The Shadow Fixer

by Matthew S. Cox

  She groaned.

  “No need to stress about being here at seven on the nose.” He smiled. “All the extra time you pulled last weekend more than makes up for being a little late.”

  “Thanks, captain. Be there soon.”

  He nodded, then signed off.

  Kirsten set the patrol craft to auto-drive to the PAC, then pulled her NetMini out to order breakfast, requesting the delivery bot meet them by the garage entrance. She spent the remainder of the ride filling out an incident report to send over to Division 2 regarding her compromised autoshower.

  Eight minutes later, she took manual control of the patrol craft and dove out of the hover lane, flying down toward the access road leading to the underground garage. A few seconds before she touched down on the car’s ground wheels, three Division 1 patrol craft shot out of the garage opening, zooming straight at her.

  “Gah!” she yelled and mashed the vertical control stick forward, slamming the patrol craft down hard on its belly.

  The Division 1 units raced overhead.

  “Ow,” muttered Evan.

  She looked over at him, squished under the console in the space where the passenger’s legs are supposed to be.

  “I’m okay.” Evan gave a thumbs-up. “Just surprised. Not sure why I said ‘ow.’”

  Kirsten sighed. This is the Mondayest Monday to have ever Mondayed.

  8

  Free Fall

  The delivery-bot breakfast burrito couldn’t hold a candle to her usual from Cabrera’s.

  She would’ve ordered from there but didn’t for two reasons. One, she refused to give money to Speedy-Nom since they probably tuned their bots to be reckless. Two, the sandwich would be even colder than when Evan ordered for her due to the greater distance between the PAC and the deli.

  Considering the way the morning went, she considered having breakfast at all a blessing.

  Also, on the Monday from Hell, if she had gotten an egg sandwich from Cabrera’s, there would’ve been an emergency dispatch before she could bite into it. She leaned back in her chair, trying her best to enjoy the obviously mass-produced egg-and-cheese burrito. The meat-like substance could’ve been an attempt at bacon or horribly overcooked sausage.

  At least the school didn’t give Evan a hard time about being sixteen minutes late.

  Cadet Samantha Peña, who lived at home with her parents, also got stuck in her shower tube. Fortunately, her father had been able to call in, requesting Division 2 to un-hack the tube from remote. So, the teacher had no problem believing the reason for Evan’s lateness.

  Her armband and desk terminal chimed at the same time, but the holo-panel opened on the desk, revealing the face of an Admin cadet. This boy looked about fifteen or so. Despite his youth, he had the poise of experience, not the wide eyed ‘what the heck am I doing’ stare of a newbie.

  “Lieutenant?” asked the teen. “We have a request from Division 2. They’re asking for someone to take a look at the wreckage of a hovercar.”

  She smirked at the half-burrito in her left hand. “Where’d it go down?”

  “Don’t have that info handy, lieutenant. The wreck is in the lab at the RTC. Sounds like they’ve run out of ideas to explain why it crashed.”

  “Oh, not an emergency. Okay. I’ll head over there as soon as I can.”

  He nodded, then dropped the connection.

  Yeah. If I’d gotten the real sandwich, Monday would’ve stopped me from touching it until it got cold.

  She neither rushed nor dawdled finishing her breakfast and coffee. Having a few minutes to sit still helped her finish waking up the rest of the way. Though, the longer she sat there, the harder it would be to make her sore body cooperate. So, once she finished the burrito, she picked up her remaining coffee and took it with her to the garage.

  Wow. Dorian’s still not here… did my entire building get the shower virus? One problem having a ghost partner… I can’t vid-call him to ask where he is. But it’s not like he’ll ever get lost. He can jump straight to the patrol craft wherever it is.

  * * *

  Kirsten flew in a priority mode to the Division 2 Regional Tech Center in Sector 7876.

  Investigating a wreck the technicians couldn’t get anything from via normal channels didn’t require excessive speed while cruising high above civilian hover traffic lanes. However, considering the rampant ghostly activity as of late, she wanted to get this request over with as fast as possible so she’d be available in the event another spirit had a meltdown.

  Sitting in ordinary traffic for a two-hour one-way ride left her out of the loop far too long.

  Plus, she had an official Inquest active, more legit than driving fast purely to avoid being late. The ride would still take forty minutes, but she used the time to plot the hauntings. Thus far, the surge of agitated spirits appeared in a relatively—compared to the whole city—small region, approximately 300 miles north from the southern edge of West City. With few exceptions, the calls she responded to over the last week and weekend appeared as dots in an area about fourteen sectors across and eleven tall. As each grid sector represented five square miles, she had a fairly big chunk of ground to cover. Something, likely near the middle of the area, had to be agitating the spirits.

  Kirsten traced a square on the holo-panel around the plot points, then an X over it, the lines crossing in Sector 2888.

  Whatever’s stirred up all the ghosts has to be within a sector or two of there. I should swing by once I’m done at the RTC.

  Dorian exuded up from the passenger seat, his body glowing blue and transparent for a few seconds before returning to his normal, lifelike appearance… at least to her. Tiny electrical arcs crackled up and down his arms. “What a mess.”

  “That bad?”

  He blinked at the console, thin blue lightning filaments gliding down his face. “Where are we going at 600 miles an hour?”

  “RTC techs need help figuring out why a hovercar went splat.” She cringed. “Why are you sparking?”

  “I spent the past hour siphoning power out of autoshower units.” He jammed his fingers into the console; everything flickered. “There we go. Had to offload some energy before I went crazy. PC still had a little room in the capacitors.”

  She chuckled. “It’s so weird you and the car munch on the same food… power.”

  “I borrow from it often enough. Might as well give back for once. Like I’ve had way, way too much caffeine. Hate being so jittery. So, again, we’re going to the RTC. How is this is an emergency?”

  “Normally, it wouldn’t be. But after last week?”

  “Ahh. You’re thinking we might have more issues.”

  She exhaled out her nose. “Yeah. So, bad?”

  “About seventy people stuck in their tubes. Would have been a lot easier if I could talk to any of them. At least eighteen just stood there for a few minutes after I shut the damn thing down. By the way, you might be getting a call from apartment 52-13.”

  “Oh? What did you do?”

  “Woman wouldn’t move out of the damn tube, so I punted the hatch open to show her it unlocked. There may have been some screaming involved.”

  Kirsten facepalmed. “At least I don’t feel like such a dumbass for clicking the firmware update if so many people did.”

  “Yeah, easy to robotically click without thinking. Another thing, the guy in 71-04 has a Nano knife. His wife got caught in the tube, but he sliced it open.”

  “Civilian possession of Nano knives is out of our jurisdiction. Division 1 problem.” She flicked her thumbnail over the grip texturing on the control sticks. “Do you think he’s going to stab cops with it?”

  Dorian wagged his head side to side while emitting a faint hum of thought. “Ehh, not really. Seemed like more of a scientist-nerd type. Probably bought it because he’s got more credits than sense and thinks it’s cool. Doubt he’s got a permit for it.”

  Nano knives made her think about Konstantin, which made her shudder. When Nina from Di
vision 9 helped her infiltrate the complex beneath the Senate chambers on the Moon, she’d used one of the synthetic diamond blades to cut her way into a pipe. A knife so sharp even someone as unremarkably strong as her could slice into half-inch-thick plastisteel unsettled her. She didn’t want to be near one. While her uti knife did count as a Nano blade, it only had a tiny cutting edge inside a protective shroud to prevent accidental loss of fingers. Just enough to cut seat belts, wires, restraints, or other small things in an emergency. Useless as a combat weapon.

  Beeping alerted her to the end of her route approaching.

  She slowed gradually from 618 MPH to eighty-five, then pitched the patrol craft into a gentle dive.

  West City stretched as far as she could see in every direction, a hint of blue ocean to the west. Dark silver ground between the high-rises gleamed like the protective coating of a circuit board under bright light. Streams of bots raced back and forth among all the buildings in a frenetic rush. From 1,200 feet up, they looked like fleas. At such an altitude, the landscape of tall skyscrapers reminded her of the outer hull of starships from the movies Nicole liked. All metal with random lights, panels, and protrusions everywhere. Real starships didn’t have so much crap hanging off them, nor did they bother with lights.

  The Regional Tech center stood out as a large X-shaped white building, a mere six stories tall, set like a giant microprocessor chip into the West City Motherboard. She figured the resemblance to electronics had to be more than accidental. Even a non-techie like her saw it.

  Out of courtesy, she activated the emergency bar lights while near the civilian hover lane altitude, shutting them off once she dropped under 400 feet. The patrol craft’s computer automatically connected to the RTC, announcing their arrival and posting a descent route so anyone else in a hovercar would see their path and be able to avoid crashing. Granted, auto-drive would take over to prevent a collision. True ‘accidents’ rarely happened with hovercars. They crashed only when someone disabled safety systems and deliberately flew into another car—or something mechanical failed.

  Mechanical failure also included—albeit rarely—paranormal situations.

  Kirsten thought about the Intera assassin Dorian killed. He’d been chasing them into a black zone, no doubt intending to attack her as soon as he could. Dorian caused the other hovercar’s drive system to shut down, and the assassin plunged to his rather abrupt death on the ground. The memory got under her skin, making her squirm in her seat. It didn’t bother her too much to watch her partner casually kill him. The man did intend to murder her, after all. Mostly, it bothered her because if a ghost Dorian’s age—not terribly old as a ghost—could take hovercars down at will, it meant other angry spirits could, too.

  She swallowed saliva while landing on the RTC’s roof. The technicians couldn’t figure out a reason the car in their lab crashed. Could be, a spirit out there figured out Dorian’s trick. A hovercar doing several hundred miles an hour 500 feet off the ground losing all power essentially became a flying coffin.

  “Something is bothering you.”

  “Yeah.” She powered the car down and got out. “Remember when you took the Intera guy out of the air?”

  He materialized next to her outside. “I do. You’re worried another ghost did this?”

  “It’s a possibility.” She shut the door. “How difficult is it? Is it a weird little trick you came up with or could any ghost do it?”

  “Any ghost could do it if they took the time to examine the power systems. I’ve spent a lot of time inside a hovercar. The systems have a tremendous amount of electrical power in them. Too much to merely absorb. A microfusion power system can keep an army of spirits caffeinated for a century. Making a hovercar drop like a stone is more complicated than simply draining. You need to draw the power out of the wires feeding the ion thrusters and redirect it into the capacitors, creating a closed loop not connected to the propulsion system.”

  She whistled. “Sounds insanely complicated.”

  “It’s much easier when you can see the electrical system from inside it.” He grinned.

  “Yeah, I bet.” Kirsten started walking toward the entrance. “So, any ghost your age or older could do it, but it would take them studying the guts of a hovercar for a while?”

  “Yes. I don’t imagine it would be high on a spirit’s list of things to do. In my case, the car is my attachment point.”

  Whew. Not as bad as I feared. “Okay, good. I don’t need to panic.”

  “Not yet anyway. Let’s see what happened here.”

  * * *

  A six-inch orb bot led Kirsten down a triple-width hallway finished in shiny plastisteel.

  Overly cool air carried the fragrance of scorched plastic and the subtle flavor of electricity. Garage-sized doors on both sides led to forensic labs used to study large objects—like crashed hovercars. A few exoskeletons stood idle in charging bays between the doors. Several forklift bots crept along, transporting chunks of wreckage or supply boxes. Intermittent brash, bursty screams from high-torque wrenches or other tools made it feel more like she’d wandered into a factory.

  Having never visited this wing of the RTC before, she gazed around like Evan at the science center. Some Division 2 techs gave her odd looks, certainly wondering what a psionic would be doing there.

  “Can’t believe they let those freaks in the NPF,” muttered a passing guy in a blue jumpsuit, underestimating the volume of his voice. “They’re going to take over the government.”

  As they passed, Dorian reached out and poked a finger into the guy’s coffee cup, chilling it.

  Kirsten forced herself to smile pleasantly at the two techs. Once they’d gone far enough away to be out of earshot, she glanced over at Dorian. “He’s going to blame me for that.”

  “Let him. I’ll confess.”

  Imagining the guy’s reaction to seeing a ghost appear made her laugh.

  The orb bot stopped by a lab entrance the size of three garage doors merged into one. A four-inch thick plastisteel strip—the door—sat flush with the floor, open by means of lowering out of the way. Past it, nine technicians examined the remains of one hovercar and four ground cars. At least, she assumed the mangled metal slab on the middle table to be a former hovercar. It appeared mostly flattened, as though a DS4 military transport ship landed on top of it. The civilian vehicle lacked the armor of a police patrol craft, but still had opaque metal plates for windows with video displays. After multiple fatal incidents involving advert bots during the initial release of hovercars to the civilian market, few manufacturers still made hovercars using glass or plastic windows.

  Two of the ground cars had been partially crushed. One’s front end crumpled in, the other smashed in from the side. In the farthest recesses of the lab room lay tables of blackened components, the remains of an unknown number of other cars caught in a bad fire.

  A moment after she entered, the techs paused in their tracks, looking at her.

  “Teela, your long shot’s here,” yelled the man nearest her.

  Better long shot than freak.

  “Coming,” called a woman from over by the charred bits.

  Kirsten waited where she stood, not wanting to accidentally touch anything and contaminate evidence.

  A late-thirties woman in a blue Division 2 tech jumpsuit ducked under one of the ground cars up on a lift and jogged over. Her black hair and deep brown skin didn’t make her stand out too much, but her metallic gold eyes nearly caused Kirsten to gasp.

  “Hi. I’m—oh, crap. Sorry, lieutenant.” Teela saluted. “I’m TS2 Randall.”

  Despite a technical sergeant grade two being equivalent to an E7, Kirsten felt outranked—by experience and knowledge if not pay grade. She returned the salute. “It’s fine. Not here to compare pins. Kirsten Wren. Do you mind if I call you Teela?”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  “It’s fine if you want to use Kirsten. Or whatever you’re comfortable with.” She smiled. “So, what’s the s
ituation?”

  Teela pulled a small datapad from a thigh holster and stepped closer so Kirsten could see the screen. “Hovercar unexpectedly fell out of the sky three days ago. Citycams caught the accident, but we still haven’t been able to explain what happened. C1—that’s the hovercar—was cruising at traffic speed of 180 miles an hour when it abruptly went into dead free fall, dropping 500 feet before landing on the two ground vehicles we’ve designated as C2 and C3 approximately six seconds later. Vehicle C4 had been twenty-six feet behind C3 on the ground, doing sixty MPH. The driver had enough distance to swerve out of the way—but collided with C5 coming in the opposite direction. C5 also attempted evasive maneuvers. C4 struck C5 in the driver’s side door, launching C5 off the roadway into pedestrians.”

  Kirsten and Dorian cringed.

  “The drivers of C1, C2, and C3, plus two passengers, died instantly. The occupants of C4 and C5 respectively suffered minor injuries. One pedestrian died as a result of being crushed by C5, three suffered moderate injuries. Another pedestrian suffered a fatal injury from a flying piece of C1, while eighteen others experienced moderate to superficial injuries from airborne debris.”

  “Ouch,” whispered Kirsten. “For what it’s worth, I don’t see any ghosts hanging around in here.”

  “Ghosts?” Teela leaned back, eyes widening. “Who said anything about ghosts?”

  “I thought you requested me here to help figure out why C1 crashed.” Kirsten looked over the wrecked cars again, feeling them out astrally. C1, C2, and C3 all had a faint spiritual resonance, proof they’d been in contact with someone at the moment of death.

  Teela shrugged. “I just asked for a psionic to help me try and make sense of this. Might as well take a shot at it if you’re here. So, we’ve eliminated mechanical failure or a hacker as the causes. My team’s been back and forth over every GlobeNet communication into or out of C1, and nothing looked remotely suspicious. The only damage to the vehicle occurred from impact with the ground.”