Dredd VS Death Read Free

'The crime is life... the sentence is death,' he ritually intoned and, seconds later, another corpse joined the thousands of others in the burial pits.
    Vernon crept away, still only dimly aware of the significance of what had just happened. Death had found him, had judged him - and had found him worthy of something other than extinction.
    There was something more though, something the Dark Judge had left within him. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, Vernon imagined he could just see it, a slick, hard, black pearl planted amongst the living tissue of his brain.
    He had been marked by the Dark Judge. Marked not for death, but for life. For a purpose that was yet unknown to him, but which he already knew he would faithfully and devoutly carry out when the time came, for he knew that if he did Death's bidding, then he would be suitably rewarded.
    'I don't want to die,' he intoned to himself as he crept away again. I don't want to die. Not now, not ever. I don't want to die.'

 
    MEGA-CITY ONE, 2122
     
     
    ONE
     
    "Anything happen while I've been away?" Burchill asked, helping himself to a few generous gulps from Meyer's cup of now lukewarm synthi-caf.
    Meyer sighed in unhappy resignation. Being a Judge-Warden wasn't exactly the most exciting duty in the Justice Department, and keeping watch over the things they kept down here in the Tomb wasn't exactly the choicest duty posting in the Division, but it was having to work with jerks like Burchill that was the worst thing about this job. Worse even than the mind-numbing boredom and the extra creep-out factor of the nature of the... things encased within the crystalline cube-prisons only a few steps from where Meyer sat at the duty-console.
    "Nothing much," she told the smug Psi-Judge. "You're welcome to watch the vid-logs, if you want. We've got the whole of the last eighteen months since you were last here still on file. Not much to see, I'll grant you, but I think maybe Sparky might have done something like blink or change the flicker pattern of his flames a month or two ago."
    Burchill snorted into the cup of synthi-caf. "Sparky! It was me that christened him that, you know that? Sparky, Spooky, Creepy and Bony, that's what I called 'em one night, a year or two ago. Glad to see it's caught on while I've been away."
    Meyer bristled in irritation again. Psi-Judges were notoriously highly strung, and other Judges were expected to cut them a little extra slack, but Burchill was just an annoying creep. Duty regs said that there must always be a Psi-Judge on duty in the Tomb, to protect against any dangerous psychic activity from the things imprisoned down here, but the Psi-Judges selected for the job were rotated every three months since there were concerns about the effects on a Psi's mind of long-term exposure to the creepy vibes generated by the four detainees held in the Tomb. It had been a year and a half since Burchill had been on Tomb duty - or "spook-sitting", as he called it - and Mayer didn't think that was nearly long enough.
    "Yeah, ain't you just the Department comedian?" she commented, the sarcasm bare in her voice. "And, hey, by the way, feel free to finish the rest of my synthi-caf, why don't you?"
    "Thanks. Don't mind if I do," laughed Burchill, draining the last of the contents of the plasti-cup.
    "No! Don't you d-" began Meyer, way too late, as the Psi-Judge casually flipped the empty cup over his shoulder, throwing it towards the thick red warning line painted on the floor behind him, which divided the underground room into two distinct halves.
    On one side of the line were the duty-consoles for the two Judges - one experienced Judge-Warden and one Psi-Judge - which Tomb regs required to be at all times on duty here, as well as the elevator entrance back up to the surface. On the other side of the no-go line were the four entities imprisoned within the Tomb.
    Even before the plasti-cup had crossed the line, hidden sensor devices buried within the walls of