Tseng staggered to his feet, pivoting about with a lurching stride somewhere between a drunken frictionless hooligan and Frankenstein’s monster. Aaron locked eyes with him, grasping Anna’s shoulders.
“Why do you think I had an ‘injury’ and had to ‘retire?’ The CSB noticed. One of them was a bleedin’ Manchester fan and kept doing parabolic analyses on the flight paths of the stone. There’s no cybernetics in my leg. I never got hurt.”
Tseng reared back and charged.
“Bugger…” Anna stared over his shoulder, off into space. “And they didn’t rescind Arsenal’s―”
Aaron leapt to the right, tackling Anna out of Tseng’s path while simultaneously hauling the man forward with a severe telekinetic yank. The vibro-blade sliced the inch-thick reinforced glass as easily as foam. His roar of rage became a yelp of surprise, which cut out as his face made contact with the window, shattering the entire six-by-twelve-foot panel. An unconscious Tseng plummeted to the street far below.
“No, the club had no idea. I was after personal glory.” He winked.
Lying on the floor, Anna looked up at Aaron and grasped his forearms. Flakes of broken silica caught light from outside and sparkled on the dark tiles around her head.
“Looks like pixie dust,” he muttered.
“You’re a cheat,” she said, with a smirk.
He helped her up. “Just a little nudge here and there.”
Anna stared at him for a second or two before she let go and took a step back, crossing her arms. “That’s cheating.”
The pounding of numerous bodies in heavy boots grew louder in the assistant’s office. Whether or not anyone in the building believed Tseng had gone psycho didn’t matter to his present aversion to being around cops. Aaron put a hand to her back and guided her closer to the window.
“Aye, but it worked.” He threw an arm around her and leapt off the edge, dragging her along.
nna’s scream ended about halfway down when her lungs ran out of air. The effect of her terror manifested as a line of darkness following their plummet on the side of the building. Sputtering flashes and pops inside raced along with their fall, as anything electronic within fifty meters of her overloaded and died. Aaron’s coat pocket caught fire when his NetMini committed seppuku. Unfortunately, the concentration necessary to maintain their telekinetic parachute prevented him from swatting at it until they reached the ground.
He landed facing the building, with Anna clamped around him like a koala bear. As soon as he relaxed his brain, he tamped at his left side while dancing in a circle and chanting the word “hot” repeatedly. Her trembling lessened, but remained audible in her voice.
“Aaron. If I’ve soiled my knickers, I am going to do something very, very bad to you.”
“Bastarding thing.” He clapped his hand over the smoking fabric. “’Mini’s buggered itself.”
She lifted her head; her shaking ceased. “Aaron?”
“What?”
“Are those friends of yours?”
Aaron sighed at rapid flashes of azure light reflecting from the corporate tower. He swiveled around as Anna disengaged from her death grip. Two Division 0 patrol craft sat half on the sidewalk, parked behind a pair of flowerpots as tall as a man, which held small trees. Four tactical officers had laser pistols leveled off at the pair, three E-90s and an E-86. The one woman among them looked angry enough to shoot him as readily as talk.
He smiled at the man holding the green-glowing pistol. “’Ello, Vernon. Still haven’t upgraded that pea shooter?”
“He’s Sergeant Ridge to you now,” snarled the woman.
“Almost double the shots for the same E-mag,” said Ridge. “Look, Aaron. I don’t like this either, but we got orders to escort you in.”
“I’ll take a small bit of comfort in thinking you might believe me, since you’re not just shooting.”
The woman rounded the front end of the car, walking up to him, weapon raised. “I wanted to. Rios and Frost were in my graduating class. They weren’t even there to mess with you, just getting tested. You killed them for nothing. Gimme a reason. I’m beggin’ you.”
Aaron glanced at her nameplate, Tactical Officer Nuñez. His gaze fell, as did his voice. “You know I had no control over that. I don’t rightly understand what happened.”
“They always say that,” snarled Nuñez. “I was hoping you’d resist.”
“Ridge.” Aaron ignored the woman at his side. “How long did we ride together? You know me better than that. You knew Allison.”
“Yeah.” Sergeant Vernon Ridge shifted his weight, looking off to the side. “Like I said, I don’t like it either, but you gotta come in so we can get everything straightened out.”
“I can’t do that yet.” Aaron stared to his right, down the street. “The bitch that killed Allison got away. I’ll consider coming in after I deal with Talis.”
Anna raised her eyebrow at him.
Nuñez grabbed his arm. “You’re coming with us now.”
She dug her fingers into his bicep while making a constipated face, which melted to anger and then confusion.
“Oh, that’s cute,” said Anna. “She fancies herself an electrokinetic. I think she just tried to stun you.”
“Hands in the air, bitch,” screamed Nuñez, aiming at Anna. “She’s an EK too; strong.”
Anna winked. “How adorable. Let me show you how it’s supposed to work.”
Four streams of crackling lightning danced from the officers’ weapons to Anna’s raised hands. The pistols went dark. Anna thrust her arms forward at Nuñez, releasing two thicker arcs into the woman’s chest that knocked her off her feet. Screaming, Nuñez skittered on her armor into the facing side of a patrol craft with a heavy clank.
The other three officers turned pale and clicked useless triggers.
Anna frowned, pouring more energy into the surge. Rage in Nuñez’s howls faded to agonized, terrified pleading.
“Please, don’t kill me…” Nuñez wailed, her body lost to electric convulsions. “I have a son!”
Aaron hauled Anna off her feet with a telekinetic shove, jerking her away from Nuñez and pushing her into the wall behind him. “Enough, Anna! Don’t kill her.”
“I wasn’t going to.” Anna faked a pout.
“You had me worried there for a tick. Wasn’t sure a Man U fan could tell the difference ’tween a cop and a ref.” Aaron grinned.
“You prick!” she yelled. “You cheating prick!”
Nuñez curled fetal, crying, muttering “ow” over and over.
“Did she just…” Ridge pointed at Anna.
The officer to his left blinked. “Throw electricity out of her fingers?”
“Are you okay?” asked the last officer, taking a knee at Nuñez’s side.
The woman continued shaking, not even trying to speak.
Aaron offered an apologetic look to his old partner. “Vernon… I’m not entirely sure―”
“Get in the car,” said the man checking on Nuñez. His eyes glowed faint green.
No! Aaron twisted toward Anna, intending to shout at her to run, but couldn’t get his jaw open. He strained to hold back, to resist the psionic compulsion, trying to contain the detonation millimeters away from escaping. His mouth hung open. Tears leaked from both eyes as his face reddened. Guilt at killing Allison hit him all over again as Anna’s face flooded his vision, her eyes full of confusion and concern.
Run! Get away from me. Not again!
The command brought his head around, staring at the patrol craft he’d been ordered to get in, and the man before him. Energy filtered over Aaron’s brain; painful waves rippled around the sides of his head and down his spine. He fell to a knee, grabbing his head, and screamed. A tremendous crash pierced the roaring din within his mind, snapping him out of his disorientation. Aaron straightened out of his cringe.
One of the patrol craft had vanished; twinkling glass brought his attention upward to the building across the street where a car-sized hole punched thr
ough the wall on the third story. Fragments of office furniture drifted out into the wind. The massive flowerpots had struck the building two stories higher, on either side of it. Distant screaming came from the damaged windows.
No… Anna…
The officer who attempted to use psionic suggestion on him also seemed to have ceased to exist, until a moan from above made him look up. A large advert bot struggled to remain aloft at the level of the fourth floor, impaled by a human projectile. Armor had prevented the man from dying, turning him into a living spear. Without a car to lean on, Nuñez had fallen flat on her back.
“What the bloody fuck…” Anna wheezed. “Was that?”
Aaron’s heart resumed beating. With a gasp of relief, he looked over his shoulder; the glass wall behind him had disintegrated almost fifty feet in both directions from where he stood. Anna’s boots stuck up from behind a bench seat in the lobby a short distance inside. The destruction seemed weakest around her.
Ridge and the other officer stood up from behind the remaining car. It sat about ten meters further away, in the middle of the road at the end of long black streaks from the tires. Another wave of pain gripped Aaron, knocking him to his knees and drawing a whimper.
“Don’t use suggest…” He groaned. “I can’t control it.”
The advert bot let off a series of loud detonations and flashes. Aaron forced himself to look up at the exact moment the hover unit gave out. Calling on his telekinesis felt like someone had inserted a burning coal under his brainstem. He growled, face reddening, veins in his forehead rising, and pulled the semi-conscious man out of the plummeting wreck before it smashed a handful of parked cars into a tangle of warped metal.
Half-digested tea and biscuits sprayed out of both nostrils. Aaron collapsed with his forehead to the blessed, cold plastisteel sidewalk after setting the man on the hood of the remaining patrol craft.
“You’re not making things any easier on yourself, Pryce,” said Ridge.
Anna’s boot crunched the glass by Aaron’s cheek. “Are you all mentally deficient?”
The two unhurt Division 0 officers both grunted in fear.
“Your genius compatriot attempted to use suggestion on him. Something’s gone bollocksed in his brain. I thought you people were supposed to understand psionics. Bloody look at him! Does that seem like somethin’ he wanted to do?”
Aaron pushed at the surface beneath him; his effort to stand increased the war in his head to migraine proportions. White spots danced in his eyes as a trickle of bile leaked from his lower lip. He coughed, mesmerized by the once-straight line of the sidewalk edge blurring into a twist of reflected light.
“Bastarding hell,” wheezed Aaron. At the touch of Anna’s hand on his shoulder, he tried again to stand, and managed it. “Ridge…”
“You flung the goddamned PC into a building.” Ridge glanced up and back for a moment. “You’re rating ain’t that high. No one’s is. Logan’s one of our stronger TKs, and she can’t even get a PC off its wheels.”
“And electrokinetics don’t throw lightning through the air,” added the other man.
“Don’t poke me in the head.” Aaron pressed a hand to his temple. “I’ve not got me legs, luv.”
Anna pulled his arm around her shoulders, though her height left him in an awkward slouch. She gestured at all four officers. Glowing blue arc spiders appeared, dancing over their armor for a few seconds before dissipating. The two men screamed out of startlement, then exchanged a glance in silence.
“Can’t ’ave you callin’ for backup now. Be good little constables and stay out of our way. You’re right. Electrokinetics don’t toss lightning bolts from their fingertips, so you blokes must be hallucinating. Everything you just saw was in your imagination.”
“You shouldn’t antagonize…” Aaron lurched forward.
“Come on.” Anna dragged him to the side like a drunk hauled out of a pub.
“I…” He pawed at his face, trying to pull at the sensation of a spike rammed into his brain, and vomited again. Before he could apologize, he blacked out.
fter the hot iron faded from his temporal lobe, Aaron found the dead Comforgel pad exquisite in its softness. Despite its gummy consistency and off-putting rubbery smell, it offered paradise compared to the past hour. He closed his eyes, focusing on the entrancing, repetitive wubba-wubba-whirr of the autoshower in the next room.
Minutes later, a metallic squeak echoed in the hallway outside, dragging him away from the precipice of some much-desired sleep. He cringed in preparation for the slam of the stairwell door, but it didn’t hurt as much as he expected. Darwin’s out-of-tune whistling grew louder until it entered the narrow entryway and burst into the main room.
A barrier of old clothes didn’t do much to mute it.
“That’s very far away from anything resembling music, unless you’ve been listenin’ to alien species.”
“Heads up,” said Darwin.
A new NetMini sailed over the motley curtain, stalling in midair above Aaron’s chest. Telekinesis didn’t cause pain. A good sign.
“Thanks, mate.”
Darwin’s voice softened as he retreated to his room. “No problem, mon.”
“You’re about as Jamacian as I am, Darwin.” Aaron laughed as he reached up to turn the little machine on.
“It’s ready to go. I had ’em link it to the same dummy account as your old one.” Something heavy hit the ground after a grunt. “Even pre-charged it.”
“What the devil was that?” Aaron waved his hand at the holo-panel projected by the NetMini, scrolling through his contacts.
“Just a li’l somethin’ I found,” said Darwin.
He impaled the long string of letters and numbers Shimmer used for a PID with one finger, initiating a vid call. The sound of ringing filled the air. “Found?”
Darwin brushed an old dress shirt and a tattered chem suit apart, leaning into the space around Aaron’s bed. His dark face and yellow toothy grin reflected upside down in the surface of a battered (and quite nonfunctional) frictionless orb. The upper half had undergone a recent attempt to restore shine to the chrome. A steady stream of crumbling dirt fell from four hover-ports protruding from small pentagonal hatches on the bottom, angled in direct lines away from the center point. The five-sided patches bore engravings of the Arsenal cannon icon.
“An old stone.” Aaron slid to the end of the bed to get a closer look.
“Ain’t stone, ya idiot.”
Aaron frowned. “Na, ya fool. We call it a ‘stone’ since it’s closer to a curling stone than a… umm…” He tapped his chin. “Right when frictionless started about, there was another… Football. Wait… they called it sucker here. No, soccer. Since it wasn’t a proper ball, all heavy and hard and whatnot, some sodding tool wit the Association thought it was like a curling stone. It’s lovely. She’s going to be thrilled.”
Darwin jerked his head toward the bathroom. “Thought you said you wasn’t screwing that one. What’cha care what the shit she thinks?” He pondered for a few seconds with a nervous grin. “Can’t say I blame ya. Too much risk to the boys.”
“Some bints don’t require the commencement of a shagging type relationship to subject you to incessant reminders of what they don’t care for.”
“Like frictionless cheats,” said Anna from the bathroom.
Aaron hadn’t noticed the autoshower cut off to silence. He clamped his eyes shut, muttering, “shite.”
“What’s that then?” she asked.
Darwin extracted himself from the hanging garments and stood straight. “Found a little trophy for him.”
“Hah. It’s as dead as his career.”
“Bitch,” whispered Aaron.
“An’ not as dead as my ears.” The bathroom door squeaked.
Aaron made a ‘that figures’ face at the ceiling.
Her voice got a touch louder. “Where’s your damn towel?”
“There isn’t one. Bloody tube’s got a dry cycle. Use it. A
ssuming a Manchester tool can figure out how to work the panel.” Aaron rubbed his forehead, cursing again when his fourth attempt to call Shimmer ended at a message stating her vid-mailbox had no free space.
Aaron didn’t pay much attention to the door squeaking a second time until Darwin dropped the old frictionless orb with a heavy clank and scurried off with a frightened whimper. A second later, Anna shoved the curtain of hanging cloth to either side with a metal-on-metal skshh of ancient clothes hangers. She was dry―and rather naked―save for a pair of thin, black lacy panties. The steamy scent of autoshower soap clung to her, along with a cloud of warm, humid air.
“Very nice. Obviously real. Perfect shape to them, but a bit small.” Aaron gave up on the NetMini and glanced at her.
“I don’t need it for drying, you twat. You chucked all over me on the way here. Even managed to get it in my boots. My kit’s flown off to the cleaners.”
Aaron leaned forward, glancing around the floor. With a smirk, he concentrated and sent the red t-shirt floating to her. Anna let it drape over her chest and slip off.
“You’re a funny one.”
“It’s a shirt.”
“I’d rather loiter about starkers than wear those colors.”
Aaron pushed the redial icon. “I’m not going to object.”
She scowled. “I’m spoken for. Unlike you, I’m not a cheater.”
“You wound me.” He put a hand over his heart. “Still, it worked for three years.”
Anna padded around the end of the bed, making sure to step on his foot on the way to the largest mound of clothing piled up against the wall. “Three years of undeserved wins, undeserved prestige, undeserved”―she waved her arm in a series of random gestures―“everything!”
“The best part… neither the Crown nor the Frictionless Association could say a damn word about it.” He winked. “Think of the scandal.”
“You should think about the amount of damage you could’ve caused. If it got out you were a psionic cheat at frictionless, the entire country would be up in arms about psionics!” She set her hands on her hips and scowled. “People have firebombed things over bad referee calls. Do you have any idea the kind of shitstorm you could’ve ignited? We’d have all been eyeball deep in cack! You endangered innocents.”
Zero Rogue Page 14