Mutant City Read Online Free

his son. Until recently he’d managed to keep his illness a secret; blood transfusions and a whole host of medications made it just about possible for him to maintain appearances. But his opponents, particularly that Cowper man, had begun to suspect things weren’t right. And rumours spread quickly in a place like City Four. Like sharks sniffing blood, they’d begun to circle in the political waters, waiting for the right moment to attack. So he’d pulled the rug from under them, called an emergency election in which he intended to use his power and influence to install his son to power. If he was honest, he had grave doubts about Zander’s ability to carry off the role. He lacked the . . . mettle to make the harsh decisions Melk knew were needed to put a stop to this mutant rights nonsense. Still, if everything went as planned, the situation would be temporary at best.
    Melk Senior reached up and removed the transparent mask from his face, the hiss of pumped oxygen escaping as he did so. ‘Close the door,’ he said, then fluttered his fingers in the direction of the chair beside his bed.
    ‘How do you feel?’ Zander asked as he sat down.
    ‘I’m dying. How do you think I feel?’
    ‘The doctors say that there’s still –’
    ‘The doctors can’t cure this. I couldn’t cure this, and I created the damn thing! I was too clever for my own good, and look where it’s got me.’ He took a gulp of oxygen and lowered the mask again. ‘I wanted to speak to you before it’s too late. There’s something you need to know.’
    ‘What’s that?’ Zander inwardly groaned. No doubt his father was about to give him another lecture on what he was doing wrong and how he should be running things. The last time they’d spoken the old man had told him he was too liberal, pouring scorn on his campaign, and saying he needed to continue with the current hard-line policies when it came to the ‘mutant problem’.
    The old man looked across at his son, an all too familiar sneer forming on one side of his mouth as he did so. ‘Don’t worry, Junior, I didn’t ask you here to use my last breath to tell you how much I love you.’
    ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
    The frail creature in the bed tried to laugh, but what came out instead was an ugly, wet coughing sound that spoke of lungs filled with more than just air. ‘See? That’s the man I made and brought up. You need to work on that attitude some more. That hardness is in the Melk genes. That’s why we got to be where we are.’
    Zander waited. Maybe it would have been better to trust his initial instinct and ignore the invitation to come here. The pair had never shared much love between them.
    ‘I need to tell you about the Farm.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘It was a place I set up about twenty years ago. A research institute, if you like.’
    ‘Like the labs at Bio-Gen?’ Zander asked, referring to the vast genetic-modification empire his grandfather and father had built up, first here, in City Four, but subsequently in all six megalopolises. It was the reason City Four had risen to become the most powerful of the cities, quickly becoming the capital, where the ruling body, the Principia, was based. The other cities were each given over to specialist industries: manufacturing of electronic goods and vehicles; food and livestock (especially genetically modified crops and animals); arms and defence; mining and power production. But the empire was run from C4, the city the Melks had always lived in, the city they practic­ally owned.
    ‘No, not quite like them.’
    Zander didn’t like the way his father said that. ‘Why haven’t I ever heard it mentioned before?’
    ‘Because officially it never existed. It was a facility where I tried to uncover secrets, secrets that nobody else wanted to look into.’ He gave a vague wave of his hand. ‘The Farm was established so I might look into mutant anomalies.’
    ‘Anomalies?’
    ‘Aberrations. Mutations so extreme