Mutant City

by Steve Feasey

  ‘He’s my uncle.’ He had no idea why he told this lie, but it was out of his lips before he knew it. ‘I was sent here to find him. His name is Silas.’

  He thought he detected the hint of something in her eye, but she shook her head and addressed him in the same stark tone she’d used to warn him away from the water. ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Do you know where I could ask? It’s very important that I –’

  Brick, who’d been silent up until now, tapped Rush on the shoulder. ‘Rush,’ he said.

  ‘Not now, Brick. I’m trying to –’

  ‘There’s someone in there.’ He nodded towards the dark interior. ‘Someone who needs me.’

  The woman looked at the giant with open distrust. She was about to speak when Brick walked up to the door, pushed past her and entered the shack.

  ‘Hey!’ the old woman said, following the hulking intruder inside. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t just barge your way in here. Get out!’

  But if Brick heard her, he didn’t show it. He stood, perfectly still, staring at a small, unmoving figure on top of a thin and grimy mattress at the back of the room.

  ‘She’s sick.’ His voice was so low Rush had to strain to hear him. Brick took a step towards the bed.

  ‘Don’t you touch her!’ the old woman said. ‘Don’t hurt her!’

  ‘Already hurting,’ Brick said. ‘I can see it. She doesn’t have very long.’

  ‘Horace! Janek!’ the woman cried out of her front door to her neighbours across the square. ‘Anyone! Come quick! Help!’

  ‘Brick . . .’ Rush put a hand on the big guy’s arm and tried to pull him back. He might as well have been tugging at the giant wall that loomed over this place. Brick knelt down beside the pallet and reached out, gently brushing the sick young woman’s thin hair away from her forehead with his fingertips. Then he put his enormous hand on the top of her head and gently curled his fingers around it as if her skull was a ball.

  The woman went to grab Brick, but Rush held her back. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘You have to trust him! He can help!’

  ‘Let go of me! Get him away from her!’ the woman shrieked. ‘Janek!’

  Brick’s entire body went stiff. His face contorted into a ghastly rictus – mouth drawn down, jaw clenched shut so the muscles at the side of his face and the cords on his neck stood out. It looked as if a powerful invisible force was flowing through him from head to toe. The figure on the bed gave a little moan and then she too went ramrod stiff. Rush tore his eyes away to look at the woman. Dumbstruck now, she gawped at the scene unravelling before her. The little shack was filled with a harsh ozone smell.

  Brick still had the sick girl’s head in his hand, both of them vigorously jerking and twitching for what could only have been seconds but seemed much longer to those watching. The look on Brick’s face was terrible. Thinking something had gone horribly wrong and that his friend was in danger, Rush was about to try to physically pry them apart when Brick flew violently backwards, his meaty shoulders slamming into the hard ground. There was a low, terrible groan, and the giant rolled on to his side, drawing his knees to his chest. He closed his eyes and lay there unmoving.

  Rush dashed over to his friend’s side, taking Brick’s huge head in his hands and asking him over and over again if he was all right. He could hear the desperation in his own voice when Brick didn’t respond.

  ‘What just happened?’ the old woman asked in a shrill voice. ‘What has that thing done to my –’

  ‘Mama?’

  The woman stopped. She stared in disbelief at the girl on the bed, who’d turned to look at her for the first time in three weeks. ‘Yala!’ she cried, throwing herself down beside the makeshift bed and gathering her daughter into her arms. As the tears ran down her face, she failed to notice the arrival of some men at her door.

  ‘What’s going on in there?’ a gruff voice asked.

  Rush looked over his shoulder. Dotty had taken up a menacing posture in the doorway, blocking the men’s entry. ‘It’s OK, Dotty,’ he called out. ‘Easy, girl.’

  ‘We heard you calling out for help, Elder Yesmin,’ the man said, looking from Dotty to the old woman and back again. ‘Who are these strangers? Have they tried to hurt you?’

  The woman stayed on her knees, her daughter’s head resting in the crook of her arm. An odd laugh-sob escaped her lips. Without taking her eyes off the girl, she waved her free hand in the direction of her neighbours. ‘No. No, they have not tried to hurt me. They have helped Yala. They have saved her.’

  The men hesitated, uncertain what to do. ‘You’re sure?’

  The old woman nodded. Tears of happiness ran down her cheeks. ‘I’m sure. They are my guests. They are guests of Green Ward.’ This time she turned to look at the men, nodding and smiling through her tears. ‘Go now. I’m fine.’ She looked lovingly down at her daughter before adding, ‘We’re all fine.’

  Yesmin – that was the mother’s name – prepared a meal while her guests sat around her single-room house. Despite protests that she felt perfectly well, Yala was ordered by her mother to rest. Rush hardly recognised the girl as the same person who’d been lying on her deathbed when they’d arrived, and he doubted there would be any kind of relapse; whatever Brick had ‘taken away’, he had made the girl completely fit and healthy again. She answered Rush’s questions about the slums, explaining the layout and the politics of the place.

  Word of Brick’s healing quickly got out. It turned out that there were currently three more victims of Rot in Green Ward, and Brick, having recovered slightly from healing Yala, was asked by their families if he would visit them too. Rush, seeing how progressively ill his friend was becoming after the first two treatments had begged him to stop, but to no avail.

  Now the big guy sat hunched over on the edge of the mattress. He looked terrible: pale with deep purple shadows under eyes that had lost all their shine. It was clear to everyone he was suffering, despite his insistence that he was ‘fine’. When he’d healed Rush back in the cave, his eyes had gone completely black. Now the same blackness was in his veins, all of which seemed to stand out luridly in stark contrast to his sallow skin, on which dark, nasty-looking sores had erupted. His breathing was laboured, and when he coughed it was a nasty wet noise.

  ‘It’s not much,’ Yesmin said as she placed the food on the low table in the centre of the room, ‘but you are welcome to everything we have and much more.’ She gave Brick a worried look. ‘Will your friend be all right?’ she asked Rush.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t known him long. He did something similar to me when I was blinded.’

  ‘You were blind?’ Yala asked, looking between the pair.

  ‘Temporarily. But Brick healed me.’ He glanced across at his friend, shaking his head at what he saw. ‘He recovered quickly that time, but he didn’t look anywhere near as bad as he does now. I don’t know how or why, but I think he takes into himself whatever it is that has made the person sick. In doing so, he gets ill until he can make it go away.’

  ‘You must both stay here until he recovers. The slums are not an easy place for those new to them.’ She spooned a thin stew into a bowl and handed it to him, setting another, bigger bowl aside for Brick, who did not even look up.

  ‘That’s kind of you, but I think we should press on and try to locate the man I’ve come to find.’

  ‘Silas?’

  ‘You know him, don’t you?’ Rush remembered the strange look on the woman’s face when he’d first mentioned the man’s name.

  ‘I know of him. He’s a troublemaker. His name has been mentioned in connection with the mutant rallies, talking in front of the crowds about our rights and how we should strive to make our voices heard. From what I gather, he also runs a small school for children who have been orphaned by the very disease your friend took away from Yala. Again, I’m not sure, but it’s rumoured to be somewhere in White Ward. Some say he is not even a Mute, but I find tha
t impossible to believe.’ She paused for a moment. ‘You are not from here, so you don’t know what we have to live with – the ARM crews and their thuggish tactics: coming into our houses and demanding to see our ID papers, hauling us off in the middle of the night to experiment on us or take blood samples. People like this man, Silas, have sown the seed of hope in many a mutant’s head, but he’s setting himself up for a fall. Melk and his ARM brutes will not stand for opposition.’ Another pause, this one accompanied by a long, searching look. ‘Thankfully, the ARM has been quieter of late. Apparently, half its units have been sent out from the cities in search of mutant children with strange abilities.’

  She smiled when she saw the look on Rush’s face. ‘Don’t worry. Even if you are the ones they’re looking for, you’re safe here. There is no love for the ARM in this, or any other, ward, and the two of you have more than earned all the protection Green Ward can offer. You can be sure of that.’

  ‘Our being here might put you in danger.’

  ‘Nonsense. The ARM are not expecting you to turn up here. They think you are hidden out there somewhere.’ She waved her hand.

  Rush glanced over at Brick again. He hadn’t touched his food. Despite his reservations, it looked as if staying in Green Ward was their only option until his friend was back on his feet. Something else Yesmin had said struck him. She’d said the ARM was looking for children, not just one child. It was what Kohl had said in Logtown, and Tink had spoken about there being at least one other ‘like him’. He felt his heart thudding as he remembered what Brick had said a few days ago in the mountains: ‘Five.’ There were five of them. Although strictly speaking Brick wasn’t a child, he was more like one than Rush in many ways. Were Silas and Jax bringing them together, here in the slums of City Four? If so, why? His head was spinning with it all.

  ‘There is a safe house a little way from here,’ Yesmin said. ‘I know people have been hidden there before. I’ll take you there and keep you out of harm’s way. In the meantime, I’ll somehow get word to this Silas man about where you are.’

  ‘Thank you, Yesmin. We’ll take you up on your kind offer.’

  She smiled reassuringly at him. ‘It’s the least I can do.’ She looked lovingly at her daughter. ‘I owe you everything.’

  Zander

  Zander looked through the bars at the Mute his men had brought in that morning. By any standards, the prisoner was enormous: a broad-shouldered giant with long, greasy black hair that hung halfway down his back in a braid. He was naked from the waist up, not an inch of his true skin colour visible through the tattoos that covered him as he sat, hunched forward, with his huge ham-like forearms resting on his knees. At the sound of their approach, he raised his head to look up at his jailers. Zander was surprised to see the man grinning. One bloodshot brown eye stared back at the politician; the other socket was sightless, containing an orb of tarnished metal that looked like an old ball bearing. Zander idly wondered what might bring a man to choose to wear such a thing instead of an eyepatch. Of course, if he’d been a city dweller he could have had a new eye produced for him using the stem-cell technology that Zander’s father’s company was famous for.

  Zander turned his attention to the ARM officer. ‘Please remind me who this charming individual is.’

  ‘Mange,’ the caged freak said, getting up and stepping forward. He thrust a filthy hand through the bars for the politician to shake, completely ignoring the shock-rod the guard quickly pulled from his belt and pointed in his direction. ‘Steeleye Mange. I run Dump Two. And I have to say, Principal Zander Melk, I don’t appreciate unannounced raids like the one your guys sprung on me this morning. That is not the way things have worked for a long time now. You need to ensure these new ARM recruits of yours know that.’ He sniffed. ‘If I hadn’t wanted to talk to you anyway, there could have been a little . . . contretemps between your men and mine, if you know what I mean.’

  Zander ignored the hand. ‘What do you mean, you wanted to talk to me?’

  Steeleye grinned and rubbed his hand across his face, deliberately pulling down on his left cheek to stretch the lower eyelid and reveal even more of the grotesque metal orb. ‘You don’t seriously think that I would let this “Agency for the Registration of Mutants” just –’

  ‘Regulation.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s the Agency for the Regulation, as in control, of Mutants. You said “Registration”.’

  Steeleye rolled his one eye towards the ceiling. ‘Whatever the hell they’re called, they gotta know they can’t just swan in to my place like that unless I want them to, OK?’

  ‘And today you wanted them to?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Zander could hardly believe the gall of the man. He also wondered what the jailers here thought was so important that it warranted summoning a member of the Principia. ‘Well, if you wanted to get yourself arrested and imprisoned, you’ve succeeded. Congratulations, Mr Mange.’

  ‘Oh, I won’t be in here for long.’

  ‘Really?’ Zander raised an eyebrow. He didn’t like the arrogant grin he received in return.

  ‘Yeah, really. Not only will I be out of here, but all previous charges against me will also be dropped.’

  Zander smiled and shook his head. ‘You really are quite something, you know that, Mange? What makes you think that I will –’

  ‘I know where the mutant kids are – you know, the ones your men are so keen to find, the ones with the weird powers. At least, I will do very shortly.’ He gave Zander that arrogant look again. ‘I can give them to you.’

  Zander stood as if he’d been frozen. When he spoke next, it was to the ARM agent. ‘Open the cell.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Open the cell and escort Mr Mange up to my private suite on the top floor.’

  The officer looked in amazement from Principal Melk to Steeleye and back again, then quickly swiped a card in the lock of the steel door, making it swing open.

  ‘I thought my subject matter might pique your interest,’ Steeleye said, grinning through mud-coloured teeth at Zander.

  It was all Melk Junior could do to hide his revulsion. He gestured for his ‘guest’ to make himself comfortable on the white leather sofa opposite his own. He would have the furniture destroyed and replaced afterwards. ‘Please sit, Mr Mange, or may I call you Steeleye?’

  ‘Sure. It only seems right and proper now we’re friends. What’ll I call you?’

  ‘Principal Melk will do.’

  ‘Hmmm. You look like your old man, you know that? I mean, you really look like him.’ He sniffed and took in the opulent surroundings.

  ‘The similarity has been pointed out to me before.’

  ‘Now that is one tough cookie. I mean, really, that’s a man you do not want to mess with. Must have been something being brought up by a mean old bastard like him. Not that my old man was a saint – you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘I don’t really remember him very much. He wasn’t around.’

  ‘And now you want to take over from him.’ Steeleye leered. ‘The president. Got a nice ring to it, don’t it?’

  ‘I guess it does.’

  ‘So where is he, hmm? Rumour has it he’s dying or something. Got some disease that’s eating him up.’

  ‘You said you had information for me.’

  ‘Not in the mood for chit-chat, huh?’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like some refreshments. Food maybe.’

  Mange settled back into the cushions, interlacing his fingers and cracking his knuckles before putting both his feet up on the coffee table in front of him. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Whatever you got. And don’t be shy with the goodies – I got a big appetite.’

  Zander tapped the palm of his left hand with a finger and a series of symbols and motifs in purple light appeared beneath the skin where the tiny communication device was embedded. He was instantly patched through to his secretary, whom he asked to bring ‘two steak-with-all-the-trimmings dinners’. He look
ed across at the massive mutant. ‘Make that three,’ he said. ‘And bring some beers too.’ He smiled across at Steeleye. ‘You’ll like the steak. We’ve managed to bio-engineer previously extinct cows. Delicious.’

  ‘And there I was, planning to have rat again tonight.’

  ‘Now,’ Zander said, the purple lights beneath the skin disappearing as he closed his hand into a fist and turned off the comms device. He leaned towards the one-eyed man. ‘You said something about mutant children with special powers?’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  Steeleye wagged a finger at the principal. ‘I knew you had a special interest in them. That’s why your ARM boys have set off in all directions, and those that haven’t are sniffing about asking questions.’

  ‘What I know and what you think I know might be very different things. Why don’t we assume I have no idea what you’re talking about, and you can tell me why you’re here.’

  Mange narrowed his eyes at the politician. ‘I’m not really feeling the love here, Principal Melk. I think you might have some trust issues.’ Again the wagging finger.

  In the short time they’d been alone together, Zander had already radically reassessed his opinion of the mutant; although the man was undoubtedly ruthless and cunning, he’d assumed at first that he was not particularly intelligent, but he was starting to see that beneath the rough exterior was a shrewd mind. It was easy to see how such a man might have risen to a position of power beyond the wall. Nevertheless, Zander reminded himself, he was only a mutant.

  Mange gave a resigned shrug and leaned in too. ‘Mutes come here from all over. A lot of them are wide-eyed hicks who have never seen any of the cities, let alone the slums. These individuals need a helping hand to establish themselves in such a formidable and daunting place as Muteville. I’ve taken it upon myself to try and sweep these individ­uals up before they enter the slums. Take them under my wing, as it were.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as a philanthropist, Mr Mange.’

  ‘I’m a facilitator, Principal Melk; that’s what I do. I help people to meet their needs. Some of these new arrivals could be an asset to people I know, people who need labourers, workers or . . . female friends.’ He gave Melk a lascivious wink. ‘I simply facilitate a partnership between two parties and take a small fee for doing so.’