Division Zero

by Matthew S. Cox

  “And?” She shoved him back into the chair.

  Hollow crackling accompanied his deep breath. “No one with the employees, no one in the VR room, and one guy is in the sexbot wing, but it damn sure ain’t the pretty boy you’re lookin’ for.” He brought up an ID photo of a long haired man who, like the clerk, looked like he had been on the wrong end of a narcotic inhaler for many years.

  Kirsten glanced at the doll door. So quiet… Am I too late?

  “Which room?”

  He propped himself into the chair, coughing. “Three.”

  E90 in hand, she ran to the door. Sex echoed from the other side. Nothing sounded alarming, but so far these dolls had all been fine until they freaked without warning.

  I’m not too late!

  Kirsten booted the door and swept her aim across the room over a scrawny man in his later forties in flagrante upon a female love doll. Kirsten got more of a view of him than she cared to as his scraggly black and grey hair thrashed around with his undulations and groans. So involved in his task, the man did not notice her storm in.

  An unusual feeling in the air drew her to a small closet left of the bed. The door, open a crack, revealed the faint outline of a person beneath a bevy of stripper clothing. A sense of psionic energy wafted away from the silhouette. Dorian lifted an eyebrow at the closet.

  She flung the door open. Adrian sat on the floor, gazing into nowhere. His face contorted like an active participant in what went on behind her, his body rocked with sporadic trembles. Kirsten jabbed him in the side of the head with her stunrod.

  Adrian gurgled and convulsed, falling out of the closet face-first into the rug. Sparks came out of his mouth and walked like glowing spider legs over his cheek. As he flopped about, the doll lapsed into a fit of convulsing limbs. The man let out an awful wailing howl. By the time Kirsten turned to look at him, he had fallen out of her field of view. Wounded moaning floated over from the far side of the bed.

  Dorian cringed away from him. “That’s not right.”

  The doll continued to thrash around and shudder for a few seconds before undulating twice and sitting back up into a neutral ready position. It beeped as though it had just rebooted.

  Kirsten glared at Adrian with a twinge of remembered pain flaring in her nose. She drew back the metal rod and sized him up for some payback. As her arm tensed, her mind filled with Daniel’s worried eyes. Kirsten lowered her weapon, and slammed it back into the retaining ring on her belt with a guilty scowl.

  Dorian smiled.

  She dragged Adrian into the room and secured his arms behind him. From another case on her belt, she produced a thin metal headband and put it on him. A series of blinking LED’s flickered around the ring as the psi inhibitor came online. Confident she had secured him, she ran around the bed to check on the man.

  He curled in a ball with both hands clamped over his crotch, moaning as blood leaked through his fingers.

  “Are you hurt, do you need a medic?”

  “Constriction…”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Kirsten dosed him with a stimpak and covered him with a sheet from the bed.

  “Command, this is Agent Wren. I need a MedVan and a suspect transport to my location.”

  A nondescript voice came back. “Copy, Agent.”

  irsten’s boots squeaked over the shiny floor as she walked in circles around the steel table. Adrian Lewis sat in a chair with his wrists locked together through a bolt between his knees. The lights orbiting the circumference of the headband blinked in rapid flurries, each cycle accompanied by a pained grimace. Saturated by pale fluorescent light, all color felt muted and overshadowed by the oppressive grey room.

  Dark spots speckled the bright orange leg of Adrian’s jumpsuit from the sweat that fell drop by drop from the tip of his nose. He swooned as if intoxicated, trying to follow her walk.

  “Voices, get out of my head.” A rope of saliva descended to the floor between his feet.

  “There are no voices. The psi inhibitor is sending pulses into your mind, flooding you with random sensory stimuli to prevent you from concentrating enough to use your abilities. Please cooperate with me. Leaving an inhibitor on a person for more than a day or two at a time can cause insanity.”

  Adrian looked up with an imploring glare. “You… I remember you. Sorry about hitting you, I thought you were coming to make me disappear.”

  She continued orbiting with her hands clasped behind her. “I’m over it. I want to know why you are making dolls kill people.”

  “What?” His eyes cleared as his emotion pierced the headband. “I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Would you like to review the holo from the Lyceum Hotel? We have a vid of you forcing a doll to kill one of the staff.”

  “It’s not true.” He sounded near to crying. “I was trying to stop it.”

  “Trying to stop it.” She tilted her head and folded her hands behind her. “Seems like that would be the first excuse out of the gate.”

  Kirsten stopped across the table right in front of him, just below a light that made her hair flare white.

  “It’s true.” His head sagged.

  “You’ve been a busy boy, Adrian. Six attacks in total, three people dead. At least tell me why you chose them, or those dolls. First one was a sex doll too, going in a circle are we?”

  “I didn’t.” A metallic clank rang out as he tried to lift his hands. “You have to believe me. You’re one of them… read my mind!”

  “It’s not that easy. Without the imminence of a dangerous act we need warrants to go spelunking around the brain.” She sighed. “Besides, I’m only a grade two telepath. I can’t really dig deep into past memory; just what you’re thinking right this moment.”

  He sneered. “Since when have the police cared about civil liberties?”

  “We’re a little different than patrol cops. We have a bit of a public relations effort underway. We have to play nice so the torches and pitchforks don’t come out.” She tried to smile at him but he was not buying it.

  “You’re sellouts.” His half-open eyes showered her with contempt.

  “Sellouts?”

  “To the government.” He studied the floor. “You people tried to steal me from my home when I was little. My parents saw through your lies and kept me safe. You just wanna control anyone with the gift.”

  “Adrian…” She sank into the chair facing him, whispering as she leaned an arm toward him across the table. “No one wanted to take you away from your parents. The government just asks us to make note of people with talents like yours. They offer to help you learn how to use your power, but no one is taken away against their will.”

  He twisted to avoid eye contact. “Bullshit. That’s what you say, but in the end you kidnap kids and lock them up somewhere.”

  “Who told you that?” Her fingers touched her chin. “Your parents?”

  His lack of response gave as good an answer as words.

  “Look, we don’t take kids away from parents who want them. The kids that live in the dorm got abandoned by pathetic people who thought they were monsters…” She lost the ability to look at him. “You’re lucky to have parents who accept you for what you are.”

  The sadness in her voice made him look up. He cringed through the hail of random noise pumped into his brain. “Why should I believe you?”

  Kirsten held her right hand to her chest, tracing her fingers over the back as she looked down. “I was one of the monsters.”

  Dorian emerged from a shadowed corner and moved to her side, a look of concern on his face. She flashed a quick smile of thanks at his reassuring presence.

  After two breaths, she found her confidence. “You should form your own opinion based on what you see, not what I tell you or what your parents told you. The government requires we catalog psionics, not take them and lock them all up. I will admit that Division 0 does try and recruit them, but it’s not compulsory.”

  “Don’t you think
it’s a violation of our rights? What about privacy?”

  Kirsten paced. “Maybe, on some level I guess it is. People wiser than I have decided it’s for the greater good we know where the psionics are. We can be dangerous. Spies, assassins, criminals… our talents give us unique advantages. We like to think of it in the same way as having a license for a weapon. Owning the gun doesn’t make you a dangerous person, but if you shoot someone with it the police need to be able to trace it.”

  He shrugged. “My parents did what they thought was best for me.”

  “You had loving parents. That makes up for a lot of things, even if they did fill your mind with conspiracy theories.” She flashed a wry grin.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess they went a little over the top.”

  “How are they now?”

  Adrian exhaled and sank into the chair. “They’re okay. They’re still down there. I came up a couple of months ago; I had to think. They don’t know me.”

  “What about?”

  He locked on her with a sad stare. “It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand… you’re already perfect.”

  “Perfect?” She scoffed. “Hardly.”

  Grimacing under the oppressive load on his brain, Adrian gasped. Once he could collect his thoughts, he opened his eyes and looked right into hers. “You couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to be trapped in someone else’s body.”

  Kirsten’s glare softened. “You identify as a female?”

  He looked up, mouth open. “Are you in my head?”

  She shook her head. “No, the inhibitor blocks it in both directions. I met Daniel, and I took a guess based on what you’ve already said and your visit to the body shop.”

  He cried at the mention of the name. “I wanted to go to Reinventions. They can fix it so no one could ever tell I was born wrong. They change your DNA; it would be just like I was always me. Cheap, too… they’ll do it for ten million.”

  “That’s very expensive, Adrian.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It would take a lot of cred stick pumping.”

  He made a face. “So what? It’s not like I’m stealing from anyone. I’m pulling credits out of thin air, who does it hurt? The clinic keeps the balance, I’m not hacking them or anything.”

  Kirsten folded her arms over her chest. “You know it is a psionic crime, though to be honest we’d have a bitch of a time proving it to an inquest.”

  He squinted. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it means we’d have to resolve it ourselves. Exactly how we do that is up to you. What can you tell me about the doll in the gel parlor? Why were you going to kill that man?”

  “You’re wrong.” He looked down and cried. “I…” A blush spread over his face.

  She changed her voice to a comforting tone. “It’s okay, tell me. I won’t judge you.”

  “I will.” Dorian chuckled, to a belabored sigh from Kirsten.

  “It’s a big change. I am sure it’s what I want, but because of Daniel I have to be absolutely a hundred and fifty percent positive. I have been trying to link my consciousness to dolls to experience life as a woman and, umm, that man walked in and, well…”

  Kirsten shifted. Okay, that was a little stranger than I expected.

  Dorian laughed. Kirsten had a feeling he found it amusing a man knew what it felt like as a woman and she did not. She had shared many things with Dorian, more than anyone else, but she never told him about her first time. She lived in The Beneath then; hiding under the city in the dark with the rest of the people society no longer had any use for. Down there, one did what one had to do in order to eat. She would keep that particular shame private to the grave. For now, he could keep his little smile; she sat on her hands to stop from slapping it off his face.

  “I can’t control them.” Adrian pleaded. “All I do is tap their sensory receptors. It took a lot of practice to get even that much. I can’t imagine how I could possibly control one.”

  “Maybe they just reacted badly to psionics? You know, if it was just an accident and the dolls went crazy as a result, we could talk reckless endangerment instead of murder.”

  “No. I didn’t hurt anyone. I saw the hotel doll starting to act wonky and I tried to fix it. I thought it was just a mechanical problem but something else was there… something cold, and so very angry.” Adrian shivered.

  Kirsten watched as he heaved into sobs. “Daniel says you’ve been depressed, he’s very worried you may be suicidal. If you are feeling guilty about the people you hurt…”

  “Stop trying to say I killed people.” He turned his head away from her. “That’s not it at all.” The energy fell out of his voice. “I can’t stand this body. I am not a boy! I came to the surface to fix the mistake I’ve been living for twenty years. Then I met Daniel.” He curled forward. “I’m afraid he’ll leave me.”

  Dorian rubbed his chin. “He’s got a point. I don’t think Daniel’s at all interested in that.”

  Kirsten leaned toward the crying man. “Adrian, when this is all over, you should be honest with him. I think he will understand.”

  Adrian looked up, calmed by her sincerity. “What we have is more than a physical relationship. If he was just a bed buddy, it wouldn’t tear me up like this. I don’t want to lose him.”

  Dorian grimaced and paced at the thought.

  “That is something for you two to work out. You have to be true to yourself before you can be true to anyone else.”

  “You’re right.” He sniffled back his tears. “If he really loves me he should understand. I can’t build a life on top of a lie.”

  “Good, now that lying is out of the way maybe he can share the details about the attacks?” Dorian extended his hand at Adrian.

  A sharp tapping at the glass drew their attention to the one-way mirror dominating the rear wall.

  I need to speak to you, right away. Captain Eze’s voice echoed in her thoughts.

  “I’ll be right back. Do you want anything? Coffee, drink, food?”

  Adrian shook his head and slouched. Eze waited outside with a cryptic look. As the door closed, he grinned.

  “I think you may have found the most powerful mechanical aptitude psionic ever to live.” He commended her with a nod.

  Her eyebrows formed a single flat line of distrust. “What do you mean, sir?”

  “It seems your friend in there has managed to strike again. There’s been another death. Sitting in here in cuffs, with a psi inhibitor on, he’s managed to take over another doll forty miles away and help someone catch a train.”

  Dorian grimaced. “Oh, this is going to be messy.”

  Kirsten fell against the wall and exhaled. “It can’t be him.”

  Captain Eze patted her on the shoulder. “You seem almost relieved.”

  “I just feel bad for the guy.” She offered a discomfited shrug.

  “Well, unless you got him on something else… cut him loose. Just get him registered.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kirsten went back into the interrogation room as Eze left. Adrian moaned as she walked right up to him, blinking in disbelief as she let him out of the wrist binders.

  “Adrian, I’m sorry. There’s been a misunderstanding. We just became aware of evidence proving someone else is responsible for the dolls going nuts.”

  He trembled, speechless.

  “Here, hold still while I get that damn thing off your head. But if you zap me again, so help me”―she patted the stunrod―“I’ll teach myself how to play drums on your face…”

  A thin layer of sweat on the metal made the inhibitor difficult to open. She fiddled with it, recounting as she worked about how they made her wear one for a few hours during training. She had to run a combat course with it on to understand how it felt. At last, she got a fingernail in the catch and popped it open before peeling it away from him.

  He collapsed into the chair, rubbing the dark red line around his head. “The silence hurts.”

  “The pain will sto
p in a minute or two.” Folding it, she put it and the binders back in their respective belt cases. “We will need to create a profile record for you, but afterwards you’re free to go. I won’t be filing formal charges at this time in regards to the credstick thing.”

  “You’re not?” both he and Dorian asked simultaneously.

  “The credstick issue is difficult to prove to satisfaction during an inquest. It would take me so long to collect enough evidence to charge you that you could… you know, probably finish paying for the procedure before I caught up to you.”

  He stared as if he could not believe what he heard her suggest. Dorian had a similar look on his face. She put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him and he hugged her.

  “Of course, your apartment is gone. Mr. Chen has confiscated everything in it unless you actually pay him rent.”

  “He can keep the shit. There’s more creds worth of electronics in there than I owe him.”

  “Now, once you get sorted out who you are, promise me you won’t abuse your talents. If you ever need any help, Division 0 is not your enemy. They protect us from the world.” She looked at the floor. “I might not be alive if they hadn’t found me.”

  He nodded. “What now?”

  “I’ll have someone from Admin come by to take your information. There’s a series of quick tests and evaluations so we can measure the scope and intensity of your abilities. Then you’re free to go. Of course, you are welcome to join us if you like and can pass the psych eval. I’ll call Daniel for you; he’ll be waiting by the time you’re done. All in all it will probably take a bit over two hours.” She took a step to the door. “I’m sure the two of you will make the right decision.”

  With Adrian on his way to the Admin section, Kirsten ran to the garage with Dorian trailing behind. Library quiet permeated the car for the first few minutes of the drive to the Maglev station, until Dorian broke it.

  “So you’re just going to let him steal?”

  She flicked her thumbnail on the control stick. “It’s not like he’s taking the money away from someone.”