Fear the Darkness (5 page)

He probably fainted at some point during the ritual, she thought. At least I hope he did. That way he wouldn't have seen the demon. Poor kid's probably traumatised enough without having the memory of that to add to his nightmares.

"So I guess this means we killed Satan?" a voice said behind her. "Or you did, anyway."

It was Whitby. His left arm held in an improvised sling, he looked shaken but not too worse for wear.

"Thanks," she said. "It would look good on my rep, but I'll have to pass on that one. That thing was no more Satan than I'm the Chief Judge. Just some low-class demon who lucked by when these idiots opened a portal and thought he'd have himself a free lunch. How you holding up?"

"Busted shoulder," he shrugged reflexively, then winced at the movement. "Nothing fifteen minutes in the speedheal won't fix. So, what next? We take the boy back to his family and it's a happy ending all around?"

"Something like that," she said, looking down at Himmie Durand and remembering the face of Hammy Blish.

A happy ending. It felt good to have one of those every once in a while.

TWO

CUSTODIAL INTERFERENCE

"Control to any unit vicinity Gaultier Megamart. Mass brawl at Crazy Egbert's House of Fashion. Available units please respond."

"Control to any unit vicinity Alvin Toffler Block. Futsie on the rampage. Be advised, subject reported to be armed with flamethrower. Available units please respond."

"Control to any unit vicinity Kevorkian Precinct. Suspected homicide at Florrie Nightingale Crock Block. Available units please respond."

By the display of the wall clock opposite his desk, it was seventeen minutes past midnight. The graveyard shift. It looked to be a busy night at Sector House 12. Sitting alone in his private office on the twentieth floor of the Sector House, Sector Chief Joseph Franklin heard the staccato bulletins issuing from the comms-feed beside him and wondered if he should break with habit and turn it off.

The feed was patched into the radio frequencies Sector Control used to communicate with the Judges on the street, spewing endless updates on every crime and emergency as it happened. For fifteen years, ever since he first made chief, Franklin had kept the comms-feed running routinely in his office night and day. Normally, he found it soothing. With the feed blaring constantly in the background he felt connected to the pulse of his sector. More than that, it reminded him of his own days on the streets - days he increasingly looked back upon with rosy nostalgia. Listening to the feed at night as he tried to catch up with his paperwork, it no longer seemed a comfort. The feed taunted him, acting as a barbed reminder of all the things in his life he stood on the brink of losing forever.

"Judge Farrow to Control. Responding to that call of a suspected homicide at Nightingale Crock Block. Make that multiple homicides. Eight bodies so far, all eldsters. Looks like we've got an 'angel of mercy' on our hands-"

He had heard enough. Switching the comms-feed off, Franklin briefly glanced at the stack of files sitting on his desk, before turning in his chair to look at the view of the night sky through his office window. Outside, it was clear and cloudless, the cityscape of Mega-City One granted an eerie, spectral light by the bright moon.

It's three-quarters full at most, he thought. With all the chaos on the streets, you would have sworn it was a full moon night. Right now, the entire sector is in the middle of the worst recorded crime wave in ten years. Assaults, homicides, futsies; every kind of violent crime is way above the seasonal average and rising. It's been that way for the last three weeks. Almost ever since Justice Department made the first public announcement they were moving the Sector House.

He wondered if the two events could be related. The building he currently occupied was due to be demolished in a month's time, to be replaced by a newly built facility elsewhere in the sector. Already, Sector House 12 was operating at minimum staffing levels as personnel and equipment were transferred to the new facility in preparation for the move. Could some unknown party be trying to take advantage of the situation to create chaos as part of a wider agenda? Franklin dismissed the idea. Everything he had seen over the last few weeks told him there was no hidden hand at work. Crime levels might be up, but the statistics showed the causes of the crimes in question were so commonplace as to be almost humdrum: domestic disputes, fights between neighbours, arguments in the street that spiralled out of control and turned to violence. They were ordinary crimes of the kind a Street Judge saw a dozen times in the course of a normal shift. Crimes born of the frustrations of four hundred million people living right on top of each other with no room to breathe.

No, if the current crime wave had any deeper cause, it was simply that public awareness of the Sector House's imminent closure had served to undermine the subtle balance of power in the sector. A Sector House was more than just a building to the citizens of Mega-City One. It was a plascrete symbol of the Justice Department itself, a daily reminder of the Law that ruled the city. While in reality Sector House 12 was only moving, psychologically to the citizens it did not matter. Even the idea of a Sector House closing suggested an element of impermanence to the forces that controlled their lives. It weakened the hold the Justice Department had over their minds, diminishing a vital bulwark that helped to keep the worst excesses of the human soul in check.

Making a mental note to order an increase in street patrols and crime swoops to remind the citizens of Sector 12 just who was in charge, Franklin tried to return to his paperwork. It was no good. Even now the comms-feed was silent, he found it hard to concentrate. The restless thoughts churning through his head would not allow it.

I suppose the closure had to happen eventually, he told himself. Sector House 12 has been in operation more than fifty years. Things have changed a lot since then. There's new technology, new forensics, new threats. To keep pace with those changes, they've updated the systems in these old walls so many times the entire Sector House is little more than a jury-rigged hotchpotch held together with glue and spit. Frankly, the place is so decrepit it's a wonder it doesn't just collapse. When I think of how often I pushed for a replacement Sector House to be built. When I think of all the time I spent in meetings and before committees, pleading for resources. Through it all, through every budget hearing and planning session, I never realised I was digging my own grave. I never realised, once they finally decided to give in and build a new Sector House, they would also want a new Sector Chief to go with it.

There was a letter sitting in the drawer of his desk, written on official stationery headed with the Justice Department seal and signed by the Chief Judge herself. Franklin felt the urge to read it, but he resisted the temptation. In the last three weeks he had read the letter so many times he knew the words by heart. To read it again would only be to willingly inflict himself with more pain by picking at the scabs of half-healed wounds. His heart was heavy enough with pain already.

They were retiring him, putting him out to pasture. That was what the letter said. Granted, it did not put it quite so bluntly. Instead, it congratulated him on his forty-five years of active service and offered him a teaching post at the Academy of Law, but the subtext was clear: he was surplus to requirements. He was an old man past his prime, no longer needed. In the eyes of the Justice Department he was a dinosaur - every bit as much a relic as the Sector House he commanded. To underline its message, an addendum to the letter had arrived a week later, informing him Judge Meryl Coolidge had been chosen as his successor and asking him to do everything he could to acclimatise her to the sector when she arrived to take up her duties at the new Sector House in a month's time.

I hear Coolidge is a good Judge, he thought. Tough as nails and a competent administrator with it. Though I find it precious little comfort to know I'll have such an able replacement.

He could still turn down the offer. He could refuse to join the Academy. That would leave only a single option open to him: the Long Walk. He would be sent out into the Cursed Earth, expected to bring law to the rad-infested wastelands outside the city. Alone in an inhospitable landscape, surrounded on every side by freaks and mutants, he would be lucky to survive a month. As a younger man he might have made the decision gladly, content to go out in a blaze of glory. But the years had taken their toll. If he was honest with himself, he knew there was no more chance of him taking the Long Walk than there ever had been of him making Chief Judge. No matter what his frustrations, he had no other choice but to swallow his pride. He would accept what they had given him. He would take the Academy job, and for one simple reason. Like it or not, his years had made him a coward.

When did it happen, he thought? When did I become an old man, afraid to die?

He realised his reputation was all he had left. Forty-five years of active service, and he had never once been disciplined. His career had been spotless. He had never violated regs, nor done anything to earn any form of censure. He was a model Judge. A straight shooter. There were no black marks on his record. In the twilight of his years, maintaining that unblemished record had become important to him. Above all else, he refused to see his career end on a sour note. No matter the powers-that-be had decided to cast him aside, he would not allow it to affect his performance. In the weeks to come he would see out his remaining time with the same diligence as always, ensuring a smooth transition as the current Sector House closed and the old made way for the new. When the day came to hand the reins of power over to Coolidge, he would leave Sector 12 with head held high, knowing he left behind a record of service that showed for fifteen long years this small part of the Big Meg had been a better place due to his presence. He had commanded with firmness and intelligence. He had maintained order. He had upheld the Law.

There was only one small problem, a dark cloud that troubled his horizon and threatened to undo all his good work.

Sighing, Franklin picked up the folder at the top of the pile of files on his desk and opened it. It was embossed with the skullheaded symbol of SJS - the Special Judicial Squad, a semi-autonomous division within Justice Department given wide ranging powers to investigate their fellow Judges in cases of suspected malfeasance. A preliminary report, sent to him as a courtesy, it detailed an ongoing investigation into a series of suspicious deaths in custody that had occurred in the Sector House's holding cubes over the last two weeks. It made unwelcome reading. In content, the report was short on evidence and long on unsubstantiated allegations, but Franklin knew he could not ignore it. As much as he might wish the entire business would just go away, he had to try to resolve the matter somehow. He had to take action.

Otherwise, the whole thing had "sour note" and "black mark" written all over it in big, ugly letters.

"Sector Control to Custody Command," the voice said over the speaker. "Catch Wagon inbound with twenty-four - that is two four - perps for processing. ETA to your location: six minutes. Confirm."

"Confirmed, Control," Judge Mullins said, inputting the new figures into the computer terminal set in the console in front of him. "Twenty-four perps inbound. We're getting pretty full down here. Request iso-block transport ASAP to relieve overcrowding. Over."

"Negative, Custody. All transports currently engaged. Sector's so busy you'd think there was a Block War on. Will advise you as soon as situation changes. Sector Control out."

It was turning into a hell of a night. Standing beside his control station in the Custody Command Room opposite the holding pens on basement sub-level two, Chief Warder Judge Abel Sykes looked at the Situation Board and grimaced in annoyance. Twenty-four more prisoners inbound, while according to the board's holographic display they were already running at ninety-eight percent capacity. The cubes were full, and they had been packing perps into the holding pens like canned synthi-fish all night. A twenty-five year man, Sykes didn't need to turn to look through the reinforced plasteen viewport at the holding pens behind him to know things were in danger of turning ugly out there. Litterer and murderer alike, he knew every new perp came to the Sector House nursing a fresh grudge against the system.

Overcrowding made them more volatile, increasing the likelihood of their lashing out at their warders as the nearest representatives of that system. This left it to him as chief warder to keep a careful lid on things, walking the tightrope between protecting his men and not being so hard on the prisoners as to trigger a full-scale riot.

"Another twenty-four prisoners inbound, chief," Mullins said. "We're already approaching the permitted safety threshold for prisoner numbers."

"I'm not deaf, Mullins," he replied. "I heard you over the comm with Sector Control. And I can read the Situation Board as well as you can. Contact the watch commander upstairs and tell him I'm putting the interrogation cubes off-limits until further notice. If his Judges want to question any perps they can do it in the hallways. Next, radio Murcheson in the holding pens and tell him to start filtering out the non-violents. Jaywalkers, litterers, loiterers - he can use his discretion. Tell him to put them in restraints and transfer them to the interrogation cubes to free up space in the pens. And tell him to have his men suit up in their riot gear, just in case."

Turning away as Mullins switched through the comm-channels to relay his instructions, Sykes stared for a moment through the viewport at the prisoners in the holding pen closest to him. On the other side of the pen's bars he saw a sea of faces. Each one was angry, vainly and silently cursing the unfairness of a life that had seen them caught and imprisoned for their crimes. Not for the first time in his life, it seemed he had seen every one of those faces before. In his years as a warder he had seen thousands of perps. They were all the same to him. Pushed far enough they were all potential Judge killers: the only question was how much each individual perp would take before he showed his true colours. When it came to safeguarding the lives of Judges, Sykes didn't believe in taking chances. He ran things hard and tight, always putting the lives of his men first.