"6:23 this morning?" Anderson remembered the lights going out at the Sector House, the race down the stairway to the holding-cubes, and the mystery of why there had been no more burnings. "But that would mean he left the Sector House around the time the last power cut ended."
"That's right," Control said. "Surveillance cameras show him waiting by the front exit when the power came back on. Like I said, I don't know if any of this is relevant to your case. But I figured you'd want to hear about it either way. Control out."
The hiss of static over the radio unit grew louder as Control broke the connection, but Anderson was no longer listening. Instead, she considered what she had just learned and wondered whether it might be the beginning of some kind of breakthrough. Queeg was at the Sector House, she thought. That's why the entity chose him. Maybe it's power is limited somehow. Maybe it's tied to the Sector House in some way I don't understand yet, and that's why it had to use a proxy. Either way, if it's true that its power is limited, then that means there must be some way to stop it.
"Anderson!" She heard a shout as the Tek-Judge came hurrying back towards her. "I just got the results back on that text analysis you asked for. You hit paydirt. Wait a second... MAC is sending me more files." The Tek-Judge's hand moved to the side of his head as he scrolled through the incoming information on the drop-down info-display inside his helmet. "Hmm, there's a lot of it."
"Just give me the edited highlights," she told him. "If I need any further details I'll ask."
"Okay." The Tek-Judge began again in a distracted tone as he skimmed through the files on his display. "Looks like you were right about the religious angle. MAC calculates a ninety-seven per cent correlation between the wording of the messages on the wall and phrases from The Testament of Jaron - an apocryphal text used by the Jaronite Brethren, a sub-sect of a heretical splinter group that broke away from the Church of the Original Holy sometime in the mid Twenty-first century. Vatican Inquisitors killed most of them, but a small group made it to Mega-City One and were granted religious asylum. By all accounts, they're a bunch of zealots. When the Jaronites first made it to MC-1 they tried to recruit converts, but you know that whole fire and brimstone number doesn't go down too well in the Big Meg and they've stayed a pretty small sect in the years since. MAC puts their current membership at maybe three-dozen or so, give or take, with most of those members drawn from the original refugees and their descendants. You know, it always gets me how these religious types keep on believing in this stuff even long after it's clear nobody else is buying-"
"Edited highlights, remember? Keep to the point. You want to discuss the nature of religious faith, we'll have to do it some other time."
"Oh, right." If the Tek-Judge was disappointed he gave no sign of it. "Okay, then. According to the files all that 'flame of heaven' and 'sword of fire' stuff refers to an angel named Uriel. He's one of the four archangels - whatever the Grud they are - and he's supposed to be tasked with watching over the Earth and punishing mankind for its sins. You want to hear the rest of this?"
"Go on." Anderson could feel a tingling sensation on her scalp as though her instincts were trying to tell her something.
"Right. Well this Uriel is supposed to be the angel that Grud sent to guard the Garden of Eden to make sure Adam and Eve didn't try sneaking back in after they got thrown out over that apple business. In some of the religious sources he's identified as 'the destroyer of armies' and 'the angel who watches over thunder and terror'. Basically, a real bad-ass, angelically speaking."
An angel, Anderson thought. Remembering the shadowy, winged figure of the entity standing over her, she was once more forced to suppress a shudder. It ties in with what I saw all right. But this thing can't be that straightforward. Even if we assume this Uriel really exists, how the hell did he end up stealing souls in Mega-City One? There's another piece of the puzzle I'm just not seeing. I'm missing something. She felt the tingling on her scalp again, but no matter how much she tried to open up to what her unconscious was trying to tell her, it did no good.
"Anderson?" It was the Tek-Judge. Abruptly, Anderson realised she had fallen so deeply into her own thoughts that she had lost track of what he was saying. "I'm sorry, Baines." She noticed the name on the Tek-Judge's badge. "I was a million kilometres away from here for a moment. Please, go on. Tell me what you were saying again?"
"I was saying MAC found another correlation in the archives." As Tek-Judge Baines scrolled through more files on his helmet display, his voice grew excited. "It's an even better match this time. A ninety-nine per cent correlation between the content and prose style of the messages on the walls here and the diary of one Morris Arthur Weems."
"Weems? I don't know the name. How come he rates a place in the archives?"
"Weems was a perp," the Tek-Judge said. "Killed by a Judge fleeing the scene of a firebombing at Flynt Plaza - that's right here in Sector 12 - fifteen years ago. When his apartment was searched after the shooting, the diary was found and one of the Tek-Judges on the scene must have decided to scan it into the archives. Apparently, Weems had been a member of the Jaronites until he had a falling out with the church hierarchy - claimed they were too soft. And there's something else." Baines paused and licked at his lips as though his mouth had suddenly gone dry. "The Street Judge who shot and killed Weems was Judge William Brophy."
Brophy! Anderson felt a lurch in her stomach as the name hit her like a bullet. She had no idea as yet what it meant, but she was sure this was the missing piece of the puzzle.
And, if it was, then it was time for her to get moving.
"Contact MAC and have it forward copies of every file it has on Weems and Uriel to my bike computer." Turning away from the Tek-Judge, Anderson shouted back to him over her shoulder as she hurried toward the block elevators. "Make sure you send copies to Chief Franklin and Deputy Grimes as well, marked Urgent: Priority One-Alpha."
"Sure, if you say so." Startled by her sudden exit, the Tek-Judge called after her, but she was no longer listening. She had no time to spare. "Anderson, where are you going?"
Call it a hunch, intuition, or even a premonition, but Anderson was now sure there was only one place where she would find the answers to her questions. She was headed back to the place where it all began, back to where her investigation had started. Back to the place where, finally, all roads seemed to be leading her.
Back to Sector House 12.
THIRTEEN
URIEL RISING
It was time, and Uriel was ready.
Deep inside the darkness of his hiding place in Sector House 12, he shifted his many limbs and prepared to take the next great step forward to the achievement of his aims. The sinners he had punished in the holding-cubes and at Charles Whitman had only been the beginning. Small steps, designed to temporarily sate his hunger and to give him the energy he needed to set about his work in earnest. There were sinners all around him. He could feel them in the rooms and cubes of the Sector House, and in the blocks and streets of the wider city beyond it. The entire world was sick with sin. Even here, alone in the darkness, he could sense it clearly. The world and the city were worthless. Morally diseased. Decadent. Corrupted beyond measure of hope or salvation. The world was a sinkhole. A stinking cesspit of damnation. But through circumstance and the grace of Grud, Uriel had been granted the weapons to purge it of both sin and sinners.
Circumstance. Unbidden, through the fog of his memory, remembrance came to him. He had been a man once, that thought was clear to him. He remembered pain. He remembered his body shaking, the ground cold beneath him, a vast and encroaching darkness growing deeper and blacker around him as he grew more fearful. He remembered screaming out silently in rage and resentment. He remembered the sound of a voice in the darkness, answering him, whispering to him - the sound not unlike his own voice now, the voice he used to speak to sinners at the moment of judgement. With that, his memories become more uncertain. He remembered falling and the fear his life would be extinguished. Next,
after what now seemed a timeless eternity, he awoke once more in the darkness and found himself transformed, granted a new body, new senses, new powers to better aid him in his struggles against evil. And with it, something else.
A new hunger.
It was a terrible thing, the hunger. It burned inside him constantly. It was endless and demanding. It gave him no peace. He felt it through every fibre of his being, through every moment and movement of his body. Even when he had taken the sinners in Charles Whitman, Uriel had known his hunger would not be placated for long. It was insatiable, remorseless, a craving for sustenance that knew no bounds. It raged inside him, restless and dissatisfied, without respite. At times, the hunger seemed so huge it was as though he lived within it rather than it living inside him. At times, it was as though the hunger owned him completely - as though he had been made only as a slave to serve its needs. Whenever that thought came to him he cast it angrily aside. He was the master here; he was slave to nothing, least of all to himself. He was Uriel. The flame of Grud. The angel of vengeance. His eyes were the eyes of judgement. His hand wielded the swift and merciless sword of retribution. He did not fear the darkness. Whatever had become of the man he had once been, it was clear he had been brought to this new form of life for only one purpose: to fulfil the terms of his mission and to punish the world for its sins.
It was time. Time to take the next step forward. Time to begin the work in earnest.
Once he had been a man. Once, he had been forced to rely on merely four limbs and five senses. No longer did he need to labour under such pathetic restrictions. He had new limbs and senses, vastly different to any he had known before. It was a feature of his new existence that Uriel now had a multitude of both limbs and senses. Using his senses, he extended his perceptions to every corner of the building around him. He could feel the Sector House and everything inside it: the holding pens, med-bay, Check-In, the Judges' dormitories and living quarters. There were sinners everywhere. Courtesy of his senses, Uriel could see into the hearts and minds of every living creature around him. He could see everything: the secret fears and anxieties, the desires, the sins that would serve to damn every last one of them to hell. He could see it all, every disgusting act and sinful pleasure any of them had ever even as much as considered. They were sinners. They must be judged. They must be punished.
It was time. Inside him, the hunger beat a relentless tattoo like a restless animal throwing itself against the bars of its cage.
He extended his senses further, past the world of flesh and bodies, to the unseen world existing around it. He saw the dance of electrons as streams of electricity flowed through the wires and conduits of the Sector House power supply. Fluid in the darkness, his own form moved and shifted.
It was time. The hunger would not be put off a moment longer.
He stretched out his limbs.
Basement sub-level three. A sudden electromagnetic surge knocks out the Sector House's generators. Backup systems fail. As the lights go out and the entire Sector House above falls into darkness, amid the rumbles of discontent and expressions of anger the thought in every mind is the same. It is happening again...
He stretched out his limbs.
The holding pens. In the wake of the loss of power, the mood among the prisoners in the pens changes and becomes ugly. A storm of hatred rises. Quiet at first, then growing louder, fists begin to drum angrily against cell bars and walls in a cacophony of protest. A riot is brewing.
He stretched out his limbs.
The sector chief's office. Sitting at his desk, Chief Franklin hears stealthy footsteps approaching and looks up from his paperwork in concern. A shadow falls across his face. A dark figure stands before him, the blade of a knife raised above his head...
He stretched out his limbs.
The Judges' dormitories. In his bed, Judge Victor Sharff wakes abruptly from a whispering voice in his dreams to the realisation that the other Judges in the bunks and rooms around him are sinners. Taking the pillow from his bunk, Sharff moves to the sleeping Judge closest to him and presses it down onto his face. When the arms of the man spasm and grow still, Sharff moves on to the next victim, and the next. He is not alone. Elsewhere in the dormitories Judges Witter, Vindal and Montoya awake from similar dreams to the same realisation. Soon, they will join Sharff in his work...
He stretched out his limbs.
The check-in desk. Gripped by a strange hysteria, the citizens waiting in the reception area suddenly explode into violence. They turn on each other with fists and kicks, tearing the plasteen seating apart to use as makeshift clubs. The injured fall screaming and bleeding to the ground. When the Check-In Judges venture from behind their bullet proof screen to quell the disturbance, some wade in with daysticks while others draw their Lawgivers. Shots are fired. More screams fill the air...
He stretched out his limbs.
Med-bay. As a Med-Judge loosens the restraints on Judge Brophy's arm to give him an injection, Brophy abruptly emerges from his catatonia and attacks her. Knocking the Med-Judge unconscious, Brophy grabs the las-scalpel from her belt and cuts himself free. As other med-staff rush to restrain him, Brophy jams the las-scalpel into a nearby oxygen tank. His last words, as the oxygen tank explodes in a bright white flash of fire are: "We are sinners. We must be judged!"
Uriel stretched out his limbs.
Tek-bay. Admin. Accounting. The comm-centre. All across the Sector House, the drama is repeated. Judges, citizens, perps, all awaken to the sudden realisation that the people around them are sinners. There is violence. Punishment. Retribution. And, deep in the darkness, Uriel senses the flow of souls towards him and smiles. It is all going splendidly.
He stretched out his limbs and took the Sector House for his own.
FOURTEEN
ANATOMIES OF DISASTER
"Code Ninety-Nine Red." The voice of Sector Control over her bike radio was shrill with panic. "Judges down. Reporting multiple incidents at Sector House 12. Holy Grud!" There was the sound of a shot, then a muffled scream and the noise of a struggle. Abruptly, Control's voice grew distant as though the controller had moved away from his station. "The drokker's gone crazy! Somebody restrain- Patterson? What do you think you're do- No! Don't-"
More shots. Then a squall of feedback, followed by the hiss of static as the voices of Sector Control and the sounds of whatever in hell was happening there were abruptly lost as the connection was broken. Riding her bike along the Brando skedway en route to the Sector House from Charles Whitman, Anderson tried switching through all the frequencies used for local Sector House comms. Dead air and static. It was the same on every channel. Whatever was going on at Sector House 12, it was clear the comm-centre was out of business.
"Judge Anderson to Central Control." Setting her bike radio to route its signal through an out-of-sector relay, Anderson switched across the channels to one reserved for direct communication with Justice Department's headquarters at the Grand Hall of Justice. "Reporting Judges down and a possible emergency situation at Sector House 12. The nature of the emergency is at this time unclear, but I am on the way to the scene to investigate. ETA: three minutes. Over."
"Acknowledged, Anderson," Central Control responded. "We received reports of a power outage and violent incidents at Sector House 12, then all comms went down and we lost contact. We are now re-routing street level comms through Sector House 11. Please advise when you have more information. Over."
"Will do, Control. Anderson out."
Hitting the accelerator and siren simultaneously, Anderson gunned her bike towards her destination. With comms down, she would only be able to find out what was going on at Sector House 12 once she reached it. All the same, as her bike hurtled past civilian vehicles that pulled aside to let her pass, she felt a growing sense of unease as she wondered what kind of situation she would face when she arrived.
Given what she had heard over her radio, it sounded like the entire Sector House had just gone crazy.
"Grud
on a bike. Listen to them," Judge-Warder Cates said, his voice barely audible over the sound of perps hammering on the bars and walls of their holding pens. "I've never heard anything like it."
"Shut up, Cates," Chief Sykes said. "I hear you take the Lord's name in vain again, you're on a charge." Abruptly, Sykes found himself wondering why he had just said that - he had never been a particularly religious man. He shook his head. Guess the noise must be getting to me, he thought. It's like they say: there's no atheists in foxholes.
The lights had gone out ten minutes ago. Unlike the previous occasions when it had happened, after a few initial outbursts, there had been no screams from the holding-cubes. Instead, the perps in the overcrowded holding pens had begun to pound on the walls and bars around them, creating a deafening and unsettling avalanche of continuous noise. Having failed to quell the disturbance with the threat of dispensing extra cube-time to every prisoner, Sykes had ordered his men to assemble in full riot gear in the corridor and beat their shockprods against their riot shields in the hope of frightening the perps into submission. It had not worked - the cacophony coming from the pens drowned out their efforts. Moving the beam of his torch across the pens, Sykes saw hundreds of perps glaring at him from the darkness with fixed and glassy-eyed stares, their hands broken and bleeding from pounding their fists against the bars. And still the noise continued.
"It's like they're in some kind of trance." Cates shifted nervously beside him. "It's like they're waiting for something. Like they know something we don't."
"Quiet," Sykes grunted at him. "I'm not telling you again, Cat-" He became aware of another sound. This one more quiet, the low humming noise of electricity moving through the Sector House's power lines. "There, you hear that? The power's started coming on again. Crisis over. If the perps don't stop their noise when the lights come back on, we'll hit them with some stumm gas. See how they like that-"
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