![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
your first sunlight reaching down
Jan. 1st, 2021 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wronganswerIt meant almost nothing in Mega-City One at first.
Anderson had long since realized she'd been naïve to think that she knew the limits of her system, that laws would hold, that she was the law. The laws themselves could be unfair, unjust, and even merciless, but they were clear text, words on a screen she could read and reread and wrestle with. There was no wrestling with the Empire. It was a slow, creeping realization like dread running across her nerves, almost like she was in an unceasing dream, where she knew something was after her but couldn't locate what. Just knew, with a certainty, that it would eventually get her.
For months, she just did her job, same as always. Slowly, the Empire seemed to realize that the United Mega-Cities had a small contingent of well-trained Force-using operatives, and the fact that she was a Judge - that she'd bled, killed, violated people for that privilege - began to stop mattering. The Megs tended to stomp out any psychic that didn't join the Hall of Justice with great prejudice, so it wasn't as if they were about to pose a threat to the Empire. Even the whole concept of 'the Force' was alien and strange to Anderson, who tended to think of that as a religious belief, unnecessary cultural layering on top of innate abilities. She'd had to learn the way the Empire saw her and the other Psi-Judges: highly competent militaristic Force-users with a narrow focus on psychic interrogations, who were above all already slavishly devoted to enforcing fascist rule.
Maybe most of the other Psi-Judges didn't know, or care, that their role was changing. There weren't many of them to start with, and she'd never had friends within the ranks. Maybe Anderson was being singled out because of her ability; she'd always rated top of her class on her interrogations, the sole reason they'd kept her around on the force. She didn't know, because she was being singled out, sent out of the Megs more and more often on special assignments to interrogate difficult prisoners. There was an advantage to sending Anderson, after all - unlike what she'd learned were considered 'dark' Force-users like the Inquisitors, she left their minds wholly intact afterward, not a whisper of damage. She was a scalpel where they were sledgehammers. Anderson could interrogate the same person multiple times, indefinitely.
This is how she found herself stalking down the corridor of another Imperial detention center, not even on the same planet as her city, expression tense with forced apathy. Every day, it felt more and more like a trap was closing in on her, like she was suffocating with the inability to do anything, change anything. But what was she going to change? So she just kept following orders, as best she could without losing herself.
Anderson nods at the guards who promptly salute her at the door, says nothing more, and steps inside. She still has her badge, for whatever it's worth; still has her Lawgiver. Sometimes she feels that's about all she has left of the identity she'd clawed toward her whole life.
"CT-7567," she says with a professional briskness as she enters the cell and the door is locked behind her. "I'm here to question you."
Anderson had long since realized she'd been naïve to think that she knew the limits of her system, that laws would hold, that she was the law. The laws themselves could be unfair, unjust, and even merciless, but they were clear text, words on a screen she could read and reread and wrestle with. There was no wrestling with the Empire. It was a slow, creeping realization like dread running across her nerves, almost like she was in an unceasing dream, where she knew something was after her but couldn't locate what. Just knew, with a certainty, that it would eventually get her.
For months, she just did her job, same as always. Slowly, the Empire seemed to realize that the United Mega-Cities had a small contingent of well-trained Force-using operatives, and the fact that she was a Judge - that she'd bled, killed, violated people for that privilege - began to stop mattering. The Megs tended to stomp out any psychic that didn't join the Hall of Justice with great prejudice, so it wasn't as if they were about to pose a threat to the Empire. Even the whole concept of 'the Force' was alien and strange to Anderson, who tended to think of that as a religious belief, unnecessary cultural layering on top of innate abilities. She'd had to learn the way the Empire saw her and the other Psi-Judges: highly competent militaristic Force-users with a narrow focus on psychic interrogations, who were above all already slavishly devoted to enforcing fascist rule.
Maybe most of the other Psi-Judges didn't know, or care, that their role was changing. There weren't many of them to start with, and she'd never had friends within the ranks. Maybe Anderson was being singled out because of her ability; she'd always rated top of her class on her interrogations, the sole reason they'd kept her around on the force. She didn't know, because she was being singled out, sent out of the Megs more and more often on special assignments to interrogate difficult prisoners. There was an advantage to sending Anderson, after all - unlike what she'd learned were considered 'dark' Force-users like the Inquisitors, she left their minds wholly intact afterward, not a whisper of damage. She was a scalpel where they were sledgehammers. Anderson could interrogate the same person multiple times, indefinitely.
This is how she found herself stalking down the corridor of another Imperial detention center, not even on the same planet as her city, expression tense with forced apathy. Every day, it felt more and more like a trap was closing in on her, like she was suffocating with the inability to do anything, change anything. But what was she going to change? So she just kept following orders, as best she could without losing herself.
Anderson nods at the guards who promptly salute her at the door, says nothing more, and steps inside. She still has her badge, for whatever it's worth; still has her Lawgiver. Sometimes she feels that's about all she has left of the identity she'd clawed toward her whole life.
"CT-7567," she says with a professional briskness as she enters the cell and the door is locked behind her. "I'm here to question you."
