Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Dredd characters, places, etc.

Chapter 15: Fractures

Dressing as Lucia might have been a challenge, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Jensen was the mastermind behind all her organized outfits. She just selected a neatly folded bundle and dressed in the set of slacks with flowing legs and a high waist with sleek, fashionable lines, the airy blouse with sheer sleeves, and the matching fitted half vest all in whites and creams along with her set of pearls before she was done.

The makeup was more of a challenge, and she opted for little more than eyeliner after scrubbing her face clean with a series of lotions with instructions on order and use on the bottles put there by the manufacturers. Her hair needed no real styling to simply fall into place, and she was ready with a large matching purse, into which her breaking and entering clothing went, namely fatigues, long sleeve shirt, gloves, and a cap, along with boots. She'd never before had the opportunity to appreciate an oversize purse before.

Rico had acquired breakfast, a couple of egg sandwiches, by the time she emerged. He was dressed artlessly in tan slacks and a short sleeve collared shirt, cream colored with verticle white patterns accenting the breadth of his chest and slender waist. They matched perfectly, and where Anderson knew her clothing was laid out, Rico's didn't seem to be for the ease in which he wore it. The scars all over him didn't seem to weigh into his considerations of dress either.

Without saying too much, he simply grabbed a leather bag from beside the counter and they descended to the parking deck. Anderson had no idea where the car they'd been using came from, climbing in without question.

Rico drove them almost an hour to the east, into a quiet part of town. He parked in a garage adjacent to an elegant building with graceful arches and grand windows. It was a masterpiece of balance and older styles with great windows stretching twenty feet high, an enormous stone porch wrapping around the entire thing, and lots of light shining out from the three interior floors. It sat in the shadow of a much greater mega block nearby, and for that it glowed like a lantern.

"Leave your bag," Rico admonished while he took his.

Inside the echoing antechamber, Rico led them down rather than up. She gathered it must be a museum by the admission booths, but they used a side stairwell down a corridor. Anderson's psychic ability simmered, trying to chew its way free and range ahead. It fizzed in her brain with background noise as they circled down two flights of stairs and emerged in a hallway lined with beautiful antique shelves filled with books, ending in a heavy wood door and what appeared to be an intake window. Rico, carrying his bag, stepped lightly up to the counter and rang the bell.

A sallow man almost manifested in the darkened pane, blinking owlishly at Rico. He stared long and hard a few seconds before Rico pulled something from his pocket and set it down. It was taken by a hand missing two plump fingers at the second knuckle, studied, and then returned before the door buzzed open. Rico pulled it back and gestured Anderson ahead of him into a dank stairwell. She could smell dirt and moist air, like she descended into a grave. Something began humming in the back of her skull as her pulse involuntarily picked up, thinking again of the Valley of Hearts.

All that could be done was to plunge ahead.

When they came through another door now, they were in an office that was very worn and barren except for a decaying desk, two rickety chairs, and another sallow clerk, morbidly obese, and short. His hands were folded calmly while his legs swung childishly from his own wooden chair, making the whole thing creak.

"I don't recognize you," he announced in a nasally voice. Rico put his coin back down on the desk, and the little man took it up as he pressed a gem master's eyeglass against his right eye. He turned it over a whistled, looking up again at Rico. "We tried to recover this when you went away. Ransacked everything. Where did you hide it?"

"What's the value of a spoiled hiding place?" Rico smiled crookedly. The little man gurgled some response that Anderson couldn't identify as an exact emotion, his legs swinging more animatedly now.

"The Underboss will be interested to hear what you have to say. Word is you deal with Klegg, and we've no use for his influence here."

"I'm not an apostle," Rico shook his head. Still the legs kicked back and forth, and now the fingers drummed along the desk. He took the coin and tossed it into what looked like the bell end of a trumpet attached to a vacuum hose. Anderson tensed, assuming Rico would lunge for it, but he waited unperturbed in a staring contest with this squat man.

There was nothing but the complaints of the overburdened chair for several minutes until finally another door was opened by an enormous man with pale skin, built like a linebacker and dressed in a suit. His thug appearance was completed by sunglasses, which seemed unnecessary in this dim place. He beckoned by cricking two fingers, and Rico followed. Anderson fell in his wake, careful not to look back at the squat man that watched them go.

"Don't stare," Rico murmured back at her just in time for them to emerge into another room, this one well lit. Whatever else was in the room, Anderson was immediately distracted by the smell of rot and sickness. Her eyes flashed about in search of the source, and found it in a man swathed in bandages like a mummy, dark spots bleeding through in places and the skin around his eyes and mouth pale with a slimy green sheen. Every sense screamed that she run from this cadaver, most of him obscured by a nice three piece suit in charcoal and a maroon tie. He was standing with a bloodied pipe in one hand, and at his feet were the bludgeoned remains of...someone.

"Been a long time," he rasped at Rico as Anderson quickly focused on the bloody mess, allowing her peripheries to continue detailing this…thing. The pipe rotated in a circle as the man rolled his wrist.

"Still guarding the Underworld I see."

"I've no interest in divvying cuts with Klegg or the HOJ or anyone else," the Underboss answered, walking away from the kill saturating his oriental carpet. He opened a gilded box on an enormous desk and took out a cigarette, another large man like their guide lighting it for him. There were six she realized. The Underboss turned back to face them, leaning against the desk and staring with jaundiced eyes and frigid blue irises at them. "So why are you here? I can't even guess who you really work for, you've so many masters."

"Whatever they want, I'm here for pleasure," Rico tossed his leather bag on the floor, close but not in to the blood. "Twenty years on Titan, and I want a good time." He hooked an arm around Anderson's slim waist and pulled her close. Her mind jangled with the contact and a little headache started in the back of her skull. She wondered if this would pass or if habitual restraint of her gift would make the headache common.

The bandaged man flicked his eyes at one of the six golems in his service, who proceeded forward and opened the bag. Bundles of cash were jumbled inside, all crisp. Anderson didn't disturb her Lucia mask, as if she was used to this sort of money with her head tipped against his shoulder, passively observing. The cadaver didn't laugh, but his icy eyes lingered on the bills.

"Mutts. If I win, you take that money and set me up something nice, with of course a cut for you. You win, I'll fight in a Suicide and the money is yours," Rico shrugged. The cold blaze in the cadaver's eyes intensified. He turned away from them and circled around behind his desk, lifting the coin again. He flipped it over his knuckles, smoking meditatively.

"The girl?" he looked at Anderson. Her skin crawled.

"Winner takes all," Rico shrugged. The unwholesome smile curdled Anderson's blood as it took all her control not to reopen the scar on Rico's throat and flee the room. Instead she looked up and traced a finger along the mark.

"You lose, and it really will be a suicide," she promised, and then stepped out of his reach. She lifted the bag, approached the desk, and dropped it with a thunk on the wood. Placing one hand down next to it, the other on her hip, she looked directly now at the putrefying Underboss. "Shall we?" she arched one eyebrow. The corpse rose and offered her an arm. She took it, almost overwhelmed by the stench.

"Call me Gideon," the cadaver smiled, yellowed teeth in gray gums.

"Lucia," she replied, as if nothing in the world were wrong.

A "Mutt" was a Mutant Fight Anderson learned as they walked up and down a line of mutated champions. They passed through the mist of a shower room, the men all in a varying state of undress waiting with surprising order. She'd thought conditions would be much crueler. Gideon had won first pick in the coin toss, which didn't seem to ruffle Rico. Anderson mentally threatened her partner repeatedly while she hoped he knew what he was doing.

Gideon retained her arm in his as he led her down and along the ranks, pausing sometimes to inspect different men with critical severity. The Underboss finally doubled back to a big man with three arms and a crooked horn leaping out of one side of his head. There was something mean about him and Anderson didn't like the way his eyes crawled up and down her skin.

"Straight from Djakarta," Gideon observed and the man nodded with a crooked smile that showed off what looked like shark teeth. "Ten days in a pleasure house if you win." Djakarta grinned even wider, all three hands flexing and clenching. "You're turn," he gestured at Rico.

"Lucia," Rico gestured graciously to her. Anderson stared at him a long moment, her mind crackling against its imprisonment, and then released Gideon to face the lineup. With eyes like hands the mutants studied her in turn as she looked them each over, appraising them with statuesque indifference. Finally she stopped before a young man with a towel wrapped around his waist and a grotesque under bite complemented by a harelip.

She stood and stared at him for a very long time, pushing against her mental restraints as something about him prickled the skin on the back of her neck. The mutant fighter stared back. He was just shy of being as tall as Anderson and had dirty blond hair, his eyes an unusual shade of gray, so dark they were almost slate.

"Fought in Ankara didn't you?" Rico prompted from behind her. "But you're from further East, out in the wastes there I'd wager." Surprise flickered through the boy's eyes as he looked up a good foot to meet Rico's gaze. He nodded once, very slowly. Rico motioned for him to turn and he did so, exposing a tattoo of a very old, very prestigious looking tree of some sort. It had thick limbs, rough bark, and winding roots.

"Where are your brothers, boy?" Rico prompted.

"It was for them that I signed my contract," he answered softly, his voice surprisingly gentle.

"I'll take the Ankara Oak," Rico announced to Anderson's surprise. Djakarta shifted and fire blazed in his eyes. Ankara simply bowed his head slightly.

"What's your name?" Anderson asked the selected champion.

"Utku Karga, ma'am," he whispered. She removed her bracelet of pearls and took his wrist. He only had three fingers and one thumb on each hand and his spine curved a little crooked so his shoulders weren't even. There was a slit over his left eye that looked like it might be another eye, a few lashes straying and it seemed to twitch in almost a blink over an opaque, off white colored tissue beneath.

"Why is there a tree on your back?" She inquired as she calmly secured the bracelet.

"The oak boughs do not sway – they do not pay homage to God. My brothers and I do not pray to a God who tore down the world and makes monsters...like me..." the last words were barely a whisper.

"I have seen monsters," Anderson rebutted. "I would not make one my champion." She met his eyes with a significant raise of her eyebrows. He covered the pearls with the other hand and pressed them over his heart.

"Yes ma'am," he gave her a smile forced crooked by his deformities.

"Find your way to the boxes then while I arrange some last minute affairs for the match," Gideon instructed, snapping a finger at one of the remaining healthy guardsmen. Though she wanted to, Anderson didn't look back at the fighters as she departed, wondering about her fate. Had she set Utku up for some real trouble? Something about him had tugged at a corner of her soul, some nagging sensation insisted that she should place her bet accordingly.

"He's a Trabizond Silk, one of the brotherhood who forsook God for Atheism after the Atomic Wars. They have exceptional martial skill seeing as they believe death is the end of their existence. Is that why you chose him?" Rico prompted beside her.

"No," Anderson answered coolly, rather than saying he had no idea what a Trabizond Silk was or anything about their brotherhood and martial skill. Her education in martial arts had been pragmatic, the absolute best use of force with minimal effort to subdue or execute attackers. Styles and techniques weren't given a history, just names and practical application.

"Djakarta fighters have very high pain tolerance. I hope your Ankara boy hits hard enough to cripple something as big as that."

"Or you will have some real problems on your hands," she replied without looking at him. She was afraid her anger might overtake her façade otherwise. Rico only chuckled, laying a hand on her lower back and guiding her around a different hallway. Anderson almost snarled, instead opting to step far enough apart from him once the turn was executed.

The boxes were half a room with an extended balcony and comfortable plush chairs for viewing. There was a complete bar and wall sconces, scattered pub tables, and lining the walls were framed sketches of different mutants.

Anderson stood before the largest, a life sized mural of a mutant taller than she was. His head was a complex pattern of bulges and crater like depressions, his eyes almost hidden under a thick brow, and he stood with only one good arm rippling with muscle. The other was a withered, blackened, skeletal appendage. Bone spurs stretched from his ribs in asymmetrical lengths, the skin webbed between them. He was a good, solid six feet with long fingers and dazzling eyes the color of honey. He had hair braided back out of his face in a hundred smaller braids, gold cuffs and coins looped around the tail of each braid.

"That's Mihovil Horvatincic," Rico said from behind her. Anderson didn't look away from the strange mutant, the better part of naked but for what looked like boxing shorts. "He was a champion boxer before I was put away. I saw a few of his fights when I was running my racket. I'd have put money on him against the norm champs at the time."

"What happened to him?"

"A woman brought him to his knees," Rico shrugged. Anderson looked over her shoulder at the world weary smile Rico was wearing. "Do you remember the Salamanca crime family? I don't think you were alive when they were in operation but theirs was a spectacular finish. They might teach it in your history books."

"The Salamancas were arms dealers as I recall," Anderson replied. Rico nodded as Anderson turned to look back at Horvatincic.

"There was a three day fire fight before Chief Judge Goodman finally had her Judges blow the place sky high. Ercilia Salamanca was the youngest daughter of the cartel's head, Fernando. Horvatincic fell in love with her. She led him on by the heartstrings and made a fortune betting on his desperate affections against impossible odds. In the end he took on some sort of mutant they found way out in the wastes like a Roman Gladiator and it tore his spine out and gorged on whatever was left. That was the only time Ercilia bet against him."

"Did she go down with her family?"

"The world isn't so poetic," Rico chuckled. "Last I heard she was importing fighters from as far away as the wastes of Old China. That was about five years ago when one of her henchmen was sent to Titan. I imagine she's still around."

"Is importing fighters so lucrative?"

"Mutant blood sport is huge money amongst MC1's wealthy," Rico shrugged. "I'm not the only norm – or the only Judge – that finds their way down here via the Underboss."

Anderson reached out and touched the wooden frame supporting the artistic rendering of Horvatincic. She wondered if he'd been happy in such a mad state of love, if he knew Ercilia Salamanca had betrayed him. Would it have mattered to him she wondered? People didn't always have to be loved in return to go on loving. She'd felt it countless times between people.

Turning away from Horvatincic's frame, she went to the balcony and looked down at the ring, framed in a chain link cage and lined with stained floors. Folding her arms she noted that there were plenty of seats, and several other boxes like the one in which she stood. She had no idea where she was in reference to the museum where they'd entered, but knew they were several floors underground.

Her mind suddenly jangled with the touch of a psychic gift. A needle of paint sank deep into her head, making her shift and brace her hands on the railing. She expelled a careful breath, trying not to look too much in pain as she wondered if Klegg was looking in on them.

Utku and the Djakarta fighter suddenly appeared in the ring. They glistened with oils and were dressed in silk boxing shorts, their torso's and legs bare, braided rope wrapped around their knuckles. Anderson got a sudden chill as she glanced again at the old stains on the caged ring and compared the size of her diminutive fighter against his Goliath.

"A curious match," remarked Gideon as he entered behind her. Anderson didn't look back, not because she was maintaining her Lucia character, but because she was transfixed as her small fighter turned and gave a gladiatorial bow to her, her pearls wrapped around the wrist of the hand pressed over his heart. Had she consigned him to death?

Gideon was presenting a glass of something to her. She took it and put her back to the ring as the fighters circled one another, not yet ready for the show down. Rico was watching her, though his eyes were focused on the ring. She knew it by the prickle of hair on the back of her neck. Anderson looked down thoughtfully at her drink, tilting her head so that the lines in her neck appeared long, seeing Gideon study them intently with an attraction that almost made her shudder. She felt pinned between the undead and a demon suddenly.

The cadaver lifted a transmitter like an old fashioned radio, pressing a button at the side without ever looking away from the column of her neck. "Gentlemen, the round commences on my mark. Remember the stakes," he added as the fighters squared up. Anderson had her back to them, forcing herself to remain calm even as her mind reeled to regain control of her situation. She was too far sunk into these games, had trusted Rico too much.

"Begin."

It seemed to echo, the sounds of their initial connecting blows. Anderson remained with her back to the ring, as if supremely confident in her champion, even as a wild fear for her boy champion fluttered in her breast. The six guards were lined up in the room, and Rico stood watching the fight with his arms crossed, a stationary golem no more her ally than Gideon beside her. She was reduced to a bargaining chip. Wynne could have worked this to her advantage perhaps, would know the way to warp and twist Gideon's unwavering attention or whatever this mood of Rico's was. Lucia would in fact know. But as she was Anderson, she was without the necessary knowledge.

Six enormous guards she reminded herself, studying them in her peripheries even as she hazarded a sip of whatever Gideon had brought her. It burned on her tongue, almost making her shy away, but she kept her face perfectly schooled in indifference. Her thoughts scrambled over the pattering, almost rain like sound of the fighter's feet on the ring, the hollow connections of their blows, all the time growing more concerned for the small fighter she couldn't see. What should Lucia do? What was Rico expecting? There was no hint in his stony face fixed on the fight, and only the perverted intentions of Gideon's anticipating triumph on his moldering countenance.

So what would Dredd do?

Utku cried out at the sound of something breaking. All consideration for Lucia vanished as Anderson resumed command of herself. Gideon's knee had cracked out of joint and he was down before his guards even realized she'd moved, supported by her arm around his soft throat and with the jagged, shattered edges of her tumbler at his jugular.

"Fire if you like," she said calmly to the guards training guns on her, her psychic powers causing a howling ringing in her ears as it strained in all its force to reach out and paralyze her enemies. Gideon's damp, cloying fingers clung to her iron forearm, the rest of him twitching with agony from the shattered knee. Seemingly at the very second Anderson had reacted, Rico had bounded across the room and strong armed one of the guards into surrendering his pistol, pressing it too against the unlucky mutant's temple.

"You won't walk away," burred one pale guard.

"Neither will Gideon," Anderson replied. "I relinquish his life when I have passage through the city."

"We will hunt you down," the same spokesman threatened.

"I'm not here for petty turf disputes. I don't care who controls the Underworld," Anderson replied, her fingers contracting around Gideon's throat. "I seek passage only. If it is granted I leave in peace. If not, I will leave only pieces in my wake, and there is no Judge in MC1 with grounds to proclaim my guilt in such actions against a nest of Muties so deeply vested in blood sport." Though she spoke with bravado, it rang with enough truth to make her would be assailants uneasy.

"You will never be welcome," Gideon gurgled, clawing at her forearm as his putrid stench made her stomach turn. She quirked a brow at the guards and pressed her impromptu weapon just deep enough to draw blood.

The muzzles of guns lowered. Anderson watched them one by one until six guns were at their sides. Rico then moved and collected each one in turn, tucking them into his pants. And then as he stood considering her handiwork, he flashed her a quick smile.

Gideon's brain was splattered all over the side of Anderson's face and her shoulder as his body went limp. Her mind had barely registered his death, the weight of him sagging in her arms, before six more shots left her in a bloody panorama of needless death. Rico then turned and took aim at the ring.

The shot missed, but barely. Both fighters sprang apart startled, looking up at Rico holding Anderson aloft by the throat after she'd thwarted his shot. His attention had shifted to his partner, sullied in bits of Gideon's half rotten skull. Outgunned by his raw power and choking, Anderson hooked a leg up over his shoulder and proceeded to put him into an arm bar, pressing her belly against his elbow joint and pulling it taut until it threatened to break. Rico was forced to drop her or lose the elbow, and the two of them sprang apart, glaring at each other like wolves.

"I wondered how far I could push you," Rico smiled as the clips came free of the pistols one by one. Anderson retained her grasp on the shattered tumbler, crouched like a beast until he was done. He reached into a pocket then and pulled a roll of bills free before lobbing it all the way into the ring. "Run boys, run!" he called. Djakarta wasted no time and pounced on the money before bolting. Utku stood in the ring staring up at the unlikely duo.

Slowly, the mutant pressed his bloodied fist over his heart and gave another bow, this one stiff with pain rather than dignity. He then turned and disappeared into the depths of the ring.

"Peace," Rico dropped all his empty weapons but two. He offered the butt of one to her. Anderson was no longer under his sway, every nerve stretched to the brink as she searched his face for further treachery. "If you want to get technical, his crimes include trafficking, tax evasion, harboring mutants, and most importantly multiple counts of murder in the first degree from Mutt Fight death matches, warranting the penalty of death." Rico waggled the pistol butt at her like he was attempting to entice a cat.

"A Judge through and through," Anderson remarked with narrow eyes, mindful still of the throbbing in her skull and Klegg's potential presence.

"Down here, I'm the closest thing to law you'll find," Rico tested the elbow she'd nearly snapped before rolling that shoulder. Anderson kept the snarl off her face at the statement. "We've got to go. It won't be long before this is discovered."

Anderson gestured at her spattered clothing before she attempted to clean some of the clinging brain matter off her cheek.

"I've got a plan," Rico assured her, closing the distance between them and offering the pistol now in an open palm. "Trust me," he gave her a smile that might have been confusing a few hours ago. Anderson took the weapon and tucked it in the back of her pants where it pushed uncomfortably against her spine.

"What would that garner me?" she replied, and didn't need any of Lucia's influence this time to maintain her aloofness.