James Axler - Janus Trap

There had been explosions and blasterfire, and a smoking canister had almost exploded in his face. After that it was all lost; he couldn’t remember anything.

“How’s the newbie?” Kane asked, recalling the rookie’s name at last. “McKinnon?”

The psychiatrist looked at him, his expression the well-rehearsed mask of sympathy that every psychiatrist on Cappa Level had been trained to employ in such situations. “I’m afraid Magistrate McKinnon died,” he said, holding Kane’s gaze.

As he lay back on the couch, Kane’s eyes wandered around the room once more. Despite the relative safety of the surroundings, his point-man sense was alert. He felt as if he was being watched, and not just by the psychiatrist who sat patiently beside him. There, in the far corner of the ceiling, a little black blister, no bigger than his hand, contained a surveillance camera. You were never truly alone in Cobaltville, he remembered.

“What about my partner?” he asked, still looking at the surveillance blister. “What about Grant?”

“He was still in surgery when you came in here,” the shrink said. “Would you like me to go check?”

Something was wrong, Kane knew. Some instinct deep inside him felt unsettled. Maybe the gas attack had affected him, just as the psychiatrist had said. And what was this Cerberus that the man had been speaking about? The name seemed familiar and, even as he thought of it, an image flashed in his mind: a woman’s face, her porcelain skin beautiful and clear, her hair a flowing tumble of red curls, her glowing eyes like twin emeralds reflecting flame.

“That’s okay,” Kane said, pushing himself up from the couch and smoothing back his dark hair, gathering his thoughts.

Beside him, the shrink checked his wrist chron. “We still have almost twenty minutes before the session is over, Magistrate Kane,” he announced as Kane stood.

Kane looked at him, standing in the dark T-shirt and combat pants of an off-duty Mag, the muscles of his tanned arms flexing as feeling returned to them. He felt as though he had been sleeping and was only now awakening. “I think I’m going to skip out of this one,” he explained. “You’ve been a great help. I’m better now.”

The psychiatrist looked about to complain, but Kane stared through him before placing the dark-lensed glasses over his eyes, becoming an emotionless Magistrate once more. The whole culture of the Magistrate system was built upon intimidation; everything they did, the way they dressed, the way that they carried themselves—even when off duty—was designed to instill fear in the people around them. They were the last bastions of order in a world that had tipped close to utter chaos, and their authority was absolute, their judgment incontestable.

The psychiatrist stood up, and Kane could see the little beads of sweat forming on his brow as he peered into Kane’s dark lenses. “Well, I wouldn’t wish to waste any of your precious time, Magistrate,” he said in a shaky voice, visibly cowering before the larger man.

“No,” Kane agreed, shucking into his regulation black, ankle-length, Kevlar-weave overcoat, the familiar red shield of office attached to the lapel, “I’m sure you wouldn’t. Good day to you, psychiatrist.”

“G-good day to you,” the shrink said, rushing in front of Kane to open the door to the office and let him out.

Kane walked along one of the corridors of Cappa Level. Above him, the grand structure of the Administrative Monolith towered high into the sky, brushing the clouds that languished across the Colorado plains. Off to the west, the sun was sinking, a rich orange ball as late afternoon turned to evening.

He thought back to the discussion he had been having with the shrink minutes before. “Cerberus, the hound of Hades,” he muttered. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Before he had time to consider it further, Magistrate Kane found himself standing outside his apartment in the Residential Enclaves, and the aching in his limbs and gnawing at his stomach told him that he needed to get home, prepare some food and get a proper night’s rest. He would check on Grant tomorrow; right now he was dead on his feet.

A SUDDEN JOLT OF PAIN and Grant was awake.

He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t open. He felt so lethargic and yet strangely he was utterly awake.

And the pain. The crazy pain.

It was so intense, so absolute, that it threatened to overwhelm him, consume him. He clenched his fists, holding on to his tenuous grip on wakefulness. Did his fists really clench? He couldn’t tell, couldn’t be sure. No matter now, what really counted was the pain. All that counted was the pain.

He calmed his mind, remembering the techniques they had taught him years before in Magistrate training. A Magistrate is never ruffled, never swayed by emotion.

The pain was in his right leg. High in the leg. A line of pain across the top of the leg, close to his groin.

And the left? The left leg? What did that feel? Was he trapped under something? He felt as though he may have blacked out and had lost his immediate short-term memories. Even in not remembering how this came about, he still recognized the symptom, the feeling of bewilderment.

The pain continued, a blazing sensation that felt so strong across the top of his right leg.

Pain equaled danger, which meant that Grant needed to be awake, needed to find out what the pain was, what was going on. To escape perhaps? To save himself? Perhaps even to save others.

He struggled once more to turn his head and open his eyes. I’m awake, he told himself, but I can’t wake up.

It seemed impossible, but suddenly the pain became worse, went beyond absolute into a whole new level of agony that Grant had never even imagined existed. He felt the muscles of his mouth strain, stretching open, trying to scream, yet no sound would emerge.

And suddenly his eyes were open, assaulted by lights so bright that it stung to look. His vision blurred immediately, salty tears streaming across his eyes, rolling down his cheeks. He struggled, blinking the tears away where he couldn’t move his hands to reach them, and he saw properly for the first time where he was.

Safe.

That was Grant’s first thought when he realized where he lay. He was on his back, bright lights around him, people bustling about in the familiar, starched uniforms of the Cobaltville medical hub. Behind the lights it was hard to see. Everything was lost in comparative darkness, but he could smell the disinfectant, the antibacterial wash. He counted six—no, seven—people in the room with him, reduced to silhouettes by the overhead rig of fierce lights. As Grant watched, he began to discern their features, his eyes getting used to the bright halogen lighting. They were looking at him intensely, with concern and furrowed brows and much muttered, hasty discussion that he couldn’t seem to make out. They were looking at him intensely, but not at his face. They were staring at his legs.

Grant tried to look down the length of his body, to see what had transfixed them, but he found that he couldn’t move, couldn’t make his body react.

The pain in his right leg burned and ached, but he could not see why, could not see what was going on.

Suddenly, one of the doctors, a middle-aged man with a shaved head and vibrant blue eyes, wearing a cotton mask over the bottom half of his features, leaped back from where he stood at the foot of the gurney, and Grant watched as a fountain of blood flew up and splashed over the doctor and the other people there.

The bald surgeon bit out a curse, and Grant saw something glinting in his hand, a whirring blade of some kind, attached to a wire that led to a socket in a portable machine.

Please, Grant thought, please let me know what is going on. And, once again, the salty tears blurred his vision until all he knew were the frantic voices and the sounds of the machines beeping steadily in the far distance.