Red Shadows

by Mitchel Scanlon

  "Good," William tells him. He bends down and picks up a broken piece of glass from the floor. The fragment is long and sharp. It is perfect. It is just what he needs.

  "Stay still, Father," William says. His back rigid against the chair as though it has been glued in place, his father is compelled to obey him. "Now, lift up your chin. Higher, father, higher, I want to see your throat. That's right. Just a little bit higher and soon it will all be over..."

  This time, it is William's turn to smile.

  "It seems you killed your father," the man says to him. He is sitting in a chair beside William's bed, looking down at a clipboard in his hands. The name tag pinned to his white coat reads "Doctor Dominguez". "Can you tell me why you did it?"

  Opening his mouth, William struggles to speak through the haze enveloping his mind. His brain feels slow and sluggish. He tries to shrug, and then notices that there are restraints on his arms and legs, tying him to the bed.

  "You find it difficult to speak?" The doctor takes a pen from his coat pocket and writes something on the clipboard in front of him. "It is a side-effect of the blow to your head. You know, you are very fortunate, my friend. I understand you ran from the Judges? That was foolish. The Judge in question must have been something of a liberal, to crack your skull with a pain stick rather than simply shoot you down. Still, the neural scan shows there has been no permanent damage. Concentrate, try and frame the words carefully in your mind, and you should find yourself able to speak once more."

  A Judge? The doctor's words provoke a flood of memories. In the wake of killing his father, William had left the apartment. Eager to see the world outside with his own eyes, he had walked the night streets of Ciudad Baranquilla for hours, drinking in every sight, sound and sensation. It had been a time of revelation. On the Tri-D, Ciudad Baranquilla was often presented as a glittering paradise of tall towers and rising residential blocks whose opulence matched those of any other city in the world. In reality, William had found the city was far different: a place whose shanty towns and impoverished barrios existed in the shadows of the same towers he had seen on Tri-D.

  To William, it had all seemed breathtaking. For years the apartment had been his entire world. Now, at last, he was free of his father and could do as he wished. Finally, as dawn broke in the sky above him, William had returned exhausted to the apartment to find a Judge was waiting for him. The Judge had said something about one of the neighbours finding the door open and calling the authorities. William had panicked. He had tried to run, foolishly it seemed, his last memory a splitting pain in the back of his head before darkness had claimed him.

  "Well? Can you speak now?" the doctor asks him. "Can you tell me why you killed your father?"

  "Untie me," William tells him. He tries to summon the power in his voice, to compel the doctor to obey him, but it is hopeless. Lost in a haze of painkillers and concussion, he can hardly even speak, never mind make the doctor obey him.

  "You want me to remove your restraints?" the doctor smiles, not unkindly. He makes further notes on his clipboard. "I am afraid not, my friend. The Judges have determined that you killed your father. In accordance with the Law, you will be confined indefinitely. Again, however, you have been most fortunate. As part of his will, your father established a trust fund to see to your future welfare. My understanding is that the trustees of that fund have interceded with the Judges on your behalf. A sum of money has changed hands and you have been sentenced to spend your time in a private psychiatric care facility rather than in prison. This is Ciudad Baranquilla, after all. Here, so long as one has money, there is little that cannot be achieved. Who knows? Perhaps in time, should enough money change hands, you will be judged cured and they will release you back into the community."

  Time passes. Inside the institution, William kills two people. The first is a fellow patient whom William kills when the doctors make the mistake of allowing William to mix with the other inmates. Standing in the day room, William notices one of the men there is a Red and strangles him before the attendants can stop him. After that, they put him in a straitjacket and increase his medication. The second man he kills is the doctor whose brains he beats in with a chair after they put him on the blue pills. Two people: to William, it doesn't seem like so many. One of the attendants tells William that there are inmates who have killed dozens of people. The difference is that they did their killing in the world outside. By killing people inside the institution, William has crossed a line. The doctors call him dangerous. They order him locked up in a room, all on his own; a room with padded walls and only one small window. Really, it is like being a prisoner in the apartment again, only worse. At least in the apartment, his father never gave him pills.

  They make him take a half a dozen different pills every day: yellow ones, green ones, pink ones, white. The pills make it hard to think. They make it hard to remember. They make him tired. Some days, all William does is sleep. Worse, the pills stop him from using the power in his voice. If only they would take him off the pills, he is sure he could escape, but the doctors refuse to stop his medication. And so, day after day, William sits in his room and dreams of escape.

  "I think I can help you, William," the Grey Man says to him. "The fact is, I think we can help each other."

  A new day comes, and William has a visitor. The first one he has seen in all his time in the institution, but this man is special in more ways than one. He has no soulshadow. At first, when the attendant opens the door to his cell and the Grey Man steps inside, William is afraid the doctors have changed his medication again and he has lost his ability to see soulshadows. Then, he notices the attendant's soulshadow - green tinged with blue - and realises there is something different about his visitor: a man without a soulshadow. If it was not for the evidence right in front of him, William would have thought it was impossible. A man without a soulshadow; it is as though he is face to face with a man without a soul.

  "From your records, I understand you have killed three people," the Grey Man says. For a moment, William wonders whether he is a doctor, but swiftly dismisses the idea. Doctors have soulshadows coloured in shades of blue and yellow, sometimes tinged with violet. He has never seen a doctor without an aura, any more than he has seen any human being like the Grey Man before. The Grey Man: that is what William decides to call him after perhaps a minute in his presence. It is not the fact that the man's clothes are grey, though they are. Nor even the fact that his hair is grey, which it isn't. No, it is simply that in comparison to the flowing colours he sees in other human souls, to William's eyes a man without an aura seems grey.

  "Three people." The Grey Man purses his lips as though considering something. "Of course, that is hardly an impressive total, especially considering one of them wasn't even a Red. Still, I suppose it's a start."

  Shocked, William looks at the Grey Man with wide eyes. How did he know about the reds? Naturally, William has told his doctors about them, but the doctors never listened.

  "You know about the reds?" William leans forward, excited. At last, he may have found a kindred spirit.

  "Of course I do, William," the Grey Man tells him. "I know all about them. In fact, I have a list of reds right here. I want you to kill them for me. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  William nods.

  The Grey Man smiles.

  William dreamed. Safe and comfortable under a blanket in his lair, he dreamed of his past. He dreamed of his victims to date, and he dreamed of his victims tomorrow. He dreamed, knowing that come nightfall he would walk the streets of the city again and seek out the next three names on the Grey Man's list. He dreamed the dreams of a monster, knowing there was a safety in that exalted status. So long as he was a monster, he need never fear his father. He need never fear his past. He need never fear his dreams. He was no longer the small scared child of his youth, afraid of spiders. He was reborn as William Ganz, the murderer. William Ganz, the killer of reds. William Ganz, the monster.

  He dreamed, his dream
s straying from the past to the future. Even as he slept, he saw the Grey Man's list in his mind, the names written in his dreams with letters of fire. He dreamed of the next name on the list, the two words of the name figuring large in his mind like a promise yet to be fulfilled. A promise he would keep once the light of the day he slept through was gone and night had come to the city once more; a promise that, for William, began and ended with those two words. The name of his first victim of the night to come; the name of the next Red he would kill.

  Marjorie Kulack.

  TEN

  HEARING VOICES

  I can't believe she's going out with Eduardo, a voice said inside Marjorie Kulack's head. What the hell does she see in him? Everybody knows he's a no-good creep.

  Half a kilogram, another voice joined it. I've been on this drokking diet for three weeks! How could I have only lost half a kilogram?

  Damn Tri-D is broken again, a third voice said. And after the repairman swore he'd fixed it! I've got a good mind to take this piece of junk over to the shop and demand my money back.

  She was hearing things again. Sitting alone in her apartment on the fifteenth floor of Sissy Spacek Block, Marjorie Kulack cupped her head in her hands and groaned in despair. It had been the same way for weeks now. Morning, noon and night, she heard an incessant babble of voices in her head. True, she knew she was hardly unusual in that regard; you only had to turn on the Tri-D for the news flashes on the latest citizen to turn psycho or go futzy to know there were plenty of people in Mega-City One who heard voices in their heads. What made Marjorie's voices worse was the nature of the things they talked about. Other people's voices told them they were the Messiah, the reincarnation of Elvis Presley, or the Emperor Napoleon. Grud, she only wished her voices were as interesting as that. Frankly, as far as Marjorie was concerned, they talked nothing other than complete and utter drivel.

  I can't believe that drokking Pieterson baby is still crying, she heard one of her voices say. Somebody should complain to the Judges. Damn thing's kept me up all drokking night.

  And so it went, on and on without respite, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Marjorie heard hundreds of different voices in her head gabbling on about the most mundane and boring things. They talked about shopping, Tri-D programmes and the Megalot. They gossiped about her neighbours. They bitched. They whined. They complained, and worst of all, some of them even said nasty things about Marjorie herself. It was all becoming too much. Sometimes, it was like she was going crazy.

  So now Constance is marrying Brad? I thought she was married to Dirk. Damn soaps. You miss a couple of episodes, and suddenly everything changes.

  In search of relief, Marjorie had been to her doctor and told him about her problem. Telling him she felt like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she had begged for his help. In response, all the doctor had done was put her on a course of antidepressants. "It's just stress," he had told her, barely looking at her as he hit a key on his comp-terminal to print up a prescription. "I see from your records that you're going through a divorce. It's probably just a reaction to that. Take three tablets a day, and then come and see me again in a week."

  Have to remember to tell Martha I saw Marjorie Kulack yesterday, she heard a voice whisper spitefully in her head. What a skank, I know she's let herself go recently, but really you couldn't blame her husband for leaving her. Who'd want to lie down with that big moose every night when you could be getting busy with Betsy Winters.

  Feeling her cheeks grow wet, Marjorie realised she was crying. The last voice had really hit home. Three weeks ago, shortly before the voices began, she had discovered her husband Herv was having an affair with that silicone-enhanced slut Betsy Winters in Apartment 33-B. Furious, she had given him an ultimatum: either he ended the affair or their marriage was over. Unfortunately, Herv had chosen the latter option. He had left to move in with Betsy the same night, and had served Marjorie with the divorce papers the morning after. Now, after sixteen years of marriage, she found herself alone and abandoned. She was forty years of age, with her good looks only a dim and distant memory. Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe it was stress that was causing her to hear the voices. No matter how many pills she took, the hubbub of voices in her head continued regardless.

  Only fifty-nine credits for a limited edition scale model of the Statue of Judgement? Boy, these home shopping networks are great! I'd better get on the vid-phone and order one before they run out of stock!

  On and on and on; her head was throbbing. She heard hundreds of different voices, all chattering away at once in a never-ending stream of inanities. It had been weeks since she had had a proper night's sleep. Sometimes, it felt as if she was hearing the private thoughts of every person in the block around her, but that was impossible. She wasn't psychic. She was Marjorie Kulack, soon to be divorced and fast approaching middle age, her life falling apart like ashes in her hands, a woman on the edge, driven to the brink of a complete breakdown by the endless jabbering of the voices in her head.

  It was only a matter of time before she snapped.

  ELEVEN

  THE HELIX CONNECTION

  It began with an apparent breakthrough.

  "Mr Mortimer will see you now," the secretary said as she ushered them into a plushly furnished office. Her manner was smooth and unruffled, as though it was an everyday occurrence for a couple of Judges to come calling on her boss. Inside, a handsome middle-aged man sat behind a huge and imposing desk. Looking up from a comp-terminal as they entered the room, he stood and stretched forward his hand.

  "Douglas Mortimer, CEO of HelixCorp Pharmaceuticals," he said with a smile. He looked at their badges. "You must be Judges Weller and..." Noticing the Psi Division insignia on her badge, he paused, "A Psi-Judge?"

  "Anderson," she told him.

  "Anderson?" The expression on Mortimer's face shifted almost imperceptibly. "Yes, of course. I've heard of you... I mean, who hasn't? It's just... You'll have to forgive my surprise, but when I was told two Judges had come here seeking information, I wasn't aware that the matter was so high profile."

  "It's not." Weller was brusque. After seeing the news crews waiting for them as they arrived at the Melanie Arnwold crime scene, he seemed to greet the words 'high profile' with particular disdain. "There's nothing to be alarmed about. We're simply following a line of inquiry in an entirely routine investigation."

  "Alarmed?" Waving a hand, Mortimer batted the concept away, "Not at all." He indicated a pair of chairs in front of his desk. "Please, won't you both sit down?"

  It had started with a call from Central Control regarding the details on each victim that Med-Judge Noland had been forwarding to MAC for analysis ever since the investigation had become a serial case. By comparing their names to every computer database in the city, MAC had discovered that the victims had all been covered by a private medical insurance policy with HelixHealth - a wholly-owned subdivision of a major pharmaceutical megacorp based in Mega-City One called HelixCorp.

  Now, Anderson and Weller had journeyed to HelixCorp's corporate headquarters for more information. They might have expected their inquiries to be palmed off on some middle management functionary, but instead their request for information had been directed into the office of the top dog himself - Douglas Mortimer, the company CEO. Granted, this was Mega-City One, where you could achieve a lot more with a few kind words and a Judge's badge than you could with just a few kind words. All the same, the CEO's willingness to deal with such an apparently minor matter set alarm bells ringing distantly inside Anderson's head. The whole thing smacked of a guilty conscience.

  "Can I ask Hilary to get you anything? Some synthi-caf, perhaps? Or some other beverage?" Seeing both Judges shake their heads, Mortimer dismissed the secretary before taking a seat once more. "Thank you, Hilary. Hold my calls, will you. If we need anything else, I'll let you know."

  "I must admit, I'm surprised that you agreed to see us," Anderson said as the secretary left the office and cl
osed the door. She wanted to test Mortimer's reactions, to ascertain whether he gave any indication of guilt or evasion. "As Judge Weller said, this is an entirely routine inquiry."

  "Yes. Well, frankly, we do a lot of work for the Justice Department here at HelixCorp." Mortimer gave her another smile. "Particularly with your Med Division. That being the case, I wanted to ensure you had every help in your investigation." The smile grew broader, as though he was delivering the end of year results at some shareholders' meeting. "Now, please, how can I help?"

  "We're following a lead on a series of killings that have all involved people who had insurance with HelixHealth," Weller told him.

  "Killings? You mean murders? Why, that's just terrible," Mortimer shook his head sadly. "But I can't see how their membership of HelixHealth could have any bearing. It's strictly a medical insurance program run for the benefit of HelixCorp employees and their families. I have a policy myself. It's one of the perks that comes with working for the company." His brow furrowing in thought, he paused for a moment. "Of course, if you could give me the names of the people concerned, I can compare them with the records in our database."

  Pulling a data-crystal from his belt, Weller handed it to Mortimer. Then, while the Judges waited, Mortimer slotted the crystal into his comp-terminal and used the keyboard to scroll through the information as it appeared on-screen.

  "Hmm-hmm." Typing something into the keyboard, Mortimer waited as the screen changed, and then turned to the Judges once more. "Yes, I've checked the database. According to our records, all the names you've given me are people who qualified for discount rates on a HelixHealth policy by having a parent who once worked for HelixCorp. At first glance, I can't see anything else here that might help you. Their policies were all up-to-date. If you wish, I can print you out a copy of their medical records."