The Fall of Deadworld Omnibus Read online

  The badges on the door were weak-minded wormfood, however, and it didn’t require much in the way of effort for her to slide into their heads and plant a suggestion that they let her pass. Their brains were mostly rancid fly-blown organs, capable of the barest motor functions, and she dipped out as quickly as possible, leaving them with a mild expression of confusion on their sallow faces as they stepped aside and she walked out into the twilit grim. It had been a while since she’d seen natural light, and the novelty took some getting used to—that and the sensation of a breeze upon her skin—though a tenebrous gloom seemed to have settled over the city, as deep and dark as a bruise. A thick bank of clouds hung heavy above the rooftops, allowing a meagre amount of light to filter through, and it cast the streets with a monochrome pall, deadening the world still further. There was the flicker of flames in the distance where Judge Fire and his incendiary squads had been busy—she’d heard that they were creating funeral pyres for the thousands already butchered as a form of wall around the capital’s central sectors—but the shadows it threw on the buildings seemed oddly inanimate. There was no doubt the smoke was adding to the greasy quality in the air, particulates of ash and bone twisting in the gentle wind. It was indeed becoming a necropolis, a place fit only for those that had crawled from a grave.

  She couldn’t deny she felt no small amount of freedom, and wished that she had longer to drink it in; but she was doubtlessly being tracked. The reeks that she’d pside-swiped past had been one thing, but the Sisters were something else, their presence tangible throughout the Grand Hall. Nothing occurred within its environs that they weren’t aware of, and they would’ve been alerted the moment she crossed the threshold. They distrusted her intensely already—now that she’d gone off-reservation, there were going to be convinced she was up to something. She couldn’t dally; it was surely only a matter of time before they intervened, or they got Sidney to order her detained. She needed transport.

  The bike pool beneath the HoJ was another level of complication she didn’t want to deal with so she’d have to commandeer one from the streets. That proved easy enough, casting her mind out and psychically steering a deadbeat to her, muddying his perception so that he was under the impression he’d received new directives in the next district over before forcing him to head off on foot. She swung onto the Lawranger and peeled away, once again relishing the distance she put between her and the CJ’s headquarters.

  It was the first vehicle she’d handled post-mortem, but she hadn’t forgotten how to ride it; indeed, the skill was instinctive, her gauntlets gripping the handlebars firmly, her weight in the saddle perfectly proportioned. She could’ve let the onboard computer do most of the piloting, but there was pleasure to be had in controlling it by her own means, and that in itself was unusual—feeling the emotion for something that benefited only her was a strange sensation. She should’ve outgrown such petty concerns, which belonged to a life pre-De’Ath. But it was inescapable, as she curled the bike through the choked, smouldering thoroughfares of the city, leaning into the turns and twisting the throttle on the straights—adrenaline of a sort was coursing through her, synapses thought long-withered-away firing at the exhilaration. Memories stirred like a seething cauldron of gumbo, nuggets of her past rising from the depths: recollections of her cadet days, registering in the top percentile of her class for Applied Lawranger proficiency, and being taken out onto the streets for the first time with her assessing senior Judge. The rush had been extraordinary back then, had penetrated her very marrow. She’d known nothing else like it.

  Yet she shouldn’t be able to remember any of this; this all should’ve been wiped from her mind by the raging fire of the Dead Fluids, scourging her of her past existence and birthing her anew. Nothing of the old days should trouble her. But here it was, seeping into her consciousness like water bubbling up through the earth from a cracked underground pipe, as if fragments had only ever been buried, not vaporised entirely. The psi-amplifier had done this, she was convinced—it had splintered her psyche, allowed her to access elements locked inside her head that she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to open. She was feeling emotions, thinking independently, acting against the Chief’s wishes; the psi-amp had caused a glitch in her programming.

  There was unease at all this too, she had to admit. The sudden flow of images from her previous existence was unnerving—previously suppressed snapshots of her past flashing up unbidden in her head. Some she recognised, others she didn’t, but she couldn’t be certain that whatever the amp had done to her head hadn’t in some way distorted them—was she seeing how things were, or a twisted version, corrupted by a fractured mind? She hoped, perversely, that for the most part it was the latter; that this was her history viewed through a funhouse mirror—strange and warped and bearing little relation to the reality. Otherwise, digging through the truth would be harder to process. For example, the concept of punishment kept rearing up at her, of receiving strict discipline for misdemeanours perpetrated as a child, and it brought a chill that was both at once familiar and weird. Somehow, she knew she used to be scared when she was younger (pre Justice Department?), that it played a big part of her early childhood, and yet, in her post-mortem state, she’d never been frightened by anything, despite the monsters she was now allied with. Fear had been an emotion that no longer troubled her. But suddenly here she was feeling it again, and it was unmistakable, like the musty scent of a favourite toy that had been clutched every night under the bedclothes. She knew it intimately. How much of these memories were real? Had she really used to feel like this? Who was she—or perhaps more pertinently, who did she used to be?

  She had to find out before Mortis’s contraption snapped her mind in two. There had to be a reason why she’d been chosen for the prototype—she was convinced that answers lay somewhere in the mental sludge that was being dredged from her brain. Corroboration was more than likely to be found in the old records of the Academy.

  Cafferly skirted a vast pile of corpses that had been ladled on the side of the road, clearly awaiting Judge Fire’s touch. The dead had been stacked without dignity, heads and limbs entangled, and countless filmy eyes regarded her accusingly as she passed. She instinctively turned away, refusing to meet their glassy gaze, prompting her to remember the execution she’d declined to watch the other day. She’d been curious about her squeamishness at the time, wondering the reason behind it. It was prior to her use of the amp, so the blame couldn’t be laid on that in this instance. Evidently, some small change in her had occurred naturally… or as natural as anything could be in Sidney’s blighted world. Maybe the Sisters had sensed that, ordered Mortis to line her up for the experiment—they wanted to know something, find something out about her, aware of what it could do to her.

  She roared the Lawranger away from the bodies, furious. Fucking Phobia and Nausea! Everyone was just puppets to them, to be used and picked apart at their whim.

  Crossing the sector at speed, she reached her destination without incident. The few units she saw were either conducting summary judgements or disposing of the aftermath. They paid her no mind. The capital was surprisingly quiet, much of the central districts having been purged of life entirely, and apart from the distant cries of some lawbreakers protesting at the sentences before being cut short by the retort of a Lawgiver muzzle, nothing stirred beyond flies feasting on grey flesh. De’Ath’s forces were moving out, widening the coverage beyond the city limits and into the outlying areas. Work had already been done both environmentally and ecologically, to wipe out a lot of the mass population, and much of the task ahead for the Chief’s goons was simply mopping up. Nevertheless, it was going to be a slow process. That suited Cafferly—it meant she was less likely to be disturbed.

  She pulled up her bike at the foot of the building’s grandiose steps and dismounted, climbing up to the shattered entrance, the façade wrecked by flame and gunfire. Tiny shards of glasseen crunched beneath the soles of her boots, and she had to duck her head unde
r a beam that had torn loose from its housing before she could slide across the threshold.

  The Academy of Law had certainly seen better days. On the night of the Fall it had been one of the first buildings targeted by forces loyal to Sidney, determined to wipe out all those within the department that might oppose him. By all accounts, it was the site of a ruthless massacre. A few cadets had pledged allegiance in a bid to escape execution, but most were too young to be any use to the cause, or too ingrained with the doctrine—either way, De’Ath ordered a scorched-earth policy and the juves had no chance, a pogrom made all the more chilling by the fact that the Chief wasn’t that much older at the time than the cadets he ordered killed. Colleagues he would’ve eaten with, shared dormitories with, passed trials and examinations with, he butchered without a second thought.

  It was empty of corpses now—in a nod to efficiency, the majority of the youngsters had been lined up in the exercise yards and shot—but you could still see the remnants of those final hours as Cafferly passed through the silent corridors. Bullet holes pockmarked the plaster, and blood spray had darkened to rust; rooms where last stands had been fought were blackened shells, blistered by multiple high-explosive discharges. She’d never seen a ghost, ironically, despite all that she’d witnessed in recent times and the feats her mind had performed, but she could imagine them haunting the rec areas and shooting galleries in here, the violence perpetrated within these walls absorbed into the rockcrete. She was aware that there was a rare psi-talent that enabled the operative to tap into the psyche of a structure, to read the echoes of life that reverberated through the building and soak in its past, but she figured any attempt on the Academy’s ruins would be the equivalent of listening to one long, piercing scream. As it was, even without the talent, the timbre of the place was oppressive, like a persistent pressure on her skull. She really didn’t want to linger any longer than possible.

  She found her way to a set of stairs and descended, the well gloomy and thick with silence. Next to no power was still functioning, and she relied on the handrail to guide her. At the bottom, dust swirled as she disturbed it for the first time in weeks, and she drew her Lawgiver, using the torchlight mounted above the barrel as a means of getting her bearings. The records room was a vast warehouse-style open-plan area, lined by an endless number of shelves on which stood multiple storage boxes. They contained the details of every cadet that had passed over the threshold since the early days, even those that had dropped out. There was a computer system, of course, but that was redundant right now given the lack of electricity, and in any case it looked like someone had taken a daystick to several of the terminals. Frankly, she was surprised that this huge chamber of info relating to the old department had so far escaped Judge Fire’s pyre; it was the kind of documentation that represented the former order, all mention of which Sidney was extinguishing. Cafferly didn’t hold out any hope for it surviving much longer—once Fire had finished with the bodies, his attention would doubtless turn to buildings and their contents. All would be put to the flame until De’Ath presided over an empire of ash and bone.

  Ordinarily, physically searching this mountain of paperwork without the aid of the digitised index or an auxiliary that knew their way around the filing would be a task she wouldn’t attempt if she didn’t want to be holed up here for days on end. But she was confident she could cast her mind out and alight on what she needed. It was a form of dowsing, and—holstering her gun—she laid one hand on the shelving struts as she tried to piece together a picture in her head of the young psi-cadet she once was. An image coalesced hazily, as if behind misted glass, but it was enough to tug her senses in a particular direction; she released her hold of the shelf and allowed herself to be led, trance-like, across the room. Signifiers lit up, her consciousness a motherboard that saw past and memory synching, and she followed the psi-trails that glowed golden behind her eyes. It was a path, a breadcrumb trail, and with each step the blurry face swam a little more into focus. There was the outline of a young girl, for the moment just a silhouette, but colour and detail were bleeding through, like a snapshot fading into clarity.

  Cafferly stumbled through boxes, sending sheaves tumbling as she progressed, but paid no attention. Her mind knew where to go. She reached out and pulled a container from its housing, and emptied it contents on the floor, names and profiles of former cadets scattering before her: Ferdinand, Jorn. Pace, Cecily. Fenrick, Bifford. Duke, Sasha. She flashed through them, searching for that connection as the trails glowed brighter and the girl in her head gained resolution: brown eyes, dark complexion, mouth tight in a scowl, head shaven in a buzz cut. Was this her? Her hand trembled as it touched one manila cover, and a spark burned across her brain, threatening to white it out entirely—

  (I STILL BELIEVE IN YOU, FUTURE READER)

  Wait, what? She snapped out of her fugue state, disorientated, and snatched up the file, tearing it open.

  “Ssssissster Cafferly,” a voice called behind her. She spun, admonishing herself that her senses had been so preoccupied that she hadn’t been alerted to another’s presence.

  It was Nausea. She was in her human guise, though that couldn’t hide the malevolence that was radiating from her, ancient and terrible, despite the young face that she was wearing. She danced across the space, bare feet nimbly edging around the upturned boxes and wrecked monitors, long auburn hair flailing behind her, a teenager to all appearances pirouetting to music only she could hear. The nonchalance with which she came towards the Psi-Judge was all the more disturbing, picking her way unhurriedly, eyes occasionally catching Cafferly’s and a smile creasing her lips. As Nausea got closer, a gentle hum could be heard emanating from her akin to a simple nursery lullaby. It stopped when she finally came to standstill before the psi.

  “What are you doing here, sssisster?” the witch asked. “Why aren’t you at your possst?”

  Cafferly figured a degree of honesty was the best policy; she could feel incremental nudges of pressure in her head where Nausea was probing her defences, teasing out the truth. In any case, there was nothing innocent about her questions: she was well aware of what the Judge was doing here. “I… was experiencing difficulties. My abilities were being interrupted.”

  “Interrupted?”

  “Crossed signals. Random images. It happens sometimes.”

  “Doesss it?” Nausea tilted her head unnervingly, one eyebrow rising.

  “Only sometimes. Par for the course with soft talents like mine. You get… well, sort of feedback, and it can lead to disconnection.”

  The witch nodded as if she sympathised, but there was nothing soothing in the gesture. Cafferly got the impression that Nausea was playing with her, which she didn’t appreciate. Her grip hardened around the file she realised she was still holding, and she pushed back forcefully against the mental inveigling, sensing it retreat slightly.

  Nausea glanced briefly at what Cafferly was holding before returning to meet her gaze. “Isss thisss ssssomething to do with Brother Mortisss’s trial? The amplifier?”

  “No, not entirely—”

  “Because the intention wasss to increassse Psssi-Divisssion’sss efficiency. To greater aid ussss in our caussse. If there have been… ssside effectssss, then we need to know.” She sidled closer. “What are you doing here, sssister?” she whispered in Cafferly’s ear. “What brought you here? What are you after?” She reached out and laid her hand over the psi’s clutching the file.

  Cafferly snatched her hand away and involuntarily took a step back. “Don’t come any fucking closer.”

  Any false bonhomie vanished from the witch’s face in an instant. “Have a care, dead thing,” she scowled. “You exissst only becaussse of ussss. You can be unmade jussst assss easssily.”

  The psi refused to back down, disregarding any notion of bowing to Nausea’s authority. She felt a steely resolve growing, tired of being manipulated and lorded over by the witch and her sibling, of being a servant to Sidney’s tyranny. The two
locked stares, and Cafferly once again felt Nausea insistently probing her mind, trying to get past her mental wall.

  “Are you with usss, ssssisster?” Nausea rasped. “Have you truly embraced what it isss to become one of Death’s crusssaderssss?” Her brow twitched ever so slightly as if she’d just realised something. “Becaussse I don’t think you are, are you? I don’t think you’re a hundred per cent committed.”

  “Why did Mortis choose me for the trial? It wasn’t random, was it?”

  “I think you know already. It ssseemsss it brought you here, to the Academy, for anssswersss.”

  “There was something in my past.” She held up the file, and paper and photographs slid out, pooling at her feet. That sullen-faced girl looked up at her from the floor. “I keep getting flashes, sense-memories, like the amplifier unlocked them. You and Mortis, you knew that would happen, didn’t you? That’s why I was the subject. You wanted to see what the effect would be.”

  “You were an aberration, my dear.”

  “An aberration?”

  “A rare inssstance where the Dead Fluidssss didn’t remove the ssself. Your old wretched humanity wassss trying to reassssert itsssself. You were caught between two ssstatesss.”