Mutant Rising Read online

  Steeleye

  The ARM soldiers stood at the back of their troop carrier watching the strange behaviour of their cyborg commander. Standing about twenty metres ahead of them, the Mute had been staring at the ground for what seemed an age, occasionally looking off in one direction or another. When he went down on one knee to peer more intently at something, one of the men swore he saw Mange lick his finger, dab it into the dusty soil, sniff it, then lick it.

  ‘What on Scorched Earth does he think he’s doing?’ another man asked. ‘I tell you, this freak is –’

  ‘Shhhh,’ Blake, the recently appointed captain, hissed. ‘Guy’s got the hearing of a bat.’ Despite his voice being barely audible, he eyed the man-machine warily as he gestured for the men and woman in his charge to gather together back inside the vehicle. Everyone safely inside, he closed the rear door and spoke to them in an urgent whisper. ‘Listen, from what I can make out, this madman intends to lead us off deep into the Wastes in his search for these rebel kids. That’s out of our jurisdiction. Way out. Who knows where we’ll end up if we continue to blindly follow this crazy son of a bitch?’

  ‘Those were our orders though, sir.’

  Blake shook his head. ‘The Agency for the Regulation of Mutants, that’s who we are. And why did we sign up to the ARM, hmm? I’ll tell you why: to keep a handle on these Mutes. To stop them from contaminating our cities and our blood with their filthy mutant genes. That’s the reason I signed up anyway. What I didn’t sign up for was to find myself being ordered around by one.’

  ‘So what do you propose we do?’

  The captain turned to the woman standing by his side. ‘Sergeant Loyas, you’re the best shot here, am I right?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Loyas said without hesitation.

  Addressing the group as a whole, Blake continued: ‘Then I suggest tomorrow morning, when that freakosaurus is out front, running with the wind in his hair, Sergeant Loyas puts a bullet in his head. We leave him where he falls, to be picked apart by the scavengers. Then we head on back to our families and civilisation.’

  ‘A bullet? Sir, we haven’t used ballistic firearms for a long time now. The Principia banned such weapons after the –’

  Blake, who had removed a long box hidden beneath the bench on his side of the compartment, flipped open the lid to reveal the antique weapon inside. It was his grandfather’s high-powered rifle, complete with a long, black telescopic sight mounted on the rear of the barrel. One of the soldiers gave a low appreciative whistle. Where Blake’s grandfather had got it was anyone’s guess, but following his death the old man, himself an ardent hater of the Mutes, had left it to his grandson to show how proud he was that the boy had joined the ARM.

  ‘Our former captain didn’t deserve to be shot in the way he was,’ Blake said. ‘I went to visit him before we left, and thanks to that thing out there –’ he nodded in the direction Steeleye had been standing – ‘Cap might never regain the use of his left arm. Now I don’t know what special defences Melk and his scientists might have built in to the cyborg, so I don’t trust our pulsed-energy guns against him, but this …’

  ‘May I?’ Loyas said.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  The sergeant bent down and picked up the rifle, swinging it into her shoulder and looking down the scope. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ one of the newer recruits said, the apprehension in his voice clear to everyone present. ‘What do we tell the authorities? They’re bound to ask what happened to their new pet project and why we didn’t bring him back. Hell, I can’t begin to imagine how much those bionic augmentations of his must have cost. And President Melk said –’

  ‘I couldn’t care less what anyone said,’ Blake cut him off. ‘We’ll tell them that we were ambushed by a marauding gang who killed the commander. We did our best to repulse their attack, but there were simply too many of them. We saw them haul his body off. There was nothing for us to bring back.’ He shrugged and bent down to the viewing window to stare out at the cyborg. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the guy signed his own death warrant when he shot Cap like that.’

  The rest of the group murmured their agreement.

  ‘So it’s settled. Tomorrow morning.’

  With the promise of bad weather, the platoon woke up early the next day. Dark clouds hung in the air. Every now and then the men and Sergeant Loyas caught the distant rumble of thunder somewhere off to the east. In his usual position, up ahead and away from the others, Steeleye looked out across the severe landscape laid out before him, his human eye seeing the scene in one way, the other ‘eye’ superimposing a weirdly coloured image atop it. It was this secondary visual representation, an ultraviolet filter of some kind, that allowed him to see the trail clearly left by the transporter taken by the rebel children. The vehicle must have had a small leak in its cooling system, nothing serious, but enough that every fifty metres or so, a drip of coolant fell on the ground. When he’d analysed these tiny seepages, he found out he could see them clearly by switching his cyborg vision to one particular mode, and now their route was laid out before him like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumb trail. All he had to do was join the dots for his chance of revenge.

  The albino.

  Of all the renegade children he sought, the one called Jax – the one who’d first come to Steeleye and messed with his head, implanting nightmare visions so that the mutant gangster was rendered a quivering coward in front of his own men – would be made to suffer the most. Him and the kid with the freaky telekinesis, the one responsible for the brain damage that had nearly killed Steeleye, injuries that would have killed him if Melk hadn’t rebuilt him into the thing he now was. Those two would know what real pain was before he finally dispatched them. As for the others? He thought he might capture them alive. Take them back as a present to Melk and Razko.

  Steeleye was so caught up in his diabolic fantasy that he didn’t notice the troop carrier had stopped some distance away from him, the driver swinging the vehicle round so the opening at the back, the door now thrown wide open, was facing him. Neither did he notice the momentary glint of the sun reflect on the front lens of the telescopic sight as Sergeant Loyas swung the rifle up and centred the fine crosshairs on the cyborg’s head.

  Instead it was pure luck that Mange twisted his head to the right to take in the mountain range that stretched off in that direction at the precise moment Loyas squeezed the trigger with her forefinger.

  The bullet should have taken the Mute’s head off. Instead it hit the metal half of Steeleye’s skull, careening off into the air after blasting the cyborg from his feet so he landed face down in the dirt. Carried by the momentum of the impact, he rolled over two or three times before coming to a stop against a small rock sticking up out of the ground. Inches from his face, a small scorpion, brown in colour, scurried out from a crack in the rock and waved its barbed tail at him.

  Mange sucked in a deep breath. His vision swam, and he thought there was every chance he would give in to the curtains of grey pushing at the edges of his vision. What the hell had just happened? Warnings, accompanied by a loud blaring noise, flashed across his HUD, informing him that certain systems were down and others were malfunctioning. Fighting to maintain consciousness, and trying to get his thoughts straight, Steeleye focused on the data from his scanners, desperate to ascertain where the attack had come from. He knew the crew in the troop carrier to his rear would have seen him being hit, and that they’d be rapidly dispersing to deal with the threat. Calling up the control panel on his heads-up display, he scrolled down until he found what he wanted, the selection turning green as he activated it. A small panel slid away from his bionic right arm, the shiny black globe inside emerging on the end of a metal rod. DEPLOYING SPY DRONE flashed across his vision a split second before the sphere shot out, hovering in the air just off the ground for a moment before ascending straight up into the sky. Via the tiny remote device, Steeleye could see everything below him as if he was flyin
g up there himself, and not face down in the dirt, fighting for his life. Despite everything, he refused to give in and close his eyes, knowing that to do so might mean never waking up again. He switched the camera to a combination of optical and thermal, so the warm bodies of the ARM agents would stand out in stark contrast with the cold ground. One of them had remained in the vehicle, the agent’s heat signature visible above the heat from the troop carrier’s engine. The others had disembarked and spread out in two groups. Steeleye paused, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Instead of fanning out from the vehicle to discover where the attack might have come from, the agents, all armed, were approaching him. They had split into two groups, a pair closing in from one side, three from the other as if they were …

  The reality of the situation dawned on Steeleye. The attack had come from the ARM vehicle! These traitors were trying to kill him!

  Anger had always served Steeleye well. In the slums, as head of a vicious criminal gangland, he’d been renowned for his ruthlessness, especially when dealing with rival factions who sought to take over from him. Calling upon all his reserves and fuelled by rage, he forced himself to focus. Keeping face down, and as flat to the ground as possible, he scooted himself round to put as much as possible of the small boulder between him and the shooter, who was no doubt at this very moment trying to make a target of him again. Despite the incredible pain in his head, the cyborg’s face twisted into a grim smile. If this was the way they wanted it to go, so be it. He’d show them precisely what happens when you screwed with Steeleye Mange!

  On his HUD each of the little figures below acquired a small red triangle, the symbol tracking their progress as they made their way towards him. Two triangles appeared over the troop carrier.

  Showtime, Mange thought as the words MINI GUIDED AP MISSILE LAUNCHER ACTIVATED flashed across his vision in green.

  Another small panel slid away, this time from his shoulder, revealing a small cylinder. The device was packed with twenty or thirty small rocket-shaped objects, each one no thicker than the tip of the cyborg’s little finger and of about the same length. At his silent command, seven of these missiles flew up in the air, separating after fifty metres or so and each taking its own path as it honed in on its allocated little red triangle.

  The first five missiles exploded almost simultaneously. Steeleye grinned as, on his display, the small red triangles over the moving figures flashed brightly in time with the blasts. Then they, and the little figures they accompanied, disappeared from view. A split second later, the last two missiles found their mark. Steeleye was already on his feet as the transporter was destroyed, the thing instantly turned into a fiery mass from which torn and twisted metal flew off in every direction. With a roar he pumped the air with his fist, revelling in the destruction of his enemies.

  The drone, having been summoned back, returned, hovering in the air in front of Steeleye until he reached out and took it in his human hand and placed it back inside his robotic arm.

  During his time in the slums, in order to rise to the position of power he’d come to enjoy, Steeleye had been forced to kill on numerous occasions. The act had never kept him awake at night, and this time would be no different.

  ‘Pure?’ he muttered to himself, looking about him at the desolation. ‘Pure garbage.’

  The grin that was forming on his lips slipped away almost as quickly as it had appeared. His water and supplies, not to mention various pills he was supposed to take to stop his body rejecting his bionic augmentations, had been in that vehicle. The doctors back at C4 had impressed on him the importance of the drugs, but they’d omitted to tell him what the consequences might be should he fail to take them. Swearing under his breath at his own stupidity, the mutant cyborg spat a bloody blob into the dirt, turned his back on the scene of destruction and set off on the trail of the stolen transporter and the rebel kids he’d been sent out here to find.

  Anya

  She was trapped. Trapped inside the body of the hideous creature she’d conjured up in a moment of anger and frustration, the thing she’d become after arguing with Silas and Rush. And now that body had become a permanent vessel for her mind. Stupid! She had stayed in this form for too long – flying for extensive spells and neglecting to transform back when she returned to solid ground. She had no idea how long she’d spent aloft, flying through clouds and across open skies, but she knew the sun had risen and set at least once since she had assumed this form. And she knew how dangerous that could be for her. She should do – being trapped inside another body had happened to her before, but never for this long, and never with the resulting pain she was now experiencing when she tried to morph back.

  She had no idea how long she’d been struggling to turn. Hours? Days?

  Taking a deep breath, she tried again.

  Not that anything without wings could get up there, but had anyone been unfortunate enough to pass the shallow cave on the mountainside at that moment, seeing the snake-headed creature writhing grotesquely on the floor, they could have been forgiven for believing the chimeric beast was in its death throes.

  The thing twisted and bucked violently back and forth, as if pushed and pulled by huge unseen hands. The serpent mouth, stretched impossibly wide, emitted shrieks and hissing noises that were every bit as terrifying as the sight of the creature making them. The face seemed to change, distorting horribly, caving in and puckering in places, bulging and distending in others, as if something was alive beneath the surface – alive and trapped and trying to force its way out. A nose appeared and then disappeared again; the eyes shifted and changed, large and reptilian one moment, smaller and more human the next. The mouth too stretched and shrank; a ghastly slit became an oval of human pain before reverting to something between the two, and as it changed, the noises coming from it altered too – rasps and hisses became screams and gasps. It went on for maybe a minute, although to Anya it felt much longer, and then the Anya-thing stopped, the creature going limp, its abdomen heaving up and down as it struggled for air.

  A keening heee!-heee!-heee! sound came from its mouth. Agony didn’t even begin to describe the all-consuming pain Anya had just experienced, and yet she was still trapped. Something had changed, she was sure of that. She reached up and felt her face. Except it was not her face. She tried to speak; something she had not been able to do since her initial transformation into this body. ‘Trapped,’ she said, the word sounding as ugly and distorted as she felt. Her half-serpent, half-human voice had an eerie, breathy quality to it, but at least she could form and utter words now.

  Getting to her hands and knees, she tried to stand, but fell to one side, crashing painfully back down where she stayed, tears running down the tight scales that made up the skin of her face.

  Exhausted, she slept for a while, and when she woke she knew: this was their fault. Silas and Rush and that do-gooder Tia Cowper. They had alienated her and pushed her out of the group. Tink had come for her. Tink had been the one to rescue her and bring her to the others. They had been happy to use her, oh yes. Happy for her abilities to aid them in their plans. They had needed her help with the raid on City Four. She had been the one to set most of the explosive devices. She had been the one to catch Silas as he leaped from the top floor of the skyscraper, taking him up in her hands and flying him to safety. But once that was done, once they had made their point and proved to the Pures what they could do, she was no longer needed and had been pushed out.

  It was all too clear to her now – the way some of them, especially that Cowper girl and Rush, spoke together in hushed voices, stopping or changing the subject when she came near. Tia was the main troublemaker! She’d never liked Anya. And poor, pathetic Rush had fallen under the pretty little city dweller’s spell. Anya had watched how he’d been manipulated, the way Tia flirted so openly with him, trying to break up the group. And Silas too! He was just as gullible and weak.

  That was why they had been chosen to go to C4 together, while she had been expected to
stay back in that dead place. They’d known she would react. They might even have planned it. Now this. Now, because of them, she was confined in this body, unable to get out. Tia Cowper. Anya pounded angrily at the ground, imagining it wasn’t the earth she was hitting but the Cowper girl’s face.

  Why couldn’t they see? Tia wasn’t one of them, would never be one of them. Silas wasn’t either. There were only five people who could ever know what it meant to be one of President Melk’s freak experiments: Rush, Flea, Jax, Brick and Anya. They should have stuck together, always. But now they couldn’t even trust each other.

  Anya forced herself to her feet, staggering a little but managing to stay upright this time. Dragging herself out of the cave, she shivered when she came into contact with the cold air. But it was just what she needed, and she gulped huge breaths of it to clear her head. The mountains reminded her of the place where she had grown up. She could think here. Feeling stronger, she stepped forward and jumped off the ledge, her heart leaping in her chest as she plummeted towards the ravine below. Unfurling her wings, she was instantly caught up by the air, and she flapped her huge bat-like appendages until she started to gain height.

  She would go back. Go back and show them what they’d done. Then she’d work out a way to get even with them.

  Steeleye

  It was clear to Steeleye that a number of things were wrong. His HUD, designed to keep him informed of everything around him, kept winking out when he least expected it. Every time it did this he realised how much his brain had come to depend on the information constantly being streamed to it. There were mechanical gremlins in the system too. His left leg was making a weird whirring noise when he moved, alarming enough to make him give up on the idea of travelling at anything but a moderate pace in case the damn thing just packed in altogether. In addition, his cyborg right arm had started to jerk uncontrollably one moment, refusing to move at all the next.