Prog 9 : Disorderly

It was abruptly dark within Mercy, the morning sun lancing a thin line of light through the single open door. The long golden path reaching into the seemingly-endless darkness did nothing to illuminate the dim corners of the foyer, merely revealing the trash and detritus strewn on the floor.

Her crimson hair gleaming in the sun and long shadow flung forward, Quartermain snapped her head back as Cornelius closed the door behind them, the acute wedge of light abruptly narrowing to a flashlight beam, then a single golden thread, and finally vanishing altogether. The noise of the door latching shut echoed grimly through the pitch-darkness. Quartermain's heart leaped to her mouth and, for an instant, despite the fact she knew it made perfect sense – the harsh contrast of bright sunlight and darkened room would ruin their night-vision – flailing terror scrabbled at her heart. We're trapped in here, the door's closed, we'll never get out . . .

The crack of breaking plastic. A spark of pus-green illumination. Slowly, a queasy luminescence grew from the snapped chemphail in Cornelius' hand, driving the darkness back with a pathetic circle of ghastly phosphorescence. He clipped the glowstick to his shoulder as Quartermain did the same. The J-Dept chemlight produced frequencies of light the human eye was most sensitive to. But pragmatism was not aesthetics; Quartermain's scarlet hair was featureless black in the green light, her eyes burning like witch-fires. Cornelius' face was gallows-spectral, his broad cheekbones and angular jaw underlit so an algae-slimed skull stared at the Cadet with empty eyes. She shivered and turned away.

Even as the glowsticks brightened with accelerating chemical reactions and their eyes adjusted, the fringes of the room remained in unknown darkness. Quartermain edged gingerly forward, her head on a swivel, her boots shuffling through the discarded litter on the floor. She leaned over the reception desk, tilting her shoulder so the glowstick illuminated behind it. Something – several somethings – scurried in the darkness, tiny claws clattering on the floor. Jittery, she jumped, jerking her gun up and letting off a burst before she could stop herself. Muzzle-flare strobed, capturing Cornelius hastening to her side in a crude monochromatic three-frame animation as bright flashes filled the room. Noise echoed, battering itself to silence against the walls. The acrid stench of ammonia mingled with cordite hit her nostrils. She laughed nervously. "Rats . . ."

"Keep your head, Jackie." Cornelius' voice was calm, but she knew him well-enough to detect the faint edge of disapproval blunted by his own nervousness. He blinked his eyes to clear the bright-fog afterimage from them.

"Sorry, boss," she muttered contritely. "What's the plan?"

Cornelius didn't answer immediately, instead snapping a couple more glowsticks and tossing them out into the darkness. Sonar-green suggestions writhed in the shadows of the foyer as the light sources flipped end-over-end, revealing an empty space strewn with long-dead potted plants, low tables and chairs, and a few inoffensive pieces of abstract art. The puddles of light settled as the sticks spun to stillness, flat green tableaus that seemed to float in black nothingness. For long seconds, he scanned the room, turning his head and lifting his hand to shield his eyes from overspill from the chemphails. "Boss?" began Quartermain. He pressed a finger to his lips for silence.

She shut up. Cornelius gave the room a final sweep and turned to her. He flicked his head, pointing with his chin. "Main stairwell's that way; should give us access to all the levels. Blueprints say there's a skylight."

Quartermain nodded, even though it was difficult for Cornelius to see her – the glowsticks provided poor illumination in the large room and as she moved the shoulder-mounted light moved too, creating confusing shadows and projections. There were no windows in the foyer, but . . . "Shouldn't there be light from the stairwell, boss?" she asked. "Blueprints show it's pretty open, and the foyer connects to the lower levels."

Cornelius slung his blockrocker and reached into a thigh pouch for the building's plans, unfolding the flimsy printout and lifting it so the glowstick illuminated it. The paper rustled and something out in the darkness rustled too. Swiftly, he folded the map closed. It crumpled and he stuffed it back into his fatigues in a scrunched bundle. "Lotsa rats, boss," said Quartermain with a shudder.

"No . . ." said Cornelius softly, his eyes and ears straining. Something else moved – a metallic scraping against rockcrete, a glutinous hissing noise. He snatched something from his belt, popped the cap off the pyrophoric fuse. "Flare!" he yelled, tossing it into the darkness and grabbing for his gun.

Quartermain screwed her eyes shut as the munition went off, flinching to take the glare on her shoulder rather than in the face. Harsh sunfire painted the foyer, edging everything with sharp-edged shadows. The flare fountained white sparks, spitting gobbets of flaming metal over the floor, darkness fleeing to the corners of the room like burning paper.

Cornelius had an instant's warning before they were on him, flinging themselves forward on all-fours with a loping gait, gangly limbs propelling them with surprising speed. He managed to get two shots off, hitting one in the head and chest, the filth-encrusted arthritic claws of its hands inches away. And then another two slammed into him and he staggered backwards, going down and dropping his weapon as another tackled him at the knees. "Oppa!" she screamed.

Cornelius was in motion before he hit the floor, twisting to come down with a knee in one's throat, breaking another's hold with a straightened arm and snatching his daystick with his free hand. Bloody mucus sprayed upwards, splattering his uniform as a trachea was crushed. He rolled to his feet, lashing out with baton and boot, sending the other two tumbling away. "Focus, Cadet!" he snapped.

There were dozens of the things – filthy, ragged, once-recognizable as human and now barely that. The flare was still roaring, lighting the foyer with pure illumination, revealing the walls and floor smeared with dirt and decay, rotting garbage and half-chewed corpses piled festering in the corners. They crouched in the shadows, some clinging to the walls and even hanging bat-like from the ceiling. "Bright-bright!" they chittered. "No-likee-lightee! No likee! No likee!"

They were men – or had been, perhaps – dressed in tattered-rags that had once been green scrubs. They were scrawny and malnourished, limbs twisted as if they'd been broken and healed poorly. Their hands and feet were gnarled collections of bone and talon wrapped in boil-encrusted parchment skin, gray veins writhing around their knuckles like roots around rocks. Little could be seen of their faces – just a fang-filled maw gaping and chomping and slobbering behind a portcullis-like facemask, bloody-phlegm spitting and boiling. Needle-teeth that cut and ravaged cracked and rotted lips in their hunger. "Munchy-crunchy! Time for lunchy!" they gurgled. "Onesie-twosie, thick and juicy!"

Quartermain's face twisted with revulsion and anger. "It's puppy fat, you insensitive spug!" she snapped. "I'm working out!" She snapped the gun to her shoulder, bracing her legs and her sensuous lips in a grim pout of concentration, picking her targets with mechanical precision. The things shrieked and dived clear, blood-black jelly bursting from their wounds, the air thick with the stench of death and decay. She swallowed her disgust, desperately telling her mind this was nothing more than an exercise on the range.

Half a dozen charged Cornelius. They had tried, or someone had tried, to make them look like the building. Featureless black domes were bolted to their skulls, the grilles over their mouths rusted with blood, maggots writing amid the rotting remains of past meals. Putrefying hunks of bone and flesh were nailed to their shoulders – rad-gulls or some other air-vermin to the right, a rack of ribs to the left.

He took in their weird adornments in the splintered second before any analysis vanished in the swirl of motion. He spun to the side, stomping down as one fell past him, cracking bones and smashing it to the ground like an insect. He brought his knee up into the sternum of another, grabbing it by the throat and throwing it away. He sliced the legs out from under a third with a sweep of his daystick.

There was no art or strategy to their assault – they simply flung themselves at him, mouths howling behind the portcullises, the stench of decaying meat bellowed into his face. He whipped his weapon up, catching one in the chin and sending it flailing back with a shattered jaw. He stepped forward, bringing the daystick back down and whacking another on the crown of the head with enough force to crack its helmet.

In her near-panic, Quartermain had miscounted and the bolt fell on an empty chamber. "Drokk." She shucked the magazine, flipped the pair taped jungle-style in her hand. She was too-slow; she managed to slam the mag home but couldn't pull the bolt before one of them grabbed her. Its talons sank into her shoulder. Armorweave foiled its claws but the thing's surprising-strength was near-crippling; she cried out in pain and fell to her knees. That saved her throat as it lunged for her, tilting its neck back to bring its teeth to bear. The portcullis' tips tore ragged lines through her scalp.

Cornelius dropped his shoulder and flipped one of the things over his head as it charged him. It shrieked, flailing wildly as it spun and fell. He kicked out behind him, catching it in the chin and silencing it with a snapped neck. He swung that knee forward, doubling another over with a sickening blow to the solar plexus, driving the tip of his daystick into its spine with fracturing force.

He tossed the paralyzed ruin away, moving to help Quartermain, but slipped as one of the things he'd left mewling and broken on the floor grabbed his foot. Filthy claws tightened around his ankle and fangs gnawed at his calf. Bootleather saved his flesh, but his leg was jerked backwards and he stumbled to one knee. He jerked his elbow backwards, smashing through rusted steel and crushing the thing's nasal cavity deep into its face – its skeleton was fragile, a worm-eaten honeycomb of rotted bone. He struggled to his feet, using his daystick as a cane to push himself upright.

Quartermain was on her back, her forearm jammed desperately into the neck of the monster, straining to push it off her. It howled and gibbered, fangs inches away dripping stagnant blood-flecked spittle into her face. "Didn't . . . your mother . . . ever tell you . . . to floss?" she grunted. The thing gurgled as it pushed itself forward, its trachea crumpling. It didn't seem to mind, nor need eyes to find her – its featureless helmet reached below its nose, blindfolding it. Something itched at her psynses, lurking beyond the awareness of her vestigial telepathy – these things were driven by other than mere biology, sustained by some dark power that animated this whole building. She grit her teeth and fumbled for her boot knife.

The things – or the dark intelligence animating them – realized Cornelius was the greater threat and dove for him en masse. They hit him just as he was rising to a crouch, their combined speed and weight knocking him on his back. He vanished beneath a welter of gnarled limbs and stringy flesh, clawing and scrabbling. He kicked out, sending one flying away with a pathetic shriek. It smashed against the wall with a crackle of bone, smearing a trail of slime as it slid down.

The things howled with anger and redoubled their efforts. He ducked his head into his shoulders and crossed his arms to protect his face. They clawed at him, gouging the leather and scoring bright scratches in the armor plates, battering his chest. He cried out in pain as one of them drove its knotted fist into his still-tender ribs. Dim realization flooded through their atrophied minds and they hissed with satisfaction as they concentrated their blows.

Quartermain drew her knife and with a convulsive burst of strength shoved her arm up and away, forcing the thing's head back. She stabbed upwards, driving so deep her hand pressed against its throat, the tip of the blade piercing its brain. There was ear-splitting bang, a blue-green flash of eye-boiling brightness, a shock like grabbing a live-wire in the rain. She yelped and kicked the corpse off her, her right arm hanging buzzing-limp, vision and thoughts clouded with pulsing afterimage. Smoke rose from her glove, the pain of a scorched palm burning the fog from her mind. Her knife was still embedded in the thing's head, spasmodically crackling with chained lightning, an extra layer of burning offal added to the stench of the room.

She managed to get to her knees and then one foot down, her right arm still useless, when another of them leaped for her. She flipped onto her shoulders, grimacing as she grabbed it between her thighs and rolled so she was on top. Jaw-clenched with effort but her face a dispassionate mask, she wrapped her legs around it in a figure-four and pinned its neck to the floor, the full weight of her shoulder pressing her thumb onto its windpipe. She squeezed, the leather of her pants creaking as her broad quads tightened. The thing gurgled and gasped, its ribs groaning.

Cornelius was on his side, curled to protect his ribs and head, looking for an opening. He spun on the floor, getting a knee under him and grabbing one of them around the neck. He rose to his feet, jerking his elbow and snapping its spine like a marrow-bone. He dropped it to the floor, leaping backwards to get some distance, his right arm defensively tight against his chest. He bounced easily on the balls of his feet, his eyes flickering back and forth between them. Half-a-dozen opponents, well-coordinated, fast-and-strong but delicate. "Alright," he murmured, "alright. Who's first?"

They all charged him at once.

He spun away, executing a quick chop to one's neck and sending it tumbling to the ground. Another stepped into an explosive kick, its face imprinted with his boot's eagle-treads. His fist came up, going off like a concussion grenade under one's chin, shattering its jaw and snapping its head back. He swept the legs from under another and stomped down, crushing its chest. He stepped into another's charge, grabbing it and spinning to throw it into its buddy. The two of them tumbled to the ground in a welter of limbs.

Quartermain hadn't been idle – her arm still flopped from her shoulder, but sensation was returning to her fingertips. She pressed down harder, gritting her teeth and snarling with satisfaction as something gave in its throat with a gristly crunch. Arching her back and grunting with effort she clenched her legs until she thought her muscles would pop. She could feel fragile bone crumbling in the thick embrace of her thighs. The thing gave a gasping shriek, breathing its last as ribs snapped one by one, pulping and piercing the offal stuffed higgledy-piggledy inside its chest. Quartermain grinned as her head sagged forward, sweaty hair flopping down. "Thick 'n' juicy, huh?" she panted. She slapped her thigh proudly. "Damn straight."

"Quips later, Cadet." Cornelius was still standing warily, eying their remaining opponents. They were hanging back, hissing angrily, nervously starting forward and then leaping away.

"Nastee-nastee," they gurgled. "They hurts us, kills us." They licked their gnawed and cracked lips, glancing hungrily at their fellows' corpses on the floor. "Yummy-yummy, more for tummy . . ." they murmured.

"Drokking degenerates," spat Quartermain. She unwound herself from around the jellied chest of her victim, hobbling upright like she'd been given leg-presses as PT punishment by Novak. "'Rocker on your five, boss," she said, sweeping her foot so the gun slid along the floor.

It bounced to a stop against Cornelius' boot. Without taking his eyes off the twisted horrors he knelt to retrieve it, pulling back the bolt to chamber a round even as they flung themselves at him. He fired from his crouch, the butt against his shoulder, precise three-round bursts cutting them down.

The final round whipped over the shoulder of the last one as it tumbled, the bullet vanishing into the shadows at the stairwell end of the the foyer. "Fire in . . ." began Quartermain.

BOOOM! The Hi-Ex shell – one of the rounds the precog had loaded to surprise everyone but her – detonated in a smoky-edged fireball against the makeshift barricade separating the foyer from the atrium stairwell. File cabinets and other furniture were flung in the air by the force of the explosion, dust blowing back into the foyer in roiling clouds, motes of shattered gypsum sparkling and whirling in long fingers of dusty sunlight.

" . . . the hole?" she finished in a very small voice. Cornelius chuckled, but winced as his ribs pained him. "You okay, boss?" she asked as he clutched at his side.

"I'm good," he lied. It wasn't the pain, that was manageable – it was the worry the wound might always stay with him, that he was permanently injured, that this was the first step in a long, slow decay of the flesh. The nurse had told him he'd have weakness and tenderness for a while, and the official recommendation had been to take it easy for a week or two. He hadn't been able to – the demands of adjudication had seen to that, of course – so it was to be expected. But, even so, it was disquieting. He shivered himself free of his ruminations and very deliberately took his hand off his side. He spun the blockrocker in his hand and handed it to Quartermain butt first. "I'm throwing your numbers off?" he asked.

She shook her head as she took the gun in her left hand. "Nope."

He grinned. "Didn't think so." He retrieved his daystick, shaking blood and brains off with a practiced flick of the wrist. He didn't collapse or stow it, instead tapping it meditatively against his palm as he stalked towards the broken bodies littering the floor. He glanced at Quartermain's last victim. "You don't skip leg-day," he remarked. She blushed, modestly giving a lopsided shrug. "What's wrong with your arm?"

She slung the gun and massaged her bicep. Feeling was coming back and she wiggled her fingers experimentally, rotating her shoulder. "Dunno," she said shortly. She pointed at the corpse with her boot knife embedded in its skull – the hilt still crackled with unearthly arcs. "Stabbed that one – got a shock."

"Electric?" asked Cornelius. She shook her head.

"Psionic." Gingerly, using the back of her hand, she tapped the knife. Satisfied, she put her foot on its skull and yanked. The blade came free with a particularly disgusting sucking noise, pulling with it glutinous strands of pinkish-gray brain matter. Swallowing her nausea, she held the knife inches from her face and examined it. "Cerebral tissue's inflamed." The stench of rotting, fried fat was awful – somehow, she managed to speak without opening her mouth or nostrils.

"What's that?" Cornelius asked. There was a brain-matted hunk of burned technology fused to the tip of the blade, what looked like a capacitor welded to the chromium-vanadium-molybdenum steel. Quartermain pulled hanks of sizzled cerebellum clear.

"Psi-amp," she said. She grabbed it and wiggled – it was solidly attached. Rather than drop the knife, she tightened her grip and held it by her side. "The helmet's an antenna – a transmitter and receiver, catches psionic waves and focuses them through the amp. I've seen plans in PsiDiv's files. They boost psychic power, make you more receptive, more open to suggestion. But the neurological trauma's severe, never mind the risk of infection or brain damage from the surgery to install them." She looked at her glove with distaste, wiping it on her uniform.

Cornelius nodded and studied the corpses on the floor. The flare was spluttering out, but there was enough light from the stairwell to see by. The things were obviously the remains of hospital orderlies, driven to madness and cannibalism by isolation and malnutrition when Mercy had closed. He'd seen horrors like them before – in the Undercity, in the depths of slum hab-blocks, out in the Cursed Earth. Degenerate cults of sub-human monstrosities desperately supplicating a powerful figure – a warlord, mutant leader, gang boss – with a grotesque, almost-religious fervor. How much easier must it have been to turn them into loyal minions with a brutal psychic imperative burning through their butchered brains? "So you think our perp found a stash?" Cornelius asked. "Stuffed 'em in these poor sap's heads, set them to guard his door?"

"Yes, but more than that. They're like watch-'bots – he can control them, see through their eyes. I couldn't psynse it before, outside, but . . ." She shivered and ran a trembling hand through her hair, clawing at her scalp and wincing as her wounds were tugged open. "They're tied to this place, tied to him – they, it, are extensions of his will, of his . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"Hatred?" asked Cornelius. "Malice?"

"No," realized Quartermain. "It's not . . . he doesn't . . ." She turned to him. "It's justice, boss," she explained. "It's justice – a twisted sense of it, sure, but you can see it, sort of understand it, you know? He wants . . . justice. He wants to see the guilty punished, criminals stopped, a purer world without crime and sin and weakness."

Cornelius snorted. "Who doesn't?" he asked flippantly.

"Who does?" she countered. He turned to her. "Who really wants justice, boss?" she asked. "Really? Who hungers for it, obsesses over it, will do anything to get it? The one thing they won't give up even if they sacrifice everything else, the thing they would do anything to achieve? Who's really like that? Not perps. Not citizens."

"Judges." The word dropped into Quartermain's questioning pause like a pebble into a still pool. "You think . . . ?"

"And he wants psis." Quartermain continued as if she hadn't heard him, her eyes glazed and distant, her voice singsong and faraway. "I can taste his hunger for us – he always wanted us; to be his angels of mercy and justice throughout the city. Beyond the city, perhaps. I can hear his promises – he will make me strong, lay his hand on me, smelt the dross from my bronze . . . I will be his instrument of justice, of vengeance, of retribution." There was a blue-green gleam in her eyes that hadn't been there before, a certainty more than precognition or intelligence in her voice. "He wants us all – but he wanted Cassandra the most. She was his project, his special girl – and she was taken from him. And he's angry about what's been done to her, her weakness, her secrets, her idols. He will break her – he'll take her and break her and make her his and . . ."

Cornelius' hand tightened painfully on her shoulder. "No," he promised, "he's not. Because we're gonna find her and we're gonna bring her home. Right?" he asked. "You get me, Cadet?"

Her eyes were wide and wild, staring at nothing, her face slack and underlit by the faint glow from the psi-amp welded to the blade in her hand. Cornelius fancied he could feel something with senses he didn't know he had, running through the nerves of her shoulder, buzzing under his fingers. "He is the eagle and we will be his claws . . ."

Cornelius tapped her wrist with his daystick – a precise, surgical blow. Her hand sprang open of its own accord and the knife clattered to the floor. Quartermain gasped and started, coming back to herself. "Woah . . ." she breathed, massaging her wrist. The reversed-eagle electro-branded through the leather by the pommel stared back at her. Very deliberately, she stripped her hand and tossed the glove to the ground, sharply kicking the knife away. Her naked palm was a flushed, angry red, throbbing with heat. Gingerly, she licked and blew to cool it, very deliberately closing her fingers and pressing her bare hand quiescent to her side. She nodded firmly. "We're going to find her, and bring her home," she agreed.

There was a glutinous, chuckling laugh. Cornelius moved swiftly, putting himself between her and the orderly struggling to sit up. Its spine was snapped, its legs trailing uselessly, but it pulled itself forward on its arms and drew itself upright. Maybe it was the only one left alive, maybe the others were too weak to move, maybe a living vessel wasn't even needed for the malignant intelligence that spoke through it – who knew? "Lissten to the girl sscout," it hissed. Its voice was deeper than before – a slow, sibilant drawl rather than a peeping, chittering trill. "Turn around. Leave. Sslink off back to ssafety and home. Leave Cassssandra to me."

Quartermain stepped out from behind Cornelius. She came forward, fascinated and repulsed at the same time. "Rindón," she said flatly – it wasn't a question.

The thing laughed again, thin lips drawing back from finger-length fangs and flapped its claws together in a ghastly semblance of applause. "Clever, clever, Little-Missss Thunder-Thighss!"

Cornelius' hand clenched and unclenched on the hilt of his daystick. It took all his willpower not to smash the thing into a red smear with a few judicious blows. Only the fact he knew this was nothing more than a mouthpiece stayed his hand – destroying it was fruitless as smashing a radio. "I guess SJS lied," was all he said.

The gnarled flesh-puppet laughed. "Sso bitter, Corneliuss?" it taunted. "Don't be; Judgess are sso eassily perssuaded, made to ssee what you want them to ssee. A little pussh, a little sshove . . . ssteer their minds like hand in glove." Once more, it laughed and, once again, Cornelius didn't. "No ssensse of humor, though," it complained.

Now it made sense. Cornelius could see the scenario – Slocum (never what he would have called strong-minded, a weak-willed yes-man, a toady easily persuaded by a slick tongue or pretty face) coming to arrest Rindón. The Med-Judge an undiscovered-psi – Cornelius knew they were more common than the Department had originally suspected, even in populations born before the war, many of them hiding their powers. Psionic screening had been in its infancy when Rindón was inducted – it was his research that had made it possible, for Grud's sake! He could easily have slipped through what net there was. A shootout, the doctor wounded but not dead, Slocum 'persuaded' the job was done. Sector nine and the SJS wanting to close the case and put a lid on it – the notion of simply boarding-up Mercy and letting it rot out-of-sight and out-of-mind would have been appealing even without any kind of psychic suggestion.

Yes, Cornelius could see it – and didn't want to dwell on it. "These the best you've got?" he asked, gesturing at the bodies on the floor. "Gotta say – I'm not impressed. You don't make a good case for retreat if these . . ." He cocked his head as if trying to think of a word, a calculated act of bravado designed to throw the perp off. "You got a name for 'em, Cadet?"

"Zomborderlies," she said succinctly. Cornelius chuckled.

"Cute," he said.

"Oh, yess, sshee iss!" the thing hissed. It turned to her – she wondered just why the things lurked in darkness, why bright light pained them so much. Its eyes were invisible, hidden behind the featureless dome of the psi-amp's antenna. Disquietingly, it nevertheless somehow managed to face her. She could feel the weight of its – his – attention, an awareness deeper than sight sliding over her. "But not for the reassonss you think – a ssmart mouth and a pretty fasce and good, meaty quadss and glutess. Sshe iss sso much more than that . . ."

Cornelius stood in front of Quartermain once again, leveling his daystick meaningfully at its empty face. "You deal with me, creep," he said decisively.

"Why?" it asked reasonably. "You don't interesst me, Corneliuss. What are you, a blunt? Dumb musscle? I have enough of that. I will admit," it allowed, "thesse . . ." It leaned over, turning its head to peer around Cornelius' bulk, leering at Quartermain, "zomborderliess are lessss than ideal. Thiss crude ssurgery was nescessssary to make them ssuitable for my needss – they were my firsst attemptss. And they were alwayss only in it for the money – it was jusst a job to them, they never believed in the missssion. No passssion for mediscine, but the nurssess . . . " Its words trailed off into a hissing laugh. "You might interesst them . . . Rest assssured," it promised, "I have many more delightss for you to experiensce if you don't turn back."

"Looking forward to it," said Cornelius shortly.

"I doubt that," it grinned. "But, like I ssaid, you don't interesst me – sshe doess. Sshe'ss a pssi."

Almost-angrily, Quartermain came out from behind Cornelius once more, actually shoving against him to get him to step to the side. "I'm fine," she told him. "This creep doesn't scare me. I just wanna know why; you're a psi . . . like me, like those you experimented on. You're a doctor and a psi and a Judge – and you tortured people like us. Why?" she asked, her voice flat with uncomprehending revulsion. "How?"

"With a ssong in my heart," the thing said. Its smile was grotesquely broad, its improbably-wide mouth stretching impossibly further. "I sseek jusstisce, little one – but I have sseen the darknessss of this scity and I know there iss no jusstisce but merscy, no merscy but death. I do not exspect you to undersstand."

"Oh, I understand." Quartermain's jaw was clenched, her balled fists on her hips. "I'm a Judicial-Cadet, of course I understand. I've seen it, I know the evil that lurks in men's hearts, I've heard the arguments. I just don't agree."

It hissed with eager joy. "Oh, you don't undersstand – not yet;if you undersstood you would agree. But you could come to – I can tasste your eagerness, your hunger for jusstice. Yess, yess, little one – come to me and be whole, come to me and be my lively little firebrand. You know what you could be, you can ssee it – every dark corner of thiss scity burning with the flame of my jusstisce, a thoussand firess in the scity and a million more beyond . . ."

With every word, Quartermain quailed. Rindón had got to her. She was no longer standing proudly, no longer defiant; she was shaking, her face ashen and lips trembling, actually cowering back behind Cornelius. He'd heard enough. He stepped forward, swinging his daystick. The whole weight and strength of his shoulder was behind the blow and his balance and timing were perfect. The thing lifted off the ground, spinning in the air with the force of the impact, its humerus snapping with a wet krack! Before it landed, Cornelius caught it around the throat with his free hand, slamming it against the wall. Bones crunched in his fist and blood and bile splattered his uniform. "You leave her alone!" he yelled. It laughed again.

"You can't protect her forever," it warned him – somehow, the voice came perfectly from its ruined throat, "and you can't protect her at all from me. And who iss going to protect you from yoursself, from the dark ssecretss you hide in your heart? Your weaknessssess, your obssessssions, the thingss that torment you in the ssecret watchess of the night? Leave," it told him again. "Leave and you need not fasce them. Go back to your flawed jusstisce, your tarnisshed bronsze."

"I'm not leaving without Cassie – where is she?"

Another hissing laugh. "It iss not where sshe iss, it iss where sshe iss going. And sshe iss coming to me. Cassssandra will be mine, when I have purged her of her weaknessssess and ssmelted the drossss from her bronsze. But don't worry," it assured him, "you will ssee her again, when sshe is perfected. And you will love her for her dark jusstisce even asz sshe tearss out your heart."

"You ain't nothing but a bat-spug-loco punk," Cornelius said decisively, "and I'm done listening." He lifted the ruin above his head and slammed it to the ground. A single blow to crushed its helmet, shattering its skull, but the echoes of its laughter took a long time to fade. He collapsed his daystick, jabbing the tip against the wall so it telescoped back on itself. "Come on," he said, stowing the baton on his belt, "let's get moving – we've wasted enough time." He walked toward the light coming from the stairwell.

Quartermain didn't move. "I shouldn't have come," she said bleakly. She looked up as Cornelius turned to face her. "I'm a liability, boss – I'm a psi, he can get inside my head. That's how he gimmicked Cassandra in here – it's what he does. And he's too powerful – I was a fool to come. Cassandra's much stronger than me, and he got to her. I can't . . ."

Cornelius stalked towards her; Rindón's taunts had been aimed at unnerving her, undermining her self-belief, trying to turn her to the way he saw the world. As a psi, she was vulnerable to his influence. While there was nothing he could do about that, it was the crack in her confidence that truly worried him. "You getting cold feet, Cadet?" he asked.

She blanched, flinching away from something only she was aware of but nevertheless couldn't see. "Don't . . . don't say that, Sir," she begged.

"Because you were all on fire for rescuing Cassie."

"Don't say that!" she shouted, her vehemence surprising them both. "Please! Not . . . not cold. Not fire. Just . . . I don't know why," she said lamely. She looked at him imploringly. "Just . . . please?"

Embarrassed and frightened he'd peeled her open to reveal weakness, he nodded apologetically, a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I need you, Jackie," he said without irony. "You know that, right? Out of all the Judges in the city . . ."

"I wouldn't even be in the top ten," she said shortly. "I'm not quite as green as my eyes, Sir."

He considered, realized honesty was the only policy here – regardless of where it led. He was privately interested in the answer himself. He popped out the thumb on his right hand, "Dredd," and started to count on his fingers. "Giant, Hershey, Chris Taylor – no." He folded his middle finger back into his fist, pinned it in place with his thumb and crossed himself. "Grud rest his soul. Daz." He looked at her, almost surprised. "You'd be in the top five."

She narrowed her eyes – she suspected he'd deliberately left names out. "Novak."

He shrugged. "In the classroom or the octagon, every day and twice on Sundays. On the streets?" He shook his head, pointed at her. "You. I want the girl with the dream, hungry for the black-and-bronze."

She looked at him carefully, trying to read him, to tell if he was blowing smoke. "Really?" she asked. He shrugged.

"I only lie to Cassie."

Satisfied, she smiled. "You two should quit that," she advised, and silently took point, leading the two of them towards the demolished barrier and the central stairwell.