Red Shadows

by Mitchel Scanlon

  "Neither," Anderson said. Turning to her lawmaster, she opened the rear stowage pod and took out a flashlight. "You stay out here, I go in alone. The perp's a teledominant, he can make people do anything he tells them. As a Psi-Judge I'm best equipped to deal with him. No offence, but that's just the way it is. Keep your eyes open, stay sharp and tight. If you see anyone hanging around who isn't a Judge, hit them with a stun-shot and ask questions later. And one more thing..." Switching on the flashlight, she began to move towards the building.

  "Seeing as I'm probably heading into a trap, if you haven't heard from me in twenty minutes you might want to get Control to contact Psi Division and ask them to send a new Psi-Judge."

  All right, so you got what you wanted, Cass, Anderson thought to herself as she moved slowly through the building's ground floor foyer. You're hunting a psychic serial killer in a burnt-out building and you were crazy enough to come in here without backup. Plus, without a working elevator, you're going to have to walk up about thirty flights of stairs to search this place top-to-bottom. Still, all things considered, it could be worse.

  At least it isn't raining.

  If the Robert Bloch Con-Apts had seemed a foreboding sight from the outside, inside it was even worse. Swinging the beam of her flashlight around as she advanced with her Lawgiver in her hand, Anderson picked her way carefully across the soot-stained and debris-strewn floor. Here and there, she heard the creak of plasteen floorboards indicating the footing beneath her was insecure. Mindful of the dangers of the floor collapsing, she stayed close to the walls in the hope that the floor there would be stronger. All the same, it was slow work simply crossing from one end of the foyer to the other. She soon realised that searching the entire building could take hours.

  Got to look at this from another angle, she thought. If I'm a killer, where's the likeliest spot for me to hide in his place? There's no electricity in the building. If he wanted heat and light, he'd have to build a fire. But he'd want to keep it hidden - in a derelict ghost town like this the light of the flames could be seen for miles. Plus, the floors are bad. All of which suggests there's only one place he could be.

  The basement.

  "I want you to keep on walking," William whispered to the Judge outside. "Then, when you've walked five hundred steps, I want you to take your gun and put it in your mouth. After that, I want you to pull the trigger. Do you understand me?"

  "Yes," Judge Dietz said. When William had appeared suddenly behind him, the Judge had tried to bring his Lawgiver to bear to shoot him, but William's words were faster than any gun.

  "Good. You have a silencer for your gun?"

  "Yes." Despite the coolness of the night, the Judge's face was sweating.

  "Then, put the silencer on before you put the gun in your mouth. We don't want Judge Anderson to hear the shot, do we? She might come running to investigate." William turned to look towards his lair and smiled. "Right now, she is exactly where I want her."

  It's no good, Anderson thought, as she stood beside a rubble-choked stairwell. If the creep lives in the basement, he doesn't use this way to get down there.

  She had been searching for fifteen minutes, trying to find a way down into the basement. So far, her efforts had been thwarted. She had checked the building's two emergency stairwells and found them impassably blocked by fallen debris. The only other access to the basement seemed to be via the elevators. And, given the state of the building, it was safe to assume that the elevators were out of order.

  Anderson had a thought. Granted, the electromagnetic pulse of the warhead would have destroyed whatever parts of the building's electrical system might otherwise have survived the firestorm, but so long as the elevator shafts themselves were intact, the perp could use them to climb back-and-forth to the basement. Retracing her steps to the foyer, still mindful not to put her feet on any of the weaker floorboards, she made her way to the nearest elevator and saw something that immediately raised her suspicions. The elevator doors had fallen from their mountings, but one of them was wedged in the shaft in a fashion that did not seem accidental. Investigating more closely, she found a rope tied to the underside of the door that led down into the darkness of the shaft. The rope was knotted at regular intervals to make climbing easier.

  Looks like this is his point of access all right, she thought. Moving gingerly to the edge of the shaft, she shone her flashlight down it. At the bottom of the shaft she could see the outline of a smashed elevator carriage that had presumably fallen when its cable had snapped. Although I'm not sure I like the idea of climbing down there when the perp could be waiting for me.

  "Drop the pistol," said a voice behind her.

  Turning her head slightly to the side, from the corner of her eyes she saw a man in a black overcoat standing a couple of metres behind her in the foyer. His hands were empty. She turned to face him, raising the Lawgiver and pointing it at him.

  "Drop the pistol," the man said again, more forcefully. Every time he spoke she could feel ripples moving around her as though the currents of the psi-flux had been stirred by the sound of his voice, only for those same ripples to break against the walls of her psychic defences.

  "You're wasting your time," she told him, pointedly pulling back on the hammer of her gun to underline her words. "That won't work on me. Put your hands in the air. You're under arrest for the murders of Judge Edward Weller and seven citizens."

  "Seven?" The perp tilted his head to the side, his lips moving silently as he made a mental calculation. "That would mean you're counting Lenny then? It's funny, I never really thought of him as one of mine. I didn't kill Lenny. I just made him fly. Oh, and I killed two Judges by the way, not just one. You didn't know that? Her name was Wilkins, I think. No, not Wilkins, Wilkerson. She had blonde hair and when I was killing her I was thinking of you. Then, there were the others: the doctor, the patient in the institution, my father, but of course, I didn't kill those last three in Mega-City One." He smiled liked a child expecting praise for his cleverness. "Do they count?"

  "They all count," Anderson told him. "I said, put your hands in the air. Do it now, slowly."

  "No, you're wrong there," the killer said, his hands still staying resolutely by his sides. "Only the reds count. That's why I do it. I like killing reds." His smile became broader. "Like you. You're red. In fact, you're the reddest person I've ever seen."

  "Ten seconds," Anderson said. "That's how long I'm giving you to raise your hands unless you want to get hit with a stun-shot. Ten... Nine... Eight..."

  "You say that like you think you're in control, Judge." The smile grew broader still, confident, self-assured. "You're not in control. This is my lair, my home. I've only been here a few days, but already I know every nook and cranny, every entrance, every exit, every floorboard."

  Raising his hands slowly, the perp's body seemed to sway gently to one side as though he had altered his balance. Hearing an alarming creak from the floor beneath her, Anderson realised what he was doing. The perp had shifted his weight from one foot to another, putting extra weight on a damaged floorboard that he had known was there all along. The floor gave way beneath them with a sudden jolt, throwing off Anderson's aim as she fired a stun-shot. The shot went wide over the perp's shoulder, while the floor collapsed beneath them, pitching them both headlong into the basement. The world spun on its axis. Anderson's last sight was of the perp's smiling face.

  Then, she was falling into darkness.

  She hit the ground hard, the flashlight was knocked from her hand by the impact, the circle of its beam turning crazy cartwheels as it jumped and skipped away across the floor. Winded, Anderson stumbled to her feet and tried to go after it. Her senses warned her of danger. Feeling the presence of an assailant leaping towards her in the darkness, she raised her Lawgiver. The gun's barrel met her attacker's blow and deflected it with a metallic clang. The impact forced the gun from her hand, sending it spinning away into the darkness. The perp attacked again, slashing at her with a wide s
weep of his blade that skittered across one of the plasteen plates of her body armour. She felt blood at her side and realised that the knife had penetrated her armour. Acting on reflex she directed a low kick into the darkness in front of her, hearing a satisfying gasp of pain as the ball of her foot connected with bone.

  The perp moved away. The silence returned. Blood seeped slowly down her side. Ears straining, Anderson heard the quiet sounds of the perp's breathing as he edged in a circle around her. It was as if he could see her in the darkness. Seeing the beam of the flashlight shining dimly in the distance, her first instinct was to run towards it. Realising it would present her back to the perp, she began to move sideaways instead, trying to second-guess the perp and traverse a circle within his circle. She saw a leg silhouetted by the beam of the flashlight behind it. She lashed out with a kick again, raising her foot higher and making contact with a softer target. She heard the air explode from the perp's mouth.

  Pressing home her momentary advantage, she charged towards where she thought he was, only to suddenly feel his hand grab hold of her hair as he pulled her head back. The perp was going to try to cut her throat! But he had made a mistake. Anderson remembered Noland telling her that the perp was right-handed, so she twisted to her left and raised her right shoulder, the blade deflecting harmlessly off the armoured shoulder pad of her uniform. She reached back with her left hand grabbed the wrist of the hand holding her hair and twisted it. The perp shrieked. His hand released her hair. Using the movement of her body to increase the leverage, she twisted the wrist further, at the same time stepping backwards to overextend his arm.

  The movement unbalanced the perp, causing him to fall to his knees. Wary of the knife in his other hand, she twisted his wrist further, dislocating it. The perp shrieked again. She twisted further, harder. As he shrieked once more, she kicked him in the stomach, and then used her leverage on his wrist to push him face down on the floor. With her knee in the small of his back, she used her free hand to grab his other arm and pull it behind him. Fumbling in the dark, she pulled a pair of handcuffs from her belt and put them on his wrists as he struggled.

  "In case you're wondering," she said as she snapped the cuffs shut, "this is what it feels like when you're no longer in control."

  Lifting him by the arms, Anderson frog-marched the perp towards the fallen flashlight, but, even as she bent forward to pick it up, she felt a change come over her prisoner. With a strangled gasp, the perp fell to the ground as his body began to shake. At first cautious in case it was a trick, Anderson shone the flashlight in his face. The perp's eyes had rolled back in his head, while white froth gathered at his lips. He was having convulsions. Then, as she turned the spastically flailing perp on his side to keep his airways clear, Anderson saw an image from inside his mind...

  Daytime. The apartment in Ciudad Baranquilla, sunlight streaming in through the windows, his father sitting in his chair. William is two years old the first time the spiders come for him.

  The image is gone, quickly replaced by other images as she is suddenly subjected to a disturbing kaleidoscopic cascade of the killer's memories. She sees the same boy a year later, huddling under the covers of his bed as a black tide of spiders flows across the floor around him. She sees him older, discovering the colours of the human aura for the first time as he realises his father is a Red. She sees the boy older again as he pulls a jagged piece of glass across his father's throat. She sees the institution. She sees the Grey Man. She sees their bargain. She sees the list of twenty names. She sees the deaths of Margaret Penrith and all the others. She sees the killer's name - William Ganz. Above all else she sees herself through William's eyes as he spots her for the first time outside Sissy Spacek Block. To him, she is an angel surrounded by a bright fiery halo: a halo so brilliant that it hurts him to look at it. She sees it all, granted access to every one of William's memories for half a second. She sees it, and even as the images pass before her she comes to a realisation.

  Something is wrong.

  The memories in William Ganz's mind are dying. As each image flashes through his mind, it is shredded and disappears. Piece by piece, drop by drop, memory by memory, everything that exists of William's personality is being destroyed, fading away before her eyes. Where once there was a man's mind, there is now only a void: a black hole, a blank slate, an empty canyon, and then...

  It was over. Drawing a sudden gasp as the contact was broken, Anderson looked down at William Ganz in horror. The convulsions had stopped. His eyes had rolled back around, but now, all that was left of him was a dribbling, drooling husk.

  He's been mind-wiped, Anderson thought. It's like someone set his memories to self-destruct if he was captured. And, if I hadn't been the one to capture him - if I hadn't been holding onto him at that vital second - I never would have known it had happened. Whoever did it, they must be the people behind him, the people who gave him the list of twenty names and set him on the road to killing. It's as if they're trying to cover their traces. But they made one mistake.

  Casting her mind back to the memories she had just experienced, Anderson concentrated on the image of a man she had seen in William's mind: a man in a grey suit, with blond hair and a sardonic, arrogant manner. Even as his memories were dying, William had realised what was going on. Seeing his own memories flash and fade before him, he had realised exactly who was responsible. In his final moments of lucidity, William had reached a new understanding. He had realised who it was that had betrayed him. Now, thanks to his insight, Anderson understood it, too. She realised who had betrayed William Ganz. She realised who had mind-wiped him. It was the man she could see in the image in her mind. The man William had called the Grey Man. He was the man who had all the answers to all the questions raised by this case: the murders, the list of names, HelixCorp's involvement.

  Now, all she had to do was find him.

  EIGHTEEN

  EXECUTIVE DECISIONS

  "We found him about half a klick away," Loudon said to her after the various resources of the Justice Department had arrived to attend to the clean-up following the arrest of William Ganz. Tek-Judges were there to sweep Robert Bloch con-apts for forensic evidence that might lead her to the Grey Man. A Med-Judge was present to see to the bloody but shallow cut that Ganz's knife had left in her side. And there was an ambulance to take Ganz himself away to Psi-Lab for observation while they tried to work out whether his condition was permanent. Loudon had also arrived, at first ostensibly to assist the other Judges, but now to mourn another fallen comrade.

  "It looks like suicide," Loudon continued. She was talking about Dietz. "He shot himself with his own Lawgiver."

  "No, it wasn't suicide," Anderson told her. "The perp used his powers to make him do it. I saw it in Ganz's mind before he was mind-wiped, but by then it was too late to do anything about it." She paused. Despite the fact that she wore the tough veneer of the typical Street Judge, Loudon was clearly upset. "If it's any consolation, Ganz has already paid the ultimate penalty for his crimes. Having your mind wiped is about as harsh a punishment as you can get. Chances are, he'll spend the rest of his days as a dribbling imbecile. It's like a living death."

  "Yeah? Well that's no more than the drokker deserves then," Loudon said, the minuscule crack in her veneer abruptly disappearing. As Anderson watched the Street Judge stalk away, she found herself pitying the next perp who tried to mess with Loudon.

  "Control to Anderson." The dispatcher's voice came over her radio.

  "Anderson receiving, Control," she sighed. It had been a long night. "I hope you've got some good news for me. I could use it."

  "You might want to prepare yourself for disappointment then, Anderson," Control answered her gruffly. "You remember you requested that Douglas Mortimer be brought in for interrogation? Well, it looks like we may have something of a problem."

  It was the colours, or lack of them, that surprised him most. Having never been in a Sector House interrogation suite before, Douglas Mortimer had ass
umed that the colours there would naturally follow the usual Justice Department colour scheme of blue and gold. Instead, it turned out that every feature of the room he sat in was the same uniform shade of grey. The walls, the door, the chairs, the table he sat at, all of them were grey. And not just any grey, but a particular shade of washed-out grey that he was sure no one other than a Judge would ever consider using. It was as though he had been transported without his knowledge to some dull monochrome world where colour had been abandoned, while he sat to wait in fear of judgement.

  Finally, the door to the interrogation suite opened and a Judge stepped into the room. Recognising her as the same Psi-Judge who had come to his office yesterday, Mortimer felt a brief and familiar tang of fear. Then, remembering that attack was the best form of defence, he took the offensive.

  "I demand to see your superior," he told her, using the same voice he had often used to terrify under-performing middle managers. "This is an outrage. First, a Judge comes to my apartment in the middle of the night. Then, I am forced to wait in this limbo for hours. I want to speak to Chief Lochner at Med-Division immediately."

  "I'm afraid the Med-Chief isn't available," Anderson said. If she was even remotely terrified of his voice, she gave no sign of it. "You'll have to speak to me."

  "I want to know what charge I've been arrested on. I have my rights."

  "No," Anderson shook her head. She almost seemed saddened. "No, you don't. Not here. Not anymore. You can see that can't you? They don't do rights here, only confessions. And believe me when I tell you if you don't talk now, you won't get another chance. Now, why don't you start by telling me about HelixHealth and the medical tests for this so-called cancer vaccine?"