Sins of the Father

by Mitchel Scanlon

  EIGHTEEN

  LEONARD UNLEASHED

  Leonard had been back at the hostel for less than half an hour by the time the killers came for him.

  Seeking a place to gather his thoughts in the wake of recent revelations, he had returned to City Bottom with Daniel in tow. The boy's mood had not improved. All the way back to the third floor room where Leonard lived, Daniel had argued with him relentlessly, wheedling and pleading in his attempts to persuade him to kill another of the so-called bad men. Leonard had been adamant, though: now he was convinced that Daniel wanted him to kill innocent people, he refused to be bound by his promise. Admittedly, he had not necessarily thought everything through. Inwardly, Leonard was aware that without Daniel's help he would never be able to find his mother. But though he still wanted Daniel to help him, he was no longer willing to pay the price if it meant more innocent people would die.

  They were at a stalemate. The argument between them raged back and forth, without being resolved. No matter how often Leonard tried to explain his insights to Daniel - that the bad men Daniel saw were not really there - the boy refused to listen. It was as though the idea that Leonard might be right was somehow too terrible for Daniel to contemplate.

  Then, in the middle of their dispute, Leonard heard the sound of men in the distance moving towards the hostel and felt a nameless instinct warn him of danger.

  It was difficult to tell without seeing them, but he estimated there were a dozen of them at least. It was not so much the fact there were so many men outside that spooked him. Even in City Bottom, large groups of people - other mutants, mostly - sometimes passed by the hostel, minding their own business. No, the unsettling part was that the men outside were trying to move too quietly. Raised in the ways of the Cursed Earth, it was a sound Leonard knew well. The sounds of hunters stalking their prey.

  Motioning Daniel to be quiet, Leonard doused the lantern in his room and crept towards the window. Looking out cautiously, he counted fifteen men advancing stealthily under cloak of darkness on his side of the hostel. He smelt the scent of gun oil, watching as the men manoeuvred to cover all the exits. It was clear they were not Judges. They were all dressed head-to-toe in black, including black masks, and they were heavily armed.

  Stealing a glance at the old rifle propped up in the corner of his room, Leonard cursed himself for his lack of foresight. He should have used some of his wages to get Freddie Binns to buy him some more ammo when he had had the chance. Now, it was too late. The rifle was empty and all but useless.

  Downstairs, he heard the thud of explosions as the men outside threw grenades into the ground floor of the hostel. He heard mutants screaming in pain, followed by the muffled pop of silenced gunshots as the armed men advanced into the hostel to finish what their grenades had started. He heard more screams, and more gunfire, as the mutants he had lived and worked with were slaughtered on the floors below him. The sounds were moving closer, but Leonard was already hurrying from his room to meet them. He was unarmed.

  If the rifle was useless, then he would just have to use his hands.

  "The perp's name is Lenny," Judge Patton said, his voice raised to make himself heard over the roar of the H-Wagon's engines as he briefed the assembled members of his tac-team seated either side of him. "No surname - just Lenny. He's a mutant, wanted for three homicides that we know of. You'll find a picture of him, along with further details, on the briefing monitors beside your seats. Study them closely. And pay particular attention to the fact the perp is strong enough to bend plastisteel with his bare hands. If he decides to come quietly, that's fine. But we don't take any chances. Be prepared to use lethal force if need be."

  Seated next to Lang at the end of one of the files of Judges, Anderson checked the magazine of her Lawgiver as she prepared herself for action. The H-Wagon and tac-team assistance had been summoned at short notice. The informant who had claimed to know the perp's name and location had turned out to be a career criminal by the name of Einar Jensen. Having been captured during one of the sweeps for Operation Lazarus, Jensen had attempted to make a deal for his freedom by offering up the killer of Jimmy Nayles based on the photo-scan released to the media. But the Judges of Mega-City One didn't do deals. Instead, Anderson and Lang had been summoned to perform a psychic interrogation. Courtesy of a telepathic probe of Jensen's mind they had learned Nayles's killer was a mutant named Lenny who lived in a ruined apartment building in City Bottom. Meanwhile, Jensen himself had been sent to the cubes with an additional five years added to his sentence for Withholding Information. Whatever private concerns she might have about the quality of justice in Mega-City One, Anderson was forced to admit it was certainly thorough.

  "ETA to location: three minutes," the voice of the H-Wagon's pilot came over their radios. "I'm reading multiple gunflashes up ahead. At least two dozen hostiles. Looks like a major firefight has broken out at your target location."

  "Call for backup," Patton said, gruffly. "Drop us three hundred metres from the target. Then, get airborne again and light up the hostiles."

  "Understood," the pilot replied. "Taking her down now."

  There was a sudden feeling of almost-weightlessness as the H-Wagon abruptly changed direction and started to descend. As it landed on City Bottom, the side doors slid open automatically, disgorging its cargo of Judges.

  "Spread out." Anderson heard Patton's voice barking orders over her radio as she followed the tac-team out of the H-Wagon with Lang beside her. "We advance as a single firing line. Maintain noise and light discipline. Safeties off and stay sharp."

  Hurrying to her position on the line, Anderson found she had to be careful to avoid tripping over the garbage and other assorted debris littering the rockcrete. At this time of night City Bottom was pitch black; the lights of the Big Meg above it were too far away to be anything more than a distant gleam in the darkness. Not for the first time in her Judicial career, she had reason to regret the fact she did not wear a helmet. The standard Mark Two helmets the tac-team members wore were equipped with an infrared vision filter, allowing them to see up to ten metres in absolute darkness. Like most Psi-Judges, however, Anderson dispensed with wearing a helmet because she found they got in the way of her powers. At that precise moment she was tempted to consider it a price worth paying if it prevented her falling on her face.

  "Get ready," she heard Patton say as the Judges swiftly crossed the intervening distance to their target and took up their positions. Ahead, she could see dim shapes moving in the darkness as she heard the quiet, yet distinctive sound of silenced gunshots.

  Suddenly, the night was banished by a blinding radiance as the H-Wagon overhead illuminated the target and its vicinity in the eye-burning glare of its searchlights. Revealed in the light, Anderson saw half a dozen gunmen intent on gunning down fleeing groups of terrified mutants. The gunmen's arms and equipment were state-of-the-art: jet-black combat armour, silenced spit guns, grenades, IR visors. They went about their business with a cool, professional detachment. Anderson tagged them at once as top-of-the-line mercenaries rather than common-or-garden street punks.

  "This is the Justice Department!" the roar of the pilot's voice over the H-Wagon's public address speakers was deafening. "You are all under arrest! Drop your guns and put your hands on your heads! This is your final warning!"

  In response, some of the mercs began to fire at the H-Wagon above them. Whoever they were, they didn't scare easy.

  "Pick your targets," Patton ordered over the radio. "Fire at will!"

  There was a brief flurry of gunshots as the Judges opened fire, cutting the mercs down in a hail of bullets. As the last of the mercs fell, Anderson saw further gunflashes come from inside the apartment house ahead of them. There were more hostiles inside it, but the way was now clear for the Judges to advance.

  "Move forward!" Patton yelled. "We go in hard and heavy! Take prisoners if you can, but whatever else happens I want those hostiles subdued ASAP!"

  In common with every
other firefight it had ever been Anderson's misfortune to experience, what happened next was all but lost in a welter of chaos and contradictions. Advancing into the apartment building, the Judges found more of the mercs waiting for them. What had begun as an ordered advance degenerated into a series of individual firefights and Anderson abruptly realised she had lost sight of Lang in the confusion. Pressing on regardless in search of the fugitive giant, she suddenly found herself confronted by a merc who turned away from trying to shoot a frightened mutant to wheel his spit gun towards her.

  "Psi Division! Drop your weapon!"

  Seeing the merc refuse to comply, she fired three shots and put him down. Then, running toward the merc's would-be former victim, she grabbed the mutant by the scruff of the neck before he could escape.

  "Where's Lenny?" she shouted at him. "Big guy. Face like a bat. And don't tell me you don't know him!"

  "He lives up on the third floor," the mutant said. Up close, he had whiskers and an elongated nose like a rat. "Please, don't shoot me! I didn't do nothing!"

  Releasing him, Anderson headed up the decrepit staircase towards the third floor, carefully picking her way past the steps that seemed most likely to collapse beneath her. On the third floor landing she found a merc lying dead on his back with his chest torn open. Glancing at his body as she passed it, she noticed an old surgical scar and a telltale bundle of wires peeking out from beneath his ripped body armour above his heart. She recognised the signs at once. The merc had been equipped with a blitzer bomb: an explosive device implanted in his heart and designed to detonate if the unfortunate wearer tried to surrender.

  Guess that explains why these creeps refuse to give up, she thought. If they even think of trying to surrender - boom, off goes the bomb.

  Hearing the sound of more gunshots somewhere off the landing, she cautiously advanced towards them. Until, turning a corner she caught her first sight of the mutant Lenny at work.

  He stood in the middle of the corridor, coat tails flapping about him and his fists covered in blood. A number of mercs lay strewn the entire length of the corridor, their necks and bodies broken, lying dead where the mutant had killed them. As Anderson watched in horror, she saw the giant punch his open hand through the chest of the last remaining merc, his fingers emerging bloodily from the man's back as the mutant's hand pushed right through him. As Lenny pulled his hand free from the merc's chest, Anderson saw the man's body collapse like a broken rag doll. Then, she saw the mutant start to turn her way.

  "You're under arrest!" she yelled. "Freeze or I shoot!"

  Incredibly, as the mutant turned towards her, she saw there was a child hanging from the mutant's shoulders with his arms around the creature's neck. It was a little boy, about seven or eight years of age. Recognising the boy's face from the psi-scans he had performed on each of the mutant's victims, she hesitated. The mutant was charging towards her, as fast as a locomotive, moving with a speed that belied his size. Wary of hitting the child with a through-and-through, she fired low. She hit the mutant in the groin. Too late, she realised there was a window. The mutant kept on coming, barrelling into her, the impact jarring her bones.

  Together, they went through the window.

  She landed in a heap of garbage on the ground below the window, crash-landing with an impact even more jarring than when the mutant had charged into her. Half stunned, for a moment Anderson tried to find her bearings.

  The mutant had landed on his feet and had already started to run away from the apartment house. There were Judges in his way. She saw them try to stop him. Concerned they would hit the child while shooting at the mutant, she tried to shout out a warning. Too late again, she saw the Judges open fire. A dozen shots hit the mutant. At least three of them exited from his back and into the child.

  For the second time in as many minutes, Anderson saw something incredible. The bullets passed right through the child's body as though he was intangible, leaving him unharmed.

  The mutant charged towards the Judges. She saw him punch a Judge in the face, his fist crushing the man's helmet and the skull inside it like they were eggshells. He pushed another Judge out of his way, then clubbed a third one a sickening blow with his hand that snapped the Judge's neck. Racing clear, the mutant jumped high in the air, covering fifty metres in a single leap. He leapt again. And again.

  As the last shots from the Judges faded away, the mutant was out of sight.

  If there was one thing Freddie Binns was unhappy about, it was that it turned out it was a lot more dangerous making a hundred grand than he had expected.

  Sitting in a hover van parked a kilometre away from the mutant hostel, he listened to the distant sounds of gunshots and shifted uneasily in his seat. A few hours ago, when he had seen Lenny's picture on the Tri-D news, it had seemed like the perfect score. Now, he was not so sure.

  It should have all been so simple. When he had gone to his contact with the info on Jimmy Nayles's killer, his only fear had been that somebody else might beat him to it. Unfortunately, it had soon turned out the Russians weren't about to just give him the money - not when his information was still untested. Instead, they had insisted he should accompany their kill-team down to City Bottom.

  "You will be their guide," one of the Sovs had told him. "Then, when the job is done, they will bring you the head so you can confirm the kill."

  Naturally, the guy hadn't bothered to lay out the subtext behind their conditions. He had known as well as Freddie that the other major reason they had dragged him down to City Bottom was so they could make him "disappear" if it turned out he was trying to con them. Not that Freddie would have ever dreamed of running a game on a bunch of Russkies. From all accounts, they were stone-cold bastards: if somebody pissed them off, they were likely to get a finger chopped off or worse - and that was only for minor infractions. The word on the street said if you drokked with the Sov gangers, you ended up dead. And Freddie, who had no ambition to die of anything other than heart failure in the arms of a couple of high-class hookers when he was an old man in his dotage, would no more try to con a Russky than he would his dear old mom. The info he had on Lenny was solid. So solid, his only thoughts when he had set out for City Bottom were about how he was going to spend his money.

  Still, the fact it currently sounded like he was sitting uncomfortably close to the outbreak of World War IV, had given him cause for seconds thoughts.

  Guess this is what you get for betraying a friend, he thought to himself. Well, I guess not so much a friend. I mean, Lenny was as dumb as three-day old munce, while having a conversation with him was like pulling teeth. Then again, he wasn't such a bad sort. Almost a shame, really, that he had to die to make me rich. I guess them's the breaks.

  Abruptly, as Freddie sat in the van, he saw a dark shadow loom over him. Turning to look through the passenger window to his side, he saw Lenny standing there with a face like thunder. Before Freddie could react, Lenny had smashed his arms through the Plexiglas and pulled him, squirming, out through the window.

  Oh drokk, he knows what I did, Freddie thought, as he found himself held by the scruff of the neck in Lenny's hands while his feet dangled uselessly above the ground. Think fast, Freddie! You got to come up with something good!

  "Lenny!" he said, putting on his best "hail fellow, well met" smile. "Thank Grud, I found you! I've come to warn you! Somebody's put out a hit on you!"

  "You did, Freddie," Lenny rumbled at him, his voice slow and angry. "You act like my friend. But you aren't my friend. You're a liar."

  "Why, sure I'm your friend," Freddie exclaimed, widening his smile as though he couldn't quite understand what Lenny was getting at. "You and me, we've been friends ever since you came to the city. That's why I'm always looking out for you. Break my neck if I'm lying."

  For the last ever time in his life - or Freddie's, for that matter - Leonard did exactly what Freddie had asked him.

  NINETEEN

  TO LIVE FOREVER

  For Roderick Lowe, i
t was the day his new life was destined to begin.

  Concerned by the progressive decline in the functioning of his organs, his doctors summoned a private hover ambulance to take him to the Don Siegel Medical Centre at just after midnight. Mr Lowe had been scheduled to undergo a surgical procedure at the same hospital the next morning; however, given the perilous state of the patient's health it was decided to bring the operation forward immediately.

  While the doctors hurried and flustered around him, though, Roderick Lowe felt only a serene sense of inner calm. Earlier, his man Prendergast had assured him that everything was ready. With the aid of Gruschenko's protÈgÈ Arkady, a suitable donor had been found. Through the avaricious Dr Langstock, a world-class surgical team had been assembled. Nothing could go wrong. If money could bring a man anything, it was the peace of mind that came from knowing his life was in the best possible hands.

  His life. Where once he had feared it was drawing to a close, Roderick Lowe was amused by the concept now. His life would never end. He would live forever, and all because the ingenuity of medical science had reached a level that a man's death could now be cheated indefinitely.

  A Total Body Transplant. That was what the doctors called it. Really, it was such a prosaic name. Mr Lowe preferred to think of it in terms of a much more ancient term.