Division Zero (2 page)

“…attracting guys? Oh.” Nicole offered her a sheepish look. “Another runner, huh?”

“Yeah.” Kirsten fidgeted with her cup. “The second I told him.”

“Trail of flames leading to his car?” Nicole shook her head. “Why did you tell him on the first date? You know they always run.” She looked away for a second before her brain switched gears again. “Oh, hey, did you get carded again or did they believe you were over twenty-one?”

Kirsten’s face turned red. “I tell them up front because I don’t want to get attached and
then
have him freak out on me. I have to be honest.”

“Someone got carded!” Nicole giggled.

Kirsten glared out the right side window. “Well, now I know why Eze put us together. I look like I’m thirteen and you act like it.”

Nicole gave her a raspberry. “You’re tall for thirteen.”

Staring into the endless black of her uniform, Kirsten searched for answers that did not dwell there. A warped version of her face sulked back from her silver belt, and she turned to the window with a sigh, looking through her reflection at the passing century towers. Hundred-story monoliths; each was a variation of the same standard pre-fab design like most of the city. Full of happy people, or at least people happy enough to fake being happy. Kirsten frowned.

Is there a man in any of those buildings that isn’t a shallow jerk?

“Probably not,” replied Nicole.

“Dammit.” Kirsten gave her friend a light slap on the back of the head. “Get outta my mind.”

The car swerved as Nicole ducked, causing Kirsten to grab the oh-shit handle.

Oh, come on, you know you do it all the time.
Nicole’s telepathic voice pierced her consciousness.

“Seriously, no, I don’t. Just because we
can
doesn’t give us the right to just pick through people’s thoughts without probable cause. Didn’t you pay attention at all in class?”

“You are such a downer.” Nicole frowned. “Besides it’s just you, not some citizen.”

Kirsten stared in silence at the NavMap, watching a small yellow triangle creep along a blue line. Sometimes having friends that did not run away in fear at the sight of a psionic could be as much a curse as a benefit. Several minutes of silence passed and Kirsten sensed something. She turned her head, looking through the intermittent flashes of sunlight gleaming off the ad-bots below. A feeling pulled her stare down into the darkness that clung to the narrow alleys below.

“You haven’t seen them, but they’re out there.”

Nicole made a sarcastic look of fear. “Ooo…your little shadow-men?”

“Look in my head now if you have the proverbial balls.” Kirsten dared her with a gaze, recalling the memory of her last meeting with a Harbinger. She steeled herself against the memory of the mass of darkness gliding out of the shadows, piercing silver eyes locked upon the malevolent spirit it had come to claim. “Just please don’t have an accident; in your pants or with the car.”

Nicole accepted her challenge and locked eyes. Her amused grin shattered to a half-open mouth, taking with it all the color in her face. When her body went limp, the car’s safety system brought them to a hovering standstill. Kirsten gave her an ‘I told you so’ smirk.

“Wow…well…” Nicole stared at the hover lane in front of them. “Okay then. Consider me glad I can’t see that shit.” A visible tremble settled into her hands as she clutched the control sticks.

Kirsten rubbed her friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

Nicole’s voice faltered as she coped with the images and sounds, and worst of all, the inherited feeling from reading a memory. “You see that stuff all the time? How are you not sucking your thumb under your bed every night?”

“I had a scarier demon to practice on.”

Nicole’s eyes closed, her hands stopped shaking. “I don’t even want to know.”

“It’s weird.” Kirsten folded her arms. “Ghosts don’t bother me. The Harbingers make me a little nervous, but I know they’ll leave me alone. They only go after evil souls. Some living punk with a gun, though―that scares me to death. I don’t know what to do.” Kirsten turned toward the window.
I don’t want to be responsible for sending people into that world.

Nicole went into a well-rehearsed recital of standard Division 0 combat doctrine, trying to explain to her ‘what to do’ in those situations. Her friend’s telekinesis and temperament suited field work with a tactical team, not to mention she lacked the patience or finesse demanded by I-Ops. One of her favorite tricks involved telekinetically yanking the guns out of a suspect’s hand. She had started printing still images of the faces they made, caught by her helmet cam, and hanging them above her desk.

Kirsten’s role came with much less glory. She arrived well after the shooting stopped to do the figuring out, not to mention all the typing. Ghosts on the other hand, she did not mind fighting. With them, she had the upper hand.

Nicole stopped hard at a red traffic control node when her attempt to beat the yellow failed. Kirsten shot down her suggestion about hitting the bar lights and zipping through, not wanting a reprimand. Their argument stalled with the appearance of a newsbot trailing a billboard-sized hologram of a mutilated body. Reporter Kimberly Brightman’s voice emanated from the coasting droid, with details about the latest in a series of attacks by out-of-control dolls. As always, the Newsnet worked it up, stirring the stew of paranoia. Where would the next attack be? Could your doll go crazy too? Does death lurk in your own kitchen?

“How can they air that crap?” Kirsten gestured at the monolithic screen. “Children could see those.”

“I dunno…dolls creep me out, don’t you think?”

Kirsten shrugged. “Not really. Though if I ever got run over by a PubTran, I’d rather just die than have my brain stuffed in one.”

“No.” Nicole shook her head. “I mean the AI ones, the
fake
people. Not the real-brain ones… and those sub-sents are even creepier.”

Kirsten pointed out the signal had changed. “What do you mean?”

Nicole muttered as she formed her ideas. “I mean it’s like, what if all the AI’s in the world talked to each other and no one knew it? What if they were all part of this network that like, hated humans? And what if one day―”

You could carry the same thought for longer than twenty seconds.
“You’ve been watching too many Holovids, Nikki. Self-aware AI’s are considered citizens under the law.”

“Oh, that’s just the first part of their plan.” She held up her finger in triumph, and then lost her train of thought. “By the way, I heard Samir finished fixing your car.”

ADD sucks.
Kirsten smiled at the expected topic flip. “Oh, that’s good.”

Nicole grinned. “Hey, isn’t that the car everyone hates? Don’t you have problems with it?”

Kirsten gave her a dismissive wave. “No, not at all.”

“I heard it almost killed the last like dozen people that drove it. Why was it in the shop anyway? Is it true Morelli borrowed it and wound up putting it through a fortieth-floor window of an office building?”

“Yeah, pretty much. It’s been fine for me. I didn’t think it’d be a problem to let him use it.”

The comm flashed, and a six-inch holographic rendition of Captain Jonathan Eze’s shaved head appeared in the center of the console. He glanced back and forth between the two women and gave a curt nod.

“Field Agent Logan, I need you to drop Agent Wren off back here as soon as possible. I’ll have Forester go with you on that warrant pickup.”

“Understood, sir.” Nicole saluted her intangible Captain. “Whee! Code three time,” Nicole shouted.

Eze nodded again, and faded out.

Kirsten glared. “Command actually lets you carry a weapon… in public?”

Nicole wrenched the car around with a laugh, in a hard about-face that smacked Kirsten into the door. Revving the throttle control almost all the way forward, she flicked on the bar lights and streaked at three hundred miles per hour back to the command building.

Ten minutes later, they came to rest in front of the parking deck. Squad Corporal Forrester walked through the large cloud of cryonic mist and debris kicked up by their arrival, and saluted Kirsten as she got out. Unprepared, she fumbled to return it.

I’ll never get used to that
.

She still felt like a newbie even though she had been on active duty since the age of sixteen, and Forrester’s enlisted rank took longer to attain. With the rank of Agent, she held the status of officer―now all she had to do was feel like one.

The hot ion rush of liftoff left Kirsten’s legs wrapped in tingly sparks as the hovercar peeled up and away from the building, leaving a trail of wobbling windows. Kirsten shook her head and went down into the garage where Captain Eze waited by her patrol craft. His reflection, framed in glare from the overhead lights, shone clear within the just-washed gleam of the hood. A twinge of alarm in his voice overshadowed his usual comforting mannerism.

“Kirsten, we’ve got a situation. Two Division 1 patrol officers have gotten themselves trapped by a possible category four manifestation.”

She gulped. The Wharf Stalker rated only three. “How much do we know?”

Eze’s hand on her shoulder stalled her ever-widening sapphire eyes. “Some mechanic took a few pot shots at a passing Div 1 unit. They pursued him into an abandoned building, and at some point thereafter hit their panic buttons. By the time backup arrived, they were gone. There are also reports of strange sights, screams, and to use the technical term they did: ‘weird shit’.”

“What sector?”

Eze shook his head. “No sector, it’s off the map. Southwest of where the city plates stop, a pre-war building right on the surface.”

She bit her lip, never having been that far south before. “Who’s the mechanic?”

“I’ll relay the details while you’re en route. No criminal record, no idea why he fired. Their sergeant wants someone out there ASAP. His people are refusing to go inside.”

Refusing? With fellow officers in danger? What the hell is this thing?

“On it, sir.” She leapt into the waiting car.

Kirsten tapped at the control sticks urging the car to power on faster. Any trepidation she had at tangling with something that might be worse than the Wharf Stalker evaporated under her sense of duty. She thought only of other cops in danger.

Twenty minutes of blurred buildings later, the patrol craft shot out over the edge of the city. The exposed Earth fifty meters below looked desolate and brown; dotted here and there with scrub-brush and cacti. The car descended into the shadow of the endless urbanity behind her. The rearview monitor filled with the vast network of pipes and support struts between the great city plates and the ground, a place known as The Beneath. She had been down there before, many years ago, but now was not the time to dwell on old memories.

Not with lives at risk.

hattered plaster rained down everywhere as unseen gunfire tore chunks out of the wall above her head. Kirsten raised her arms to shield her face from the fall of debris and closed her eyes. After the shooting stopped, the wall rocked with a powerful impact that knocked her forward into a squatting wobble. With a flail of her arms, she recovered her balance enough to fall back against the crumbling cinderblocks. Sinister laughter, touched with insanity, echoed from around the corner before fading to silence. Soon, only the sounds of her rapid breaths and the crunch of her boots upon the debris broke the stillness.