Judicator Chronicles: Fugitive

By Stephen Landis

It is the year 2096. The age of the nation-state has given way to the age of the corporate-state. On Earth, corporations have created a society that is prosperous, safe, and controlled. Yet mankind is not limited to the mother world, having spread out to incorporated colonies on the moon and the frontier settlements of Mars and the Asteroid Belt.

Life on the frontier is hard and fraught with danger but it is free. Biologically and mechanically augmented adventurers and warriors help keep the independent colonists safe from the many perils of life outside of corporate control, the most legendary of these so-called superheroes are the Judicators, an esteemed order of cunning scientists, shrewd investigators, and transhuman paladins.

Yet this is not their story. It is the story of Mason Smith, an once-ordinary man on the run from a conspiracy with terrifying consequences for the Judicators and the people they protect...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387708307

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Judicator Chronicles: Fugitive

Judicator Chronicles

Fugitive

By Stephen Landis

This novel is dedicated to three people:

To the Witness, may your memory be forever sharp.

To the Victim, know that you are never forgotten.

To the Damned, know that you are never forgiven.

The following is a work of fiction.  All people, organizations, and locations within are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.  Any similarities to real events or people are purely coincidental.

Homecoming

The city of Wilkes-Barre was just like he remembered it, Mason Smith decided as he sat on a wooded hill overlooking the city.  In the valley below him, the bright glow of LED lights and animated signs twinkled to life as the sun began to set on the horizon.  The scrawny brown-haired man sat on an ancient white bench cobbled together out of old plastic seats, watching the city below him from behind a pair of rose-colored shades.  He didn’t know why he thought the city would have changed in the two years since he… went away; Wilkes-Barre resisted pretty much everything that tried to change it.  Many of the buildings were the same weathered stone and concrete buildings that had stood there for at least two centuries now, still standing but worn from decades of neglect.  Even the bench he sat on, a salvaged set of stadium bleachers, had been in the same spot, unchanging for at least a generation as far as anyone knew.  Welcome to Wilkes-Barre in the year 2096.

Greed, violence, corruption, these were as much a part of the city’s beating heart as the Susquehanna River running through it.  Even when the lower city flooded in 2051, turning much of the inner city into a giant lake, nothing changed.  Even when the former Commonwealth of Pennsylvania became part of the incorporated territories of security giant Arcadia Enterprises, nothing changed.  If the city could resist those then the trouble he had gotten himself into would hardly charge anything.  Regardless, he had to come home.  It was stupid to risk it, but he still needed to try and see them one last time….

It was risky coming home after all he had seen but he had to do it.  It had to be done; he’d drive himself crazy if he didn’t come home.  And if he was lucky, maybe he could bring about a couple changes for the better.  If he had the time to change something that is, it was a given that his absence was noticed by now.  You simply don’t just let yourself out of the most secure prison in 2096 AD without causing a small stir involving a few thousand incorporated enforcers to come after you.

Sighing and dusting off his jeans and overcoat, he rose to his feet and walked down the dirt trail to where he hid his electric scooter where the trail met the street.  A mismatched contraption assembled out of a bulbous old gas-powered scooter, the electric motor of an industrial air conditioner, and a Dynamo Motors car battery that someone had left on the side of the road; there was a wealth of parts and materials in yesterday’s trash for those who knew what to look for.  The scooter didn’t look like much but it was the best he could manage with a toolkit consisting of bent metal scraps and his bare hands.  Still, it served its purpose and that was all he needed at the moment.

Setting the jury-rigged machine upright and taking a seat, he quickly coaxed the scooter to life with the flip of a switch.  Soon he was puttering down a cracked asphalt street and onto the main state road running through the eastern half of the city, the familiar scenery racing past him as he zipped along.

State Route 309 had definitely seen better days; even after the invention of smart roads and a dozen other innovations in the world of motor transportation, the local roadway was still riddled with potholes that he had to weave his way around.  Fortunately traffic was light at this time of day, most folks were either home or already at the bars celebrating the first Friday of the month in honor of an old tradition dating back to the days of nation-states and welfare systems.  Even though none of the corporate states supported the notion of paying people to do nothing, not even kind-hearted Epicurean, the people of Wilkes-Barre still found reason to go out, get drunk, and get into brutal brawls about nothing at all.  Mason was glad he wasn’t an employee of Tri-Alliance Healthcare.  To have to deal with that twelve days out of the year on top of everything else would have driven him mad.

Just goes to show that like the highway he drove on, nothing could change the valley, not even incorporation.  Though Arcadia Enterprises certainly deserved credit for trying.  No matter how many times Arcadia had set aside money to rebuild Route 309 from the ground up, the money always seemed to disappear before the project could begin.  The change from petty government bureaucrats to corporate executives had done nothing to change the city’s culture of corruption.  Eventually Arcadia just gave up and focused on using the flooded Susquehanna to send cargo barges up and down the river instead.  Not that the poor road access out of the city mattered that much; people here tended to stay put.  Tended to settle for how things were instead of wondering if things could get better, instead of questioning why things were the way they were.  Mason never knew it was possible to feel so much contempt for complacency until everything went wrong…

The artificial glow of neon signs and LED lights reflected off of his shaded glasses as Mason left the trailer parks and prefabricated neighborhoods of the outer suburbs and drove into the city proper.  Fast-food restaurants advertising the full spectrum of Americana cuisine were plopped down next to strip malls and small insurance offices as he pulled off of 309 and puttered along towards Georgetown.  A tight-knit suburban community on the eastern edge of the city, Mason couldn’t think of many places in the Susquehanna river valley that were better to live in even if the town was just like the rest of Wilkes-Barre.  Beaten down row houses constructed of ancient concrete and brickwork dating back to the 1960’s, hard to believe back then that they knew how to make something that would last a hundred and thirty years, lined the streets and were only broken up by the multipurpose municipal building, the old gas station that somehow managed to stay open, and the shuttered-up two-story brick building that once held Paleman’s library.  Here was where Mason spent much of his formative years… here was home.

The electric motor quieted down to a soft purr as Mason slowed to a stop in front of the one place he had been dreading ever since he arrived at the Wilkes-Barre city limits.  He had arrived home.  Red brick house, concrete basement that opened out into the street, the virtually nonexistent front yard tilled over and turned into a flower garden.  Except… something was wrong.  The garden had grown thick with weeds, the lights were off, and the door had been boarded up.  A flicker of yellow caught his eye, a tattered scrap of yellow tape tied to the banister with the words crime scene printed in black block print.  Amazing how one little detail, one little spit of neon-yellow, was enough to make his worst fears come to life.

Can I help you son?  A voice called out to him.  Mason turned his head and found himself looking at an elderly black man sitting on a nearby porch, watching him suspiciously.  Mason couldn’t blame him; anything new in Wilkes-Barre was automatically suspicious.  And if memory served him correctly, this man only moved in a few weeks before The Incident happened, he wouldn’t recognize Mason even if the young Caucasian man wasn’t wearing sunglasses in the late evening.

Hello, I used to live in this neighborhood.  Do you know what happened to the couple that used to live in this house?  Smith asked even though he already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

Oh the Smiths?  Lovely couple, it’s a shame what happened to them.  First Judge O’Connor took their boy away.  Then a year ago there was a home invasion that went bad, killed both of them.  He replied with a shake of his head before spitting into his front lawn.  Judge O’Connor… now there’s a crooked bastard if there ever was one.  Not like the good old days.

Mason kept his expression neutral as he politely thanked the man and got back on his scooter before taking off.  As he took off to the only place left where he could potentially be safe and lay low for a while, his mind was a maelstrom of warring emotions.  He needed a moment to think and to straighten out his head.  He didn’t have much of a plan after his escape from New Alcatraz and now it looked like that lack of foresight was starting to come back to haunt him.  It wouldn’t be long now before they would start sending people after him.  His only saving grace in that regard was that Arcadia would hesitate before sending their most powerful and secretive assets after him.

Paleman’s library was once the public collection of a wealthy Arcadian executive who came to the valley to retire.  Mason had heard rumors while he was in prison that Paleman had packed everything up and took it with him into space to open a new library on Ceres or something.  Mason couldn’t blame him even though it pained the younger man to see his mentor gone; things had been getting hard for the librarian before Mason was taken.  Sunleaf Media had put out a bounty for collections of pre-Long Dark media and the city was full of people hungry for money and stupid enough to sell out their neighbor to a corporation infamous for destroying old printed material so they could sell their own heavily doctored reprints.  They were only updating stories to better reflect the times, Sunleaf’s PR reps said.  Paleman argued that it robbed people of their history and their identity.  Having seen both the originals and the Sunleaf rewrites for himself, Mason tended to agree with his absent mentor.

With Paleman and his library now long gone, the brick abode where he had once maintained his collection of old novels, comic books, and movies from the times before now stood empty.  A hollow shell of a building mocking Mason with memories of what was no more.  In a way it was fitting, the brown haired man wasn’t sure if he was little more then a former shell of his old self either.  Still, now was not the time to get poetic, not while there was still unfinished work that needed to be done.

Mason took his scooter around to the back of the building so people driving by wouldn’t notice him.  Weeds had grown through cracks in the parking lot pavement since the library was abandoned.  With the building concealing him from people driving on the road, Smith dismounted and walked up to the old service entrance.  Did Paleman ever get around to having someone fix this door before he left?  The fugitive man mused silently as he clasped the metal door handle and gave it an experimental tug before pulling hard.  A second later, the fidgety lock hiccupped and the door pulled towards him.  Looks like shelter was taken care of for the time being, he thought to himself as he wheeled his scooter into the empty basement and looked around.  The library basement was once used for building maintenance, record storage, and the workshop where Paleman would laboriously restore partially destroyed books, films, and discs under the unearthly glow of a well-loved magnifying lamp.  It was now completely empty; all that remained of the once-proud library were a few empty storage racks and the sturdy metal workbench where Paleman had done much of his restoration work.  Even the magnifying lamp went with the librarian; the only light left in the room came from the flickering ceiling lights above.

Shutting the door behind him and looking around, Mason slowly surveyed the empty space before discreetly exploring the upstairs, drinking in the nostalgia of afternoons spent here reading old science-fiction novels and studying for his entrance exams to get into the local vocational school.  Shaking his head, he turned around and walked back downstairs.  He needed to keep his mind focused on the now, he needed to remember that he was on the run.  It was not a good idea to be reminiscing upstairs with the lights on.  The windows may be shuttered but people could still see light through the cracks in the shutters.  Not a good thing to see in a building that’s supposed to be abandoned.

Descending back down to safety and standing at the foot of the basement stairs, he finally gave into the maelstrom of emotions and slammed his fist into the painted cinderblock wall.  The cement brick buckled and cracked from the impact of his hand hitting the wall with the full force of his augmented muscles.  The brief display of impulsive violence didn’t even bruise his knuckles despite striking the white cement with enough force to partially crumble it.  The lack of injury was hardly surprising considering what was in his veins, the things They put there to make him less then human.

Throughout Mason’s body, untold millions of microscopic machines had woven their way into his muscles, his bones, his skin, and his organs.  In addition to providing him with abilities that were still unknown to him, these highly advanced nanites enhanced his strength, his reflexes, and his ability to heal from injuries that would otherwise incapacitate a normal man.  Arcadia Enterprises invested billions into previously unseen technology that turned him and a handful of others into supermen.  Yet his newfound superpowers didn’t help prevent him from being stupid enough to think that he could just go home once he escaped from New Alcatraz…

Staring intently into the wall, he took a deep breath and exhaled.  All of that was moot right now.  He needed to figure out what he was going to do now, he needed a plan and he needed it badly.  Arcadia would have had to realize he was here and sent agents to try and capture him.  Things might start looking better for him the instant he escaped Arcadia’s incorporated territories but even that was dodgy, Arcadia Enterprises provided security services to almost every other corporation on the world stock exchange.  Everywhere was technically Arcadia territory.  It was a long shot that he’d be able to shake off pursuit once he left Arcadia’s stomping grounds on the North American East Coast for Epicurean country in the old American Midwest but it was better then where he was standing right now, literally and figuratively.

Unfortunately to pull it off he needed money, weapons, transportation, and something that would distract Arcadia’s attention long enough for him to slip away unseen.  He also didn’t have a lot of time to get it all done in; the search team would have to be here any day now and then everything would start going downhill.  A fugitive cyborg with prototype technology in his body, no way they wouldn’t have a way to track that sort of thing.  Still, there had to be a way he could engineer something to occupy the company’s attention long enough for him to make a clean getaway…

Mason laughed softly at the irony of the idea that had began to form in his head.  Yet the more he thought about it… well, it would also be a perfect opportunity to right a few wrongs.  It would be too much to hope for his old home city to take this chance to amount to something, that ship had sailed at least a century ago.  But at least it would send a message that his captors had trained him too well.  If he could pull it off that is and that was definitely a big if considering what he was doing and the precious little time he had to get it done in.

Sighing and exhaling, he searched the empty library one more time to take stock of what was available.  A largely pointless gesture as Paleman took everything down to the metal shelving with him to Ceres, leaving nothing but a series of completely empty rooms upstairs devoid of even simple furniture.  Empty rooms with brightly painted walls, Mason could identify each room and the collection it once held just by the shade of color on the walls.  The calming, warm pastels of the children’s room, the pale purple of the corner that contained the fantasy and science-fiction collections, the muted beige of the nonfiction and reference materials, everything echoed with an unnatural stillness that conjured up old memories of him spending his teen years either studying for his trade certifications or simply enjoying Paleman’s collection of old media from the forgotten times.  With nothing found but painful nostalgia, Mason went back downstairs to give the basement one more look.

At first he thought the basement would finally reveal something but in the end it turned out to be just as empty as the library above.  Other then the bare workbench that at least provided a place to tinker, all he found of value was a scrap of wood roughly a half a meter long.  Not exactly what he needed but at least it would make a good weapon in a pinch.  And the building was still drawing power from the electrical grid meaning he could recharge his scooter as he finished searching the building for supplies and planning what to do next.

With no money and with his only identity listing him as legally dead, even buying food was going to be a difficult proposition… if he insisted on being a nice guy about this.  But then again, where had being a nice guy gotten him?  All that paperwork and some jackass ruined it anyway just to line his pockets.  No, the time for being mister nice guy had long since passed, he decided as he picked up the piece of wood and gave it a few practice swings before setting it back down.  Now was the time for the city to see just how much of a bastard he could be…

Leaving the abandoned library once more, Mason hopped back on his scooter and made his way to the old downtown district.  It was time to do some reconnaissance and figure out what else happened in his absence before he could plan things out further.  As he crested the last hill before descending into the valley proper, his scooter bounced and transitioned from asphalt road to the narrow floating roadways restricted to lighter vehicles.  He had just crossed over into the Canal District.

Once upon a time, the Canal District had been the heart of downtown Wilkes-Barre.  Then one year the annual floodwaters from the Susquehanna stopped receding, instead increasing until the first few floors of every building in the floodplain were permanently underwater.  It wasn’t until the damage was done that people realized what had caused it.  In addition to rising sea levels due to the increased melting of the polar ice caps, there was the tiny problem of some inept jackass building a hydroelectric dam at the end of the valley, down towards the ruins of old Plymouth, without correctly calculating how the increased blockage would affect things upriver.  Typical Pennsylvanian urban planning at its finest, forgetting to make sure the decimal place was in the correct position before approving construction.  They were lucky the dipshit planners remembered to include a canal lock for the cargo barges going up and down the river.

Still, the city adapted to the changing circumstances in its own unique way.   Downtown was rebuilt with the lowest levels being written off or sealed up and drained out, a latticework of floating roadways and pedestrian bridges connected buildings while motorized boats puttered through the flooded streets.  Yet the renovations had not been enough to offset the loss of the city’s two main universities in the flooding.  Nor were the new constructions particularly sturdy.  Most of the citizens switched to motorcycles, scooters, and walking to avoid putting too much strain on the pontoon roadways but every year there always was one story about someone, usually a drunk local, trying to drive their car downtown and being sent thirty feet underwater when the road collapsed underneath them.  Sometimes they managed to fish the idiot and