Mutant City

The Farm

This book is for all the ‘freaks’ out there.

You know who you are. SF

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BEFORE

The raiding party comprised only seven individuals: six mutants and the ‘Pure’ insider who’d planned the incursion. They hurried down the corridor that led to the research facility, stepping over the uniformed bodies of the guards that lay on the floor. The small canisters of powerful nerve gas they’d used to incapacitate those in charge of this place – pumping it in through the air-conditioning system – had worked better than any of them had expected, and they now stood before a huge steel door, sweating behind their awkward gas masks. The man closest to the door slid a key card into a small metal box on the wall. When he tapped in today’s security code and held his thumb over the scanner, he was rewarded with the noise of automated locks disengaging.

The seven stepped through this door, squeezing into a decontamination chamber on the other side. From here, they were able to pass through a second door and enter the top-secret facility beyond.

The air supply in the lab came from a separate system to that in the rest of the facility, and they could finally remove their masks and look around them properly. Steel benches crammed with high-tech equipment lined the walls, but their eyes were immediately drawn to the huge glass tank that took up most of the centre of the room. 

Inside, suspended in a murky yellow liquid to keep it preserved, were the remains of a grotesque humanoid fi gure. Long dead now, it was almost unrecognisable as a man; its limbs and body were bent and contorted, as if they had been incorrectly attached by some sick and twisted creator. A huge, deformed head with large bulging eyes stared sightlessly back at them through the glass. 

‘What is that thing?’ the woman named Maw asked.

‘The mutant they found in the Blacklands,’ Silas answered. As the insider responsible for getting them all into this place, he had seen the preserving tank many times. Nonetheless, he was still horrified by it. ‘That poor, unfortunate wretch is the reason we’re all here today.’

A noise from behind a door set into the far wall silenced them. It was the unmistakable sound of a small child crying out.

‘Let’s get a move on,’ said Silas. ‘We don’t have much time before the effect of the gas wears off.’

Another keypad, another door. This time, as it swung open, they halted on the threshold to take in what lay beyond.

The nursery was a harshly lit, featureless room containing three aluminium cots and, at the far end, two beds. Beside these were small wheeled trolleys, vials, syringes and other medical paraphernalia neatly arranged on each one. There were two cameras mounted in opposite corners of the room. Motion-activated, they now swung towards the door and the intruders, the whine of their servo-motors just recognisable over the hum of the air-con. The men who usually monitored the images from these cameras would not be raising any alarms. Like the rest of the workers on the facility, they were out cold.

The children, none of whom was asleep despite the late hour, stared back at the strangers, almost as if they had been expecting them. There were three in the cots, all around two years old, maybe a little more. The other two were older. One, an albino, appeared to be about six; the other was perhaps four years older. Unlike the toddlers, these two were secured into their beds by leather straps around their wrists and ankles. Silas hurried over to one of these beds, motioning Maw towards the other. He quickly undid the restraints and helped the albino boy to stand up. Already tall and lanky for his age, the young mutant’s skin was the colour of milk. He looked back at the man through eyes of the palest blue imaginable.