Mega City 2

America is an irradiated wasteland. Within it lies a city. Outside the boundary walls, a desert. A cursed earth. Inside the walls, a cursed city, stretching from Seattle to San Diego. An unbroken concrete landscape. 800 million people living in the ruin of the old world and the mega structures of the new one. Mega blocks. Mega highways. Mega City Two. Convulsing. Choking. Breaking under its own weight. Citizens in fear of the street. The gun. The gang. Only one thing fighting for order in the chaos: the men and women of the Hall of Justice. Juries. Executioners. Judges.

The air in Mega-City Two always tasted different than the descriptions in the archives. They said it used to taste like salt and ocean spray. Now, it just tasted like ash and irradiated dust, filtered through the struggling atmospheric processors of Sector 4.

Inside the ‘Golden State’ hab-stack, a misnomer so cruel it bordered on comedy—the air tasted worse. It tasted like cordite, copper blood, and the acrid, ammonia stench of a cooking lab gone wrong. Judge Vega kicked over a overturned metal table, her boot crunching on broken glass and spent brass casings. Beneath it, a perp groaned, clutching a through-and-through shoulder wound. He was wearing the shredded remains of a neon-yellow gang jacket. The ‘Sun-Kings.’ Small timers trying to move big weight.

"Secured," Vega grunted into her helmet mic. Her voice was a gravel slide, roughened by fifteen years on the MC2 streets. She didn't holster her Lawgiver. In MC2, you never holstered until you were behind blast doors. Behind her, Judge Diaz was zip-cuffing the only other survivor of the twenty-man crew. Diaz was younger, only three years out of the Academy of Law, her movements twitchy with adrenaline that hadn't yet faded into the career-long numbness Vega possessed.

"Eighty kilos of base product," Diaz reported, her respiration loud over the comms. "Looks like a localized variant of 'Drift.' Cheaper to make than Slo-Mo, faster high, quicker burnout."

Vega looked at the dead bodies littering the concrete floor of the retrofitted hydroponics bay. The Sun-Kings had defended their lab with suicidal ferocity. It had taken Vega and Diaz twelve minutes of sustained, close-quarters violence to clear the floor.

"Burnout is right," Vega nudged a corpse with her toe. The skin was gray, veins popping black against the flesh. "They were sampling the merchandise before the shooting started. Made them slow."

"Made them dead," Diaz corrected, hauling her prisoner to his feet.

"Meat wagon is inbound," Vega said, checking her wrist computer. The display flickered; MC2 gear was always second-rate, salvage from the richer sister city to the east, patched up and sent west to die. "Let’s get topside. This whole level is structurally compromised from the grenade exchange."

They rode the elevator up through the guts of the hab-stack. Eighty thousand citizens crammed into a concrete hive designed for fifty. The atrium levels were choked with smog and the dim, flickering neon advertising synthetic ramen and cheap pleasure-stims.

Outside on the landing pad, the smog over MC2 was a bruise of purple and brown. Far in the distance, the dried-up bones of what used to be the Pacific Ocean stretched out, a radioactive desert separating them from the rest of the world. A heavy H-Wagon descended, its thrusters kicking up toxic dust. They weren't going to the med-bay. They were heading straight to Sector House 101 for immediate debrief.

The Sector House

The debriefing room smelled of stale synth-caff and ozone. It was a windowless concrete box dominated by a steel table and a large wall screen displaying Sector 4 casualty statistics in real-time. Senior Judge Varrick didn't look up when they entered. He was older than Vega, his face a roadmap of scar tissue and radiation burns partially concealed by graft-skin. He was reviewing the helmet-cam footage of their raid at quadruple speed.

"Sit," Varrick commanded.

They sat. Helmets off, placed on the table. Vega ran a hand through her sweat-matted, severe black hair. Diaz wiped a smudge of dried blood from her cheek, not hers. Varrick paused the footage on a frame showing Diaz putting two rounds into a charging perp holding a rusted machete. "Clean shooting, Diaz. Though your ammo expenditure was high in the initial breach."

"Suppressive fire, Senior Judge. The entryway was a killbox," Diaz said, her voice tight.

Varrick grunted, a non-committal sound. He turned to Vega. "Eighty kilos of 'Drift' off the street. A dozen Sun-Kings terminated. Two in custody. A statistically significant Tuesday, Vega."

"The structure is unstable, Varrick. The firefight weakened the load-bearing pillars on level 40. The levels above might pancakce."

"Engineering is already shoring it up. The citizens in the affected sector have been advised to remain indoors. If they die, they die. We contain the chaos, Vega. We don't solve it."

It was the mantra of Mega-City Two. Unlike their eastern counterpart, which still clung to illusions of order, MC2 was about triage. It was a hospice for humanity, and the Judges were just the orderlies making sure the patients didn't kill each other too quickly. Varrick tapped the table, bringing up a map of the continent. A long red line illuminated the irradiated wasteland between the West Coast and the East Coast. The Cursed Earth.

"The Sun-Kings were just distributors," Varrick said, his tone shifting. "The precursor chemicals for that 'Drift' variant aren't local. They're coming across the wastes. From the East."

Vega frowned. "Nothing comes across the Cursed Earth except radiation storms and mutants."

"And high-value contraband, if the price is right," Varrick corrected. "We have intelligence suggests a new supply line is opening up, originating from Mega-City One territories."

"MC1," Diaz scoffed quietly. "The golden city."

"It’s a concrete toilet, just like ours," Varrick said flatly. "Just cleaner rims. But they have a problem, and it’s bleeding over to us. We're coordinating with their Justice Department to sever the link."

Varrick leaned back, the sterile lights reflecting in his cold eyes. "The intel package we received from MC1 was... extensive. Their methods are different than ours."

"Different how?" Vega asked. "A Lawgiver shoots the same rounds."

"They operate under the delusion that the Law is absolute," Varrick said, a hint of cynical amusement in his voice. "Here, we negotiate with the chaos. We accept acceptable losses. Over there... they have elements that do not believe in negotiation."

He swiped the screen. A file appeared. It was heavily redacted, but the silhouette of a Judge was visible. Standard issue uniform, but the presence in the still image was undeniable. It looked like a statue carved from granite.

"They sent us a profile on one of their primary street Judges. As a 'advisory' on how they handle major cartel breaches."

Vega leaned forward, squinting at the screen. "Who is he?"

"A blunt instrument," Varrick said. "A relic. Over there, they call him Dredd."

The name hung in the air for a second. It sounded less like a name and more like a sound effect, something heavy hitting something soft.

Diaz looked at the file. "Dredd? That's his name? Sounds theatrical."

"There's nothing theatrical about him," Varrick said, his voice dropping. "I met him once, fifteen years ago, during the 'Judgement Day' joint-ops. He doesn't speak. He sentences. He doesn't view the population as citizens to be managed, but as potential criminals waiting to be processed."

Varrick looked between his two officers. "You two cleared a hab-level today. You fought hard. You survived. You did good work for MC2."

He tapped the image of the shadowed Judge on the screen.

"But if this Judge Dredd had gone into that 'Golden State' hab-stack? He wouldn't have just cleared the floor. He would have judged the entire block guilty for harboring them. He would have burned the infection out, regardless of the collateral damage, because the Law demanded it."

Vega looked at the silhouette. It seemed absurd. A Judge that rigid wouldn't last a week in the meat-grinder of the MC2 sectors. The gangs would swarm him, or the sheer psychological weight of the city would snap his mind.

"Sounds like a liability," Vega said finally. "A zealot."

"He is," Varrick agreed, closing the file. "But he's the most terrifyingly effective liability on the continent. Pray this pipeline gets shut down on their end, Judges. Because if Dredd decides to follow the trail west to clean it up himself... God help the West Coast."

Varrick stood up, signaling the end of the debrief. "Resupply your ammunition. Get back on patrol. The city doesn't police itself."

Vega and Diaz grabbed their helmets. As they walked out into the oppressive, smog-choked hallway of the Sector House, Diaz glanced back at the blank screen.

"You believe him?" Diaz asked quietly. "About this Dredd guy? Sounds like propaganda. A boogeyman MC1 tells its rookies to scare them straight."

Vega pulled on her helmet, the world narrowing to the tactical display of her visor. The air tasted of ash again.

"Maybe," Vega grunted, checking the charge on her Lawgiver. "Or maybe he's just what happens when you take the badge too seriously in a world that stopped caring a long time ago. Come on, Diaz. Let's go find some more acceptable losses."

The Next Day

The stairwell of Sector House 101 was a humid concrete tube that echoed with the heavy thud of Judge boots. Vega and Diaz were coming off a double shift, their uniforms caked in a fresh layer of gray soot from a secondary fire in the Golden State hab-stack.

"I’m telling you, Varrick was just trying to spook us," Diaz said, adjusting the strap of her Lawgiver. "The 'Boogeyman of the East.' It’s a myth to keep the mid-tier Judges from getting lazy."

"Maybe," Vega replied, her voice flat with exhaustion. "But Varrick isn't the type for bedtime stories."

They pushed through the heavy reinforced doors into the main lobby. Usually, the lobby was a chaotic hive of processing droids, shouting perps, and weary clerks.

Today, it was silent.

The air in the room felt heavy, charged with a sudden, localized pressure that made the hair on Vega’s arms stand up. Every Judge in the lobby had stopped what they were doing. They were all looking toward the motorpool airlock. The heavy hydraulic doors hissed open, venting a cloud of high-octane Lawmaster exhaust. Two figures stepped through the mist. The one on the left was a woman, younger, with blonde hair tucked behind her ears and no helmet. She looked pale, her eyes darting around the room with a focused intensity that made Vega feel like her secrets were being peeled back.

The one on the right was a nightmare in leather and Kevlar.

He was a wall of shadow and hard edges. His helmet was scarred, the red visor reflecting the sterile lobby lights like a guttering fire. His green eagle pauldrons were oversized, his badge DREDD gleaming with a dull, cold light. Between them, they were dragging a man whose feet didn't even touch the floor. He was a high-ranking Sun-King lieutenant, his face a mess of bruises and sheer, unadulterated terror.

Vega and Diaz froze mid-step on the bottom stair.

"Is that..." Diaz whispered, her voice failing her.

"Dredd," Vega breathed.

The two MC1 Judges didn't stop. They marched toward the centre desk, the sound of their boots hitting the floor like gavel strikes. Dredd dropped the perp onto the floor with a bone-jarring thud.

"This is Kayne," the female Judge—Anderson—said, her voice calm but echoing with a strange resonance. "He’s been very helpful. He’s told us everything we need to know about the 'Drift' distribution hub."

Dredd didn't look at the desk sergeant. He turned his head slightly, his chin-line a jagged piece of granite. His gaze raked over Vega and Diaz. He looked at their scuffed armour, the mismatched plating on Vega’s shoulder, and the way they stood—tired, sagging.

"You're the sector officers," Dredd’s voice was a low, mechanical rasp that seemed to vibrate in Vega’s teeth. It wasn't a question.

"Judges Vega and Diaz," Vega said, trying to find her professional spine. She stepped forward. "We led the raid on the lab yesterday. This is our jurisdiction, Judge."

Dredd took a step toward them. He was shorter than the behemoths of the MC2 riot squads, but he felt twice as large. The scent of burnt rubber and ozone rolled off him.

"Your jurisdiction is a sieve," Dredd said. Each word was a sentence. "The chemicals used in 'Drift' are a derivative of the Ma-Ma clan’s Slo-Mo formula. I thought I finished that infection at Peach Trees. It seems the rot spread west while you were busy 'negotiating' with the chaos."

"Hey, we do our jobs," Diaz snapped, her face flushing. "We took down twenty perps yesterday—"

"And let the supply line remain open for sixteen hours," Dredd interrupted. He didn't raise his voice, which made it worse. "Incompetence is a crime. In Mega-City One, you’d be back in the Academy. Or the cubes."

Anderson glanced at Diaz, her expression softening slightly, though her eyes remained piercing. "He’s not impressed with the 'MC2 way,' Judges. He sees the Drift business as unfinished business from his own city. He’s here to close the file."

Dredd looked back at the perp on the floor, who was whimpering. "The boss. Valerius. He’s holed up in the 'Pacific Spire' ruins. Level 110."

"That’s a fortress," Vega said, her tactical mind overriding her irritation. "You’ll need a full tactical response team. Three H-Wagons, at least."

Dredd reached for the Lawgiver Mk II at his hip. The movement was so fluid it was almost invisible. He checked the readout on the back of the weapon.

"I don't need a team," Dredd said.

"It's a suicide mission," Diaz muttered.

Dredd turned fully toward them now. For a second, the light caught the edge of his mouth—a permanent, grim scrawl of disdain.

"It’s a sentence," Dredd corrected. He looked at Anderson. "Let’s move. We’re losing light."

He didn't acknowledge Vega or Diaz again. He simply walked past them, heading back toward the motorpool. The air seemed to follow him, leaving the lobby feeling cold and strangely empty as the doors hissed shut behind the two visitors from the East. Vega stood there for a long moment, her hand resting on her own battered Lawgiver.

"Did he just call us incompetent?" Diaz asked, her voice trembling with a mix of anger and awe.

"He did," Vega said, watching the motorpool lights cycle from red to green. "And the worst part is... I think he’s going to prove it."