The Final Cut

by Matthew Smith

  Stump is backing away, a look of shock painted on his perfect features as I move forward and put an arm round his throat. He struggles feebly, but doesn't put up much opposition, his eyes are fixed on the pistol in Alphonse's hand.

  "What... what's this... all about?" he stutters, an inflexion in his voice suggesting he's hoping that this is a game, or an impromptu role-play session, where his ability to look scared is being tested. If I was a director, I'd say he was doing a pretty drokkin' good job.

  "Don't speak unless I tell you to, OK?" Alphonse warns, to which Stump nods in agreement. "OK. Now, Catalyst has a new policy on hiring actors, in which we gotta see you're capable of following orders. Can't have a loose cannon, doing what he likes, can we? Thing about making movies is that everybody has to pull in the same direction. You still wanna be in the movies, don't you, Bart?"

  He nods again, fervently. Watching this guy, I realise how easy it's been for the drokkers at the studio to find victims for their sick photo shoots, dangle the promise of fame and fortune, of their name up in lights, and the poor saps are queuing up at the door, happy to be exploited for a fleeting chance at stardom. Whilst they might have known they were selling something of themselves for the lure of the silver screen, few could've expected that they'd end up sacrificing everything for that one big shot at immortality.

  "I guarantee, all eyes are gonna be on you. Now, I want you to pack some clothes, 'cause you're gonna be going away for a few days. Anybody likely to come checking up on you?"

  "M-my ex-wife. She'll want to get in touch if she hasn't got her monthly payment-"

  "OK, then you write her a note. Say something about a job that's come up across town that you couldn't pass up an' you'll get in touch when you're back. Hey, you're the creative, I'm sure you can come up with something."

  "Look, what the hell is this all about?" Stump says, trying to inject some authority into his voice. "This is all very unorthodox. You can't just rough me up and drag me somewhere against my will. Is this some kind of method acting procedure, where the actor has to go through the same treatment as the character?"

  "Bart." Alphonse cuts through the actor's protestations like a las-knife. "I won't give you another warning. No questions. Just do what you're told."

  "Drokk you, and drokk your loathsome pet bulldog here." He struggles to look round at me, and spits, a globule of phlegm pattering against my cheek. "I'm not going to be threatened by a couple of petty thugs." He kicks against me weakly and tries to wrestle free from my grip; with my arm still wrapped around his throat, I pull back hard, cutting off his air supply.

  Surrounded by this joker's rampant and misplaced egotism, his puerile handsome blandness looming in from every side like I'm trapped inside his self-obsession, something snaps in my head and I suddenly want to give this deluded drokker a taste of reality. A darkness descends as I increase the pressure until the choking rasp emerging from his mouth ceases altogether and his hands flutter up to my arm in a feeble attempt to wrest it away. I hear my name being said and the shadows at the edge of my vision begin to disperse as I glance up at Alphonse and see him mouthing at me to stop. I release Stump and he falls to his knees, coughing and spluttering. I edge away from him, a numbness replacing the rage.

  Stump makes a gagging noise as he forces oxygen back into his lungs, and gradually words begin to filter through. "Please... don't hurt me... I'll do anything... Don't hurt me..." He doesn't raise his gaze from the carpet, keeping his head bowed as if in supplication.

  "No more arguments, OK?" Alphonse says softly.

  Stump nods, as meek as a lamb after that, his spirit broken. He silently packs a couple of holdalls, then sits at his desk and composes a short note, which he shows to Alphonse for his approval. My partner gives it the nod, then instructs me to tidy the place up.

  "Hey, I ain't clearin' away his shit," I say without thinking, pointing to the dirty dishes piled up in the sink and the takeaway boxes stacked on top of one another next to the actor's armchair.

  "You'll do what you're drokkin' told," Alphonse rumbles, the threat so implicit in his voice that even Stump looks up at him, fearful. He checks himself and says more quietly, "This is a disappearance job. You think the Judges are gonna think he went of his own accord if everything's left as it was? This place is gonna stink of a kidnap."

  "I'd be surprised if they smell anything over the reek of that sink," I mutter.

  "Rubber gloves are over there," Alphonse replies. "Get to work."

  Grudgingly, I set to giving the apartment a polish. I know this is all part of the test, pushing me to my limit with menial tasks, but going elbows-deep in someone else's mess particularly yanks my chain. It's times like this that I feel like telling the drokker just who exactly I am and see him crawl through shit for a change, but I control my temper and swallow my pride, letting him feel he's still the boss. For every greasy plate I stack, I visualise the moment when I take the spugger down.

  Once the chores are done, we're ready to go. Stump looks shellshocked, like he's retreated into himself, and he dumbly follows Alphonse's lead as he picks up his bags. I try to summon some kind of guilt for nearly killing the guy, but it's surprisingly hard to find, as if my reserves of empathy have run dry.

  Alphonse hands me a hood. "Blur mask," he says. "Don't want the street cameras catching our faces with him." He turns to Stump. "OK, let's move out. I'm gonna be right behind you and the gun is gonna be lodged in your spine, so no funny stuff." He gives me a wink. "Don't want to ruin your performance."

  I'm standing alone in an empty studio lot - which I'm pretty sure was where I was taken to by the goons from the bathroom at Tommy's - watching over Stump, who's been tied to a battered old chair, and I feel like I'm floating above myself, watching and wondering what in the name of all that's holy I've got myself into.

  In the bright, white glare of the spotlights, I can see dark stains on the floor and scrape marks where a number of heavy objects have been dragged. There's a trolley parked next to Stump and upon it are several metallic instruments that sparkle in the light. Amongst them are some of the torture devices I snagged off the Danskys and passed on to DuNoye. The stench of death is everywhere in this place. Grud only knows how many have been slaughtered here.

  A groan breaks the silence; Stump has already been beaten unconscious once, when he attempted to resist being strapped down, and now his bloodied form is stirring. I study him and it reminds me of how I was in that position not long ago. As his swollen eyes open and appeal to me for help I turn away.

  "Are we ready to start?" a voice from the shadows says, and DuNoye emerges from the darkness with Alphonse tagging along beside him.

  "He's coming round," I reply quietly, my throat like sandpaper.

  "Excellent." The lawyer looks at me. "And Mr Trager, Alphonse says you acquitted yourself well with Mr Stump's retrieval. You seem to show to a remarkable propensity for violence, which is always gratifying to see in an employee."

  I don't answer but try to look flattered by the compliment nonetheless.

  "All we await now is our talented photographer," DuNoye says theatrically, turning to the blackness beyond the circle of light. "Ramona, is everything set?"

  "Don't wet your pants, Vandris," I hear just before a stunningly beautiful woman in her early twenties joins us out of the gloom. My heart freefalls. Despite the casualness of her clothes, she exudes an authority and confidence that's utterly magnetic. Short, blonde hair frames an exquisite face, with blue eyes magnified by delicate round glasses. Small, kissable lips are offset by a flawless complexion. She has a couple of cameras hanging around her pale neck, the straps dividing her breasts. I try hard not to stare, but I can sense her gaze upon me. "This is the new guy, huh?"

  "Indeed," DuNoye answers. "This will be Mr Trager's first session."

  "Well, as long as he doesn't screw up the shots," she says, removing a lens cap.

  "Oh no," he says. "I think he's going to be quite a natural." DuNoye walks pa
st me, his feet tip-tapping on the hard studio floor, and stops beside the trolley. He pauses in thought, glances once at Stump, then picks up what looks like a miniature wrench. Smiling, he holds it out to me and says: "Perhaps you'd like to begin, Mr Trager? Why don't we start with the teeth?"

  TEN

  The groans seemed to echo from the very walls, as if the building had been passively soaking up the pain, misery and madness it had witnessed over the years. As he passed across the threshold, Dredd reasoned that this structure had probably seen more human degradation and mental agony than most, and wouldn't be surprised to discover that its history still resonated within its corridors, like a psychic illness that had permeated the rockcrete.

  The psychiatric Iso-Block in Sector 42 was one of the oldest in the city, and it had housed a good number of the Big Meg's most dangerously insane perps. Its age meant that its technological resources were a long way behind the more recent kook cubes that had sprung up in its lifetime, but the wardens and med-staff here didn't pretend that they were attempting to cure their charges. They were simply locking them away where they couldn't cause any trouble. The prisoners were kept sedated and occasionally recommended for lobotomies if drugs proved insufficient, but as a rule, once a crim entered the Iso-Block it was unlikely they would see daylight again. Futsies that had possibly suffered only a temporary plunge into madness were usually sent to one of the more progressive units where they received counselling. This place was for those who had insanity deeply ingrained into their brains, and who had retreated into some dark centre at the heart of their being from which there was no return.

  It was an unnerving environment, there was no question of that, Dredd thought, as he headed into the bowels of the building. The disembodied cries that drifted from beyond the locked doors of the iso-cubes were almost ethereal, and as he passed a pair of wardens struggling with an inmate, he caught the feral look on the perp's face, virtually all trace of humanity gone. The lawman wondered how long a sane man could stay in here before he too lost his mind, succumbing to the sickness that seemed to pervade the air.

  Dredd found the records department and entered a small office occupied by a single elderly Judge. It was many years since he'd last seen active duty, and he had taken this administrative post rather than go on the Long Walk. But despite his balding, wrinkled features, his eyes belied a sharp mind still at work.

  "Dredd," he said. "Don't often see you round these parts."

  "Denton," Dredd acknowledged. "I need to pick your brains."

  The old man smiled. "Well, you've come to the right place. Picking apart brains is our specialty."

  "What do you know about Erik Rejin?"

  "Rejin..." Denton pondered. "The name sounds familiar. He's some kind of bigshot, isn't he?"

  Dredd nodded. "He's the reclusive head of a film studio called Catalyst. Hasn't been seen in public for the past two decades. I'm investigating his company for some kind of criminal activity."

  "So what brings you here?"

  "I've been trying to check up on this creep, but there's some troubling gaps in MAC's data. His early years seem fairly straightforward; his family made a fortune in kneepads, I don't know if you remember them? They were behind the Supafit range."

  Denton nodded. "They had the Justice Department contract for a while."

  "That's right. There doesn't seem to be anything suspicious in the first half of his life, he lived with his parents and brothers, Troy and Bennett, on the huge family estate. Then came the Apocalypse War and their home takes a direct hit."

  "It wiped them out?"

  "All of them except Erik. Now, this is where the details go hazy. He vanishes for a substantial period of time, at least a year, I think. MAC has no record of his movements during this interlude. When he reappears - or, at least, when our files make mention of him again - he's inherited the kneepad business, which he goes on to sell off eighteen months later, and then founds the film studio."

  "So it's that gap that's interesting you?"

  "I can't see how he could've got out of the city, not with the war on, and he couldn't have survived on his own. He might've been injured and it's very likely he was traumatized. The length of time he was missing seems concurrent with possibly a period spent in incarceration. I'm wondering if he was admitted to a Justice Department facility and this would've been the nearest psych-unit."

  "But if he was in here, then the records would be on MAC."

  "Exactly. That's what's worrying me. It seems too convenient that this bracket of his life has just disappeared into a hole."

  "Hold on, I'll enter his name into our inmate database, just in case." Denton tapped at his keyboard and waited while the computer completed its search. "Nothing." The old man stroked his chin. "There are quite a few gaps in our data, Dredd. Wars, Necropolis, Judgement Day, they've all destroyed important records. It's not surprising that a handful of cits fall through the cracks."

  "This seems more... intentional to me" Dredd replied. "Targeted. If we'd lost all the details on Rejin, then you could put it down to a glitch in the system. But just to have the details missing for one year strikes me that somebody is covering their tracks."

  "You think the data's been erased off MAC?" Denton asked, incredulous. "To do that would mean someone with very high-level clearance had accessed the files. In other words, somebody within Justice Department."

  "I'm aware of the seriousness of the implications," Dredd said sternly. "But until I'm proved wrong, that is my suspicion." He glanced at the elderly Judge's terminal. "Can you run an ident match? You can grab a photo of Rejin from before the war off MAC and cross-reference it with your intake from 2104."

  Denton did as he was asked, pasting a citizen ID of Rejin on one half of his screen, then instructed his machine to compile any similarities from kook cube detainees that had been processed in that year. Hundreds of faces flickered past as the computer churned through its records: eyes, noses, mouths, all compared and dismissed.

  "How old was he when he lost his family?" Denton enquired.

  "Late thirties by my reckoning. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine. He was single - didn't marry until a while after his reappearance."

  The computer flashed up a message to say it had finished its trawl and all it had was a partial match. The visage it displayed to the right of Rejin's was of a wild-eyed man of roughly the right age, but thinner around the cheeks and with a heavily lined complexion. The screen said his name was Marcellus Blisko.

  "Could be him," Denton mused. "Grief and madness can change a man's appearance quite severely." He scrolled through the perp sheet. "Hmm, that's odd. The charges against Blisko, the reasons for him being sentenced here, don't seem to have been entered." He read further, then peered up at Dredd, an uneasy expression passing over his face. "And he was... released."

  "When?"

  "About eleven months into his stay here. Just says that his release had been approved, but not by whom. That's extraordinary. Next to no one gets freed from here. They're all lifers."

  "This was over twenty years ago. Who would've handled the paperwork?"

  "At that time, it was probably Judge Warnton. He died a few years back. Heart attack." Denton ran a hand over his hairless pate. "I just don't understand... He was such a stickler for detail. Can't think why there's so little info entered on this Blisko character."

  "Unless it's been removed, like the data on MAC?"

  The elderly Judge shot a look at Dredd. "Not on my watch. I'm the only one in this Iso-Block that can access these records."

  "So we're looking at an outside job," Dredd said. "Some creep hacks into the Justice Department mainframe and removes anything incriminating relating to Rejin."

  "Jovus, they'd have to be good to get into our system."

  "I think they're getting help from on high, the same way Rejin did twenty years ago. Somebody's covering for him. A friend." Dredd turned and headed for the door. "Thanks for the help, Denton. I'll call in the Tek boys, see if they
can run a source program on your terminal and follow the trail back to the hacker."

  Meanwhile, Dredd thought, I'm going back to where it all started.

  Councillor Matheson Peat sat at his desk in his office in the chambers of commerce, staring at a blank computer screen. He'd been motionless for the past hour, his expressionless face bathed in the green glow of the monitor. He was meant to be composing another of his audience-pleasing speeches - about how Mega-City One needed leaders with vision to drive it forward into the next century, about every citizen facing up to their responsibilities of being part of the most progressive society in the western world, blah, blah, blah - but the words would not come.

  Normally, this kind of oratory was his bread and butter, and he'd delivered variations on the theme more times than he could remember. It was a reliable old stand-by, and it went down well with Justice Department. But recently, those phrases that would slip out of his mouth so naturally now seemed hollow and desultory, nothing more than insincere platitudes. He could not summon the enthusiasm to once more praise the city and its custodians without wishing to expose his words for the overcooked mix of hyperbole and lies that they were.

  This metropolis was not some sparkling testament to mankind's indomitable spirit any more than the Judges were an even-handed force of truth and righteousness. The reality was that the people were victims, trapped in an industrialised nightmare, bullied into submission by an unelected regime that crushed democracy at every turn. It used every trick up its sleeve to hang on to its precious power, discrediting - even quietly removing, if the rumours were to be believed - those that dared to criticise its authority, and resorted to extreme levels of violence to demonstrate its belief in supremacy through strength. If he stood up now in front of a collection of fellow politicians and judicial representatives and spouted his usual media-friendly soundbites, he felt he would choke on them.