Simon Green - Just Another Judgement Day

Joan Taylor looked far more dangerous. Simply standing there, with no obvious weapons, she looked entirely calm and confident. I hadn’t realised how disconcerting that could be. It was strange, looking into her face and seeing so many similarities. I could see myself in her. Her gaze was cool and mocking, her smile an open insult. Take your best shot, everything about her seemed to be saying. We both know it’s not going to be good enough.

“So,” I said, making sure the words came out clear and casual, despite my smashed mouth. “My evil twin. I suppose it had to happen, eventually.”

“Hardly,” Joan said easily. “You and I are the perfect example of the only child. Self-sufficient, self-taught, a legend in our own lifetime by our own efforts. Was your mother . . . ?”

“Yes. Did you . . . ?”

“Yes.” Her smiled widened. “And I made her beg before I killed her.”

I smiled. “We’re not even remotely alike. My partner is a professional. Yours is a psychopath.”

“Perhaps,” said Joan. “But he’s my psychopath.”

Stephen Shooter giggled suddenly. A brief, disturbing sound. “It’s true, it’s true. I do enjoy my work. That’s why I’m so good at it. Practice makes perfect.”

“You talk too much,” said Suzie.

“How did the two of you end up here?” I said, before things could get out of hand. I needed to keep Joan talking, buy myself some time, because I was counting on there being one major difference between us and them.

“We made the old home-town a touch too hot for us,” Joan said coyly. “We’d spent years together as soldiers for hire, professional trouble-shooters, whatever euphemism floats your boat, but we made the mistake of taking out a very well-connected functionary called Walker. It was all his fault. Stupid old man, thinking he could tell us who we could and couldn’t kill. We’d have done him for the fun of it, but luckily he had an awful lot of enemies . . . Stephen blew him in half with his shotgun, and we laughed about it all the way home. But it turned out Walker also had friends, rich and powerful friends, and, just like that, no-one loved us any more. So when the Baron very kindly offered us a regular gig and a guaranteed new start . . .”

“We killed a whole bunch of people, settled some old scores, burned down half the town, and escaped here before anyone knew we were gone,” said Stephen. He was grinning, a loose, crafty smile with far too many teeth in it.

“We’ve been here for ages,” said Joan Taylor. “Doing all sorts of things you wouldn’t approve of. You’ll probably take the blame for a lot of them. Everyone knows about you, but no-one knows about us. Though I can’t say I believe half the things they say about you.”

“Goody Goody Two-shoes,” said Stephen.

“Any chance we can make a deal?” I said.

Joan raised an eyebrow. “Would you?”

“No,” I said. “Your very existence offends me.”

I lunged forward and punched her right in the face. She fell backwards, sprawling awkwardly on the floor. She hadn’t even had the time to take her hands out of her pockets. I looked round, and Suzie had already taken her shotgun away from Shooter and back-elbowed him in the throat. I grinned. Sometime back, Suzie and I had both received werewolf blood, diluted enough that we were in no danger of turning were, but still potent enough that we healed really quickly. My aches were already fading away. I looked down at Joan Taylor and smiled as she scrambled angrily back on to her feet.

We stood facing each other, hands clenched into fists at our sides as we concentrated, both of us calling on our gifts. I opened my inner eye, my third eye, and studied her coldly, searching for some gap in her defences, something I could use against her. I could feel her doing the same thing. Strange energies flickered on and off in the air between us, a tension of unseen forces building and building until they had to explode somewhere. My gift versus hers. It was like arm-wrestling with invisible, intangible arms.

I was vaguely aware of all hell breaking loose in the hospital ward, as Suzie and Stephen went head to head. Shotgun blasts were going off all over the place, accompanied by the roar of grenades. Beds overturned, and patients were thrown out, disconnected from their supporting tech. Dark smoke drifted across the ward as equipment caught fire.

I couldn’t let this go on. We were too evenly matched with our duplicates, and too many innocents were getting hurt. So I found a slippery patch under Joan’s left foot, let her stumble and lose her concentration for a moment, then I yelled to Suzie.

“Hey, Suzie! Switch partners and dance!”

She grasped the idea immediately and turned her shotgun on Joan Taylor. And while Stephen Shooter hesitated, I used my gift to find the one pin that wasn’t secure in his grenades. It popped out, Stephen glanced down, and there was a swift series of explosions, as the one grenade set off all the others. Small parts of Stephen Shooter went flying all over the hospital ward in a soft, pattering, crimson rain. Behind me there was the single blast of a shotgun, and when I looked round Joan Taylor was lying flat on her back, without a head. She probably wasted time trying to find a way to stop Suzie, the fool. No-one stops Suzie Shooter.

“They were good,” I said. “But they weren’t us. They hadn’t been hardened and refined by life in the Nightside.”

“They weren’t us,” Suzie agreed. She came over to me and looked closely at my face. “You took a hell of a beating.”

“So did you. Thank the good Lord for werewolf blood.”

“But you still tried to get to me, to protect me. I saw you. I didn’t even think to do that for you. You’ve always been better than me, John.”

“Forgive me?” I said.

She smiled briefly. “Well, just this once.” She looked at Joan’s headless body. “I’ve never cared for cheap knock-offs.”

“Our dark sides,” I said.

“Well, darker,” said Suzie.

I considered the point. “Do you suppose . . . there might be better versions of us, somewhere? In some other world? More saintly selves?”

“You’re creeping me out now,” said Suzie. “Let’s go find the Baron and shut him down.”

“First things first,” I said. “I’ve had enough of this place. No more suffering innocents. Not on my watch.”

I raised my gift again, and studied the whole ward through my inner eye, until I could See the connection the Baron had forged with his science and his voodoo, between the patients in their beds and their more fortunate duplicates in the Nightside. A whole series of shimmering silver chains, rising from every patient and plunging through the ceiling. And having found them, it was the easiest thing in the world for me to break the weakest of the chains, with the slightest mental touch. Pushed out of its awful balance, the whole system collapsed, the shimmering chains snapping out of existence in a moment. The patients in their beds cried out with a single great voice, as all the traces of age and surgery and hard living disappeared; and, just like that, they were young and perfect again. They didn’t wake up, which was probably as well. Let Walker send some people down to help them, and hopefully get them home again.

Suzie and I had other business.

I considered what must be happening, in all the best clubs and bars and parlours in the Nightside above, as rich and powerful faces were suddenly struck down with years, and the many results of debauchery and surgical choices. I visualised them screaming in pain and shock and horror as they all finally assumed their real faces. What better revenge could there be?

“You’re smiling that smile again,” said Suzie. “That I’ve just done something really nasty and utterly justified and no-one’s ever going to be able to pin it on me smile.”