Mutant City (24 page)

Before the men could make it out through the door, Rush/Jax lifted his hand again, this time turning it upward as if he was grasping something invisible. When he pulled the hand down, the entire back section of the house collapsed, falling around the soldiers and blocking their way with rubble and timber from the roof.

Jax let go Rush’s hand and the dual world disappeared, along with the cacophony of thoughts. At the same time, all of Rush’s strength and energy seemed to evaporate, and he sank to his knees, gasping. Dotty was immediately by his side, nudging him with her snout and looking from him to the collapsed building and back again.

Jax crawled over to Brick. Careful not to touch the orange substance that enveloped his legs and torso, he tried to get him up off the floor, but it was impossible. There was a crash from behind them as the soldiers began to kick their way through the debris.

Jax straightened up. If the smoke bothered him, he didn’t show it as he tried to work out what best to do next. ‘We have to go,’ he said.

‘We can’t leave!’ Rush coughed. He was still on his knees, his head swimming. ‘Brick is stuck in that stuff!’

‘We have to. If we don’t, we’ll all
be killed or captured! You, me
and
Brick.’ He gestured back towards the safe house. ‘You
heard
him! He’s called for reinforcements. We can’t stay here.’

‘I’m not leaving without Brick.’ Rush tried to get to his feet and almost fell. Instead he crawled over to his friend.

‘Rush go,’ Brick said.

‘Not without you.’

‘GO!’ Brick bellowed. ‘RUSH HAVE TO GO!’ With an effort he craned his neck around to see his young friend and gave him an encouraging nod. ‘Go.’

Rush blinked away the tears. ‘I’ll come for you, Brick. I promised you I’d look after you, remember? We promised each other.’

‘Brick and Rush,’ the big man said with a sad smile.

‘Rush and Brick,’ the boy agreed, reaching out for him and almost putting his hand into the thick orange goo until Jax hooked a hand under his armpit and manhandled him to his feet.

‘GO!’ Brick shouted.

With that, Jax dragged Rush away just as the ARM commander and his men broke through the rubble in time to see all but one of their quarry were getting away. ‘You,’ the squad leader barked at two of his men, ‘secure the prisoner. The rest of you, after those Mutes with me.’ He led the way, stumbling through the debris and down the stairs. ‘They’re heading for the end of the alleyway,’ he barked into his communicator. The final spy drone came smashing down at the man’s feet, causing him to cry out in alarm.

As the two mutants approached the junction at the end of the passageway, Rush heard the cacophony of noise again.

‘Who are all those people?’ he asked.

‘Remember how I said we were going to disappear?’ Jax replied.

They rounded the last bend to see the tide of mutants moving across the intersection where the end of the passageway met the broader avenue beyond.

‘It’s a Mute Rights rally, but they’re really here for us,’ Jax said, pulling the youngster out into the thronging mass, where they were immediately swallowed up and swept along. ‘We’ll go along with it for a while and then slip away.’

‘You arranged all this? So you could get us away?’

‘Silas did.’

Rush was having trouble walking. He stumbled, his legs giving way unexpectedly, and he would have fallen had it not been for the young man at his side.

‘What the hell happened back there? When you took my hand. What did you do?’

‘Thirteen years ago I rewired parts of your brain, made them hard for you to access. It was for the best at the time, and I knew it wouldn’t last for ever. Today I gave you a chance to realise some of your potential again. You did those things, Rush, not me. Unfortunately a lack of practice at using your heightened abilities means you’re left mentally and physically weak when you do, but it’s only temporary, and you’re more powerful than you know.’

Rush glared back at him. ‘Yeah? Well, if I’m so powerful, why did we leave Brick?’ He pulled his arm free, not caring if he fell.

‘We had no choice. You know that and Brick knew it too. You heard him yourself.’

They walked on while Rush took this in.

‘Where will they take him?’

‘Into the city.’

‘Will they torture him?’

‘Probably.’

Rush swallowed a sob. ‘I don’t care what it takes – I’m going to get him back.’

‘
We’re
going to get him back,’ Jax replied. ‘You’re not alone any more, Rush.’

Melk

Zander squirmed in his seat, trying not to meet the eyes of his father, who was staring at him with a mixture of disbelief and anger. Before the botched raid had started the old man had summoned a nurse, demanding she give him ‘a shot of juice’ to ensure he was alert, and waving away her protests and lecture on the dangerous side effects of the drug. When she’d administered the dose via intravenous tube, the change had been extraordinary. Now faced with a reenergized and angry father, Zander wished he’d insisted Melk Senior listen to the nurse’s objections.

The monitor they’d been watching was now wrecked, sporting a jagged, gaping hole where his father had hurled a glass through it. Before this, and despite the loss of visual contact as one by one the drones went down, the two had heard everything relayed between the base and the ARM unit through the speakers.

The unnerving silence stretched out for what seemed like for ever, until his father finally spoke.

‘What on Scorched Earth did you think you were doing?’ he asked.

‘You can’t possibly blame me for the unsuccessful outcome of this mission. I was not personally in charge of those men. It’s obvious that my officers made –’

‘Oh, no, you don’t! You chose to do this. You! You don’t get to turn round now and foist the blame on anyone else.’ He waved away the nurse, who’d been hovering by the door, and waited for her to leave before continuing. ‘I told you to call it off. You should have listened to me.’

‘You should have made it clearer what we were up against!’

‘As if you would have paid any attention.’

Zander bit his lip. ‘We captured one of them.’

‘If you’d just listened to me, you could have had them all!’

Zander’s palm tingled. Holding his finger to his ear he listened to the message relayed to him from the ARM base. When it was finished, he looked across at his father again. He didn’t like the expression on the old man’s face. It was one he’d seen all too often when he was growing up. ‘The prisoner is in custody,’ he said. ‘I think I should get down there so I can meet up with this creation of yours, don’t you?’

The old man struggled up out of his chair, brushing away his son’s attempt to help. ‘I’m going with you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’re too unwell. I’ll –’

‘You’ll do as you’re told and shut the hell up!’ Melk Senior slipped his gown on. ‘Assuming it doesn’t kill me first, that shot will see me through the next hour or so. Now let’s go and see what you’ve managed to salvage from this train wreck, shall we?’

The Melks observed the prisoner through the one-way mirror. The application of a simple solvent solution had removed the orange foam-glue that had trapped Brick, and he now sat, handcuffed to a metal table in the starkly lit interrogation room. They’d put him in bright yellow overalls which, despite being the largest pair they had, were still far too tight for him. He sat staring down at his hands. There was a cut above his left eye, and his lower lip was horribly swollen. The wounds looked as if they’d been inflicted recently, but if they bothered him he didn’t show it. A speaker above the mirror on the observers’ side relayed the sounds from the room: the prisoner was humming to himself.

‘He’s a big one,’ Zander said to his father, who grunted something.

‘How did he get injured like that?’ the older man asked, nodding in the prisoner’s direction.

‘He resisted when we tried to take this from him.’ The guard held out a small plastic torch.

Melk stared at the object before taking it from the guard. ‘Open the door. I want to speak to him.’

‘I’ll come in with you,’ his son said.

‘
You’ll
stay here. If I want you, I’ll call for you. I think you’ve done enough damage for one day.’ He coughed for the first time since leaving his hospital room, and once he’d started it was unclear if he’d be able to stop. Bent double, he struggled to breathe until the attack finally abated and he straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

He addressed the guard again. ‘Give me the key to his handcuffs.’

‘Sir?’

‘The key.’

The man looked flustered, but obeyed. Unhooking the key chain from his belt, he handed one over.

‘At least let the guard go in with you,’ Zander suggested.

‘SHUT UP!’ the old man barked, rounding on him. Without another word the president gestured towards the security panel beside the door. The guard hurried over and entered the code, and the heavy door slid smoothly aside to provide access to the interrogation room. Melk paused in the entrance, looking back at his son and the guard in turn. ‘I don’t care what you see or hear in the next few minutes. Once this door closes behind me, neither of you is to come into this room. Is that crystal clear?’ He waited for them both to agree before he turned and went inside, shutting the door behind him.

Brick stopped humming and looked up at the man as he entered, his eyes growing wide with fear and recognition.

‘I see you remember me,’ Melk said, walking over and taking a seat opposite the big man. He waited for the Mute to speak. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

Brick looked down at the table again. ‘You’re the bad man from that bad place.’

‘Oh, don’t be like that. “Bad man”?’ He shook his head. ‘Not exactly the welcome a son should give his father, is it?’

‘You’re not Brick’s father.’

‘Technically no. But in a way I’m the closest thing to one you’ll ever have.’ He reached out, giving a little grunt of surprise as the mutant flinched away. Without saying a word he held the little key up between his finger and thumb so the Mute could see it. ‘It’s a key to the things on your wrists. I’d like to unlock them for you.’

Brick slowly extended his arms and allowed the manacles to be removed.

Melk put the torch on the table. ‘Yours, I believe.’

Without a word, Brick shot an arm out and the device disappeared into his meaty hand.

‘Where are they?’ Melk asked.

‘Who?’

‘The others. Silas and Jax and the other two.’

‘Don’t know.’

‘You were going to them.’

The hulk shrugged his massive shoulders.

‘If you knew where they were, would you tell me?’

The question was met by the same gesture, but this time, instead of looking back down at the table, Brick kept his eyes on the man. He sighed, the edges of his mouth down. ‘It’s bad. You don’t have long.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘The sickness. I can see it.’

Melk swallowed loudly, the smile faltering on his face for the first time. ‘Of course you can. I know that. I also know that you can cure me.’ He let the statement hang in the air.

‘No.’

The old man sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘You can’t? Or you won’t?’ He waited.

‘Won’t.’

‘Not even to save the life of your friend? The one you came to Muteville with.’

‘They got away.’

Melk made a clucking sound with his tongue and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. They
did
get away for a while, but the youngest one, well, I think you saw he wasn’t too good on his feet. The albino abandoned him, and my men picked him up not far from where they left you. Not exactly loyal, are they, your friends?’

He could see the confused look on the big Mute’s face. ‘The youngster, the one you were in the safe house with – he’s being held in a room like this one as we speak. Unfortunately he’s in a bad way. The men he hurt in that house – they were very angry when they got back here, and some of them took their frustration out on him.’

‘Rush.’

‘What?’

‘His name is Rush.’

‘That’s what you call him, is it? Of course, to me he was always Case Number 3. The telekinetic.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘I had big plans for him. It’s a shame the damage my men have done to him means those plans will never be realised.’

Brick lowered his head but continued to look up at the man through his eyebrows.

‘You have to make a choice, Brick. Make the right one, and I’ll let you help your friend. But you have to do something for me first.’

‘Take the hurt from you?’

‘That’s right. Do that, and I promise not to harm anyone else I have here in my custody.’

Brick considered this for a moment. He mumbled under his breath, something that sounded to Melk like, ‘Russianbrick.’ Then he reached out across the table and grabbed the other man’s hands.