Division Zero (23 page)

“Yeah, like a beet.”

“She’s exaggerating,” said Dorian.

“Dammit. Theodore surprised me in the shower this morning.”

“Oooo.” She cooed. “Sounds like fun.”

Kirsten squinted. “You are a soulless ginger aren’t you? Theodore’s a ghost.”

“Sounds kinky.” Nicole laughed, calling out as she wandered off. “No, I just have a wild imagination.”

With a roll of her eyes, Kirsten flicked on her terminal and added a summary of what she had learned so far to her notes. Even if she had no way to trust Theodore’s information, she wanted to get to the mall just in case.

n Kirsten’s mind, the scrapes of her plastic fork rose above the din of the mall at Hanford Plaza. She picked at the plate, pushing formless blobs around through a sea of brown rice. Supposedly chow mein, it looked like the sidewalk after a flock of incontinent seagulls used it for target practice. Her table sat adjacent to a glass partition separating the dining area from the vertical shaft at the center of the mall. From here, she could see three floors up and four down. A tree, rumored to be real, occupied the center of the hollow. Artificial birds chirped and darted, flying between the branches and the solar pumps far above. The food court bustled with people from old to young; some shopped, some talked, and some just walked around. Small indoor ad-bots chased the birds around the tree, drifting up and down to each floor in an endless orbital pattern.

We’re not even safe inside…

Thousands of conversations filled the air and the melodic presence of ad jingles drifted in and out as the bots passed by the glass. The occasional outburst from a small child or automated display rose out of the ambiance to grab the attention of those around it for a few seconds. The food court consumed the entire level, covered by dull green tiles stained with a century of spilled reconstituted food. Miniscule restaurants of every type jammed together all around the exterior wall.

Each table had a small purpose-built terminal where at the swipe of a finger any item from any restaurant would be whisked to your side by one of the big-breasted dolls drifting among the dining public, transporting food and collecting trash as they walked in the ghostly footsteps of another generation’s job. Trying to save money, the mall repurposed old sex dolls into waitresses. The thought made the slime on her plate even less appetizing. She tensed when one turned without warning at a man in a shiny grey suit, but it just walked away after nodding at him.

Just a waiting game now. Theo wouldn’t lie about this… I hope.

One woman’s voice floated above the noise, the independent bird soaring astray of the flock. She complained to her friend about how her son had to go to Mars to find a job for the summer, and how she thought of moving to a colony world herself to escape the congestion. Just as fast, the flock caught up and the conversation drowned in the noise. Kirsten kept watch on the waitresses, eyed the people eating, and sulked at the crime against nature on the plate in front of her, wondering how awful the tea would taste by comparison.

Scratching fork.

“You’d be better off eating the tray than whatever that is.” Dorian laughed from across the table.

She frowned at the mess. “Yeah, for once I think I agree with you. I thought veggies were supposed to be healthy. I’m no expert on Chinese food, but I don’t think it’s supposed to look like this.”

“Just another step removed from the Earth. I think their assembler misplaced a molecule, looks like it is devolving into squiggles of OmniSoy.”

Kirsten giggled. “When did you start hugging trees?”

“So how are you holding up?” He took on a more serious tone.

Just looking at him distracted her for a moment. His unexpected question caused her to turn with a faint blush. “Fine, why?”

“The boy from the other night, the whole situation seemed to really bother you. I have never seen you so angry before. Mick, was that his name? He’s rocking back and forth in a ward now… keeps saying ‘bastard’ over and over again while drooling on himself. The doctors think it might pass in a few days.”

She looked at him, trying to feel guilty, but could not. “When I first saw Evan, I thought he might be a ghost.” Her hands folded in her lap, gaze drawn to random children. “You know how I am about kids. I know death isn’t the end of our consciousness, but it still feels so wrong when it’s a child.”

“Evan isn’t dead.”

Kirsten pushed the schlock around the plate. “Yeah, not for that son of a bitch’s lack of trying. I never saw someone projecting before.”

“Really? You’re one of the more notable astrals Division 0 is aware of. If I remember my research properly, projection is a related talent.”

“So?” She rolled her eyes. “Maybe I can, but I just never bothered learning how. Dorian?”

“Hmm?”

“Did it bother you when you had to kill people?”

“They all deserved it.” He fidgeted. “I looked in their heads. They were killers, rapists…”

“You have second thoughts now, don’t you?”

Dorian glanced at his forearm guard. “Dammit. Someone is messing with the car. I’ll be right back.” He jogged off, leaving her alone with the protoplasm.

She knew he tried to get her to admit she had seen her mother instead of that man, the same sort of game he always played. The chatter over her ear bud derailed her from the subject. The Division 5 team in the maintenance corridors grew edgy at waiting.

Giving up on the miasma, which had moments ago ceased having a specific aroma, she dumped it in a trash bin a few paces away and leaned on the railing.

Despite the ubiquity of delivery bots, some citizens still preferred the tactile nature of in-person shopping. Most physical stores carried clothing or cyberware, focusing on things people wanted to see and touch before buying. A holo vid hanging in front of a store one floor down touted custom clothing made for you on the premises. On one panel, a woman stepped onto a metal disc in her underwear before robotic arms ‘printed’ a dark blue dress onto her within a minute.

All yours for the low price of six thousand credits.

A scream from below made her jump. Two young men, somewhere around seventeen, sprinted by on the ground floor. Pale and terrified, the one leading appeared to have wet his pants. People turned as they ran through the concourse and out the door. She smiled, and let out a laugh as she sat back down. The green tea seemed at least worth drinking.

The enjoyment of it did not last.

As soon had she took a sip, a bad feeling came over the area, centered on a man moving through the food court at a brisk stride. About thirty, he had neat blonde hair and green eyes. His prominent nose reminded her of the tram ghost’s comment and his furrowed brow lent an air of imperiousness to his hurried gait. A white lab coat made him look like some kind of technician, either an engineer or a medic.

The coat flowed in the air like a cape, lifted by the speed with which he moved. An itch in the back of her mind was confirmed when he walked right through a bank of tables without disturbing them. She tracked his gaze to a waitress dropping off food at a table with a woman and two little girls who giggled and clapped at their arriving meals.

Oh, no
.
No fucking way!

Her chair fell as she leapt out of it, focusing her power through her body to make it tangible to ghosts. Straining, she rushed to intercept before he reached the doll so perilous in its proximity to such innocence. Her imagination ran away with the scene; haunting her with images of what could happen if a crazy doll got its hands on a three- and a six-year-old.

Kirsten leapt onto him from behind, just as his fingertips traced across the back of the doll’s pink vest. The mother screamed, watching her land on the tiles a few feet away with an incredible splatter of clear ectoplasmic slime. Unheard by all but Kirsten, the man yelped with surprise at being not only seen, but touched.

The ghost shifted, changing front to back in an instant. As he glared, his initial shock at contact changed to anger. She struggled to hold him down as he tried to reach the mechanical woman.

Kirsten looked back over her shoulder at the table. “You, waitress, get out of here!”

“Can I help you?” It turned; face whirring into a preprogrammed smile.

“Are you alright, miss?” The girls’ mother stood and took a step toward Kirsten, gasping as she slipped in the ooze all over the floor. That Kirsten thrashed about, floating inches above the ground, alarmed her more. The woman leapt back, astonishment changing to terror as an unseen force flipped Kirsten over and her uniform bunched beneath invisible choking hands.

Kirsten fought for the air to yell. “Take… girls… run…”

The ghost’s once-green eyes flared yellow. Ice-cold fingers circled her neck as if she had no cloth between her body and his touch. The mother backed up to her daughters, halfheartedly suggesting they should find a different table. Kirsten’s eyes glowed bright bluish-white as she reached out with her mind and lashed. The impact of the psionic whip launched him into a distant table.

The sight of Kirsten’s glowing eyes made the woman shriek; the table ten yards away flipping over on its own caused her to drag the screaming kids out of their chairs and sprint off.

Static in her ear parted for a brief moment. “Agent Wren, what is your status?”

Kirsten’s radiant psionic energy jammed her electronics, reducing her reply to crackling static. The ghost picked himself up out of the table and growled. The whip glimmered brighter as she wound up another lash. He zoomed to the side as the tendril of energy fell short, and sprinted at a blur into a different waitress.

Kirsten let her power ebb. “This is Agent Wren. He’s here and has a doll on the west side, by Speedy Panda.”

The doll shuddered and danced like a marionette on broken strings. It looked back at Kirsten with a stare of resentment and fear, torn between accomplishing something and fleeing from her. Unlike Deirdre, this thing had no sentience. Kirsten had no qualms about calling on Division 5 here, no more than she would feel bad for destroying an out of control car.

The doll lurched to another table, slapping the fork from the hand of a nearby businessman. A plastic hand around his throat stalled his yell into a gurgle. His face reddened as it squeezed and lifted him out of his seat.

“Drop him!” A deep male voice echoed over a loudspeaker. “Hold your fire, the civilian is too close.”

Six men and one red-haired woman surrounded the doll while two others herded the crowd away. Thick blue armor glistened in the mall lights as they took position around it with weapons trained. The explosive fragmentation slugs in their ABR20 rifles would shred the hostage as well as the doll at that distance.

Kirsten waited. The doll body afforded the ghost more than a fair degree of protection from her astral lash. The amount of effort it would take would not be worth the result; the metal interfered too much. The choking man scrabbled at the doll’s wrist, tearing her sleeve but doing nothing to the synthetic skin.

One flick of an actuator could snap the man’s neck. Kirsten knew it, the cyber-swat team knew it, and judging by the look in his eyes, the suit knew it.