Ghosts of Koa, The First Book of Ezekiel

by Colby R Rice

  She had refused to speak for a week after that. She'd refused to use her powers, too.

  Poor thing. Quite a few months passed before Zeika was able to convince her that the dog had already been dead.

  Zeika slung the bag over her front again and crouched, presenting her back to Manja. "Up you go."

  Manja reached out blindly, feeling for Zeika's shoulders, and she hoisted herself up onto her back. Zeika secured her and the load and continued walking them through the field of dead.

  They needed to mine at least four or five more corpses in order to get enough metal for the next batch of weapons; she wasn't sure there were that many bodies left, though. Manja had taken all the metal she could, but maybe they could look for some old rags in alley trashcans, or--

  "Zeeky! Look!"

  The girl pointed to their left at what looked like a pile of blasted rubble. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  "What? They're just rocks."

  "Not just rocks. A door. A blue door in the ground. And a blue ladder too!"

  Zeika walked over to the distant pile of broken stones and waved her hand, squeezing her powers under the rubble. The rocks fell downward as the metal door beneath them transformed, revealing a square shaped hole.

  "Nice job, kid."

  Zeika peeked in. A faint light glowed at the bottom of the hole, just enough so that she could see all the way down. It couldn't have been any deeper than twenty feet or so.

  "Are we going in?" Manja asked.

  "Yeah. But not like this. I'm going to go in first, and you're going to follow me down just a little bit. But you need to stay close to the top of the ladder, and you need to stay there until I call you, do you understand?"

  "Yes, Zeeky."

  Zeika undid the obi sash, unloaded Manja and the bag of fabric, and then tied the bag to Manja's back. She set Manja's bear bag at her front, smiled, and pinched her cheek. Then she pulled her gun. Holding it in one hand and grabbing the ladder with the other, she started the climb down. Manja looked in and when Zeika had gone down far enough, she started in after her. She stopped about a third of the way just like Zeika told her to, and Zeika continued downward, disappearing into the dark.

  As Cameron pulled the car up to the curb, Caleb and Bly silently checked their weapons. They hadn't talked much on the way over, but they didn't need to, really. Bly was an asshole, Cam was a rookie, and Caleb was somewhere in between, from what he could tell. The only thing they had in common was that they'd all responded to the same emergency Ninkashi call, and they had agreed to go in together. "Don't die", seemed to be the team slogan as Bly chambered a round in his shotgun and Cam checked his ammo pack.

  As captain of the team, Caleb had decided that was as good a team spirit as any.

  He craned his neck from the passenger seat, peering beyond the windshield into what looked like the crack of Satan. The long tunnel was loosely-gated and filled with trash. Fetid pools of rainwater lapped at the stone floors. It certainly looked like a place where Ninkashi would make a nest. The location was good, smack in the crossroads of a couple Civilian lots, where midday and midnight snacks could be grabbed right off the road and devoured in the dark.

  Ever since the attack, the hunt for Ninkashi had gotten piled on top of the search for the missing ghosts and the mystery of the Lakeside bombing. The juggling act was stressful, and though Caleb realized that Ninkashi took priority, he resented having to put the ghost hunt on the back burner. Really, it was as though the entire world had decided to go straight to Hell without sunblock, and had taken his entire life with it. Despite the fact that he was exhausted and hadn't seen the inside of his home in three weeks, he'd also come up with zero leads. That is, until the call came in.

  An anonymous Civilian, hysterical, claiming she saw some flaking, stumbling creature limp its way into a nearby junk sewer near Lot 26. Maybe a Ninkashi, trying to suck some First Matter from the dead. Hopefully the tip proved legit.

  Caleb got out, and the two cops flanked him until he stopped at the gate. He followed the tunnel's darkness with his gaze, seeing that it sloped down into a junk pit. The Ninkashi would most likely have made their nest close to the entrance of the tunnel. When they were weak for First Matter, they typically didn't like to travel too far for food. They were either gone, or they were waiting. Caleb looked at Bly and Cameron, and nodded, his chin tight. Together, they started down the dank tunnel, their weapons firmly in hand.

  "Woah..." Manja whispered, hushed by awe. She'd come down after Zeika had given the all-clear, but while Manja seemed excited, Zeika was just confused.

  This whole thing was... weird. Way weird. Had Koa attacked Civilians? Or had it been the other way around? She couldn't answer either way because nothing she was seeing here made sense. A control panel was built into the far right corner of the hovel, near where she came in. Work tables covered in dust lined the other side of the room, broken bits of porcelain were scattered on top. A heavy metal door, one that had been bolted, sat tall in the wall to her left, standing diagonal from the control console. Blankets had been heaped in the corner closest to the door, and after a quick search through them turned up nothing but cockroaches and empty potato chip bags, Zeika had come back to her original conclusion. This was weird.

  Whatever had happened above, someone must've high-tailed it down the hole and shacked up until everything had calmed down--

  No. Not possible.

  The rocks. They'd been piled on top of the hatch she'd just come down. No one could have come through that way, so they must have been using the door. Habitually. Had this been some homeless guy's house or something? She looked at the control panel again... not likely.

  "Zeeky! Cops!"

  Manja's worried whisper was the first sound to cut the silence. She pointed towards the door, apparently having felt out the guns from a distance. That's when Zeika heard the echoing footsteps, coming from the other side.

  SHIT.

  "Go, go, go!" Zeika hissed, ushering Manja back to the ladder. She lifted her to give her a head start.

  The steps got louder, the hushed, clopping sounds becoming an organized shuffle right outside of the door. No time. She wouldn't make it up the ladder before they found her, and she couldn't risk them giving chase. Whatever the APs were going to think, she had to change their minds.

  "Keep climbing," she whispered. "Don't look back! Just keep going!"

  Manja obeyed, and Zeika walked into the middle of the room, pulled back her hood, and knelt. A whirring buzz wound into the silence as a drill went into the door lock. She had fifteen seconds max. She ejected the clip from the Beretta she was carrying as the drill bit ground its way through the metal lock, spitting out curls of irons before slipping back out of the hole.

  Zeika field stripped the gun, laying its parts on the ground in front of her. The door lock unhinged with a heavy groan, and just as she was putting her hands at the back of her head, the door swung open, and three men walked through.

  APs. One was tall and dark-skinned and the other, a stocky blonde. She could barely make out the third one because the blonde was now rushing over to her, grabbing her lapel, and yanking her to her feet.

  "Not a Ninkashi," he announced. "But just as bad. Just what the hell are you doing here, unh? And what's this?" The blonde shot a menacing look at the gun parts on the ground.

  Zeika pursed her lips and looked away, her hands pasted to her head.

  "You better speak up, honey. I didn't crawl through two miles of earth just for you to act like an asshole." He shook her again.

  "Take it easy. She's just a kid." The third AP, the one Zeika hadn't gotten a good look at, spoke up from the far corner. His back was to her as he circled the room with the other team member, investigating.

  "Captain. I'm not sure who called the tip in, but this isn't a Ninkashi nest. It never was," the dark-skinned AP announced. "It's a Koan hollow."

  Oh, hell...

  The realization t
hat she was screwed hit home as she watched the AP lift something from one of the dusty work tables. It was the smooth mold of porcelain lips, the impression so lifelike that she half-expected the mold to speak. The edges of the mold were jagged, as though it had broken from a mask.

  The captain of the team finally turned, and in the same moment, Zeika's stomach tightened.

  It was Caleb. His eyes flickered as they came face to face, but he only lingered on her for a second.

  "Just some random scavenger. A ghost of war," he said flatly, turning away. "Nothing to write home about. Let her go."

  "You kiddin' me?" The blonde snapped. "How do we know she's not Koa? We should bring her in just in case."

  "No!" A cry of cognizant terror rang out from the ladder, and in the next second, Manja's little legs were seen climbing back down the chute. She jumped the last three steps and ran into the room at the blonde's legs, beating him with her fists. "No! No! No! Leave her alone! Let her go!"

  Damn it, Manja.

  "Lucky day," the blonde sneered. "Anotha one! A Koan two-for-one sale, I'll take it."

  The dark-skinned AP, who had been silently scoping out the hovel, calmly walked over and hoisted Manja and her bears under his arm. The girl screamed and flailed her arms and legs, firmly in tantrum mode.

  "Put me down NOW!"

  "I don't think Mirandas'll be necessary, do you?" The blonde turned to the AP holding Manja. "Cam?"

  Caleb stepped forward. "They're ghosts of war. They are not to be harmed or arrested."

  "Fuck that, Captain." The blonde sneered, spitting out Caleb's title like tobacco. "The kid's loaded. She's Koan if I ever saw one." Zeika felt the grip on her collar tighten. "You know what the field code is on Koans." He turned his gaze to hers, amused. "We do 'em and dump 'em."

  Caleb narrowed his eyes. "And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  Zeika followed suit, turning hot attitude towards her captor. She wanted to know what the hell he meant, too. This jingo jerk-off had clearly slept through police procedure at the academy.

  "He's right, Captain," Cam chimed in. "It'd be different if she were just walking down the street, but this is a Koan hollow, and she's armed. The Articles39 don't protect against that. I'm not saying we hurt them--" Cam cut the blonde a look of disgust. "--but we should definitely take them in."

  Caleb didn't budge. "The hollow is abandoned. She surrendered before we even walked in. She's just a scavenger. They both are. For all we know, they stumbled across this place by accident."

  "Why even waste brainpower puzzling it out?" The blonde piped up. "I say we just blow their heads off, and save on the paperwork. Both of 'em. If they're Koan then they won't grow up to be even bigger threats than they already are. And if they ain't, who's gonna miss some dirty street scamps anyways? Koa's bound to approach 'em sooner or later. Better safe than sorry."

  "Are you insane?" Caleb said, creasing his brow. "What the hell has gotten into you?"

  "What's gotten into you? With your record, I thought you'd be about business."

  "Sir, I'm not sure we should go there--" Cam raised his hand in warning, but Bly pushed past him and stepped up to Caleb, dragging Zeika with him.

  "Clowning around the Fifth seems to have made you a little soft, eh? What happened, you got bought off?"

  Caleb stepped up too. "Piss off, all right? Just because I don't murder the innocent doesn't mean I'm on the take."

  "Since when? Or are Civilians the only ones who count as innocent nowadays? But your fellow Azures, your brothers, it's okay to waste them on a whim, yeah? No wonder Persaud and Morgan've got you tagged."

  Zeika stiffened and looked at Bly, then at Caleb. There was some heavy history here, whatever Bly meant about Caleb "wasting Azures". Caleb didn't confirm or deny the accusations, but he didn't have to. Whatever they were talking about had moved beyond this room in a bad way, and it was time for her and Manja to do the same. Bly, whoever he was, had just dropped Sal Morgan's name, which meant it was time to get the hell out of here. She looked towards the door, then the ladder.

  "We're not bringing them in," Caleb said. "Let her go, Lieutenant. That's an order."

  Kata forty-six could help Zeika break free, but she still had to get Manja out of the other AP's arm. Then they had to get to the ladder, and then fifteen feet upwards, without getting holes blown into them. They needed a diversion, or something--

  "We release them, and Morgan's miles away from pushing the repeals through," Bly shot back. "No arrests, no repeals. No repeals, no checks."

  "So this is what it's about? Trading innocent lives for money?"

  "Look at you, getting all 'baby Jesus' on us. What's next, flipping over banker tables, sweetheart?"

  "We are officers of the law. Not Morgan's personal army."

  "The Fifth pays us, we work for them. But the Fifth ain't payin' us no more. Or did you miss that while cashing checks out of your trust fund? Newsflash: you might be doin' just fine, dollhouse, but the Civic Order gave the rest of us a rubber check that said 'fuck you'."

  "Let her go." Caleb was done debating. "I won't ask you again."

  Zeika watched another sneer crawl onto Bly's face, watched in shock as he lifted his gun, raised it over her head, and aimed it at Caleb's chest. So much for duty and decorum. This guy had just lost his friggin' marbles.

  "Even if you didn't want to do this for yourself, you could do this for us," Bly said. "You could do it for your brothers. But you seem to be forgetting who you are, Captain. Maybe I should remind you which side your bread's buttered on."

  "Wait a second, sir!" Cam started, his eyes widening in concern. "This is our Captain. What the hell are you doing?"

  "No. He's not my Captain, and you should shut up and follow lead, if you know what's good for you, rookie. This is how we honor code. Our code says that no matter what an Azure, AP, or an Alchemist is ranked, he doesn't hurt his own, directly or indirectly. That's our code, and he broke it. But he'd bend over backwards for this."

  Zeika winced, her plans of escape screeching to a halt as Bly grabbed a fistful of her hair to emphasize his point. It was taking everything in her to not drop him with her powers.

  "He's a traitor," Bly continued. "You know what we do to traitors."

  Caleb's eyes hardened. "I will not violate the Articles39."

  "You will, or you'll be eating lead, dollhouse. You wanna try me?" Bly moved to depress the trigger, and Cam stepped in front of him, separating him and Caleb.

  "Calm down. We have suspects to book. Take it easy."

  Manja, still tucked under Cam's arm, was now in Zeika's line of sight. They locked eyes, and her heart leapt into her throat. If they started shooting, she and Manja would get caught in the gunfire.

  "Let's talk about this, okay, sir?" Cam cooed, raising his free hand. "C'mon. This is our Captain. We're all on the same side here. Let's work it out. Just relax, and let's get our heads on straight."

  "Move, rookie. Move, or I'll shoot."

  But Bly didn't wait for Cam to move. Instead, he was curling his finger around the trigger. Not an ounce of fear crept into either of the men's faces as they watched him, and for the life of her, she had no clue why. Everyone was about to die, and neither of them would pull their guns in time. Bly's trigger finger was tightening, and Zeika focused on the gun in his hand, ready to reveal her powers.

  "Sir, STOP!" Cam snarled.

  Bip. Bip. Bip.

  The sound was sudden and sharp. Demanding. Zeika looked up, and air rushed out of her like a vacuum. A device was attached to the ceiling above their heads, blinking. Beeping.

  She gasped, her eyes widening with terror. All three APs followed her gaze.

  "SHIT!"

  The grip that had been so tight at her scalp was flinging her to the side. She hit the pavement and rolled, getting bruised, but thinking only one thing: she had to get to Manja.

  The little girl was curled up on the floor
and whimpering, just having been dropped by Cam in the commotion. Gripped with terror, Zeika scrambled and sprang towards Manja, grabbing her and tumbling, covering her with her own body as the yells grew into a roar of panic and the steady beeping hit a long high note.

  In the rush, Caleb was somehow able to think only of the two girls, who were getting kicked around under the feet of his men.

  No time, we're all gonna die--

  A flash of gray in the corner. Zeika was under the control console, burying the little one with her own body. Acting, not thinking, Caleb leapt forward towards them, reaching out with his power--

  The cave shook, vomiting fire and debris from above. Just an inch shy of the console, Caleb's body slammed downwards into the cavern floor, and his back was consumed with agony. The side of his face smashed against rock, and he felt two back teeth shatter, releasing blood. Electric shocks in his chest and back, anguish that was sudden and intense. Then silence.

  Zeika.

  Minutes, maybe hours later, he wasn't sure. But she was his first thought when his consciousness swam back to him.

  "Zeika..." He coughed, painting the rock floor with wet red blossoms.

  Dust and debris tumbled into the hovel from above. He tried to move, to drag himself towards the obliterated console. It had been blasted with heat and rock, and in the dust cloud, he couldn't see them.

  Shards of something sharp were wedged into the flesh of his back, like puppet pegs cruelly driven in. They ground against his ribs with each movement. Still, he gripped what ground he could and dragged himself forward. His right arm was working. His left one lagged, disobedient. He managed one final slide forward before he laid on the ground face down, spent.

  Please. Please don't be dead.

  He had placed a shield around the girls first, then over himself... maybe too late. He needed to get up. He had to get up.

  "Manja? Hal anti bikhaira, yaa hebiibetii?"