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PLAYING GOD

Part 4: Takes One To Know One

What does a man think, in his final hours? What does he ponder while watching his last seconds of life tick patiently away? What grim and terrible thoughts run through his mind, as he contemplates the sheer inevitability of his impending doom?

Finn lounged in a chair in his holding cell, and examined the word "Scything". It was one of his favourites, he decided. The hard sharpness of the "s", "c" and "y", suddenly given a hissing whispering quality by the delicate insertion of the "th". And then - with a glorious pulse of energy, "ing" gave the word sudden action, bringing it to ecstatic, thrumming life. Showing that it was a word of action. Of power. Of violence, but also of control.

Humming a few bars from Torssen's 11th Symphony, he straightened up in the chair, glancing at the door on the other side of the room -

• and separated by a solid cage of iron bars. The guilty shall have no escape from the strong arms of Justice. No escape...

So he didn't try to. He kept humming as he filed away the pleasures of the word, to be enjoyed at a later da-

Ah. Later. Chuckling ruefully to himself, the wolf considered his death for a few seconds, then placed it neatly at the back of his mind. It wasn't interesting. What was interesting was:

"Ready to die, you scumbag?"

Arms folded, Inspector Redstone stalked into the cell. Every hair of his fur seemed to be quivering with rage.

Finn yawned, smiling at him. "Evening, Inspector. Come to see if there's anything else I'm going to confess to?"

The rat narrowed his eyes. "Quite frankly, Mr Finn, I don't really give a fuck what else you've done. I've got what I wanted."

"Really?" The prisoner frowned at him, sitting up in his chair, ears cocked with interest. "Doesn't sound like you. "Justice will be done, Raphael. Justice WILL be done. Will you help me?" Remember?"

Redstone snarled low in his throat. "You heard it?"

"That's the thing about other people, my dear Brutus. They don't notice. And you do, and they don't notice that you do. You can dance their little dances right in front of them, you can pry loose their every last secret, you can hide from them in plain sight, and they're just blind to you. Blind to almost everything but their own exquisite, delicate lives. You can watch them, learn them, understand them, love them and watch them love you . . . and then you can break them." He shivered, his eyes closed as he drew in a breath, sensing and tasting the rodent's rage. "It's perfect . . . utterly perfect. And it's something I'm quite willing to die for."

"But . . ." growled the Inspector, his fists still clenched, "society doesn't seem to approve, for some absurd reason."

Finn chuckled. "Indeed. Alas, I fear that "society " is hardly a -"

"And why?" Redstone interrupted, his paws shaking with anger. "Because they think their lives are the most important thing in the world. Because they'll never begin to understand that sacrifices must be made. Because they cannot see the true glory of progress, and comprehend how it demands their petty little lives."

Finn cracked open one eye of liquid amber, staring at him. "Excuse me?"

Inspector Redstone glared back at him, pure, white-hot fury written across every inch of his stocky, brown-furred body.

And then he turned it off.

The rat smiled thinly at his captive, relishing the momentary shock that flashed across Finn's muzzle as he sauntered over to the chair opposite the wolf's. His pose was different now, relaxed and casual, but like a predatory jungle cat crouched low in the long grass. Coiled. Controlled. Ready to spring. As he sat down, still watching Finn, his movements were like those of a dancer: as if he had orchestrated every last muscle involved to exacting perfection.

The two were silent for a second, simply contemplating each other. Finn spoke first.

"Interesting development."

Redstone sat straight-backed, at odds with his prisoner's lounging position. He still didn't smile.

"I suppose the courteous thing to do would be to compliment you, Mr Finn. You were very good."

The lupine accepted the praise with a nod of the head. "And you... I'm impressed, frankly. That was gloriously... unexpected. You were entirely believable. And I've scrutinised you quite carefully, I can assure you." He leaned forwards, grinning roguishly at the still emotionless rat. "But two months? Come on, Brutus. You could've done better than that."

"I did." Brutus returned his smile, albeit coldly. "I got you after three weeks. Saw you at the funeral of your last one. Saw your jacket pockets. It all worked out. You were boasting, weren't you?"

"Heh. Yes, that was me. Dance in front of them, right under their noses..." The wolf raised a silver eyebrow. "So why didn't you get me then?"

"Respect." Redstone kept a straight face for almost four seconds before a cruel snigger escaped his pointed muzzle. "No. Of course not. I was just being patient. I wanted to enjoy this."

"People could have died, Brutus. One very nearly did."

The rat frowned."Yes, but... you were going to kill her. "

Finn shrugged, dismissing the technicality. "And the capture? One officer dead and another hospitalised? You didn't see it coming? You didn't suggest that I just get sedated on the -" He paused, and started to smile. "Except... you did, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. Creatures like us, Finn, we don't let things like that go unnoticed. But a dead copper is very popular with the public. Really shows you up as a remorseless killer. Ensures that a slight alteration to the Degree of Sentient Rights won't go down too badly.

The wolf whistled. "You sent them to die. Just so you could make sure I'd get death as well_?_" He chuckled. "That's... magnificent. You threw their lives away, simply in order to-"

"I don't care." Redstone spoke curtly, ignoring his captive's soft growl of annoyance at being interrupted. "Little people...They're not important."

Finn blinked. "You don't...? Okay. Tell me, Brutus... have you ever felt that the Police forces aren't for you?"

Redstone laughed, a sharp bark of humourless mirth. "Oh, dear. Come on, Mr Sharpe. Do you think I want to be here? Do you think I care in the slightest about who lives and who dies?"

Finn looked at him for a few seconds, his amber gaze flickering over the burly frame of the rodent. Than he spoke. "...No. I don't think you do. How... delightful. So, " he reclined in his seat, gesturing expansively, "how did you get here?"

The rodent leant back, mirroring his prisoner's pose."Tell me, Finn... have you ever heard the expression "Set a thief to catch a thief?"

"Ah-ha." The tall wolf inclined his head in a slight bow. "I see. Mr Knives was mine, Brutus. What did they call you?"

Redstone sighed. "Do you remember the Vanisher?" he said, and Finn stopped things then. Just for a quick second as he let his eager memory dance for him.

The Vanisher. A serial abductor who had terrorised the city twelve years ago. He picked his victims carefully, making sure that they were utterly alone, and then took them away. No bodies were ever found. Not so much as a trace of blood. It was only by pure fluke that they'd caught him: a young high school student, a sparrow, had spotted his latest abduction from a deserted alleyway. The Police had managed to trace it from the van description. The official report was that the culprit, a schizophrenic rat named Seth Masters, had been holed up in an abandoned warehouse, a few miles outside the industrial district of the city. He'd been killing his victims and dissolving their bodies in acid. When the police tried to bring him in, the murderer had turned a gun on himself, painting the floor with blood and brains. But...

"...that was only the official report." muttered Redstone, who had been watching his captive intently. "In reality... "Seth Masters" never existed. It was all Yours Truly. They managed to subdue me and locked me away in an asylum for the criminally insane. They lied to the press, modernised the warehouse, and turned it into a top-secret military research installation. Kept everyone out. At gunpoint."

Finn let silence fall for a moment, considering.

"Why?"

"Because..." Brutus closed his eyes, his lips twitching at the memory, "there wasn't any acid in there."

No reply. Finn's eyes didn't move, not leaving his opponent's, but Redstone could play as well. The wolf tutted at himself as he spoke.

"So. Enlighten me."

Brutus smiled thinly at his victory. "I call it the Rift. As far as I can ascertain, it appears to be a rip in the fabric of the universe itself. A place where we come into contact with... whatever there is beyond."

Neither spoke. Finn simply sat there, watching him. This time, Redstone cracked first.

"I discovered it. Me. Yes, that's right, me. I found it. I realised its potential. I mean, what could this mean for us? Imagine what we could do with this power!" He tapped his fingers impatiently on the arm of his chair. "But you can't just say that. I needed to experiment with it, find out how it actually worked. Find out what was on the other side."

His paws shook. "Cameras just exploded. Animals vanished, or burst into flames, or turned inside out. I couldn't find any way to get through." The rat growled coldly, his dark eyes burning with frantic obsession. "I was desperate. This was the greatest discovery in our entire history. This was an entire century of progress." He licked his lips, as if tasting the air. "And sacrifices... sacrifices have to be made for progress to go on."

The wolf nodded slowly. " I see. How many "vanished" before they got you?"

"Thirteen. And none of them, none of them made it through. Pathetic. None of them told me anything. They just screamed." He tapped a finger against his temple, grinning cruelly. "They've never stopped screaming, to be honest."

"And then you were locked away."Finn's eyes glittered. "Nothing to do but think about how you failed, and how everything let you down, and how you could have done it. If they'd given you just one more try."

Redstone was strong. When he spoke, his voice was calm, not even shaking slightly. "Correct. But me? "Brutus is an obsessive and frequently delusional sociopath who considers brutal violence to be the most efficient answer to most problems?" They were never going to let me out. Never."

" But then... along came Mr Knives. And oh, they were desperate. So they cut me a deal." He sucked in a breath, his white teeth clenched. "I find you. The Authority sentences you to death, and as far as the world is concerned , all's well that ends well. And you... my dear Finn... you get to be Test Subject #14."

The wolf didn't react, and his captor smirked. "It's willpower. I'm convinced of it. You need a mind that's able to survive being shredded as it is torn out of this dimension. You need a being who can keep itself sentient, if not sane, throughout the entire process. You need something with control. And I've read your psychological profile. Finn is all about control, isn't he?"

"I suppose he is." Finn smiled pleasantly, and when he again spoke his voice was reasonable and friendly.

"You're going to die, Brutus." His eyes seemed to darken, as if the warm amber behind them was dying and peeling away, to reveal the monster lurking behind. "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to destroy you."

"Wrong." said Redstone coolly , and shot him.

The wolf glanced at the tranquiliser embedded in his shoulder, then back to his assailant. "Melodramatic."

Raising an eyebrow, the rat sent another one into his leg. His voice was starting to blur and distort as the sedative took hold in Finn's system."No. Efficient. But you're wrong, Finn. You're going to die. And when you do... you're going to thank me with all of whatever remains of your heart. You're going to beg me for it."

Then Finn's eyes rolled up in his skull, and he knew no more.