Free Fear the Darkness by Mitchel Scanlon

thoughts. No evidence that any living thing had ever stepped inside it.
    She felt nothing.
    It was as though she was surrounded on every side by a blank space. As though she stood in the middle of a black hole in the middle of the psi-flux. Like she had abruptly been rendered blind and deaf, the senses she had relied upon her entire life were suddenly gone.
    She felt nothing. And, with it, a new understanding grew cold and chill inside her heart.
    Something was terribly wrong here.
     
    "So you're telling us you found nothing?" Sector Chief Franklin said from his chair, his expression betraying his disappointment.
    It was three quarters of an hour later, and Judge Hass had been busy. Emerging from the holding pens after conferring with Chief Warder Sykes, Anderson was summoned to an impromptu meeting in the SJS man's office to discuss her progress. Given the imperious nature of the summons, and the fact she harboured little in the way of kind feeling toward SJS, she had been tempted to send a message back telling Hass to go drokk himself. In the end it was a question of protocol. Strictly speaking, she had come to Sector House 12 to assist in Hass's investigation; the fact she was sure he would try and stonewall her in the usual SJS fashion was neither here nor there. Besides, Hass had made it clear Sector Chief Franklin and the Deputy Sector Chief Grimes would be attending the meeting.
    Anderson might not have been a particularly political animal - few Psi-Judges were - but even she knew better than to snub the Sector House command structure within an hour of her arrival. Still, political animal or not, her presence at the meeting had since given her more insights than she ever could have wished into local Sector House politics.
    "Not altogether the result we might have hoped for, then," Deputy Chief Grimes ventured his opinion from the chair beside Franklin. It was clear the two of them had a frosty relationship: every word from the Deputy Chief's mouth seemed full of subtle antagonism towards his superior. Pushed aside for promotion most probably, Anderson thought, sensing spite and agitation beneath Grimes's calm exterior. Psi Division said Franklin is due to be replaced as Sector Chief by Meryl Coolidge over at Sector One-Sixty. Grimes was probably hoping he'd get the job himself.
    "Still, he shouldn't let ourselves become too disappointed," Grimes continued, nodding smoothly towards Franklin and making a show of patronising the older man as though he thought he was half-senile already. "Judge Anderson's investigation is barely an hour old, after all. They say justice wasn't built in a day."
    "Indeed," Hass said, holding his hands splayed with fingertips touching in front of him. "Though, of course, methods of psychic investigation are notoriously unreliable. Not that I mean to impugn Judge Anderson's efforts in any way, you understand. Her reputation speaks for itself." His smile was of a cold, dead thing, dripping with venom.
    He's typical SJS, all right, Anderson thought. Where do they find these guys? Under a rock? Or is there some secret cloning machine at SJS headquarters that turns them out by the dozen?
    "The Dark Judges Incursions, the Apocalypse War, the Necropolis Event," Hass said, the smile fixed to his face. "Time and again, Judge Anderson has acted above and beyond the call of duty to protect Mega-City One. It would not perhaps be too much of an exaggeration to say, on occasion, she has performed miracles on our behalf. Of course, the problem with miracles is that in the end we begin to expect them every time. We forget, Psi-Judge or not, that for all her not-inconsiderable gifts even Judge Anderson is only human."
    Hass paused as though waiting for her comeback, until apparently convinced she had ceded the floor to him indefinitely, he began again.
    "And besides, another Psi-Judge has already scanned one of the previous crime scenes with no greater degree of success," he said, a hint of triumph in the