The Supernaturalist (4 page)

But even worse than the pain, was the thirst.

Cosmo tried to open his mouth, but his lips were dry-gummed together. A frustrated moan escaped through his nose. Footsteps approached across a hard-sounding surface.

‘OΚ,
bueno
,’ said a voice. Female. ‘Welcome to Abracadabra Street.’

A wet cloth brushed his lips, breaking the seal. Cosmo opened his mouth, squeezing the material between his
teeth. The water tasted like life, trickling down his throat.

‘Easy, not too much.’

Cosmo opened his eyes a crack, squinting against the glare of sunlight. The girl was ringed by a corona of white light. For a second he thought – But no, it was the girl from the roof. The roof?

‘Welcome back. Though the way you’re gonna be feeling for a couple of days, maybe you’d rather be dead.’

Cosmo remembered it all then. The crash, the climb, the fall.

‘Ziplock?’ croaked Cosmo, his voice alien and distant.

The girl scratched her forehead, stretching the DNA strand tattooed on her forehead. Cosmo knew that the tattoo was the signature of one of the various Satellite City street gangs. The ink was probably loaded with an isotope that could be tested by a bar scanner. This prevented police infiltration.

‘Ziplock?’ she said. ‘You got the energy for one word, and that’s the word you pick?’

Cosmo felt a single tear crawl down his cheek. Ziplock had been just about the closest thing he’d had to a friend.

The girl saw the tear and made the connection. She winced at her own blunder. ‘I’m sorry. Ziplock, that was your friend’s name?’

‘Is he…’

‘Sorry, kid. He was gone when we got there. We left him behind, remember?’

Cosmo raised his arm. The only thing around his wrist was a bandage.

‘The electricity fused part of the cuff to your skin. Ditto had to peel it off. You were lucky the vein didn’t pop.’

Cosmo didn’t feel so lucky, and it wasn’t just his wrist.

‘In fact, Ditto had to do quite a bit of work on you. You never would have made it to a hospital, so we had to use whatever was lying around. Your painkiller drip was a bit past the sell-by date, but hey, it didn’t kill you.’

Mona consulted a wall monitor over Cosmo’s bed.

‘Ditto glued the Achilles tendon in your left heel and replaced your right kneecap with grown-bone.’

Cosmo nodded, aghast.

‘We also had to go into your chest and plasti-coat a few of your ribs. I took the staples out this morning. And, of course, I had to shave your head.’

‘What?’

Mona shrugged. ‘It was either that or let your brain fall out on the floor. Lucky for you Ditto had a couple of robotix plates lying around; he used one to patch your fractured skull. Those robotix plates are made of the same material used to armour assault tanks. When your skin heals up, Ditto says you’ll be able to headbutt your way through a brick wall.’

Cosmo remembered something. ‘Ditto? The little boy?’

Mona glanced over her shoulder. ‘Shhh! Don’t call him
that. He’s very touchy.’ The girl stepped closer, lowering her voice. ‘Ditto is a Bartoli Baby. That
little boy
is twenty-eight years old.’

Now it made sense. Doctor Ferdinand Bartoli’s genetic experiments were an infamous chapter in modern history. The doctor had performed gene-splicing tests on a batch of infants in an attempt to create a superhuman. Instead, he corrupted the babies’ own DNA, resulting in a series of mutations. ESP was one side effect, but the most common was arrested physical development. The Bartoli scandal led to the outlawing of gene experimentation for over ten years.

Cosmo gingerly rubbed his bristling scalp. A section of his forehead felt hard and stippled.

‘There are pressure release pores in that plate, so don’t poke anything through the skin.’

Robotix plates in his head and Bartoli Babies. It was almost too much to take in.

‘Anything else?’

‘That’s about it. Of course there are still a hundred or so staples in various cuts and bruises, but I disguised them with skin-spray. All in all, you’re a lot worse than you look.’

But not worse than I feel
, thought Cosmo.

Mona peeled the foil from a patch and stuck it to his arm.

‘The best thing for you is rest and recuperation. This sedative patch should keep you out for a while. The next
time you wake, you might even be able to walk around a bit.’

‘No,’ protested Cosmo, but it was too late. The sedative was already seeping into his bloodstream.

‘Nighty night,’ said Mona gently.

Cosmo’s limbs felt weightless. His head wobbled like a toy dog’s.

‘Nighty night,’ he echoed.

Or maybe he only thought it, because the world was dripping down his eyeballs like wet oil paint down a canvas.

Cosmo ran through his memories like files on a computer screen. Who was he? Cosmo Hill, fourteen years old. Fugitive no-sponsor. Where was he? A warehouse maybe, rescued by a band of creature-hunters. A tall teenager, a Latin girl and a Bartoli Baby. Could that be true? It seemed impossible. Could he become part of this strange band? Was that what he wanted?

Cosmo’s brain stuttered to a halt. What
did
he want? This was a question that nobody had ever asked him. He rarely asked it of himself. The only thing he had ever
wanted was to escape from Clarissa, and now that he was out, he had no idea what to do next. But Cosmo did know one thing with absolute certainty. He was never going back to Clarissa Frayne. Never.

Cosmo checked his injuries. The pain was still there, muted but there. Like a troll under the bridge, ready to pounce if he moved too quickly. The bandage was gone from his wrist, and his entire forearm was covered with skin-spray.

After several minutes’ basic breathing and blinking, Cosmo decided to put his limbs to the test. He sat slowly, dizzy from the sedative patch stuck to his arm. He peeled it off, checking the sponge. White. No more juice. That explained why he was awake.

His new knee was covered with a plexi-cast. The transparent cast was filled with an anti-inflammatory which would accelerate the healing process. A green LED over the cast’s x-ray panel told him that the leg was safe to walk on.

Cosmo tested the ground like a swimmer testing Arctic waters. His knee twinged, but nothing more. He must have been out for at least forty-eight hours for the cast to have done its job. His forehead was a different story. Every movement, however slight, sent a steel nail of pain hammering into his skull. Almost as bad as the pain, was the itch of new skin growing over the robotix plate in his forehead.

He gritted his teeth and began walking, his initial
target being the jug of filtered water on the table five metres away. Not exactly a marathon, but not bad considering what he’d been through.

Cosmo almost reached the table. He would have made it, if it hadn’t been for one thing. A steel mirror bolted to the wall. Cosmo caught sight of his own reflection and, for a moment, thought there was someone else in the room.

His dry lips parted to form a single syllable: ‘Oh.’

The figure in the glass reminded him of a war child from those history vids. Battered and thin, haggard and hangdog. He looked like a miniature Frankenstein’s monster. Cobbled together from various parts. None of them the right size, some of them not even intended for humans. His head was especially grotesque. Completely shaven with a dozen staple scars criss-crossing the scalp. The robotix plate in his forehead bulged slightly beneath the swollen skin, the pressure pores clearly outlined against the pink tissue. The only things that he recognized were the wide-spaced, round, brown eyes.

Cosmo completed his journey shakily, grasping the jug with both hands and drinking from the neck. Most of the water splashed down his front, but some went in.
Everything was being fixed
, he told himself.
It was all temporary.

But not for Ziplock. It was too late to fix him.

Ziplock. His friend should have been here with him. But where was here exactly? Cosmo looked around for the
first time. He was in a large open warehouse constructed from pig-iron polymer. The windows were tall and thin, church style, with blackout curtains hanging on each side. Workbenches and electronic equipment littered the concrete floor, and power cables flowed from every wall socket like multicoloured snakes. Various cubicles were sectioned off by mobile dividers and a dozen hard drives hummed inside the makeshift rooms. But no people. Besides him, the warehouse was completely deserted.

Cosmo moved slowly, getting used to his new knee. There was a kitchen area in one corner. Nothing cosy. Just a two-ring burner, moulded garden furniture and a pot of sim-coffee. A bunch of lilies lay on the table, cellophane-wrapped with a bubble of water at the base. Real flowers. Expensive. There was a card stuck between two of the lilies.
Mother
, it read, I
miss you more than ever
.

A set of steel cuffs lay on the bench beside the simulator. Cosmo felt a lump in his throat. The last remaining evidence that Francis Murphy had ever lived, and they didn’t even know his real name.

‘Let’s go, Francis,’ he said, picking up the cuffs. ‘It’s time you saw the city.’

Cosmo climbed through the window on to a balcony, trying to get his bearings. Judging by the position of the Journey River, he was somewhere on the Westside. The piercing wail of sirens and the overhead
whup whup
of police birds confirmed this theory.

Cosmo dangled the cuffs over the edge. There should be something to say. Something special to mark Ziplock’s passing. Cosmo thought for several moments, but he couldn’t find any words to describe how desolate he felt. Maybe that was the point. How could any words capture feelings like these? He knew how he felt, and that was the important thing.

Cosmo tossed the cuffs into the Satellite City air and they twinkled through the neon like shooting stars.

Cosmo hobbled after them.

‘What happened?’

Stefan did not answer, clearing a Formica work surface with a sweep of one arm.

‘Close the curtains,’ he shouted.

Cosmo pointed at the react-to-light control panel beside a window.

‘But the glass. Why don’t I adjust –’

‘Because the police birds see right through react-to-light. That’s why it comes with the building. Get it?’

Cosmo hauled the sackcloth curtains across the windows. Seconds after he had finished, a government bird swept past the building. Cosmo heard an electronic crackle as the windows were remotely de-polarised. With the curtains open, the room would have been exposed. Which was fine, so long as nobody was fleeing the scene of a crime. Which they obviously were.

Stefan was bent over Mona. Her slim frame was wracked with pain, every muscle and tendon stretched tight. Long streams of Spanish fluttered from her bloodless lips, and her black, sweat-drenched hair slapped the table like seaweed strands.

Ditto hopped up on the table, pulling a screwdriver from his belt. He jammed the tool’s handle into Mona’s mouth, to stop her swallowing her tongue.

‘I don’t know what this is,’ he admitted. ‘This is a new one on me. I’ve never seen this strain before.’ He peeled the adhesive back from a thermostrip, sticking it to her forehead.

‘She’s on fire,’ he said, reading the temperature off the strip. ‘Going critical.’

‘Get a bucket of ice,’ said Stefan to Cosmo. ‘Whatever you can carry.’

Cosmo lurched to the refrigerator, emptying a fire bucket of sand on the floor. He jammed the rim against the fridge’s ice-dispenser toggle, watching while the cubes rattled out with infuriating slowness.

‘Come on, come on.’

It took almost a minute to fill the bucket halfway. That would have to do. Ignoring the pain in his knee, Cosmo hurried back to the table.

Stefan grabbed the bucket and began packing the ice inside Mona’s clothing. Ditto’s gaze remained fixed on the thermostrip.

‘It’s not working. A hundred and twelve, and still rising.’

‘No,’ shouted Stefan. His features tight with worry. ‘We need to take her to a hospital.’

‘What hospital?’ snorted Ditto. ‘I’ve worked in every hospital in the city, remember. There’s nothing but General on the Westside, and believe me, if I don’t know how to fix something, they don’t know how to fix it either.’

Cosmo peered in around Stefan’s frame. Mona’s convulsions grew more violent, green tendrils spreading across her eyeballs.

‘Should we give her an antibiotic?’ wondered Stefan. ‘We have to try something.’

‘No!’ Cosmo blurted. The word was out before he could stop it.

Ditto hopped down from the table.

‘No? What do you know, kid?’

Cosmo’s aches and pains picked that moment to come back.

‘I don’t know. Something, maybe. I’ve seen this before at the Institute. What happened to her?’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ said Stefan. ‘We have to take her to General. Take our chances.’

Ditto stood up to the tall boy. A molehill facing a mountain.

‘Take our chances? By the time we get processed, she’s dead. You know it as well as I do. Let’s hear what the boy has to say. Now, kid, what do you need to know?’

Cosmo avoided Stefan’s gaze. ‘Just what happened. How did she get this way?’

Stefan kneaded his brow. ‘There was an explosion at Komposite chemical plant. We were doing a sweep for Parasites. Some of the local marshals caught us, and one got a dart into Mona. She’s been getting worse ever since.’

Cosmo wracked his brain. By law, private marshals were not licensed to carry guns. They got around the problem by arming themselves with non-lethal lightning rods that fired cellophane slugs or various chemical darts. The darts were clever, because they were technically non-lethal so long as you stayed around for the antidote.

‘What colour was the dart’s casing?’

Ditto frowned. ‘Casing? I’m not sure. Green, maybe.’

‘With a white stripe along the side?’

‘Maybe. I can’t swear.’

‘Yes,’ said Stefan. ‘A white stripe. I remember pulling it out of Vasquez’s leg. Green and white.’

Cosmo closed his eyes, remembering the Institute. ‘Those Komposite darts were tested at Clarissa Frayne. I remember. The green and white was the worst. We called them Creepers. Guys were sick for hours, even after they got the antidote. The Institute’s plumbing got all backed up. One guy found a cure though. He ate a mouldy sandwich and felt better. It wasn’t the bread, it was –’

‘The mould,’ completed Ditto. ‘Of course. This is a flora virus. Cellulose would shut it down. We need some plants.’

Cosmo limped to the cellophane-wrapped flowers. ‘Here. Right here.’

He pulled a single flower from the bunch and ripped the lily’s stem and leaves into bite-size pieces, cramming some into his own mouth. The rest he handed to Ditto, who did the same. Stefan grabbed another bloom, folding the stem into his mouth.

They chewed furiously, ignoring the acrid taste seeping down their throats.

The stems were tough, splitting into stringy lengths, refusing to be broken down. But Cosmo and the others persisted, grinding the strings between their molars. Green juice dribbled over their chins. Finally they spat wads of green paste into their palms.

‘Do the wound,’ Cosmo instructed.

The Bartoli Baby ripped Mona’s trousers apart, spitting the goo in his mouth directly on to the puncture mark on the girl’s thigh. Stefan added his wad of paste to the wound, kneading it into the inflamed hole.

Cosmo removed the screwdriver from Mona’s mouth, force-feeding the paste between chattering teeth. Mona gagged, shuddering, her body naturally rejecting the plant, but Cosmo rubbed her windpipe until she swallowed. Gradually more and more green ooze slipped down the girl’s throat. By the time he was finished, Cosmo’s fingers were chewed bloody.

For what seemed like an eternity, there was no change in Mona’s condition. Then –

‘A hundred and eleven,’ said Ditto. ‘She’s peaked.’

Mona’s eyes continued rolling, but the green tendrils pulsed gently, then disappeared.

Ditto checked the thermostrip. ‘One hundred and eight. It’s working, wrap me if it isn’t.’

Something flickered in Mona’s eyes. Recognition?

‘One hundred. Ninety-nine.’

The girl’s slight frame slumped on to the table. Gradually tension lost its grip on her muscles.

‘Ninety-eight. Normal. She’s going to be all right.’

Mona turned on her side, throwing up green sludge on to the tiles.

Ditto grinned an angelic baby grin.

‘That’s what happens when you eat cow food.’