Mutant City (25 page)

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 not 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?’

‘There was an ambush. He was captured.’

It was as if the wind had been knocked out of the older man. He shook his head and looked at the floor. ‘I should have come with you.’

‘We agreed you should stay here with the others. How could we have known they’d been betrayed?’ said Jax.

‘Silas?’ Rush said, addressing the man, who turned to look at him again. He was about the same age as Josuf, Rush’s former guardian, maybe a little older; the grey strands starting to pepper his dark hair matched his eyes, which were steely and intelligent. Rush thought it was a strong face.

‘I’m sorry. Forgive me, Rush. Yes, I’m Silas. I’ve been very much looking forward to meeting you again.’ He gave a little shake of his head. ‘I was hoping it would be under happier circumstances.’

‘We have to go after Brick. I should have stayed with him and fought those men as best I could, and –’

‘And then we’d have been launching a rescue for two instead of one.’

‘So we are going to rescue him?’

‘Of course.’

‘When? We should go now.’

Silas sighed. ‘I understand how you feel, Rush, I really do. You’ve come a long way to get here, and no doubt you and Brick have formed a special bond – that was our hope when we sent you out across the Wastes. You see we hoped . . . no, we knew you’d find each other. You’re anxious to help him, but to hurry headlong into a rescue attempt without proper planning would be madness.’ He smiled kindly at the youngster. ‘I’d like you to come inside and meet the others first. Allow me to tell you who you are and why we had to bring you all here. Then –’

‘But we’re not
all
here, are we?’ Rush interrupted.

‘You can’t get into the city on your own, Rush.’

‘These “others”. Are they the five Brick spoke about?’

‘What has he told you?’

‘Not much. Just that there were five of us, and we were all made by the same bad man. I didn’t pay him much attention at the time – he says a lot of strange things – but he recognised Jax the minute he walked in the door.’

A sad smile touched Silas’s lips. ‘There are indeed five of you. Brick is the eldest, then Jax. You and two girls are all the same age. They’re here too. You’ve met Anya already, and I understand you’ve also had a glimpse of her unique gift.’

‘She’s some kind of shape-shifter.’

‘She prefers the term polymorph, but essentially, yes.’ He paused. ‘There’s somebody else here who’s keen to see you.’

‘Who?’

‘Tinker.’

Despite everything, Rush couldn’t help but show his delight. ‘Tink’s here?’

‘He says he told you he would be. Shall I take you to him?’

Rush nodded and Silas led him through to one of the classrooms where, sitting at a table, was Tink. Upon seeing the teenage mutant, the older man put down the small book he’d been reading and stood up.

‘I’ll leave the pair of you alone,’ Silas said, closing the door behind him.

Tink looked tired. He still wore his battered old hat, and he’d pulled it down in an effort to cover up a large cut over his eye that somebody had put six or seven stitches in. The cut, plus the scratches on his cheek and hands, told Rush that Tink’s journey, like his own, had not been without incident.

They sat across from each other, neither saying anything for a while, just content to be in each other’s company again.

‘What happened?’ Rush said, gesturing at the wounds.

‘Nothing really. Anya and I had a little run-in with some people on the road here. You know how it is. Anyway, I understand you’ve had a rough old time of it yourself today?’

‘Yeah. You could say that.’

The old man nodded. ‘I knew you’d make it across the Wastes. Just knew it. And I guess you found what you were supposed to at the trading post.’

‘Just about. The place was attacked by cannibals.’ Rush gave the man a searching look. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Tink? All those times you visited us, and you didn’t say anything about the things you knew about me.’

‘Would you have felt safer if I had? Would you have grown up happier if I’d revealed that you were actually in hiding out there with Josuf? No. It’s better not to know some things, believe me.’

Something about the way he said this made Rush stop and think. ‘Are you one of us, Tink? Do you have . . . unusual powers?’

He watched as the man considered this. ‘I’m not sure what’s usual and what’s unusual any more. And I sure as hell don’t know what being one of
us
is
.
There are Mutes out there in places like the Blacklands with strange abil­ities. Heck, there are probably some right here in the C4 slums. But the five of you are different. When Melk cooked you up in those test tubes of his, he created something that might possibly change this world for ever. Of course, I hope that any change that might occur will be for the better, but that too remains to be seen.’

‘You didn’t really answer my question.’

‘No, I didn’t, did I?’ He paused, absently stroking his white moustache with the tips of his fingers before continuing. ‘I sometimes get visions when I meet people. Like when I first met you. Oh, you were just a little bitty-bob, but I knew you were destined for great things. I sensed you would one day be caught up in a conflict – a fight between right and wrong, if you like – and I knew you’d have to go through a long and painful journey before you could bring an end to that conflict. That journey started when you set out through that tunnel under the farmhouse, and I’m afraid it’s far from finished just because you managed to get back here to Silas and Jax. This is yet another start.’

‘Do you know what happens to me?’

‘No.’

Tink’s answer came a little too quickly for Rush’s liking. As if aware of this, the old man’s face softened and he gave a small shrug. ‘No, I do not. I don’t see the future, just . . . possibilities. But I have to be careful; anything I say might close off some of those possible outcomes for ever. It’s like a game of chess before the first move has been made: there are an almost infinite number of ways the game might be played, but each time a piece is repositioned, that number diminishes slightly, until eventually there’s only one ending. I can be sneaky at times and nudge pieces around the board, but I have to be careful that I don’t knock any of them over.’

‘Is Brick going to be OK?’

Again Tink considered the question before answering. ‘I think that will depend on what you do next: on whether you allow yourself to be guided by those who want the best for you both, or if you’re governed by your own fear and guilt and hurt.’