“Computer, search for maximum security prison breaks or related events in the last month,” I said.
“One record found,” responded the computer.
The news report showed the smoldering remains of the prison in the background as an attractive brunette reported, “It is not yet known what caused the explosion, but authorities believe that no one survived. The entire area has been quarantined due to the toxic levels of psionic fallout.”
“No, I think there was at least one survivor,” I said to the news reporter. I clicked off the report and started a search for similar explosions in the past month. Only two others matched: my house and a seemingly random house across town.
Samuel was dangerous, but there was no way he could have blown up that prison without help. He would have had no access to that kind of weapon in there, even if he’d somehow miraculously woken up by himself. No, there was only one person I knew who had access to those kinds of weapons—and too little sense to refuse to sell them.
I headed to the back of my hideout and opened a closet that I had sworn I would never open again. In the back was a safe. I started to place my hand on the biometric-secured latch, then hesitated. A chill ran down my spine as I remembered the horrors I had witnessed in my past life.
I might have turned back then, but for my wife and daughter. “You can do this,” I said to myself. “You have to, for them.”
I activated the latch; the safe’s door slid up with a swoosh. Inside hung a pure black set of body armor, so black that all the light in the closet seemed to fall into it and get trapped. Hanging next to it was a backpack containing various tools of my former trade. Above it hung a set of pulse pistols and an assault rifle.
“You can do this,” I said to myself again. “Just one more time.” I knew I was lying, but it didn’t matter. I had no choice. I was the only one that could stop Samuel, and everyone knew it. The only question was, who could stop the monster I would become again?
I suited up in my armor and grabbed my equipment. Before heading out I looked at myself in the mirror, struggling again to see myself as others would. My military-issue armor was encoded with a special telepathic identification code, one that would instruct normal civilian implants to replace the image of the armor and weapons with something more benign. Something from their own memories, something fitting for the situation. Like Samuel, I had no implants, so I couldn’t see this camouflage effect, which meant I would never know if the camouflage ever failed.
I slid aside a fake panel in the side wall of the closet and walked through to an underground garage. Waiting for me was a high performance military assault cycle. It was illegal for civilians to own, but the law no longer mattered. My family’s lives were at stake. I climbed into the cycle and launched off into the rising sun.
* * *
It took an hour to reach the warehouse district where the less-than-respectable members of society conducted their business. It was in this district that I had once shopped for the kinds of supplies that gave me an edge over the competing bounty hunters, most of whom were unwilling to take the risks I took.
I landed my cycle near an abandoned-looking alleyway and swept the area with my visor for heat signatures. “Five of you? Really? I would have expected more.” They didn’t respond, but I hadn’t really expected them to.
Ignoring them, I walked up to a partly hidden door and kicked it in. Two men with pistols rushed forward to intercept me, but I had the jump on them and blasted the guns out of their hands. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to get the new password. Now, where’s Tony?”
They looked at each other and then lunged toward me. Before they could take two steps I had fired both guns. Their momentum carried their now-dead bodies past me and into the wall. “Fools.”
I wanted to feel remorse, but it wasn’t in my nature. Inside me was only coldness.
“Fine. I’ll just look around, then,” I said.
I headed toward the back, where Tony normally conducted business, and more men moved to intercept me. “Really?”
“How about you turn around and drop your weapons,” one of them said.
I stared him down. He was attempting to read my mind with his puny implants. That gave me enough time to focus on using my own powers.
“How about a taste of nothingness?”
I slowly eased some nothingness into his mind. His face went blank and he fell to the ground, limp.
“Anyone else?”
The others dropped their guns and fell back as I continued to build the nothingness around me. Their telepathic implants would pick it up and transmit it directly into their minds.
“It’s the Null!” shouted one.
“Run!” called out another.
They tripped and stumbled over each other as the fear overwhelmed them. I waited until the path to the door was clear, then I slowly relaxed my powers and retracted my field of power back into myself.
I heard scrambling sounds coming from behind the door as I approached. I kicked the door open and saw Tony making a break for a window.
I fired a blast from my pistols into the wall over his head. “Not so fast.”
Tony turned to face me, all the color drained from his face. His body was physically shaking as I approached. “But—but—you’re dead!”
I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and lifted him up. He was a small man, easily handled. “Now, Tony… after all the business we’ve done, is that any way to greet me?”
“Sorry—” he stammered. “Had you called ahead—”
“You would have skipped town,” I said, and tossed him into a chair. “Now talk to me. Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” he asked.
“You sold the dirty bombs that were used to free Samuel,” I said.
“No! I didn’t know! I swear!” he said.
“Samuel tried to use one on my wife. Did you know that?”
“I tell you, I didn’t know!” His bald head was covered in sweat, and he was struggling to control his breathing enough to speak. “Please, you have to believe me!”
I leaned in real close. “Who did you sell them to?”
“I didn’t get his name. I don’t keep records—you know that!”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten your last taste of nothingness?” I asked.
“Please, don’t. All I know is a man came in claiming to be an agent of the government. Told me he’d shut me down if I didn’t give him my entire stockpile. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Your entire stockpile?”
“Well, I only gave him some of it. He didn’t seem to know how much I really had,” he said.
“How many?”
“A dozen.”
“You better tell me everything you remember. Dates, times, locations, everything.” There had been three blasts so far. The one at the prison was probably two or three bombs of the size Tony normally carried, which meant Samuel had maybe seven or eight more bombs.
“Look, I had my guys deliver them to Mockingbird Industries on Thirteenth Street. I don’t know what happened to the bombs after that.”
I picked him back up. “If I find out you lied to me, I will be back,” I said. I threw him to the side and headed out the way I’d come in.
As I exited the building, I saw three men standing by my cycle. “You best back away from that.”
They pulled out knives and clubs. “Nah. I think we’re going to take this bike, mister.”
“That would not be wise,” I said.
“Yeah, well, no one ever accused me of being real smart,” said one of the men. “Get him, boys!”
I felt coldness pass through my body as my conditioning took hold of me yet again. There was no logic in that coldness, just a pure desire to kill.
His two partners charged and I waited for them to close in. Once they were in reach, I spun and launched a kick into the closest thug’s throat, collapsing his windpipe. I continued my spin, and as I came around again I slammed the toe of my boot into th
e other’s temple. He fell to the ground next to his choking partner and didn’t move.
“Now,” I said to the remaining thug. “Run and tell everyone you know: the Null has returned.”
“The Null?” he gasped and sprinted off, leaving his buddies on the ground at my feet.
I sighed as I climbed back on the cycle and closed the canopy over my head. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and already I was struggling to control the monster that lived inside my heart and had threatened to consume me once before.
Afternoon, Day Two: To Kill or Not to Kill
I forced myself back to my hideout to eat lunch and attempt to regain some self-control. For the first time since my marriage I had killed, and I had done it without remorse. This was why I’d retired in the first place. A cold-blooded monster like me doesn’t belong on the streets.
I leaned back in my chair, holding the picture of my beautiful wife and sweet daughter. My daughter was in her soccer uniform, covered in mud and grass stains. They had just won their championship game; I could still remember the pride we’d all felt that day. Now both of them were in some prison somewhere on my account. I wiped away a tear and choked down the last of my meal.
Forcing myself to focus on the task at hand I pulled up the records on Mockingbird Industries. Mockingbird was a multi-national corporation that manufactured weapons for all the major militaries in the quadrant.
“Why would they need to buy bombs?” I asked myself. Getting answers from them would be a lot harder than roughing up some small-time arms dealer. I searched all my records, looking for anything that would connect them to Samuel, but came up empty.
Something didn’t make sense here. Dirty bombs weren’t Samuel’s style. I went back to the records of the prison break and checked them again. Sneaking bombs in and detonating them was one thing, but freeing Samuel was a whole different ball game.
My comm rang, but this time it was my secure line, the one no one should know about. I picked it up slowly. “Hello?”
“Null, I think you know who this is. You’re being played. Meet me at the Point after dark.” And then Samuel hung up.
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a trap, “ I said with a chuckle. “Not at all.”
I grabbed my gear and headed to the Point. I wanted to be there long before dark to prepare.
As I flew there, a nagging thought kept coming back to me: Samuel never used dirty bombs, and he’d never threatened anyone before. It just wasn’t his style. If he had wanted me to stop pursuing him, he would have just killed me without warning.
Tony had said that a government agent had purchased the bombs, and that he’d had them delivered to a major government weapons contractor. There was no way that Samuel would ever willingly work with government agents. The story just wasn’t adding up.
The Point was a tourist trap on Rahar Mountain. The mountain was named for a woman who freaked out, thinking aliens were after her, and ran off the edge trying to get away from them. Her body was never found, but presumably she died in the five-thousand-foot fall. Many legends claim she still haunts the mountains—which helps keep the place relatively empty after dark.
I hid my cycle near the meeting point and moved to scout it out. With a few hours of light yet to go it was still pretty busy. There were families milling around taking pictures and kids playing precariously close to the edge. With so many people around I couldn’t fully search the place without drawing undue attention. Instead I found a place to hide and wait.
As dusk fell, another cycle pulled up with a lone driver. Tourists were thinning out quickly, and soon we were alone. I caught a quick glimpse of his face as he turned to check something on his cycle. It was Samuel.
I slowly took aim with my rifle. One shot and it would be over. I would get my family back, and the Null could die again. Samuel turned his back to me and leaned over the rail, seemingly admiring the scenery. I carefully lined up my sights with the back of his skull. One shot, and the greatest criminal mind of our era would be gone. My body knew what to do without me even thinking about it. I felt my breathing slow, steady. I wouldn’t risk a miss, not even by a millimeter.
A coldness came over me as I prepared to kill again. The crosshairs of my sight were perfectly centered on target, and I slowly started to pull the trigger back.
My mind flashed back to a dozen other men and women the government had ordered me to assassinate just like this. With a sigh I let my finger off the trigger and put the rifle down. I could not allow myself to become that monster again. Shooting a man in the back was wrong, even if it was Samuel.
I stepped out of my hiding spot and said, “Hello, Samuel.”
“I’m glad you didn’t shoot,” he said. “I was concerned for a moment.”
“Why did you call me out here?”
“I’m not your enemy, at least not today,” he said.
“What’s going on, then?”
“There’s an old expression that goes something like: the enemy of an enemy is my friend.”
“I’ve heard it. Are you implying we have a mutual enemy?”
“Agent Mikian blew up the prison, your house, and kidnapped your family. What do you think?”
“But—why?” I asked.
He turned and leaned back against the handrail. “To get you to kill me.”
“If he wanted you dead, he could have done that while you were in prison, in stasis,” I said.
“I was never in prison. No more than you were dead.”
“What?” That seemed impossible. I had visited his cryotube. I had seen his body and read the monitors that gave reports on his health.
“I faked that so that I could disappear, just as you did,” he explained. “They made us monsters, and now they’re hoping we’ll kill each other off and solve their problem.”
Samuel and I were products of a secret, selective breeding program. We both had natural psionic powers that the vast majority of the race couldn’t even dream of, not even with all the implants in the world. We were intended to be super-soldiers, and were trained to be killing machines, but both of us escaped the program. Samuel to a life of crime, I to vigilante justice.
“So you’re saying this whole thing was staged?”
“Is that so hard to believe? We represent a smear on their perfectly planned society, one they mean to be done with.” He took something out of his pocket and held it out to me.
I took it and felt a twinge on my heart when I saw it. “This is Mother’s locket.”
“Yes,” he said. “Keep it as a peace offering.”
“What about my family?”
“I doubt you’ll be permitted to see them again,” he said. “Now that they think they have a way to control you, your family will never be safe.”
I knew that was true, but I didn’t know what I could do about it. I joined him at the railing. “You and I had some good fights, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because your family is in danger. Stop chasing me and rescue them.”
“And you?”
“I plan to send a message to the agents never to bother me again,” he said. “It would be best if you and your family are clear when that happens.”
“Where are they being held?” I asked.
“Basement of Mockingbird Industries. But I should warn you, they have plenty more bombs and intend to use them all, if need be.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You’re a hero, remember?” he said. “Heroes can be controlled by threats to innocents. Villains like myself suffer no such weakness.”
“Hence why they want you dead.”
“And you back under their control.”
“You still haven’t told me why you want to help me.”
He turned and looked into my eyes. “Brother, we are family. In times like this, that is reason enough.”
“That, and if I’m not trying to kill you, there’s no one that can stop you,” I said.
> “Yes, that too. But, what is more important to you? Taking me down, or saving your family?”
“I could do both,” I said.
“Perhaps, but you know as well as I that if we’re working together there is no one that can stop us.”
I smiled. “True. When do you make your move?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ll move on the capital building. That will draw all attention out there. Call in and tell them you’ll be along to assist, then make for Mockingbird Industries.”
“And when this is over?” I asked.
“We go our separate ways. The Null can return to the grave, and Samuel will be back in retirement.”
“Deal.”
I wasn’t sure I believed he would retire again, but I couldn’t see any other way out. I needed his help to rescue my family, and that was all that mattered.
Nighttime, Day Three: The Rescue
I had been staking out Mockingbird Industries all day and was merely waiting for Samuel to do his part. It seemed wrong to be teaming up with the mastermind behind the Ku Crisis, but he was right. So long as I let them think they could use my family, my family would never be safe.
From my hiding spot inside the main lobby I watched the newscast on the large monitors. Most of the employees were heading home for the night, and soon it would be just the guards and me in the building.
About an hour past dark, the lights in the building flickered, and on the screens I saw one of the capital buildings go up in flames. My portable comm went off: a message from Agent Mikian.
“Samuel spotted at the capital, please call in,” scrolled by on my screen.
Not wanting to speak and give away my position, I typed in a simple reply. “Samuel has acquired several psionic bombs and has stated he plans to use them tonight to teach you a lesson.” I then sent a similar message to the anonymous tip line for the local news.
I waited a bit longer, ignoring the frantic requests for more information on my comm until everyone in the building had their eyes on the monitors, watching the reports on the bomb threat and the emergency forces attempting to control the ensuing mass panic. The rumor I had started with my tip was growing out of control as only baseless rumors can.
Future Chronicles Special Edition Page 24
