Division Zero (36 page)

he nightmarish kitchen faded to a field of blinding light. A throbbing pain settled into her hand as a light pressure forced the air out of her chest from the child that had wrapped her arms around her.

“It’s okay, sweetie, I won’t let her hurt you ever again. I’m here.” Kirsten patted her on the back. “I’ll take care of you.”

Little Kirsten looked up. “Are you okay?”

She clung to her little self, kissing the top of her head and muttering through hair. “You’re safe now; Mother will
never
hurt you again.”

“Who’s gonna hurt me?” The voice changed, different but familiar. “Are you gonna be my new mom?”

What the hell is going on?
The child she held grew a little larger and a little heavier.

“You hit your hand on the bed,” said Evan.

She opened her eyes and gasped at the form that extended into her field of view, startlingly close to naked and quite adult in appearance. While it lacked explicit detail, the lines curved with enough accuracy to be embarrassing. Evan also embodied a shape of glowing energy to which she clung like a beloved doll. Thin silver strands of light ran to their sleeping bodies.

What just happened to me?

The realization came as she searched the blank wall for an answer. She had stood up to her mother; the last of the hold the evil woman had on her every bit as dead as the bitch herself.

He hugged her, squealing. “You did it, you’re projecting.”

Evan looked up with adoration and his question repeated through her thoughts in his voice.
Are you gonna be my new mom?

“Is… Is that what you want? I could talk―” Doubt filled her mind about being a mother, could she do it?

His astral hug squished tighter.

A weak smile spread over her face as she tried to change what she looked like. “Do we have to look like we’re naked?”

He slipped out of her grip and circled her. “So? It’s not like anyone can see us.”

“Yeah, but it’s still embarrassing.”

“Souls don’t wear clothes,” he teased. “They wear bodies. This is our magic self, an’ we took our bodies off.”

She giggled, despite her discomfort, at his innocent explanation. “The appearance of a ghost is formed by latent self―”
What am I doing? He’s nine
. “Whatever a ghost thinks they look like is what they look like. That’s why most of them appear in whatever they were wearing when they died.” She concentrated, trying to imagine her astral self in uniform―but nothing happened.

He tilted his head. “What if someone dies with no clothes on?”

“You get to spend a real long time being ashamed to be seen.” An awkward warble ran through her voice. “Another reason to regret bathtub suici―”

Damn.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

He cheered and spun in a circle. “We’re not ghosts, just magic people!”

Resigning herself to a cartoonish nude apparition, she studied the silver thread descending into her body. For poking around Intera, this would have to do.

The sight of her own apparently dead body caused such a start she lurched forward in a blinding flash and sat up with a gasp. It felt like falling from a height into a hard floor. Evan’s astral projection laughed and pointed at her.

“It scared me the first time, too.”

Having expected juvenile mockery, his honest admission surprised her. After gathering her calm, she again floated out of her body and attempted to walk around. She succeeded only in waving her legs back and forth. He glided closer and explained how to move. While attempting to help, he grabbed her hips, trying to push her through the air, and things quickly degenerated into a tickle fight. He felt like gelatin and zipped around taking advantage of her helplessness. After she cried out in surrender, he relented and explained further.

“You can’t just walk or swim around. Just think about going, and you go.” He giggled, still orbiting. “If you wanna go back inside your body real fast, grab the thread comin’ out of your face. If you think about your body you get slurped back up your nose.”

“Sounds great.” She gagged.

For several minutes, she experimented and the two of them wound up gliding hand-in-hand through the dorm. She got up to a decent clip, faster than she could run.

He glanced at her as they sailed along. “Look out. Some walls here hurt.” He rubbed his nose.

“I know.” She ruffled his shimmering hair. “A few special rooms are solid to ghosts.”

“Oh.” He shrugged, too young to care about the reason.

They played astral tag until true fatigue overpowered his attempt to act wide awake. She followed him back to his room, where he came to a halt hanging in space over his body. He did not want to stop playing with her, but could not protest.

“Are you gonna wake up yet?”

“No, I have something to do; something important that you just helped with.”

He beamed with pride and the apparition of boy-shaped light dissolved into a smear of energy that rushed back into his body, inflating his chest with a breath. He stumbled out of bed and fetched a spare blanket from the dresser. After tucking it around her, he gave her a smooch on the cheek and crawled back into bed.

Her heart melted.

She stayed with him until she thought he had fallen asleep. Seeing him safe gave her a kind of satisfaction she had never thought possible.

If I never accomplish anything else in my life, I can die happy.

irsten’s astral form streaked through the crowd, staring up at an ebon sky hidden behind the punishing glare of street-level lights. Color appeared in muted tones; her form radiated a soft amber glow upon a world existing in black and white. She wondered if the stars still shone, somewhere deep within the black in a place above the smog. Mesmerized by the sky, her glide came to a halt as she tried to imagine what real stars looked like.

Oblivious, people walked through her hovering form.

Her body felt no sense of temperature, but the sight of hundreds of faces shimmering in her castoff light brought back her embarrassment. Flying, on the other hand, took her mind off her exposure and she lost herself in the newness of it. She left the crowd behind, going straight up and sailing around in circles for more time than she had intended.

I have to take Evan flying up here, he would love this.

In midair a quarter mile up, she stopped and tried to figure out which way to go. Her amusement was suddenly tempered by the worry of paranoia. If the population at large became aware of astral travel, there could be riots about privacy.

Kirsten willed herself faster into the air. Away from the sea of blinking lights and smears of color below, the smog surrounded her with the violet of reflected twilight. Every so often, a patch of city languished in shadow. In places where violent death scored a mark upon reality, the other side leaked through. Along with the sight of the breaches came the sensation of being watched―the presence of Harbingers.

Without a NavMap console, she wandered in circles trying to navigate by landmarks in a city of identical construction. Hours passed until the silhouette of the Intera Tower emerged from the haze. She managed to get her flight speed up to something akin to fifty miles an hour, but it seemed plodding compared to her car. She glided in an upward arc toward the pyramid at the top of the central building.

At least I can skip that wretched elevator tour.

Past an outdoor balcony, she glided toward dim light and phased through angled glass into a lavish inner sanctum awash with shadows. Scant light leaked through an open door from a room deeper in. A massive desk dominated the center of an office that held an impressive collection of art. Wooden statues, paintings, a bronze globe, and a stuffed polar bear tangled in an anachronistic clash with modern electronics.

Against the far right wall, a little girl of about eight or nine sat in a huge chair that left her stocking feet dangling, shoes kicked a few feet away. Her dark violet dress shimmered with a hint of metallic thread. It looked like an overpriced designer thing only someone with an excess of money would buy for a kid. Diamond-encrusted barrettes held back her long, thick brown hair, most of her face hidden beneath adult-sized electronic display goggles. Her cheeks flashed with colors, her hands clawed at the air as she manipulated her VR world.

Kirsten drifted closer to her out of curiosity.

Beneath the gargantuan helmet, the child’s sad mouth formed a flat line. Between her expression and the murmur of voices outside, Kirsten assumed a disinterested father stashed his burden in a rear office so he could work. She wanted to peek into the girl’s mind, but with Kirsten’s consciousness quite some distance away from her body, she could not. Any psionics she activated now would emanate from her living body, assuming they even worked at all.

She folded her arms, staring. The girl appeared healthy and had no visible injuries or apparent lack of care. For all Kirsten knew, she could have just been denied some expensive want and pouted about not getting her way.

Damn you, Mother. You always make me think the worst
.

Kirsten patted her on the shoulder, making the child shiver.

“Heat, seventy four,” said the girl.

The room responded with a faint mechanical whirr.