The Final Cut

by Matthew Smith

  "Uh, sir?" Rawlinson piped up. He was still standing by the open trapdoor, shining his torch into the darkness below, his face pale. "You might want to take a look at this..."

  "He had partially consumed them," Peat said, gazing at his hands folded before him on his desk. "Can you imagine what that did to his mind? Trapped with the bodies of his parents and brothers, crazed with grief and hunger, he'd been forced to cannibalise his own flesh and blood. When we found him, he was covered in them, head to foot, and he was raging, raging against the Sovs that had murdered his family."

  Dredd stood before the councillor, impassive. "And so you took him to a psych unit under an assumed name. You were working an angle already, weren't you? You saw an important future ally and you helped protect him."

  "I was a businessman before I was a politician, Dredd," Peat replied simply. "Here was the sole heir to one of the largest kneepad manufacturers in the city. I felt I could help both our causes if we kept this as discreet as possible."

  "How did you get him out of the kook cubes?"

  "The company lawyers, plus some significant leaning on certain elements within Justice Department by myself and my colleagues. We convinced them he could be kept under control."

  "But he couldn't, could he? You released a dangerously insane man because it made sense to your career. What did he do? Fund your election campaign?"

  Peat stood and crossed to the window, his back to Dredd. He sighed and rested his forehead against the glass. "I... I thought Erik deserved more. He was too important to be left rotting in some padded cell. I believed his energies could be directed into something more... worthwhile." He paused, then added, raising his voice, "For grud's sake, Dredd, this was twenty years ago."

  "The Law is the Law. You used Rejin the same way you use everyone else, to climb the greasy pole and to increase your own publicity. And you attempted to cover your tracks by trying to erase the past. How did you hack into MAC's files?"

  Peat turned and looked Dredd straight in the eye. "I'm not saying any more."

  "Fair enough. We'll talk further down at the Sector House."

  "No," Peat replied, reaching into his jacket and removing a small blaster, pointing it at the Judge. "I'm going nowhere with you."

  Dredd stared him down, unfazed. "Don't be ridiculous, Peat. You're only making things worse."

  "How can they possibly be worse?" he replied, his eyes watering. He sniffed, then shouted "Keisha!" Seconds later, his secretary entered, glanced at the two men, then spied the revolver, her jaw dropping. Before she could speak, the councillor reached over and pulled her to him, his left arm snaking around her throat. He placed the gun barrel against the side of her head. She whimpered and he shushed her quiet.

  "Now, I'm walking out of here, Dredd," he declared. "Try to stop me and you'll have blood on your hands too."

  ELEVEN

  I'm sitting in a small room, adjacent to the studio set, my eyes closed, trying to control my breathing. In the darkness behind my lids, all I can see is blood and a face twisted soundlessly in pain, as if the images are burned onto my retina. No matter how much I shake my head or pound my temples with my fists, nothing can dispel them.

  They're imprinted there, indelible, and a part of my mind not paralysed with shock at what I've just taken part in is terrified that they will never fade, like a stain on the inside of my skull. I fear that every time I shut my eyes, I'm going to see the gore-streaked features of Bartram Stump, dying in the most perverse and brutal manner imaginable. And I was the one who was responsible for his horrifying injuries because I had no way of backing out of this horrible mess this group of callous, monstrous perps have dragged me into. It's going to replay in the theatre of my mind like my very own private snuff movie on a permanent loop: star, director and audience all in one, anguish and revulsion keeping the spools turning.

  I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, wanting a hit of anything - zizz, alcohol, even a sugar rush would do - to destroy my nerve endings and render me numb. I want to crack open my head and rip out the darkness festering inside because I know it's only going to grow and grow before it consumes me entirely. What's scaring me even more than the acts I've just performed on another human being is the voice I'm starting to hear asking why I'm being such a hypocrite.

  You knew what you were getting into, it's saying. Nobody forced you into anything. Don't act all mortified about what you've witnessed. The truth of the matter is that you took some gruddamn pleasure from it. The first time you met Stump, didn't you want to drive your fist into that handsome, bland face? Haven't you always longed to destroy everything that offends you with its puerility? Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't get a thrill from the power you wielded, released from the moral obligations of being a Judge. You embraced the black, cancerous heart that pulses inside you and allowed it to blossom. It's always been there, don't deny it. It's right there, right at the core of who you are.

  I can feel tears trickling down my cheeks and I cover my face with my hands, trying to stem their flow. I don't want to hear what this voice has got to say, it's cutting too close to the bone, but I can't escape it. If I stuffed my ears, buried my head, it wouldn't halt its condemnatory monologue.

  You don't want to hear it, it replies, because you don't want to accept the unacceptable. Take a look in the mirror, pal. Come to terms with it.

  "No... no..." I murmur, unaware the words are escaping from my mouth.

  In answer I hear a different, female, voice. "You all right?"

  I lift my head away from my hot, wet face, blinking back the tears. It takes a moment for her features to coalesce into focus, then I see Ramona peering round the door, her camera still dangling from her neck. She doesn't look concerned, merely moderately surprised to see such a reaction. She eyes me curiously as if I'm some sort of freakshow attraction. She glances back behind her briefly, then slips into the room, shutting the door after her.

  "No need to ask how it was for you," she says with a little more warmth, a slight smile playing on her lips.

  I do my best to straighten my appearance, wiping a hand over my tear-streaked cheeks. "Sorry," I say, clearing my throat. "Not very professional."

  She leans against the wall opposite me. "No need to apologise. You wouldn't be the first guy to freak out after a session. Not everybody can do it. Lots of them think they can, but when it comes to it they lose their nerve. It takes guts and a certain strength of will."

  "Sounds like you've done plenty of these... sessions."

  "A fair few," she says, absent-mindedly removing her glasses and cleaning them with the edge of her T-shirt, affording me a tantalising glimpse of her pale belly. If she notices me looking, she doesn't make mention of the fact. She replaces the spectacles and fixes me with those piercing blue eyes. "Vandris seemed to think you were a natural for this kind of work. I have to say, you looked like you were in control of the situation. The best performers hit a kind of plateau, as if they're sculpting a work of art and are taken over by a... creative reverie. But the comedown can be a bitch, can't it?"

  I nod, thinking that sounds like the understatement of the drokkin' century. "Doesn't it ever affect you?"

  She shrugs. "I stopped being troubled by my conscience years ago. My father taught me just how transient the human form was, how the flesh was a disguise, hiding our true selves." She taps her camera. "I'm capturing the unveiling of that truth, in all its multi-coloured glory."

  I feign understanding, thinking that the daughter sounds as mad as everyone else around here. Gruddamn, though, she was beautiful. I feel like a besotted juve, but it's worth hearing her speak just to watch the shapes her mouth makes, the way her tongue flicks against her front teeth, the movement of her slender neck.

  I'm suddenly aware that she's studying me. She's looking me up and down with her photographer's eyes, trying to get the measure of me. "So how did you get involved with Vandris?" she asks.

  I actually struggle for a couple of seconds to think
of a credible answer. Is she really entrancing me that much that I'm incapable of lying to her? Normally, the cover stories would fly from my lips without hesitation, but for some reason the dishonesty niggles me. I stamp it down quickly. "I was just a street hustler," I reply, which is hardly a lie at all. "Another bum trying to make a living underground. I came into possession of some merchandise, which Mr DuNoye was interested in-"

  "The instruments from South-Am," Ramona interrupts. "They're beautiful, aren't they? It makes such a difference, working with a craftsman's tools."

  I nod queasily. "They're... unique, I'll say that. Anyway, I wanted... I don't know, to prove that I could be useful to this organisation. Maybe I felt like I needed a place to belong, that I'd been on the streets on my own for too long. Maybe it was my mercenary instincts telling me this was where the money was. Or that I recognised-"

  "Kindred spirits," she finishes. "I think it was more than the lure of a quick cred that brought you to us, Mr Trager. You felt the dark pull within your soul, a craving that perhaps you did not fully understand."

  I say nothing, and for the first time I can't meet her gaze. I look down at my palms, still speckled with crimson.

  "I could see it in you, in your performance out there," she continues. "It's impossible to fake, you either have it or you don't. And you have it very much within you, Mr Trager. It burns, doesn't it, this cold flame that can explode into violence? Directionless, without reason... But here it can be cultured, refined, into a thing of beauty." She steps closer to me and takes my hand in hers. "Let me show you."

  Ramona leads me back into the darkened studio, now empty of life. All that remains of what had taken place here is the chair lying forlornly on its side, liquid patches of shadow on the floor around it. The rest of the torturers have disappeared along with their tools of the trade, presumably to dispose of Bartram Stump's corpse in yet another chem-pit somewhere in the city.

  I briefly wonder, as I follow her into a backstage corridor littered with props and costumes, just how DuNoye and his men know where to dump the bodies. They seem to have intimate knowledge of every rad hotspot into which they can dissolve the evidence. It smells to me like they're getting help from outside the organisation, and that someone is priming them on the best places to go; someone with a vested interest.

  We climb a set of stairs, leaving the filmmaking apparatus in our wake, and emerge into an office area. The lights are off here too, but I can feel the brush of plush carpets beneath my feet. Ramona heads towards a door, then fishes in her trouser pocket for a key.

  "This all part of Catalyst too?" I whisper, glancing around me.

  She nods. "This is the business section. Vandris's office is just down there," she says, pointing vaguely behind her, "and my father's quarters... are at the far end."

  She looks uncomfortable, as if she doesn't want to say anything further, and turns her attention back to the lock, twisting the key and tugging down on the handle. The door swings open and she enters first, slapping on a light that casts an eerie red glow. I follow, pulling the door shut after me.

  "Your father lives here? At the studio?" I ask. Once my eyes become accustomed to the lighting, I realise it's a compact but fairly high-tech darkroom: various pieces of photographic equipment and developer chemicals line the shelves.

  Most immediately striking is the plethora of pictures - mostly all of them black and white shots - tacked to the walls or hanging from makeshift washing lines. It's a grotesque gallery of suffering as men and women of a wide range of ages are caught in mid-scream, their agonies frozen for the camera. Despite the horrific nature of the photos, and it's impossible for the eye not to be drawn to them, flitting from one atrocity to the next, there's evidently a talent at work that's equally hard to ignore.

  Whilst the majority of Vi-zine pics are flat and unimaginative, or grainy to the point of illegibility, these are approaching art, with a style and sense of composition that far outstrips anything I've seen before. I begin to understand now what Alphonse had been talking about when he maintained that Catalyst was going for something more upmarket, and it is clear that the driving force of the talent is Ramona Rejin. She is capturing death and creating something new from it.

  "My father's family home was destroyed in the Apocalypse War," she says quietly, setting her camera down on the work surface. "He was the only survivor. After that, he was uncomfortable living alone, so he made his work his life. Catalyst is everything to him; he lives and breathes what we're doing here. And this is where I feel safest," she says gesturing around her. "Alone with my photographs."

  "These pictures," I say, continuing to gaze up at the photos, genuinely impressed. "They're like nothing I've ever seen before."

  "You like them?"

  I pause for a moment, trying to conjure up a word that sums up my simultaneous fascination and repulsion. "They're... unforgettable. I've never seen Vi-zine shots like these before."

  She pulls a face. "Vi-zine." She spits out the word as if it were poison. "Such a patronising and inaccurate term. It was the Judges that coined that phrase, did you know that? A catch-all expression for something they've sought to eradicate."

  "Then what are you doing here?"

  She shrugs. "Literally? A Pictorial Study of Human Transformation, if you want to give it a grand title. Does art need to be pigeonholed and labelled? I'm making something new here, something aficienados will not have seen before. You know the kind of rubbish that's out there on the black market."

  I nod. "I've seen them."

  "Pulp hackjobs like Dismemberment Today, In the Flesh and Shreddies - they say nothing and they offer nothing, other than a cheap voyeuristic thrill. The subjects are often vagrants, the photography is ugly, with no semblance of skill or sincerity, and they're treating their audience with a shameful disdain. However, what my father and I are doing here is creating beauty from the inbuilt flawed nature of human physicality."

  "Come again?"

  "Us, our bodies, are fundamentally flawed. In our minds, we're misshapen, unable to conform to the aesthetically pleasing archetype that's paraded before us on Tri-D and in the movies. We try to change ourselves, transform ourselves, but rarely to our satisfaction. The image in the mirror is never perfect. In reality, we're prone to infection and disease, constantly fighting against the defects that lead to illness and death." Her eyes glow with a preacher's zeal, sermonising what's clearly her life work. "But take apart this human jigsaw puzzle," she holds her hands to her chest, "expose the interlocking pieces and it takes on an abstract beauty. Through my photographs, I demonstrate that mankind contains an inner light so rarely seen."

  The cynic in me wants to ask her to point out the artistic worth in the pic above her head showing some poor sap having the tips of his fingers sheared off, but in truth the passion in her oration is incredibly overwhelming. I feel almost dazzled by the bright flame of her self-belief. If Ramona sees her mission as unveiling our inner light, then it's shining from her right now, sparkling from her eyes and mouth.

  "You're tellin' me you're misshapen?" I ask. "I've never seen a more perfect example of beauty." I'm laying it on a bit thick, but unusually, I'm not lying.

  She looks confused for a second, then smiles to herself, lowering her gaze. In the blink of an eye, her guard is broken and she's gone from zealot to an embarrassed young woman, her cheeks flushing. Her restive fingers look for something to do and she opens the back of her camera, removing a small disk which she then plugs into a terminal.

  "I promised to show you something," she says quietly.

  She flicks the screen on, opens a desktop folder and scrolls through the digital photos of me participating in the torture-murder of Bartram Stump. After the fourth or fifth picture, I turn my head away, scarcely recognising the man before me, and Ramona glances sideways at me, noticing my discomfort.

  "Do you see it?" she asks. "The way you wield the knife, as if it feels natural in your hand? Do you see the violence in you boiling aw
ay, looking for an outlet? You can't deny I've captured your true-"

  "I'm no killer," I try to assert.

  "No? Some kill because they have no choice, or do so by accident, and others do it because it's in their blood and every life they take reaffirms their identity. They kill because they can only know themselves in those final, precious moments. I would say that you're a natural born killer Mr Trager, and that you've at last found your calling."

  There's still some small scrap of conscience inside me that wants to refute her theory, but maybe she's right. Maybe it's always been inside me, this ease with which I can take life, and I use the Law as an excuse to give vent to it. I could've easily gone the other way and become one more nutso mass murderer. Instead, I kill for the city; a sanctioned executioner.

  "I'm capable of violence, I admit," I mutter unconvincingly, "but it's not who I am. It doesn't define me." I gesture to the photos. "Your-your audience... Who are they? What do they get from it?" There's a hint of desperation to the words. I feel like I'm falling apart before her, or at least, the character I've thrown up around myself is crumbling. The light blazing from her is melting it.

  "We have an established client base which is growing all the time as word of mouth spreads," she replies, fixing me once again with her unwavering stare, stepping nearer. "The distribution network of Catalyst's propaganda films ensures that my pictures are shipped all over the world. All sorts of people are interested in my work. Perhaps they like to feel so close to death because it makes them closer to a higher being or something. Maybe they're drawn to taboo. The bottom line is that nobody else is doing what I'm doing. I'm breaking through boundaries."

  She reaches out past me, her arm brushing my shoulder, and removes a pic from the wall of a semi-flayed face, which looks in close-up like the spread wings of a butterfly. She studies it, smiling. "Transformation, you see? We're all capable of taking on new forms." She glances up at me. "Even you, Mr Trager."