Mutant City

by Steve Feasey

  ‘Brick and Rush,’ the big man said with a sad smile.

  ‘Rush and Brick,’ the boy agreed, reaching out for him and almost putting his hand into the thick orange goo until Jax hooked a hand under his armpit and manhandled him to his feet.

  ‘GO!’ Brick shouted.

  With that, Jax dragged Rush away just as the ARM commander and his men broke through the rubble in time to see all but one of their quarry were getting away. ‘You,’ the squad leader barked at two of his men, ‘secure the prisoner. The rest of you, after those Mutes with me.’ He led the way, stumbling through the debris and down the stairs. ‘They’re heading for the end of the alleyway,’ he barked into his communicator. The final spy drone came smashing down at the man’s feet, causing him to cry out in alarm.

  As the two mutants approached the junction at the end of the passageway, Rush heard the cacophony of noise again.

  ‘Who are all those people?’ he asked.

  ‘Remember how I said we were going to disappear?’ Jax replied.

  They rounded the last bend to see the tide of mutants moving across the intersection where the end of the passageway met the broader avenue beyond.

  ‘It’s a Mute Rights rally, but they’re really here for us,’ Jax said, pulling the youngster out into the thronging mass, where they were immediately swallowed up and swept along. ‘We’ll go along with it for a while and then slip away.’

  ‘You arranged all this? So you could get us away?’

  ‘Silas did.’

  Rush was having trouble walking. He stumbled, his legs giving way unexpectedly, and he would have fallen had it not been for the young man at his side.

  ‘What the hell happened back there? When you took my hand. What did you do?’

  ‘Thirteen years ago I rewired parts of your brain, made them hard for you to access. It was for the best at the time, and I knew it wouldn’t last for ever. Today I gave you a chance to realise some of your potential again. You did those things, Rush, not me. Unfortunately a lack of practice at using your heightened abilities means you’re left mentally and physically weak when you do, but it’s only temporary, and you’re more powerful than you know.’

  Rush glared back at him. ‘Yeah? Well, if I’m so powerful, why did we leave Brick?’ He pulled his arm free, not caring if he fell.

  ‘We had no choice. You know that and Brick knew it too. You heard him yourself.’

  They walked on while Rush took this in.

  ‘Where will they take him?’

  ‘Into the city.’

  ‘Will they torture him?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Rush swallowed a sob. ‘I don’t care what it takes – I’m going to get him back.’

  ‘We’re going to get him back,’ Jax replied. ‘You’re not alone any more, Rush.’

  Melk

  Zander squirmed in his seat, trying not to meet the eyes of his father, who was staring at him with a mixture of disbelief and anger. Before the botched raid had started the old man had summoned a nurse, demanding she give him ‘a shot of juice’ to ensure he was alert, and waving away her protests and lecture on the dangerous side effects of the drug. When she’d administered the dose via intravenous tube, the change had been extraordinary. Now faced with a reenergized and angry father, Zander wished he’d insisted Melk Senior listen to the nurse’s objections.

  The monitor they’d been watching was now wrecked, sporting a jagged, gaping hole where his father had hurled a glass through it. Before this, and despite the loss of visual contact as one by one the drones went down, the two had heard everything relayed between the base and the ARM unit through the speakers.

  The unnerving silence stretched out for what seemed like for ever, until his father finally spoke.

  ‘What on Scorched Earth did you think you were doing?’ he asked.

  ‘You can’t possibly blame me for the unsuccessful outcome of this mission. I was not personally in charge of those men. It’s obvious that my officers made –’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t! You chose to do this. You! You don’t get to turn round now and foist the blame on anyone else.’ He waved away the nurse, who’d been hovering by the door, and waited for her to leave before continuing. ‘I told you to call it off. You should have listened to me.’

  ‘You should have made it clearer what we were up against!’

  ‘As if you would have paid any attention.’

  Zander bit his lip. ‘We captured one of them.’

  ‘If you’d just listened to me, you could have had them all!’

  Zander’s palm tingled. Holding his finger to his ear he listened to the message relayed to him from the ARM base. When it was finished, he looked across at his father again. He didn’t like the expression on the old man’s face. It was one he’d seen all too often when he was growing up. ‘The prisoner is in custody,’ he said. ‘I think I should get down there so I can meet up with this creation of yours, don’t you?’

  The old man struggled up out of his chair, brushing away his son’s attempt to help. ‘I’m going with you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’re too unwell. I’ll –’

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told and shut the hell up!’ Melk Senior slipped his gown on. ‘Assuming it doesn’t kill me first, that shot will see me through the next hour or so. Now let’s go and see what you’ve managed to salvage from this train wreck, shall we?’

  The Melks observed the prisoner through the one-way mirror. The application of a simple solvent solution had removed the orange foam-glue that had trapped Brick, and he now sat, handcuffed to a metal table in the starkly lit interrogation room. They’d put him in bright yellow overalls which, despite being the largest pair they had, were still far too tight for him. He sat staring down at his hands. There was a cut above his left eye, and his lower lip was horribly swollen. The wounds looked as if they’d been inflicted recently, but if they bothered him he didn’t show it. A speaker above the mirror on the observers’ side relayed the sounds from the room: the prisoner was humming to himself.

  ‘He’s a big one,’ Zander said to his father, who grunted something.

  ‘How did he get injured like that?’ the older man asked, nodding in the prisoner’s direction.

  ‘He resisted when we tried to take this from him.’ The guard held out a small plastic torch.

  Melk stared at the object before taking it from the guard. ‘Open the door. I want to speak to him.’

  ‘I’ll come in with you,’ his son said.

  ‘You’ll stay here. If I want you, I’ll call for you. I think you’ve done enough damage for one day.’ He coughed for the first time since leaving his hospital room, and once he’d started it was unclear if he’d be able to stop. Bent double, he struggled to breathe until the attack finally abated and he straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  He addressed the guard again. ‘Give me the key to his handcuffs.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The key.’

  The man looked flustered, but obeyed. Unhooking the key chain from his belt, he handed one over.

  ‘At least let the guard go in with you,’ Zander suggested.

  ‘SHUT UP!’ the old man barked, rounding on him. Without another word the president gestured towards the security panel beside the door. The guard hurried over and entered the code, and the heavy door slid smoothly aside to provide access to the interrogation room. Melk paused in the entrance, looking back at his son and the guard in turn. ‘I don’t care what you see or hear in the next few minutes. Once this door closes behind me, neither of you is to come into this room. Is that crystal clear?’ He waited for them both to agree before he turned and went inside, shutting the door behind him.

  Brick stopped humming and looked up at the man as he entered, his eyes growing wide with fear and recognition.

  ‘I see you remember me,’ Melk said, walking over and taking a seat opposite the big man. He waited for the Mute to speak. ‘Cat got your tongue?’r />
  Brick looked down at the table again. ‘You’re the bad man from that bad place.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that. “Bad man”?’ He shook his head. ‘Not exactly the welcome a son should give his father, is it?’

  ‘You’re not Brick’s father.’

  ‘Technically no. But in a way I’m the closest thing to one you’ll ever have.’ He reached out, giving a little grunt of surprise as the mutant flinched away. Without saying a word he held the little key up between his finger and thumb so the Mute could see it. ‘It’s a key to the things on your wrists. I’d like to unlock them for you.’

  Brick slowly extended his arms and allowed the manacles to be removed.

  Melk put the torch on the table. ‘Yours, I believe.’

  Without a word, Brick shot an arm out and the device disappeared into his meaty hand.

  ‘Where are they?’ Melk asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The others. Silas and Jax and the other two.’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘You were going to them.’

  The hulk shrugged his massive shoulders.

  ‘If you knew where they were, would you tell me?’

  The question was met by the same gesture, but this time, instead of looking back down at the table, Brick kept his eyes on the man. He sighed, the edges of his mouth down. ‘It’s bad. You don’t have long.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘The sickness. I can see it.’

  Melk swallowed loudly, the smile faltering on his face for the first time. ‘Of course you can. I know that. I also know that you can cure me.’ He let the statement hang in the air.

  ‘No.’

  The old man sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘You can’t? Or you won’t?’ He waited.

  ‘Won’t.’

  ‘Not even to save the life of your friend? The one you came to Muteville with.’

  ‘They got away.’

  Melk made a clucking sound with his tongue and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. They did get away for a while, but the youngest one, well, I think you saw he wasn’t too good on his feet. The albino abandoned him, and my men picked him up not far from where they left you. Not exactly loyal, are they, your friends?’

  He could see the confused look on the big Mute’s face. ‘The youngster, the one you were in the safe house with – he’s being held in a room like this one as we speak. Unfortunately he’s in a bad way. The men he hurt in that house – they were very angry when they got back here, and some of them took their frustration out on him.’

  ‘Rush.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His name is Rush.’

  ‘That’s what you call him, is it? Of course, to me he was always Case Number 3. The telekinetic.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘I had big plans for him. It’s a shame the damage my men have done to him means those plans will never be realised.’

  Brick lowered his head but continued to look up at the man through his eyebrows.

  ‘You have to make a choice, Brick. Make the right one, and I’ll let you help your friend. But you have to do something for me first.’

  ‘Take the hurt from you?’

  ‘That’s right. Do that, and I promise not to harm anyone else I have here in my custody.’

  Brick considered this for a moment. He mumbled under his breath, something that sounded to Melk like, ‘Russianbrick.’ Then he reached out across the table and grabbed the other man’s hands.

  Zander watched in horror as his father jolted back and forth in the chair, his face contorted, lips pulled back in a terrible grimace, eyes bulging.

  ‘The code,’ he said to the guard.

  ‘Sir?’ the guard said, terrified and unsure of what to do for the best in equal measure.

  ‘The code to open the door! What is it?’

  The guard dutifully barked the number out to him, and Zander punched it in. But his finger hesitated as he recalled his father’s final instruction. He returned to the one-way mirror just in time to see the room’s two occupants fly back into their chairs. The Mute stared sightlessly at the ceiling. His father’s eyes were closed.

  The mutant looked ghastly. His skin was a charcoal grey colour, the veins beneath it black and bulging. Those unseeing eyes were bloody, and Zander saw a small crimson tear trickle down his cheek and splash down on to the front of the yellow overalls. He appeared to be breathing, but only just.

  When the son looked at his father, he was surprised to see the hint of a smile on his face. The old man gave a harsh bark and suddenly pushed himself up out of the chair to his feet, opening his eyes and taking in a huge lungful of air that he slowly exhaled as if it was the freshest he’d ever smelt and not the stale, recycled stuff being pumped into the room. He turned to the mirror, knowing his son was observing him, and grinned. It was like being smiled at by a king cobra. The man walked towards the door; his back was ramrod straight now and there was a definite spring in his step. When he came out, he looked at his son.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘All our technology: the gene therapy, genetic modification, and he can cure me just like that.’ He snapped his fingers to emphasise his point. He turned to the guard. ‘Put him in the infirmary. We’ll move him to the Bio-Gen labs tomorrow.’

  ‘And what are we going to do with him there?’ Zander asked.

  ‘Don’t be obtuse, Junior. We’re going to find out how he does what he does, and isolate it so we can reproduce it.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  That flinty smile slipped from his father’s face for the first time. ‘Let’s not spoil the rest of the day, huh? You just leave finding the others up to me.’

  ‘Don’t you need to go back to the hospital?’

  President Melk laughed. ‘What for? I’m cured. Besides, there’s work to be done.’

  Rush

  Even before they’d reached White Ward, Rush’s strength had all but returned and he no longer felt the exhaustion that had almost crippled him upon escaping the scene of the ARM ambush. In direct contrast to this, the guilt and sadness he felt at having left Brick behind weighed heavier on him with every step he took. Dotty appeared to feel the same way; she shuffled along by his side, head low to the ground, occasionally pausing to look round as if expecting to see the hulking mutant coming along behind them.

  ‘It’s OK, girl,’ Rush reassured her, reaching down to pat her. ‘We’ll get the big guy back.’

  Janek had been telling the truth about one thing: the inner wards were even more overcrowded than the outer ones, and large numbers of people filled the streets even at this late hour. Rush pointed this out to Jax, who explained it was even busier during the day, and that they were in the ‘between time’, when the streets and the people on them changed. ‘Most inhabitants of Muteville choose not to venture out after sundown, when the “night people” largely take over.’

  Rush glanced about him, trying to identify which of the people around them fell into this category.

  ‘Stick close to me, and try not to make eye contact with anyone if you can help it,’ Jax warned him.

  Not used to urban living, Rush was more than a little shocked by some of the things he’d already witnessed. Dubious-looking individuals hissed at people from dark alleys, offering various substances for sale, none of which Rush had ever heard of. At one point, two men, who had been arguing over a woman, started to fight, the quarrel quickly turning from pushing and shoving to fists and worse. There was a cry of pain and one man staggered away, holding his abdomen as blood seeped out from between his fingers.

  But nobody bothered Jax or Rush.

  The longer this went on, the more Rush was convinced that the albino was using some kind of mind trickery to make the two of them look different in some way. It was the way people ahead of them reacted, deliberately moving out of their way and giving them a wide berth.

  When he asked, Jax greeted his question with a nod and a wry smile. ‘It’s n
ot a perfect disguise because I have to transfer the image into so many minds at once, shifting it around as people’s attention falls on and off us again. And if anyone should seriously take an interest, we’d quickly be seen for who we really are. But to the casual observer, we appear diseased and dangerous – covered from head to toe in weeping sores: victims of Rot.’

  Rush frowned and looked down at his hands. To him, they appeared perfectly normal.

  ‘It’s passed on by physical contact. Because of what they perceive us to be, everyone is more than willing to stay out of our way.’ He nodded to a man on a street corner who was clearly selling narcotics of some kind. ‘He, for instance, is hoping we don’t go near him and frighten away his customers. He’s also wondering how he can frighten us off if we do.’

  Rush thought back to that moment in the alleyway when Jax had taken his hand and he’d briefly experienced the world as the albino did. Hearing all these people’s thoughts and feelings all the time? It would be enough to drive anyone mad.

  ‘How can you stand it? All those voices constantly in your head.’

  ‘I don’t notice them most of the time. It’s like static: annoying when your attention is drawn to it, but otherwise . . . you just screen it out and pick up on the things you want to.’

  Rush walked on in silence, taking this in. After a moment or two his thoughts inevitably turned back to Brick.

  ‘So you knew Brick before?’

  ‘Yes, but a long time ago. And I knew you when you were just a baby.’ He stopped outside a gate, undoing the lock with a key he took from his long black coat. The building, like many in the inner wards, was constructed on the ruins of an old pre-war complex, new walls cleverly merging with the remains of older ones which had somehow partially survived the apocalypse. ‘This is it. Silas will explain everything to you shortly. Right now, we need to get inside.’

  ‘You’re here!’

  No sooner had Jax and Rush entered the building than they were greeted by a man who’d clearly been waiting for them. ‘I’m so relieved. Anya told me there was trouble.’ He hurried over to them and Rush thought the stranger was about to hug him, when he suddenly stopped, frowning. ‘Where’s Brick?’