Dead Rising [complete]

[Jane]

At first it had taken much longer. Her first 'regeneration sequence' had taken four days, and she'd woken up in a coffin. Over the years her mutation had strengthened, and a usual sequence took only the same amount of time as a regular night's sleep.

Jane opened her eyes, her skin crusty with dried blood, and slowly started to move. She was covered with a heavy blanket on a mattress that crinkled from the plastic that protected it from any liquids. Her head pounded and her mouth was dry, but once her thoughts caught up with her body she reached down and felt her legs.

She wiggled her toes, and then threw back the blanket. Her pants were severed and bloody at mid thigh, but her legs extended pink and clean past where they had been cut off...the night before?

Jane propped herself up on an elbow, and spotted Mute sitting nearby. "How long -" she cleared her dry throat, "How long was I out?"

[The Brotherhood]

"Aww, look who's up from her beauty sleep!"

A thin, gangly young man with a somewhat rodentlike face spun to face her in a beaten old task chair. Behind him on a folding table was what could best be described as a rat's nest of electronics - circuit boards cannibalized from from a dozen different machines and networked together in ways no computer engineer could ever have intended. Tron grinned at Jane, his fingers still working at twitch-reflex speeds on the 4G wireless card he carried around with him everywhere he went.

"You're a fucking zombie messiah. Three days in the grave and you rise up again to hear the singing of the heavenly angels. Gotta say, you look a hell of a lot better now than when Mute brought you in, Chief."

[Mute]

While Tron spoke, Mute rose out of his seat and left from the room. Moments later, he reappeared with a glass of water and handed it to Zombie. Apart from the blood and the dirt, she was a picture of good health, which meant that - just this once - their resident technowizard wasn't blowing hyperbole: that kind of mutation went beyond science, it was miraculous. In his hand was a sleek smart phone, at which he thumbed furiously, then he looked up as the voice of Microsoft Sam came from its loudspeaker. Mute couldn't surpress his grin.

"I burned your old legs in a trash can, but don't worry, I managed to save your boots."

[Jane]

She accepted the water and drank greedily, nodding at Mute's statement. She'd lost most of one arm before, but she had never experienced, nor recovered from, a double leg amputation. Three days was long for one of her 'death comas' as Geryon referred to them, but to come out of it with two perfectly good legs was... a relief.

Jane drained the glass and set it on the floor, rubbing a hand down her bare shin. "Thank you," she said after a moment. "If that dickhead cost me my boots I'd be really pissed off."

[Mute]

The smile faded. Pleased as he was with the new phone app Tron had created for him, Mute recognised the discussion was about to take a serious turn, and after considering at length the possibilities with Tron, he was now ready, and eager, to hear the truth. Zombie was an out-and-out badass, but someone did a serious number on her, and that was a real cause for concern. He glanced at his phone for a second.

"What happened?"

[Jane]

She leaned back against the wall, her legs stretching out in front of her. "Someone tried to tranq me, and when that failed things got ugly." Jane rubbed her shoulder with the memory. "Guy in some sort of black armor, sword, red light on his helmet."

She looked at Mute, who's body language had changed. "What is it? Do you know who I'm talking about? Seemed like he was specifically hunting mutants for blood samples."

[Mute]

For three days, he'd waited by her bedside with only his thoughts for company. One thought. One small niggling doubt. It took root in the back of his mind the night he found her, and it turned, and wriggled, slowly driving him to madness. It was the cut. Clean. So mercilessly clean. Even then, as he drove away from the hardware store, he knew. In his racing heart, pounding like it wanted to escape his chest, he knew - even if his head didn't want to admit it. And now everything Zombie said confirmed his worst fears - the tranquilizers, the armour, the sword, and that fucking red eye... it was back, and it was out there.

He realised Zombie was looking at him, speaking to him even, and for once he was glad he had no voice. It felt like there was a hand, cold like steel, closing around his neck. He swallowed hard and lowered his gaze to the phone in his hand, slowly keying in a few hesitant words. This time, the mechanical sound of Microsoft Sam did not make him smile.

"It attacked me, too."

[Jane]

She admittedly didn't know Mute all that well - the silent mutant kept to himself for the most part. Still, she knew that he usually carried himself in a confident manner... and right now he seemed afraid.

Jane looked at Tron, then back to Mute. "When? Where?" She frowned, thinking. How many others had this guy attacked? And to what end?

[Mute]

"A month ago. After a job, taking out some small fry gangbanger, I got jumped by that thing."

The fortunate thing about not being able to speak was, that at times like this, he could choose his words wisely. There were things about the attack that didn't make sense, it raised questions, and Mute wasn't ready to answer them. But there was one who could...

"I'm lucky to be alive."

[Jane]

Jane nodded, "And he left me to die." She turned to look at Tron, her light blue eyes piercing.

"Are there any mutant attacks or deaths in the LA area that fit this guy's MO? Tranqs, blood draws... Sword? If we can figure out where and when this guy is hunting then we can take this douchebag down."

[The Brotherhood]

Tron's bravado evaporated as Zombie and Mute conversed. He'd always served a support role for the Brotherhood, and he had the physique to prove it. Anything that could put a pair of front-line mutants on the sidelines was reason enough to stay in the Brotherhood hideout with all the doors and windows locked.

"Um... well..." His eyes juddered as he ran some queries to the database he'd been assembling - newspapers, police blotters, blogs, legal records, even patient reports from hospitals he'd hacked. "Nothing about a sword or armor. There've been a few unexplained attacks, but none of the victims ever saw the guy."

He knew they wouldn't be satisfied with that, and he pulled up some details. "It's all pretty sketchy. Three people filed police reports, two contacted us directly. One guy checked himself into a hospital, he didn't even know he was a mutant until they told him. But they've all got the same MO. Walkin' alone, they feel a stick in the back of the neck, and they're out before they hit the ground. They wake up a few minutes later on the side of the street. Nothing stolen, no injuries except a pinprick. If this is the same guy, you two are the only ones to put up a fight. That we know about, anyway."

[Mute]

Mute hunched forward in his chair and stared at the floor, hands clasped tight around his favourite new gadget. Tron's report only fed his frustration, so he kept his head bowed, avoiding eye-contact with Zombie, who seemed to have a knack for reading people. His battle with that thing was burnt into his memory, and except for a temporary blackout, he remembered every detail. And it was nothing like the accounts from Zombie and his other victims. He cast her a scrutinizing look.

"How do you know he only wanted a blood sample?"

[Jane]

"He said as much," Jane said, raking her fingers through her hair. "Look, I need a shower. Tron, mark those incidents you were talking about on a map. And... find out what the powers are of the mutants who were knocked out."

She heaved herself to her feet and stalked off to the bathrooms. The building they were occupying was an empty office building (rented through a shell corporation), and there were three showers in the Women's. Jane turned one on as hot as she could stand it, stripped off what was left of her clothes and stepped under the spray.

Why did this asshole go all out on Mute a month ago, and then her last night? Because the tranqs didn't work on their physiology? Because she'd been pissed off and fought back? Jane generously applied soap to her bloodstained skin, rubbing the worn down bar of Zest through her short hair. No matter his reasons, he'd picked the wrong woman to kill.

[The Brotherhood]

"Fuck," Tron muttered. "What, gangs and Jericho and the fascist government isn't enough, now we've got cyborg vampires with ninja swords, too?"

He spun back to face his desk and switched on the monitor sitting next to his monstrosity of a computer build. Data and images flashed across the monitor faster than any human eye could follow. "That's the same asshole we tangled with in London, isn't it?" Tron said. "Black armor, one red eye... Arsenal said he was a cold son of a bitch, and that's sayin' something coming from him."

Names started flying onto the screen, each with a corresponding point on a satellite map of Los Angeles:

Lohr, Wanda
Age: 32 Mutation: Acid glands

Cuomo, Justin
Age: 19 Mutation: Dark vision and retractable claws

Cordero, Roland
Age: 34 Mutation: Enhanced strength and endurance

Pike, Amy
Age: 16 Mutation: Illusory clones

McCan, June
Age: 25 Mutation: Empathic sense/projection

Hassan, Louis
Age: 31 Mutation: Unconfirmed mental abilities

[Mute]

"I don't think he was after blood samples in London."

It was difficult to make any sense of the flurry of information blinking all over Tron's computer screen. Mute hovered next to him, and watched, waiting for something to make sense. And then the map appeared, marked with attack sites from all over Los Angeles, and something clicked. He leaned closer, scrutinising each location, his finger tracing lines from one spot on the monitor to the another. Until at last it came to a stop over June McCan. His free hand fumbled with his celphone.

"First attack."

And after a moment of hesitation he pointed at the spot marked Roland Cordero, and glanced at Tron.

"Last attack."

The scrawny technomancer gave him an uncertain nod. He returned his attention to the screen with a newfound sense of understanding, it was like if he squinted his eyes he could almost see the movements of their mysterious attacker on the image in front of him. Adrift in a sea of unanswered questions, he found something that made sense, and he clung to it. A dark thought occured to him.

"How long ago was the June McCan incident?"

[The Brotherhood]

"Umm, May 28th?" Tron said. "Yeah, so, bit less than a month ago. Not too long after he tangled with you."

The mutant hacker shook his head. "But blood samples? That doesn't make sense. I mean, sure, if he's looking for genetic material, but we always figured he was a government agent. MRA's gonna give them all the genetic samples they could ever want."

[Jane]

Feeling a little more human, or perhaps a little more than human, Jane toweled off her hair and left the wet towel hanging over the shower door. She walked barefoot down the industrial carpeting that the entire level had been covered with - a blue gray that probably served to lower the imagination of whatever workers had once inhabited the warren of cubicles in the huge main room.

She hitched up the red basketball shorts she was wearing, and tightened the drawstring before entering the office where Tron and Mute were bent over Tron's mega-computer. Catching the tail end of Tron's comment, she said, "He could be a government agent?"

"Well, that's what we thought. Ran across him in London a few years ago." Tron didn't turn away from his displays.

"Guess I should read the report on that mission," Jane said, scratching her shoulder just underneath her wifebeater tank top. "This what I asked for?" she added, standing behind Tron and looking over his other shoulder when he answered in the afirmative.

[Mute]

"Maybe it doesn't work for the govenment anymore."

Mute turned to his comrades and offered them a clueless shrug, but inwardly, he clung to the idea. The night of the attack, he saw that thing undergo a dramatic change, and it was inexplicable. He remembered how its featureless face started to produce that mangled, snarling voice; a gross immitation of humanity in a mechanical man. Except it was not a man, but a thing, an it.

"What about abductions?"

[The Brotherhood]

"Well, see, that's actually what we used to know him for," Tron said. With a few more flickers of his eyes, he pulled up another file in a separate window from the map of LA. This one was a list of thirteen names with varying levels of information - photographs, places of residence, contacts, known mutations. The latest entry was Virginia "Vigilante" Hayes, New York City, September 16, 2006.

"Our old pal psycho-lops made his debut capturing mutants for a government spook agency called Vanguard. Real secretive black-ops shit. Best we could figure, it was all part of the mutagen project."

He turned to find himself facing two blank stares.

"Aw, come on, don't you two read intelligence briefs?" Tron sighed pulled up the requisite files, which sprinkled the screen with chemical and genetic diagrams. "Mutagen is a retrovirus serum that can augment a mundane's genome. Mostly physical enhancements - strength, endurance, sharper senses, that sort of thing. Vanguard has been passing this stuff out to anti-mutant security forces to try to even the odds, been a pain in the ass for us. Anyway, mutagen was engineered from the X-genes of these thirteen mutants, some reason they needed these particular mutations to make it work."

He shrugged. "I dunno... maybe he's going for another round?"

[Jane]

Jane skimmed the information on the screens as quickly as she could, but she could never hope to come close to how fast Tron digested the data. "Unlikely."

Mute looked at her questioningly, and she added, "He didn't know what my mutation was. Even asked if I was a shapeshifter." She rubbed her arms as the AC kicked on. "He kept going on about how fighting made him feel alive. No, that's not quite right.

"He said it helped him pretend he was alive." Jane shrugged. "Whatever the hell that means."

[Mute]

"Because it's a machine, not a person."

Mute wore an indignant expression as his message played. His mind had been elsewhere when Jane's voice snapped him out of it. And now his thoughts returned to Tron's string of revelations. Vanguard. The name struck a chord, stirring memories like sediment in the murky recesses of his mind. It was the phantom enemy of the Brotherhood, and of all free mutants, but never before had it occured to him that the cyclopean cyborg was in anyway affiliated with it. There was some sense in that, in fact it was almost obvious, and brought him absolutely no comfort.

Then there was mutagen and Vanguard's mutagen-powered hitmen. Somehow Mute felt this was more the stuff of bedtime stories, falling into the category of paranoid science fiction and government bogeymen, with little cause for concern. Until he encountered one of these super-soldiers, he figured that one could be filed safely under "Extremist Propaganda". While deep in his thoughts, a name jumped out at him from the screen, and just as quickly vanished. Pressing forward, he tapped the "Vigilante" file with no small degree of urgency.

[The Brotherhood]

"Okay, okay, keep your pants on," Tron said, and the file on Ginny Hayes expanded on the monitor. "Good thing this isn't a touchscreen, or I could feel that..."

The new window displayed a photograph, vital stats, and some snatches of a US military service record, plus the notes the Brotherhood had taken on her from most recent to most remote. "Last we heard, Vigilante was living up to her name, doing some fact-finding on Vanguard. Saladin had tipped her off that they were the ones who abducted her. That's the only official contact we've ever had with her... the only reason we knew she was kidnapped was some street kid called it in. Uhh... here's the name, Aimee Connors."

On a whim, Tron pulled up another file, displaying a photo of a young, teenaged girl with purple skin and yellow eyes.

[Jane]

Jane ran a hand through her damp hair, pulling up a second office chair and taking a seat where she could still see the screens. "That says her current address is - Redencion House." They had done partial background checks on all of the young mutants at the House while Mute had been living there a few months previously.

"Now that is interesting," she said, turning her gaze on Mute. "Do you know her?"

[Mute]

Mute answered Jane with a nod, thumbing a message onto his phone:

"Quiet girl. Doesn't talk about her past. It's going to be difficult getting her to talk, but she might know something about Vanguard."

It was a lead, at least. And the way he saw it, they had nothing to lose by approaching the girl. He recognised in Zombie's eyes the slow-simmering hunger for vengeance, and knew it wouldn't be difficult convincing her to go along with such plans, as long as they directed her towards her infamous Dickhead.

"Maybe she is in contact with Vigilante. Whatever it takes to find this bastard."

[The Brotherhood]

"Well, good luck," Tron said, just about as earnestly as he ever said anything. "The sooner you put this creep on ice, the sooner I can breathe easy. Well... except for the gangs who want to kill us. And the mutagenic super soldiers. And the paranoid government. And gene traitors, and..."

Tron scooted up out of his seat and pointed to the door. "I'm, uh... I'm going to get myself a light drink. Be right back."

[Jane]

Jane watched Tron leave, and then heaved herself up out of the chair. Walking back to the plain mattress where she'd been lying for the last three days, she began bundling up the bloody blanket. "Stinks like death in here," she muttered, irritated.

There were five pine tree air fresheners scattered on top of the blanket, and one of them skittered away towards Mute as she folded it up. "I hate cleaning this shit up."

[Mute]

"You think this is bad? Try three days of putting up with your post-fatality flatulence."

He retrieved the air freshener and pressed it to his nose to take a long dramatic sniff. After tossing it back to Jane, he closed the distance between them, and placed a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

"If we're serious about beating this thing, we need to weaponize that shit, seriously."

[Jane]

"Next time we'll trick him into dragging away my body and then I'll surprise him." She looked up at Mute, and grinned.

"Next time. I like the sound of that. With both of us at the same time... we could take that fucker down."