by Al Ewing
“You stay with your team, I’ll stay with mine,” Rico hissed. “We’ll get on famously.” He turned on his heel and stormed away, not wanting to prolong the situation any further—he’d already been made a laughing stock in the briefing room. It was Joe who was the joke, dammit—Little Joe, the stick-up-the-ass, ever-saluting, never-smiling lawbook on legs—not him. Never him.
A thought occurred. He didn’t like his brother. In fact, he kind of hated him. He pretty much never brought Little Joe up in company. Did any of his team actually know, he wondered?
Did any of them know there was another him?
He grabbed the radio from his belt and tried to dial Mooney’s number.
Twelve
COREY CLEVELAND WAS looking forward to his work for the first time in months.
It was a selfish thing to admit, even to himself—unemployment was at a record high, and there was all kinds of scaremongering talk going around that the new advances in robotics would take away what few jobs there were left.
But to be a money-counter with no money to count—to come to the Herc on a weekend and sit there while the sorting machine gave a few desultory belches, crapping out a ten-cred note here, two fives there... and then to spend the rest of the shift watching on the monitors as they panned around the empty seats, to have to watch the rot set deeper and deeper into this wonderful place... it was more than a soul could bear. And for what? Wages had been slashed—they were paid five creds a week less than welfare.
It was love of the Herc that kept Corey coming back. Love of the days when he’d been part of a team who’d made people happy, before that awful business with Mr Donald, before the Herc had fallen ill and started to die.
Well, maybe now those days were coming back.
Corey couldn’t say he was a fan of the new competitive eating craze—it was kind of disgusting in a lot of ways, especially since the competitors weren’t known for eating with their mouths closed. But he hadn’t been a huge fan of Inferno either, when it came down to it—he hadn’t watched the games on the monitors, while the cash trickled in from the beer and mechandise sales, he’d watched the crowds, the audience, the joy and excitement on their faces. That was always what he’d come into work for—and those times were about to come again.
“Morning, Phil,” he grinned, waving to the other money-counter, Phil Hartsdale. Phil was a dour man in his middle fifties with a heart condition, a broken marriage and a daughter he never saw—none of which made the job any less depressing. Phil nodded, barely raising his head, and shuffled through the front door as if today was no different from any other. Corey made a private resolution, then and there, that he wouldn’t be letting Phil get to him today—today was going to be a special day for the Herc, and for the money room. Of that he was sure.
Corey stopped briefly in the men’s room, checking his fade—they were back in style, and he’d had his cut specially for the occasion—and making sure his tie was straight. Sure, they were going to be locked in a windowless room for the duration, until the bank truck came to take the money away to the vaults at six-thirty, but that wasn’t an excuse not to look your best. When he caught up to Phil, at the door to the money room, the older man was stabbing fruitlessly at the keypad with his finger.
“Damn thing’s busted,” he muttered, voice deep and heavy as lead. “Tried putting the code in—nothing. Won’t read my card, ether.” He shrugged. “Maybe I should get somebody.”
“Aw, crem,” Corey sighed. He was anxious to get in there, to fire up the machines and run the checks, to get started on the best working day of his life, and the darn alarm was on the fritz again. Always the way. “Have you tried the handle at least, Phil?”
Phil took hold of the handle and gave it a desultory quarter turn. The door hissed smoothly open.
“Well, there you go,” Corey said, relieved. “Guess your code worked after all, huh?” He tapped his ID card against the sensor on the keypad, hearing no familiar beep but pushing the door open and striding in anyway. “I figure probably it’s just the thing that beeps that went wrong. Like the acknowledgement signal that lets you know you put your code in right or—” He froze in mid-sentence, his eyes widening.
There was a man with a gun in the money room.
He was dressed all in black, with silver hair and bright green eyes that didn’t seem to blink. Corey didn’t recognise the make of pistol—he didn’t know much about pistols, he’d never run with that kind of crowd—but it was semi-automatic, it had a silencer and the barrel seemed very big as Corey stared down it.
“Come in. Nice and quiet, both of you.” The man with the gun spoke softly, gently, as if talking so a skittish bird that might take off at any moment. “I don’t want to use this. But if I have to, I will. Do you want that?”
Corey opening his mouth to answer, and the man made a little beckoning gesture with the gun. Corey shuffled forward obediently, his hands automatically rising to shoulder level. Phil followed behind, his hands doing the same.
“Close the door.”
Corey heard the click as the heavy metal door locked into place, and he felt his stomach sink. Unless someone took a good look at the busted keypad—noticed the lights weren’t flashing—he didn’t think anyone was going to figure out what was happening in here now. Nobody would come to help—nobody would even know. His eyes moved over to the wall by the sorting machines, the alarm button that was there for emergencies—the man was standing between it and him, but if he darted forward suddenly, maybe caught him a good sock on the jaw, he could probably—
“What’s your name?”
Corey blinked. The man was smiling at him now—all sympathy. “Corey,” he said, slowly. “Corey Cleveland.” Dope! A voice in his head screamed. Give a false name! But it was too late for that.
“Phil Hartsdale,” muttered Phil, in a stoic, defeated voice, as though all this was as pre-ordained as the sun rising. The man with the gun nodded, and reached behind him with his free hand, tugging something from the pack on his back. Two wide loops of plastic.
“Corey and Phil,” he said, smiling reassuringly. “You can call me John. And now we all know each other’s names, we’re less likely to do something stupid, aren’t we? Because I’d hate to have to use this thing.” He moved the gun from Corey to Phil, from Phil back to Corey. “If I have to use this thing, it won’t spoil my plans at all, Corey. I want you to understand that. I’ll feel bad, but that feeling will pass. It makes no difference to the plan if you’re alive or dead.” He shot Phil a quick, appraising glance—then focussed completely on Corey, singling him out. “Do you understand that, Corey?”
Corey swallowed hard, and nodded. He understood. The man with the gun had seen him thinking, had read his intentions on his face, and now he was the main threat. And suddenly, it came to him very clearly that if the man with the gun pulled the trigger right now—if he sent a wad of lead through Corey’s skull and made his wife a widow and his children orphans—Phil would simply accept it. Phil would not fight back, or try to avenge him, or resist in any way. If Corey died now, he’d die for nothing.
“I need you to say it, Corey.”
Corey shot Phil an angry, judgemental look. “I understand,” he muttered.
The man with the gun tossed one of the plastic ties to Phil, still keeping the gun on Corey. “Hands behind your back, Corey.” Corey sullenly obeyed, feeling Phil slide the plastic loop up over his wrists before even being asked. “Now, Phil, I’m going to be checking your work. I want you to know that. Don’t make it too tight if you can help it—you’ll cut off circulation, there’ll be nerve damage—but if you make it too loose, and when I check your work I think there’s a chance he can get loose, you know what I’m going to do?” Phil opened his mouth, then hesitated. “I’m going to shoot you, Phil. And then I’m going to shoot him.”
Phil was already tightening the tie, forcing Corey’s wrists together, palm to palm. Corey let out a yelp of pain, and the man with the gun walked over, hel
d the gun on Phil while he zip-tied his arms the same way—but a little less tight—then checked Phil’s work. “Little tight, Phil. That’s going to pinch. Apart from that, good work.”
“Thanks,” Phil said, quietly. Then he shuffled over into the corner of the room and sat down.
Corey had never hated him more.
Thirteen
THE BIG DAY was here, and Mooney was hating every second of it.
To start with, he’d woken up that morning from dreams of choking to find Rico standing in his apartment, leaning over his bed. If he could have pissed himself without detaching his catheter first, he would have—no doubt.
He sat in his diner opposite the Herc, drinking hot synthi-caf to try and soothe the sore throat he’d woken up with and watching the Judges forcing the mob into a queue. He kept half an eye out for Tellerman, the way he’d been told to, and tried to remember a time when he hadn’t been afraid of Rico Dredd.
I mean, the guy was a baby Judge, fresh outta the Academy—he couldn’t be more than nineteen years old. But there was just... something about the guy. He had a kind of raw presence to him—the guy filled any room he walked into. He could even be Chief Judge one day, Mooney figured.
Y’know, if his head wasn’t so full of crazy it leaked.
Mooney shuddered, unscrewing his hip flask and taking a long swig. He brewed the hooch in a still he kept in the bathroom, next to the toilet—it was pretty much fermented garbage—so he’d learned not to expect too much from it. But it tasted really off today—tainted, almost. Still, he couldn’t afford soymash every day, or even every month, and a little nip from his own supply every so often kept him mostly regular.
Mooney turned his mind back to Rico. How crazy was he, anyway? That was the thing about that guy: you could never really tell if he was crazy, or just faking it—to scare you, or get you to underestimate him. He sure seemed to like tormenting Mooney; but then again, at this point Mooney wasn’t exactly liked by anybody he knew, so it seemed almost natural. It wasn’t like Strader thought much of him either, or the two he’d brought in to handle the ambulance. In fact, the only guy in the gang who had any time for Mooney was Tellerman, and as long as he took his meds and nobody mentioned Martian death signals, Tellerman liked pretty much everybody.
And anyway, Tellerman was gonna be dead soon, so he didn’t exactly count.
Mooney stared out of the diner window. Tellerman was somewhere in that queue—the queue that was already snaking back and forth through the paved area in front of the Herc, between the decorative fountains. If he craned his neck, he could see where it snaked around the corner and down the street, to wind between the blocks and through the alleys. He figured at least a hundred thousand people were in that line already—probably more. He could see the Judges moving back and forth, doing random searches—strip searches, sometimes, the perverts—generally making their presence felt. But the Jays were kidding themselves if they thought there wasn’t going to be a riot happening the second the last ticket got sold.
Hell, Mooney thought glumly, he was there to make sure it happened—that was his job in this, according to Rico. He’d explained it all, leaning over Mooney’s bed and grinning like something out of a nightmare: if things looked like they were kicking off a little too slowly, Mooney’s role was to head out there and stir it up. Yell stuff. Throw things. Incitement, they called it.
Mooney didn’t see a way he could manage it without getting himself cubed up for a couple of years minimum—except if that happened, he had a nasty feeling Rico would get to him somehow, most likely before he reached the interrogation cube. Mooney knew that folks with dirt on Rico had died in custody before—always before they told the other Jays what they knew. Mostly, he knew because Rico had told him.
So where did that leave him now? What was his move?
Mooney took another swallow from his hip flask, ignoring the strange, rotten taste of the liquid—so much worse than usual—and the cold stare of the waitress. He stared out of the window, watching the Judges moving up and down the long queue. The hell with Rico anyway, he thought—he didn’t have to be a part of this if he didn’t want to be. He could walk away now, head for a new sector, change his name—he wasn’t like Strader, stuck with his bad debts and the warrant on his head. The Jays didn’t have a damn thing on him. So how would Rico even know if Mooney decided to—
—and suddenly, Mooney was looking right at Rico.
Somehow, he was right there, outside the window, strip-searching some poor dummy who’d brought a rod along—not to mention a little primo brain chowder, by the look of it. Only wasn’t Rico supposed to be inside? How was he going to let Tellerman in to do his thing if he was out here instead of working the gates? What the hell was going on here?
Mooney stared, wondering if maybe he had it wrong somehow—like maybe this was just coincidence, some other jaybird with a similar build, some schnook who’d look nothing like Rico Dredd at all, if Mooney could only get a clear look at him. Yeah, that had to be it. In just a second the Jay would turn around and there’d be a different name on the badge, a different face—
—and then the Judge outside the window noticed him staring and stared right back.
It was Rico, all right.
But it wasn’t.
The name on the badge was DREDD—Rico’s name. The face was Rico’s, too—but somehow it was meaner, if that was possible. Mooney never imagined a situation where he might miss Rico’s unnerving smile, and now here it was, literally staring him in the face.
“Something the matter, creep?” the Judge outside the window snarled, lip curling. He sounded just like Rico, too, but where Rico’s gravel-pit voice constantly sounded amused, like he was always laughing at a private joke, Mooney couldn’t imagine this version ever finding anything funny.
“I—I—” Mooney stammered, eyes like dinner plates. I don’t understand what’s going on, Rico, he wanted to say, but somehow he couldn’t make his mouth work.
Rico—Rico-but-not-Rico—leaned closer, his upper lip pulling up into a vicious sneer of irritation. He barked like a drill instructor, making Mooney flinch in his seat. “I said spit it out, meatball! If you’ve got something to say to me, say it!”
“I—I—I’m sorry, sir! I was—I was just looking—” Mooney turned his eyes away from the strange, scowling, barking man with Rico’s face and kept them firmly on his cup of synthi-caf, hoping maybe the vision would go away if he didn’t look at it. “I’m sorry, sir. I-It won’t huh-happen again.” He could feel a drop of sweat working its way slowly down over the folds at the back of his neck. His armpits were drenched.
“Damn right. On your feet, punk. I want to get a closer look at—” The Judge turned, hearing he sound of gunshots coming from down the street, and suddenly Mooney was forgotten—a lower priority, put to one side. When he looked up from his synthi-caf, the man with Rico’s face was gone.
“Jovus,” muttered Mooney, taking another long pull on his tainted hooch. He wondered if he’d finally had too much of it—crossed some threshold into seeing things. Or worse—what if that had been Rico? What if he’d been transferred to working the queue with the rest of the Jays on duty, and the whole plan was kaput? Maybe the whole strange exchange had been some coded message, some attempt to warn Mooney off before the riot started.
Mooney craned his neck, hoping to catch another glimpse of Rico—he was sure now that was who it had been—but there was no sign. He fumbled with the frayed cuff of his sleeve, feeling around for his wrist-com—he could at least put a call through to Strader—but he realised suddenly that he’d been so spooked after the way Rico had woken him that he’d left it on his bedside table, doing double duty as an alarm clock. With a sinking feeling, he realised he was incommunicado for the duration.
“Aw, man,” he muttered, slumping in his seat. “Rico’s going to kill me.”
Fourteen
RICO WAS GOING to kill Bud Mooney.
As soon as Hoenikker at the Edmonds In
stitute had mentioned the unfortunate need for a working paper trail for Rockford Tellerman—the need for a patsy, in other words, just in case—that whole section of the plan had fallen neatly into place in Rico’s mind. The hard part, as it turned out, had been getting the second detonator into Mooney’s stomach—Tellerman had swallowed his on command, along with half the bottle of liquid explosive, but all Rico had needed to do there was present it as a working vaccine for the death signals that were even now being beamed into human brains by... well, Rico had never worked that out. He suspected Tellerman hadn’t either.
Anyway, that kind of strategy just wouldn’t have worked with Mooney—he was a terrified bowl of easily-manipulated jelly, but there were limits.
Instead, Rico had broken into Mooney’s hab one more time, tranquilised Buddy-boy with a mild sedative to keep him in dreamland, and then simply—and a little roughly—forced the thing down his gullet. Mooney had woken up—the sedative couldn’t be that strong or he’d be useless today—but he hadn’t suspected. And assuming he was drinking the usual amount from that hip flask of his, he was getting enough to the explosive into his system to make a decent-sized bang. Mooney wouldn’t be a problem.
Tellerman, on the other hand... right now, he was the biggest issue. Over the past five hours, tickets sales had passed the ninety thousand mark, and Rico still hadn’t seen hide not hair of him. Rico had spent a couple of days, in between patrols, coaching Rocky on how important it was to choose a particular entry point to go in through—with the number of tickets that were being sold for the event, there were no fewer than thirty Judges performing the weapon scans, running their wands over the human cattle as they filed into their gaudy pen. If Tellerman had gotten confused—gone to the wrong place, been scanned by the wrong Judge...
