A/N: Thanks everyone who followed, and extra special thanks to the heroes who reviewed! This chapter was brutal to write, and I'm still not 100% thrilled with it. The creators still own everything, I'm just playing in their sandbox. Chapter edited 3/31/13 for clarity, coherence, and characterization.
The case of the fraudulent medicine consumes Cassandra's every waking moment. It's completely inappropriate to take this level of personal interest in work that isn't hers, and she suspects her superiors are loading more work onto her to keep her distracted. More paperwork, more patrols, more supervisory roles of the most junior cadets leave her with precious little time not devoted to basic functions of living. Too bad all their good intentions, extra work and exercise can't keep her unruly mind from wandering in unwanted directions. There are too many quiet moments where her body moves on autopilot and her thoughts are free to roam back to the underground manufacturing facilities and empty headed technicians and the piles of false medication.
She'd die before admitting it, but it's that last detail which keeps her up at night. Out of all the possible chemicals that might be counterfeited, Clavax should have a highly unfavorable profit margin. Expensive even to fake, cheap by Norm standards and dear only to the oppressed and impoverished communities by the Wall. The only victims of the fraud would be mutants; and there are plenty of citizens and judges who would view the whole affair as a victimless crime. Judges don't patrol the mutant blocks or enclaves; preferring to interact with the not-quite-citizens exclusively in terms of chasing them back to their place when desperate raids make it beyond the barricades. She's the first mutant judge, all too aware of the stigma that marks her in the eyes of many; she can't ignore the community she was born into the way everyone else does.
So she devotes every spare moment to learning about the monstrous entity that is the pharmaceutical industry in Mega City One: Red Pharma. Minutes snatched from other high priority activities she spends trawling reports and histories for information about the monopolistic corporation which had devoured all competition and is now the entirety of the legitimate drug industry. Factoids don't help, and for all her dedication she finds herself going nowhere; a single incident isn't a pattern and her details are irrelevant without a bigger picture. She can't give up on the case, this can't be a stand alone incident, it doesn't make any sense, but her current trajectory is unsustainable. There's little to do except refocus her energy and keeps her ears pricked for any relevant gossip. Her chance will come, and when it does she'll be ready.
Another day, and Anderson finds herself assigned the traffic beat in Sector 2, accepting the with only a private grumble. All parts of the Law are equal, the lesson is pounded into Cadets from their first moments in Academy, but the quiet consensus among Street Judges is that traffic shifts are equal only to paperwork, and outstrip all other fields of Law in tedium. All Judges are on the rota for Traffic patrols, it's just impossible to imagine the great Judge Fargo striding heroically through the heavily congested streets of Mega City One, dispensing fines and assigning forfeitures for the good of the city.
Anderson finds her pace in the work, bringing some semblance of order to the sector through her stern presence behind the damnable helmet. In all other things she prefers being bareheaded, but the constant intimate proximity with so many barely civil strangers makes her crave the anonymity behind the black visor and its dampening effects on her psychic abilities. Obstruction of Traffic, Reckless Endangerment, Carjacking, Failure to Meet Primary Mechanical Standards, Use of Hover Device in Earthbound Zone... there are hundreds of possible traffic violations and millions of violators, her presence feels like sticking her thumb in a sieve to stop the leaking.
"Control to Anderson; report for backup by the corner of Bridge and Asbury. Intercept suspect fleeing toward east exit."
"Roger, Control, on my way." It's hard not to smile as she returns to her Lawmaster, revving the bike's massive fission engine before rocketing down the boulevard, weaving around clunkers and the unfortunate speed mobiles stuck eating their exhaust. Her fat tires swallow the long swathe of congested street, and its seconds before she halts at the intersection, letting her bike idle as she checks the status of the runner, a small dot navigating across the blueprints superimposed on her view, making its way directly to the service entrance to her left. "Anderson in place," she informs Control and places a small slime trap before the narrow egress and begins the count down as her target draws closer. Three... two... one. A man bursts through the narrow side door, loses his footing to the viscous coating lubricating the sidewalk. Momentum carries him on his knees, past the amused Judge Anderson, and he scrambles to regain his footing until 130 pounds of dedicated Judge lands squarely on his back, expertly applied submission hold reducing his chance of escape to nil.
Her heart pounds, reveling in the activity after long hours of tedium, and Anderson waits for the mandated fifteen seconds after the creep beneath her goes limp before releasing her elbow around his throat. She's snapping cuffs on the unmoving man when one member of the team arrives, cautiously navigating around the slick pavement.
"Good catch, Judge Anderson, thanks." The stocky Judge speaks quietly into his communicator, and takes Anderson's space beside the perp, completing the restraints.
"Just doing my job," She smiles cheerily and tugs off her restricting headgear for an unimpaired view of the latest addition to the Iso-Cube population. Her visor had tinted the plain white coverall he wore with a stylized red X on the breast pocket, and something, observed quickly then forgotten, niggles in the back of her mind. Running a gloved hand through her sweat-matted hair, Anderson turns slowly, surveying the street until... there. A second anomalous element: blinding white truck sparkling on the dingy street. White suit, white truck. "Did you find anything odd inside?" She queries the attending Judge, drifting toward the vehicle as her curiosity exerts gravitational pull on her body. She surveys the still transport carefully as she closes the distance; perfectly parked in a legal spot, a full 10 minutes displayed on the parking meter. It might be the single most suspicious thing she's seen this week; not even Dredd made judgements on parking meter non-compliance. The hatch is locked, but the driver's door isn't, so she hops in , swinging around the bucket seats and shuffling, half bent, to the cargo area. The dome light illuminates the heavy white crates anchored to the sides. Unmarked white packaging, and she's not imagining the antiseptic smells of laboratory equipment hanging in the still air currents.
Grimly, she hops out of the truck, slamming the door behind her, and returning to the Judges standing guard over the small huddle of men and women in white lab coats, the white clad driver by their feet. "Make sure the truck gets back to the labs, too." She doesn't wait for them to respond, not entirely sure if they'll follow orders from her, and not sure if its her place to be giving them in the first place. Inside, it's not hard to trace the runner's path in reverse, back to a yellow barrier to the lab itself, in disarray but still entirely recognizable as a copy of the counterfeit Clavax facility.
Anderson floats through the last hours of her traffic patrol, a model Judge on the outside and walking on air internally. With patience and luck, she'll be able to find patterns now, common recurrences and significant differences, even confidential data on their distribution network. Unmarked trucks, unmarked driver, unmarked packaging and hopefully all the more traceable due to crisp uniformity in the dirty messy chaos of Big Meg. It's an incredible step for her case, a transition from her paranoid fantasy, as some might think of it, into the realm of Law, with the strength of Control;s information and the power of Street and maybe even the approval of High Council in time. She has to laugh at her silliness; juvenile daydreams are all well and good in the safety of her head, but not something she'd ever want anyone else learning of. Ever.
Gaining access to the reports from the second bust proves easier than she would have though. It's hardly difficult to find an off duty Control Judge, and simple enough to schmooze with them until they're comfortable helping out with her request. It's common knowledge that the street gets under your skin, makes you a little odd; everyone needs a hobby, right? Anderson picks up the thread of thought from the man she's swapping egregious lies with over a cup of synthcaff and retreats from the thought with a flicker of guilt. She could have picked the location of the files and the passwords protecting them out of his, or anyone else 's, head. It might have been faster, certainly it would have been less obtrusive, but as she snickers at a cunning observation he articulates with a wave of his glass, it would have been wrong. She swore, as a part of her graduation from Cadet to Judge, that she would hold inviolate the private thoughts of those around her. Not only are allies an assetin themselves; she finds herself enjoying the change in role.
The whir of activity doesn't last more than a few days, and Anderson is confronted with the unpleasant reality that large crimes sometimes move as slowly as Justice does. She bottles the disappointment tightly up inside, the lack of follow-up doesn't bother her friends behind Control desks, it would be unseemly for her to overreact at this stage. Whoever is behind the labs has to make a move again, it brings her a small feeling of pleasure to think of the scummy assholes behind the exploitation hemorrhaging money out of every orifice. They have to act, and soon; all she can do is wait and watch and do her duty.
Dusk falls and she meets her partner for night patrol in the garage. Dredd coasts up as she dons her helmet and swings a leg over her Lawmaster, not responding to her greeting. Nine months and his lack of acknowledgement is something she's come to accept as standard operation procedure; just him being Old Stoneface. Darkness falls as they coast through the buzzing streets lit by neon signs, keeping their vigil against sleepless crime. Anderson reaches out, touching the hum of thoughts around her, thousands of minds preoccupied with large miseries and small pleasures, unhappy but ultimately peaceful. Small crimes out of sight and they have bigger fish to fry, as a panic and horror that isn't hers prickles along her awareness, held at bay by years of personal discipline. Creep-o-clock. She veers left sharply, cutting around her fellow drivers and kitty-cornering into a long narrow alley. She can feel Dredd on her tail, gaining despite her lack of forewarning. Her skill with a Lawmaster is nothing compared to him; he probably came out of the womb riding one. She slows and cuts the engine, letting the bike glide the last few meters before hopping off, drawing her 'Giver and dodging down a narrow gap between two buildings, shoulders scraping along the walls. She sinks to her knees is loose garbage, mentally promising to find the owners of such egregious littering and give them a stern judgement. With effort, she propels herself over the last heap of refuse, landing in a crouch behind a gang of bulky shapes cornering someone out of sight. "Stop right there, Citizens!" Her voice rips through the night, and she straightens her legs, gazing squarely down the sights of her weapon.
It's a moment before the figures move, outer ring turning towards her with deliberate lassitude. Flickering red light from a sparking sign does little to illuminate the faces between low brimmed hats and pulled up coat collars, throwing odd shadows over her night vision. A light flicks on in the building behind them, casting a pane of yellow light to fall on the trio that had been shielded from her view: an uncannily tall man, well dressed in a suit that might have been the height of fashion 20 years ago, propped on a battered cane looking up with a ratty face, annoyed at the disturbance. Behind him another bulky person in tattered long coat and floppy hat, staring flatly between gaps of stained bandaging, clawed hands restraining a motionless juve girl, shirt ripped off one shoulder, blood trickling sluggishly out of both nostrils.
Her mouth goes dry, but under the surveillance of Bandage Face's flat red eyes she lets the discomfort roll off her like water down a tarp. "Assault on a juvenile. Being out of bounds after curfew. Carrying illicit weaponry." She summons her very best Joe Dredd scowl, "Don't make me add resisting arrest."
Ugly Suit looks down at her, adjusts his cravat and twirls his cane slowly between long triple knuckled fingers. "This is legitimate business, Judge. Be on your way."
Anderson opens her mouth to reply, when one of the goons speaks over her. "Shit guys, it's little Cassie Anderson! Enjoying living with the Norms, Cass? Do they let you pretend to be something other than a freak?" One steps closer, and she can't keep her Lawgiver on both the two surrounding the Juve and the large male mutant advancing on her.
Be cool, you've passed these simulations before. The muzzle of her Lawgiver doesn't waver from Bandage Face, though she does toss a careless look to the advancing antagonist. "It has its perks; they smell better and they're a bit prettier." She seizes the opportunity as he takes another heavy step towards her, sidestepping his advancement and grabbing the arm cocked back to deliver a nasty hay maker in response to her taunts; leveraging down until the mutant flips, locked limb tearing out of its socket. "Resisting arrest and assaulting a Judge? You lot don't do anything by half." Her spare hand scrabbles at her belt for riot foam, pulling the tiny canister free and tossing it at the cluster already moving to violence against her. The canister bursts at their feet, foiling their movements in long sticky ribbons of quick drying material which hardens instantly, leaving them struggling helplessly against the bonded material. Anderson dances out of the way of a grabbing hand, kicking savagely and crunching wrist beneath her boot.
"Where's your sense of solidarity, Cassandra?" The cultured voice of Ugly Suit chides gently, "We just want to walk the streets with our fellow Citizens. Is that so much?" Anderson turns to follow the voice behind her, but the cane hums through the air before she can face the lanky mutant. Ozone crackles beside her ear, and the electrified blow slams into her is shoulder with a sickening thud; nerves spasm and she draws blood from the inside of her cheek, rolling as she goes down and firing up with a hand she can't feel as the ugly narrow face comes into view. A red hole opens in the antique suit, and her assailant reels back.
Back on your feet; sensory input would just get in the way. Mechanically, she delivers three rapid kicks to Ugly Suit's torso, flicking his cane away for good measure, and nails the running Bandages square in the back, watching him sag, lifeless, onto the black boots of Judge Dredd. She doesn't want to know what he's thinking at this moment, electing to address the catatonic Juve instead. "Juvenile out after curfew carries the sentence of 40 hours community service." The process of IDing the girl and forwarding the order to the nearest community center gives her the moment she needs to regain feeling in her arm and leg, gain control over her rioting emotions. Anger, fear, disgust; sense of solidarity my sweet ass. "Do us all a favor and show up, okay?" The juve gives her a bug eyed look, fumbling to push her shirt back in place, and runs off wordlessly. Anderson twists her neck and rotates her shoulder, testing her range of motion and comfort: excruciating but not debilitating. "You took your sweet time getting here."
Dredd recognizes a needling comment when he hears it, not quite the automaton he's rumored to be. It doesn't take a psychic to see that Anderson is giving vent to some appropriately small amount of distress through sarcasm. "It was an unfavorable access point; odds of successful navigation were not in my favor." It would have been hideously embarrassing to get stuck in the slender channel: ineffective and clownish. Deftly he navigates away from the topic. "Wagons're on their way. Are you fit to continue?"
From him that practically counts as a speech and the query to her well being is as much of an apology as she's come to expect. "Nothing broken," She affirms, squatting on the pavement beside the mutant who had advanced on her, flicking away the hat and bandana obscuring his features. He's not pretty, though mutants rarely are; scabby sores around mouth and nose, lice retreating into the relative safety of his hairline. Alive, but stunned from the undesirable combination of weak bones and a hard fall. Just another stranger, some sick desperate man looking for one last way to live before he died. Somehow she doubts its relief sitting cold and uncomfortable in her gut; notoriety within the mutant community can't possibly be a good thing for her.
"Delivering execution sentence without warning is against procedure."
Anderson does give voice to a tiny sigh of frustration, "Would it kill you to just ask the question? And don't think of feeding me that psychic line again." She scowls up at him, uncomfortably aware that this is a battle of wills she can't win and they have other places to be. "Perp was out of bounds, unstable and hostile. I made the call that his presence among the general population would cause severe civil unrest, and I stick by it."
"A logical assessment. Let's go."
The unexpected and explicit praise startles her. Dredd reaching down to help her to her feet is downright astonishing; black gloves meeting and then parting as she finds her balance. It's kind, almost gentle, and she shakes herself free of the imaginings as the rumbling engines of the transport wagon approaches. Now's not the time to be losing it. "I want to investigate the illegal dumping in that alley." Dredd falls into step beside her, and they're off on a quick detour to rouse a drunken landlord and harangue him, gleaning the names of his fellow crooks before slapping him with 6 months planet side labor. Control reroutes them to disperse a brawl, and ruin the nights of several narcotics distributors and unlicensed sex workers.
They keep the hard pace through the night, shift ending as the eastern sky begins to turn grey. Anderson's tired from a good night's work, content to drift through the nearly empty streets towards shower and bed following in the wake a plain brown truck. Something about it feels slightly odd, but it's the time where the day's deliveries and early morning errands are run, so she chalks it up to sleep deprivation. Whimsically, she reaches out to the mind of the driver, recoiling when she touches a mind painfully alert, cold, and panicking. She's endured adrenaline shots before, and this mental contact is just as jolting as any chemical injection. No one paranoid about being followed by a Judge has ever up been to anything good; and as she touches her accelerator to close a bit of distance, an air current brings a faint smell of fresh paint. Anderson can't keep the predatory smile off her face, who would paint a truck, so similar to the one she had examined recently, brown unless it was to avoid surveillance associated with plain white trucks? She lets the frenetic driver regain some space, bringing the truck's location up on the aerial map in her helmet's display, swerving away to watch the progress from afar.
"Patrol's over." Dredd's voice crackles in her radio, grouchier than typical. Maybe even he gets tired sometimes.
"I need to check on something; meet you back at HQ." Maybe if she had thought about it, she could have phrased that in a way that wouldn't have so thoroughly annoyed him. He's probably going to give her hell later for breaking protocol; it'll be worth everything if she's right. Anything to glean a bit more information about the counterfeit medicines and the criminals organizing it. She follows the truck across what feels like a dozen sectors, but is probably only four, until it pulls to a stop in front of a ramshackle tenement. Minutes tick past until she judges the driver has had ample time to exit the vehicle and move out into the lab. Leaving her Lawmaster around the corner, she approaches the truck on foot, senses pricked for anything out of the ordinary. This time there is no easy access to the truck, all doors locked tight, but it's of little consequence. She circles once more and settles in to wait; the driver could be anywhere in the abandoned building, and it's impractical to rely on backup that doesn't exist. So she waits, concealed from the entrance by the bulk of the truck, sitting with a hunter's patience until she's rewarded by the sound of boots smacking tarmac and risks a glance around the corner. The three militiamen are a bit of a surprise, as are the two lab workers shuffling before them dragging dollies weighed down by pallets wrapped in unmarked white material. A pickup? Maybe she should fall back, follow them to the drop off location... no. They could be moving it to long term storage, it could be sent anywhere, and the final destination is not relevant. She takes her time lining up the first shot, downing her first target, but they respond faster than she had anticipated, and she only wings the second as the workers throw themselves below the line of fire and the two fighters leap in opposing directions. Shit. She moves without thinking, pursuing the wounded man across debris littered streets. Switching to rapid fire she sprays bullets to slow and hopefully wound. Her prey might be exceptionally lucky, but it's probably just body armor. It doesn't slow him down any, and after a long night she lags behind until he's lost.
Failure taunts her on the slog back to where she left her Lawmaster; why did she separate from her bike? She could have ambushed them as efficiently from around the corner as behind the truck, and the odds of pursuit's success would have been all but guaranteed. Another ugly mistake to add to her private tally. Her boots drag along the pavement as she returns to the initial scene, and it takes her a moment to process a Judge leaning patiently against the truck, boot resting casually on a bound soldier. Shoot me, please. She hadn't anticipated Dredd hanging around as backup, much less bagging the second runner. Is he ever in the wrong place at the wrong time? She stands awkwardly before him for a moment, too caught up in her own disappointment and embarrassment to feel anything from him. Small mercy. "My apologies, Judge; thank you." She doesn't wait for the acknowledgement that won't come, kneeling by the helpless prisoner, stripping off a filthy glove and dropping it in her discarded helmet. Pressing two fingers against an exposed and slightly bloody temple, she creates a direct link and shoves her awareness into the foreign space. Show me what you know. He fights gamely, thoughts flickering erratically, summoning random images as she probes, but she is too angry, with herself and with his organization, to be put off. SHOW ME. It's a relentless assault, all raw power and zero finesse, but there's no one to grade her performance in here. Where are you going? Who is your contact? Who do you work for? SHOW ME. SHOW ME. SHOW ME. Cracks appear, images cut through with jagged black marks, and the information trickles in, fragmented. When the same three answers loop endlessly, she gives up with disgust. She had hoped he might be more than a third rate peon, but if he knows any more she can't break in to where he's hidden the knowledge. She exhales, opening her eyes to see her hand has moved south while she probed, and has left a definite bruise around his throat. She stands, tugging her glove back on. "I know where they're taking it."
"Tell Control," He had watched, unsure if Judge Cassandra Anderson was going to snap and murder her perp right in front of him. It wouldn't be the first time a young judge did so. She meets his eyes behind the opaque visor, definitely hostile, possible defiant. He glares right back, hard scowl engraved on his exposed face.
She can't tell if he's staring back, but it feels like it. "Anderson to Control, apprehended a creep involved in the Pharma Case. Please send transport wagon to collect." She spits out between gritted teeth, meeting Dredd's sightless stare, before obeying the unspoken command. "Have ascertained a drop location of current counterfeit delivery: 4754 Brighton, ask for Tellis." She cuts the link and bows her head in submission, awaiting her own personal judgement.
"You serve the Law." He toys with the idea of saying more, then shrugs the thought away. His policy of non-involvement with other Judges has served him well; distractions are death and he'd rather live. She's smart enough to get to the crux of his statement and she doesn't need to dig around in his head to find it.
Anderson gnaws her lip, visibly ill at ease. "I know that." She figets with her helmet before pushing it back on; unhappy with the temptation to spill her worries to Dredd. He doesn't want to hear it, girl. Keep your feelings to yourself, you'll feel better after a shower and some sleep.