Judge Dredd

Dredd kept low, moving quickly behind the fallen robot. Fergie was on his back. He looked up and offered Dredd a weary smile.

“You okay, Ferguson? Take it easy, now.”

“I’m—I don’t think I’m too good…”

“You’re going to be fine, all right?” Dredd looked at his face, at the blood soaking the front of his shirt. Ferguson was right: he wasn’t too good at all.

“You—never got to say it, Dredd.”

“Never got to say what?”

“Hey, you know, man.”

“Yeah, I do.” Dredd drew in a breath. “I… I made a mistake. I’m sorry I misjudged you, Ferguson.”

“And you’ll never arrest me again.”

“I’ll—okay, I’ll never arrest you again.”

Fergie grinned. “All right, man.”

“Take it easy.”

“I’ll do that, Dredd. What I think I’ll do, I think I’ll just—sorta…”

Fergie closed his eyes.

Dredd grabbed his shoulders. “Ferguson? FERGUSON, YOU TALK TO ME, DAMN YOU!”

Dredd let him go. He clenched his fists until blood came to his palms, felt the fury begin deep in his belly, felt the fire race through his veins.

“RIIIIIICO!”

He screamed out the name, grabbed the Remington, came to his feet and ran toward the blue pods.

“Come out of there. Come out of there, Rico!”

He was driven by a rage he could scarcely contain, an anger that blinded him to caution and reason, a hatred that could only focus on Rico’s face, Rico’s laughter, Rico’s silver eyes.

He stalked through the eerie blue light, through the maze of glowing pods. Rico’s spawn surrounded him, a company of ghosts, their coral lips open, their flesh unearthly white. A man, slim and unborn. He lifted pale arms above his colorless flesh, and seemed to mock him with a smile.

“Rico!”

Dredd squeezed off two shots. A crystal pod shattered, the clone blew apart in a blossom of pink and white.

“Rico, I’m coming for you. I’m coming…”

A hail of gunfire came at him from the dark. Dredd turned, went to his knees, firing back in a wicked arc. Incubators shattered, spilling slippery flesh to the floor. One of Dredd’s shots hit a tall accelerator, a black-and- silver column at the heart of the Janus lab. Lightning crackled along the tower, snaked to the top, then exploded in a blinding fireball, showering the pods with comets of molten steel.

The incubators cracked. A flood of thick amniotic fluid hissed in the terrible heat.

Dredd saw him, then, as the computer burst into flame. Rico ran. Dredd fired, blowing a hole in the console, blinding a thousand red eyes.

The fire would keep Rico busy a minute, a minute and a half. Dredd broke into the open, keeping low, heading straight for Rico’s hiding place. Rico caught him there, raised up and raked his path with automatic fire. Dredd cursed and scrambled for cover, lead tearing the heel off his boot.

Where the hell was Hershey? She had gone after Ilsa hours—no, only minutes ago. Time was playing its tricks again.

Another incubator exploded. Blue fire webbed the walls, sizzled the concrete floor. Dredd saw the flames beginning to burst from the equipment on the far side of the lab. Getting hot in here. Going to get a hell of a lot worse…

Rico laughed, a high-pitched, grating sound that set Dredd’s nerves on edge.

“Central, hatch the first set of clones,” Rico shouted. “On my command—now!”

“Rico, don’t do that.”

“The cloning process is not finished, Chief Justice Rico. The clones will be only sixty-three percent complete.”

“I don’t care if they’re pretty or not. I want the damn clones now!”

Central’s voice droned in answer, but Dredd didn’t hear. Something exploded down below with the roar of a blast furnace, spewing a ball of yellow fire up through the floor. The place was going up; it couldn’t last long.

Hershey, where the hell are you!

Hershey knew the woman was there, somewhere in the maze of piping, the bundled strands of cable and wire. She cursed her luck, letting Ilsa slip away from her into the damn maintenance area at the back of the lab. Not her best move of the day, she decided. Rico and Dredd were ripping the Janus lab apart. She could already feel the heat, see the flames licking at the pods. When that firestorm got back here, with umpty-zillion volts of power droning above her head—that, and pipes full of oxygen, nitrogen, God knew what…

Ilsa moved. Hershey heard her, then saw a slim shadow scramble by only two yards away. Hershey came to her feet, then threw herself into the dark. Ilsa cried out, twisted, and swung a heavy wrench at Hershey’s head. Hershey drew back, winced as the wrench caught her shoulder, sending a numbing pain down the length of her arm.

Ilsa laughed. “Judge bitch! Keep away from me!”

“I wouldn’t get near you on a bet,” Hershey told her, “but duty calls, friend!”

Hershey feinted to the left. Ilsa swung her weapon again. Hershey jerked aside, balled her fist and hit Ilsa solidly in the belly.

Ilsa gasped, stumbled, reached out, and caught herself. Hershey caught the beginning of a smile on the woman’s face, tried to pull herself away, knew there wasn’t any time.

“ ’Bye, honey,” Ilsa said. She kicked out hard, a vicious blow with plenty of power behind it.

Hershey nearly went under. She felt something break, fell back. She turned on her heels and saw the incubator coming, covered her face with her hands.

Crystal shattered, raining on her back in a rush of bilious fluid. The thing flopped out, slick as a fish, its head lying inches from Hershey’s. Hershey stared, felt the hairs creep up the back of her neck. The thing made a strangled noise in its throat, tried to pull itself erect on boneless flipper arms. It came at Hershey on its wet, bare muscle, pulsing veins clinging to bare bone. It looked up at Hershey. A bubble came out of its mouth. It sighed once, dropped with a sickening sound.

Hershey got to her feet, felt the sharp bite of pain on her ribs. She looked around for Ilsa. Ilsa was gone. Black smoke was creeping across the floor. Hershey was sure she couldn’t go back the way she’d come. And there was nothing but dead and smelly mutants up ahead.

Damn it, there is absolutely nothing about this in the Regs, not even anything close.

FORTY-TWO

The flames licked at the heart of the pods, sending shadows leaping against the far walls. Dredd wrapped a shred of his shirt around his nose and mouth, but the smoke was too thick; nothing short of getting the hell out of there would help.

He couldn’t see Rico at all. The forest of incubators had turned into the center of Hell. Fire shattered the crystal tubes, mutants writhed and twisted in pain, caught in the terrible moment of horror between birth and fiery death. Dredd turned away. He didn’t need any more of this. The image was etched forever in his mind.

Rico caught him, his mind drifting for a second, his thoughts where a Judge’s thoughts had no right to be. The manual made it clear: Daydreaming is spelled D-E-A-D.

Rico hit him with a broken steel bar. The blow caught him just below the knee. Dredd went down. Rico raised