Harbinger

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Jeez, Tom,” muttered Kurosawa, hand on her chest. “Marsh’s ghost has been in this room for years and you still haven’t gotten used to it?”

  “I’m a he, thank you very much,” muttered Dorian.

  “I think she meant ‘it’ in terms of the situation of your being here,” said Kirsten.

  Montez snickered.

  “Yeah.” Kurosawa looked toward the empty desk. “That’s what I meant.”

  Kirsten keyed in a search for any murder victims cataloged during the past three months with similar injuries to Juan Miguel. The system came back with sixteen matches. She skimmed over each one, eliminating cases where the victim had been stabbed multiple times, found dead in their home, died over 300 miles away, or had been linked to a suspect taken into custody prior to Juan Miguel’s death.

  That left four additional victims, all of whom had been found within the past two weeks.

  The first, nineteen-year-old Lin Tran, didn’t show any obvious gang affiliation by his clothing in the file image, which came from his PID record. Cobalt blue hair didn’t strike her as having any significance in that regard either, though she did spend a few minutes checking other databases to see if it matched up with any street gang’s ‘dress code.’ It didn’t. He’d been found in similar circumstances to Juan Miguel. A naked corpse hidden in an alley under trash, dead to a single stab wound. He didn’t have facial bruising or any signs of damage from restraints, though his toxicology screen came back positive for a large dose of Sandman. She found no criminal record of any kind on him, though he also had little footprint in the system. Probably a fringer, living with as minimum a digital trail as possible.

  Victim three came up as a John Doe, an average-looking young man who could’ve been anywhere from eighteen to twenty. Identification would be impossible as the corpse had already been cremated, he’d been found naked, and didn’t exist at all in the system. Like the others, he’d suffered a solitary stab wound to the heart. John Doe had broken four fingers on his right hand and suffered two pages of documented bruises and broken bones.

  “Ouch. He didn’t go down without a fight,” said Dorian. “He might still be hanging around as a ghost.”

  The fourth victim, Diego Rojas, smirked at her from a booking image taken only eight days before his death. His record showed him as a member of the Angels, a mostly-Latin gang primarily involved in the manufacture and traffic of low-to-mid grade street chems. Aside from the drug trade, their war with the Fei Len (another gang) brought them to the notice of the police more than anything else. Rojas, as with the others, had also been found naked and stabbed once in the heart. His body turned up inside a dumpster that had been welded shut. Of the lot, he’d been placed as the oldest time of death, preceding Juan Miguel by three days.

  The last hit in the search, another John Doe, brought up a morgue image of a ghastly chalk-white face shaved bald. Two black letters, a D and a B in an angular script reminiscent of Greek lettering, marked his cheeks under each eye. The medical examiner noted the tattoo’s significance as the decedent belonging to the Dead Boyz gang.

  Kirsten groaned.

  “What?” asked Dorian.

  “Again with the z thing.” She gestured at the screen. “What the hell is the point of that?”

  Dorian shrugged. “I suppose it’s cool or intimidating.”

  “To who?”

  He chuckled.

  “What z thing?” asked Morelli.

  “Gangs are as bad as over-marketed products.” Kirsten thrust her arm into the holo-panel. “Scorpionz with a z. Dead Boyz with a z. Seriously, why do they do that?”

  Morelli, Kurosawa, and Montez all shrugged.

  “Well…” Dorian patted her on the shoulder. “That looks like a pattern to me. Want the good news or the bad news first?”

  She grimaced. “Good news.”

  “You’ve got more information to follow up on now.”

  “That’s the good news?” She glanced up at him. “More work? What’s the bad news?”

  He flicked a finger at her terminal, scrolling among the victims. “Five people all killed within a few days of each other under ritualistic overtones? There’s probably another demon out there.”

  “Ugh.” She flopped forward, her head striking the desk with a hollow, metallic thud. “Why does it have to be demons?”

  8

  The Opposite of Cool

  Walter grabbed the handrail and pulled himself to his feet, gasping in pain.

  “Sorry man,” muttered Evan, frowning at the ‘no signal’ message on his NetMini. He stuffed the useless thing back into his pocket, hoping Mom would notice he’d gone offline.

  The boy groaned, still unable to stand fully upright. “It’s okay. Not like you meant to. The lights were out.”

  “So, umm…” Shawn leaned out of the elevator, peering into the hallway. “Should we sit here and wait or do you really think that ghost is going to bring someone back to hurt us?”

  “There’s no monsters, dude.” Walter shook his head.

  Maela rubbed the back of her head where it had hit the floor.

  Shawn spun to face everyone. “I know that. I mean like people. Crazy people live down here. Heard they’re like cannibals sometimes, too.”

  “Or mutants.” Walter nodded. “Stuff the military tested and went wrong, so they set them loose down here.”

  “No such thing,” said Evan.

  “Yeah.” Walter let go of the railing, wobbling on his legs like a newborn foal. “Badlands has dog people. The corporations made them during the war. Remember history class?”

  “Cat ones too.” Evan grinned. “But, they can’t get inside the wall.”

  Maela paced, wiping at blood on her lip. “Great. I’m stranded babysitting a pack of nine-year-olds.”

  Shawn, almost as tall as her, gave her an up-and-down look. “You’re not in charge of us.”

  “I’m the oldest.” Maela held her chin high. “That means I’m in charge by default.”

  “I’m stronger than you.”

  Walter patted him on the arm with the back of his hand. “Dude. We’re not pirates. Ev said there’s a ghost who wants to hurt him and is probably going to bring bad stuff here. We should hide. Besides.” He pointed up. “This elevator is fried. It’ll take them weeks to fix it.”

  “Someone will notice it broke and send someone to check on it. There should be a hatch. Maybe we can climb up a ladder inside the shaft.” Maela stared at the ceiling for a little while before sighing. “Grr. I don’t see a hatch. Still, they’ll find us. We should wait here.” She scooted into the back corner, arms folded, gazing off to the side and down.

  “Still got some blood on your chin.” Walter pointed.

  Maela wiped it on her sleeve.

  “Is there anything out there?” asked Shawn.

  Evan peered into the dark plastisteel passage that looked like the guts of a long-abandoned starship. “Nope. Mom says there’s lots of ghosts down here, but they’re mostly nice.”

  Shawn grabbed his shoulder. “Stop talking about ghosts, ’kay?”

  “Sorry. It’s not scary. She was our age and lived down here for like two years, and all she had was wimpy Astral Sense.” Evan stuck out his tongue. “Walter’s got Telekinesis and we’re all telepathic, right?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “And you’re a Kinetic.” Evan poked Shawn in the arm. “You can make yourself as strong as a grown up.”

  “Yeah but not for long and I get tired fast.”

  “That’s why his dad threw him out,” said Walter. “Shawn kicked his ass.”

  The look on the big kid’s face gave off both pride and shame.

  “Sounds like you wanna go exploring or something.” Walter walked around in a circle, breathing funny.

  “Are you okay?” asked Maela.

  “I dunno. Feels like I took a Fusion Elbow to the nuts.”

  Evan grimaced. “You kinda did. But by accident.”

  “What th
e crap is a fusion elbow?” Maela blinked.

  “Gee-ball move.” Shawn pantomimed leaping into the air to drop an elbow strike on someone lying on the ground.

  “Someone kicked me in the face,” said Shawn.

  “That might’ve been me.” Maela offered a sheepish look. “But you crushed me flat.”

  “Guys.” Evan pointed out the door. “The ghost might have been trying to scare us, or maybe he really is going to bring someone or something back here that’ll hurt us.”

  Maela put her hand on the panel and concentrated again. “No! The connection’s dead. I think the crash cut a wire or something. I can’t call for help.”

  Shawn climbed up out of the elevator to the floor outside, which crossed the doorway about waist-height to him at a sharp angle. “The elevator is jammed. Look how far it tilted. C’mon. Little Man’s right. I don’t wanna sit here and wait for some crazy person to find us when we’re trapped in a box.”

  “But they’re gonna come looking for us and we won’t be here.” Maela stomped. “Mr. Short is already wondering where we are.”

  “Sure he is.” Shawn rolled his eyes. “He’s playing a game and has no idea how much time is passing.”

  Maela bit her lip in doubt.

  Walter looked up. “If anyone noticed us fall, someone would’ve been shouting into the elevator shaft already.”

  “Okay. Fine.” Maela looked at Evan. “What do you think we should do?”

  “My mom was down here a long time and she was okay, and she went all the way to the real ground. We shouldn’t do that. Just move away from the elevator and find a hiding place so if someone bad does come looking for us, they won’t find us. There’s hatches to the surface, too, but they’re locked with codes. You might be able to open one.”

  “Okay.” Maela climbed out of the elevator. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Evan grinned, spun on his heel, and marched down the corridor to a submarine style door with a wheel in the middle. He grabbed and turned, but it wouldn’t budge. Shawn and Maela walked up behind him, Walter limping along at the rear. Shawn grasped the wheel, stared at it intently for a few seconds, then turned it to the left.

  “Wow. Nice.” Evan grinned.

  Shawn slouched. “I guess.”

  “You don’t like being strong?” asked Maela.

  The ‘world’s biggest nine-year-old’ stepped past the door, shaking his head. “It’s not that… I almost killed my dad.”

  “Oh.” She looked down.

  “He was hitting my mother and wouldn’t stop, so I got mad and punched him. Broke his jaw. Almost broke his neck.” Anger swirled around Shawn, though he also seemed close to tears. “They were both scared of me after that. Gave me away to the cops.”

  “Parents suck,” muttered Maela. “Mine kicked me out, too.”

  “My other mom is a junkie. She had a boyfriend who hit me all the time. I used to go astral so I didn’t have to feel him hitting me.” Evan stuffed his hands in his pockets and trudged forward past the door into another hallway going left to right. At the silence, he glanced back to find Shawn and Maela peering expectantly at Walter.

  “Umm, mine died. I don’t remember anything about it really. Happened a long time ago. One of them did something and the company they worked for sent assassins. The killer left me alone ’cause I was only like three. Cops sent me to the dorms when they saw me making toys float or something. I don’t remember any of it, or my parents. Feels like I’ve always been at the dorm.”

  Eyes closed, Evan forced all thoughts of Mick or his bad mom out of his head, focusing on his real mom, Monwyn stuff, and even Sam. He didn’t want to say anything about that though, since the others might become sad.

  “Look for something that opens.” Shawn pointed at the ceiling, full of old pipes, support struts, and wire bundles. Large swaths of plastisteel had been stained green from decades of dripping chemicals.

  “Which way?” asked Maela. “Everything looks the same.”

  “Umm.” Evan kept glancing back and forth.

  Shawn poked him in the back. “Ev’s a precog. Which way?”

  “I’m not that much of a precog. Sometimes I just feel scared when something’s going to hurt my mom.”

  “The junkie?” asked Maela.

  “No, real mom, not the one who had me as a baby.” Neither direction gave off any more or less sense of good idea, so he randomly chose left. “Let’s go this way.”

  They followed his lead, eight sneakers clanking on metal grating. The noise echoed for what felt like miles into a maze of passageways. Here and there, flashing yellow lights on the ceiling jutted out from boxes with ‘dangerous voltage’ warnings. Other cabinets appeared to hold data conduits full of shimmering blue fiber bundles.

  Except for things labeled as dangerous, they pulled and tugged on any rectangular panel that resembled a door or hatch cover, looking for a hiding place. Evan kept his eyes high more than on the walls, hoping to spot one of the ladders Mom described that would lead to the surface. She’d said they had code-locked hatches, but that didn’t bother him. The worst they’d do is summon the police for tampering, and that would be even better than Maela opening them. Having the police pull them out of the plate beat wandering the city alone.

  A pipe about as big around as his forearm leaked a spray of water up ahead, creating a small area full of rain. Evan grinned and ran through it, the others following. The passage eventually ended at another T junction. To the right, several more leaky water pipes made the corridor look like a car wash. Left appeared dry, but a soft electronic buzz came from that direction.

  Evan glanced back and forth, this time sensing a mild pull to the right. “We should go that way.”

  “Oh, man. Really? It’s soaked.” Shawn took a step toward the left.

  “I don’t want to get drenched. Let’s go left,” said Maela.

  “Guys, if a precog says go right, you go right.” Walter took two steps toward the wet passage.

  Maela whined. “How bad is it? Is someone gonna die?”

  Evan again looked to the left and thought about going that way. A quiver of nervousness simmered along the underside of his stomach, but nowhere near as bad as any of the times his mother wound up in danger. “Umm. I don’t think so, but something bad’s probably going to happen.”

  “Okay, no death, I say we stay dry.” Maela hurried off to the left.

  Shawn followed with Walter behind him, no longer limping. Still nervous, Evan dragged his feet, trailing behind the other three. They kept checking panels, exposing valves or circuitry, but finding no place big enough for them to crawl into.

  The floor collapsed with a jangling screech of failing metal, calving into a ramp dangling on gradually bending pipes.

  Shawn, near the bottom end of the falling section, dropped straight. Walter spilled forward onto his chest and slid face-first down the incline, stopping with his shoes a few inches away from the break. Maela, near the front end of the collapse, jumped forward. She landed half on solid ground at the forward side of the hole, armpit deep in the floor. Only her fingers laced in the metal grid kept her from falling.

  She showed the boys what a ‘real’ scream sounded like.

  Evan, still on stable ground, jumped forward, grabbing Walter’s ankles while hooking his leg around a vertical pipe by the wall. Shawn wound up dangling off the end of the metal slab, his legs waving out in midair above a long drop. Several feet separated him from Walter’s hands.

  “Ahh!” screamed Shawn. “Shit! It’s gonna break!”

  Walter glanced back at Evan for a split second, then thrust an arm toward Shawn, who, seconds later, let out a yowl.

  “Hey,” shouted Shawn. “Not the best time for a TK wedgie.”

  Grunting, Walter made a series of faces. Shawn’s clothing compressed in response to invisible telekinetic force.

  The dangling section of floor creaked and slipped another few inches. Maela pulled herself up on the other side, clawing at t
he grating while her sneakers mostly slipped on it.

  Shawn slid up toward them as if pulled by a magnet. He, too, stuck his fingers in the grating, pulling himself along until he grabbed hold of Walter. Seconds after he climbed over the boy to unbroken floor, the slab broke away and fell, leaving Walter suspended upside down by Evan’s grip on his legs, which started to fail.

  “Shawn, help,” rasped Evan. “My fingers are slipping.”

  Walter flailed, trying to bend backward and grab onto something, but couldn’t fold himself in half.

  “Hang on, Walt!” Shawn scrambled around and grabbed the boy’s right leg.

  Evan shifted his grip, clamping both hands on Walter’s left ankle. Together, they hauled him up—though Shawn did most of the lifting. Walt hugged them together, shaking like a terrified chihuahua.

  “I’m sorry.” Maela, twenty feet away on the other side of the hole, bowed her head. “We should’ve listened to Evan.”

  “What the hell, man?” Shawn grabbed a fistful of Evan’s shirt and pulled him close. “You said no one was gonna die.”

  Evan shrugged. “No one did.”

  Shawn blinked.

  “It’s not like watching a movie. If you were gonna fall and die, I probably would’ve freaked out like I did in class.”

  “Wouldn’t that mean you love Shawn like you love your mom?” Walter grinned.

  Shawn released Evan’s shirt and grabbed Walter’s.

  “Okay, I probably wouldn’t have freaked out that bad. But I would’ve demanded we go the other way.”

  “Whoa,” whispered Maela. “It’s a bottomless pit.”

  The boys all looked.

  She stood close to the break, peering down, her chin-length black hair fluttering. A weak, but steady breeze invaded the space courtesy of the new hole, carrying a stink of chemicals mixed with something like sour raspberries and dead fish.

  Evan crawled close enough to peek as well, staring down at the collapsing roofs of houses abandoned for centuries. A few light sources, places where color filled in over the sepia-toned world of Darksight moved around. “It’s not bottomless, just dark.”