Jules’s smile faded. “You felt it. You can’t un-feel it.”

His finger twitched on the trigger.

The boom was flat, absolute, devoid of poetry. Jules’s body snapped backward against the pipe, a crimson rose blooming on his velvet chest. His silver-painted lips moved once, shaping a word no one would ever hear.

Dredd’s Lawgiver remained level. “Heston was found in a sub-level cistern. Self-inflicted exsanguination. He’d written your stanzas on his own skin with a shard of glass. That’s cause and effect, citizen.”