Somnium

Chapter 1 - Ex Lege

Mega City One Winter 2102 (January)

Starlight, as always, was blocked out by the bright lights and pollution of the city. On a quiet street between two mega blocks, one streetlight was out, bulb shattered on the concrete below. The front door to a street level apartment swung in toward a crime scene. Cold winter air blew through its threshold and into the shattered living room and kitchen.

"Control. Requesting paramedics to my GPS in Sector 19, multiple wounded, three bodies for resyk, and one for the cubes."

"Copy that, Anderson. Meat Wagon en route to you."

The helmet-less Judge drew a deep breath as the implications of her latest firefight caught up to her. A little boy crouched beside the body of his mother trying to shake her awake. Nearby, two of the three would-be-robbers responsible for the murder lay sprawled across the grimy linoleum of the family's kitchen floor. The eldest son lay crumpled unconscious outside near the door, having tried to stop the perps himself with sheer will. The father had dragged himself up against the fridge, badly beaten, trying to keep breathing in air to his burning lungs, unable to comfort his youngest as tears and helplessness leaked from him in waves.

Another motherless child. Another family torn apart by a senseless crime. She'd done her part. The perps were executed or arrested. There was nothing left for her to do. Her walls were up, but she could still feel the terrible grief and shock from the surviving family. The boy was openly begging his mother to wake up now, bargaining, promising to be good if she just opened her eyes. Anderson made a move to leave the shot up hovel of an apartment and escape the barrage of emotion.

"Judge, I-" the father grunted. "There's someth-"

"Don't speak." Anderson looked down at the man, hiding her pity.

"I gotta tell-"

"You're badly wounded, citizen. Rest. Help is on the way."

"No! You gotta be- be careful. There's- there's a man. He's the one who targeted m-my wife! He's powerful a-and dangerous. He's-"

The one robber caught alive and cuffed shouted out, "Shut up, man! You want us all to die?!" Panic and fear colored his voice burnt orange. The only reason the perp wasn't executed by her hand was because she had seen him throw himself in front of the youngest son when his cohorts drew their guns on the five-year old to silence his pitiful cries for his mother. "You talk about him out loud and you're gonna drop dead before the week is out!" He whispered furiously at his victim as if someone else was listening in. "You know what happens to people who snitch!"

Anderson eyed the two men suspiciously when the father hesitated and grew silent. Interesting. Maybe this wasn't just a routine armed robbery and murder like she thought. "Withholding information about criminal activity is worth 5 years in an isocube. I suggest you divulge your information, citizen," she said calmly to the victim. "You, too," she addressed her captive, "or you'll be handed to interrogation."

"I- I-" the father began to speak but was cut off by involuntary hacking coughs that wracked his body.

She turned to the perp who blanched at the look in her eyes. "I don't know hardly anything. I swear!" She caught the thought of his faceless and nameless employer and she decided to delve a little deeper. In the year since being on active street duty, she'd found that physical contact was the quickest way into a person's mind.

"Lady?" a little hand tugging at her sleeve stopped her in the middle of leaning over to drag the perp up by his collar. "Lady Judge?"

"Yes?"

"You got the bad guys right?"

She almost cried. Kids. They were always her weakness. "Yah. They're taken care of."

"Even the Bad Man?" the boy whispered fearfully, dark eyes wide.

The live perp groaned. "Shut up, kid!"

"The Bad Man? Is he one of these guys?" She gestured to the two dead and the one cuffed.

The boy shook his head, brown curls flying. "You never see him before he gets you. That's what mommy says. He controls it all. He sees you when you're sleeping and when you're awake and he knows if you've been bad." His voice had taken on a hollow quality that told Anderson he was repeating something he'd overheard. "He's only a shadow. But he waits in the dark corners and grabs you and steals away everything you love. He steals the shiniest lives and collects them in a jar to watch them fade. The Bad Man got my mommy."

A chill ran up her spine the likes of which she hadn't felt since hearing Ma-Ma's voice, cold and clear, in Peach Trees' atrium, the leader's voice calling the entire clan to arms against her. The boy's words were strange for a five or six year old, but the complete terror that gripped him and the absolute belief that the Bad Man killed his mommy was what shook Anderson.

The sirens of the approaching paramedics broke her away from the thrall of the boy's story. And she reached out two fingers to touch the cuffed perp's mind. She rifled through his scattered thoughts and found the place of his memories. Quickly scanning the surface, she found every connection and feeling and fact related to "the Bad Man" and pulled them into her own mind while letting go of the perp.

"What was that?"he gasped like he had been running for hours.

"You seem sick. Just checking your temperature. Wouldn't want you to spread any kind of infection to the medics," she lied through her teeth just as they came through the door, one stopping to check the older boy outside.

"Whoever else may have hurt your family will face justice," she told the boy quietly and walked away from the scene to her Lawmaster parked on the street. She still had 6 hours left on her patrol.

It was 9 hours later before she got back to the Hall of Justice. Anderson cleaned herself up, grabbed a tray of nutrition packed almost-toast, protein scramble and a cup of sim-caff from the mess and brought it back to her desk 19 floors up. Only three other Judges sat at their desks, engrossed in the never-ending paper work. The rest of the newly formed Psi-Division were out on assignments or street patrol.

Her food devoured quickly and efficiently, Anderson savored her hot drink. She actually preferred her sim-caff with three portions of sweetener, but the smell of it black, the bitter burn of it on her tongue soothed her frazzled nerves and settled a sense of something like home around her like a cloak. Her father used to drink the stuff every morning, grabbing a cup while walking her to school.

One of her fellow Psi-Judges also returning from patrol dropped his helmet heavily onto his nearby desk, startling her into almost spilling her drink. "Uh. Sorry," he said, light embarrassment swirling like smoke around his edges.

She laughed. "Don't worry about it, Bender. You woke me up at least. Damn paperwork," she gazed at her empty computer screen balefully, while opening a new report file.

"Ugh. Worst part of the job sometimes."

"Yah, sometimes."

"Hey, Anderson," another Judge greeted her as she walked through the doors. "Bender."

"What's the news, Michem? Are you getting transferred to 12's sector house?" Bender asked.

Michem was short for a Judge, barely hitting 5'1" with her boots on. She had a unique psychic ability- pathokenisis. She could manipulate the emotions of others. Michem ruffled her short black hair. Anderson knew that it had taken her a long time to gain a grip on her power. Michem's emotions used to spill into everyone's heads until Anderson helped her build up some walls in her mind.

"Nah. They need me here at the Hall." She grinned at them. "What the hell would they have me doing in 12 that I couldn't do housed here?"

"I don't know, Mich. Could be they need you for undercover," Bender replied. He was as tall as Michem was short. Nearly 6'6" and skinny as a straw. His psi-ability was pyrokenesis. He looked like he couldn't hurt a fly, but he had trained just as hard as the other Judges, if not harder, to be able to control his power and channel it to uphold the law.

"Please," Michem scoffed. "I'm worse at lying than Anderson."

"Hey. I resent that," she replied good naturedly.

"No you don't. See? Terrible liar."

She stuck her tongue out at Michem, then sighed. "I better get back to it. Thirty hour shifts are not my friend."

"Okay. Hey," Michem said. "I wanted to see that new movie this weekend- The Child. Wanna go with?"

Anderson smiled. "Sure."

"Call me!"

Anderson got to work. She became lost in telling the story of her patrol: The continued investigation into possible human trafficking and prostitution at the edge of Sectors 19 and 20, the 2 executed perps and 36 for the cubes, 13 resyked victims, and 15 witness and victim statements needing to be uploaded to different points to Central's data base and the Hall's records, and the sad ending to that poor family.

She added the details about what the little boy had said, his affect, and general age. "Bad Man," she typed as a possible pseudonym for the perps' boss. As she did, another chill ran across her shoulders. She glanced behind her, almost expecting a threat.

In the doorway stood Judge Dredd, formidable as ever in full street gear. She saw his familiar stubbly chin and deep frown and she immediately relaxed. "Judge Anderson," he nodded at her and gestured his chin back toward the hallway as if to say, 'I want to talk to you, but out there.'

So, she saved her progress and got up to follow Dredd. "You busy tonight?" he asked, voice rumbling low.

The question caught her off guard, sounding almost like a build up to asking a girl out, which would be completely out of character as fraternization between Judges (or anyone else for that matter) was illegal. She was almost offended, but she answered honestly, "Nothing planned." She didn't ask why like she wanted to and instead gazed steadily at him until he elaborated.

"Orders are for me to lead the raid tonight on the S19 and 20 human trafficking and prostitution. There's probably some kind of narcotics involved too."

Ah, that made sense. Either he wanted her on his team or wanted her information. Sometimes Anderson thought that he sometimes didn't speak to test her. To see if she was sneaking a peek into his thoughts. She never had. So, when he remained silent, she kept (what she hoped was) eye contact with his helmet visor and waited. She'd known him for a little over a year now, even worked on a few missions together. And while he generally shared vital information when needed, say, for example, in the middle of armed combat, it seemed to her that he needed to adjust his communication skills just a little bit toward communicating.

His continued silence was greeted with a small smirk and quirk of her eyebrows. "Just because I'm psychic doesn't mean that I read your mind, sir."

At that, his frown almost vanished as his lips twitched upward. The transparent blue strings of friendship, camaraderie, and affection snaked slowly from him toward her, as if reluctant to be given out. "Better not be in my head, Anderson," he practically growled, only half serious.

"Then you'd better tell me what you need me for, Dredd," she tried mimicking his badass tone, but wound up coughing in the end. A fiery blush spread across her face and neck.

For a moment, just a flash really, an actual smile stretched beneath Dredd's visor. It vanished quickly, but she still smiled and said,"Don't laugh. I don't know how you talk like that everyday without damaging your throat." She coughed involuntarily and Dredd's mouth twitched again. "What did you need to tonight? Psi support? My report?"

He shook his head and said, "You're my team, Anderson."

Honestly, she'd expected to be part of the team, but the way he worded it... "Just you and I, sir?"

"Unless you're busy."

"No! I mean, of course. I mean, thank you!"

"Don't thank me yet. Meet me at level 13 to plan at 1700. We'll be at the edge of Sector 19 by 2100."

"Yes, sir."

"In the meantime, send what you've got on your report from last night to my comm."

"I'll do that right now. Do you want something to drink?" she asked, immediately leading him back through her office doors. He grunted a negative. Michem was still there -'d five more people had returned while she had been engrossed in her report, but Bender the other three of her fellow Psi Judges present earlier were gone. Eyes followed Dredd and her up the narrow walkway to her desk. "What's your new comm number again?" she asked.

He told her as she punched a few digits into the keypad.

"Ok. You should have received it."

At that moment the comm on his arm lit up, her report for last night's patrol on display. "Save that number." He glanced at the start of the report. "13. 1700," he reminded as he stood and walked out of the room. The door shut silently behind him.

Immediately a clamor went up. "Holy shit. Was that Judge Dredd?" "What's he doing up here, Anderson?" "Have you worked with him before?" "How the hell do you know Dredd?"

She tried to fight it, really she did, but that little spark of pride burst into a tiny little flame. The Judge Dredd personally asked her, Cassandra Anderson, one year out from nearly failing her field assessment, to be his partner on a job. She basked for just a moment in her colleagues' envy and wonder, but then, shaking off the conceit, said in a casual tone, "Yes, that was Judge Dredd. He was up here to get some information from me. And he was my field assessment Judge." She muttered the last part.

However, Fendley, the only biokinetic of the department, understood her garble and gasped, "Dredd was your field assessment Judge? Dredd?!" His eyes slid from blue to orange unconsciously.

"Yes?"

"Holy shit!" repeated Michem. She could feel their opinions changing, and felt their curiosity and the general thought, 'What did she do for Dredd to pass her?' Most imagined heroics and amazing combat skills, but Fendley had one dirty thought after the other as an explanation.

"Listen, guys. I have at least 8000 more words to write before I can head home to crash..." She let the sentence hang as she turned her body toward her computer.

"Sure," said Michem. I've got my own to write," she sighed she led the group back to work.

Anderson was already planning the rest of her day. Finish work, home, shower, sleep, rebuild her mental shields, sleep, dress, eat, head back to Hall of Justice level 13 by 1700. Outside of her career there was little else important her life.

And she was actually pretty happy with that, she thought as she shut down her station. She waved goodbye to her friends and colleagues. She allowed herself a satisfied smile as she remembered that she'd have to meet Dredd later.

AN: 8/30/14. Not mine. Don't sue. This fic's based on the 2012 movie (which I only first watched last weekend) and, while I've done a little bit of research, doesn't take into account the original comic and books. Liked it? Hated it? Kinda had so-so feelings about it? Review please!