Division Zero (24 page)

Kirsten held a hand up. “Look, whoever you are, we can talk this through. You don’t have to hurt anyone else.”

Its head sagged to the left as it locked eyes. The ghost could force only so much of a patronizing glance out of its artificial countenance; these androids did not have fully articulated faces. An evil smile appeared as its gaze snapped back to the man.

Kirsten flinched; expecting to hear a crunch―but heard a loud boom.

She jumped back, arms shielding her face, as the doll’s right forearm burst apart in a shower of metal fragments, tattered strands of Myofiber, and green fluid. The female officer had drawn and fired an enormous sidearm before the rifle she dropped had hit the ground. A wire from the handgrip of the pistol to a plug behind her ear waved in the air from the force of its motion.

The man fell backwards with the artificial hand still clutching his throat. As soon as he landed on the tile floor, one of the other Division 5 troops fired his rifle into the doll’s chest.

It disintegrated from the waist up in a shower of fragmented metal and burned cloth. The explosion peeled the doll away from the ghost, leaving him partially exposed. The pelvis and legs of the android swayed back and forth for a second before they fell away from the spirit, spewing sparks.

Kirsten called the lash to her hand and swung the glowing strand of energy sideways. The strike caught him across the back as he tried to leap out of the way. A wail of agony echoed through the area; audible even to non-psionics. Several table terminals and nearby lights winked out as he drew power to restore himself.

Dorian sprinted into the fray, knocking the ghost flat with a lunge from behind.

The ghost fell forward on his face, sliding. Muttering in German, he looked back with desperation and hissed. She coiled the lash in the air above her like a whip.

Kirsten pointed with her left hand. “Stand down and you won’t be harmed.”

He went straight down through the floor.

Dammit, I hate it when they do that!

Kirsten ran past the bewildered Division 5 officers for the emergency stairwell. By the time she reached the next floor down, she found no sign of him.

Dorian trotted over as she sprawled on the floor, out of breath.

“Did you see him?” she gasped.

“I didn’t see which way he went, too many people.”

Trudging back upstairs, she approached the Division 5 team still searching around for the source of the mysterious scream. The redhead cut the arm from the man’s neck with a vibro-knife and checked him for injury.

A man in a cheap-looking teal suit appeared out of nowhere, yelling at all of them for destroying one of his dolls. The incessant nattering foiled Kirsten’s attempt to read the fragments of doll.

Her growl grew into a shout. “Oh,
go fuck yourself!
”

The man froze, rage gone in an instant. As he turned to walk off with a purposeful gleam in his eyes, Kirsten realized what she had just done.

She could not even imagine what the effect of her accidental psi suggestion would be and ran after him. “Shit, wait.”

The man ignored her, moving as fast as he could walk with a broad smile. Dorian fell into a nearby chair, laughing himself to tears.

“
Stop!
” Her eyes glimmered.

The man came to a halt.

“
Forget it
.”

He blinked and stared about as though he had forgotten his own name. Within a few seconds, his mood returned to where it had been before, and he resumed ranting about his fifteen-thousand-credit waitress.

Kirsten grumbled at him. “Hire a real teenager, they work cheap.”

She left the Division 5 team to deal with the manager and returned to the wreckage. Copious amounts of anger radiated from the parts, turned inward, as if it had been directed at the doll itself.

What the hell is wrong with this guy?

It could just be coincidence that Intera Corporation had made all of the targeted dolls. As the largest manufacturer of cybernetics in the known world, it could be pure chance. However, with each new attack the statistical probability plummeted.

Kirsten found one of its eyes floating in an abandoned bowl of soup a few tables away. Silver type around the iris confirmed the waitress as an Intera unit. She exchanged a glance with Dorian, as he struggled to regain his composure. He could not look at her without falling back into convulsive fits of laughter.

irsten nudged the patrol craft into the parking deck below the police building, cringing as it bottomed out where the incline leveled off. No matter how many times she came in, it always scraped. Samir called it harmless, but it sounded bad. The young man grinned from the booth, amused by the face she made every time the car scratched into the garage. The voices of a pair of Division 2 techs by the entry drifted over the sound of her closing door.

“It’s a pain in the ass to have to walk all the way down here.”

The other one shrugged. “It’s for security. They can’t let the delivery bots just fly in. What if we get a bomb disguised as pizza?”

“You’d probably eat it.”

The heavier man swatted the hat off the first.

Kirsten’s growling stomach reminded her of the horrible mess that impersonated food at the mall, and she walked up the exit ramp typing on her NetMini. Her presence sucked the volume from their conversation and they edged away. She glanced over the screen at them, sensing their stares.

“What?”

They looked at each other. “Nothing.”

The one on the left took a step back and looked out to the street.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She gave them a wounded glance. “You think I’m going to eat your soul or something because I’m from Zero?”

The thin one flashed a nervous smile. “Naah. You’ll do it coz you’re a woman.”

“Whatever.” Isolation became indignation, and she moved to the opposite side of the three-lane doorway.

A delivery bot brought their food a moment later after which they left as fast as they could without too obvious a hint they fled in fear.

“You can’t blame them.” Dorian had walked up behind her while she pouted at the traffic. “Throughout mankind’s history, the first reaction to things beyond understanding was fear. At least they’re not testing to see if you float.”

Kirsten studied her boots. “Sometimes I think dunking would be less painful.”

“Oh, come on with the melodrama. You’re not like that.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” She paused, rubbing her arms.

Dorian nodded. “Your mother again? Is everyone who shies away from you just a lesser shade of her?”

Her head snapped around to look at him. “That’s not fair.”

“She couldn’t understand your special gift, and the only frame of reference she had was her belief system.”

Kirsten fell into a lean upon the wall. “Yeah. Too bad for me the church burns everything it can’t explain.”

Dorian sighed. “Someday you may be forced to admit your mother was just crazy and there is
nothing
wrong with you.”

“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.”

A boxy droid the size of a shoebox flew up to them, sniffing like a dog at her belt by her NetMini. Satisfied, it opened a hatch on the front revealing her turkey wrap.

Dorian walked alongside her to the elevator with a concerned look. “We have it at least once a month.”

Samir held the door for her and grinned as she shared the elevator. He improved her grey mood and she managed a smile back at him. His parents dumped him here, but at least they had not been cruel, just overwhelmed. Rumor had it he still called them now and then.

Halfway to her floor he got up the nerve to speak. “How’s the car working for you?”

“Fine, no problems at all.” She picked at the clear plastic around her food. The scent leaked through the carton, making her want to eat it right there.

“Wow.” He blinked. “That’s so messed up. She gave the others such a hard time.”

Kirsten flashed a pixie grin at him. “I guess
he
just likes me.”

“Yeah, I guess she does.” Samir shivered. “Damn, it just got cold in here.”

Kirsten giggled.

The elevator chimed as the silver door snapped open with a hiss. At her desk, the holographic view pane stretched out in space, waking as she sat down. With one hand on her lunch, she pulled up records of anyone affiliated with technology or medicine that died under mysterious circumstances over the past sixty years.

Dorian settled into his seat. “The boy likes you.”

She dropped her food. “I know, but he’s fourteen, he likes anything with boobs. He’ll get over it.”

“He’s got your picture in his locker.”

Four hundred eighty thousand-some odd results came back.

“Mmmk.” The wrap muffled the four-letter word.

Dorian laughed. “Better get started.”

Duh, I’m an idiot.

She filtered the results to men only, between the ages of twenty-five and forty with the general physical appearance of the ghost she saw. A more manageable pool of about ten thousand came back. With a sigh, she set the terminal to cycle through their photos and sat back with her wrap.

A stream of pixelated faces stared at her for seconds at a time. Murder, accident, suicide, murder, unknown; the words flashed in bold red letters.

Each one had a story and an abnormal death, not always solved. As image after image appeared, her mind meandered along a twisty path. She wondered how many people each man left behind; family, parents, and friends… how many of them were missed?

“You’ll have better luck finding some dick if you check out living men.” Nicole draped herself over Kirsten’s back, being nosy.

“Oh, for the love of…” If not for Nicole on top of her, Kirsten would have jumped out of her seat. “You scared the crap out of me.”

Nicole swung around and sat on the desk next to the terminal. “You laugh at ghosts but
I
scared you?”

“I believe you mean startled, not scared,” said Dorian.

Kirsten sighed. “Whatever.”

“What?” Nicole cocked her head.

“I’d jump if a ghost snuck up on me like that too.”

“So what’cha doin?” Nicole swiped a carrot stick from Kirsten’s lunch. “Oh, hey, that one’s cute… too bad he’s dead.”

Crunching.

Dorian scowled at Nicole. When he saw her looking at Kirsten’s screen, the glare left his eyes.

“I’m trying to figure out who this ghost is, from the mall. The only thing I have to go on is the face…” She slouched over the desk. “So I resorted to cycling through images. Wanna help?”

“Sure, I can for a bit. What’s he look like?”

Kirsten made eye contact. “Take a peek.”

Nicole found the image of the mall ghost in Kirsten’s thoughts. The close up shuddered down her spine, riding the memory of cold fingers around her throat. For half an hour, the walls flashed in silence as three terminals cycled through faces.

Morelli limped by, offering a brief, polite nod at Kirsten and a wave at Nicole. He stopped, staring with a lifted eyebrow at Dorian’s flickering terminal.

Dorian picked at his eye with his middle finger aimed at him.

“Hey, Tom, how you feelin?” chirped Nicole.

He shot Kirsten a look, grew paler, and scurried off without a word.