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Superworlds - Prologue - The Hands of Death
🕑 Added 2023-06-09 13:45:53 +0000 UTCIn his death chamber, Tse stood unobserved. The room was stark and windowless – circular and lined with white square tiles, devoid of feature, with an open space in the centre where once might have stood a one-man bed. Tse had requested to die standing, and the lack of restraints was not unusual, given his composure and lack of resistance or escape attempts thus far. Yet as he turned, still restrained by his straitjacket, his eyes fell upon the sole object occupying the room, and for the first time since he had awoken this morning a soft exclamation fell from the hitman’s lips.
*
Alone at his place of execution, Cyrus Corbin began to stir. His lips curled into a snarl, his eyes struggled open, and a mumbled slurry of swear words began trickling from his tongue. He ground his jaw, his mouth dry, and blinked as the world slowly returned to focus beneath his hazy, blurry eyes. Cyrus grunted, straining against what felt like lead weights all around him, trying to swing his arms or move his legs and pour fire from his fists. But below his neck he felt nothing. He bared his teeth, looking downwards, taking in the buckled leather restraints, the bands across his paralysed legs and torso. He twisted his neck, starting to shout and howl, to rage towards the two-way mirror and all the jungle‑bloods and bootlip-lovers he knew were watching – but then a moment later his eyes reached what lay in the room’s corner, and he fell abruptly silent.
*
A metal bed, and the body of a Chinese teenager.
*
A steel table, upon which lay a black child.
*
Tse Chi-li stepped cautiously towards the body, his brow furrowed, his footsteps muffled, his arms still taut and bound. But for being dead, the corpse could have been living – the boy’s hair was clean and cut, his lanky limbs loose in a neat if not overlarge black suit, his eyes closed, his hands crossed against his chest. The cheeks and lips had a pallor to them, but Tse could see no sign of injury, of what had caused the teenager’s passing. Yet he knew he was dead, because Tse Chi-li had killed him – had coursed metal worms beneath his skin and through his bones and veins. A nobody, a middleman, some street-kid who had possessed the stupidity, the impertinence to flee with the take after a particularly good week. He had needed to be punished, naturally, and Tse remembered the lines of the boy’s face like he remembered every kill. Remembered how he had screamed while blood poured down his forehead, how he had begged, not that it had done him any good.
It was not the state of the body that perturbed him – bodies were often healed, he knew, prior to internment, for funerary purposes and familial comfort. A trained healer could repair any body, even a dead one, though nothing could return the spark of life once snuffed out. Yet he could not understand what it was doing here. Why this one? It had not been his most recent kill, nor his most notorious. Perhaps the youngest… but at that moment the door on the other side of the room opened, and Tse Chi‑li turned to look.
*
Cyrus Corbin stared at the dead baby, his mouth hanging slightly open, still unable to move from the neck down. If it hadn’t clearly been dead, the kid could have been alive – its skin clear, its eyes closed, with chubby cheeks and chubby thighs. Its negro skin was pale and ashen and it wore nothing but a diaper, but Cyrus couldn’t see what’d killed it – just that it was dead, clearly. He had no idea whose the baby was – he had never seen it before in his life.
“What is this, one last present?!” he shouted. Cyrus strained his neck against the gurney, glaring at the mirror out to the hall. “This supposed to make me feel bad?! Some dead baboon?! You think this ain’t a good start?!” There was no response. Almost without wanting to, Cyrus’ gaze drew back to the baby. Why the hell was it- wait. From the bus? Nah. It couldn’t be. But as Cyrus stared and, for the first time, maybe, reflected, the door on the far side of the room opened, and the murderer’s head turned.
*
A young man stepped into Tse Chi-li’s chamber. Maybe a hundred and seventy-five centimetres tall, with cropped black hair and an egg-shaped face, he wore a pure white suit over a black satin shirt. His gaze was downcast as he walked into the room, and he did not raise it to meet Tse Chi-li’s eyes.
*
A Chinese guy stepped into Cyrus Corbin’s chamber. Five foot nine, maybe twenty-something, with Asian skin, Asian hair and Asian eyes, he wore a sleek black suit, a white shirt and no tie. He glanced around the room, taking in Cyrus and the baby – and he lingered there, on the child, for a few seconds, before he turned and looked the white man dead on.
*
“Are you my executioner?” Tse queried in Cantonese. The white-suited man did not respond, continuing to avert his gaze. Tse felt a sudden flare of irritation. “Show respect when I speak to you. Be quick if you are to do this. I deserve an honourable death.”
The silent young man said nothing, his eyes continuing not to leave the ground. Tse Chi-li glared and took a step towards him. The boy did not move, nor flare with any display of powers.
“What is this silence? Are you a telepath, come to pry my secrets? That was not our arrangement.” He took another step forward. “You will steal nothing from me, dog. My will is iron. My knowledge travels with me to the grave.”
It was not clear if his words were having any effect – yet as he spoke the young man’s head turned, not towards Tse but to the stainless-steel mortician’s bed upon which the teenager’s body lay. After a few seconds of hesitation, the white-suited man walked over and, still without a word and without looking at Tse, placed his bare hands upon the corpse’s arm.
A moment passed – then another.
And then with a sudden gasp, the body stirred.
“Uuh,” it mumbled, and as Tse stood frozen, rooted to the spot, colour began to flow back through the dead man’s limbs, a trickle of movement like warm water slipping beneath spring ice. Tse Chi-li stared as the boy’s fingers twitched – as his eyelids fluttered – as his lips moved.
“No…” the corpse murmured, shifting on the table ever so slightly, “No…”
His movements were slow, his words slurred, his eyes unfocused. But there was no escaping it. There was no denying what had just occurred.
The dead boy was alive.
“Impossible…” Tse whispered. Without realising it, he’d taken a step backward. “Impossible…”
The white-suited man released his hand from around the dead teenager’s arm and turned silently away. With Tse Chi-Li’s victim still mumbling on its gurney, the man in white walked back across the room and pulled open the door from whence he’d came. And it was only here, at this final moment – for the briefest, fleeting second – that he turned and met the prisoner’s gaze.
“I don’t understand,” Tse murmured. His pale eyes, normally so cold and unwavering, stared at the young man, shimmering with shock. The white-suited figure gave no answer – merely turned and closed the door, leaving the killer and his living victim alone.
A second passed, and then another.
“I don’t understand,” Tse Chi-li whispered again. He turned back to the table and took an unconscious step towards the stirring teenager, his own body trembling, his hands still bound. “I don’t-”
And without pain or warning, without another sound, Tse Chi-li dropped dead.
*
“Who the hell are you?” Cyrus demanded. He struggled again to break free, to unleash fire and incinerate this mongrel, but neither Cyrus’s arms nor legs nor his powers seemed to be working. The Chinese man said nothing, glaring at Cyrus with unconcealed contempt. The prisoner stopped struggling and sneered.
“You wanna go, you slant-eyed ape? You want a piece? You cut me loose and I’ll wipe that look off your flat face, you inbred yellow-”
The Chinese man unclipped the press-studs sealing together the wrists of his long sleeves, freeing the base of his black leather gloves. Without looking down or breaking his stare he pulled one hand free from the gloves, then the other. His long, pale fingers flexed beneath the artificial light.
“Don’t you touch me, you filthy gook,” Cyrus Corbin swore, “Don’t you dare. I’m Aryan Brotherhood, you lay a finger on me and I’ll‑”
The stranger stepped over to his gurney and placed his bare hands on the prisoner’s flesh. And without another word, without warning or resistance, Cyrus Corbin simply died.
Suddenly, the chamber fell silent. The prisoner’s bald head drooped, his eyes lolling open, a thin chain of saliva beginning to spindle down his chin. Beyond the two-way mirror, the gathering crowd fell into a hush. The young man stepped away from the body, then reached into his suit’s breast pocket and removed a pair of black latex gloves. He pulled them over his hands, then put his leather gloves back on over the top of them, then sealed both pairs beneath the sleeves of his shirt and re-did the press-studs. The executioner turned and looked at the mirror, gave a single, silent nod, then walked from the room without uttering a sound.
A second passed, and then another.
All was quiet.
And then in the corner of the room, on the stainless-steel table, the baby began to cry.
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