Prophet Margin by Simon Spurrier Read Free Book Online Page B

revealing."
    The image on the screen changed to an overhead view of a dissection table. Seeing the shape arranged thereon, tagged and labelled as though paused halfway through a messy explosion, a collective gasp arose from the audience.
    "Non-viable life-forms," the scientist intoned, sighing. The photograph changed, and changed again, each time revealing a new specimen, a new failure. "Approximately half died during gestation," he said, voice heavy. "The rest were ridiculous things. Pitiful."
    Many of the dead shapes in the photographs were not even recognisable as ichthyoidal: hair replaced scales, valve glands replaced ventral fins, lesions and ulcers marked necrotic fishflesh. For every one that had three heads, another had no head at all.
    "Of them all," the old man said eventually, hands gripping the lectern, "we judged that just one per cent were mutated in a beneficial fashion."
    Again the screen changed, now showing video footage of small shark bodies in motion. In the first clip a specimen closed with a shoal of jittering fish, harshly lit in a wide tank. As it approached its jaws distended, mouth stretching with elastic slowness. As quick as lightning it ratcheted shut, gills billowing, devouring the entire shoal. The audience cried out, startled.
    The next specimen circled as technicians fired bullets into its body. The ragged edges of each wound sealed with an osmotic slurp and the predator appeared oblivious to the barrage. The next used a prehensile psuedopod to lasso a fat fish, dragging it towards its grinning maw. The next swam too fast for the camera to follow. One fired tiny bolts of electricity from its dorsal surface, another writhed and ejected egg sacs in an endless stream.
    The images formed a cavalcade of freakishness, each one bolstering the audience's outrage. The cameradrones paid lip service to their revulsion: here a shot of a man shaking his head, there a student flaring her nostrils venomously.
    The scientist sighed and tapped at a control on the lectern. The screen went black. "Ten thousand specimens," he repeated, voice carefully magnified to drown the indignant crowd, "and all of them - bar one - have since been destroyed. At my order."
    That silenced them.
    "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, omnispecs catching at the light. "I was commissioned to carry out this study to demonstrate that mutation is not an intrinsically evil phenomenon, that it is a random force, that we cannot continue to persecute those who are afflicted by it, and so on. "In all conscience, I cannot do so."
    Silence filled the studio. A hundred quizzical expressions peered from the shadows, mouths gaping.
    "One of the specimens," the man said, "was extraordinary. One out of ten thousand. It surpassed the cr... No, that's not true... It redefined the criteria. Mutation is not restricted solely to physicality, one must also consider intelligence, perception, even dimensionality."
    He struck a control on the lectern. A section of the flooring began to rise; a dais that ascended out of the floor. The audience craned their heads, watching its slow appearance with morbid fascination.
    It was an aquarium tank.
    "Mutants are not intrinsically evil," the scientist said, voice pompous, "but they are a liability. This final specimen has withstood every attempt at its destruction and continues to grow exponentially. Government commission or not, I would be a liar and charlatan if I stood here and endorsed the harmlessness of mutantkind. They are a menace to our society - whether they intend to be or not.
    "Behold!" he shrieked. "Strontium evolution!" His finger stabbed towards the rising container.
    Which was very, very empty.
    The scientist said: "What's-"
    Then something exploded, smoke blotted itself across the image and the transmission died with a zip .
     
    Two minutes later the Doghouse controlroom opened and Johnny stepped out, followed by Kid Knee. Officer Harvey propelled himself into the bright light of the station's