Division Zero: Thrall

by Matthew S. Cox

  Dorian slid to a halt at her side as the naked ghosts of the four prior victims squeaked over the smooth metal. He sat up and gasped at her, surprise and relief in his eyes. For the tiniest instant, he seemed ready to yell at her for being blind, slow, or cutting it too close.

  “Sorry I’m late; I was a little tied up on Earth.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but pointed past her. She whirled. Konstantin roared at her and the freed spirits, eyes bulging behind the mask, clenched fists shaking. With a primal howl, he yanked the ceremonial dagger from his belt and turned toward the nearest hostage. Nafiz moaned, clambering back to his feet and flinging his arms to the side. Three narrow, ten-inch blades slid through the knuckles of both hands and locked. Trickles of blood ran down each one.

  Out of reflex, Kirsten aimed and squeezed a useless trigger. The woman at whom Konstantin charged remained delirious and unaware of death coming for her.

  Kirsten screamed. “No!”

  orian thrust his hand into the E-90, focusing. The blue lights flickered on into their endless march along the sides. The weapon spat a thin streak of laser. Kirsten’s frantic trigger clicking put a shot into Konstantin’s cheek. Sparks and smoke sizzled from the curved mask; the laser staggered him to a confused halt. The deranged maleficar’s glare shifted toward her, through smoke that poured from the eye holes.

  Despite failing to pierce, the interaction of laser and paranormal artifact had left him stunned. For a few seconds, a thumbprint-sized patch glowed red-hot, searing his cheek. Kirsten recovered from the shock of her weapon coming back online, albeit with a meager eight percent charge.

  Konstantin spun on the hostage, knife raised. Kirsten fired again without a word as Nafiz dove at her.

  This time, the shot caught Konstantin in the left side. An azure line connected the E-90 to the far wall, through his chest, for just shy of a full second. Smoke and flames licked at the edges of a finger-wide tunnel through his body. Konstantin froze, the blade slipped from his grasp, and he sagged limp. A second later, he collapsed as blood squirted several feet in two directions. The mask bounced loose, clinging to his cheek by a strand of molten skin.

  Nafiz tackled her, but a well-placed knee sent him sliding away before his claws tasted blood. Kirsten sat up as the near-skeletal man flipped over and sprang through the air, blades first. She lit off a blast from the E-90 in time to scorch his leg. He fell just short of her, claws sparking over the ground. She scooted backwards as he crawled, kicking at his arms to deflect blades. Armor panels in her boots stalled the tips; Kirsten snarled and twisted as she scampered. She thought of Brooke as she stomped him in the face, knocking him on his ass. Claws retracted as he cradled his bleeding nose. Kirsten pointed the E-90 at him one-handed, using the other to steady herself as she got back up.

  “It’s over, Nafiz. Don’t make me shoot you.”

  With the Russian dead, the five hostages came out of their hypnotic state. One by one, the realization they hung by their wrists in the middle of a garage hit them, and they shouted and struggled. The woman that Konstantin had meant to kill gaped at the dead man on the ground, screaming.

  Nafiz peeled his red-stained hands away from his face and held them in a gesture of surrender. She met his wild stare; wet-looking black hair shimmered in the light. Deceit flashed in his thoughts. The words in Arabic she could not make sense of, the imagined feeling of a mechanism in his teeth came with the taste of something noxious. She cringed away a second before he leaned up, spraying clear liquid out of holes in his canine teeth. The attack missed hitting her in the face, instead saturating the upper chest of her uniform. Biting fumes robbed her of the ability to see anything but blobs of color.

  Shink. Claws popped out.

  Her mind had one proverbial foot in the door of his from eavesdropping on his surface thoughts. She did not need sight to aim a mind blast. White energy glowed from her bleary eyes as her psionic assault slapped all reason from Nafiz’s consciousness. Kirsten held her head. It ached from the re-use of her power so soon after overdoing it at the manor. The pain mixed with burning in her eyes, leaving her praying for death to escape the feeling of it all. She slumped to her knees and covered her face with both hands. Somewhere to her left, a body hit the ground, claws clattering.

  “ Hey, get us out of these cuffs!” William Arris, or at least his ghost, shouted.

  Kirsten pawed at her eyes, blinking through tears while trying to clear her skin of the toxic agent. I don’t even want to know what this would have done if it hit me in the face, the fumes are bad enough.

  “Can she see us?” Alaina Munoz asked, hopping closer.

  Kirsten’s sight returned a moment later, as if she looked through a blurry curtain. Dorian had helped the ghosts stand. All had died traumatic deaths while bound. Ugh, I think I’d rather face obliteration than eternity in handcuffs. She pondered an old East City spirit she once met and shivered.

  The woman was trapped in crude wooden stocks from many centuries ago. The persistent binding was a product of the psyche, burned in due to a cruel execution for being a witch. Perhaps in the case of recent haunts, she might be able to help them change. Kirsten shook her head, blinking, wiping the last bits of chemical burn away.

  “If any of you hear voices of your family calling you, go to them. If not, hop outside and I’ll help as much as I can once this scene is cleared. Yes, I can see you. Yes, I can hear you. No, I don’t have time right this second. I can’t remove the binders; they’re in your mind. You are uhh… ‘dressed’ like that because it is how you were at the moment of death. Stop thinking of yourself in that way and they will disappear. I’ll be outside in a few minutes.” She pointed at the door and retrieved the Nano knife from among violet crystal shards.

  Nafiz moaned and sat up, snarling an Arabic word at her.

  “Oh, fuck you too.” Kirsten frowned over the E-90 at him. “What did he call me?”

  Dorian, still cringing, shook his head. “You really don’t want to know.”

  Konstantin’s voice echoed, as if over loudspeakers, into a room-shaking roar. Lights faltered and distant electronic components exploded in a series of bangs. The venom fled Nafiz’s eyes, and he backed away from the pentagram. The Russian’s ghost formed from smoke leaking out of his remains, attempting to stand but stuck in a stoop―tethered to the mask by the same thread of skin holding it to the corpse. He pointed at Kirsten, loosing a furious barrage of Russian invectives. Nafiz gestured at Konstantin’s ghost, babbling. When the specter glared at him, he sprinted away, shrieking like a schoolboy.

  Kirsten faced him. “You’re in my world now, Konnie.” She squinted. “Now it’s my turn to touch you in a bad place.”

  She summoned the lash, letting it coil around her legs like a hungry pet snake.

  Konstantin got angrier, but only for a few seconds. He looked up and down, and then howled―this time with pain. His legs skidded together, pants bunched around his shins as if a giant invisible fist seized him. After a look mixed of pleading and hatred, the ghost of Konstantin Dobrynin vanished through the floor. She ceased concentrating on the lash; the thread of energy dissipated from the tip, as if retracting into her arm.

  “That’s not going to end well,” said Dorian.

  “No…” Kirsten glanced around. “No, I don’t think it will.”

  Dorian moved to her side. “The ritual demanded a sacrifice… I think we just fed it Konstantin.”

  Every light in the ceiling exploded at once. Brilliant spark-showers rained throughout the massive garage, sending her shrieking for cover with arms over her head. The air at the center of the ritual circle shimmered as a nimbus of faint energy expanded. Dorian ignored the raining embers, shouting at the other ghosts to hop out of here as fast as they could. He yelled until the wave of paranormal energy smacked him to the ground.

  Konstantin’s corpse shifted, sliding around in a wide circle and rising two feet off the ground. It skimmed the pentagram, head in line with the outer edge.
After making a full circle, it rose and floated above the middle, upright. Flames from the candles shot upward into three-foot hissing jets. The Lunazoom workers all screamed. Dark smoke billowed up from the center of the glyph, forming into the silhouette of a massive humanoid cloud.

  Kirsten’s fingers crept over the pile of metal boxes, soon followed by her face. The apparition reached to the sides, thrusting its chest forward. The floating corpse glided backwards into the smoke, wrapped by seeking tendrils of shadow until it was out of sight. At that instant, the mass of vapor solidified into jet-black flesh, glistening and scaled.

  To Kirsten’s horror, its face took on a nauseating familiarity as it absorbed Konstantin’s essence. He had completed the ritual, though not the way he had hoped. Rather than having control over a powerful spirit of the Abyss, it had consumed him and stepped into the world with free rein.

  “Oh, he’s going to be a ball of happiness,” said Dorian. “Any ideas, or are we screwed?”

  Faint trails of grey energy, like a fluttering cigarette ember, trailed from each captive into the huge demon.

  Kirsten shivered. “I think it is gonna siphon their spirits. Did you have to use that particular expression?”

  His face fell into a mask of apology. “I had no idea… I’m sor―”

  “It was just his hand…” Her face reddened. “What he did to my head is worse.” She held up the knife, letting the light play off the edge for a second before she offered it to Dorian. “Here. Get the people out. I’m the one that should be sorry”―she glanced at him―“for not believing you.”

  Dorian clasped the bound knife, squeezing her hand into the soft grip. “You couldn’t believe me. He had you enthralled. I knew it wasn’t you talking.”

  Kirsten vaulted the boxes as Dorian ran through them, holding the knife over his head to clear the top. The demon drew back a handful of claws, ready to slay one of the men who had fainted at the sight of it. She projected the lash a second after landing, attracting a hateful glare from the creature. Dorian snuck around to the left, making odd faces because he had to use physical cover to stay hidden. The creature backed away from the helpless man, facing her with one room-shaking step.

  She held her head high, staring it down. “You know what this is, don’t you, bastard? You can feel it.” Holy shit, this thing is huge. I wonder if this monster is strong enough to attract direct intervention. A shiver ran through her. Maybe if I fail. She thought of Evan. I can’t.

  It leaned back, rattling the room with a laugh.

  The sound of mirth melted into a roar when she caught it in the chest. The lash scored a pale burn mark over its chest. Her arm throbbed from the connection to such power. It staggered, almost to a knee, while Kirsten clamped her hand to her right bicep in an effort to dull the ache.

  “Hurt, didn’t it?” She scooted back. “You shouldn’t have made yourself look like him.”

  It charged. She swerved under a clawed arm. Talons peeled several plates out of the floor as easily as fingernails on foil. It swung again and she somersaulted into a sprint.

  Dorian darted out from cover, headed for the trapped civilians. A screaming woman in dingy worker coveralls went silent at the sight of a floating knife. When it continued to weave closer to her, she sobbed and begged for her life.

  Annoyed, Dorian forced his voice into the mortal world. “What do you think I’m trying to do? Calm down.”

  A quick swipe of the synthetic diamond blade cut the chain. She dropped to the ground on all fours. He gestured with the knife in the direction of the exit, stabbing twice in a pointing motion.

  Kirsten spun, running backwards just long enough to swing her energy whip before whirling to face forward again. This time, the abyssal leaned away from the attack and lunged. The impact of its fist, missing by inches, crumpled the ground and launched her a few feet into the air. She flailed, pitching over forward and coming down on her hands. Once more, she tumbled and slid under the buggy that hid her initial entry. Before she could take even one relieved breath, the demon clawed the front bumper and flung the rover aside. The almost six-thousand-pound vehicle spun into the air like a plastic toy. It smashed through a column, bending it, twenty yards away.

  Crouched, she came up to the creature’s knee. It roared with both hands over its head. Claws came down. She leapt at it, diving through its legs as it shredded the floor. A section of pipe stuck to its claws, tearing loose as it righted itself.

  The next nearest captive had already screamed his voice hoarse at the sight of the demon, and soiled himself when the floating knife approached. He ran whimpering after the first woman once Dorian cut him loose.

  “Come on, come on,” shouted the other woman, two columns over. She rattled her binders, staring at the floating knife with desperation. “I don’t know what the fuck you are, but hurry the hell up.”

  Dorian shot her a look and moved to the next-nearest person, one column away from her.

  Kirsten spun, lashing across the back of the demon’s legs. It howled and fell to its knees. She leapt up, poised to whip it in the back, but did not see the tail swing around. A bony sphere, the color and gloss of onyx, caught her in the side of the head and sent her skidding and tumbling over the smooth metal. She rolled to a halt some distance away, too dizzy to figure out which way gravity pulled.

  Pain shot in threads over the left side of her skull, warm blood tickled at her ear through the numbness. Rapid images flashed through her mind: Mother smashing her headfirst into the kitchen floor, a fistful of hair pounding her head against the fridge, the tub, the wall. Thanks, Mom. She shook off the disorientation and got to her knees. The grey streak across the creature’s chest was gone; it looked unhurt. Her second wind faltered.

  In the distance, the third potential sacrifice tumbled away from the column and ran for the doors. I have to keep this thing’s attention away from them. Kirsten’s battle cry came out as more of a war-squeak as she charged. It swung its right arm in a wide arc; she weaved under it and dragged the energy tendril over its abdomen. If she dove through its legs again, it would turn and see the civilians getting away; the realization made her hesitate.

  The left arm came around; she had no time to move. She focused on its supernatural presence, attempting to catch its attack with psionic ability. Its strength was overwhelming. While her effort kept its claws away, the impact of its presence on her mental power swatted her to the side. Kirsten’s body careened through the air, landing in an uncoordinated roll that left her spread-eagled on her chest some distance away.

  Ow.

  Her mind hurt, her body ached, and her nose would not stop bleeding. Her eyelids warred with her mind. There was no point; this thing was a true demon like Charazu, all the lash did was cause pain―not damage. It would be so easy to lie there on the nice, cold metal. Standing up again would only bring more agony.

  Evan must be losing his mind right now. She sucked in a breath, and pushed herself up.

  The second trapped woman held her hands apart, waiting for the knife. She strained with such force that when Dorian did free her, she smacked herself into the floor. With one hand on her face, she wobbled toward the exit. The last captive, a hulk of a man, had fainted. All three hundred and change pounds of him hung like a deer ready for cleaning.

  The knife went through the plastisteel chain with a faint click and little discernible resistance. Once the man hit the ground, Dorian looked from the abyssal to the blade and grinned.

  Kirsten eyed the fourth captive, tracking the woman until she ran out of sight down the access ramp. The energy thread connecting her to the demon faded away. Wondering if it had been leeching from them all along, she threw herself into another attack with renewed hope. She forced the memory of Konstantin’s hand to the forefront, sprinkled with anger at him manipulating her for so long.

  The astral lash glimmered with emotion, growing brighter as she rounded it overhead and snapped the tip into the demon’s chest. Thunderous, a great booming cra
sh resounded through the air as the strike launched the creature off its feet. It slid, squealing over the metal floor, until it came to a halt against a column and bent it. Kirsten took two steps, whirling at a sudden shriek as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over a man. Disregarding the odd noise, she advanced on the prone creature.

  “Wren, what’s going on in there? Cams are out.” Nina’s voice crackled in her earbud. “We got one trying to get out of a service tunnel. What kind of idiot runs at a full squad with only claws?”

  Bye, Nafiz. “He saw something he couldn’t handle. Hostages are clear, they’re inside the door. Open it, let them out, but stay back.”

  “Sounds like a full-on war in there, are you sure?”

  Kirsten whirled the lash into the air. “Yes, I’m sure. Your people really don’t want to see this.”

  She slapped it across the face, bringing forth another deafening cry. The hit knocked the abyssal to the side; however, as it rolled, its tail caught her in the boots and pulled her feet out from under her. Kirsten went down flat on her back, unable to breathe. The demon sprang forward, driving its fist into the plastisteel just as she rolled up on one side. She bounced into the air from the impact, landing on her chest a few feet away.

  It punched again, but she scrambled out of the way and got to her feet, ducking another wide-sweeping claw rake and jumping the low-swinging tail. She whipped the lash to the ready, but was unprepared for the sudden reversal of its attack. A back-of-the-knuckles slap, from a hand as tall as her torso, sent her flying onto a cart used to load missiles the size of caskets onto combat aircraft. Kirsten landed draped through two C-shaped rings. One hit her in the back, breaking a rib, and the other caught her legs; she dangled with her ass suspended above the body of the automated ordinance mover.

  The ungainly pose left her helpless long enough for the demon to close the distance in a quick stride. Once again, the pale burns the lash caused had vanished. The distorted face of Konstantin laughed at her. Stuck in an awkward position, she could do little more than glare as it reached for her.