“Hmph. I’ll bet.” He unhooked a pair of cuffs and locked them around the creep’s wrists. “Still, this is becoming something of a habit for Erikson’s employees.” He forced the guy into a chair. “It seems desperate, too—like you were prepared to take a risk to come here. What were you after? Can’t be just zziz, you could pick that up on any street corner.”
“What can I say, I got a problem.”
“It was Vassell’s drug you were after, wasn’t it? This... alien compound.”
The man’s brow furrowed. “Don’t know nothing about no aliens.”
“He’s partnered with off-worlders. That’s where he’s getting it from, right?”
The man shook his head, bemused. In the distance, Dredd heard sirens as his back-up arrived, and he yanked the perp to his feet. “We’ll see how helpful you’ll be down at the sector house. Move.” He pushed him towards the door.
But he had the nagging suspicion that the creep’s confusion was genuine. Which begged the question—if Vassell hadn’t gone into business with out-of-towners, who had he done a deal with, and where was he getting the drug from? Dredd had a resigned feeling he was going to have to talk to one man in particular to find out the word from the underground.
Four
THE SHADOWS WERE closing in, she was sure of it.
She watched them crawl across the walls, ooze along the floor, fill the corners and crevices of the room with their inky darkness, and she was convinced that with each movement they were edging towards her, stealing the light as they crept nearer. She was conscious of how insane this sounded even as she thought it, how irrational. It was her five-year-old self’s imagination running wild, awake and scared in her gloomy bedroom in the early hours of the morning, half asleep and petrified, trying to fathom what she was seeing and her dreamstate filling in the blanks where she lacked an answer. But she was twenty-three, and surely past these kinds of nightmares—so why was she curled up on the mattress, trying to tell herself that the room wasn’t alive?
She screwed shut her eyes, then opened them: the blackness seemed deeper than ever before, the lamp on the floor by her pillow weak and faltering. She wanted to reach out and pick it up, check it was working properly, but that juvenile fear of drawing the monsters’ attention by moving was abroad in her head; she had to stay still, enveloped in her blanket, hands and feet under the covers, her breathing quiet and steady. To break the status quo was to invite catastrophe.
Judi had never felt lonely in this apartment before; in fact, she’d cherished the solitude. The Gloria Vanderbilt block was a slum, and most of the habs were deserted; silent, empty absences dotted throughout the building. In fact, she believed she was the only resident on her floor. She knew there were others, like her, using the block as a squat: she intermittently heard her neighbours rather than saw them, distant shouts and screams, laughter, the occasional dull thud of an explosion or accompanying rattle of gunfire. She rarely ventured beyond the apartment’s threshold unless it was a drugs run, or to steal supplies from the local hypermart, and even then it was a straight return trip to the street and back. She had no desire to explore any of the floors either above or below her, or meet the owners of those voices that punctuated the night, as much for her personal safety as anything. But when you had an all-consuming narcotics habit, it was not necessary to seek out company. Friendships were not required. It was just her and her addiction, and the dark, abandoned corridors and stairwells had always suited her just fine, an extension of the vast, echoing chamber within her that she needed to chemically fill on a daily basis in an attempt to feel... something.
She’d spent more than a few years sleeping rough before she’d found this place. Cast adrift by gunrunner parents—whose bodies would eventually be discovered in a rad-pit, a bullet in each heart courtesy of the Cuidad Barranquilla buyers they’d try to sell faulty stub cannons to—Judi was living in cardboard city by the time she hit her mid-teens, picking up a not inconsiderable zziz habit along the way. She thieved, walked the slab, did a handful of months in the juve cubes, but always came back to where she started, her body and mind craving stimulants to escape the here and now. She lost several teeth to her sugar fix, blew her sleep cycle on caffeine, rotted her liver on the home-brewed synthi-vodka that got passed around the braziers, and yet still she wanted more. She was set on a path of self-destruction that she couldn’t get off, each drug numbing her even as her veins coursed with intoxicants, each trip taking her further into a cold, remote state of being. She relied on them to feel human, and they were slowly but surely killing her.
This hab had been the acquisition of a fellow user she’d hooked up with a couple of years ago, and they’d burrowed themselves away in here, lost in their own drugs intake, ninety per cent of their interaction when they weren’t blissed out of their minds revolving around where they were going to grab their next score. Theirs was a strange relationship to the outsider, but it had a junkie’s sense of rhythm—she thought they were almost like an old married couple, so little interest they had in the other’s feelings and so concerned they were with their own selfish needs. She had to admit that, when he went out one night on a foraging mission and never returned, she felt no great sense of loss; indeed, she didn’t even notice for a day or so. She hadn’t conventionally cared for him and didn’t miss his presence. The apartment just appeared a little bigger, that was all.
So she’d lived here, content for the most part with her own company, her home never giving her cause for concern before. But now, as the shadows swirled over the ceiling and the light dimmed further, she felt under assault, besieged by her surroundings. Judi wondered if she could last out the night, simply lie still and wait for morning, but panic was bubbling up inside her, a claustrophobic anxiety that was urging her to get up and get out. Something was whispering in her ear that once the darkness had consumed the room entirely, then she would vanish too, piece by piece. She could feel sweat trickling down her brow, nausea lodged in her chest—if she was to go, she had to go now before she threw up or fainted.
Judi steeled herself, then flung off the blanket and staggered to her feet, her head feeling heavy and swollen. Shapes flew in the gloom—long, thin worm-like entities that circled and snapped—and the bedroom door looked like it was merging into the wall, sealing her in. She ran for it, her legs wobbly, and managed several steps before she pitched forward, smacking her temple on the bare floorboards, leaving a smear of blood like a spatter of ink. She crawled, refusing to glance behind or above her, just wanting to escape, yet it was like wading through tar. She had the sudden fear that she was drowning, that she was going to sink into the blackness, and she screamed for help, for someone to come and take her hand and pull her free of this quagmire.
She thrashed violently, kicking her feet, reaching out for something to hang on to, and her fingers closed around a sharp cylindrical object: she brought it closer to her face and realised it was a discarded hyperdermic needle. She rolled onto her back and swung it before her like a weapon, trying to fend off the creatures that lived in the dark, but the shadows swarmed over her arms and legs, gripped her ankles, pinned her shoulders. Judi stabbed at them, wanting to hack her way free.
Once they covered her face and poured down her throat, the last of the light winked out entirely.
DID DREDD FEEL intimidated as he dismounted his Lawmaster and looked up at the apartment complex before him? He told himself he wasn’t, but the slight pause before entering belied his hesitancy. He admonished himself and strode purposefully into the building: there was no reason for such behaviour, though he knew plenty of others who were nervous around Rico, both perps and Justice Department personnel alike.
Unquestionably, his clone-brother was a forceful presence—some might say a dangerous man; an unpredictable and venal one, certainly—but Dredd would do well to treat him as an equal, not to display any sign of being cowed in his company. One had never overshadowed the other since their days at the Academy: they’d alway
s been bonded by blood, two halves of the same gene-stock, proud to be part of a prestigious lineage that was woven into every blood cell and hair fibre. They were embodiments of everything Eustace Fargo had stood for, had wanted the Judges to be, and from the moment they were removed from the birthing tanks they were inseparable siblings, each prepared to take a bullet for the other.
At least, that was how they were at the beginning—on the gun range, in the classroom, on the streets, the pair of them united in their abilities as lawmen, the best of the badge. But upon graduation, something happened to Rico and their paths diverged. It was a permanent split, it seemed, and one from which there was no chance—or desire, on his brother’s part—of return. Dredd felt no small sense of regret at this: it was, after all, like watching a part of yourself turn its back on everything you were created for and believed in. But mostly it was distaste that he felt when he heard the name Rico Dredd, and despair at the level of corruption to which the man had sunk. That Fargo’s precious DNA had become twisted in such a way was appalling; even more so when you considered that the Father of Justice’s progeny still wore the uniform and was to all intents and purposes still an officer of the Law.
The block that Rico called home was symptomatic of his decadence—a ritzy building in Oldtown housing a number of suspect businessmen and councillors, it reeked of ill-gotten creds and aloofness. Although there were some at the Grand Hall who believed allowing Judges to have their own apartments was too much of a distraction, the current regime encouraged living amongst the citizens to foster good relations. Indeed, Dredd had not long moved into a sparse hab in Rowdy Yates, his colleagues recommending he employ a cleaning lady (an Italian woman was coming to be interviewed next week). However, Rico was entrenched amongst the elite, subsumed in a culture of self-gratification, and the fact that he was still here was indicative of how lax things had become.
To say that the brothers had seen increasingly little of each other since they gained the full eagle was an understatement; there was no love lost between them. Once they’d been close, had seen through their graduate years together, but now they were kin in name only. What had happened to Rico, what made him drift away from devout adherence to law and order, was unknown; why, when they shared so much in biological terms, should one twin be the opposite of the other was a mystery. There had been no turning point, no epiphany, just a slow descent into violence and an increasing body count. Perhaps there was something locked in Fargo’s genetic code that Dredd had managed to avoid, but was hidden there all the same. It was unthinkable to consider the suggestion that the bloodline was tainted, but the nugget of concern remained lodged at the back of Dredd’s mind: Rico’s fall had to have been precipitated by something in his nature. Yet, despite this, he had no sympathy for the man; he was everything a Judge was meant to be ingrained against becoming.
Rico, unsurprisingly, saw Joseph as a joke, a stickler locked into an archaic system of self-denial and obsession, trying to stem the tide of lawlessness in a city that was forever teetering on the edge of anarchy. In his eyes, it was a fight none of them could win. Rico saw his response as the only sane choice; to do otherwise, to battle and break heads without reward, was lunacy.
Dredd travelled to Rico’s floor and rapped on the door to his lux-apt. It had been several months since they’d last spoken; while the brothers had nothing in common anymore, Rico had an ear to the criminal underworld that made him a useful contact and sounding board for information when it came to the latest developments amidst the upper echelons of the Mega-Mob.
A woman answered his knock—a different one, Dredd noted, from when he was last here. Blonde, elegant, bedecked in jewellery, she looked at him with a disdain he wasn’t accustomed to seeing in those that found him standing on their doorstep; then, when her gaze travelled to his badge, she emitted a small sigh, nodded, and motioned for him to enter. She gestured towards the living room with a hand clutching a cocktail, the slightly lethargy of her movements revealing how many she’d had prior to that.
Rico was reclining in a lounger with his back to Dredd as he walked in, an identical drink cradled in his hand, the Tri-D tuned to a shuggy game. “Hey, Joe,” he exhaled wearily before his brother had even rounded the chair and into his field of vision. He shifted himself in his seat to study his visitor. “Long time.”
Rico was wearing sunglasses indoors for some reason, an unbuttoned garish shirt over a bare chest, and shorts. He looked a mess: unshaven, pale and blotchy, his eyes—when they peered over the tops of the glasses—bloodshot, his hair like straw. He stank, too, of sweat and sourness. Dredd’s lip curled in repulsion despite trying not to react, and Rico caught it, smiling broadly. “Yeah, good to see you too. Offer you a refreshment?” He dangled the cocktail before him.
Dredd declined with a curt shake of the head.
“Wise. Very wise,” Rico said, draining the glass. He pushed the shades up onto his brow and swung his legs off the chair, getting unsteadily to his feet. Standing before him, Dredd could see that height was about all they had physically in common; his brother had put on weight, his belly protruding, his jowls puffy. He couldn’t imagine him passing a fitness report in this state. It was an indictment of the administration at the Grand Hall that he was allowed to keep his badge at all. Their leniency was an outrage.
Rico stumbled over to a drinks cabinet and started to fix himself another. “So what can I do for you, Little Joe? I take it this isn’t a social call.” He squinted at an empty bottle. “Darlene, do we have any more shampagne?”
“That was the last of it,” the woman answered, slinking into the room and seating herself on a couch, curling her feet up under her.
“Gruddammit,” Rico muttered under his breath, rattling through the contents of the cabinet.
“Rico, don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Dredd said, casting an eye around the apartment. It was opulent but frayed; gone to seed, like its owner.
“Don’t judge me, brother. You’re not talking to some panhandling jughead you’ve collared on the street. Since when have you cared about my personal business, anyway?”
“It’s my concern when I see you destroying yourself. You’re an embarrassment to the uniform.”
“Please,” Rico said, rolling his eyes, “spare me your pity.”
“I have no pity for you. What I see is contempt for the bloodline, and revulsion at what you’ve become.”
“What I’ve become?” Rico slammed down his glass on the countertop. “Look at yourself, you sanctimonious drokker. If you didn’t have your daystick rammed so far up your backside, you might relax enough to have some sense of self-awareness. You’re a company man, Joe—you go where they point you, you swallow the party line. You’re what they made you to be, nothing more.”
“You were once the same.”
“Yeah, but I shrugged off the DNA straitjacket, didn’t I? I refused to be Fargo’s ghost, a splice off the old man. Your life was mapped for you the moment a cell was first grown in a Petri dish, and you never questioned it, never saw there was anything beyond that. I decided that yes, there was.”
“No, Rico, all you’ve done has been to fill it with distractions. All the potential is still there, and it’s just fallen into neglect. You squandered it.”
Rico bowed his head, sighed theatrically, then looked up. “Why. Are. You. Here?”
“Your criminal connections. I know you have contacts in the underworld. Have you heard anything about an off-world gang moving in on the dealers in the sector?”
Rico laughed, a rasping, barking sound. Out the corner of his eye, Dredd saw his brother’s squeeze jump at the sudden noise; she’d been drifting off into a stoned reverie. “You’re some piece of work, you know that, Joe?” he said. “You take the moral high ground, look down your nose at me, yet think you can tap me up for info when you need to. What makes you think you can come in here, lay down the law, and expect me to help you?”
“Because that’s all you’re good for now.
You’re a disgrace as a Judge.”
“And this is meant to convince me how, exactly?”
“For all your failings, that badge that you carry should still mean something.”
Rico shook his head. “Joseph, we exist in different worlds. I have no loyalty, no commitment. I stand with no one but myself.”
“That’s patently clear. But once, as cadets, you stood with me. ‘Like clones,’ remember?”
“Get over yourself,” Rico muttered darkly. “It means everything to you, our bloodline, doesn’t it? Fargo’s heritage... Let me tell you, it’s not easy to live up to, is it? You coming here, looking for help, investigation stalled—have you realised that you have to work at being a Judge, little brother? That’s it not all in the genes?”
Dredd turned to leave. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here.”
He’d taken no more than three steps when Rico called out: “Joe.” Dredd stopped, half turned. “Indulge my curiosity: what’s the case?”
“Drugs snuff,” he replied, his back still to his brother. “I think it’s connected to new merchandise that’s hitting the streets. And I think alien creeps are bringing it in.”
“You know what this narcotic is?”
“No, but its reputation seems to be preceding it. Every joker wants a piece.”
Rico grunted, then Dredd heard ice cubes filling a glass followed by the splash of liquid. He took another step towards the door. “You’re wrong about the off-worlders,” Rico said between sips, causing Dredd to pause again. “If a foreign element had muscled into the sector, I would’ve heard about it. There’s nothing out there to suggest that.”
“You come across any drugs talk, any mention of new product?”
“Some; fortunes to be made, that kind of thing. Nothing by name. But whatever it is, it’s homegrown.”
“A tag for the ICU was painted at the crime scene. I don’t make them for this.” Control had told him that the gangbangers had been released, their testimony standing up to lie detection.
Judge Dredd Year One: City Fathers Page 4
