I'm taking generous liberties with my world building of the Judge Dredd universe in this chapter. As I've never read the comics and only have small details from the movie to go off of, I decided to just make a lot of stuff up about the world Dredd and Anderson live in.

Cassie wastes no time. She has him chained the second she is in his mind, the four walls still materializing around them.

Joe clicks his tongue when he sees the shackles. "This again? You're not going to get anywhere using old tricks, rookie."

Cassie lets the nerves melt out of her, let's herself settle into the casual tone that she knows annoys him. She rolls her eyes. "Obviously not. I've read the manual, too, Joe. 'A Judge should always try to bring the element of surprise.' Maybe you shouldn't get comfortable thinking you've got it figured out what I'm doing here."

He is not used to hearing her say his name. She senses the way his eyes flick to her when she wields it.

Good. She wants him unbalanced.

"I know exactly what you're doing, Cassie." He growls at her. "You already blabbed your strategy to me yesterday." The chair she put him in crashes against the opposite wall as he comes to his feet smoothly, ready to fight.

"Make me lose control? Good fucking luck. I see you now."

Cassie smiles, teeth bared. "No, Joe. You haven't seen anything yet." God, I hope this works.

The prison warps, the walls bleeding beige. The room is dark, empty but for the sparse, dark shapes of furniture, but the blinds are open, and the dirty light of MC One casts a dim, shadowed glow on them.

"Wha- ghhh!"

A half circle of glimmering steel materializes out of thin air and slams into Joe's neck, yanking him viciously into the wall, pinning him there. He strains against it immediately, fingers trying to rip it from his throat.

"You'll choke yourself like that," Cassie says, lifting her eyebrow. He doesn't respond, twisting in the grip of the steel, but it's no use. The steel band hold fast, its two ends buried in the wall on either side of his neck. There's enough room for his head to turn, and to breathe, but he's trapped.

She lets him wear himself out. Finally his fingers drop from the metal, chest heaving.

"What was wrong with the handcuffs?" he grunts.

"I like to mix things up," she returns.

He looks ready to retort, but she sees him catch sight of the room behind her. His brow furrows.

"What the fuck-"

Cassie takes a healthy step back in case he decides to start swinging. "Before you get angry that I looked in your memories, it was you who put it in my head, remember? What your bedroom looks like."

She sees the moment he understands what she means, in the tightening of his lips. Wonders if he's thinking about it, the thought that slipped into her head with him. About her on her knees right where they're standing, moaning eagerly around his cock.

Outside of his mind, Cassie feels the blood flooding her cheeks.

Inside, she surveys him coolly. "Must say, you're not much of an interior decorator."

"Not all of us feel the need to waste time painting our walls ridiculous colors."

"I knew you didn't like them. Blue is not a ridiculous color, Joe. It's a very nice, normal color."

She almost doesn't say it, but the point of all this was to rile him up: "You only like it on women, then, I guess."

"Shut up, Anderson."

She's getting to him, a little. "Anderson, huh? I thought we were done with all that. C'mon," she grins as she pulls the metal tab of her sweatshirt down. "Call me Cassie again. I like it."

"This again?" He shoots back as she leans down to peel off her socks.

"I just feel like getting comfortable. Maybe you should, too." With the socks successfully discarded, she steps forward again, and lifts her hands to his helmet. He doesn't try to stop her. His eyes are hard and focused on her. Cassie's close enough that he could grab her, but his hands stay still. He shifts his weight minutely, and even trapped as he is, it feels dangerous. She feels a low thrill of anticipation in the base of her skull.

"That's better."

She lets the helmet thunk carelessly to the floor, and grins at the irritated look that flashes across his face.

"You don't mind if I have a quick look around, do you?"

"Yes, I very much mind, but that's doesn't make a difference, does it?"

She smiles, turning to his austere dresser. "You guessed it. Feel free to stop me at any time."

"Sorry to tell you, but rifling through my belongings isn't going to make me angry enough to accomplish anything."

Cassie doesn't think so, either. But she doesn't want him guessing her motives. "You won't even be a tiny bit pissed when I find your porn?" She pulls open a drawer, glad she doesn't have to look at him.

Joe is scowling at her back, she can feel it. "What porn?"

The drawer is fully of sharply folded socks. Next.

"Holo-strippers? Mega City Hustle? Tentacled Babes from Beyond the Wall 3? Nothing?" She'd read a memo on pornography regulation once, blushing over the titles listed.

And then, shockingly, he laughs, a short, quiet sound that turns Cassie's insides to liquid. "Do I seem like the type to buy porn?"

She yanks open the next drawer and almost immediately regrets it. Black boxer briefs and plain t-shirts stare back at her. God, she can't believe she's doing this.

"Not at all. And I can't imagine you'd go for the pirated stuff. What do you use, then, when you get off?"

The temperature of the room seems to uptick just a tiny bit. Cassie opens another drawer. Training clothes. Another drawer, sweatshirts, H.O.J. eagles on the back. She pulls one out. This'll work.

Joe stays silent. Cassie isn't sure she could hear him above her rattling heart anyway. You can do it. She puts the sweatshirt down on the dresser and strips out of her t-shirt. Without hesitating she unclips the bra strap too, daring a peek over her shoulder. His eyes are…intense. He doesn't look as murderous as yesterday, but his fingers have returned to the metal around his neck, gripping. Cassie hopes that's a good sign. She shimmies out of her jeans. She wishes she knew how to do this in a more appealing way, take her clothes off for him. But she doesn't know what she's doing, so she settles for quick.

She pulls his sweatshirt over her head. It smells like him and her stomach swoops. It's too warm in the room but she likes the feeling of it, the way it hangs to her thighs, engulfing her.

"Help yourself to the nutrition packets in the fridge while you're at it," he growls.

"Like I said, I just want to be comfortable." With that, she sprawls out in his bed, deliberately mussing the blanket.

Joe sneers at her a little. "Nice try. I was part of expeditionary excursions out into the Waste as a rookie; months at a time living in caves. I can live with a little mess."

Cassie sits up a little. "What? No way. Did you see any?"

"Any what?"

"You know! The Canceroids."

"I did."

She rolls onto her side towards him, intrigued. "What do they look like? Can they speak?"

"No idea. They're covered from head to toe in Old World rags. Angry screaming and shooting seem to be their favorite way of communicating."

"Sounds like someone I know."

He huffs a low laugh again, grudgingly, and once more she feels a flush of happiness.

"What's it like out there?"

Joe shifts his weight again, tipping his head back to regard her. "This part of the test, too?" he grunts. "Asking me too many questions?"

Cassie grins, "Hardly. I grew up close to the Wall. You'd hear stories about the Out There, but nobody really knew. I'm just curious."

He squints at her, and she thinks he's probably getting ready to tell her to knock it off and do her job.

But he doesn't. "It's cold. You wouldn't think so because the sun bakes everything black during the day, but the nights are like being dunked in ice water. Can't sleep directly on the ground because it'll steal your body heat so quickly that you'll never wake up. And the emptiness of it; you realize you've never heard true silence before. But you can see the stars."

She sighs a little. "I've never seen stars before."

And just as she says it, a ghostly mirage unfurls gently between them, an inky black expanse, stretching out forever, glittering with countless tiny jewels. A bright spot, a memory brought to the front of his mind by their conversation. "Oh, wow!" Cassie says, before she can stop herself. "I mean, sorry –" She looks to the far wall, wrenching her eyes from the beauty of it. She's almost naked in his bed, and she's about to do things to him that he never asked for, but she won't take this from him, too. She fidgets with the cuff of his sweatshirt, resolutely staring away.

"…You can look," Joe says, voice quiet in the small room.

Cassie doesn't whip her head around to gape at him, but it's a near thing. "I – what? You ordered me not to." She manages, her words rising like a question at the end.

"I know what I said." He's a consummate professional, so he probably doesn't roll his eyes at her, but it drips from his tone. "And now I'm saying that it's fine for this."

"Oh. Are you sure?" She dares a peek at him from under her lashes.

He hesitates a fraction of a moment, then nods at her, a quick dip of his chin.

So, she turns her head to marvel at it again. They are not all the same size, the stars, some seeming to pulse with sharp light, others hardly more than an idea, half a pinprick of light that she almost thinks she imagines. Others are fat and red, drawing her eye over and over. He lets her linger as she traces her finger through the apparition, trying to pick out half-remembered constellations. "Is this…the hunter? Oh! And here's the bear!" Joe points out a smattering of faint stars, the scales of justice, and she leans in to follow the line he sketches. And the blackness is not as uniform as she first thought, a smudge of color hazes across it in a band, defying her attempts to locate its border, but most definitely there when she lets her eyes unfocus a little.

"What is that?" she breathes.

"Milky Way." Joe answers her. "The galaxy."

"Oh," Cassie says, transfixed, "I've read about it, in school, as a kid, but – I never knew it could look like that."

Another memory blooms, and she sees a different night sky, some stars peppering the expanse. "What-" she begins to ask, and looks at him through the image, but suddenly the view explodes into silent color, long twisting ribbons of green and blue arcing gently across the night sky. Cassie gasps.

"The Northern Lights," Joe says softly. "Up far, where it's always winter. The Canceroids worship them, we think. Nothing on the southern sunsets though."

And another bright memory unfolds itself, a fat, red sun slipping into the horizon and burning the sky, turning the endless water below it into hammered gold.

She's only ever seen it watery and pale and small, hidden from view behind choking clouds of city air.

They watch together in silence as it disappears, the stunning indigo of the night sky bleeding through the red, until the memory fades into nothingness.

"Joe," Cassie says, and the sudden urge to cry almost overwhelms her.

He must see it in her face, something fragile, because he clears his throat, rolls his shoulders. "We should get back to work."

Cassie nods slowly. She stares at him, wanting to hold onto this moment for a little longer, wanting to feel this quiet thing between them for just a breath more, before she- before-

There's an ache in her chest.