The heist had gone smoothly enough. They'd gone in, shown their guns and that was pretty much it. After they had cracked the manager in the nose for talking back, nobody else had tried anything stupid; the staff and the customers had done what they were told, no problem. He and Arnie had even managed to grab themselves some nice-looking kneepads as well as the money. It had been the perfect job. Until, as they were leaving the store exactly four minutes and forty-nine seconds after they'd entered it, Arnie had to go and flap his fat mouth.
"See, Leland?" Arnie had said. "A piece of cake, just like I told you. Now you can afford to get your wife that boob job just like you've always wanted."
At the time, he had thought nothing of it. It was only when a Judge kicked in the door while Leland was counting his cut in his apartment that it occurred to him maybe the heist hadn't gone so smoothly after all.
"How did you find me?" Leland had asked, staring down the bore of the Judge's Lawgiver and thinking it looked big enough to swallow him whole.
"How'd you think, genius?" the Judge replied. "Audio on the surveillance cameras at the pad-mart picked up your partner calling you 'Leland'. That, and the fact your wife wasn't too well-endowed. How many guys you think fit that profile and happen to live in the same block where the robbery took place? Piece of cake. Now, give up your partner's name without me having to take you back to the Sector House for interrogation and I'm prepared to go easy on you. Minimum sentence."
The whole damn thing was Arnie's fault anyway, Leland thought as he lay on the bunk staring at the ceiling. If the dumb bastard had kept his mouth shut, I wouldn't be in this mess, so I squealed on him.
Sadly, Arnie had refused to see things that way. When the Judge had brought him out of the block in cuffs and he saw Leland already chained to a holding post on the street waiting for him, Arnie had gone crazy. He'd kicked and bit and screamed so much the Judge driving the Catch Wagon had put him in a gag and restraints. The real shame of it was that he and Arnie had been friends ever since they were juves. Although, however Leland looked at it now, he had to figure their friendship was over.
Serves the asshole right, he thought. And it ain't like they wouldn't have caught up with him eventually anyway. Only thing I regret is not thinking to ask the Judge what the minimum sentence was. Eighteen years! So much for going easy on me. Damn Judges. You just can't trust 'em.
Leland was in a holding cube in Sector House 12, waiting for a transport to take him to the iso-block where he'd be spending the next eighteen years of his life. The second they had come into processing and the Judges had removed his gag, Arnie had started screaming again, telling anybody who would listen his partner was a rat. The warders had put Leland in his own private cube instead of the holding pens, probably figuring he would be safer that way.
So this is what a holding cube looks like, he thought. A bunk, a sink, a shower and a toilet: that's about it for the furnishings. Oh, and a surveillance camera to watch my every move. I guess an iso-cube will look pretty much the same, and I got to spend eighteen years in one. Grud. It might as well be a life sentence.
The lights went off, plunging the windowless cube into darkness. Must be time for lights out, Leland thought. I didn't think I was supposed to be staying here long enough to have to bed down for the night.
Leland Barclay, he heard a voice say nearby, the sound of it nearly making him jump out of his skin. Someone was in there with him! Leland sat up in his bunk in panic. He couldn't see anything. Frightened, he pulled his legs up onto the bunk with him like a child scared of the bogeyman. Leland sat and listened, ears straining to hear the sounds of movement or breathing. But there was only the voice again, its tone low and quiet.
Leland Barclay. The sound, a barely audible murmur.
Leland Barclay. A strange voice, malign and knowing.
Leland Barclay. A whisper in the darkness.
It is time to be judged...
Grud, Chief Warder Sykes thought as the lights went out and the Custody Command Room fell into sudden darkness. It's happening again.
The emergency lights kicked in, bathing the room and the holding pens beyond it in a dim blue light. The chief warder was already on the move. He put his helmet on and grabbed a torch from a rack as he headed for the door.
"Chief!" he heard Mullins call after him from the comms console. "Tek-Bay reports a power outage across the entire Sector House. Backup generators are out as well. We've got emergency lights and comms operating off battery supplies and that's about it."
"Tell them we need power down here now," he said, halfway through the door. "Priority code: eight five seven alpha one. The second they get any kind of power source back online, they're to route it through to us. Tell them Sector Chief Franklin authorised it personally."
"Roger, chief. You want me to radio Murcheson in holding and tell him to instigate emergency procedures?"
"I'll tell him. I'm already on my way."
As he stepped outside into the corridor, the emergency lights faded, returning the world to darkness. Turning on his torch, Sykes moved quickly past the holding pens. Everywhere, he could hear the muttering voices of the caged perps around him, angry, complaining, calling out for light. Then, seeing the glow of more torches ahead of him, he found Murcheson waiting at the end of the corridor with half a dozen other Judges in riot gear.
"Holding pens secure and all warders accounted for, chief," Murcheson said, gesturing with his own torch towards his men. "We were about to check the cubes. I had Cates break out a couple of crowbars, just in case."
There was a scream in the distance, the voice of a man in pain, echoing shrilly through the corridor. A breathless animal sound that spoke of agony and torment.
"It's coming from the holding cubes," Sykes yelled as he ran. "Kenner, Johannson, stay here and guard the pens. The rest of you with me, and bring those crowbars."
The screaming grew louder, rising to a shrieking falsetto as Sykes pushed his way into the holding cube area with Murcheson and the others.
"It's coming from Cube Two-Thirteen," Murcheson said. "Try the door."
"No good," Sykes said, tapping his override code into the door's keypad. "There's no power for the locks. We'll have to force it open."
Two Judges forced their crowbars into the small gap between door and jamb and tried to lever it open. At first, the door held; then, as Sykes and the others joined them in their labours, the door started to shift.
"It's starting to move," Murcheson said, grunting with effort. "I can feel it."
The screaming stopped. They pushed harder until finally, straining with herculean effort, the Judges began to force the door open.
"Almost there," Murcheson said, then recoiled, nearly falling over Sykes in his haste to step back from the cube. "Oh drokk! That smell..."
Sykes smelt the sickening stench of burnt flesh. Shining his torch into the cube, he saw a pall of smoke hanging into the air. Stepping into the cube he heard retching behind him as Murcheson vomited. Sweeping the beam of his torch through the haze, he saw what had become of the man in Cube Two-Thirteen and felt his gorge rising.
"Sweet Grud," he heard someone whisper. "They burned the poor bastard alive. Just like the others."
His body charred and blackened by fire, the dead man sat on the bunk with his knees against his chest, his head back and his mouth frozen open as though in a silent scream. The bunk, the sheets, even the man's clothing were all undamaged; the fire that killed him had burnt only his flesh.
The overhead lights flared back into life and Sykes saw something that told him all his worst fears had been realised. The killer had struck again, leaving a message in the shape of a word scrawled on the cube wall beside the corpse. A word that seemed to mock them.
The word was Judged, written in blood.
THREE
UNWELCOME ALLIES
Considering some of the things that could happen to a missing child in Mega-City One, Judge Kelland Whitby had to figure the Durand case h
ad turned out better than expected. Emerging from the Undercity with Himmie in tow, Whitby and Anderson had taken the boy back to Billy Friedkin Block for a tearful reunion with his parents. The kid had seemed fine - though Anderson had given him a quick psi-scan before they got to Friedkin just to be on the safe side. If there had been one problem, it was that Whitby had found it difficult to look the boy's parents in the face when they thanked him for returning their son to them. Caught up in the moment, their eyes still shining with tears of joy, they kept calling him a hero. It seemed wrong, somehow. Feeling uncomfortable, not quite knowing how to tell them Anderson had saved their kid solo, Whitby had made his excuses and left as soon as he could. A hero. Right now he felt about as far from that exalted state as a man could get.
All I did was trail around after Anderson and get my ass handed to me by a demon, he thought as he made his way down in the block elevator. If it hadn't been for her, both me and the Durand kid would be dead by now. Anderson was the hero, not me.
It was an emotion he was used to, the feeling that he was forever trailing in the wake of heroes. Even though five years had passed since he had graduated from the Academy of Law, Whitby still found himself beset by doubts every time he hit the streets. He hid it well, of course - he had to, or his watch commander would have busted him back to citizen fast enough to make his head spin. Whitby made a point of showing he could break heads and chase down perps with the best of them, but no matter how well he did his duty, it was never enough. He found it impossible to escape the nagging doubt he did not have what it took to be a Judge.
Dredd. Giant. Hershey. Not to mention Anderson herself. These were the names talked about in the Sector House locker rooms. Judges like that cast a long shadow. Each one was a legend in the city, looked up to by citizens and their fellow Judges alike. When Whitby had been a cadet, the Judge-tutors at the Academy had talked about those same Judges, presenting reviews of some of their cases as examples of the standards the cadets would be expected to meet when they became Judges themselves. Now, through a quirk of fate, Whitby had worked a case with one of these legends. Granted, they had cracked the case and Himmie Durand had been saved, but pleasing as that outcome was, in every other aspect Whitby had found the entire night to be a dispiriting experience. One night working alongside Anderson, and it seemed to him all his secret fears were confirmed.
Maybe I'm just not good enough, he thought bleakly. You work with somebody like Anderson and you see just how far you are from making the grade. All night, no matter what happened, she didn't so much as bat an eyelid. The Undercity, the cultists, the demon: she took them all in her stride. It was like nothing could faze her, and you don't get that from being psychic. You don't learn it in the Academy. She's a Judge. A real Judge. It's a knack, an attitude. Maybe it's something you're born with but, whatever it is, I just don't seem to have it.
"Ground level: block entrances and exit," the automated voice of the elevator trilled in electronic contentment as the doors opened at his destination. "We hope you enjoyed your time at William Friedkin Block. Please come again."
Emerging into the foyer, Whitby made his way through the outside doors to the block forecourt where he and Anderson had parked their bikes. He mounted his Lawmaster and keyed the ignition, feeling a sudden pain in his broken shoulder from the vibrations rattling through him as the engine hummed into life.
"Judge Whitby to Sector Control," he said, still wincing as he patched his helmet mike into the sector frequency.
"Sector Control, receiving," the voice came over the comm. "Reported break-in at Mistress Sindy's Rubber-o-Rama, off De Sade Plaza. Please advise as to your ETA."
"Negative, Control. Request to be taken off active roster until further notice. Have sustained a line-of-duty injury and I am inbound to Sector House for treatment."
"Understood. Do you require a med-wagon or other assistance?"
"Negative, Control. I can make it in on my own. ETA to Sector House: seven minutes."
"Acknowledged. Will advise med-bay you're on your way. Sector Control out."
Adjusting the bike computer so he would not need to use his left arm to manipulate the controls, Whitby was about to set off for the Sector House when he heard a voice calling after him.
"Hey, Whitby, wait up!"
Anderson jogged towards him and jumped onto her Lawmaster. "You lit out of there pretty fast," she said. "I take it you thought with the job done it was time to ride off into the sunset."
"Sunset?" he said, confused. "It's after midnight, Anderson."
"It's an expression, Whitby," she smiled. "Never mind. I guess I should know better than to joke with a Street Judge. I swear they must surgically remove your senses of humour in the Academy. Either that, or they teach extra classes in scowling. You know, we do have reason to be cheerful. We saved a boy's life and kicked a demon in the can besides. That's a good night's work by anybody's standards. Lighten up."
"I've got to get back to my Sector House," he said, not sure if it was the right thing to say, but having to say something. "Better get this shoulder fixed."
"Sector House 12, right?" Anderson said, keying in her own ignition code and activating her bike. "That's why I came after you. I'm coming with you. Just got a call from Central Dispatch. There's been a suspicious death in custody there and they want a Psi-Judge to help with the investigation. Smile, Whitby. The good news is, it looks like you're going to be having the pleasure of my company a little while longer."
"They've called in a Psi-Judge?" SJS Judge Vernon Hass's voice was aghast with outrage. "They can't do that; this is my investigation."
Hass was seated at his desk inside the converted storage room that had served as his makeshift office at Sector House 12 for the past two weeks, a secure channel to SJS headquarters open on his comms terminal and the face of his supervisor Judge Myers flickering with the occasional static burst on the screen before him. When the terminal had registered an incoming call from Myers a minute earlier, Hass had known bad news was in the offing, only to learn that what Myers had to say was even worse than he had imagined.
"You have any complaints, you'll have to take them up with Sector Chief Franklin," Myers shrugged. "The old man went over your head and called in some favours. Looks like he's still got some juice left at the Grand Hall of Justice. More than we gave him credit for, anyway."
"But you told me Franklin was a dinosaur." Hass fumed. "A tired old man, you said. How could he-"
"Even dinosaurs have their contacts, Hass," Myers said. "Back in the Jurassic it seems Franklin served with a young Street Judge named Ramos."
"Ramos?" Hass said. "You mean the Judge Ramos? Head of Street Division and a member of the Council of Five?"
"One and the same. Apparently, Franklin called Ramos an hour ago to complain about the slow pace of your investigation. Of course, it didn't help that you've been on the case for nearly two weeks with nothing to show for it. Franklin suggested that bringing in some outside assistance might help speed things along. Ramos agreed. He called Shenker at Psi Division and between the two of them they decided to assign a heavy hitter to the case. Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson. And yes, Hass, before you ask, that's the Judge Anderson."
"But I still don't see how they can get away with this," Hass sulked. "We're SJS. We're supposed to be autonomous."
"Politics, Hass," Myers said. "We can't afford to fight a turf war over this, not with the heads of two separate divisions involved and with one of them being a Council member to boot. Could be Ramos and Shenker are looking to get into a pissing contest with SJS and they're just using this business as an excuse." His voice grew hard. "Either way, I should tell you Judge Buell isn't happy."
"Judge Buell?" Hass said weakly. Even the thought he had somehow earned the displeasure of the head of SJS was enough to give him a shiver. "You've spoken to him?"
"Fifteen minutes ago," Myers said. "He told me to tell you that given your upward career trajectory to date, he has every faith you will ha
ndle this situation with sensitivity and dispatch in the best traditions of the SJS. And you know what that means. Solve this case, Hass. Myers, out."
The screen went black as Myers severed the connection. Reeling from the news, Hass sat in brooding silence and stared at the blank screen, his mind replaying the course of their conversation for the meanings hidden within the words. Most of all, he brooded on the message Myers had relayed from Judge Buell. "Upward career trajectory," Judge Buell had said. "Every faith." "Sensitivity and dispatch." "The best traditions of the SJS."
Translation: continue your own investigation and don't cooperate with Anderson any more than you have to. Stonewall her. Make her life difficult. Withhold information if need be. Above all else, don't let her solve the case before you. No matter what else happens, you have to be the one who brings in the perps. If not, we'll bust you out of SJS and make sure you end up as a Street Judge in the worst sector we can find. And you know what happens to SJS Judges who get bounced into Street Division, don't you, Hass?
It's a nightmare, he thought, as he saw a light blinking on his terminal indicating an incoming message. This entire case has had "career-breaker" written all over it right from the beginning.
"Hass here," he said, tapping a key on the comms-terminal and doing his best to compose himself as a new face appeared on the screen. It was Scranton, C Watch duty manager of the Sector House's Check-In Area. "What can I do for you, Judge Scranton?"
"This is a courtesy call, Hass," Scranton said frostily, his expression anything but courteous. "Psi-Judge Anderson just checked in on-site. Apparently she's been assigned to investigate the prisoner deaths."
"I see," Hass said, smoothly adopting his best bureaucratic manner. "I'm very busy at the moment. Have her directed to the waiting area and tell her I'll be with her as soon as possible."
Fear the Darkness Page 5