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barely,’ said Anderson through gritted teeth, as she and Stokes quaked under the psionic strain. Stokes’ face was blank with agonised effort. ‘McKern! You’ve got to expel this thing now !’ Anderson could barely speak.
    Sweat beaded the big man’s brow. ‘I’m trying... I can’t,’ he gasped. ‘It’s too big... a revenant node... ninety thousand angry souls in one. I’m just not... strong enough!’
    ‘Then we have to force it back into the host,’ Anderson strained. ‘Contain it, before it burns Stokes out completely!’
    There was silence as the trio redoubled their efforts. The entity swelled; doubled its size.
    Then it screamed through all its mouths. Shrinking and crumpling horribly, it dissolved like noxious smoke into the limp body of the orderly.
     
    The psychic link severed, the Psi-Judges staggered back. Only the dregs of McKern’s telekinetic strength cushioned Judge Stokes’ collapse to the floor.
    ‘Lisa!’ exclaimed Anderson, as she and McKern reached the prone form. McKern cradled her frail figure in his great arms. ‘We’ve lost her,’ he said simply.
    Anderson turned speechlessly, her eyes burning as she faced the slumped figure of the possessed man.
    ‘We still have a problem to solve,’ she said.
     
    ‘So she wiped his mind of everything he was. In a split second, construction worker Gregory Thorne ceased to be. She hated herself for it, but there was no alternative. The node was too strong to banish. It could only be contained in a prison that had no contact with the world outside. Maybe the hardest choice she ever made – to sacrifice an innocent mind.’ McKern fell silent, aware that Pyke and Lutz were considering the story.
    ‘That’s why we always come here when we’re on Exorcise Duty,’ said Warner. ‘Anderson has last respects to pay. And forgiveness to ask for.’ They looked up to see Anderson returning through the suite.
    ‘Let’s go,’ she said briskly. ‘There’s plenty to do, and the day is yet young...’
    ‘Lead on, Chief.’ Warner followed her to the door.
    Out in the yard, as they mounted their Lawmasters, Anderson caught McKern’s eye and smiled. ‘And let’s pray for a quiet night,’ she said.

 
    ‘I WAS A TEENAGE PERP!’
     
    By Alan Grant, Judge Dredd Annual 1983
     
     
    ‘I WAS A TEENAGE PERP!’ A LAWBREAKER CONFESSES! MOVING TRUE STORY!
     
    I remember the day I broke my first law as if it was yesterday. In fact it was yesterday.
    I was cruising the Block Plaza with Willy the C, both of us just hanging out and looking cool. I was wearing my new glitter kneepad, so of course I was attracting more than my share of admiring glances from the other citizens in the crowd. That’s what put Willy in a bad mood and started all this trouble.
    I’m going to give you a piece of advice, all you guys reading this. It’s the most important lesson I’ve learned in all my fourteen years on the Mega-City streets. Never lose your temper. In a city where so many millions of people are fighting each other for living space, losing your temper just causes trouble.
    Take Willy the C and me for instance. Willy’s problem was envy. He’d never owned a kneepad. Can you imagine that? Thirteen years old and he’d never had a kneepad of his own. Me, I loved the things – I ate, slept and breathed ’em. In fact, I liked them so much that our Block School Careers Robot advised me to make them my hobby. So I did.
    In the year or so that the kneepad craze had been sweeping the city, I had acquired myself half a dozen different pads. Not expensive ones, no solid-gold-effect or mock-velvet or nothing, just regular models. But my secret – the thing that drew so many admiring glances from the chicks and so much envy from bowbs like Willy – was that I custom-built my kneepads. Yessir, I stripped them right down to the frame and rebuilt those little gizmos with tender loving care. The first one I ever made was shaped like the death-mask of Fergee, ’cos