Judgment Plague

by James Axler

  The elevator rose, ascending far above Beta Level. It hissed to a pneumatic stop, and Salvo urged DePaul away from the wall, where he had been ordered to stand when they had entered.

  The boy walked forward, feeling the slick floor beneath the soles of his standard-issue boots, footsteps echoing hollowly. He guessed they were in a large room with a high ceiling.

  “From this point on,” Salvo ordered in a harsh whisper, “no talking.”

  DePaul nodded, though he had not spoken for the whole of the elevator ride. One of his escorts took him by the elbow and steered him blindly forward. The echoes of his footfalls became muffled, and the pressure beneath them changed as he stepped onto thick carpet. At the same time, a scent caught his nostrils, tickling them. It was incense, DePaul guessed, heavy in the air, spicy and thick.

  The man holding his elbow drew him to a halt, and DePaul smelled the way the incense became more heady, almost overpowering.

  Then came a noise, the steady beat of a gong. It chimed thirteen times, like a church bell cutting the night.

  “Remove the goggles,” Salvo ordered in a low voice, close to his ear.

  DePaul reached for the goggles and slipped them up to his scalp, automatically narrowing his eyes against the expected brightness that must be waiting for him. But there was no brightness. Instead, the room he was standing in was gloomy, with incense trails thick in the air, a deep Persian carpet beneath his boots. Figures moved all around the room, and DePaul recognized the shapes as men, though he did not know who they were.

  Suddenly, a spotlight of dazzling white light seared down from above, its brilliance almost blinding DePaul and forcing him to shy away, reaching to cover his eyes.

  “Stand up straight, boy,” Trainer Hunt ordered in his gruff voice.

  DePaul’s arms went back down to his sides and he stood, flinching in the brilliant white light. As he stood there, squinting through the dazzling haze, a voice spoke from somewhere in the room, one with a musical lilt that perfectly matched the pitch of the chimes he had heard a few moments before.

  “You are DePaul, a servant of order, a soldier of the ville, a warrior of the baron.”

  DePaul gasped, felt a rising irrational fear well up within his chest. He could see a dim shape standing before him, but it was still partially hidden, seen through a semitranslucent curtain with shimmering flecks of gold in its weave, catching the light.

  DePaul realized that the room had fallen into silence after the voice had spoken, and he suspected he was expected to say something in response. “I am Trainee DePaul, sir,” he said, failing to keep the scared tremor from his voice. Then he recited his magistrate induction number, which he knew by heart, even at eight years old.

  The figure behind the curtain swayed, almost as if floating underwater. DePaul had the impression of pale golden skin, slim arms, a domed head and lean cheeks. Then he saw just a glimpse of the eyes, alien, indefatigable.

  “You pledge allegiance to the ville,” the figure behind the curtain trilled, “but remember—you belong solely to me. From the day of your birth, you have belonged to me, as did your father and grandfather.”

  DePaul bowed his head. “I am yours, my baron. I carry only your law in my heart.”

  The figure behind the gauze curtain swayed gently, watching the child through the golden weave until the dark goggles were replaced over DePaul’s eyes and he was led away.

  DePaul would dream of that moment every night for the next six months, replaying it over and over in his mind’s eye. But he had never been able to speak of it to anyone, for while he was excited to have been chosen to meet the baron, he had never known such fear as he had that day. It was a fear he had been forced to bury deep in his soul. And a fear unresolved becomes ambition or hatred—or both.

  * * *

  DEPAUL’S THOUGHTS TURNED back to the present as he heard the noise behind him. He turned, commanding the sin eater automatically into his hand. The twin armaglass doors to the suite were open as he had left them, and there was a figure stepping through them. It was the man who had infiltrated his subterranean laboratory two days earlier—the ex-magistrate fugitive called Kane.

  “Drop it!” Kane yelled as he ran into the room.

  DePaul was already blasting, his finger squeezing the trigger and sending a stream of bullets at the charging figure.

  Kane leaped over the couch with its corpse occupant, dived down behind a table as DePaul’s blasts followed him. Bullets clipped furniture and drilled themselves into walls, shattering a vase and destroying the glass in two picture frames.

  Kane blasted a shot from the floor, sending the bullet up toward the fright mask face of DePaul, where he stood framed by the massive windows. The bullet went wide, and DePaul ducked away with a swirl of flapping coattails.

  Kane scrambled after him, springing out from under the table and blasting at the retreating figure. The bullet struck DePaul in the back, rebounding from his armored coat with a shower of sparks.

  “You need to stop this now,” Kane called after him. “It’s over. Your virus is being eliminated before it can hurt anyone else.”

  The figure in the fright mask disappeared through an open door in the suite.

  Kane took a moment to check his blaster, then weaved a zigzag path as he hurried toward the open door. Now it gets tricky, he thought as he halted there. Here was an ideal place for an ambush, and he had no choice but to walk straight into it. No choice except...

  Kane plucked a flash-bang from a utility pouch at his belt, primed it and flung it ahead of him, into the next room.

  A moment’s pause and then the device went off, sending a blast of light and noise rocking through the baronial chamber.

  There had been no time to use the earplugs, but even with the ringing in his ears, Kane heard an exclamation of pain from the next room, and he ran through to meet his foe.

  DePaul was standing against the nearest wall, a gloved hand over his face, covering the circular lenses of his mask.

  “Your war’s over, bub,” Kane told the nightmarish figure. “Whatever you think you’re doing, it ends now.”

  “Never,” DePaul spit back. “I shall cleanse crime from the world, Kane—a magistrate like never before, eradicating crime on a biological level.”

  Both men fired in that same instant.

  Still dazzled as he was from the flash-bang, DePaul’s shot went wild, whizzing over Kane’s shoulder before impacting against the floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows that surrounded the room. The reinforced glass fractured into cobwebs.

  Kane’s shot was true. The bullet traveled the four feet between the nose of the sin eater and the beaklike nose of his adversary, splitting the appendage into a cluster of razor-sharp splinters. Several of those shards flew back into DePaul’s suddenly revealed face, imbedding there with an immediate swell of blood. The other flecks peppered the wall behind the ex-magistrate like a shotgun burst.

  After the shots, DePaul just stood there, reaching a gloved hand up to his ruined mask and feeling his exposed face for the first time in an age. With the destruction of the beaklike protrusion, a whole chunk of the mask had fallen away, leaving most of the bottom half of his face and one eye exposed. The beak had filtered the air, and without it, the smells of incense and human life were oddly pungent. His skin was pale above the dark beard he had grown over his chin, his eyes a vibrant blue like sapphires. He looked haunted, the planes of his face cruelly angular, the skin washed out where it had not been touched by sunlight in a decade.

  “It’s over,” Kane said, training his sin eater on the dark figure’s chest.

  DePaul’s hand probed the ruined mask, moving more frantically by the second, smudging the blood that was leaking from his cuts. “No,” he muttered. “No.”

  “Drop your weapon,” Kane ordered.

  De
Paul pulled his hand away from his face, staring at the blood that stuck to his glove. His other hand drooped loosely at his side, still clutching the forgotten sin eater. “My blood,” he said incredulously. “I’m...” He looked up at Kane then, horror on his face. “I can’t be out like this. The germs. Don’t you realize that?”

  “Last chance,” Kane sneered, still holding his blaster on the mysterious figure. “Drop your weapon or I’ll be forced to drop you.”

  Sudden anger flashed across DePaul’s face—anger and realization—and he rushed at Kane, bringing his own pistol up to blast the Cerberus man. “I’m exposed, you stupid fugitive scum,” he howled.

  Kane shot, sending a single bullet directly into DePaul’s chest. It slammed against his armored jacket, knocking the wind out of him even as he blasted back.

  DePaul’s shot missed, striking the window behind Kane for the second time, drawing another instant cobweb there. DePaul was still running, charging at Kane even as the Cerberus warrior leaped back. With his eyes still reeling with the effects of the flash-bang, DePaul missed him entirely, and kept running for the dark figure he could see before him—the figure reflected in the fractured glass, his own dark reflection.

  Kane shouted a warning as DePaul struck the window, still screaming insanely about being exposed, being dirty. He hit the pane at a dead run and, already weakened, the glass broke apart like wet tissue paper, disintegrating into a million tiny fragments as it rattled in its frame.

  The window disappeared and so did DePaul, falling through the levels between the network of skywalks, past Beta, past Cappa, past Delta, past Epsilon.

  Kane ran to the gaping hole and watched as DePaul’s plummeting figure fell farther, dropping down through the gap where two service walkways met, disappearing at last into the shadowy districts of the Tartarus Pits, hundreds of feet below. Kane winced as the man disappeared from view. No one could survive a fall like that. No one.

  Chapter 35

  It had taken forty-five minutes to reach the rogue Deathbird. In all that time, Grant pushed his Manta’s engine to its absolute limit, challenging the craft’s specs as he determined to locate and disarm their prey. He knew he had to get it out of the sky. The alternative simply did not bear thinking about.

  Sitting behind him, Shizuka watched as blue sky and clouds hurried past the portholes. She felt the swift passage as a weight against her body, the permanent sensation of being dragged backward where she was pressed against her seat. The Manta had internal gravity compensators, but even they could do only so much to alleviate the sensation—and besides, at least it reminded both her and Grant just how urgent this mission was.

  “Grant-san, are you okay?” Shizuka asked. “You’ve been quiet a long time.”

  “Just concentrating,” he assured her.

  “Concentrate louder,” Shizuka pleaded. “I need to know you haven’t dropped off to sleep.” She meant it. Before they had left Cerberus, physician Reba DeFore had entrusted Shizuka with a hypo of adrenaline, the kind that was used to combat anaphylactic shock in an extreme allergic reaction. If Grant’s concentration should dip, Shizuka was tasked to administer the shot, keep him awake long enough to finish the mission.

  A voice came over the commtact as they crossed what had once been the Colorado-Oklahoma border. It was Brewster Philboyd, tracking their progress via satellite. “You’re two minutes out,” he stated. “Clear skies.”

  Hidden inside the flight helmet, Grant’s eyes narrowed. He was sensing the proximity of his target now, waiting to strike like a cobra. His index finger stroked against the grip of the joystick, where the trigger for the Manta’s weapons was located.

  Then he saw it down below, the familiar blocks of buildings, outlander strip farms located in the no-man’s land between villes, the places where magistrates did not bother to look. The Deathbird was two hundred feet from the ground, hovering low, following its preprogrammed path to Mandeville.

  Grant gritted his teeth in frustration as he watched the vehicle and its deadly cargo speed through the sky over the farmland. He couldn’t take the shot yet, not until he could be certain that no one would get hurt—or worst still, infected.

  He eased off the throttle and hung back, waiting for the chance to strike.

  * * *

  ROUGHLY SEVENTY MILES NORTH, Edwards was closing in on his own target, his Deathbird escort many miles behind him, unable to keep pace.

  The rogue Deathbird—the one operating via artificial intelligence—was following a straight line, five hundred feet above the surface. It took a few moments for Edwards to see it, its dark lines camouflaged against the shadows of the forest far below. Forest was good, he thought—forest meant no debris was going to wind up crashing through someone’s dining table or land on their kid’s lap.

  He flipped the safety cover up on the joystick, primed the Manta’s sidewinder missiles as he waited for the target to lock in place. One strike—that was all it would take.

  “Let’s call it a day and break for an early lunch,” he muttered as he depressed the trigger and sent twin sidewinders hurtling from the missile bays located in the Manta’s wings.

  The missiles streaked through the air, rushing ahead of the bronze-hued craft in search of their deadly target. At the last moment, the Deathbird attempted some rudimentary evasive manoeuvres, the artificial intelligence that was piloting it acknowledging the threat. But by then it was too late. The first missile slipped by twenty feet from the target as the Deathbird helicopter jounced and rolled, but Edwards’s follow-up snagged it right in the belly, obliterating the dark chopper in a burst of flame.

  * * *

  EVENTUALLY, KANE BECAME conscious of the feel of the winds batting against him as he stood at the open window on Alpha Level. The wind tangled in his hair and threatened to send him over the side in pursuit of DePaul, so he stepped away, commanding the sin eater back to its hidden holster.

  “Baptiste, you have news?” he called, activating his commtact.

  “I’m safe,” Brigid responded a moment later. “Made my way back to the refuge. Got a little bit of soot all over, as well as a few scrapes. Colin’s here patching me up now. You?”

  “I’m finished. Just had a lesson in that old saw,” Kane said, “of how it takes all kinds of crazy to make a world.”

  “The plague man?” Brigid asked.

  “Fell out a window,” Kane said. “Alpha Level.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s a lot of fall for one guy.”

  There was a momentary pause, and then Kane heard Brigid speak again over the commtact, only she suddenly sounded breathless. “Kane, I think we have your perp,” she said.

  “You what?” Kane asked, taken aback.

  “Crowd gathering down here, couple of streets over,” Brigid explained. “Someone just came in the refuge and told us that a guy fell from the high towers. I’m going to check it out.”

  “You do that,” Kane replied, feeling a little sickened at what his partner would discover when she went looking. He couldn’t envisage what a man who fell three hundred feet would look like, but he guessed it wasn’t a lot like a man at the end.

  Kane made his way to the baron’s exclusive elevator and prepared to descend. He didn’t belong here on Alpha Level. Just being here was making him feel...well, dirty.

  * * *

  “HELLFIRE,” GRANT CURSED as he continued to track the Deathbird.

  The aircraft was continuing its low-flying passage across what should be empty terrain. Should be, but wasn’t. A convoy of vehicles streaked by below, following a winding road across the hilly ground. The Deathbird and its deadly cargo hovered over them at not inconsiderable speed, its shadow crossing theirs as it passed by.

  Grant did a quick mental calculation, figured how far the debris would fall whe
n he blasted it, held his nerve and waited.

  Ten seconds. Twenty. Fifty. It all took so long before he could be certain that the fallout wouldn’t brain someone or dunk them in the path of that dreadful virus, a strain of which was still running through his own system, forced into remission by the radiation therapy.

  * * *

  AFTER PHILLIPS HAD finished patching her up, Brigid Baptiste made her way through the winding alleyways of the Tartarus Pits until she stood with the massed crowd staring at DePaul’s dead body. Calling it a body was charitable; the man had fallen so far and landed so hard that all he really was was a smear in ragged armor. But Brigid recognized that armor, and she knew now why he had worn it.

  It hadn’t been for protection from bullets—that had been a happy bonus when he had come up against Cerberus and later the magistrates in Cobaltville. No, he wore that suit out of fear—sealed armor, a mask with its filter system purifying the air he breathed. Brigid knew, maybe not for certain but certain enough, that the man had been a germaphobe, terrified of touching the outside world with all its impurities and bacteria and germs.

  It all made a kind of deranged sense.

  * * *

  THE DEATHBIRD WAS over open ground now, flying low over a patch of scrubland where plants grew wild and the grass was higher than a magistrate’s eye. Grant watched through the heads-up display, waiting for the targeting reticles to line up and hold on the unmanned Deathbird.

  It took an instant—a very long instant, the kind that seemed to last almost an eternity—and then the reticles went green as the target locked in place.

  Grant stroked the fire button, ejected a single sidewinder missile that streaked away from his Manta in a burst of white-hot propellant. He held his breath as the bomb raced toward its target, watched as the Deathbird tried to evade it, all too late to do any good.

  Then the chopper exploded as the missile struck, its dragonfly-shaped chassis transformed into a cloud of metal splinters in less time than it takes to tell.