by James Axler
His partner on the registrations desk leaped from his seat in astonishment, drawing his sin eater immediately. But it was already too late; DePaul was eating up the distance between them in the short reception space with his long-legged strides, leaping the low table that sat between them in the waiting area even as the first bullet was fired.
The round zipped past DePaul as his boots slammed down on the floor past the table. Then he kicked out, driving his right foot into the magistrate’s gut and launching him backward. The man crashed into his desk in a jangle of limbs.
DePaul stepped closer, the black curves of his mask like some gigantic insect looming over the supine magistrate where he was lying on the desktop. DePaul held his outthrust hand before him, the drooping loop of the sleeve revealing the nozzle of the plague hose there. A moment later a blast of ice-cold liquid—the incubating plague mixed with the drug glist to add to its potency—blurted into the magistrate’s face. Glist was a powerful hallucinogen refined from the perspiration of the sweatie subset of muties that roamed the Outlands. When it was suitably refined, its effects were almost instantaneous, triggering vivid hallucinations in the imbiber’s brain.
The mag cried out, getting a mouthful and lungful of the noxious mixture. The glist in the mix worked feverishly quick, sending his brain into overdrive, warping his sense of reality until he saw only a shattered impression of what was really happening.
The magistrate began screaming as DePaul stepped away from him and hurried through the hangar bay doors located behind the desk.
The shots would draw someone, DePaul knew, but there was no time to worry about that now. He had a mission to complete, which meant getting into the hangar to distribute his wonderful gift of final judgment to every ville.
* * *
MEANWHILE ON DELTA LEVEL, Kane and Brigid were working their slow, laborious way through the towers, using the skyways to make their way from one to the next. It was already eight-thirty. Time seemed to be hurrying away from them and no headway was being made.
Brigid halted on one of the skyways that linked towers three and four. The walkway was lined with windows, granting a fantastic view of the whole ville in all its magnificent manmade glory.
“This is crazy, Kane,” she said, shaking her head.
He halted a few steps farther on and turned back. People were passing on the skyway, always someone going somewhere, keeping the ville functioning with their little designated roles.
“This was your idea, Baptiste,” Kane reminded her. “You wanted to get moving so we could search for this thing.”
“I know I did,” she said, “but in my mind it was a case of walking straight to the scene of the crime and putting it in lockdown somehow.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” Kane told her. “Take it from an old mag.”
Brigid shook her head in frustration, biting at her lip.
“We can walk every corridor,” Kane said. “We may get lucky.”
“No, we’ve tried that. We need to be more methodical,” she insisted. “Kane, you were a magistrate.”
He looked suspiciously around the corridor, checking that no one had overheard. People passed by, ignoring the discussion. “Keep that quiet, yeah?”
“Sorry,” Brigid muttered. “What would you do, if you were a mag looking for revenge? Where would you go?”
“If I was this guy?” Kane asked. “Straight to the psych block to turn myself in.”
“That’s not helping,” she began, “or maybe it is....”
“Huh?”
“A magistrate looking for revenge goes to the magistrates and poisons the system from within,” Brigid said, realization finally dawning.
“Can’t be done,” said Kane. “Mag security is—”
“If we’re right, then our man either is or was a magistrate,” Brigid reminded Kane, cutting him off. “He knows his way around the mags’ security. He could get inside. After all, we did.”
Kane looked thoughtful. “But inside the mags...” he mused. “We’ll need Cappa Level. You okay to slum it like that, librarian? I know you grew up expecting Beta things.”
“I’ll cope,” Brigid assured him. “Which way?”
Kane pointed to another corridor, this one with glass on one side that looked out onto the Cobaltville landscape all the way down to the Tartarus Pits. “This way,” he said.
They hurried on together, a new sense of purpose in their strides.
“You do realize that Cappa’s full of magistrates, right? It’s the level where we’re most likely to be recognized,” Kane said.
Brigid flashed him a tight smile. “You always love a challenge, don’t you?” she teased.
“Yeah,” Kane griped. “A challenge—not suicide.”
Chapter 29
DePaul stepped into the hangar bay, an insectile, nightmarish figure of terror in his long-beaked mask and the sweeping black wings of his coat.
Though located on Cappa Level, the magistrate hangar bay had roof access, thanks to the slant of the building, and an opening side door to grant passage for the Deathbird helicopters. These choppers were used on scouting missions beyond the ville walls, for surveillance and to take out rogue operators who strayed too close to Cobaltville’s protective embrace. Eight Deathbirds were lined up along both walls of the bay—sixteen in total—being serviced by magistrate technicians to ensure they were up to spec.
The personnel within the hangar had already gone to high alert, having heard the shots from the reception room. They watched the door warily as the sinister figure stepped through, seemingly unarmed and yet striding purposefully into the restricted space.
“Freeze where you are,” a magistrate called Christopher ordered, raising his sin eater in his gloved fist.
Behind him, two other mags backed by seven technicians were poised with their own weapons, a tiny army against just one man.
DePaul slowly raised his arms, hands spread wide in surrender. “You have me, Magistrate,” he said, his voice eerily filtered through the breath mask. “No need to shoot.”
Magistrate Christopher remained where he was, holding his weapon steadily trained on the newcomer as he questioned him. “What happened out there? We heard shots, screaming.”
“It’s...difficult to explain,” DePaul said. “Here, let me show you....” He lowered his hands slightly, ready to unleash the cleansing rush of vat-grown plague on these unsuspecting lawbreakers.
“Don’t do that,” Christopher warned. “If you move, I will be forced to shoot you.”
DePaul halted, his arms a little lower than they had been before.
“Why is he dressed like that?” one of the techs asked, venturing out from cover.
“Is that a magistrate shield?” another asked, recognizing the red emblem emblazoned on DePaul’s coat.
Christopher stepped forward, his sin eater poised before him. “Well? What is it?”
“I’m one of you,” DePaul said, his filtered voice hollow, like something speaking from beyond the grave.
“That so?” Christopher asked, clearly unconvinced.
“How else do you explain my presence here, on Cappa Level?” DePaul asked him. “Now, may I lower my hands?”
“Keep those mitts where I can see them, buddy boy,” the magistrate instructed. “Words don’t prove nothing. Tennyson, Mallick, go check on what happened outside.”
Two of the magistrates in the hangar went trotting toward the door and out into the reception area. As they drew level with him, DePaul calculated the distance and trajectory, working out how best to disable every person in this room. He would wait for them to return, then unleash the judgment upon them, passing the final sentence for their transgressions.
* * *
KANE AND BRIGID found an elevator and slipped inside, usin
g the pass she had borrowed from Phillips to ascend to Cappa Level. As a roving medic, Phillips had access to all levels except Alpha, which meant he was on call to treat magistrates who had been wounded in the line of duty.
As the elevator ascended, Brigid’s eyes met with Kane’s uncomfortably, despite all the time they had spent together, and she began to shy away.
“You think Grant’s going to be okay?” she asked over the quiet hum of the elevator motor.
Kane nodded firmly, as though convincing himself. “He better be,” he said. “I don’t think I have the energy to train up another partner like that.”
Brigid looked solemn, shaking her head. “Don’t you...don’t you ever take anything seriously?” she asked him.
“I have a theory, Baptiste,” Kane said. “You start making it serious and it becomes serious. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”
She was flummoxed. “So even with your partner—our friend—lying on a...lying in the medical bay, you...”
“I’ll tell you when it gets serious,” Kane said grimly.
Just then, the elevator came to a halt and the doors began to slide open on the most dangerous level in Cobaltville.
* * *
MAGISTRATES TENNYSON AND MALLICK marched from the hangar and into the reception area beyond. The room had a single desk, a bank of windows and a comfortable couch with a low table in front, handy for placing beverages while magistrates waited for their Deathbirds to be prepped.
Right now, there was a magistrate lying on top of the desk, weeping quietly to himself, his sin eater held rigid in his hand before him and his helmet askew. Across the room, another was slumped behind the couch, a blood-soaked rip on the breast of his black uniform.
“Baron’s blood!” Magistrate Tennyson exclaimed as he took in the scene.
Mallick looked up and around, spotting the familiar circular wound in the wall where a bullet had struck it. “Got a shot here and—” he began, pointing.
“Screw that shit,” Tennyson shouted, cutting the man off and hurrying back toward the hangar. “We have to tell—”
As Magistrate Tennyson stepped into the hangar bay, DePaul triggered his nozzles and turned, sending a blast of infectious liquid at his face with one hose, while the second jet slammed against Magistrate Christopher, who had been questioning him. Both men went down in a splatter of dark, foul-smelling liquid, the force of the impact pushing them to the floor.
“What the—?” a tech screamed as he saw two of the three on-duty mags go down.
DePaul commanded his own sin eater into his hand and fired a shot, blasting the technician before he could comment further.
Swiftly, DePaul strode to the door that led to the reception area, hunting the last magistrate—and hence the greatest threat—as the other two struggled in the grip of the glist-laced virus.
Magistrate Mallick was on his way to the door when DePaul reappeared, and he was quick enough to leap for cover even as he commanded his own pistol into his hand and began blasting. His shots struck DePaul across the torso—one, two, three—then zipped away in a spray of sparks as the armored coat protected its wearer.
DePaul curled his index finger on the trigger of his sin eater, blasting a triple burst of shots at the retreating magistrate even as he dropped down behind the couch. The bullets struck the sofa, ripping chunks out of it and turning the stuffing to powder.
Mallick blasted back, activating his helmet comm as he returned fire. “Magistrate down. Repeat, magistrate down,” he yelled, the sin eater bucking in his hand. “We are under attack, Cappa Level, hangar three. Request assistance.”
As Mallick filed his report, DePaul came running across the room, advancing onto the couch as if it were a staircase, stepping from cushions to back in two quick strides.
Mallick glanced up as the shadow loomed over him, swinging his weapon to shoot. DePaul kicked out, the toe of his boot driving into the fourteen-inch barrel of the sin eater and kicking it out of the mag’s hand. Mallick howled in shock as his wrist bent back, scrambled to reach the pistol as it slammed into the far wall. Still looming over him on the back of the couch, DePaul blasted, sending a burst of infected liquid into the exposed face beneath the helmet and visor. It was just like shooting that sniper at the mutie farm all those years ago.
Mallick sank to the deck and wrenched his helmet off as the liquid struck, hoping to keep the foul-smelling gunk from touching him.
DePaul lined up his shot and blasted, sending a single 9 mm slug toward the man’s exposed face. The bullet buried itself in his forehead, drilling into his brain in an instant.
For a moment, Mallick’s body twitched as he lay there, responding to the last signals from his dying brain.
DePaul turned back to the hangar, reloading his sin eater as he went to kill the technicians.
Cappa Level
KANE AND BRIGID were wondering which way to go when they heard the noise.
“A shot,” he said, cocking his head to listen.
She looked alertly down the length of the corridor they were in, wary of magistrates finding them in a restricted area.
“No, make that shots,” Kane said as more noises reverberated down the hall. “This way...” He started to run, that old point-man sense at work once more, tracking the specific source of danger in a level that was full of dangers.
* * *
INSIDE THE HANGAR, five technicians watched as the ominous figure stalked back through the doors, sin eater in his hand.
“He can’t take all of us, lads,” Greene whispered to the others.
One of his colleagues looked less certain. “I dunno. He killed all those mags,” he muttered.
“We can take him down,” Greene insisted, plucking up the pistol that waited in the armaments kit for the nearest chopper. Then he nudged out from behind the cover of the armored helicopter, the sin eater raised before him, its weight familiar from his days as a magistrate.
Greene’s weapon blasted, but it was accompanied by a much louder roar as something came crashing through the wall of the hangar. “What th—?” Greene yelped as a battered SandCat mowed him down in a screech of straining brakes.
Greene’s bullet cut through the air toward DePaul, but the aim was just wide. DePaul turned his head as the round whipped past, six inches from his hidden right ear. He had called the drone SandCat the moment he had left Beta Level, and it had followed its programming, using the service roads to ascend to the magistrate level, where the hangar was located. The SandCat looked battered, but DePaul had reinforced its front fender for just such an occasion, knowing precisely when and where he would require its appearance. Admittedly, he had not foreseen that it would run over an opponent who was in the process of shooting him, but sometimes, as the old saying went, the barons favored the brave.
The other engineers were looking at the scene in astonishment. The SandCat had plowed through one wall, hurtling in past two Deathbirds before running down their colleague.
“Greene couldn’t have survived that,” said Hirshey. “He was right—we can take this loon!” And with that, Hirshey was running out from safety, swinging a wrench over his head as he charged toward the dark-robed infiltrator.
DePaul shot him in the face with a blast of poison, the ice-cold liquid splashing across his head in an instant. Hirshey went down with a shriek of agony, and in a moment the potent mixture of glist was being metabolized by his system, turning the lights of the hangar bay into swirling rainbows of intense color and vibrancy.
DePaul stalked across the room, sending out another spurt from one of his hidden hoses, blasting two more engineers where they cowered behind the black shield plating of a helicopter. The guilty went down with yelps of surprise, drifting almost immediately into a semiconscious delirium as the hallucinogen took them.
The last engineer, a man called Bojef
fries, was feeling either incredibly brave or incredibly desperate then. As DePaul made his way across to the drone SandCat, the tech ran at him, swinging a hammer above his head. DePaul saw the man’s shadow as he stepped into the light, watched his reflection on the scratched ceramic finish of the SandCat, then brought his sin eater to bear, blasting him in the chest before Bojeffries could get close enough to strike.
The engineer went down with an agonized grunt, and the hammer went clattering across the deck. DePaul ignored him, his attention fixed on his mission now, accessing the rear of the SandCat, where the full canisters of his final judgment virus were held. He could not have entered the ville with them—too much risk, and besides, how would he have carried them while he made his way through the levels? Having them arrive twelve hours after he did at this designated point had meant he could move about freely, set in motion everything he needed to ensure success.
Beneath the front wheels of the SandCat, the engineer called Greene was drifting in and out of consciousness, his pain intense. His ribs had been crushed, his spine and both hips broken, and his left leg had been wrenched out of its socket as the three-ton vehicle came to a halt on top of him. “K-kill me,” he muttered through bloody teeth.
DePaul looked pitifully down at him through the lenses of the eerie, inhuman mask. “I do not kill,” he said. “I pass sentence on the guilty.”
Greene sank into oblivion as his body started to shut down from loss of blood.
* * *
THERE WERE MAGISTRATES EVERYWHERE.
A squadron was marching in the direction of the shootings in the hangar bay, but there seemed to be some confusion. A second group of mags met the first in one of the broad corridors that characterised the magistrate level, and a discussion erupted.
“Beta Level—report just in, someone’s killing magistrates,” one of them explained, stopping the group that was hurrying toward the hangar. “We need all hands, right now.”
“Beta?” the opposing leader asked. “I thought the report came from Mallick in the hangar bay.”