by James Axler
* * *
AN UNCANNY SILENCE seemed to have overtaken the Cerberus redoubt. Word of Grant’s condition and the radiation treatment he had been rushed into had got out, and the news of the mission that his partners were now on weighed heavily on the minds of all personnel. Cerberus was a family—a large and sometimes dysfunctional one, but a family all the same.
To DeFore, the silence conveyed the sense that she was being watched, that everyone was waiting for the news she would bring about Grant’s condition. She checked him out, a surgical mask over her face, while Dr. Kazuko waited quietly to one side and Shizuka looked on from the edge of the room.
“Grant is a healthy specimen,” DeFore said, “and has built up a natural immunity to a plethora of diseases. He reacted badly to the initial attack—little wonder, as Brigid says he was drenched in infectious detritus when he was struck by the infected subject. That’s roughly equivalent to being poisoned, so it’s little wonder his system almost shut down.
“But from what I see here, I think he’s fighting back now, his natural immunities going some way to stave off the infection, the radiation having destroyed what we could find.”
“Thank you.” Shizuka mouthed the words to the air.
“We’ll flush Grant’s system with a cocktail of antibiotics,” DeFore continued, “while keeping him strong to fight the infection internally. He’s been doing what he can with that, but we can help him.”
Dr. Kazuko wrote down several notes on a computerized clipboard, running through antibiotics and dosage levels.
“Furthermore, we’ll need to monitor him at hourly intervals for the next half day.”
“Understood,” the doctor acknowledged.
As he hurried away to begin gathering the drugs that would fight Grant’s infection, DeFore turned to Shizuka, her expression wrought with concern. “He’s not out of the woods yet,” she admitted. “That will take time.”
“Grant-san is strong,” Shizuka reminded her, “and his heart is pure. In the end, that must be enough.”
The Cerberus physician nodded, accepting the warrior woman’s point. “For now, all we can do is monitor his progress,” she said, “and hope.”
Chapter 25
There were two dead bodies in the living room, but DePaul ignored them. He had trained as a magistrate; death held no revulsion for him.
He stood in the tiny apartment, staring out through the bedroom window at the towers of Cobaltville, seen through his own dark reflection on the glass. His face was reflected there, the face he had worn for longer than he could remember, so long that it had become a part of him, its sharp black lines like an insect’s face or a bird’s. He could no longer remember a time he had not worn that face, with its black covering, round eyes and beaklike nose. It was a part of him, as much as his own limbs, protecting him from the sickness that loomed in every breath of air, every touch of breeze on skin. His skin had not touched the air in eight years. Even when he bathed, he did so in a hermetically sealed chamber with its own regulated environment made up from distilled chemicals, oxygen split from sterilized water, boiled over and over to ensure it was clean.
The lights of the ville cast great arcs of gold across the towers, like golden fingers reaching up for the sky. DePaul smiled as he observed them, old sights renewed, not changed one iota from when he had lived here, before his exile.
He thought back, recalling the day the decision had been made for him to leave Cobaltville.
Ten years ago
SALVO SAT BEHIND his desk, thumbing through the psych-division report.
Dressed in his rookie uniform, DePaul stood at attention, hands behind his back, waiting for him to finish. If Salvo took two minutes or two hours it would not matter—DePaul would wait; that’s what he had been trained to do.
He had augmented his uniform with a standard surgeon’s mask, its ties hidden beneath his helmet, the white mask itself cinched tightly over his exposed mouth and nose.
There was a window behind Salvo, looking out on the high walkways of Cobaltville and up to Alpha Level, where only the baron and his most devoted and trusted administrators were allowed to tread. Eyeing the highest levels, DePaul wondered if they were clean. Whether anyone had ever caught a disease up there, or if it was protected from everything in the ville and what lay beyond.
“DeSouza in Psych reports you were a good prospect,” Salvo said, bringing DePaul’s thoughts back to the present. “But that thing you picked up out in mutieville—” he used the term flippantly; there was no mutieville, just ranches and pest holes where the muties struggled with the rest of the Outlands scum “—knocked you for a loop for quite some time.”
“Nine days, sir,” DePaul said, hating the feel of his hot breath against the surgical mask. “I was out of the field for nine days in total, and I would have returned sooner had the doctors allowed me to.”
Salvo inclined his head, accepting the point. “Your dedication to the Magistrate Division is not on trial here, rookie. Your emotional capacity to function under pressure, however...”
“Sir?”
Salvo held open the report and tapped a page. “It’s compromised. Very compromised. The incident in the Tartarus Pits on Tuesday. According to Irons you had to be evacuated from the location with an armed escort. Irons said that you had put both yourself and him in jeopardy with your aberrant behavior.”
“My behavior was not aberrant, sir,” DePaul insisted. “I was surrounded by filth. It was a natural and entirely rational response.”
Salvo shook his head slowly, wearily, as if it weighed more than his neck could support. “Listen to me, DePaul,” he said finally. “We immunize all citizens, including magistrates, against a whole host of diseases because there is so much crap floating around out there. But we never catch all of it—and even what we do, it sometimes takes a person’s body a few days to shrug off, especially what they pick up outside ville walls. I’ve seen that before—it’s normal, it happens. It happened to me, nastiest darn rash you ever saw, went right across my chest and burned like an acid-spitting mutie. But it passed, and yours did, too.”
“I know that, sir,” DePaul said, struggling to keep the edge of irritation from his voice. “I am fine.”
Salvo looked sorrowfully at the rookie, and despaired when he saw the surgical mask. “Your scores are impeccable, your initiative is above question, but I cannot place a magistrate on the streets who may put himself and others in jeopardy.”
DePaul was taken aback. There was so much crime out there; everyone hid something. Without good magistrates the system broke down, and then it would be anarchy, just like it was outside the ville walls. “With respect, sir,” he began, “I believe in the Baron’s Law and I truly intend to make a difference.”
“And you’ll make that difference from a desk, DePaul,” Salvo told him. “It is with regret that I say that I cannot put you out on the street. For now, you’re on desk duty in a probationary capacity. We’ll evaluate in three months, and again in six. If Psych sees no improvement, then we may have to reconsider your position here entirely. That is all.”
DePaul stood for a moment, his superior’s words jabbing at him like knives.
“That is all,” Salvo repeated, looking up from the paperwork he still held.
“Yes, sir,” DePaul said, saluting. He turned and left the office, feeling empty as he strode down the corridors of Cappa Level, where the magistrates were headquartered.
* * *
A DESK JOB. No, not just a desk job. A probationary desk job that might be rescinded at any time. It was ridiculous, DePaul thought as he sat in his quarters. What good could he do behind a desk? That was where old men sat, brave mags who had got wounded in the line of duty. It was no place for a rookie who had graduated top of his class in every field.
He had been trained for this job
since birth, had one name—DePaul—like his father before him; would assume his father’s role the moment the old man retired. That retirement was in just a few weeks, DePaul knew—not that there was a sentimental attachment there, merely that the date was lodged in his mind from when he had been told he would be taking over. Only now he wasn’t taking over, after all, not really.
Crime was rife, the dirt and the wickedness creeping out of the shadows, determined to strike good people down. As it had struck him down at the mutie ranch, where he had picked up that infection and lost days on the beat.
He had not gone soft. He was still able to do the job, enforce the law, execute its abusers. He would kill a mag if he knew the man was doing wrong, his belief in the law was so strong.
A desk job, he sneered, reaching for the lock-up drawer where he kept his sin eater and ammo. That was not the glorious future he had in mind.
* * *
THE COMPOUND, A STORAGE facility for SandCats and the other ground vehicles magistrates used, was located low down in Cappa Level, with ramped roads running through Cobaltville. Air vehicles were located in another tower, much higher up, where they could be launched with ease.
Thirty SandCats were parked in bays in the low-ceilinged room, and the air was suffused with the smell of fuel and grease and oil.
Only magistrates ever came in here, since no one else could get this deep into Cappa Level without being challenged. Even so, the facility was guarded, with two mags on the walk-in doors, another posted by the exit gate and armed with a UT Blaster—UT being short for Undertaker. The weapon was like a portable Gatling gun on a sling, and it took some strength just to wield the thing. There were other magistrates in the garage compound, too, plus five mechanics fine-tuning engines and checking over tires for damage, two more support staff wiring the electrical system in a damaged rig that had taken too much punishment out near the east wall.
DePaul watched them from the door, his eyes masked by the tinted visor of his helmet. He was in full uniform, which would get him so far, though he knew it would not help him entirely. He would need to be efficient and ruthless if his plan was to be successful. See them as lawbreakers. Every man was a criminal if you dug deep enough.
DePaul marched into the garage, drawing the door closed behind him, and headed over to the admissions desk, glancing at the open doorway behind it. That led to an office where another mag was waiting, going through paperwork relating to the upkeep and servicing of the vehicles under his command. The man could be seen clearly through the open door, in full uniform, but with his helmet removed, feet propped up on his untidy desk.
The magistrate at the front desk looked up, putting down the technical booklet he had been reading, which outlined the latest developments in magistrate firearms. Its cover showed a blueprint of the UT Blaster, the weapon being trialed across Cobaltville this quarter. “Name and rank?” he asked. If he wondered about the surgeon’s mask that DePaul wore, he did not comment on it.
“Irons, full shield, twenty-six years served,” DePaul recited. “Require a SandCat for an exploratory mission.”
“SandCat, sure,” the mag at the desk said, typing the request into his terminal, the screen inset in a well so that its top barely poked above the desk’s surface. “’Cats in bays 12, 14, 15 and 19 have just been checked over and refueled, and are free. You can take your pick.”
“Thank you,” DePaul said, his eyes switching to the parking bays. This was proving easier than he’d expected, he thought as he began to pace toward the nearest of the available SandCats, waiting in bay 15. He was three steps toward it when the mag at the desk called him back.
He was checking through his itinerary on the screen and slowly shaking his head. “Not showing anything here, Irons,” he explained. “Are you sure you have the right day?”
DePaul flinched his wrist tendons and his sin eater popped into his hand, firing its first shot even as the guardless trigger met his finger. The mag at the desk went down in a burst of bullets, slumping over his desk as the titanium-shelled slugs cut through his helmet and body armor.
The alert went up at the noise, the second magistrate on duty hurrying from his office with his sin eater extended, garage mechanics scampering to retrieve their weapons, running for cover.
DePaul shifted aim, blasting another shot through the door to the back office, executing the helmetless magistrate with a head shot even as he came to investigate the disturbance in his garage. The man went back and down, his feet still running even as his skull exploded in a familiar blossom of red.
DePaul continued moving, striding purposefully across the garage and picking off two mechanics as they peered out warily from their hiding positions. He had graduated top of his class, and this was just like training. The secret was keeping mental track of all the targets as they moved about the field.
Bullets whizzed across the room toward him, pinging against the armored ceramic shells of the SandCats as he ducked his head. DePaul selected his targets emotionlessly—they were all guilty of something, he knew, just the way Irons had told him. He blasted a service operative in the shoulder and watched the man drop back in a spray of blood.
More bullets crashed against the nearest SandCat and DePaul ducked down behind it, using its armaglass shielding for protection. He reloaded, listening to the drumbeat of bullets slapping against the far side of the vehicle.
Almost done, he thought. Just four more left, plus the gate man.
Hunkering down on his belly, DePaul slipped under the stationary SandCat and crawled its length, emerging on the far side, eight feet from where the mags were concentrating their fire.
When he popped up, he surprised a mechanic who had clearly been hoping to surprise him. The man was carrying a sin eater and had a patch over his missing left eye. He brought the weapon around with an exclamation of surprise as DePaul drove his own blaster into the man’s belly. Overalls mangled with flesh as he pulled the trigger, holding it down for a moment, blasting a triple burst into the poor unfortunate’s guts.
The mechanic sank to the floor, blood washing over his teeth.
The next one was behind a SandCat being stripped down for parts, hunkering against a wall with fear in his wide eyes. DePaul shot him as he passed, moving like a wraith along the aisle.
As he executed another service man, DePaul heard the loud boom of heavy artillery. The mag at the gate had fired up the UT, was blasting at DePaul’s shadow as he made his way through the garage.
DePaul moved quickly then, clambering into the open door of a SandCat and scrambling into the back, up into the well that led to the turret. A moment later, he had the USMG-73 machine guns powered up, and he swung the turret around as he searched for his last two targets.
The twin USMGs sounded apocalyptically loud in the confines of the low-ceilinged garage, spitting cruel bullets out at a rapid rate.
The remaining mechanic made a break for it and got caught up in the fire, his body all but cut in two as the 73-caliber bullets drilled through him.
That left just the man who had been on the gate, a fully trained magistrate armed with that vicious Undertaker Blaster. DePaul eased his finger off the twin triggers, let the USMGs cycle down with their accompanying low whir. He watched through the armaglass of the turret, searching for the mag.
Need to move quickly, DePaul mentally urged himself. An alert’s gone out. Won’t be long until reinforcements arrive.
Yes, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be facing another few dozen angry magistrates, trained killers carrying everything the armory had to offer.
The mag at the gates reappeared, stalking between two parked SandCats, that heavy Undertaker blaster slowing him down as he tried to get behind the rogue magistrate.
DePaul scanned the area, then took careful aim, not at the mag, who was little more than a fast-moving shadow, but at a fuel st
ore located a little way behind and to the left of him. Then he depressed the triggers and watched as his bullets rocketed away, drilling a steady stream of holes into the metal-sided bin.
The fuel exploded in a mighty blast, flipping two SandCats parked beside it and rocking the others on their suspension. DePaul’s rocked, too, but he was already scrambling back through the vehicle, slipping into the driver’s seat. Too close to the blast, the mag who had been posted on the gates was obliterated in an instant, body stripped down to a charred mess of meat and bone.
DePaul pulled the gull-wing door closed and pumped power to the accelerator, bringing the SandCat to life as fire ravaged the garage all around him. In a moment, he was hurtling from the parking bay, lunging toward the sealed gates at the end of the garage. DePaul stepped on the gas and smashed through the gates, ripping them from their frames as he crashed out onto the service road and to freedom. Behind him, the garage burned, alarms wailing.
He would bring judgment to the Outlands first, but he was not done with Cobaltville. Not by a long shot.
* * *
THE MISSION HAD not changed, but that day everything else had. DePaul had realized that he was the force of justice, a walking, breathing, living representation of the law, just as he had been trained. And that Salvo and all the other mags merely paid lip service to the law, could never understand the true nature of crime in its myriad forms. He had seen crime, had seen its filthy grip as it tried to strangle the life out of mankind, preying on the weak, the helpless, even the healthy. His job as a magistrate was to bring harmony, to end the fear that people were forced to live with, to pull crime out at the roots.
And now he was back in Cobaltville, back to bringing final judgment down on everyone, every damn dirty lawbreaker, everyone who had ever tried to lay him low.
The lights of Cobaltville winked like artificial stars in the darkness, framed in the reflection of the inhuman mask that had served as his face for so long. Down below, the Tartarus Pits seethed, and above them, the crimes of the sexual deviants, the selfish, the immoral and inconsiderate, the greedy who clung on to power. It was a great tapestry of criminality, spiraling all the way up from the pits to Alpha Level, a cesspool of crime that could never be fixed. Could only be disposed of forever, sterile perfection left in its place.
