Division Zero: Thrall

by Matthew S. Cox

  Brooke moaned in her sleep and opened her eyes. She convulsed, and sat upright with a feral gleam in her eye. Kirsten leaned over and put her right hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  “Hey, calm down. I’m here, you’re safe.”

  The girl lunged for the side of the bed; Kirsten held her down. Weak from the surgery and with no Lace in her system, the task was a simple one.

  After a futile effort to get away, Brooke flopped limp. Kirsten gathered her hand once more, earning an accusatory frown. The girl stared at the ceiling for a moment, and raised her left hand. It fell on her chest, then slid up into her chin, popped up straight, and finally came down on her face where she wiped her eyes.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  “Apparently, Lace withdrawal can cause violent flashbacks for the first few hours. You can break your arm or leg from flailing around. They gave you something to protect you against that. Even if you have a seizure, your muscles shouldn’t have the strength to do damage.”

  “Let me go. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Well, first of all, you’re in no condition to even get out of this bed. Right now, you’ll need help getting to the bathroom.”

  Brooke blushed.

  “Secondly, you were on Lace. Right there, that warrants mandatory detox. There’s a couple officers outside who want to have a nice short chat with whoever gave it to you.”

  Brooke folded her arms, frown deepening. “No one gave it to me. You can tell them to go away.”

  Kirsten lifted the girl’s arm, tracing a thumb over the back of her hand as she examined a delicate wrist. “You’ve probably got Greybones. Same thing I had at your age from being out there alone. All the chemicals you’ve been walking around barefoot on, breathing, basking in… they leach at your body.”

  “My bones are grey?”

  “No, just brittle. It’s just called that because most sufferers live in grey zones, or worse places.”

  The girl tugged her arm away, staring at her fingers as she fussed with the blanket. “Maybe I missed a few vitamins.”

  Silence lingered for a moment. Brooke glanced at her, holding her arm up.

  “You had this too? How’d you go from street kid to cop?”

  “Well, maybe not quite as advanced. I’m sure the Lace didn’t help. Come on, look at me.” Kirsten held her arms out. “I’m barely a hundred pounds.”

  “Try a hundred and ten.” Dorian winked. “You’re perfectly healthy, K.”

  “How did I become a cop? Well, mostly because I’m psionic, but aside from that, I decided to trust someone. Father Villera called me, Brooke. He said you came to him because you saw something.”

  The tremble made Kirsten grab her hand again; this time Brooke didn’t object. “I don’t wanna think about it.”

  “Whatever you saw, those people can’t hurt you here. Do you remember the man who attacked you at the church?”

  “Sorta. He wanted to kill me, right?” She coughed.

  Dorian paced around the foot of the bed. “Lace users often experience memory gaps. They can go a week or two at a time in a primal state where they operate only on animal instinct. Higher brain functions tend to shut off.”

  “Yeah.” Kirsten reached with a tissue to wipe bloody sputum from the girl’s chin. “I got him.”

  “You killed him?” Her hand clenched.

  Kirsten looked down. “I’m not proud of it, but the idiot did point a gun at me.”

  “What a moron.” Brooke scowled. “You only point a gun at a pig if you wanna get killed.”

  “Oink.” Kirsten smirked.

  “Uhh, sorry.”

  “Why were you out on the streets? Who gave you the Lace?”

  “No one, geez.” Brooke huffed. “I stole it from some South Fork weenies.”

  “Why?” Kirsten’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Why would any kid take that shit willingly? It’s deadly.”

  “I heard it made you super strong, and I wanted to defend myself. Almost got caught by the Diablos once. I didn’t wanna be anyone’s bitch.” Brooke glowered, and lifted an eyebrow at the morose expression on Kirsten’s face. “I don’t need the pity party.”

  “There are better ways to avoid that than taking Lace.”

  “How’d you do it then?” Brooke pushed the control on the bed to sit up higher. “If you didn’t take Lace, and you were as skinny as me, how’d you fight them off?”

  Kirsten stared at the wall for a while. “I hid in The Beneath. There are pipes down there too small for men to fit in. But getting used by a gang isn’t much of a worry down there anyway.”

  “I guess not. There’s monsters though. You might get eaten.” Brooke grinned.

  “Yeah… there are.” Kirsten let out a long breath. “I’m glad we got you off the street before anyone could…” A tear ran down her cheek.

  “Rape me?” Brooke shifted, staring at the impressions her feet made in the blanket. “I’m sorry.”

  Kirsten stared away, reddening. “I’m not sure I’d call it that. I traded myself for food. I wasn’t forced or anything.”

  Dorian did a double take and rushed to her side. “Kirsten… I… you never said anything.”

  “I didn’t let it bother me. I had to eat, didn’t I? He had unopened military rations. I’d been stealing garbage for two years. Besides, he was gentle.”

  “Doesn’t make it right.” Dorian fumed. The look on his face said he wanted to kill someone.

  “Who are you talking to?” asked Brooke.

  “You saw him before, the man sitting with me on the bench in the same uniform. He’s a ghost.”

  Brooke went pale. “Was I really dead?”

  “No, honey. You were projecting.” Kirsten gave Dorian a weak glance, hoping for affirmation. He was too busy stomping around by the window to notice. “Your body was still alive, you just fell out of it.”

  “I don’t wanna stay dead.”

  “Good.” Kirsten squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”

  Brooke stared at the wall, quiet for a moment, and broke out in a sweat.

  Kirsten wiped the girl’s face. “Are you hot?”

  “Freezing actually.” Brooke scrunched her face up as the towel made another pass. “So, you were someone’s bitch?”

  Now it was Kirsten’s turn to be quiet for a moment. “No, it just happened once.”

  “The Beneath?” Brooke gave her a scolding frown. “Well no wonder you had to. That was your problem, there’s no damn food down there. Plenty of Nippy-Noms up here to steal from. Sometimes they gave me food for helping out… mopping and shit.”

  A wistful smile spread over Kirsten’s face. “Yeah. I guess it was stupid of me to crawl around in the shadows for so long.”

  “Why’d you run away?” Brooke tried to scratch her nose. Her arm flopped anywhere but.

  Kirsten wiped it for her. “My mother tried to kill me.”

  Brooke grumbled. “At least yours noticed you. Rita was more of a mom to me than my mom.”

  “Who’s Rita?”

  “‘Nother one of the gang bitches. She’s dead now too. Got shot up by a couple of Hatchetmen… pussies. They went runnin’ from the main rumble with the South Fork idiots and wound up dragging the firefight with them through where we were sleeping. Old Mack never even woke up.”

  “All that’s behind you now, Brooke. There is no reason for you to stay on the street. Trust me; take advantage of it while you’re still a minor. You can get placed with a family and go to school. If you stay on Earth, you really need higher education. All the crappy jobs are taken by dolls. That’s not so much of a problem if you are open to the idea of colony adoption. I’ll be honest, Brooke, there’s a waiting list to stay on Earth.”

  Brooke waved her feet back and forth, pondering.

  A woman in a white uniform entered, throwing a pleasant smile at both of them. She sidled up to the bed on the side opposite Kirsten and set some things on the table: a white cylinder about
three inches long and a thumb’s-width around, a derm patch, and a tangle of tubing.

  “What’s that?” Brooke leaned away.

  “You’re going to feel a spot of cold, hon.” The medtech swabbed the girl’s left bicep with an alcohol wipe before applying the adhesive derm. “There’s no needle in this, just a pad. It’s very cold, so it might feel a little shocking. This medicine will help your body recover from the awful stuff. Little tiny machines will go swimming around inside you and collect all the bad chemicals from your body.”

  Kirsten, still holding Brooke’s other hand, stood. “Umm, don’t they usually flush Lace out in the tank?”

  The medtech brushed the hair out of Brooke’s eyes, examining them. “She was on Lace long enough to cause deep tissue damage. Her heart walls have thinned, her muscles were in very bad shape due to insufficient nutrition and the stresses of the drug. The surgical team had to reconstruct many of her ligaments. A body her size is not meant to lift four hundred pounds. We were all amazed she could still move at all.”

  The woman attached one end of the thin tube to the derm patch, the other to the cylinder, and secured the device to the girl’s arm with tape. Two taps created a holographic control screen in midair above the capsule of medicine and the tech dialed out a dose. A series of dashes lit up on the derm patch in dark blue, creating the illusion of rotary motion on the flow meter as the medicine wound its way down the tube to the patch. When the line of liquid reached the derm patch, it beeped, and clicked.

  “Ow.” Brooke winced as she tried to grab the patch. Her arm moved three seconds after she wanted it to, and flopped like a fish out of water. “It burns.”

  Kirsten gathered the girl’s hand and tried to comfort her without disturbing the patch.

  “It’s so cold it feels hot,” said the medtech. “Please try to relax and let the medicine work. She has been on Lace for several months. The sudden absence of it could prove fatal. Normally, the doctors would use an induced coma to mitigate the effects of violent withdrawal; however, they feel she would not tolerate it well in her weakened condition. They almost did not want to risk the muscle relaxers. When she was in the tank, we almost…”

  “Yeah, I know exactly how close it was.” Kirsten and Brooke traded a knowing glance. “If she’s that tenuous, shouldn’t someone stay with her in case she has an attack?”

  The medtech nodded. “Sure, but our staff doesn’t have that kind of time. This is a government med center. The HSO won’t pay someone to sit here with one patient. If you want a dedicated nurse, go to an Amaranth Corporation medical pavilion. You have to understand this is a highly unusual situation. Normally, Lace-addicted individuals are detoxed over the course of a few hours while unconscious in a tank. This patient is too delicate for that procedure; we need to take it slow. Most juveniles exposed to Lace as long as she was don’t last long enough to come in for detox at all. Depending on how she responds to the first round of this”―the nurse tapped the cylinder on Brooke’s arm― “she’ll be in the gel again tomorrow for some additional surgery to rebuild her muscles and bones. If she makes it through the first twelve hours with no major issues, they will be able to finish the detox tomorrow. There is also scar tissue in her lungs from an old infection we need to remove. At any moment, she could go into a violent episode with little to no warning. I’m afraid as soon as you leave we’re going to have to strap her down so she doesn’t hurt herself.”

  Brooke gasped, clinging to Kirsten’s arm with both hands.

  “So you’re just going to leave her in a room alone and tie her to the bed?” Kirsten stared aghast. “What about the muscle relaxers?”

  “You’ve never seen a Lace teardown, have you?” The beleaguered woman sagged. “What else can we do? Our budget can only stretch so far. If she throws a fit and smashes her own skull, the NewsNet will be all over the hospital claiming we killed her. It damn sure won’t be the government that takes the blame for a dead street kid. I can’t stay with her, I have four dozen rooms to check, and Jerry called out sick again, so I have to cover his too. I got an old guy one floor up who keeps throwing his bio collection reservoir at the wall. If you’d like to go clean that up, I’ll gladly sit with her.”

  “I’ll stay.” Kirsten put an arm around Brooke. “There’s no way I’m going to leave her like that. It’s cruel. It’s not a medical necessity, it’s bald-faced stinginess.”

  “She may have a psychotic break once her deep unconscious realizes no Lace is coming.”

  “But she’s no stronger than a person her age should be now, right?”

  The medtech nodded. “Yes, weaker due to the wasting and muscle relaxers.”

  “Then I can hold her down if I have to,” said Kirsten, gripping the girl’s hand.

  With a shrug at Kirsten, the medtech went for the door. “It’s your pretty little body to bruise if you want to.”

  Brooke glared at the woman in white.

  The medtech glanced back with a softer face. “If this city had more cops like you, it might not suck so much.” She looked at her wrist, sighed at the time, and trudged out while grumbling about moving to Mars.

  A moment later, Brooke flopped back onto the bed.

  “Excellent interview technique,” said Dorian. “That just earned you a lot of trust.”

  Kirsten shot him a dark stare.

  “Thanks, but who’s gonna want a Lace-head.” Brooke pouted, then coughed.

  “By the time you get out of here, your eyes will be white again and the Lace will be out of your system. You don’t have to tell anyone about it unless you trust them. Sometimes people have to do bad things just to stay alive.”

  Dorian’s face was a mixture of shock and pity.

  The girl settled in, as if about to go back to sleep.

  “Brooke? You went to Father Villera because you saw something. I really need you to tell me about that.”

  “My throat hurts.”

  Kirsten moved to the edge of the bed, hovering over her. “If you want, you can just think about it. I can see it in your head if you let me.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “No, I promise it won’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “Open your eyes, look at me, and think about what you saw.”

  The telepathic connection gave Kirsten a brief glimpse of her own face before the room fell away, as though her point of view went over backwards into a deep well. The hospital room flew off into the blackness above her, melting into a spiral of colors from teal to grey. She focused on the concept of the specific memory, tumbling through the dark until the cold wetness of rain-soaked alley seeped through her clothes in the tight confines of a space beneath a trash crusher. Kirsten recognized the random scraps of cloth in which her point of view snuggled as a street urchin’s nest. If not for the city light leaking in from the alley, it would have been just like her old home, even down to the stink of chemicals and urine. Everything had a strange green tint―the memory of a Lace user.

  Voices shouted nearby, evidently the reason for the girl waking up. The words blurred by Brooke’s fitful memory and terror, becoming demonic roars and growls rather than agitated men. Kirsten watched―a spectator with no control. A grimy hand reached into view as the child crawled to the edge to peek.

  Four men stood around a squirming female figure in a black silk robe. Chrome binders gleamed stark against coffee-colored ankles; a silk bag covered the head of a struggling woman. The sound of a scream attempting to get through a mouthful of cloth was louder than the whispering that originated from the man who stood at her feet. He, too, wore a black robe, but also a shiny mask covering his face beneath the hood. Gold filigree circled the eyes, descending to thin gold trails that ran down the cheeks. The black surface glinted, as if covered in minute flakes of silver.

  The man at the woman’s head was the one who tried to kill Brooke. On the left and right, two others dressed in coats and body armor held her bound arms by the elbows. She thrashed as if she knew her deat
h was imminent, though her protests stilled as the man at her feet swung his left arm and aimed his palm at her. Her body arched, shuddered, and fell still. Her head wobbled about as if drunk; violent struggling became half-hearted squirms.

  The men on either side pulled open her robe down the center, exposing her nakedness to the sky as the chanting man knelt over her. He traced some manner of stylus over her, apparently writing, though Brooke’s angle prevented seeing what he drew on her skin. Kirsten shivered; reading the traumatic memory forced her to share in the terror the girl felt at the sight. It took a moment to divest herself from the inherited fear and resume.

  Red light glowed from the eyes of the mask. The raspy chanting grew louder; the language was one Kirsten had never heard spoken. It sounded menacing and guttural. A sense of being unable to breathe came over her, part of the memory, when he raised a wicked gold and silver knife to the clouds in his right hand. The blade was wide and single-edged, tiered into three waves each about four inches long. In his left, a glowing violet gemstone the size of a baseball pulsated with pale light.

  Brooke covered her eyes for a moment, looking back up just in time to see the masked figure plunge the decorative dagger into the helpless woman’s chest. She gurgled and went still. Brooke, now Kirsten, stared at the wobbling handle in the shape of a gold dragon’s head.

  Light within the great stone flickered brighter as he held it over the dead woman. Vaporous white swirls rose from the still-warm corpse and attempted to form into the image of her ghost, distorted by an irresistible force drawing it into the gem. Energy streamed from the body’s eyes, swirling into a tornado of white light consumed by the precious object. Withering spread over the dead woman’s chest, and the glow faded.

  The disembodied voice of a terrified woman screamed. The sound cut out as the gem devoured the spectral essence. He held the stone aloft with reverence, as if a priest conducting a mass.

  After retrieving the dagger, the mask wearer strode out of view, followed by the two men that had held the victim down by her arms. One had a metal hand. The last man gathered the robe closed over the corpse and stooped to pick her up, pausing when he looked straight at Brooke.