Guardian

by Matthew S. Cox

  Kirsten glared. “She’s psionic?”

  He blinked, a surprised look on his face. “Oh… no.” He bit his knuckle. “At least, not as far as I know. That’s got nothing to do with it at all. Her mother.” He shifted his jaw side to side. “She wasn’t my wife.”

  Dorian smirked. “If having a kid from an affair is the worst thing this guy did, I’ll be shocked.”

  “Hmm?” Kirsten glanced at Dorian.

  He gestured at the man. “He’s a senator. The only difference between them and organized crime is that they bend the law to make what they do legal while the Syndicate ignores it.”

  Senator Winchester walked close enough to speak low. “It’s not that confusing, is it? Her mother was not my wife… she was someone else’s at the time.”

  “Oh.” Kirsten studied the girl’s face. “The ‘hmm’ was for my partner. I… understand your situation.”

  “I hope you do. If certain people found out about her, it would give them fuel for pointless attacks. She’s had a difficult enough time of it. I don’t want her to have to suffer a media circus on top of it.”

  Dorian gestured at him. “Of course he couldn’t be possibly worried about his own career.” He paused with a pensive expression. “Though, I suppose no one would really care much about an affair.”

  “Senator,” said Kirsten. “Did she have a friend or anyone close to her die recently?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Seraphina has never been much of a people person. She’s spent more time in virtual worlds than the real one.” He looked down.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” Kirsten leaned back as he snapped his gaze up to her. “Umm. I mean… I’m only trying to find this ghost.”

  He chewed at his lip for a short while watching the girl sleep. “I don’t know the full details, but she spent a few months out on the street. She ran off while I was in session. Showed up about two weeks ago half dead.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you think she may have been involved with a gang?” Kirsten considered diving into the girl’s mind while she slept, but decided against it as a deep read would be obvious, and the senator had already made his opinions of that sort of thing quite clear. Without an imminent threat of death or bodily harm, bending the rules with a senator involved would only bite her in the ass. “Is the mother still involved?”

  “Unlikely. The woman was poor, and once she accepted I had no plans on abandoning my wife, she left Seraphina with me, expecting her life would be far better here.”

  Kirsten added to the notes. “I appreciate your help, Senator. I will keep everything as quiet as I can.”

  “As you can?” He looked worried.

  “I can’t falsify a report. Command has the ability to see this.”

  “Oh.” Senator Winchester relaxed. “Within Division 0… that’s not a problem. What do you need in order to find and retire this spirit?”

  She squinted at the walls. “I’m afraid nothing you can provide… At this point, there’s no indication that the event you experienced relates to you in any specific way. It may have been a transient haunt, or perhaps a discharge of some old energy in the walls. I’m sensing that something was here, but it’s gone now. I’m sorry, Senator, but I’ve got nothing to work with unless you can give me some clue as to who may have died within the past twenty years with a grudge against you. The best I can offer is to come racing back here if it happens again.”

  He rubbed his chin. “There’s nothing else?”

  Kirsten looked up at him. “Do you have any reason to believe a ghost would want to harm you or Seraphina?”

  “How am I supposed to know what motivates a spirit?” He fidgeted, tinted a bit red in the face, and jammed his hands in his pants pockets. “You’re absolutely certain you have no way to find this thing?”

  “Unless you can give me some idea of who is dead and might want to hurt you… I’ll have to come back when the spirit is here. It may not even come back. The attack could’ve been random. Spirits do that sometimes. Many of them enjoy messing with the living for no reason other than to do it.”

  “I understand.” He frowned. “I would like to hold you to that offer… if it does return, may I contact you directly?”

  She nodded. Yay. I’m on a senator’s speed dial. This couldn’t possibly go wrong. “Okay. Umm. Do you mind if I ask what happened to her? If she is or was close to death, perhaps that attracted something curious.”

  “Seraphina is recovering from a serious injury and illness. She is not on death’s door.” Senator Winchester shot a look at the medtech.

  “The young lady is delicate and requires medication to help with her recovery.” The woman on the couch indicated the machine aglow with eight or nine small holo-panel displays, floating tiles of light. “Her vitals are strong at the moment, but she is tired.”

  Kirsten bit her lip. Ran off, probably got in with gangs, probably took a bullet or a blade. High chance of sexual assault. The senator seemed agitated at the direction her questioning had gone, so she backed off. Street crime wasn’t the purview of Division 0 unless psionics had been involved. If he got me here by name, he’s probably got enough pull to send a Div Nine doll out there to kill everyone who even saw her.

  “Marguerite?” asked Winchester. “She will show you out, if there is nothing more you can do right now?”

  “That’s fine, Senator.” Kirsten headed for the bedroom door. “If you think it comes back, I’ll see what I can do.”

  The waifish housekeeper met her in the hall with a pleasant smile and walked her down the stairs. Kirsten thanked her at the front door and made her way back to the patrol craft at a brisk jog against a chilly northern breeze. She hurried inside and stabbed a finger at the console to get the heat on.

  “So what do you think?” asked Dorian as he coalesced in the passenger seat.

  “He’s hiding something. I’m half tempted to think he caught her with some street tough she’d fallen for and had him killed… or maybe something political.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Might just be the girl got herself hurt doing something illegal and he doesn’t want that blasted all over the Newsnet. I got the feeling he’s genuine in his concern for her, but you’re right―he is being evasive about something. Whoever this ghost is, I’m sure the senator knows them… That comment about ‘retiring’ tells me he’s hoping you destroy someone specific.”

  She tapped her fingers on the control sticks. “I dunno. If it was that personal, why would the spirit have left? They’d still be in the house.”

  “Too new?”

  “How long did it take for you to be able to get a person to feel you touch them?”

  Dorian shrugged. “I can’t say I tried much. Messing with people―Morelli notwithstanding―isn’t my thing.”

  She powered up the patrol craft and guided it airborne. “I guess it’s too much to ask that this was a one off.”

  “Yeah.” Dorian settled in for the long ride. “I’d expect a call.”

  Kirsten plotted a course back to the PAC. With any luck, she could spend the rest of the workday relaxing at her desk.

  van carried his lunch tray away from the serving line and speed-walked into the seating area of the cafeteria. Beige carpet, frosted seashell sconces around the walls, and beige curtains made it feel more like a hospital than a school, except for the one corner with cartoon figures on the wall and bright plastic chairs―where the preschool and kindergarten-aged kids went. Older children clustered in groups at circular tables that varied in size from seating four to twelve. He headed for one of the smaller tables by a window overlooking an enclosed yard that resembled a tiny version of Sanctuary Park.

  Shani and another second-grade girl, Ruby Stanton, stopped chattering back and forth and looked at him as he took a seat. A scrap of pink peeked out from the top of her straight black hair. Shani’s friend had the darkest skin he’d ever seen on a person; it made her seem to be a silhouette in the blinding cafeteria.

&nbs
p; Evan smiled at her. “Hey.”

  “Hey, Ev,” said Shani.

  “Hi.” Ruby gave him a half-second look before staring at Shani. “If you don’t do it. I’m gonna. I don’t wanna get citizenship points for something I didn’t do.”

  Shani huffed. “Even if you find who did it, you’ll get in trouble for reading minds without permission.”

  Ruby grumbled. “It’s not fair. She can’t give us all points ‘cause someone’s stupid.”

  “Everyone thinks it’s me anyway.” Shani pouted.

  “It isn’t!” Ruby poked her.

  “Uhh.” Evan paused with a grilled chicken sandwich in front of his mouth. “Why doesn’t your teacher just look at everyone’s head? And what happened?”

  Shani held both arms out to the sides in a grand gesture of exasperation. “She did! But she doesn’t believe no one did it. She thinks someone’s doing a trick to hide the memory.”

  “Only four kids have TK. It’s not fair that everyone’s gonna get points.” Ruby grumbled.

  Evan gave up waiting for an explanation and attacked his lunch. Four bites into it, the girls stopped quibbling about who deserved points and looked at him. He finished chewing the current mouthful and glanced between them. “What?”

  “You’re clairvoyant.” Shani grinned. “You can touch the chair and figure out who did it, right? That’s not invading someone’s mind.”

  “Chair?” Evan took another bite.

  “Someone pulled the chair out from under Mrs. Han when she tried to sit down.”

  Evan laughed breadcrumbs into his throat and choked. A red-haired teen in an Admin cadet uniform ran over to check on him. The boy patted him on the back until the coughing fit subsided.

  “Crumbs.” Evan hit himself in the chest. “I’m okay.”

  Cadet McPherson nodded. “Slow down a bit, and drink some water.”

  “‘Kay.”

  The teen walked back to his post by the wall.

  “It’s not funny.” Shani frowned. “She’s super mad.”

  “It was probably Abernathy.” Evan drained half his lemonade in one pass, then gasped for air.

  “Who?” Ruby blinked. “That’s a funny name.”

  “Ghost.”

  “Ooo.” Ruby grabbed Shani in a hug as if hiding behind her. “Seriously? There’s ghosts here?”

  “Only one. He’s a butthead. Plays tricks on people. He keeps changing my homework to like grade ten stuff.” Evan took a bite of food before he remembered he had more to say. “Mmm!”

  “Slow down,” whispered Shani. “You’ll choke again.”

  Evan rolled his eyes as he chewed, feeling as though the chicken took forever to reach a point he could swallow it. “I wanna help him. He’s stuck here and I think I know how to help him get free.”

  “This is too weird.” Ruby held her hands up. “I don’t wanna mess with a ghost.”

  “You’re gonna get in trouble.” Shani shook her head. “Like a million citizenship points. Let your mom fix it.”

  “I can’t.” He frowned at the ‘healthy’ substitute for French fries―baked zucchini sticks―but ate some anyway. “She’s active duty. They won’t let her do what we need to do to set him free. She’d get in trouble with Captain Ezzeh.” He eyed a half-eaten bit of zucchini and dropped it back on the plate with a smirk. “She’d do it anyway, which is why I can’t tell her about it.”

  “What is it?” asked Shani.

  “He died like a really long time ago to a mind blast… so they put his brain in a jar so’s they could study it.”

  “Eww.” Ruby dropped her fork in her salad. “Really? Tryin’ to eat here.”

  “Yeah. I wanna get it and take it to Father Villera.”

  Shani bit her lip. “You’re gonna get in so much trouble.”

  “I need your help.” Evan flashed a huge, hopeful grin.

  Ruby shook her head.

  “Umm.” Shani fidgeted. “I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

  “We won’t. They’re not even looking at it anymore… they put it down in the archives and forgot him, that’s why he’s stuck here ‘cause they’re treatin’ him like a thing not a person. We gotta get in, find his brain, and save it.”

  Shani squirmed. “I dunno. Maybe if you tell Mrs. Han it wasn’t someone wif TK and we don’t get points.”

  “I can try.”

  He hurried to finish the last of his lunch, tossed the tray on a pile of dirty trays near a bank of trashcans, and followed the two seven-year-olds down the quiet, deserted hallway to their classroom. In stark contrast to the sterile white of the corridor outside, the room exploded with vibrant colors. Holographic cartoon characters paraded around the walls near the ceiling holding up the letters of the alphabet. Globes, rainbows, pictures of historic places, and hand-drawn student art covered every inch of the place.

  Evan swelled with pride at being the ‘big kid’ coming to the younger kids’ room. He headed to the teacher’s chair and put his hand on it. Eyes closed, he opened himself to receiving any psychic imprints left in the fake wood. Miss Easley, a clairvoyant almost as old as Mom, had mentioned Epoxil was a poor conduit for emotional imprints, something about it being mostly plastic. He scrunched his eyebrows together, straining, and the soft whispering of the girls behind him blurred as though he’d gone underwater. Soon, a mood of annoyance came over him. He grunted, feeling trapped in the presence of people he couldn’t stand to be around. The desire to go home hit him with such intensity he let go of the chair, fully intending to walk outside and get a PubTran car.

  “Whoa.” He blinked at his hand. “I didn’t see who moved the chair, but I’m pretty sure your teacher hates kids. All she thinks about is going home all day.”

  “Is that so?” asked a woman.

  Evan turned around, finding Ruby and Shani grimacing, and a half-Chinese woman in a uniform like Mom’s (without the equipment belt, laser pistol, or forearm guard) standing there with her hands on her hips. The woman’s nameplate read, ‘Han, C.’ She looked a lot older than Mom, but not quite enough to be a grandmother.

  “Hello, Mrs. Han.” Evan put a hand to his head and tried to clear the thoughts from his mind.

  “Are you okay?” She eased back on the hostility a little.

  “Yeah.” He let his arm drop and gave her an innocent look. “Why do you teach if you can’t stand being around kids?”

  She frowned. “I’m fond enough of children when they can behave themselves. What are you doing in this room during lunch?”

  Evan took a breath and sighed. “They said someone yanked your chair and wanted me to see if I can tell who did it with clairvoyance so you didn’t give points to the whole class. I think it was Abernathy.”

  “There’s no student in my class named that.” She patted him on the shoulder, guiding him to the door. “Go on. Back to the lunchroom.”

  Shani and Ruby looked amazed.

  Evan looked up at her for a second, glanced at the door, and back at her. “Mrs. Han?”

  “What?”

  “Does stuff happen in here a lot? Like things falling over or moving or ‘lectronics not working?”

  Mrs. Han let off an exasperated sigh. “I’ve got four or five telekinetics in here. Of course things happen.”

  “I think Abernathy knows you’re not being nice to the kids, and he’s giving you a hard time for it.”

  “Who exactly is this Abernathy?” Mrs. Han crossed her arms. “Some code word?”

  “He’s a ghost. Ask Mr. Vasquez about him; he knows.”

  “Oh, help me.” Mrs. Han stared at the ceiling. “The last thing I need is nonsense about spirits. Do your parents know you believe in that stuff, or are you a ward?”

  Evan clenched his jaw. “My mom knows that ghosts are real.”

  “Who is your mother? I think we need to have a talk.” Mrs. Han fell into her chair and picked up a NetMini.

  “Agent Kirsten Wren. I-Ops.” Evan puffed out his chest. “She’d love to tell you all a
bout ghosts, and Harbingers, and Abyssals.”

  The girls tried to stifle giggles at the face their teacher made.

  Mrs. Han stared into space for over a minute before looking at him. “So you’re trying to tell me that a ghost is haunting the classroom and doing things to annoy me?”

  He shrugged. “I’d have to ask him.”

  “Is he here now?” Mrs. Han looked around again.

  A few seconds of concentration opened Evan’s senses to the astral realm. Mrs. Han gasped, staring at him. White light shining in his eyes glinted from a half-glass of water on the corner of the desk. Ruby drifted closer, mouth open, seeming fascinated. He turned in place, but the room held only the living.

  “He’s not here.” Evan caught a glimpse of light behind Mrs. Han’s shoulder. He crept over and leaned to peer at the chair behind her, at a glowing handprint. “Yeah. He did it.”

  Mrs. Han leapt from her seat. “How do you know?”

  “Look at my thoughts.” He kept his attention on the luminous residue. The tingle of incoming telepathy came and went. “He touched it here where it glows. Some of his energy stuck to the chair.”

  Another telepathic poke hit him, from Ruby. “Wow… that’s so cool.”

  “Mrs. Han?” asked Shani. “Are we still gonna get points?”

  Evan laughed and let his astral sight fade.

  Mrs. Han shook her head, seeming too rattled to speak.

  “Come on.” Ruby grabbed Shani’s hand. “We got like twenty minutes left on lunch.”

  The girls darted off. Evan walked to the door, glancing back over his shoulder at the teacher. Maybe telling her about ghosts hadn’t been such a great idea.

  “Mrs. Han? Next time I see him, I’ll ask him to leave you alone, okay?”

  She startled, as though she didn’t realize he’d still been there. “Yes. Okay. Thank you.”

  Evan headed out the door, and whistled. “Oops.”

  Two minutes later, he found Shani and Ruby playing holo-pong in the game room. He stopped at the side of the virtual table. The place had no ‘cool’ games, only variations of sports sims that kept the kids playing them moving around.