“What’cha got there?”
The man’s voice behind her made her spin; her reply came as a squeak. Just past an enclosed conduit, hidden from sight from one side, a large bald man with a heavy beard leaned. Immense arms crossed his chest; his Sons of Charon jacket creaked in protest.
“Huh?”
He pointed at the helmet. “Fancy.”
“Oh…” Scared me shitless, maybe I sounded high to him. “Found it by a dead cop.”
“Careful, they got trackers in ̓em.”
She belted a nervous giggle. “Yeah, right. Cops’ll come in here, bullshit.”
The giant laughed his face red and his eyes into thin wrinkles. She had not noticed his rifle until his joviality tapped it against the wall.
“Hey, grab me a cold one, kid.”
“Uhh, sure.”
Surface thoughts surprised her with his motivation. He did not just ask the girl to fetch him a beer as a sign of a female being subservient; gang code kept him from leaving his watch station. Wow, these guys are organized more than I thought. She lifted an idea of how to go about getting inside out of his thoughts before walking off through the stacks of junk in the crammed alley. Piles of ancient terminals, almost a hundred years old, melted into various discolored stains that crept through shades of white and green on the metal ground.
Holy crap, they don’t even have M3 sockets. How can they just let this place rot so long?
The dull brown door matched the sentry’s thoughts; the man on the other side, however, did not. With a grin, he yanked her by the collar through the opening, back against the wall, and forced his tongue into her mouth.
She tasted his last shot of street whiskey and gagged. As she shoved him back, he grabbed her breasts through the jacket and froze.
“Hey, what the shit? You got some hard-ass titties.” He squeezed, then knocked. “Fuck, daz armor.”
“Yes it is”―she grabbed the handle at her side―“and this is a stunrod, asshole.”
“Wha―”
Bwong.
The eerie electrical chime came as the blue glowing tip cracked him across the side of the head. She could not help herself but clock him with it. The brief contact with the element only staggered him, and he fell backwards scratching at the wall for a handhold. Kirsten pounced, thrusting the tip into his chest. Sparks lapped at his T-shirt as his hands clawed at the air. He gurgled and convulsed. Eyes rolled into his skull, lit blue, and he went still.
She spat, twice, trying to get the taste out of her mouth. The helmet went back on and she shrugged out of the jacket. More to keep it from being pointed at her, she kept Leaf’s weapon. Having armor gave her more confidence dealing with mortals, even if it was uncomfortable, heavy, and pinched in all the wrong places. Kirsten never thought of herself as having much in the way of a chest, but Nila had even less. If she got a suit that fit, perhaps she could grow to like it.
Wonderful technology in the helmet came back online just in time to point out two figures on the other side of the wall. One man and one woman leaned on either side of the doorway she needed to use. They had full size assault rifles and each held a beer. Based on the way they moved, she assumed they were in the midst of a quasi-flirtatious conversation.
I’d rather not kill them, SOC or not… They’re compelled.
Kirsten eased the E-90 out of the holster and raised it until the luminous cobalt-blue dot appeared in the center of the glowing circle, lined up over the woman’s rifle. If the sensor can go through this wall… She aimed at the midpoint and fired. The rifle fell in two; its amber outline shimmered away. No longer a recognizable shape, the helmet electronics lost it amid background clutter.
“What the fuck was that?” shouted the man.
The woman’s holographic image spun and looked down. “Fuckin’ thing just exploded.”
Too brief, they didn’t see the laser. Kirsten’s smile grew wider as the man backed away from his weapon, expecting the same thing.
She did not disappoint him.
Unfortunately, that time they both saw the streak of blue and came running. The woman rounded through the door first, knocking it straight off its hinges. Hate burned out of her eyes as she pulled a blade from her thigh. Her companion followed close behind, without a weapon aside from his size and temper. She chose him. The mind blast peeled away from her brain with the same sort of spine-wiggling discomfort that comes with stepping barefoot in cold cat puke.
For a brief instant as her thoughts collided with his, her mind stuttered. Snippets of his recent past flashed by as his brain came to an abrupt halt in an effort to make sense of the overwhelming mass of information she pounded into it. His charge became a stumble, which became standing and drooling. The woman, shrieking, dove at her.
Kirsten got the stunrod under the incoming weapon, getting a good close view of the C39 UCF Marine Corps boarding-party personal defense blade. Yellow light from Kirsten’s helmet glistened in the sweat over her attacker’s dark skin. She surged forward, her scream silencing as all effort went into her arms. One foot to the rear in an effort not to lose balance became three steps and her back slamming into the wall.
Is everyone stronger than me? Kirsten grunted, twisting. Well I was starved for the first ten years of my life; protein bars can only go so far. She strained against the larger woman, getting nowhere other than pushed closer to the floor as the snarling ganger crushed into her. Desperate for a distraction, Kirsten navigated the helmet interface with eye motions, going for the searchlights. Nose to visor, the unexpected helmet-side lights blinded the large woman and let Kirsten direct the gladius away. It sunk seven inches into the wall.
Bulging eyes never parted from Kirsten as the woman tugged at the stuck sword.
“Stop.” Kirsten leaned on the wall. “Kneel.”
Her brain reverberated with a brief shock, a membrane pierced, as the potency of a short-term suggestion overwhelmed Rene’s lingering thralldom. Kirsten did not have the time, nor the energy left to deprogram them right now.
“I’m sorry.”
A light tap of the stunrod to the side of the head knocked the woman out before she did the same for the still dazed and drooling man. Dorian came through the wall as she searched around for a gap in the armor to dose herself with a stimpak for a burst of energy.
“There you are.” He tromped over, circling her. “You hurt? What’s with the girl in the van?”
Kirsten explained, euphoric for a moment as the stim beneath the jaw lessened her fatigue. “You find anything?”
“He’s on the thirty-sixth floor, and the stairway has a couple of IR mines in it.”
She tapped the visor. “No problem.”
orian led the way up the stairs, pointing out the presence of a half-dozen detonators. Each sprouted a gleaming invisible line of infrared light. Lamps that failed a century ago had littered the concrete stairway with a minefield of glass shards. Autoinjectors and spent narcotic derm patches gathered in clusters of dust strewn with paw prints.
“I feel bad for these cats.”
“Those are rat tracks.” Dorian chuckled.
She drew in a breath, tensing.
“Really? After hanging off the side of Intera tower, taking a nosedive out of an exploding parking deck, a large rat scares you?”
“They’re icky.” She pouted like a nine-year-old, and then laughed.
“Shh. There are men around the next corner.”
Serious face. The gun came out as she edged toward the end of the section of steps. At the top, she whirled around the corner and aimed at four men in Sons of Charon jackets, standing amid a thick haze of yellow vapor from narcotic inhalers. The air reeked of Flowerbasket.
“Nobody move.”
A little over ten seconds after she appeared, the first one reacted to her, and blinked.
“Zat a cop?”
The other three looked.
“Naw, man, you’re seein shit,” said a skeleton wrapped in skin and hair.
“I see it, too,” added another.
“Wait, you’re right.” Skeleton reached for a gun.
“Don’t do it.” She aimed at him.
Dorian sauntered through them, drawing the power out of their guns. Kirsten relaxed.
As casual as if on a firing range, the four men pulled weapons and pointed them at her.
“There’s four of us and one of you. Tell ya what.” The pudgy one shifted towards her. “Bend over and we’ll let you outta here.”
“I don’t think so.” She smirked. “Might want to look behind you.”
All four turned, squinting at the empty hallway.
White vapor rippled up Dorian’s legs, surrounding him as he forced his essence into the material world. For a few seconds, he took on the appearance of what was slumped in the driver seat of his car that awful day.
Even expecting something drastic, Kirsten shied away from the sight and choked back tears. The pudgy one fainted, the other three barreled past her, screaming as they hurried down the stairs. When Kirsten risked a peek, Dorian had gone back to normal, wearing an apologetic frown.
Her pathetic face of pity caused him to turn away.
“I made it look worse than it was. Don’t give me that look.” He took a step. “Come on, it’s just down this hallway.”
Dead lights jutted out from the wall every twenty feet on curved bronze rods carved to resemble plants. Stains of every imaginable shade of brown spread over the walls, accompanied by the cloying stink of rotting food. The fading maroon carpet muted the sound of her steps as she edged along the left wall, both hands on the E-90.
“You almost look like a cop today.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m doing normal cop stuff today,” she whispered. “Going after a living man. Dorian, please try to make sure he stays that way.”
His face flared with anger. “You sure care a lot about the bastard that killed me. Never did understand how people get so wound up about the rights of murderers and how much they suffer. They didn’t give a rat’s ass for the rights or feelings of the people they killed.”
“You’re wrong.” Kirsten leaned into his accusing glare. “I care about you. I don’t want you to lose your… I don’t want to lose you to the Harbingers. People get wound up about that because if we don’t, we’re no better than they are. What’s that saying? Eye for an eye and everyone goes blind?”
Dorian turned on his heel, stomping to the only closed door in their section of hallway. “Need I remind you I am already lost? You’re still alive, stop agonizing over what can never happen.”
“Fine then. I want him to get mind-wiped by Ashford and spend the rest of his life sucking his thumb trying to remember what conscious control over shitting was like. I want him to forget what being psionic is.”
“I can live with that.” Frustration seethed out through his teeth at the look she gave him. “You know what I mean.”
Three tactical steps put her at the doorjamb. She nodded once. Dorian walked through.
“I think he just got done having sex. You got a noncombatant on the right side, about twenty yards from the door on a bed. Based on the way she’s staring at him, he’s programmed her to worship him. Other than the woman, he’s alone. There’s a small entertainment room in the front just inside the door; the bedroom is beyond. Balcony on the left side, windows are op… gone.”
Kirsten took three heavy breaths and turned to face the door. The kick stalled when Dorian’s face came through the fake wood.
“Please don’t hesitate. Don’t try to butt heads with his power; if you feel him try anything―just shoot him.”
She stared at the warped reflection of her face along the barrel of her sidearm. The little metal prong she always ignored gleamed. With an expression like a kid at Christmas finding one more present, she pulled a length of microfilament wire out of the handle and tugged it out to about four feet. A few seconds of fumbling around the side of the helmet found the plug, and soon she had a tiny window showing her wherever the gun pointed.
“That’s perfect.” He hugged through her. “No line of sight and―”
“No suggestion,” she finished.
Her boot shattered the door open, flinging it through Dorian as she charged in.
“Rene Bollard! Police! On the ground. Don’t move, don’t speak!”
She shouldered into the pea green wall at the far end of the entertainment room, poking the E-90 through the arch into the bedroom. The little floating window in her view blurred as she panned to the right, finding Rene at the side of the bed with a woman in a headlock―gun at her temple. A sycophantic grin was the only thing the woman wore, legs threaded through white silk sheets. She stroked Rene’s arm, adoring even the touch that used her as a human shield.
He shifted behind her, pulling her by her hair. “I must commend your determination, though I lament your foolishness.”
The woman moaned, arching herself as he pulled, her left hand rubbed a breast. “Yes, Rene.”
Kirsten’s mind raced, she could not see the weapon anymore behind the hostage. The fragrance of jasmine and incense overwhelmed the foulness outside.
“You probably expect me to kill you. I want to bring you in alive.”
Dorian stomped toward him, shaking with rage.
The grainy image in the targeting window tilted his head; the well-practiced, disingenuous grin of a con man a decade past his prime wrinkled his cheeks. He edged further behind the mattress, pulling the woman up to her knees and drawing forth another moan of ecstasy. She did not realize what poked her in the back was a gun. Kirsten tried to put the blue dot on his face, but did not trust her aim.
“Rene, you know with an innocent life in danger I won’t hesitate to shoot. If you kill her, you only guarantee it.”
“I don’t believe you.” A fistful of hair tightened. The woman gasped in passion. “If I kill her you lose your justification. I know how you are; you do not want the stain on your soul. It’s amazing what you can learn from your worshippers.”
“Can’t see the gun,” Dorian growled, sidestepping for a better angle.
“I’m going to kill this whore and make you watch. Then I’m going to pay a visit to that little whelp of yours, what’s his name”―his head tilted to the other side―“If he begs well enough I’ll make it quick. Better yet, I’ll make him kill you.”
Rage boiled in her gut; somehow, she found the strength to swallow it. “Now you’re the one who’s lying. You won’t dare go near him. You’re scared, Rene, scared out of your mind. You can’t go near the city proper because every police officer knows you’re a cop killer. You know what they do to cop killers don’t you, Rene? There won’t be enough left of you to fill a synthbeer can. I don’t want to kill you, Rene. I’m here to bring you in alive.”
The woman squirmed, craning herself up to kiss Rene on the neck as she touched herself. Kirsten tried not to watch. Rene seemed equally as disinterested at that moment.
“So why now? Why you? After all these years, they finally found someone stupid enough to follow me here?”
“It’s deliberate misinformation, Rene. We want people to think we avoid black zones. That way we know right where to look. Come on, Rene. We both know you can’t stand it here, either. You’re more miserable here in this filth than you would be in a holding facility.”
Kirsten still did not trust using a four-inch screen to put a blue dot over a two-inch section of forehead. Come on, come on, stand up a little more.
“I don’t think so. I’ve been in enough cop heads to know the truth. They’re all petrified of the real world. Their laws, their fake society, it’s all smoke and mirrors. Everything is politics. This is old world; this is how it used to be. The strong rule the weak. Why did you really come out here? Were you that dead pig’s side bitch? I thought he was bedding the nice little thing he had in the car. She was quite accommodating actually, gave me a ride, cooked me dinner, we had great sex… pity she doesn’t remember it.”
Dorian’s fury paled his face and darkened his eyes.
Rene jumped as a portable food reassembler to his right sparked and shut down. Two field lights went next.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Rene? He’s right in front of you.”
Kirsten swiveled around the corner. Dorian blocked her direct view, but did not appear in the digital targeting box.
The hostage moaned, reaching for Rene’s nether regions. Her other hand continued cupping her breast, noticing its reaction to the environment. “It’s cold in here, Rene, my love. Why don’t you warm me?”
A blaze of white vapor billowed around Dorian’s outline; he stepped closer, out of the astral realm and into reality. Whatever look he had on his face scared any trace of flesh tone out of Rene’s. The Frenchman jumped back, firing twice at Dorian. Two emerald laser streaks sizzled through the air, holing the wall just to Kirsten’s left. She yelped and dove, taking cover behind a marble-topped table that she knocked over forwards. One went high; the next disrupted Dorian’s left shoulder for a second. Without flinching, he leapt at Rene, emitting a primal growl of hatred. Kirsten shoved at the table, knocking it forward into a barricade. She popped up, trying to get a bead as Rene circled the bed in an effort to evade her partner.
A chance step on a piece of loose rug spared Rene from Kirsten’s first shot by dumping him on the floor. When he spun to face her, she ducked, breaking eye contact. His amber silhouette flaked in and out, bits of errant pixels. Two-inch-thick stone was too dense for the sensor to see through.
Dorian yelled. The sound gave Kirsten the mental image of him diving over the bed. She popped up, just as he landed on Rene and pulled him into a staggering step before phasing through. Dorian landed on his chest, looking out of breath. The wispy vapor faded. Rene looked around, unable to find him.
“What game is this?”
Kirsten ducked as Rene spun in her direction.
A thin line of spittle flew from Rene’s lip. “You. You’re in my head, making me see him.”
Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis Page 23