The latest prose novella in the new JUDGES series – Lone Wolf– is out now!
Written by George Mann (Doctor Who, Solaris Book of New Science Fiction), Lone Wolf is now available as an ebook and as a special signed limited print edition of just 250 copies.
In the USA of 2036, Eustace Fargo’s Judges have been on the beat for three years. Crime is down but tensions are high between police and Judges, and millions rail against the radical new laws.
A summary execution sparks a crisis: only the killer knew where his last, still-living victim was hidden.
With the largest storm in decades brewing off the East Coast and a city about to erupt into violence, can Judges Ramos and O’Shea find him in time?
Launched by series editor, author Michael Carroll, Judges explores the origins of Justice Department before Judge Dredd, bringing to light its difficult formation amondst the dark days of the end of the United States of America.
You can now pre-order the ebook of a brand new novella series that explores the origins of Justice Department and the world of Judge Dredd!
Judgesis a collection of stories from Abaddon Books exploring the very beginnings of the Judges, years before the Atomic Wars and the construction of Mega-City One!
In a time of widespread poverty, inequality and political unrest, Eustace Fargo’s controversial new justice laws have come into effect. Protests and violence meet the first judges as they hit the street to enforce the Law; the cure, it’s clear is far worse than the disease. Is this a sign of things to come?
In an utterly familiar world, just a few years away from our own, the series will interrogate due process, race, class, the militarization of the police and surveillance culture as it asks us: What sort of world will eventually give rise to the totalitarian Judge Dredd?
Over the past few years Carroll has been stamping his own mark on Judge Dredd for 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, as well as penning a series of e-novellas for Abaddon Books.
The Avalanche will be followed by When the Light Lay Still by newcomer Charles J Eskew in August 2018. A third, as-yet-unannounced novella will be released along with a collected Judges volume in January 2019.
The uniformed officer was busy transcribing a hand-written statement and didn’t look up from his keyboard. “With you in a second.”
Charlotte-Jane Leandros looked around the open-plan office. Aside from the now-limp Christmas tree in the corner, the top half of a paper Santa Claus pinned to the wall, and an Elf-on-a-Shelf that had what was very clearly a bullet-hole in the middle of its forehead, the police station of St. Christopher, Connecticut, didn’t appear to have changed in the two years since she’d last visited. The officer behind the desk, however, had changed quite a lot. He’d put on weight, and his hair was now very grey, as was the thick moustache he sported.
She reached across the officer’s desk and poked a pencil at his Schnauzer-a-day calendar. “So… Happy birthday, Benny.”
His typing paused for the briefest moment as he said, “Knew it was you, CJ.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He still hadn’t looked up from the screen, but he was suppressing a smile. “Sure I did. You’re still wearing the same deodorant, and you cleared your throat on the way in. You think I don’t know my own baby sister’s voice, even if she’s just clearing her throat? I’m a cop. I’ve been trained to notice stuff like that.” Benny Leandros finally stopped typing and glanced up at his sister. “So, does Mom know you’re back or is this a surprise vis—”
He jumped to his feet, and his chair skidded back across the room. “CJ, what are you wearing?”
CJ Leandros placed her dark-visored helmet onto her brother’s desk and took a step back, giving him a better view of her uniform. Matt-black Kevlar-and-titanium-fibre tunic and pants, dark grey gloves and boots, reinforced grey pads protecting her shoulders, elbows and knees. She turned in a slow circle, ignoring the officers who had been staring at her from the moment she’d entered the station. “So what do you think?”
Benny walked around to the front of his desk, stopped in front of his sister and stared down at her. “I think Mom’s gonna have an aneurysm. You… You told us you’d quit the police academy, not that you’d signed up to be a Judge! What was all that about working in a hardware store?”
“Cover story. We’re not encouraged to talk about it, even with family.” She shrugged. “Lot of people are still very hostile to the idea of Judges.”
“Can you blame them?” He shook his head slowly as he looked her up and down. “Body-armour. It’s a bad sign when cops need body armour. And you don’t have a body-camera!”
“What would I need one for? I don’t answer to anyone. Look, Benny, more than everyone else—even more than Dad—you were always telling me that I should go into law-enforcement.”
“Yeah, but I meant be a cop. That was before there were Judges! I mean, Judges like you. I thought you and me and Stav could be like a team, working the same beat, watch each other’s backs. That’s what Dad always wanted for us. Not… this.” He took a step back and again looked her up and down. “Not this, CJ. He’d have hated Fargo’s Footsoldiers and everything they represent.”
A voice behind CJ said, “He’s not alone in that.”
She’d known that he was there. Unlike Benny, Charlotte-Jane actually had been trained to be aware of what was around her at all times, and she was good at it. It was one of the reasons Judge Deacon had selected her for his team.
Her oldest brother, Sergeant Stavros Leandros, had entered the room right after Benny had walked around to the front of his desk. Stav had been watching her from the doorway, and CJ had in turn been watching his reflection in her helmet’s visor. On her way into the police station, she’d seen his car parked in the lot outside, and as sergeant he would have already been informed that a Judge had been seen riding through town.
He shook his head slowly. “If I’d known you were going to do this, I’d have stopped it.”
“How? It’s my life, my decision.”
Stavros nodded toward his office. “Let’s talk. Right now.” To Benny he said, “Not you. Get that report done and go home. You’re back on at oh-nine-hundred.”
As Stavros stomped away Benny said, “Better do what he says, CJ. You know what he’s like when he’s under pressure. Until yesterday we had half the town without power because the Settlers knocked out the grid again, and we’ve got like ten guys down with the flu. So…” Benny shrugged. “I figure the last thing he needs is a bunch of Judges showing up and throwing their weight around.”
He paused in the middle of dragging his chair back to his desk. “That’s not what’s happening, is it? Tell me that you’re here on your own and you just came back ’cos it’s my birthday and you wanted to surprise me.”
“I came early because it’s your birthday. There are six of us, working under Senior Judge Francesco Deacon. The others will be arriving tomorrow.”
Benny dropped into his chair. “Oh, Stav is not going to like that. And the captain is gonna have a fit.”
CJ Leandros smiled and shrugged at the same time. “Happy birthday, Benny. I’ll see you tomorrow back at Mom’s, yeah? And don’t tell her I’m here—I want to surprise her.”
“I won’t say a word… You know, I can’t decide whether she’s gonna be madder that you became a Judge or that you cut your hair. You always had great hair. Everyone said so.”
She was already backing away from his desk. “Judges can’t have long hair. Regs.”
She recognised some of the other officers and staff—there were a few she’d known her entire life—but right now they were pulling off that awkward trick of staring at her without looking her in the eye.
From the day she’d been hand-picked from the police academy, she’d known that this was going to happen. Ordinary cops didn’t like the new Department of Justice, and not just because it signalled the end of their careers.
As she passed the open doorway to Stavros’s office, he yelled, “CJ! Get in here!”
She stopped, and looked in through the doorway to see her brother standing next to Captain Virginia Witcombe, a cold-looking fifty-year-old woman with grey hair so tightly pulled back that CJ was surprised she could still blink.
“So,” Captain Witcombe said. “Welcome home, Charlotte-Jane.” CJ had the impression the Captain was just barely keeping a lid on her emotions.
“Thank you, Captain. It’s nice to be back. I honestly never expected to be posted here.”
Stavros said, “Yeah, about that. So out of the blue this afternoon we get an official e-mail telling us six Judges have been assigned to St. Christopher. We’ve got forty-three beat cops to manage twenty-eight thousand people, and now we’re babysitting half a dozen Judges too? And my own sister turns out to be one of them? Hell with that.”
“Yeah… I don’t like this either,” Captain Witcombe said. “Not one bit. You people want to make a difference, you should set up station in one of those towns in the Midwest that’re being overrun by gangs. Not here. It’s bad enough that I’ve got to put up with Judges at home in Colton, but I’ve worked too long and too damn hard to get where I am to throw it all away now. St. Christopher might not be the picture-postcard small town, but it’s a damn sight better than most, and I’m not going to stand by and watch while you Judges clear the path for the handcart this country is going to Hell in. You get what I’m saying?”
“You think that the Judges are a symptom of the problems, not the cure. I understand that, Captain, but I don’t agree.”
Stavros nodded. “Well, I agree with the captain. You remember what Dad always said, CJ. I remember Pappous saying it too, before you were even born. The single most important right any American citizen has is due process. The right to unbiased judgement when accused. You Judges have taken that right and flushed it down the crapper.” Stavros looked away from her, shaking his head. “It’s unconstitutional.”
Captain Witcombe said, “No, it’s not, Sergeant Leandros. Not since Eustace Fargo got the constitution changed.”
CJ said, “Captain, when you spoke at my dad’s funeral, you said that we need tougher laws to clamp down on drunk-drivers so that sort of thing would never happen again. Afterwards, at the reception, I found you crying in the corridor, and your husband… Harvey, right? He was trying to console you. But you didn’t want that. You didn’t want to be consoled, and you were furious with him because you said he was trying to pretend it had never happened. Then you saw me, and you took my hands and told me that it wasn’t fair, that my dad was a great man, and to have his life snatched away by some drunken loser was the worst possible crime. You remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. And that’s not all I remember.” The captain stepped closer to CJ, arms folded. “I remember an incident about a year earlier. You were fifteen years old, and I caught you and Tenna LeFevour stealing beer from the One-Stop.”
Stavros said, “What?” but both CJ and Witcombe ignored him.
The captain continued, “And now you’re a Judge. I heard you all had to be squeaky-clean. Can’t see how that’s possible if you were a shoplifter.”
“I wasn’t charged,” CJ said. “Remember? Dad asked you to take care of it.”
Witcombe pursed her lips. “Hmm. So if I hadn’t done that, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”
“Possibly not. But you broke the law when you persuaded the store’s owner to drop the charges. That’s a bad mark on your record sheet, Captain, not mine.”
Captain Virginia Witcombe remained perfectly still, and her voice was almost a whisper as she said, “You don’t talk to me like that. I don’t care who your father was or what happened to him. You never talk to me like that. Sergeant? Throw this smart-ass little punk out of my station in the next ten seconds or someone will have to arrest me for assaulting a Judge.”
Stavros took a step towards CJ. “Captain’s right. Get out, CJ. You and your new friends are not welcome in this town. The system we’ve got might not be perfect, but it’s fair and it works.”
CJ stood her ground. “Recorded crime in St. Christopher is up one hundred and sixty per cent from five years ago. In the same period, conviction rates have dropped twenty-nine per cent.” She sighed. “Stav, I drove by Mom’s place on the way into town. You know what I saw? Bars on the windows. They weren’t there when I left two years ago. Four houses down the street, the Johnstone place? Used to be a nice house. Now it’s just a pile of rubble and burnt timber.”
Stavros began, “That’s not—”
“I’m not done. Six weeks ago Cain Bluett stabbed Kirby Decosta twice in the chest on Main Street. Three sober, reliable eyewitnesses, plus CCTV footage from two angles. Where’s Cain Bluett right now? Drinking in Whelan’s bar. Why? Because he’s rich enough to hire the slickest law firm in the county, and his family has the political strength to bury the case. Dad might not have approved of Judges, but you know the drunk that ran him over was awaiting trial for DUI at the time, and wasn’t in jail because of overcrowding.
“You want me to go on? No, you don’t, because you both know that the system is not fair, and that it doesn’t work.” CJ turned from her brother to Captain Witcombe. “Judge Deacon and the others will be here early tomorrow morning. During this period of transition, we will work alongside you and your officers, but Judge Deacon has seniority. His word is final.”
Stavros looked away in disgust. “Jesus, CJ! Don’t—”
“Judge Leandros.”
“What?”
“Judge Leandros. Or just ‘Judge,’ if that’s simpler. That’s how you’ll address me, Sergeant.”
“Right. And does that apply when you’re off-duty? Because I can think of a few other names that might apply.”
CJ took a step back towards the door. “We’re never off-duty. Remember that.”
Captain Witcombe glanced at Stavros. “Looks like your baby sister outranks you, Sergeant.”
“Matter of fact, I outrank both of you,” CJ said.
* * *
Judge Francesco Deacon slowed his Lawranger and pulled in towards the sidewalk on Main Street. The four Judges following pulled in behind him.
Deacon climbed off the bulky motorcycle and trudged back through the refrozen slush, glad of his helmet’s auto-tint visor that cut off most of the glare from the morning sun. As he passed his fellow Judges he held out his left hand, palm-down.
Judge Lela Rowain asked, “Sir…?”
“Stay put, Rowain. They’re cops.”
Judge Kurzweil said, “Cop car. Doesn’t mean there’s real cops inside it, sir.”
Deacon ignored that. In the academy, Kurzweil had always been a touch paranoid about police officers and lawyers. She’d always believed that they were going to cause the Judges more trouble than the citizens would.
The police car had signalled them to pull over when they’d turned onto Main Street. Ordinarily, Deacon would have ignored it, but this was their first day in St. Christopher. Ruffled feathers weren’t conducive to a smooth transition.
As Deacon passed Hayden Santana, the last Judge in line, the police car’s door opened and a fifty-year-old woman climbed out. She stepped towards him, breath misting as she shrugged herself into a padded jacket and zipped it up. “Cold one. Again.”
“We were on the way to see you, Captain Witcombe.”
“You know who I am?”
“I’ve been briefed.” Deacon extended his hand to her. “Francesco Deacon.”
As she shook his hand she asked, “So is that Frank, or Fran? Or…?”
“‘Judge Deacon’ is fine.” He glanced around.
A couple of locals had stopped to stare at the Judges. They were passed by a teenaged boy dragging a large gasoline canister on a battered sled. The teenager glanced at the locals, then looked across the street to see what had snagged their attention. He said, “Oh, great. Judges.” Then spotted Deacon glaring at him, forced a smile and added, “I mean, ‘Oh, great! Judges!’” before turning away and increasing his pace.
On the street, an old red pick-up truck was crawling past, its white-bearded driver pointedly staring straight ahead and very definitely not looking at either the police captain or the Judges.
“Suspicious,” Deacon said, nodding towards the pick-up. “You want to pull him over, Captain, or should I?”
Captain Witcombe stepped closer to Deacon. “Leave him be. That’s not guilt on his face. He’s in shock. His name’s Henderson Rotzler, seventy-one, lives on the west edge of town. Loud-mouth when he’s drunk, but aside from that he’s all right. And he’s the reason I’ve stopped you…
“Rotzler’s just brought his dogs to his brother’s place, now he’s heading back home. I’m going to meet him there, and I expect you’ll want to, too.”
Deacon turned back to face the captain. “So what’s happened?”
Witcombe hesitated. “Way I understand things, you’re here to work with us, yeah? You Judges are gonna replace the entire judicial system, but that can’t happen overnight, because there just aren’t enough of you. So for now, you work alongside us ordinary cops and lawyers. Tell me I’m right.”
Deacon nodded. “That’s right.” Before the team had left Boston, Judge Fargo had called him in. “Go easy on them,” he’d said. “Let them have their last moments in the sun before the Justice Department takes everything away from them.” Deacon had fully intended to comply with that suggestion, but now, with the captain looking haggard and more than a little worried, diplomacy seemed like a luxury. He told her, “Do us both a favour and skip to the end.”
Captain Witcombe slowly shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Judge. I spent a few hours last night reading through the new directives. I was hoping to find something that tells me you’re not allowed to do anything until I sign you in, something like that.”
“We’re Judges,” Deacon said. “We’re already signed in. Doesn’t matter where we are—we’ve already got all the authority and approval we need. So get to the point, Captain.”
She glanced behind her, towards the back of the red pick-up truck, then said, “Rotzler’s dogs woke him up last night. He said they went crazy, barking like there was an intruder. He went out to check it out… There was a body in the back yard of his home. Someone had dumped her over the wall. Female, mid-twenties. Stripped naked. Shot at least once, in the head. According to Rotzler, she was still warm when he found her.”
Deacon stared at the captain for a moment, unmoving, and suppressed a shiver that he knew wasn’t down to the cold.
Witcombe continued, “Judge Deacon, we haven’t formally identified the deceased, but we have every reason to believe that she is Charlotte-Jane Leandros.”
Abaddon Books, Rebellion Publishing’s cutting edge-imprint for smart and subversive fiction, is thrilled to announce a new series in the Dredd-verse.
Judgesis a new series from Abaddon Books exploring the very beginnings of the Judges, years before the Atomic Wars and the construction of Mega-City One. In an utterly familiar world, just a few years away from our own, the series will interrogate due process, race, class, the militarization of the police and surveillance culture as it asks us: What sort of world will eventually give rise to the totalitarian Judge Dredd?
Commissioned by Abaddon’s David Thomas Moore and overseen by series editor Michael Carroll – one of the current writers on the Judge Dredd comic series – the series will begin with Carroll’s novella The Avalanche, due out in May 2018, followed by When the Light Lay Still by newcomer Charles J Eskew in August 2018. A third, as-yet-unannounced novella will be released along with a collected Judges volume in January 2019.
David Thomas Moore said, “The Judges of Mega-City One are a strange breed; an utterly horrifying sort of hero. What is the appeal? What would they look like today, on our streets? Judges will be one of the more challenging things I’ve ever worked on, and I’m hugely proud of it.”
The Judgesseries will begin in 2018.
ABOUT JUDGES BY MICHAEL CARROLL AND CHARLES J ESKEW
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 2033 A.D
In a time of widespread poverty, inequality and political unrest, Eustace Fargo’s controversial new justice laws have come into effect.
Protests and violence meet the first judges as they hit the street to enforce the Law; the cure, it’s clear is far worse than the disease.
Is this a sign of things to come?
About the Authors:
Michael Carroll is the author of about thirty books, including the acclaimed New Heroes series of superhero novels for the Young Adult market. He currently writes Judge Dredd for 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine. Other works include Jennifer Blood for Dynamite Entertainment, Razorjack for Titan Books (co-written with artist John Higgins) and a series of Judge Dredd e-novellas for Abaddon Books. A self-confessed expert in self-confession, Mike lives in Dublin, Ireland, with his wife Leonia and their ungrateful imaginary children Tesseract and Pineapple. He is currently studying for a master’s degree in illiterature and a mistress’s degree in fidelity. In his spare time he worries that there are still actual grown-up adults who don’t eat the crusts on their bread. Visit his marginally awesome website at www.michaelowencarroll.com.
Charlie J Eskew is a writer from Columbus, OH. He is a professional comic book shop lurker, and tenured Black dude in America. Please find an unnatural obsession with him via Twitter @CJEskew or his site, www.askeweskew.com.
About Abaddon Books:
Since its formation in 2005, Abaddon Books – an imprint of Rebellion Publishing – has been pushing the envelope on modern pulp fiction, producing fast, smart, subversive, high-action stories for today’s market. From the muddy trenches of No Man’s World to the terrible Oceans of The Sea Hates a Coward, and from the twisted Robin Hood of Hunter of Sherwood to the sly fairies of Monstrous Little Voices, Abaddon is the home of weirdness.
Out now in digital and print – this is the untold story behind Mega-City One’s most famous telepath and Judge Dredd partner, Judge Anderson, in her first year on the job!
Read the first chapter – for free – below!
Mega-City One, 2100. Cassandra Anderson is destined to become Psi-Division’s most famous Judge, foiling supernatural threats and policing Mega-City One’s hearts and souls. For now, she’s fresh out of Academy and Psi-Div themselves are still finding their feet.
Judge Anderson: Year Onecontains three novellas from 2000 AD writer Alec Worley:
Heartbreaker: After a string of apparently random, deadly assaults by customers at a dating agency, Anderson is convinced a telepathic killer is to blame. Putting her career on the line, the newly-trained Psi-Judge goes undercover to bring the romance-hating murderer to justice, with the big Valentine’s Day parade coming up…
The Abyss: Sent to interrogate Moriah Blake, leader of the notorious terror group ‘Bedlam, ‘ Anderson gets just one snippet of information – Bedlam’s planning on detonating a huge bomb – before Blake’s followers take over the Block. It’s a race against time, and Anderson’s on her own amongst the inmates…
A Dream of the Nevertime: Anderson – a rookie no more, with a year on the streets under her belt – contracts what appears to be a deadly psychic virus, and must explore the weirdest reaches of the Cursed Earth in search of a cure. She must face mutants, mystics and all the strangeness the land can throw at her as she wrestles weird forces…
Finding love in the city is hard. Soaring crime rates keep everyone indoors. Living life on the right side of the law keeps everyone busy. These days, who has time to make that special connection? Is romance dead?
MEET MARKET don’t think so. We’re Mega-City One’s most popular in-house dating agency. Our auctions can get you a great deal, whether you’re bidding on the date of your dreams or listing yourself as part of a romantic evening that goes to the highest—and hopefully hottest— bidder!
Sign up before Valentine’s Day and we’ll upgrade your first listing for free.*
Whoever you’re looking for, you can find them on MEET MARKET.
*subject to 36-month contract; offer excludes robots, mutants and aliens.
‘Meet Market’ Tri-D commercial, first aired 01.02.2100
MEGA-CITY ONE 2100 A.D.
One
Zak placed Reena’s synthi-caff on the table and smiled. Reena snarled and thrust her fork into his eye. He staggered backwards, open-mouthed, barging into the table behind him, spilling hot drinks into the laps of another couple, who stood and cursed him. The table capsized as Zak sprawled onto the floor. He sat up, touching the utensil protruding from his eye. A woman screamed.
A plate shattered against the wall by his head. Then a cup glanced painfully off his skull. Reena was a lot bigger than her profile picture had suggested. She was standing now, snatching glasses, plates and cutlery from the other tables and hurling them at him, shrieking obscenities, as though he were a rat she had cornered in her kitchen. Other couples were grabbing their coats and bags and hurrying past her out the door. Some just sat and stared. One of the guys behind the counter was babbling into a vidphone. Reena grabbed an empty loomanade bottle and pointed it at Zak, screaming.
“One-eighty tall, my ass. You lying sack of stomm!”
A big guy began to rise from a chair beside Reena, appealing to her to calm down, and she smashed the bottle across his face. He cried out and fell to his knees, clutching his cheek. The few remaining onlookers fled. The surrounding windows were now crowded with people, some filming the scene on their vidphones. Reena stared at the broken bottle in her shaking hand. Her chest heaved as though she were pausing to catch her breath. She turned to Zak, her teeth bared.
Zak’s habmate Marty had warned him that there were way too many crazies out there. Didn’t he read the newsfeeds? Zak had just told him that a cute girl on Meet Market had accepted his 75-credit bid to take her for an afternoon stroll around a holo-park. Marty advised him to wear a stab-vest; he had read about this chick who murdered this guy she met through one of those agencies. You gotta watch out for those futsies. Marty was right, of course. The feeds were full of stories about futsies, those citizens whose minds could no longer resist the overwhelming madness of day-to-day life in Mega- City One. Some threw themselves off buildings or under trains. Others vented their outrage on their fellow citizens, using hastily purchased shotguns or the biggest cleaver they could find in their kitchen drawer. Having claimed the lives of several unlucky citizens, these spontaneous episodes would invariably conclude with a couple of well-placed bullets courtesy of the Justice Department.
“Listen to me when I’m talking to you!”
Zak held up his hand to placate Reena, edging towards the door as he did so. But the gesture only seemed to incense her. She snorted like a maddened bull and ran at him, clutching the broken bottle like a dagger.
Zak yelped, feeling the fork wagging in his eye as he turned and scrambled for the exit. The automatic doors parted and several onlookers backed away outside. Reena grabbed a fistful of Zak’s hair, throwing her weight on top of him and pushing him to the floor. Scrabbling wildly, he pulled over an ornamental plant, spilling stones and soil. Reena stabbed him in the throat three times before the rest of the bottle shattered in her hand. Zak grabbed the largest of the scattered stones and rolled over to swing it at her head. He felt it connect and she fell to one side with a groan. The onlookers watched as Zak staggered to his feet and lunged towards them with bloodied hands. They retreated and he fell to his knees, clutching his throat.
Through his remaining eye, he squinted at the afternoon sun glowering through the vast windows of the Meet Market plaza. He could feel blood pulsing warm against his fingers, drenching his shirt. Someone would help him. Any second now. He would be okay. Zak felt himself topple and roll onto his back, his hand falling away from his spurting neck. From here he could see the indoor holo-park where he and Reena had paid to take a stroll, maybe rent a boat on the lake.
“Drop your weapon, citizen.”
Bemused, Zak turned his head. Across the spreading pool of blood in which he lay, he saw a Judge approaching from across the plaza, his Lawgiver raised. Zak heard screams, then feet pounding towards him from the caff-bar. The Judge paused, then fired twice. More screams as someone landed on top of Zak, driving the breath from his body. It was Reena. A large stone slipped from her dead hand and rattled on the ground beside him. Zak shivered as he felt Reena’s body dragged aside. Strong gloved hands pressed down either side of his throat.
“Control, this is Montana,” the Judge said. “I need a med- wagon, code three, at Meet Market Block, level six at the caff- bar on Valentino Plaza.”
Zak looked up at the red and blue visor glaring down at him. “Hang on, citizen,” the Judge said. “You’re gonna be okay.” Zak felt a wave of helpless gratitude. He shivered again and felt as though he were falling backwards. He hoped his sisters would take care of Mom.
Then the world according to Zak Mahoney disappeared.
* * *
Experiencing the death of another person through their eyes was routine post-mortem work for a Psi-Judge, but Cassandra Anderson always worried that it moved her more than it should. She figured she would get used to it soon enough. At least the technical term ‘reading for latents’ no longer felt as shockingly indifferent as it had when she first heard it as a child. Zak’s body was cooling more rapidly than usual, thanks to the blood loss. It was time for Anderson to vacate the premises. Principal Randall, a leading telepath at the Academy, liked to scare cadets with the story of the Psi-Judge who had lingered too long in the fading mind of a dead subject, the Judge’s consciousness drowning in darkness when the lights finally went out. Anderson withdrew her fingers from the dead man’s temples and opened her eyes.
“You okay?” Montana said. “What did you see in there?” “Same thing your witnesses saw,” Anderson said. “One minute these two’re making nice, next minute she’s riding the overzoom to Nutsville.”
The med-wagon had arrived and Anderson moved aside to let a pair of spindly droids start bagging Zak’s body. The two Judges had the plaza to themselves now. Montana had released the last of the witnesses, who were now being ushered elsewhere by Meet Market staff. Meet Market was required by law to accommodate Judge patrols, although the company filed constant objections on the grounds that it spoiled their expensive ambiance. Thank Grud Montana had been finishing up a sweep when he heard the screams. Anderson had just finished a routine cult bust-up two blocks south at Robin Hardy when she caught a patrol call about an assault in progress. She arrived five minutes later to find Montana guarding the two bodies and confiscating a citizen’s vidphone, threatening to bust the creep for obstruction.
“Sane one minute, crazy the next,” Montana said, watching the med-droids lift the bodybag containing the woman. “Sounds like a standard futsie to me.”
“Wait a second,” Anderson said, standing in the droids’ way as they tried to load the body into the med-wagon. “Don’t you wanna know why this woman flipped out?”
“She flipped out because she was crazy.” Anderson shook her head.
“There’s gotta be a reason.”
Montana gave her a sympathetic look.
“The other week, there was this mall manager up in Michael Douglas Block,” he said.
“Gets his hands on a flame-thrower, torches everyone in menswear before the Jays can take him down. No priors, no reason. People just snap. You’ll see this kind of thing every other day around here, rookie.”
“Rookie?” Anderson said, standing her ground. “That’s cute, Montana. Now let’s see…” She touched her temple.
“You made full eagle a whole month before me. Gee, I’m surprised you haven’t made Chief Judge yet with that kind of experience.”
Montana tried to interrupt.
“Passed by Judge Landsman, right? Although you almost blew it for failing to submit the correct address on an incident report. Oh, and there’s an ‘o’ in ‘perpetrator.’”
“That’s real clever, peejay,” he said. Peejay; Street-Div’s latest epithet for a Psi-Judge. “I’ll bet that one goes down great at kids’ parties. But, y’see, there’s this thing we need in the real world called ‘evidence’ and—Hey, what’re you doing?”
“Gathering evidence,” Anderson said, lowering Reena’s bodybag to the floor as the droids chirped their annoyance. She ignored them and unzipped the bag, revealing the dead woman’s blood-streaked face.
“I need to know whether we’re looking at a plain old futsie flip like you say, or something else. Now keep these droids quiet, I’m trying to concentrate.”
Anderson touched the dead woman’s forehead and tuned out before Montana could answer.
The other Judge, the droids and the plaza in which they all stood vanished as Anderson slipped into silent blackness. She reached out, drawn by the psionic afterglow that remained inside the dead woman’s congealing brain.
Reading the minds of the dead was really no different from reading those of the living. With a living subject, you just locked onto their cerebral cortex and fired psionic impulses into their synapses in order to access whatever memory you were after. Psi-Judges called it ‘lock and shock.’ Unlike living minds, the dead ones did not wriggle about like a mess of eels when you tried to grab hold of them. Provided the brain was reasonably fresh and had not been sucked inside out by a Lawgiver round, post-mortem subjects took a lot less ‘locking’ but one heck of a lot more ‘shocking.’ The Psi had to jumpstart the dead brain by flooding it with psionic energy. This temporarily revived the inanimate mind and illuminated the neural pathways last used by the subject. The Psi then had to maintain a steady flow of energy into the subject’s brain in order to keep the lights on while they had a look around.
Anderson let her psi-energy flow and felt the woman’s blackened mind light up like a city block returning to life after a power cut, although the synapses in the right hemisphere kept flickering. She remembered the woman had suffered a head trauma when Zak clocked her with that stone, and Anderson had to increase her bandwidth into the dead brain in order to maintain a steady link.
The first thing Anderson heard was hate. Super-fast gamma brainwaves, screeching like a zillion tortured violins. No steady beta-waves here to rationalise or restrain, just a torrent of terrified loathing. She heard wild commands to claw out the eyes of the man cowering before her, rip the flesh from his cheeks, beat his head against the floor until his skull cracked like an egg.
Anderson listened. Psi-Division telepaths were trained to regard the human brain as a radio with every station playing at once. Some stations played fast; others plodded. Some sang shrill and staccato; others produced bass notes so deep they felt like an earthquake. Anderson could tune in and out of different thoughtwaves as easily as if she were flipping channels on the Tri-D. But she was struggling to hear her way through this cacophony. So insistent were the woman’s hateful thoughts that the moment Anderson tuned one out another replaced it. The thoughts weren’t fried in the telltale backwash of drugs or stims; nor were they slurred by alcohol. The only thing the woman appeared to be high on was nerves and caffeine. Anderson was eventually driven back, forced to tap the more rational core of the woman’s long-term memories.
Anderson struggled to sustain the immense flow of energy into the dead woman’s brain. That tap on the noggin had caused a post-mortem haematoma, a ‘black spot’ that was now leaking psi-energy. Anderson quickly tapped into the woman’s revived synapses and several long-term memories rang out at once. The woman’s name was Reena Stanhope. She had a mother in Sector 72, whom she called every Saturday. She kept lots of houseplants. She lived in fear that the Judges would find out she had an illegal Tri-D hookup, which her last boyfriend had set up for her and which she couldn’t figure out how to disconnect. She was an account manager at an ad agency. She hoped people liked her. She worried about her weight. She was lonely, dissatisfied, and fearful that her next birthday would prove another tick of the clock counting down to spinsterhood. Anderson had heard it all before, of course. Everyone’s private fears sounded remarkably similar.
It was here in the forebrain chatter that you heard the ‘screamers,’ the psychotic or predatory urges, the long-term damage wrought by abuse or trauma. This was the stuff of which futsies were made and it usually started yelling at you the minute you tuned in. But here inside the rational core of Reena Stanhope’s memories, there was nothing of the sort. So what had made her flip?
Anderson was unsure how much longer she could maintain the psi-link, especially with that black spot leaking energy like a punctured tyre. Better hurry up and read those latents before the lights go out. She sank herself into the cockpit of the woman’s consciousness. Two holes glowed in the blackness, converging and widening until the light enveloped Anderson and she found herself peering through the eyes of Reena Stanhope, viewing the last few minutes of the woman’s life.
Reena was eating a forkful of brandycake. Anderson could feel its soft sweetness mashing between her tongue and palate. She heard the clink of Reena’s fork against her plate. She and Zak were talking about tomorrow’s Valentine’s Parade, a weekend- long festival that flooded the city streets with exotic dancers and lavish floats. Reena had never attended. She had been put off by too many stories of Judges busting heads at random. Zak said it could get pretty crazy, but was a lot of fun. Maybe they could check it out together. Yeah, maybe. It turned out they both lived in Carey Mulligan Block. She lived three levels down from him, but they both used the same gym, the one where the air conditioning kept breaking down and that girl with the piercings was always on reception, but never said hello.
The conversation was a breeze, each topic revealing a shared interest or giving Zak a chance to show off his cool sense of humour. Reena worried about filling her face with cake while they were talking and wondered what her mom would make of him. Reena had only just subscribed to Meet Market. The first two bidders she accepted had not impressed her. The first was at least 40 years older than his profile picture and had forgotten to bring his teeth. The other guy, who called himself ‘JudgeCuddles2072,’ had suggested they skip the bat-gliding lessons secured by his bid and Reena’s listing fee, and instead go back to his hab. But this time Reena appeared to have stuck man-gold. Maybe not 24-carats—he was way shorter than the 180cm he had stated on his profile—but definitely worth another date.
Zak asked if she would like another caff. She did. The bar was warm and comfortable and their coupon for the holo-park was good for another month.
Anderson heard a thought shriek out of nowhere like a bolt of lightning.
He’s playing you, Reena.
Unrelated thoughts always bubbled up from the cauldron of a person’s mind, but they rarely lingered, or struck with such violence.
Anderson listened, horrified, as that single thought—he’s playing you—consumed Reena’s mind like a virus.
You think a guy with arms like that struggles for a date, Reena? He’s probably bidding on twenty other girls right now. And look how you’re falling for it, bitch. Are you really that stupid? Are you really that desperate? Tomorrow morning that drokker will be high-fiving his buddies and laughing at pictures of you on his vidphone.
Reena was glaring now at Zak as he queued at the bar. She stabbed her fork into the table, rattling her caff cup, drawing glances from the other couples. Her heart was racing. Anderson did not have to be an empath to feel the volcanic hatred gathering inside Reena’s body.
From nought to ‘I wanna kill you’ in 60 seconds? No way was that a normal train of thought. So what had caused it? Some long-forgotten trauma? Dormant psychosis? Nothing Anderson had heard so far in the mind of Reena Stanhope suggested any such thing. Anderson was now convinced Reena was no futsie, but would have to dig even deeper if she were to find any evidence to the contrary. If evidence existed at all. Zak smiled as he returned with Reena’s caff. The image flickered. That damn black spot was now haemorrhaging psi- energy as fast as Anderson could pump it. One minute more and her body, kneeling somewhere out there in the Meet Market plaza, would pass out under the strain, severing the psi-link, and leaving her consciousness stranded. But did Reena deserve to be remembered as a murderous futsie, another reason for citizens to hide behind their hab doors, her breakdown a conundrum that would torment her family for the rest of their lives?
Anderson held on, as Reena’s view of Zak and the caff-bar dissolved into a black sea that repeatedly whispered the words he’s playing you. Anderson focused on the source of the sound and pitched a final round of synaptic commands into Reena’s deepest memory centres.
An image flashed through Reena’s mind: a black arrow, gleaming as it drilled through the air. Anderson felt it burn with hatred. The image was not a memory. It was a bolt of negative psionic energy shaped—visualised—in the form of an arrow, and fired into Reena’s mind. There it had detonated, confirming every insecurity, igniting every secret terror, obliterating all sense of judgement and sending her aggression impulses somewhere north of thermonuclear. Reena Stanhope was not insane; she had been driven to murder by a powerful psychic.
Anderson let go, releasing herself from Reena’s dwindling mind. But instead of surfacing in her own body, Anderson felt herself sinking deeper into the surrounding darkness. She took a second to realise, grasping at emptiness, that she must have passed out, her body keeling over out there in the real world, leaving the rest of her to evaporate. Anderson felt a flush of panic before her memories vaporised and she forgot what panic was. She felt herself dissolving. Where was she? Was she in trouble? What is ‘trouble’? Who am I? Anderson? Anderson.
“Anderson!”
Someone was shaking her by the wrists. Then a gloved hand slapped her face so hard that she cried out in rage. Anderson caught her attacker and threw him to the ground, locking his throat with both arms, a reflex burned into her by fifteen years of daily training in the Academy dojo.
“You’re welcome,” Montana said through gritted teeth, as the world returned to Anderson’s senses like a refreshing tide.
“I’m sorry,” she said, releasing him as the med-droids retrieved Reena’s body.
Montana sat up, rubbing his throat. “You nearly broke my neck, peejay.”
“And you’re breaking my heart, Montana. Now listen up. I think we’ve got a psychic psycho on the loose.”
