Fear the Darkness (16 page)

Smiling. Her own anger rose inside her at the thought. The creep smiled every time he pulled the trigger. Anderson felt her eyes burn as her vision became clouded. Putting her hand to her face, she saw tears and realised she was crying. So much pain, so much horror, so much sorrow. Sometimes, it was almost too much for her to bear.

Get a grip, Cass, she told herself. You need to stay focussed and catch this creep before he kills again. She breathed deeply as she attempted to regain her equilibrium. Another thought occurred to her. Wait a minute, writing on walls?

There were words written in jagged letters on the walls all around her. At first she had been too caught up in the pain and sorrow of the dead to even notice, but now she could see them: words on the walls, written in the victims' blood, messages from the killer to his hunters.

I am the fire and the flame
, one of the messages read.
I do not fear the darkness.
She saw another.
I am the sword that guards the gate. I sit in judgement.
And another.
I am the Angel who watches. I have weighed this city and found it wanting.
More than any other message though, amid the blood and the stillness and the silence she saw a single word repeated endlessly as though it spoke of some kind of reason for all the slaughter she could see before her.

Judged.
She saw that word written over and over and over again in blood.

"Control to Anderson." After so long a period of silence, the sound of a voice over the radio unit on her belt almost made her jump. "Backup has arrived at the scene. They are en route to rendezvous with you on the thirty-eighth floor in approx-"

"Negative to that, Control." Keeping her Lawgiver warily pointed down the hallway ahead, Anderson took the radio from her belt and held it close to her mouth. "Tell them to cover the elevators and stairwells and work their way up floor-by-floor. I'll work my way down and see if I can drive the killer towards them."

"That's not procedure, Anderson," Control said. "You're alone in there. You need backup. Stop trying to be a hero."

"Believe me, Control, that's the furthest thing from my mind," she replied. "I've found evidence at the scene indicating the killings at Whitman may be linked to the murders in the Sector House holding cubes. I don't know quite what we're dealing with here, but my instincts tell me it's a whole lot more than a simple futsie."

"No offence, Anderson." Control's voice was testy. "But I can't go violating procedure just on your instincts-"

"You want authorisation?" she cut him off. "Call Sector Chief Franklin - I'm sure he'll give it to you in spades. Anderson out." She broke the connection.

She knew she was taking a gamble by bringing Franklin in on this. After what she had seen during the meeting with Grimes, she had no way of knowing whether the Sector Chief would back her play or countermand her instructions and the order the cavalry sent in at once. If nothing else, though, there would be a delay while Control contacted Franklin and waited for his decision. A delay that would buy her the one thing she needed most right now: time.

Judged. The same word from the Sector House was written on the walls of Charles Whitman. Assuming on that basis that the killings here and at the Sector House were linked, Anderson needed to capture the futsie alive so she could question him. This was a priority any other Judges on the scene would be unlikely to share, especially given that the futsie had killed at least five of their fellow Judges already. Anderson did not necessarily think the local Judges would set out to intentionally kill her perp, but there was a hard way and an easy way to any capture, and with five Judges dead nobody was likely to offer the futsie the easy way. To top it off, there was the unsettling fact that a single perp had proved capable of killing five Judges in the first place. Even in Mega-City One, things like that rarely happened. Judges were too well trained and well equipped to be slaughtered so indiscriminately by some madman, no matter how many guns he had. "It's like the drokker's got eyes in the back of his head," she had heard a Judge say over the comm line. An exaggeration in the heat of a fire fight, maybe? Then again, there was ample evidence at the scene to suggest there was a lot more going on here than just a futsie on the rampage. The whole thing was too strange for that.

Strange. It had "Psi Division case" written all over it.

All right then, Anderson thought to herself. So it looks like I'm on my own against a Judge-killing psycho. I don't know where he is, what he really looks like, or even if he's watching me right here and now. Oh, and he's armed with a spit gun and he's a mass murderer who's killed a minimum of several dozen people already. I've got to hand it to you, Cass, you sure know how to get yourself in the middle of these tricky situations.

Seeing the bodies of two Judges lying down the hallway, Anderson moved cautiously towards them, past a pile of corpses, her eyes sweeping from side to side and alert for any sign of movement from the doors alongside her. Kneeling beside the closest Judge, as she put her fingers to his neck to check his pulse she glanced at the name on his badge.
Hoskins
. He was dead. She noticed an entry wound in his back where a bullet had evidently slipped in-between the plasteen armoured plates inside his uniform. Then, she noticed the other Judge had been shot in the back as well.

Futsie must have got behind them somehow, she thought. For a moment she was tempted to read the Judge's lingering memories in search of answers, but she couldn't risk losing track of the physical world around her, no matter how briefly. The futsie could be anywhere; she had stay sharp and focussed. She glanced at the bloody drag marks criss-crossing the floor. Looks like he killed most of his victims in their apartments and then dragged them out into the hallway. But why? And Hoskins here looks to have been in his forties at least. An experienced Judge. No way he just walks blindly into an ambush and lets a perp get the drop on him. Unless...

Her mind raced and took flight, thoughts rushing in breathless staccato rhythms towards a conclusion. Two Judges shot in the back. Bodies lying everywhere. Bodies dragged from their apartments. Bodies alone or stacked haphazardly in piles. Extra work for the perp. No reason for it. Two Judges. Shot in the back. Bodies moved.
Why?

The perp was using them for cover!

The psi-bitch, Jeffrey
, she suddenly heard a strange voice whispering in malevolent urgency. Not audible. In her mind.
She knows. Kill her, Jeffrey. Kill her now!

She heard the sound of bodies falling. From the corner of her eye she saw a bloodstained man rise smiling from the tangle of limbs of the corpse-pile behind her, but Anderson was already moving - diving toward the ground as bullets cut through the air above her. She rolled, firing her Lawgiver. She saw the man jerk as a bullet took him in the belly. She felt a sudden pain as something struck her in the shoulder. She fired again, wild this time, and saw the man drop his spit gun as a bullet hit his arm while two more chewed up the ceiling above him. She saw his hand go to his pocket, emerging with a fist-sized metal ball. He threw it in her direction, the ball bouncing and skidding across the floor towards her.

A grenade! It seem to move towards her in slow motion. The creep's crazy, he'll kill us both.

It detonated, not with a bang but a whimper. Amazed, Anderson heard a soft fizzing noise and saw a black puff of smoke rise from the top of the grenade as it landed beside her and rolled to a halt.

A dud, she thought, still hardly believing it. Lucky, Cass. Lucky.

The tails of his overcoat flapping behind him, abandoning his fallen spit gun, the man turned to run away. Bringing her gun to bear, she thought she saw something, a shadow around him. Ignoring it, sighting in with her Lawgiver, Anderson fired low. She needed him alive. The bullet struck the futsie's thigh, causing him to stumble, but he regained his balance, turned a corner and disappeared out of sight.

Pulling herself to her feet to give chase, Anderson saw the spit gun still lying on the ground where the futsie had dropped it. Then she noticed a gouge cut into the eagle insignia on top of her right shoulder. No blood. The shoulder was sore, but it still worked. She realised the bullet must have been deflected by the insignia. Lucky again, she thought as she began to jog after the fleeing perp.

Better hope I haven't used up all my luck too soon.

Pain.

Jeffrey's right arm hung uselessly by his side. His leg hurt where the Judge's bullet had struck his thigh. He felt warm blood drip from the wounds in his back and belly where the other bullet had gone through him, mixing with the blood of his victims already staining his clothes. Worse, every time he drew breath he felt a burning pain deep inside him. It was agony. He knew something vital was broken. He wanted to stop running. He wanted to give in. To surrender. To fall down to his knees and beg for forgiveness. He wanted to lie down. He wanted to rest. But the voice...

The voice would not let him.

Turn right
, the voice told him, guiding him as he stumbled uncertainly through the maze of the block's corridors.
Now, left. No, Jeffrey, your other left. Now left again. Quickly, Jeffrey. We must hurry. The psi-bitch is coming.

"Please..." Jeffrey whispered, his own voice ragged and breathless. "Please, it hurts. Everything hurts... Please, you have to let me stop."

No!
The voice screeched angrily. The sound was painful and unsettling, like the shriek of fingernails scraping on a blackboard, only a thousand times worse. It hurt Jeffrey even more than the pain from his wounds.
No! You will do what I tell you. You will follow my instructions. The psi-bitch is coming, Jeffrey. You will kill her.

"But I tried..." Jeffrey moaned in quiet torment, like a child trembling before a raging parent. "She shot me, the grenade didn't work. I tried..."

You will try again
. The voice was calmer now. Insistent.
And next time you will succeed. You will do as I tell you, Jeffrey. You will kill the psi-bitch for me. Then you can rest.

"Please..." Jeffrey pleaded piteously. "I think I'm dying."

No, Jeffrey
. The voice was patient.
You will not die. I will not allow it. Here, turn to your right. There! You see the apartment? Eighty-Eight-A, Jeffrey. Open the door.

Legs all but faltering beneath him, Jeffrey went to the door and did as he had been told. The door was unlocked and the apartment was deserted. I must have missed them, Jeffrey thought. The people from this apartment, they must have run before I could get to them, leaving the door unlocked behind them. Among the furnishings of the apartment, he saw an easy chair, its cushions round, plump and inviting.

"Please." The word was almost a sob. "The chair. I need to sit down."

Yes, Jeffrey
, the voice crooned softly to him.
But first move the chair so it faces the door. There. Good. Now you can sit down. You will sit here and wait for the psi-bitch to come, Jeffrey. Then, you will kill her. Oh, and Jeffrey? In case you were wondering, you will be needing the Magnum again.

There was something riding the perp. Anderson was sure of it.

She had quite a glimpse of it as the perp ran away, in the split second before he rounded the corner in the corridor and disappeared. A shadow, dark and malignant; not cast on the walls or floor, but sitting on his shoulders as though it was riding on his back. As she moved towards the corner, Anderson wondered if it had been no more than a trick of the light. She had abandoned the idea almost as quickly as it occurred to her. She knew what she had seen. A shadow, invisible to anyone without psychic powers, its presence every bit as unsettling and foreboding as the voice she had heard whispering in her head in the half-second before the futsie had emerged from the corpse-pile. The same voice she had heard whispering when she deepscanned Judge Brophy. A psychic entity. She was even more certain of that fact now than she had been before.

The entity must be using the futsie as some kind of proxy, Anderson thought, advancing cautiously on the corner with her Lawgiver ready to fire. I don't read this as a case of out-and-out psychic possession. It's more like the entity's sitting in the futsie's head, guiding him and influencing his actions. The thing's probably looking out for him as well. No wonder the creep managed to get the drop on so many Judges. But why all the killings? What's the entity after?

Crouching as she reached the edge of the corner, Anderson pulled her boot knife from its sheath with her left hand and carefully extended it around the corner until she could see a blurred image of the corridor beyond reflected in the silver surface of the blade. The coast was clear: there was no sign of the futsie. Standing, the knife still in her left hand, her Lawgiver in her right, Anderson turned around the corner and saw a blood trail running along the floor toward the corner of another corridor further down the hallway.

Okay, so now we play follow the leader, she thought. Looks like the perp's lost a lot of blood. No surprise there, considering I tagged him three times. Most perps would have surrendered by now, but with some kind of psychic creature in his head, pushing him on, Grud knows how long he can keep going before he collapses. I have to keep it tight, be careful, work it corner-by-corner and stay sharp. The futsie could be waiting for me anywhere.

Repeating the same procedure as she reached the next corner, Anderson used her knife blade as a mirror to scan the corridor beyond and make sure it was clear. Working corridor by corridor, corner by corner, she followed the blood trail snaking a twisted path through the labyrinth of block corridors. Her senses alert for any sign of ambush, she moved at a slow and cautious pace, until with three or four changes of direction behind her, she saw the blood trail reach an end at an apartment door.

Apartment Eighty-Eight-A, she thought, trying to keep her footfalls silent as she moved closer. Looks like he's gone to ground.

Replacing her boot knife in its sheath as she advanced towards the apartment, Anderson bypassed the door and laid her hand against the wall to the side of it as she tried to pick up stray psychic impressions from inside. The perp was in there - she could feel it. His mind seemed dim and distant to her - distant enough that she could not read his thoughts. It was as though something was partially shielding him from her powers. She could sense another presence in the apartment with him, shadowy and vile. The entity, she thought. All right, so I can sense it. The question now is, can it sense me at the same time?