Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Dredd characters, places, etc.
A/N: So don't trust me. I'll just update as I can. Sorry for my lameness.
Chapter 12: Puzzling
Dredd hadn't expected to be at Tower Argos anytime soon. Certainly not while Anderson was away. By his reckoning she was long gone undercover. Still he hadn't been able to pass the building without stopping. Never mind the long shift behind him and the ember hot rays of sunset magnified by the innumerable windowpanes around him, the tower gave him unusual energy. He got off his Lawmaster and stalked through the front doors, remembering not so long ago when he'd accompanied Anderson into this very lobby.
"B5," he told the aide seated at the desk.
"Business?" he asked without looking up.
"Ognibene," Dredd replied. The Tek looked up at his badge – not the helmet – and lifted a phone. He punched in a few numbers and waited.
"Judge Dredd for you," he said and listened. Without answering he hung up and passed Dredd a visitor's card. Dredd accepted and made for the elevators.
Ognibene would need to be apprised of the information Dredd had acquired. He accepted that answer as he descended the floors. He put the nagging sensation that there was something strange centered in this place, a sort of confluence of happenings. Anderson had gone undercover at the same time as the city had erupted into madness. SJS was circling her like vultures. Iraj Kadivar, her companion through the Academy, had voiced concern over Slocum. And Dredd himself had seen the outrageous tantrum thrown by Cal lobbing suspicion at Anderson, like she was a dog with rabies to be put down.
No, he was here on official business, not to sniff out scraps of where she might be found. Mega City One had swallowed her whole. No doubt he wouldn't even recognize her if she passed him on the street. The undercover units were thorough, and she would accept this mission with no less dedication than she had the Valley of Hearts or Peach Trees. He would have to wait and watch her manifest of her own accord.
"That's not coffee, that's syrup," Radkov objected as the doors opened on B5.
"No, its coffee. Smell it," a girl replied. Dredd saw Radkov leaning away from a small auburn haired girl thrusting the offending mug up at him. His hands were up like she brandished a pistol.
"What are you, part hummingbird?" He pushed the mug back at her with one finger. She smiled and the skin around her nose crinkled. "Come on, you said you wanted a coffee, you got coffee flavored syrup. Now lets get you back where you belong."
"You blow stuff up right?" she asked, cradling the coffee between both hands. "Can I help?"
"That is the worst idea I've ever heard," Radkov scowled. "Go to your room," he pointed. She made a face at him and turned to go. As she did her eyes landed on Dredd and she stiffened. Fear flickered across her face and she backed away from him. Radkov looked over his shoulder. "Judge," he greeted.
"Is Ognibene around?" Dredd asked.
"Somewhere," Radkov shrugged, pulling a keyring out of his pocket with a host of keys. "Runt, this is Judge Dredd. He's your beloved's mentor, so you can stop cowering."
"I wasn't cowering," she replied with a dark look at him. Her eyes flicked nervously to Dredd and Radkov took her wrist, checking a little silver bangle there with a dark interface on it.
"Hey, hey. Focus here. You need to breathe. The room's starting to get stuffy," Radkov instructed, jostling the display on the bangle – and consequently one of her hands – at her. She looked at it and flushed before screwing her eyes shut and seeming to exert a tremendous amount of attention on something. Dredd felt the temperature in the room drop by several degrees. "Good," he seemed genuinely relieved, some tension slackening in his shoulders. He pushed coal curls back out of his face and looked down at her like a weary father.
"Um, you're not SJS," the girl observed of Dredd when she dared to open her eyes. He shook his head once as she eyed his uniform, perhaps to be sure she hadn't missed any insignia. "I, uh, my name's Juliet November. Judge Anderson, um, she's my teacher."
"I got word she was undercover," Dredd looked at Radkov.
"She is. I'm babysitting," Radkov gestured at Juliet. "No sudden movements. My charge is literally that – a charge." Dredd wracked his memory as Juliet's name seemed to ring a bell.
"Eight years ago, sector 305, the orphanage," Juliet said quietly into her coffee mug. Dredd's jaw shifted. It was said the ash had rained down over a six block radius and the steel foundations had melted into a lake of iron. After his recent interactions with Sunakarib, Dredd could easily imagine the destruction of a pyrokinetic psychic unchecked.
"Listen to Anderson," Dredd said as Juliet curled into some dark corner of her thoughts. She looked up at him with the haunted eyes of the damned, perfect reflections of death and hopelessness. "She can show you control. Then the responsibility becomes yours." He saw a kindling of light in Juliet's face. Her eyes dropped to his badge, and then lifted back towards his helmet.
"Anderson said she learned out there...over the Wall," Juliet said hesitantly. "You...um, how are you her mentor? I thought a woman taught her."
"Radkov misspoke," Dredd replied simply. The Tek shook his head and gestured at a door.
"Maybe he didn't teach her anything about being psychic, but that's the man she measures her decisions against," Radkov told Juliet. The girl's eyes somehow managed to grow wider and the room grew considerably warm. Radkov tapped her wrist again and she scrunched her eyes shut until the temperature cooled down. The Tek pulled back a door for her and ushered her through. "I'll let Ben know you're here."
"G'bye!" Juliet called in a voice that sounded hurried, shy, nervous, awed, and adolescent all at once. Dredd was left alone in Psi-division's empty bull pen, a place with desks yet to be filled with psychics. So far it was Ecks, Anderson, and now November with her utter lack of control. As Dredd thought about the teen in her long sleeves and jeans he recalled rumors of SJS occasionally bringing a pyrokinetic into service. The daunting task ahead of Anderson and this department struck home for some reason, perhaps because November looked so terrified of him and was a little girl caught in the currents of tremendous power. November was lucky to be alive. He suspected that fact wasn't lost on her, but rather that it galled her. That was a lot of death centered around one little girl.
Anderson would feel that weight. Of that he was certain. How much could they heap onto her shoulders before it broke her? He paced to a desk with Anderson's name impersonally set on a placard. Set to one side of the slender monitor was an actual physical dictionary. Staged at the far end of the desk in a propped up shadow box was the Gitaskog's scale.
Boundaries. He thought about that term, about Amanirenas' use of the word as it pertained to psychics. There were lines between Anderson and the job. Dredd felt there were absolutely no lines to separate him from his badge, but with Anderson it was different. There were barely lines to separate her from the people around her, never mind the actual job. He at least had set confines within his own person but Anderson was made amorphous with her psychic ability. It was her job to step into the surrounding minds. What could that do to her?
I'm worried, he realized quietly. Some of the muscles in his back eased at the admission while others in his chest tightened.
"Judge Dredd!" came a voice he recognized. Dredd turned around and saw a handsome, smiling man with blue black skin. "A pleasure. Welcome, sit!" he gestured. Dredd pulled back Anderson's chair. "So, as I said before I've managed to narrow down the sector..."
"This investigation is going to tie in with Moderna Robotics," Dredd cut him off. Ognibene's eyebrows jumped up. He pulled over another chair and sat as well, leaning over his knees and carefully matching his fingertips together. "That signal, it should go back to a Silas Greene. He's the one I want you to monitor. Silas Greene is a cover name for David Brigg, one in the same with Rourke Kenny."
"Moderna Robotics...why would they have bugged Eliza Del Monte's? She was fighting for robot rights."
"I'm sure it would cut into their profit margin somewhere. People don't pay top dollar to give their toys rights," Dredd rumbled dispassionately. Ognibene nodded.
"I saw the news. Rough night. Sorry about Del Monte," the Tek sat up straight. He seemed distracted, mind already hard at work on his investigation.
"Brigg is an ex-Judge. Thrown out of the Academy for hacking SJS files. Remember that," Dredd moved on from thinking about blood soaked Eliza Del Monte with her hand clutching his and then how weightless she was when he'd carried her back down from her final speech. "There will be backlash from last night's events."
"Indeed. We'll be pulling double and triple shifts quite soon," Ognibene mused, sounding bemused rather than overwrought by the idea. "I'm to my work then. I'll keep you posted." They stood up again and shook hands before Ognibene departed down another corridor opposite that of the one Radkov and Juliet had taken.
Dredd lingered just a moment more, studying Anderson's tidy desk with such quiet statements about her person settled on it. He turned to go and saw Radkov striding back into the room, examining a data pad and shaking his head. He walked straight up to Anderson's desk and sat on its corner.
"SJS has taken up residence," he nodded over at a closed office door without looking up from his work. "Slocum himself." Dredd tilted his head at that. Radkov's smile came in dark and crooked. "Julia seems to like him, but I don't. He'd just as soon dope the fire bug up as train her and he hovers over everything. And he's funny about Anderson."
Words and impulses warred in Dredd's head. He was silent as he struggled for the correct response. There was an overwhelming urge to demand answers from his superiors, but that would never work against SJS. Following the evidence wasn't a concern, but things got delicate and murky where SJS was concerned. Goodman seemed to spend as much time placating Cal as issuing him orders. The relationship between Chief Judge and SJS had always been complicated. He needed evidence before he walked in with accusations.
Damn the politics. Too many people thought Slocum strange. His muscles were just beginning to react to a forming decision when Radkov held up a small data stick.
"Its not much yet," Radkov said. "But its unclassified records and some additional information."
"Additional?" Dredd prompted.
"Some of it is more personal information about Slocum, some SJS procedures with psychics, taken from anything useful Juliet says when she jabbers about him. The rest I got from...friends," Radkov pursed his lips. "I don't like him here like a tick, and I don't trust him."
Dredd took the data stick and tucked it in a pouch at his side. He didn't say anything else about it as Radkov seemed to relax a little. He shot a baleful glare at the door to Slocum's office and stood up, still mostly absorbed in his data pad.
"See ya 'round Judge," he gave a distracted salute and went back the way he'd come. Dredd only felt stranger as he waited for the elevator.
There was a light knock on his office door. It was early morning after a scant few hours tossing and turning restlessly. Dredd frowned a little deeper as he stood up, turning off the data pad he'd left unconnected to the building's net. He hadn't felt comfortable placing Radkov's data on his issued computer and had elected this portable device instead, knowing full well he was being watched. It would be harder to get to this information if he kept it with him.
So far all Dredd had learned from the copious reports that Slocum filed at first daily and then weekly about Anderson and her progress as a girl was that Slocum was a fastidious observer and had an eye for detail that rivaled Anderson's. Hardly surprising for Cal's right hand.
Opening the door Dredd could admit to himself he was surprised to find Lina Forest on the other side. She was dressed in pleated black dress pants and a nice white blouse with billowy sleeves, hair pulled up in its bun. She smiled at him, two steaming cups of coffee in her hands.
"Everything alright?" he asked, suddenly concerned. She had never come to find him like this before.
"For me, yes," she nodded, holding a coffee out to him as she scrutinized his appearance. "You haven't been sleeping, and there's an investigation that's bothering you."
"Duty should be spent on the streets. I'm catching up on paperwork now," Dredd tried to argue around her observation. Forest gave him a little smile, patient and without argument. She seemed to say that this was a true statement, but that hers had been equally as true. He could smell breakfast from a bag she clutched with two curled fingers, his stomach rumbling in a sudden realization it was hungry. Thinking he must be getting soft he stepped back from his threshold and allowed her entrance after accepting his coffee.
It was fantastic after the burnt sludge he'd been nursing. Leaving the door wide open Dredd went back to his desk and settled as Forest dug out bagel sandwiches of breakfast sausage, egg, and cheese, handing him one. He made no qualms about eating and she skimmed the morning paper he'd left on the other smaller table across from his desk as she ate more delicately, perfectly at home in communal silence.
Dredd wondered if he needed to fill the quiet when he'd come to the end of his breakfast. As he was opening his mouth to say thank you, Forest extracted a cinnamon roll and placed it down in front of him, a plastic knife on top.
"I want a sliver," she instructed. A smile tugged at a corner of his mouth, amused by the tang of iron in her tone, as if she expected he would deny her this little thing. She seemed to realize she had used a command on him. "I'm sorry! I just was set in breakfast mode. I'm too used to running the troops at this hour."
Dredd opened the container and cut the cinnamon roll in half, pushing it towards her so she could choose.
"Their first breakfast at Samson's?" Dredd asked, referring to her recently divorced husband. She nodded mutely, taking her half and sitting down in the chair opposite his desk this time.
"Maybe it was forward of me, but I saw the news the other day and couldn't stop thinking about it. I know we're not friends like this and its not good form to drop in on you like we are, but I suddenly didn't have an excuse telling me I was too busy to worry about how you were doing after that speech. So...I brought you breakfast. I'm sorry," she pulled at her cinnamon roll.
"I'm alright, Forest," he assured her. "Are you?"
"Maybe not," she admitted after a moment's hesitation. "Are you working the Del Monte case? Is that why you haven't shaved?" Dredd ran a hand over his chin and realized he was indeed due a shave. He gave her a solemn nod in tacit confirmation. Forest took her half of the cinnamon roll between her teeth and went back to collect the paper. She brought it to his desk, rifling through the pages until she found a particular article. Folding it just so, she turned it to face him and then at last took her first full bite of cinnamon roll.
Dredd skimmed the article her manicured nail indicated, titled simply "Assassination". It recounted the events accurately with a surprisingly factual tone before diving into the technological possibilities of how this could have happened. It seemed unlikely Forest was looking for an assessment as to its accuracy he reflected as he came towards the end, wondering why it seemed important to her. When it was said and done he leaned back and digested the words, poring over all these details.
"So?" he asked finally.
"Its funny, but I like the brain teasers and cryptograms in the papers. I do them every morning waiting on the coffee pot," she reached into her purse, her arm vanishing practically to the elbow. "I particularly like the ones that tech columnist you just read puts in. He covers lots of the AI news and does a Q&A about programming glitches. I learned a little about programming from reading all this."
Her arm came back out and she gave him a handful of cut out columns. He leafed through them, the Q&A sections dealing with an array of questions, noting the stars she'd put by each one. Forest took a sip of her coffee before standing up. She took the pages back now he'd seen them and laid them all out in a particular order, her face set calmly as she went about her task.
"This is all the same person, all related to the name 'Ken'," she indicated the authors of different letters over the last several weeks. Dredd looked and saw strange iterations, wondering how they were connected. "Old English, Celtic, Gaelic...I like names. I spend a lot of time with them and look for origins," she said without looking up to see him studying her. "Anyway, I thought it might be a hidden puzzle and so I researched the variants of Ken. There's a song you see, called 'What's the Frequency, Kenneth?'. And the very last line of the article about Ms. Del Monte here: 'We've taken our Benzedrine, now its time to find the frequency.' The song references Benzedrine. It can't be a coincidence, or maybe it is and I'm looking too hard for puzzles."
Dredd leaned forward again as she handed him another sheet with notes about the name Kenneth, and even the lyrics to the song. "'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' is your Benzedrine...'" he read aloud. "Did you glean anything about these programming questions?" She shook her head, finishing her cinnamon roll and taking a sip of coffee.
"I don't know if its right or not," she insisted. "And I didn't put it together until this morning or I'd have been over sooner."
"All this from a love of puzzles," he said, astonished.
"And concern," she smiled gently as she gathered her purse. Dredd noticed the dark rings under her eyes and the way her bun was a little sloppy.
"What about you?" he prompted in a half inquiry about her well being. She looked up at him, her blue eyes so much more stark against the haggard backdrop of a stressed face.
"I used to swim, back before the academy. I think its a good time to practice again," she replied. "I hope its useful, my little puzzle. Maybe its nonsense."
"I'll find out," he assured her, thinking it was much better than paperwork. He downed the rest of his coffee, getting up to follow her out of the office. The data pad came with him even though he closed the door, locking it behind him. Forest was quiet next to him as they made their way down the hall towards the elevator, she still sipping her coffee and managing to keep pace with his long strides. It was an equally quiet ride down to the ground floor and Dredd waited long enough for her to check out at the desk before walking with her to the garage.
"Be careful on your investigation, Judge Dredd," Forest advised as they came to the point of parting ways.
"Thank you," he held up the pages still in his hand. He fully intended to get them to Ognibene and Rosenberg to see if they understood them. She waved off his gratitude and plunged her arm back into her enormous purse, extracting keys from its unknowable depths.
"I'll see you later," she graced him with another serene smile, the weariness evaporating from her expression. He gave her a nod and they parted ways, Dredd already planning a trip to the MC1 Times to ask after a particular tech columnist.
