Division Zero (33 page)

“You got me.” The assassin walked out from behind a row of cars with his weapon aimed. “I figured you for a total rookie and fell for the door.”

Fear added to her hope. She flew ahead, somehow ducking another shot with a forward dive, sliding on her chest. Rolling behind a concrete support pylon, she grabbed for her E90 but found the holster empty. She imagined it on the ground under the SUV. Her arms wrapped about her legs, hugging her knees to her chest.

Nope, I was wrong
. Shuddering in a ball underneath a truck had replaced cowering behind a toilet as the most helpless she had ever felt. Now she had a new answer for that question. Two more shots gouged chunks of concrete away, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of screaming.

She got angry rather than scared.

His boots squeaked as he drew closer. The brief reprieve under the truck gave her a second wind and the self-injury of overextended psionics seemed a much better option than taking a bullet. With a deep breath, she gathered her willpower for one all-or-nothing blast, and spun into view. Her eyes flared as an intangible wind tousled her hair. He cocked his head. The instant of confusion at the sight of white, glowing eyes stalled his shot just long enough.

Anger and terror mixed in a mental attack that knocked him senseless. Fingers slackened, and the clatter of his gun upon the floor echoed through the massive chamber. The blue of her eyes returned as her mind throbbed. A trickle of blood seeped from her nose. A headache would come, great and thunderous, but not right away. She grasped the column for balance and stared wondering if she had the strength to get to him and take his gun before he could move.

He stumbled backwards, clutching his head, claws once more hidden inside his fingers. Tugging at his coat, he pulled it open in search of a gun. Inside, half a dozen black hand grenades hung on a bandolier as well as three more pistols and a handful of knives. Her eyebrows tilted in incredulity at the sight. Her lips breathlessly rasped
what the fuck…

“Intera has it wrong. I don’t give a shit about them, I want to stop Albert,” Kirsten choked out.

“Albert’s dead, like you’re about to… ugh.” The man could not pull his hands away from his head. “What did you do to me?”

“His ghost is killing people. All I’m trying to do is stop him. I don’t give one shit about Intera.”

He shook off the daze, but could open only one eye. He stared at the small, shivering woman using the wall to keep from falling over. “Oh, but I do so enjoy destroying pretty things like you.” Pure evil leaked through his smile. “Especially when I get paid for it.”

She had nothing left for another mind blast. The last stimpak had only so much effect; her tenderized gut and tired legs had eaten most of it. Her brain scrabbled at the dark, searching for any way out. Kirsten’s gaze stalled on his chest, thinking of Nicole. The redhead could drag desks across the room without a second thought, but when she got pissed off, she could flip a car. Back in the dorm, she had tried to teach her, but Kirsten could only get a tampon to stand on end. It did not take much power to lift something so small.

I don’t need much power…

She focused as he tugged at one of the holsters, oblivious to the gun on the floor by his foot. The mind blast scrambled his brain; he did not realize a strap held the weapon in place, yet he kept pulling. She concentrated on the fist-sized spheres of death. One by one, the grenades vibrated.

Then the pins in the grenades rattled. The holster strap ripped.

Come on!
She grunted as a trickle of blood fell from her nose.

Stillness.

All at once, six pins popped out. The spoons sprang away in a cacophony of clattering steel as the little bits of metal hung in a cloud before his face for an instant before she let them rain to the floor. He looked down in horror and roared as he continued tearing at his sidearm.

She ran to the edge of the deck, knowing as soon as she looked back at him that she could not get far enough away to survive. Over the side, the ground waited eleven stories down through a stream of ad-bots. In the span of a fractional second, fear of height and the dread of the imminent explosion battled. Without explanation, the yawning chasm before her filled with a welcoming sense of safety as though something urged her to trust it. Her fear gone, she leapt into the void, floating in serenity, and closed her eyes.

Boom.

The air behind her filled with sound and fury. Somewhere within the brutal concussion wave, she thought she felt the presence of a hand pull at her uniform. Her eyes snapped open as her body slammed into the advert bot she had aimed for. Lights shattered as the impact sent the coffin-sized droid into a dizzying spiral, fighting to regain control. She clung to its frame with her last bit of strength. When it stabilized, she looked up through the rain of fire and fragments that blotted out the sky. Threads of faint silvery light fanned out and shimmered in the air above her. Visible for a fleeting instant, they withdrew through a point in space. Her mouth filled with blood, each breath hurt, but she embraced the pain as a reminder of being alive.

Am I that close to dead? I must be hallucinating.

The ad-bot recovered and its hover unit propelled it back up to its former altitude. The holographic panel she lay through alternated between static and a test pattern, the ad-bot’s cracked emitter struggling to display it. Kirsten did not look down; only her fingers stood between her and a lesson in terminal velocity.

“Warning… you are in proximity violation to ComTec International’s property. Please retreat to the non-violation distance of at least five meters.”

She let her face slap into the cold metal and shut her eyes. “Fuck off.”

Even if there was ground below her to walk on, she doubted her body could do much more than breathe. Small comets of flaming debris fell past as chain reaction explosions ran among the cars.

“Noncompliance will result in police notification; this is your final warning.” The emotionless cadence of the electronic voice had an air of sanctimony about it that would have made her angry if she had the strength to care. She wondered if the Harbingers would come for him. She
wanted
them to come for him.

“I
am
the police, you stupid hunk of metal.” She wanted to yell, but produced only a whispery moan and a dribble of blood.

“Your disrespect is noted, the police have been summoned.”

A dire feeling interrupted her eye roll. She forced her head up and eyes open. Heavy black smoke billowed through the eleventh floor; the explosions had ceased. The walls at ground level roiled with darkness as a tide of black rose up from below. She strained to look as the wind whipped her hair into her face.

Dozens of shadowy figures swarmed up the side of the parking garage and merged into the smoke. Somewhere in the dark, a primal wail of horror echoed out into the arriving night. She clung tighter to the ad-bot as if it would protect her from the malevolence saturating the area. The sound faded, and the ominous feeling receded just as abruptly as it had manifested.

Good, bastard. You deserved that.

“You, there, what are you doing?” The un-robotic voice of a man came down on her from above.

“Huh?” Kirsten peeled her face off the steel hull of the droid. She squinted through the wind at a six-inch holographic head that frowned at her from the glowing tip of a small rod. He was a corporate weasel, bald with a fringe of brown hair around his head, with the faint shadow of a dark suit bordering the image below.

So much for calling the police. Are corporations
ever
honest?

“You’re not supposed to be that close to our hardware, miss. As a matter of fact, it looks like you damaged it.”

“Land the damn thing and I’ll be quite happy to fall off it. If you haven’t noticed I’m about nine stories off the ground.”

“There’s no need to get snippy, young lady, certainly not after you damaged our property. Besides, I cannot land the droid, it’s against policy. No deviations from the route are approved. Now, off you go.” He made shooing motions with a hand that drifted into the image.

She blinked. “Are you suggesting I just fall to my death?” Blood rolled down her chin.

“What you do after you are no longer in contact with our property is not my concern.”

“So help me I am going to kick your balls into your throat if I ever find you in person.”

“I’m trying to be civil about this, my dear. As gracious as I am, you make threats? Do you really want me to get the police involved? They don’t take kindly to little vandals.”

Kirsten just stared at him; the situation reached so far beyond the pale that she had nothing else to say. She let her cheek slap into the droid again. The pain in her chest neared the point where letting go did not seem like such a bad idea after all. His prattle faded into meaningless jumbles of sound until flashing red and blue lights entered the edge of her senses. A voice came over a loudspeaker ordering the bot to descend. The hologram protested, citing lost revenue.

Hands settled on her, pulling her away from the droid, carrying her to a hovercar pulled up alongside. She slid onto the rear seat, barely aware of a man holding her hand.

Her shirt tugged open and fingers examined her injuries. The grip squeezed her fingers. Something beeped, something hissed, and she heard Dorian’s voice.

“I’m sorry.”

oft warmth surrounded her; and with it came a sense of weightlessness amid viscous liquid. The substance muted sound save for the faint thrum of distant machinery it carried into her ears. Kirsten opened her eyes. The room outside shimmered through a haze of peach-hued light. Her naked body floated inside a clear cylindrical tube stretching from floor to ceiling. She looked down past her toes at the metal floor, a patchwork of electronics and gratings. Two people in white coats, a woman and a man, worked at terminals a few feet away. Blood ran to her face; she felt trapped and exposed.

The gel filled her mouth and throat with the flavor of strawberry.

An attempt at a scream sent blood in a torrent of silent fluid past her lips, reminding her it filled her lungs. The sanguine cloud billowed in front of her face and then faded away, devoured by millions of nanobots. She put her hands on the glass wall; thankful unconsciousness had spared her the panic of having to drown her way in.

I wonder if Nicole feels this vulnerable in here; she’s in these things twice a week.
Kirsten tried to cover herself as best she could. Knowing the nanobots would mistake clothing for contamination and destroy any coverings did not make her feel any better. Only so much program code fit in robots that small.

Nicole probably likes the attention.

Kirsten froze with panic. The feeling of imprisonment came too close to the closet, the exposure too close to the time her mother had spanked her in front of her friends. Shivers traced fingers of pain through her ribs, reminding her of the explosion. She doubled over, another short-lived red nebula formed at her lips.

These are medics. I’m safe.

A man’s voice echoed through the gel like the voice of God. “Please remain still, Agent Wren. We are repairing your lung tissue. If you move around it will take longer.”