Red Shadows by Mitchel Scanlon Read Free Book Online

matters worse, the odds were stacked against Alexei from the very beginning. He was ten years old; five years older than the usual age at which psi-talented cadets were inducted into the Academy. Already, he had learned to use his powers on his own - meaning there was every chance he had picked up bad habits along the way that no amount of repeated instruction would ever be able to rectify. Training the Psi-Judges of the future was a long and expensive process. The Psi-Tutors might decide Alexei's age made him a bad risk, unlikely to make progress no matter how much time they invested in his training.
    I have to hope for the best, Anderson thought as she gunned her Lawmaster's engines and sped faster along the megway, her hair whipping wildly in the breeze from the slipstream. Alexei has a rare and unusual psi-talent. I have to hope that's enough to tip the scales in his favour.
    The most frustrating thing about it was that Anderson understood the reasons why the system worked the way it did. It was harsh, but she had seen for herself what happened when wild psi-talents raged out of control. From bitter experience she knew there were whole armies of hostile psionic entities existing in the psi-flux - entities capable of using psychics as a gateway to allow them to invade the physical world. In her time she had seen entire cities brought to their knees and almost destroyed by psychic invasion. She had seen innocents killed in their millions, streets running red with blood, bodies littering the megways, all because of psychic powers.
    The history of Mega-City One was filled with such incidents: the Necropolis Event, the Judge Child-Mutant Affair, the Dark Judges Incursions. One way or another, Anderson had been involved in all of them. At times it seemed like her own life had been one long, salutary lesson on the dangers of psychic talents and how they could be used for either good or ill. Taken all together, it was enough to convince her - whatever the distaste she felt towards it - that the Justice Department's policy on psychics was not wholly without merit.
    But it was one thing to accept the policy in theory, quite another to have been involved with it in practice. Whatever the arguments for or against the policy, she had been forced to lie to a ten year-old boy in order to gain his trust. Everything will be all right , she had told him. I promise you: no one will ever hurt you again. The way she felt now, she wouldn't have complained if the words had turned to poison on her tongue.
    There has to be a better way , she thought. It was an old argument she had had with herself more times than she cared to count. Just because someone is born with psi-talents, it shouldn't mean their only choice is becoming a Psi-Judge or spending the rest of their lives in the psi-cubes. It's the twenty-second century, for Grud's sake! We should have come up with something better by now. No matter what the Law says, there has to be room for some compassion.As ever, try as hard as she might, she could find no answer.
    "Control to Anderson." She found herself strangely relieved as the radio on her Lawmaster motorcycle abruptly squawked into life. Where earlier in the night she might have despaired at being called to yet another emergency, now the prospect of more work seemed a welcome distraction from her thoughts.
    "Anderson receiving," she said as she hit the transmit button. "Go ahead, Control. Over."
    "Duty board indicates you have completed your current assignment," the controller said over the radio. "Are you available for reassignment? Over."
    "Affirmative, Control. What have you got for me?"
    "Psi Division backup requested at Kitty Genovese Block. The Street Judge investigating a suspected homicide needs a Psi-Judge to perform a psychometric scan of the crime scene. Can you attend? Over."
    "Confirmed, Control. Currently headed westbound on Henry Ford Megway. ETA to Kitty Genovese. Seven minutes. Request a more specific location on