As the Undercity gates yawned wide ahead of them, the Team reflected on the advice they’d been given about surviving in the ‘Down-Below’, as those charged with patrolling it knew it. As the H-Wagon carrying Tac-Team Wily and Anderson had screamed to a halt, grav-motors protesting, they’d been met by a motley figure. With a slouch hat and a rad/camo-cloak slung casually over one shoulder, the badge of a Judge could just be seen peeking out from under the bandoliers and ammo pouches that festooned her chest. To Hart’s disgust, he saw that the badge had been treated with something that dulled the parade-ground shine of Hart’s own shield, as had every other reflective surface she wore. This was a Judge-Ranger, one of a select group tasked with patrolling the Undercity. Not to bring the Law; the Down-Below was far beyond that. Instead, their task was to identify and destroy any threats to the City above. Their calling demanded a particularly ‘flexible’ attitude that usually extended both to their dress and demeanour. Still, they got the job done.
Judge-Ranger
Bolt handed them a cup of synthi-synthi-caff as they gathered in the plascrete
briefing room built into the fortified entrance to the Undercity. ‘Hear you’re
going down there alone, then.’ Her face spoke volumes about her opinion of this
idea, but she continued. ‘Dredd feels that the smaller the group, the less
chance you’ll draw attention. And that’s true. Down there, the numbers are
always on the side of the troggies, muties, gators, cannibals, rad-fleas,
rad-rats and everything else that’ll want to eat you. Not forgetting the
dinosaurs’ she added with a grimace. ‘There’s a reason why Rangers travel
either alone or in pairs. The best and sometimes only defence is not to be seen
in the first place. Here.’ Bolt indicated a pile of back-packs stacked in the
corner. ‘These contain all the gear you’ll most likely need down there;
rad-camos, munce-spray for the fleas, radiation counters, all that. We’re
pretty close to Old Central Park here, so you shouldn’t need to travel too far
to find whatever it is you’re after. The best advice I can give is to stay quiet,
use your training and be alert. Something’s been riling the natives down there
for a while now, although we haven’t been able to determine what. I wish you
luck, ‘cos you’ll need it’. Muller nodded distractedly; on their journey to the
northern rad-zone, the team had received some unwelcome news. The meat-wagon
carrying Vernon Martins’ body to Resyk had been discovered on the side of the
slab, its crew missing and signs of an evident struggle having taken place.
Control had put this down to the ongoing unrest in the Sector, but one thing
gave Muller pause; Martins’ corpse was missing, and although it had shown no
sign of retro-virus contamination…still, he felt there was more to this than
met the eye. Looking up, he saw Bolt giving him a hard stare, his distraction
evident. Muller’s face hardened in return. ‘We don’t need luck, friend. We’ve
got Hi-Ex.’
As the blast
doors finally clanged open, the team began to file through. As soon as they
reached the other side, they gates began to close. Turning back, the last they
saw was Bolt, shaking her head. Feeling their eyes on her, she forced a smile
and gave a half-hearted thumbs-up as the gates clanged shut. Giving their gear
one last check, the five Judges activated their helmets’ low-light filters and
looked about them. They were standing on a metal platform, stairs leading down
to what appeared to be the top of a building. Above them could be seen the
underside of the slab separating the Undercity from the Mega-City above. For
the first time, they appreciated the scale of what the City’s original builders
had done. Rather than rebuild the broken world of the past, they’d simply
sealed it away under a layer of plas-crete and started again. There was a whole
world down here, but it was obvious that the occupants weren’t happy with this.
As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they saw that the inside of the doors
leading to the outer world were covered with scratches, gouges and blast-marks.
There were things in here that had tried very hard to get out, and from the
apparent claw marks on the plas-crete, not all of them were human.
Moving
cautiously, the Team began to descend. The metal stairs did indeed lead to the
top of an old-time tenement block. UV trail markings left by the Rangers marked
a safe route, warning them away from unsafe floors or the traps they’d rigged
to discourage the locals. As they approached city bottom, all of the Judges
began to feel a growing sense of oppression. For Kowalski and Anderson, this
manifested as a sick nausea, a worsening dull pain throbbing through their
forebrains. Muller and Hart obsessively checked and rechecked their weaponry,
grumbling to each other over a closed comm-channel whilst Wily suppressed his
own disquiet by reviewing the latest map updates on his data-pad.
Eventually,
they reached the original ground level and emerged into the open. Around them
loomed building after silent building, their smashed windows appearing to stare
at them accusingly. Crashed and burned-out vehicles littered the streets, as
did mounds of rubble where the buildings had given up their struggle against
decay. More ominously, skeletons could be seen here and there, many of them
showing signs of having been a meal for something or other either before or
after death. Even before Wily could point out their route, Kowalski knew which
way they would be headed. Even though her precog and telepathic abilities were
minimal, she could still feel the waves of malignant evil emanating from some
distance away. Glancing at Anderson, she nodded and set off, swallowing the
sour taste of bile.
Tac-Team Wily
followed the Judge-Ranger’s advice and proceeded cautiously. Muller took point
whilst Hart moved from one pile of rubble to another, taking the high ground
wherever he could. He’d taken the opportunity to requisition a Ranger’s
Long-Rod rifle, equipped with a low-light scope and silencer. All of the team
had fitted silencers to their Lawgivers, even though it limited their use of
the favoured Hi-Ex and Incendiary rounds, much to Muller and Hart’s disappointment.
As they moved forward, Hart noticed movement off to his right; crouching and
scanning through his scope, he saw a small group of figures moving parallel to
their route. Pale-skinned, hunched and with enlarged eyes, they were
well-adapted to their environment. ‘Troggies, three o’clock’ growled Hart into
his comm. ‘Let’s keep moving’ responded Wily. ‘Reports indicate that they won’t
attack a group like ours directly. Instead, they’ll wait until we have wounded,
then they’ll move in’. Checking the scope once more, Hart could see other
groups moving on either side of them, being careful to stay just far enough
away to not present too tempting a target. Biting down on his frustration, Hart
followed Wily’s lead and continued onwards.
Despite a
couple of detours around fallen buildings, after an hour or so the small group
could see what appeared to be a petrified forest ahead of them. Leafless, dead
branches reached for sunlight that was no longer there, appearing rather
disconcertingly like skeletal hands. Through the ancient trees could be seen a
sickly, actinic light, its flickering seeming to beckon them onwards.
Cautiously, they moved through the former parkland; once more, Hart took the
high ground by scaling one of the trees. Scanning around him, he could see the
light emanated from a disc that appeared to be floating in mid-air. Behind him
he could see the troggies, gathered in a larger group now. But they clearly
feared whatever was in the park and stayed some way away, watching and waiting
for their chance.
Without
warning, the brittle branches surrounding them burst into motion and three
howling, deformed figures flew into their midst, a thin tracery of sickly green
giving definition to their forms in the gloom. The speed of the vampires’
assault caught Muller off-guard, and he found himself desperately fending off
claws and teeth almost before he knew it. Covering each other, the remainder of
the team began to pick off the charging creatures, recognising the tell-tale
effects of the EverPet retro-virus in their physiology. With disciplined fire,
the two remaining attackers were handily dealt with using a mix of SE,
Incendiary and Hi-Ex rounds; they figured that staying silent was now
irrelevant given the feverish howling of their assailants. Meanwhile, Muller
fended off his own attacker by dual-wielding his daystick and Lawgiver. Pushing
the beast back, he gave Hart an open shot and he took it, sending a round into
the creature’s head. As the fiend slid to the ground, however, Anderson and
Kowalski let out a simultaneous groan of horror as terror gripped them. From
his position, Hart saw an even more imposing shape crashing from side to side
through the petrified forest. As it came closer, Wily recognised the figure as
that of Jennifer Radley; following their encounter at the Church of Death HQ,
Radley had gone missing despite a thorough search. Clearly, somehow she’d made
her way to the Undercity somehow. As the Judges prepared to fire, it was clear
that Radley was in some distress. As before, despite the gross mutations
marring her hulking, distended form she retained the petulant face of a rather
plain-looking teenager. But this time, the beast held its head in its clawed
hands, howling wordlessly as it blundered from side to side. Suddenly, the
cause became evident; overlaying Radley’s form like an ill-fitting funeral
shroud was the ethereal form of a far more fearsome being; Judge Fear himself.
Evidently Fear, having been frustrated by the Judges’ quick thinking at the
warehouse, was attempting to possess Jennifer’s body, being half-way between
death and life as it was. However, Jennifer clearly had other plans and was
fighting him every step of the way. Without waiting to see the outcome of the
struggle, Tac-Team Wily opened fire with a mix of standard ammunition types and
the experimental ‘Adimax’ shells Helsing had designed at Hart’s suggestion. As the Adimax shells struck home, the
regenerative power of the retrovirus was stopped dead, as the life-giving Adifax
molecule negated the thanaton particles that gave the retrovirus its foul
potency.
The shock of
physical damage appeared to break the Radley-Beast’s concentration momentarily,
and Fear took his opportunity. The Dark Judge’s ethereal form suddenly became
more solid and he turned his terrible countenance towards the attacking Judges.
Instantly, a nebulous shape took form in his hand and shot out towards Muller,
solidifying into a wicked-looking mantrap with razor teeth trailing a chain
held in Fear’s grip. Muller grunted at the impact, then grinned as he realised
his suit had protected him from damage. His smile was short-lived however, as
he was tugged from his feet and drawn inexorably towards the fearsome spectre.
Try as he might, he couldn’t prevent himself being brought face to face with
Fear. As shells continued to pound his form, Fear reached up and opened the
front of his helm. Muller felt his heart turn to ice as his deepest fears began
to bubble up from the depths of his mind. Fighting to retain his sanity, Muller
clenched his teeth so hard that several of them broke. In the next moment,
Muller felt himself fall backwards as a shell shattered the chain holding him
fast.
A dry hiss
escaped Fear as he turned to find the one who had cheated him of his prey. As
Muller scrambled away to retrieve his Lawgiver, Hart gave Fear a sardonic
salute and raised his Long-Rod to his shoulder once more. Lightning fast, Fear
reached out his skeletal arm, a second chained mantrap forming as it gripped
Hart’s arm in its wicked teeth. Hart grimaced as the teeth sliced through his
body suit and drew blood from the flesh beneath, then felt himself being
dragged out of cover and brought face to face with Fear. As before, Fear stared
deep into Hart’s eyes, drawing forth his deepest fears. Created from Dredd’s
genetic stock as he was, Hart like to imagine that fear had been eradicated
from his psyche. But he soon realised that even Dredd contended with fear; not
fear of any creature or even death, but failing to protect the city he was
created to serve. As images of the city being overrun by the forces of crime
filled his mind, Hart likewise drew on his deepest reserves of sanity to remain
whole. Distracted as he was by this struggle, Radley took the opportunity to
loosen Fear’s grip on her body. Suddenly overwhelmed, Fear released Hart,
giving the Judges the chance to redouble the fury of their assault. Surrounded
by a nimbus of fiery destruction and locked in her struggle with Fear ,
Radley’s enhanced form finally succumbed and collapsed to the ground. As a sigh
of…what, relief?...escaped Radley’s charred lips, Fear’s spirit-form coalesced
in the air above, no doubt preparing to flee. With a scream of rage, Anderson
reached out with her mind and held Fear fast. Kowalski felt her mind being
drawn into the contest, marvelling as Anderson wove a net of psi-force around
Fear and drew him in. It was a complex feat, no doubt, but Kowalski thought she
could see how it was done…
All that the
mundane Judges saw of this struggle was Fear’s spirit darting this way and that
as it was drawn inexorably towards Anderson’s waiting figure. As one, they
grimaced as Anderson seemed to draw the oily smoke of Fear’s spirit in through
her eyes, nose and mouth until nothing remained. Catching Kowalski’s arm as she
fell to the ground, Anderson spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve got him, but
he’s a feisty drokker. I can’t carry on and keep him penned in, so you’ll have
to go on without me.’ She nodded to the circular shape floating in the air just
ahead. ‘Odds on that leads somewhere no-one in their right mind would go, but
something tells me Death’s got a plan. If we don’t take him down now, Grud
knows what he’ll do next. At least now we can take the fight to him’.
Exhausted, she collapse backwards, conserving her strength to fight off any
curious troggies.
The Tac-Team
regarded each other. ‘We could destroy the gate and leave that drokker where he
is’ offered Hart. What the others thought of this plan would never be known, as
Kowalski forestalled any further discussion by taking a running jump and diving
head-first through the portal to who-knows-where. Stunned, Muller, Hart and
Wily regarded each other wordlessly for a moment before racing after her. All
at once, Anderson found herself alone. ‘Come on then, you spuggers; it’s
dinnertime!’ she growled, raising her Lawgiver towards a group of troggies
picking their way through the ruins towards her…
The portal’s
destination was clear to the Judges as soon as they landed on the dry, uneven
ground on the other side. All around them, a grey light revealed a cruel parody
of the City they’d left behind them. The ground was made up of a thick covering
of human bones of all shapes and sizes. As the Judges climbed to their feet,
the bones shifted and clattered hideously. Kowalski was on her knees,
shuddering and retching as the horror of the place overwhelmed her. Wily and
the others were affected too, feeling their sense of reality slip away. Wily
realised he had to take the lead, and did so. ‘Right, Tac-Team, listen up.
We’re the best the City has to offer, and we know it. We’ve beaten things that
would drive ordinary people insane, and grinned whilst we did it. I don’t know
about you, but this Death creep has caused me enough trouble already. Let’s
mess his stomm up good and proper, and kick his skinny dead butt for good!’.
Miraculously, this was enough to get his comrades up and moving. Without any
discussion, they all began walking towards a huge building that appeared to be
a twisted copy of the Grand Hall of Justice back on Earth. As they moved, they
could see what appeared to be a glimmer of light emanating from within.
Mounting the steps, they saw that the entrance took the form of a huge replica
of Death’s face, swallowing them whole as they stepped within, Lawgivers at the
ready.
Inside, the
atmosphere was even more oppressive than ever, and an unearthly howling echoed
through the spine-like columns supporting the ceiling. The bones of the judged
lay piled in immense drifts, in places reaching almost to the ceiling high
above. The eyes of those slain by the Dark Judges gazed sightlessly into
eternity, testament to Death’s obsession with eradicating the crime of life.
Muller in particular found this gruesome spectacle almost too much to bear; his
practical, no-nonsense approach to life left him unprepared to deal with such
cosmic evil. For Wily, the horror of seeing the tremor in Muller’s usually
rock-solid gun hand was almost worse than the devastation around him. Summoning
his courage, he once more spoke words of encouragement to his team. But
although the call to action seemed to stiffen the resolve of his comrades once
more, they sounded hollow in his own ears. He, for one, was convinced that
Death would claim them. As one, the four
Judges turned towards the light glimmering from within what appeared to be a
vast auditorium, perhaps where Death had first outlined his vision of a pure
world without lawlessness. Realising the futility of stealth in this charnel
house, Tac-Team Wily walked forward, pushing down the rising panic within each
of them.
The floor fell
away to a circular area at the centre of the auditorium. Its higher reaches
were shrouded in a coiling miasma, but the centre was bathed in a sickly, pale
light. Around the perimeter of the central area stood five pillars of the same
black stone as that of the Monolith in the Church of Death HQ. Bound to each
was either a vampire or a cultist, evidently the source of the unsettling howl
as each writhed in apparent agony, bound to the pillars with chains. In the
centre of the space was a five-pointed star, marked out in the blood of an
unfortunate victim of the enormous creature that stood at its very centre.
Sensing its presence, it turned towards them and with a shock they recognised
the tortured corpse of Vernon Martins, its flesh bubbling and stretching as it
changed before their eyes, getting ever closer to embodying the true master of
this place: Death himself.
Death spoke in
a low hiss, but the sibilant words sounded clearly in this, his place of power.
"Our servant's spirit has left this flesh, but his sinful attempts to
attain eternal life would seem to have had their uses. His serum flows in this
body's veins, transforming its dead flesh. Now it is truly indestructible, a
fitting new form to contain my spirit and a vessel with which to continue our
great work." Dropping the pitiful corpse he held in his dead hands, he
gestured to the writhing figures surrounding him. "Yes, with the energy
from these little ones, I can open the dimensional gateways to their full
extent. The Sisters of Death will be found and returned to us. Deadworld and
your own corrupt dimension will merge together as one. I will cross over again
to free my brothers. In this body, with our two worlds merged into one, I will
be invincible, and all will finally be judged!" With that, he launched
himself forward with a soul-shrivelling cackle, filthy claws outstretched.
For desperate
minutes, the Judges tried to fend off Death’s assault. Convinced that the
figures bound to the monoliths were somehow connected to the Dark Judge’s
power, Hart and Wily methodically began to shoot the bindings holding them. As
they did so, each figure slumped forward and the terrible howling lessened each
time. Muller took up the responsibility of drawing Death’s attention, with a
mix of Adimax, Hi-Ex and Incendiary shells. For his pains, he received…pain. With
a hiss of glee, convinced of his invincibility, Death darted forward with preternatural
speed. Thrusting its arm forward, the fiend caught Muller’s shoulder, its fist
appearing to slide through the protective padding and into Muller’s flesh
beneath. As the awful pain registered, the colour drained from Muller’s face
and he sagged backwards, his Lawgiver falling from nerveless fingers. As he did
so, Kowalski caught a glimpse of Muller’s face and was taken aback by the expression
of terrible despair it bore. Clearly, he was hanging on to his sanity by a
thread. At that moment, Hart and Wily renewed their own assault on Death,
blowing huge chunks out of the beast. With a hiss, the Dark Judge let Muller
fall and turned towards his new foes.
Kowalski saw this
terrible scene playing out before her. Muller was slumped forward, desperately
trying to lift his Lawgiver to assist his comrades. Hart staggered backwards,
having taken a heavy blow to his chest. Wily’s helmet had been knocked off,
revealing the wild look in his eyes as he poured round after round into Martins’
possessed corpse. Above all the pounding gunfire could be heard Death’s dry, gleeful
laughter. Although his body was taking terrible damage, he was confident of
victory. Kowalski knew with a terrible certainty that they and their City were
doomed. Unless…
Unless. For
Kowalski, time suddenly slowed to a crawl. Despite the regenerative powers of Martins’
retrovirus-filled corpse, the dampening effect of the Adimax meant that Death’s
spirit was momentarily shaken loose. Not enough to make a difference for the rest
of her team, but as the spirit made to dive back into its host it was enough
for Kowalski. With a thought, she channelled every ounce of her psi-power into creating
a net of force, as she’d seen Anderson do to Judge Fear. Contemptuously, Death
made to break the flimsy bonds…and found he couldn’t. Kowalski was pouring
every part of her heart and soul into containing Death. ‘My life for yours, creep!’
she hissed between bloody lips. Inexorably, the dark shape of Death’s spirit
was drawn towards Kowalski. Finally, she stood there, fists clenched at her
side, face to face with her nemesis. Blood poured from her eyes as she gave up
the last of her strength to imprison the foul creature in her mind. Instantly,
she fell to the bone-covered floor. As Hart and Wily raced to her side, she silently
mouthed one word over and over, staring pleadingly into Wily’s face. ‘Boing!
Get me some Boing here right drokking now!’ he yelled. Wordlessly, Hart slapped
a canister into his hand and it was the work of a moment to encase Kowalski’s
slight figure in the wonder plastic. Kowalski’s tortured face finally relaxed,
and it seemed as though she slept. Without speaking, the remainder of Tac-Team
Wily gathered around her form, leaning against each other for support.
***********************************
"And the
gateway in the Undercity?" asked Chief Judge Francisco. "Destroyed
also," Psi-Chief Schenker assured her. Francisco sat back in his chair,
digesting everything he had heard in the last few hours as the Council of Five
had convened in special session to discuss the aftermath of the recent carnage
caused by the Dark Judges' escape. It could have been a lot worse, he reminded
himself, looking at the death toll figures that scrolled across the screen of
the small desk monitor in front of him. It still made for grim reading but yes,
he told himself, it could have been a lot worse. The Church of Death was
officially no more, its members either dead or locked up for life in the cubes.
EverPet had been shut down, and Icarus's secret research work seized by the
Justice Department before anyone else could try to replicate it. Even before
Justice Department med-scientists had started going through it in detail, Judge
Helsing had been able to successfully replicate a cure for the effects of
Icarus's retrovirus. There would be no more outbreaks of any plagues of undead
in Mega-City One for the foreseeable future. Harsh lessons had also been
learned. A new prison to hold the Dark Judges had already been built. Death and
his three brethren would be its only inmates, and the facility's location was a
closely guarded secret, even within the ranks of the Justice Department.
Security procedures at the facility would be ultra-rigorous, with several
systems of fail-safes in place. There could hopefully never be a repeat of the
events that happened at Nixon Pen.
Epilogue
The Judge serving
as the Sector Chief’s ADC knocked on the office door and waited for an answer.
Everybody knew the Chief was a stickler for small courtesies: ‘Grud knows this
City has few enough of those’ he was fond of saying. The younger Judges often
sniggered about the Chief’s odd ways, especially as he’d ridden a desk for the
past decade, but the more experienced Street Judges were quick to put them
right in no uncertain terms. Yes, the Chief was no Street Judge, but he’d paid
his dues ten times over. Besides, his kindly exterior hid a keen mind for
strategy and an insight into the criminal mind that most Judges could never
hope to have. Through his meticulous
preparation, planning and strategy, he’d saved the lives of more Judges and
Citizens than any trigger-happy Slab Jock ever could.
‘Enter’ came
the quiet, calm voice. The ADC stuck his head around the door: ‘your visitor’s here,
sir’. The Sector Chief turned away from the view screen showing the Mega-City
skyline and took a deep breath whilst straightening his dress uniform before nodding.
‘Send him in’.
The visitor
wore the uniform of an Academy Judge-Tutor, but the Chief still saw the younger
Judge his visitor had once been. ‘Hart. Good to see you’. He stepped forward to
take the other Judge’s hand, and was surprised to find that he actually was glad,
despite his earlier misgivings. ‘How long has it been?’ Hart turned his face away
from the Chief as he considered his answer. ‘Fifteen years, three months and
twenty-three days’ he said, without a trace of humour. Chief Wily shook his
head slightly. Whilst he’d been a desk judge for most of his career, scaling
the ladder of promotion, Hart had been a Street Judge until a brutal run-in with
a bunch of Klegg mercenaries had ended his days on the Slab. Although he’d
wanted to end his days out on the Street, it wasn’t to be. The Chief Judge
herself had ordered Hart to join the faculty of Judge-Tutors at the Academy, and
by all accounts he’d been an effective if merciless teacher.
After briefly shaking
Wily’s hand, Hart had moved around the office, picking up mementos of a long
and distinguished career until he finally lifted a commendation plaque in the
shape of the Eagle of Justice. ‘All three of us got one of these. Mine’s in a
box somewhere’. ‘Four’, replied Wily. ‘Four of us’. Hart looked at him briefly,
before nodding assent. ‘Yes. Four.’ He turned back and gestured towards the
door, his prosthetic arm and legs hissing. ‘We should go’.
It was only a
short H-Wagon ride to the Wall Gate where the ceremony was to take place. The two
senior Judges sat in silence for much of the flight. They’d never really had much
in common anyway, and their separate career paths had pushed them even further
apart. Still, Wily reflected, it felt right that they should both be here today,
of all days.
As they dismounted
from the H-Wagon, the Wall loomed above them into the haze. A small group of Judges
stood talking quietly near to one of the innumerable sally ports that punctured
the barrier separating the City from the radioactive wasteland known as the Cursed
Earth. As Wily and Hart approached, the junior Judges straightened up and
nodded. Standing amongst them was an older figure that Wily didn’t recognise at
first. It was only when he turned and strode towards them that the trademark curled
lip became apparent. He nodded curtly to Hart and shook Wily’s proffered hand. ‘Glad
you could come to my going-away party’ he said, adjusting the heavy pack across
his shoulders. Muller had spent the intervening years on the Slab as an uncompromising
Street Judge. His impressively high body count and arrest stats meant that he
was regularly put up for promotion, only for his relentless contempt for authority
to keep him at street-level. He’d had several run-ins with SJS over the years,
particularly with a Judge Smith before his untimely death. According to
witnesses, this had been one of the few times that Muller had ever been seen to
break into a grin. But street duty had changed Muller. He was now sour and
cynical, having lost faith in the institutions he’d spent his life preserving. For
such a Judge, there was only one recourse.
‘Come on, let’s
get this over with’. As the sally port’s blast doors began to open, the Judges
formed an honour guard on either side of the door, their Lawgivers held high.
As Muller strode forward without a backward glance, Wily intoned the words laid
down in the Book of the Law for those taking the Long Walk. ‘Let his name be
recorded in every place of honour. Let him take the Law he served so well to
those who have it not. Let him be written in our thoughts and memories forever
as our brother enters the Cursed Earth, there to take the Law to the lawless, until
death.’
***********************************
His brethren at
times fought and raged against the even more restrictive confines of their new
place of imprisonment, but Death remained still and silent, content for the
time being to merely observe the conditions of the barriers and wards that held
them in check, and study the minds of their human jailors. Slowly,
imperceptibly, the thinnest, most invisible tendrils of his psychic aura crept
out to explore the limits of this new place and of the living minds that
inhabited it. He was patient, never rash or greedy, and his slowly expanding
knowledge of all that was happening around him passed beneath the psychic
perceptions of the batteries of Psi-Judges who were there day and night to keep
watch over him and his brothers. There were possibilities even here, Death
sensed. Dim and remote they may be right now, but Death was patient in a way in
which his still-living jailers were not, and after all he had all eternity to
wait and plan, if need be. "Patience, brothers," he consoled the
others, whispering to them in a voice so quiet that it existed at a level never
even suspected by the living. "One day we will be free again, I promise,
and then our great work will begin again."
But Death’s
whispers were not unheard. Shielded from Death’s sight, a small bright thing lay
undisturbed and undiscovered in the corner of Kowalski’s mind, watching and
waiting, one thought cycling eternally: ‘Just you try it, you drokker, and see
what happens. I haven’t been idle in here, you know; you’ve no idea what I’ve
become. So come on, just you try it…’
***********************************
On the other
side of the dimensional void, in the empty silence of Deadworld, something
stirred amongst the jumbled litter of ancient bones that was all that remained
of the original victims of the Dark Judges. Death had been wrong when he had
thought he had seized control of an empty vessel when his spirit had flowed in
to take possession of Icarus's retrovirus-mutated corpse. Some vestige of the
body's original owner had lingered, remaining trapped and helpless within the
prison of its own dead flesh, powerless to intervene as the Dark Judge had
claimed that same flesh for himself. That same remote vestige had survived the
destruction of its body, but in being freed from that dead flesh, it found it
had merely exchanged one prison for another, larger one. It wandered the far
reaches of its new prison, receiving no response to its increasingly frantic
entreaties for help. Dr Dick Icarus, aka Vernon Martins, had achieved his wish
at last. Here in the empty, still spaces of Deadworld, he would live forever,
lingering bodiless and alone for all eternity, with nothing but the dead bones
to hear his whispered, begging pleas to be granted the oblivion he now so
desperately craved.
THE END……?
(inspired in part by the 'Dredd vs Death' console game and novelisation. I've used some sections of text in my write-ups, without permission)
