I was a bit taken aback by that. “Is that all you remember him as?”
“Gotta think of the group.” She stood up, looking at me for the first time. “Misha, we lose one, we consolidate. That’s what this is. No time for tears, okay?”
She walked off towards the storeroom (probably to count supplies again). Thanks for the pep talk, pal! I’m not convinced it’s not an act she’s putting on, that she’s denying stuff she doesn’t want to deal with. Feel like this place is a pressure cooker at times, bubbling away just waiting to blow.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE WERE MANY things that Cafferly was struggling to get used to in the new set-up, but what the Hall of Injustice had become was possibly the most unsettling. The shift had happened virtually overnight, within hours of the regime change, and walking its corridors she found herself in a metamorphosed building, as if the structure had warped to better reflect the psyche of its current masters. Walls had darkened to a sickly green and were icy to the touch. Ceilings stretched and bowed impossibly, almost as tall as a cathedral in places, the material grown supple. A chill breeze blew in from somewhere, carrying with it the permanent stench of decay. How this had happened without her noticing at the time was decidedly unnerving, causing her to question her own perception and senses. This was, no doubt, the new normal now, but she hadn’t anticipated how subtle the transformation would be. Within the space of an eye-blink, further mutations could ripple through the Hall as the powers that be secured their position.
Clearly, the new Chief was in league with dark forces. Cafferly had yet to meet them first-hand, but she detected their psi-presence all the time, like a background hum that once you tuned into it, you couldn’t drown it out. Their malignancy was soaked into the very rockcrete. She knew they were watching, reporting back to Sidney, whispering in his ear, trying to influence his decisions, guiding his hand. The kid probably liked to think he was the architect of this new world, but they were the power behind the throne; they’d more than likely enabled him to seize the Grand Hall in the first place. What they were, she couldn’t read—she gleaned aspects of their psignature (female, twin sisters, wholly black-hearted, like life itself was an anathema to them), but believed they were manifestations of a greater intelligence, and as such its defences were far too strong for her to probe further. Cafferly had to be careful: if she started putting her mind in places that weren’t welcome, she would be more than likely hauled before the Chief and negated. It was one of the perils of being a Psi-Judge—you were always aware of the secrets swirling around the ether, but had to learn when to turn a deaf ear to what you’re not supposed to hear, otherwise it could come back to bite you. Or at least you gave the impression you hadn’t heard it. Whichever, Psi-Div operatives were regarded with suspicion and distrust regardless: nobody liked the idea that someone could comb through their heads on a whim.
It had been true enough before the Fall—then, it was the perps who had eyed her with fear and contempt as they had sat across from her in the interrogation cubes and she had divulged their guilt. They were minds that were easy to pick apart, built on base instincts and cowardly self-interest, and she had taken no small pleasure in drilling down into their unconscious and spilling out every thought and deed that had passed through their skulls. If they got antagonistic and resisted, she filled their brains with broken glass and re-awoke childhood traumas, then watched them squirm. They learned not to mess with her after that. As a telepath, there was little that could be hidden from her, and even the dead—if they were fresh enough—could be read from the latent images still ghosting in their slowly disintegrating cerebella, revealing up to the point of their demise their final moments and, if you were lucky, the identities of their killers.
It had been a curse since birth, and a talent that she’d never been comfortable with. It started slowly—moments of startling precognition, the muted whisper of her parents’ minds leaking into hers, which she at first thought was a sign of schizophrenia—but it was finally the age of five that brought with it a sharpening of her mental faculties, like someone had plugged her into the direct current. Suddenly, every voice in the neighbourhood was in her head, and she couldn’t hide it any longer, couldn’t control the rush of information that was flooding into her. It sent her over the edge. Her parents, who taught her how to control her abilities, submitted her to Justice Department without delay and she was made a ward of Psi-Division, enrolled as a cadet.
Cafferly underwent eight years of intensive training, and her mind, once a scattershot receiver, became a deftly wielded weapon. Her supervisor Burrell and the rest of her tutors instructed her how to channel her residual psi-power into a force she could deploy with the same level of skill as a Lawgiver or daystick. She was still occasionally at the mercy of random flashes—shards of the future interrupting her consciousness, bleed-through from disturbances in the veil between the dimensions—but these were part and parcel of being a Psi-Judge, and a useful asset at the HoJ’s disposal. Glimpses of imminent gang conflicts, a predicted domestic murder, discovering the hideaways of pro-democratic seditionist cells: she turned her now-powerful mind to all of them, and as such ensured the perpetrators were brought to book. She’d been brought up to respect the Judges, and now that she was the eyes scanning the city, she had to admit she enjoyed the position of authority it gave her, stealing into creeps’ heads with relish.
It was remarkable that, given the influence that Psi-Div held within the Grand Hall—and the number of operatives working for the department—no one saw the coup coming. That was in itself troubling. The entities that Sidney had fallen in with had managed to cloak themselves to such a degree that the pre-cogs and empaths had no knowledge or warning of their presence before they were upon them, inveigling their twisted creed in through the back door, as it were. De’Ath too should’ve raised some red flags before he showed his hand, the virulence of his anti-life agenda caught by telepaths such as herself, but his psychopathy was well-hidden among the rank and file uniforms already predisposed to extreme acts of brutality. The street Judges were not a stable bunch by and large, many hopped up on aggression-enhancing drugs: seeking out a deranged mind amongst that lot would’ve been no easy task. So it was that Sidney’s ruthless rise to the top came as a surprise to them all, his youth by no means a handicap to his pervading desire to wipe out all criminality (and by extension every living thing capable of it). Together with his inner circle of lieutenants—themselves warped by their close exposure to the sisterly creatures—De’Ath had installed himself in Chief Drabbon’s chair before anyone knew what was happening, or indeed could do much to stop it.
Some resisted—even the hardliners who’d previously advocated summary executions for pet-owners whose animals fouled the sked weren’t prepared to be party to the wholesale genocide of humanity. But the fightback was easily quashed, the rebels battling a regime that couldn’t be destroyed by conventional means. Many of their heads now adorned Sidney’s office, a reminder of the fate of those that opposed him. Others, mainly auxiliaries and support staff, fled, taking their chances with the citizenry, merely delaying the inevitable. The majority in the Grand Hall, however, were given the ultimatum adapt or die, and they plumped for the former, drinking specially concocted fluids prepared by De’Ath’s associates that transformed them into beings that went beyond normal mortality. Life was the enemy now, and Sidney’s troops were no longer part of that hateful state; instead they were his zombified acolytes, carrying out the slaughter on his orders.
Cafferly didn’t fight the regime change—she accepted without question the new state of affairs, and the demands of her new boss. Part of it was self-preservation, but mostly it was a way to protect her sanity. At the beginning of the purge, those with soft talents like hers were swamped by the psychic backlash of the mass murder taking place in the capital and beyond—Psi-Div experienced a near total whiteout in the first few hours, something that the department had never witnessed before. Operatives were en
tering catatonic states, third eyes effectively blinded by the nuclear blast of suffering reflecting back from the psychosphere. It reminded her of the burgeoning of her abilities as a teen: a sudden rush of energy and information that threatened to blow her mind like an overloaded circuit. Then, she’d needed Judicial training to teach her how to turn it on and off; now, she, and the rest of the division, required help by non-human means to shield them from the sharp end of De’Ath’s designs. Sidney still had uses for Psi-Judges, wanting them to play a part in his global carnage, and so they were all instructed to partake of the Fluids, promised that they would be better attuned to what the world was becoming. Cafferly didn’t argue—in truth, at the time she was incapable of argument, rational thought drowned out by the persistent screaming of the dying and the dead—and the change, when it came, was akin to the volume knob on a radio being turned mercifully low.
Physically, she was undoubtedly different—her skin became sallow, her hair thinned, her teeth rotted, and she found that she barely needed food and water any more—but the important thing was that her mental faculties were as keen as a blade. She even sensed something opening in her head when she concentrated, as if she was gaining insight through a higher power. A glance in a mirror showed light leaking through a sphincter-like orifice that was now at the centre of her papery-thin forehead, the origins of which she couldn’t begin to fathom. However, after the initial shock, she accepted it as part of her new state of being: a badge to declare that she was loyal to the current authority. Sidney was very big on loyalty, on his lieutenants following his every lead, and those that weren’t up to the task—or displeased him in some way; he was notoriously fickle—were purged mercilessly, their new lives beyond death cut short. It fed into a general air of paranoia that existed in the Grand Hall, worry of falling short of the Chief’s demands and expectations; having seen what he was doing to the general population, no one under his command wanted to suffer the same fate. That was why Cafferly was keen not to antagonise the sisters that De’Ath was so beholden to at any point, or poke her nose into their doings. If they were casting an eye over her from afar, let them see she was a good little soldier for the cause.
Right now that’s what she was, engaging in the task that occupied most of her waking hours (not that she slept much; the act felt alien these days): rooting out survivors. With her digital map up on her screen before her, and her mind racing along its channels, she was adept at zeroing in on the living, breathing guilty holed up in their rats’ nests. Sometimes it was a particularly strong psignature that she locked on to; other times she picked up the notes of fear and distress in the ether, like a wine-taster divining the balance of ingredients in any given glass, and followed them back to their source. There was a certain amount of needle-in-a-haystack sifting to do considering the sheer volume of conflicting signals washing through the psychic plane, but she was nothing if not dedicated. It was a sacred calling to bring lawbreakers to justice.
For the last hour or so, she’d been tracing elements that had caught her attention in the upper north-east quadrant of the capital. She’d had to tease them out, sieve away some of the more distracting psi-chatter so she could focus on what they were and exactly where they were coming from. She peeled back layer after layer of white noise, the objects of her interest gleaming brighter in the dark like undersea jewels the harder she concentrated. They had the delicious psychic aroma of terror and hunger, both of which always gave off a unique scent, and she followed her nose, telepathically speaking. That combination was a surefire indication that one or more perpetrators had shut themselves away to escape Sidney’s legions, and were now slowly starving to death as they ran low on supplies. It would be a dereliction of her duty not to hasten their demise by directing a couple of uniforms to their door.
“Any units in the vicinity of Bleeker Street,” she said into her mic on her headset, “I have a strong indication that several justice-evaders have sought refuge at…” She furrowed her brow, sensing that her third eye was pulsating at the same time, and touched a finger to her temple. “...Two-nine-eight. That’s an old furniture store, on the corner with Klein.” Her other hand lightly brushed the map screen, and it zoomed in, buildings and thoroughfares lighting up. “It’s a weak signal—suggests they’re in the basement.”
“Copy that, Control,” a sibilant voice responded in her ear. “Maher and Venablesss ressponding. Prossseeding to location.”
Cafferly could’ve ended the connection there and moved on to the next target, but curiosity and a certain sadistic voyeuristic interest—call it like it is, she told herself; there was no point denying her nature now—meant she lingered on Bleeker, keen to see justice being meted out. She’d been doing it more often recently, a little addicted, it had to be said, to the vicarious thrill that came with setting up the slaughter. De’Ath probably wouldn’t approve, if he knew, having lectured previously on the importance of dispassionate genocide, of punishment without emotional attachment, but then again the guy could suck the fun out of everything. Anyway, she knew that he still got a tingle in his Department-issue jocks when a lawbreaker was ended by his hand.
She cast her mind out and found the pair of Judges arriving at the address, watching events unfold inside her head as if she were there, witnessing it in person. Bodies were strewn about the street, rotting where they lay, and the uniforms didn’t even attempt to negotiate their Lawriders around them, simply ploughing through limbs and organs. It was just roadkill now: the guilty punished and discarded. They dismounted, and one tried the door handle. When it was evidently locked, he drew his gun and smashed the glass frontage with the butt, reaching inside and popping the latch. They entered, showing little concern for their entrance being advertised. Their new state of being gave them no reason to be afraid; they had partaken of the Fluids and gone beyond death. All that mattered to them was the execution of the criminals unlawfully clinging to life.
Cafferly zoomed her remote viewing into the store with the two greys. It was dark, but they had no need of light; indeed, it was likely that neither Maher nor Venables still had eyes to see with anyway. Their liquescent complexion suggested they were sloughing off all the vestiges of their bodies in life, and becoming nothing more than revenants adorned with a badge. They moved purposefully towards the back of the building, striding past plastic-sheeted three-piece suites and pine cabinets that belonged to a world that didn’t exist any more, pausing momentarily before a maintenance door, heads turning to the side as if trying to catch a sound or a scent, though they no longer had the senses for either. They worked instead by some innate impulse. As one they shouldered the door, and descended the stairs that led to the basement, justice inexorable and remorseless.
The psi felt a pleasurable knot turn in her stomach. The anticipation was always the best part. Would the survivors accept judgement meekly and with grateful resignation?
They rarely did. Before the Judges had stepped off the last stair, one of the humans stepped out from behind a stack of pallets and levelled a shotgun at them. The report when he pulled the trigger was deafening, and Cafferly’s mind’s eye twitched in discomfort. The shell blew a hole clean through Maher, sticky black tendrils splattering the floor, but it barely slowed him. The Judges returned fire instantly, riddling the man with bullets, and continued their progress even as he hit the floor, as if he’d been nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Maher paused briefly and looked down at the wound torn in his sternum with something approaching curiosity, running a gloved finger around the glistening hole, before moving on. Cafferly sensed his mild confusion, some tiny vestige of his living brain remarking that this should’ve hurt, but the lack of functioning nerve endings meant he had felt nothing. The body was just an empty shell.
As they rounded the corner, Venables took a shot to the head, ricocheting off his helmet. It had hit with sufficient force to cleave the metal, exposing the grey-green skull beneath, but he simply pumped his trigger without breaking his stride, shred
ding the crates the young woman with the revolver was sheltering behind until she had to abandon her cover. He snapped off an SE round just as she fled towards the stairs and blew her jaw in two.
For a moment, there was stillness, smoke rising from their barrels, wooden shards pattering on the earthen floor. The two Judges stood side by side, scanning the darkness. Cafferly furrowed her brow, aware that there was more living here than just the two that had been despatched. She pushed, and got a response back.
“There,” she whispered aloud to herself, and in her head Venables’ gaze alighted on a section of the panelling around the bottom of the far wall. He stalked forward without hesitation, reached down and wrenched it free; several scared pairs of eyes looked out at him from the gloom, their owners lying horizontally in the crawlspace. A baby’s whimper echoed in that split-second of quiet. Then Maher joined him, and they both levelled their Lawgivers.
Cafferly broke the connection and her mind shut down. It was only after she emerged out of the static fuzz that came from an abrupt viewing termination that she wondered why she’d turned it off. She’d done it without thinking, the psi version of a repulsed look away. She wasn’t normally so squeamish. That was… unusual.
She sensed a figure standing at her shoulder, and glanced up to see Mortis’s creature waiting for her attention. It was a sad, shambling thing, decayed and moulded by his master’s touch.
“The Chief wuh-wants to suh-see you,” it stammered, exposed teeth chattering.
Cafferly felt a weird sense of unease, but pushed it down so it wouldn’t show. She nodded and stood up, shoving past the pathetic servant, keen to make it know it was beneath her and she wasn’t concerned by its presence or its message. She stepped into the corridor, and headed for the stairs, hands trembling slightly on the guardrail as she climbed.
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