The Supernaturalist Part 3

Stefan nodded at Ditto. 'OK, we take him. He's a Spotter.'

The Spanish girl examined the cuffs. 'OK, Stefan. Gimme a minute.'

'A second, Mona. We can spare a second.'

Mona picked a clip from her hair, jiggling it expertly in the cuff's lock. In slightly more than a second, Ziplock's wrist was free, not that it was any good to him now.

Stefan hoisted Cosmo on to his shoulder.

'Let's go. We can open the other cuff at the warehouse.'

Cosmo hung there like a side of meat. He could have spoken then, asked a few more questions. But he didn't, afraid that if he pestered this tall young man, they would decide not to take him wherever it was that they were going. And anywhere was better than the Clarissa Frayne Inst.i.tute for Parentally Challenged Boys.Cosmo's brain decided that there was no room for this new feeling of relief and shut him down for repairs.

CHAPTER 2:

SPOTTER.

The smell woke Cosmo. The bitter, pungent aroma of a nearby sim-coffee pot had set his nostrils twitching. And even though the smell was not unpleasant, it was too much for his raw senses. Everything made the headache worse. The rasp of material, the light hammering on his eyelids and now this smell. 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.

'OK, 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 a.s.sault tanks. When your skin heals up, Ditto says you'll be able to headb.u.t.t 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s like wet oil paint down a canvas.

Cosmo woke again about five seconds later, or so it seemed. But that couldn't be right because the halogen strip lights were on, and m.u.f.fled stars poked through the smog beyond old-fas.h.i.+oned hanging curtains. Not many people used curtains any more; generally, react-to-light gla.s.s came with the building.

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 n.o.body 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 gla.s.s 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-s.p.a.ced, 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 makes.h.i.+ft 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.'

One of the warehouse windows faced across the river towards Satellite City's famous downtown skyline, dominated by the cylindrical Myis.h.i.+ Tower. The Cuzzy Cola building fizzed from across the bay, its walls animated by computer-generated rising bubbles. And a red light winked in the Statue of Endeavour's stone hand, an eight- hundred-foot colossus, pointing at the Satellite overhead.

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 pa.s.sing. 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's hosts seemed to go from one crisis to the next. He had barely latched the window behind him when they burst through the elevator's grille, bearing a shopping trolley before them. Mona was folded into the trolley. Her skin had a greenish tinge and she was s.h.i.+vering violently.

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 gla.s.s. 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 n.o.body 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.'