A second passed. Two.

Stella watched him go, the blood on her boot already drying to rust. For the first time all night, she smiled.

Dredd didn’t turn. “It’s a graze.”

“No,” she said, pulling her hand back. “That’s the disease. You’ve been doing this so long you’ve forgotten what it feels like to stop a monster. You don’t even get the quiet joy of a job done well. You just get the quiet.”

Stella nodded toward the corpse below. “He was broadcasting fear. Not his own. He stole it from his victims. Wore it like a perfume. That’s why the block went silent—everyone was too terrified to breathe.”

Here’s a short story based on your request, featuring “Dredd and Stella.”