Harbinger

by Matthew S. Cox

  Kirsten crept past a disintegrating doorway, her boots crunching on broken bits of wall and ceiling panels. Soft whimpering and the rattle of chains triggered a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Concern kicked her fear aside. She rushed toward the sound, following the corridor around a corner to the left where it opened into a former room. Ten stories of smashed floor overhead let daylight in, as well as trickles of water, making the area more of a courtyard with enormous walls than the ground level of a building.

  Three men in black biker coats emblazoned with red pentagrams on the back sat around in dingy recliners at the center of the ruined space. Six cubbies the size of large closets lined the left side of the room under a section of intact second-story floor. The addition of chain link fencing turned the spaces into holding cells. A mix of nude women and men occupied the cells in varying degrees of restraint. Some had been chained to the wall like prisoners in a medieval dungeon, some curled up on the floor. Dirt and dried blood smeared all of them.

  Kate eyed the prisoners. “I think I know why your captain asked me to help out here. These fuckers need to be purged from the Earth.”

  The three Diablos finally noticed them standing there and rose to their feet, grinning.

  “We’re not here to exterminate,” said Kirsten.

  Dorian walked toward the gangers. “They’re Diablos. They will kill you on sight for being cops without any hesitation. You said yourself they don’t surrender.”

  Kirsten pointed her E-90 at the gang thugs. “I know. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” She raised her voice. “Who killed Juan Miguel Esparza, and who’s playing around with ritual mysticism?”

  “Yo, was that shit laced with zoom, or am I seeing cops here?” asked the guy in the middle, laughing.

  “No, I see cops too,” said the guy on the left.

  “The fuck are cops doing here?” The man on the right made a rude hand motion at Kate, licking his fingers.

  “Committin’ suicide.” The man on the left raised a large submachine gun in Kirsten’s direction.

  She started to skim their surface thoughts for any answers, but picked up only a mixture of ‘cops, kill them’ and the strong urge to rip Kate’s uniform off her. The man on the right charged at the redhead with intent to grab. The middle guy drew two handguns.

  Kirsten shot the man with the submachine gun dead center in the chest. His coat ignited front and back around the laser. A blue fireball the size of a grapefruit flew by on the right, striking the Diablo rushing at Kate in the face. Skin vaporized; his eyes exploded in foamy sprays as a three-second burn cored a hollow out of his skull, leaving a charred bowl-shaped crater with exposed, scorched brain.

  The ghastly sight stalled Kirsten in her tracks, staring dumbfounded at the corpse. Kate hurled another fireball into the center man simultaneously with him firing both pistols at Kirsten. Fortunately, his quick-draw routine killed his accuracy, and both shots hit the wall somewhere above and behind her. He grabbed at his chest where the flaming sphere hit, his scream of agony drawn in the air by the smoke coming from his lips. His ghost staggered backward away from the still-standing body, which fell two seconds later.

  She blinked at Kate.

  The Harbinger glided forward, raking its shadowy claws at three surprised ghosts, shredding them into strips of ethereal matter. Kirsten winced at the energy spike from three mild obliterations, not sure what to make of watching one of those beings destroy spirits rather than escort them to the Abyss.

  It’s either pissed or trapped here and can’t do its job.

  “Fuck yeah,” shouted a woman with pink hair in a pixie cut from one of the cells, jumping to the end of a leash. “Kill them all.”

  Kirsten glanced at her long enough to realize the woman wore only a collar, handcuffs connected to said collar, and some random objects stuffed places they did not belong, then turned away, blushing, mortified, and furious. “Captain, are you seeing this?”

  “Unfortunately…”

  “Does Pemberley’s A3HV have enough room for…” Kirsten forced herself to look at the cells again. “Nine people?”

  Two young men and a woman about Kirsten’s age remained on the floor in fetal positions, not reacting at all to what happened. Most of the prisoners bled from numerous minor injuries, small cuts, whip marks, and nails stabbed into their skin.

  Kate grabbed a padlock securing one of the pens in her bare hand, the glowing steel melting as if she crushed raw dough between her fingers.

  “Negative, lieutenant,” said Pemberley in her earbud. “We’re full up.”

  “Get them out of there and fall back to where you landed. Pemberley, move your team in to secure that area as an LZ. Another A3HV will be en route within two minutes for civilian transport.”

  “Copy, captain,” said Pemberley.

  Kirsten shot out a few padlocks, pulling the chain link gates open. She cringed at the overwhelming stink of feces and urine coating the floor as well as the captives. Her uti knife dealt with the cords and other restraints easily. The pink-haired woman hastily rid herself of unwanted objects, then ran out into the room and began kicking the dead Diablos over and over again. She grabbed a handgun off one and emptied the magazine into the corpses.

  Those who retained enough sanity to process that they’d been rescued showered her with thanks, and an equal amount of disbelief that the police had bothered looking for them. Kirsten didn’t mention they’d been discovered purely by accident, and helped escort them out to the intersection about a quarter mile from the building. One man, both his legs broken, screamed the entire way as two fellow captives carry-dragged him along, despite having four stimpaks pumped into him.

  Twelve officers in PSI armor greeted them, standing in a defensive formation around an armored black hover van. Pemberley turned out to be a wiry man she thought too skinny for Tactical—or his deep voice—but he may well have been a kinetic. Size didn’t necessarily correlate to strength for some psionics.

  After getting all the abductees to relative safety, Kirsten followed the Harbinger back to the building where they had been beaten, tortured, starved, raped, and who knows what else for weeks.

  “How can people be so cruel to other human beings… it’s worse than anything true demons would do to us.” She stared at the Diablo with the melted face.

  The Harbinger tilted its wispy hand side-to-side.

  “It’s worse because they’re human, too.” Kirsten shook her head.

  “That’s debatable. That they’re human, I mean.” Kate shuddered, stepping around a few discarded bits of narrow pipe that had previously been inside people, and not only via natural body cavities.

  Kirsten felt sick at the thought, but perhaps the members of this particular gang did deserve to be removed from existence. Though… she’d still wait for them to attempt to kill her first. On the off chance one of them did surrender, she’d hold her fire. But, she also wouldn’t allow herself to feel much guilt over defending herself—especially from subhuman monsters like this.

  The Harbinger drifted deeper into the building, down a hall past a crumbled cube farm. Nine bodies in various states of decay hung from hooks along the left wall, some still wearing jackets or shirts with logos from different gangs.

  “It’s a damn trophy room,” muttered Kate.

  I’m going to wind up on Dr. Loring’s couch after this is over. Kirsten swallowed bile. “Yeah.”

  At the far end of the room, the Harbinger squeezed its billowy form through a doorway into a short hallway that ended where the outer wall of the building on that side—all ten stories of it—had collapsed into a field of rubble and giant plasticrete chunks. An improvised ramp of metal grating led from the edge of the concrete slab floor to the ground.

  Kirsten hurried down, taking cover behind the nearest mound. The Harbinger drifted in a straight line, ignoring the physical barriers while she ran from spot to spot, pausing each time to look around for threats before dashing to the next hiding place.r />
  They covered a little more than a city block’s distance before the Harbinger stopped and sank low, merely eye level with her. It pointed past a tall slab of broken thermacrete sticking up from the ground like a giant square shuriken. Metal housings attached to it suggested it had been a piece of roof before falling with enough force to punch a hole in the metal ground, sticking into the city plate like a giant, square shuriken.

  The din of numerous voices came from the other side. Her helmet attempted to create amber ghosts on the electronic display to show the position of people, but it couldn’t quite manage it, either due to signal interference or too many targets too close together.

  Sensing the Harbinger’s reluctance to go any farther, Kirsten nodded. “The people who did the ritual are there?”

  It held up one finger.

  “One person?”

  “You know…” Kate looked around. “It’s kind of disturbing to hear you carrying on conversations with thin air… and getting answers.”

  “Look into my head if you want to see what I’m seeing.” She turned back to the Harbinger. “Which one is it?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll know.” Dorian pulled his head back out from the slab. “He’s kind of obvious.”

  “What’s out there?” asked Kirsten. Kate started to lean around the wall to peek, but she grabbed her shoulder. “I’m talking to Dorian. He can look without being seen.”

  “Around thirty gang members. The area’s set up like an open air auditorium. Bench seats all facing a throne. There are a handful more kidnap victims, one right by the throne.”

  Kirsten relayed the description.

  “Damn. So much for going nova,” whispered Kate.

  “What?” asked Kirsten. “Nova?”

  Kate shrugged. “Forget it. I can’t exactly do that when I want to anyway.”

  “Looks like everyone is armed except for the guy in the funny hat.” Dorian stuck his head into the wall again. “If he’s got a weapon, he’s sitting on it.”

  Funny hat? Kirsten crept to the edge of the wall and leaned enough so the camera dots on the right side of the helmet could see past it. A thick layer of pulverized concrete made the landscape beyond the wall appear more like the surface of the Moon. The Diablos had set up a sort of amphitheater at the base of a shallow crater roughly a hundred meters on each side. Unless the city plate had been dented down, the rubble forming the bowl-shaped depression had to be quite deep.

  As Dorian described, nine rows of long bench seats made of rubble formed a semicircle around a dais of concrete slab. Crude rebar candlesticks held up black candles, six per side of the throne, though none were lit. Men and women in Diablos colors lounged around. Some occupied themselves with NetMinis, others cleaned guns or sharpened blades, one or two molested captives. She counted five innocents: two women and two men among the ‘congregation’ and one woman by the throne. It wouldn’t be difficult to identify the civilians in the midst of a firefight as none had any clothes.

  A man in black robes occupied the throne, his face painted white and black to resemble a skull. He wore a tall black and white hat somewhat shaped like a spearhead as well as a long stole of dark red fabric around his neck, covered in black pictogram writing. Kirsten had seen a similar hat years ago in a picture Mother had on the wall, only red and gold. She remembered the awful woman saying something about him being named Bishop, and he worked for another guy named Pope. It angered Mother that most of the people in the UCF didn’t believe in her fairy tale, and she routinely threatened to pick up and move to Italy where belief still held strong. Of course, no one in their right mind would ever move to the ACC. But… Mother had definitely not been in her right mind.

  This ‘black bishop’ certainly seemed to be trying to parody that whole look though.

  Kirsten narrowed her eyes. That Pope guy her mother so adored condoned abusing a small girl for having psionic gifts the woman didn’t understand. Ghosts seeking help, trying to send warnings to protect their living families couldn’t have been the work of any sort of devil. If this robe-wearing Diablo wanted to be the reverse of that Pope guy, he should’ve been a nice, sweet man.

  However, after meeting Father Villera, Kirsten had to wonder if Mother had simply been thoroughly insane. Perhaps Pope was completely different from what she’d thought. That priest had been horrified to hear what her mother had done to her. Maybe Pope would, too? Not that she ever cared to ask him—she’d never go to the ACC. They shot psionics on sight there. Another reason Mother probably wanted to go. Of course, the Allied Corporate Council didn’t hate psionics over theoretical supreme beings—they feared people they couldn’t keep secrets from.

  Motion beside the throne drew Kirsten’s attention to a slim dark-haired woman with light brown skin and hollow, empty eye sockets. Trails of dried blood ran like tears down her cheeks. She knelt beside the black bishop, her only clothing a spiked black collar and thick chain connected to the ground between her knees not long enough to allow her to stand, or even fully sit up. Except for her missing eyes, she didn’t have other visible injuries. Kirsten cringed in sympathetic pain, certain the Diablos hadn’t been gentle when they did that to her.

  The woman’s surface thoughts contained a simple repetition of ‘please kill me.’

  Kirsten fought hard not to throw up. She shifted her attention to the bishop, who seemed rather angry. His thoughts centered mostly on confused as to why several people hadn’t yet died while he feverishly read over pages of incomprehensible scribblings trying to understand where his ritual went wrong. He believed the demon he’d summoned refused to obey commands or return due to an error he’d made. She poked deeper into his consciousness. The man didn’t appear to have any real understanding of the differences between Harbingers, abyssals, and They Who Always Were, lumping them all together into ‘demon.’

  He had no visible weapons, though the rest of the Diablos carried a veritable arsenal of small arms, up to and including swords, axes, and a cybernetic limb or two.

  Kirsten moved away from the edge, rolling to put her back to the wall. “Okay, this is going to be a pain in the ass.”

  “Nah,” said Kate. “I got it. Just keep an eye out for someone trying to get me from a blind angle.”

  Before Kirsten could say another word, Kate stepped out into view, brazen as anything.

  “Police,” called Kate. “You’re all under arrest for… umm.” She scratched her head. “Illegal demon summoning.”

  Dorian cracked up.

  Kirsten gasped and spun to aim her E-90 around the end of the wall.

  Mostly, the Diablos laughed. The Black Bishop quirked an eyebrow, his face a mask of utter disbelief.

  The laughter continued for a few seconds until the crack of a gunshot rang out.

  A splash of molten lead sprayed off Kate’s left shoulder, her body rocking back as if she’d been punched.

  “Oh, that wasn’t very nice.” Her mood darkened, and she stepped forward. “You boys have a fetish for hell?” Dark red flames erupted from thin air, shrouding Kate in a column of burning before drifting upward into the general shape of wings. A head-sized blue fireball appeared in each of her outstretched hands. “Well… I brought the fire.”

  Both fireballs zipped forward, each striking a different Diablo. One’s head vaporized entirely to a smoldering neck stump. The other caught it in the chest and fell without even screaming.

  The Black Bishop jumped to his feet, pointing at Kate and screaming in some weird language.

  She didn’t seem impressed, and hurled a somewhat smaller blue fireball at him.

  He screamed, diving off the dais. The flaming projectile missed him by inches, striking the back of the metal chair and covering it with burn.

  All the Diablos opened fire. A fusillade of bullets kicked dust and debris into the air, clanking off stone and whistling by close to Kirsten’s head. Every so often, a fleshy thump came from Kate’s direction, but she didn’t make any noise other than angry grunts. Do
rian ran into the fray, taking up a position a short distance in front of Kirsten. He drew power from one weapon after another, focusing his attention mostly on the ones pointed her way.

  Kirsten opened a psionic link to her armor, energizing its force field. The pale grey trim on her arms and legs lit up with a soft violet glow. She fired as fast as her E-90 could cycle, taking kill shots purely out of trained reaction. Amid the sudden explosion of chaos, the scene in front of her became another training sim with person-shaped targets. Only the occasional spray of concrete fragments across the helmet or a bullet glancing off her armor proved otherwise. Any Diablo with a raised weapon that she noticed ate a laser blast. Once or twice, the gang thug she aimed at went up in a conflagration of fire before she could click the trigger.

  A stabbing lance of pain in her right shoulder knocked her back around the wall. With a soft hiss, her stimsuit activated, automatically injecting her with the equivalent of a single stimpak. The tunnel a bullet that drilled completely through her right bicep erupted in a mass of cold itching.

  Ugh. Someone’s got a rifle.

  She screamed past gritted teeth, spraying her visor with spittle. Moving amber light appeared to the left, her helmet electronics highlighting a Diablo climbing over a chunk of building behind Kate. Kirsten tried to raise her arm, but it wouldn’t respond. She grabbed her right wrist with her left hand to lift the stunned limb, and managed to fire at the guy before he could spray Kate with bullets.

  Alas, the blue streak of her laser missed him by a few feet, but the shot warned Kate enough to spot the guy. She dove into a somersault as he opened up with full automatic from a submachine gun, chasing her across the dusty ground. Kirsten adjusted her aim and fired again, putting a beam into the man’s chest. His gun kept spitting bullets for another half second as he fell over, stopping only after the magazine ran out.