Division Zero (44 page)

“You remember what happened to Milner when he tried the auto drive?” Dorian asked.

She gulped. “It crossed my mind.”

“I was still working out some anger issues back then.”

The car tilted back, landing with a gentle rush of warm ions a few feet away. She leapt through the door and pulled out into the street before it closed all the way, leaning forward to stare straight up through the windscreen. The hover traffic formed an impenetrable curtain of moving lights above them. It would take too long to find an opening, so she gunned the ground drive. Banded rubber tires raced around their impeller cores, shoving the vehicle through a squealing turn.

Dorian remained silent as she fishtailed around the corner and flew down a six-lane artery. The only traffic on the ground consisted of a handful of roach wagons lingering past closing to catch the desperate wage slaves who were trapped late at the office. Two cyclones of trash spun behind the car as it sucked up all the debris on the seldom-used road.

After screeching onto the access ramp, she jumped a berm of faux grass and slammed on the brakes. The car slid to a stop in front of the central Intera Tower at the end of a weave of black streaks over a white stone courtyard. She wrestled with the pneumatic door, trying to open it faster than it would go on its own.

An ominous sight waited for her on the steps.

Two men in security guard uniforms stood just outside destroyed glass doors, with massive head wounds and disoriented expressions. She ran past them and ducked through the dark grey frame, glancing at them once inside.

“You’re dead. Go to the light. If you can’t figure it out just wait right there until I come back.”

The two men turned toward her as she ran off, leaning back as Dorian ducked between them. Ten paces into the lobby, she found their bodies slumped on the floor in front of an abandoned burgundy marble reception desk. Blood and debris littered the entire area.

A trail of crimson footprints through the teal carpeting led her at a brisk jog to a hallway full of elevators. Once she reached white marble tiles, she crouched to examine one of the clear ones. The holographic panel appeared over her arm, scanning the tracks, and finding no detectable pattern of ridges. A smooth footprint meant it was a doll. Her computer postulated from the shape and size of the blood smear that it was ninety-four percent likely to be female.

“Looks like he got a Mitsu,” Kirsten lowered her arm and stood. A patch of wall to her left darkened as her armband terminal disappeared.

Dorian gave her a pointed look. “Didn’t believe me, did you? About the creepy factor?”

She sprinted over to the bank of elevators. “Great, I just got rid of one nightmare, now I’m going to have a new one. I’ll never look at those kids at CyberBurger the same way.”

He walked right through the elevator door. “Oh, come on. As if you even eat there. I’ll meet you upstairs; try to circle around behind him.”

Kirsten’s finger impersonated a woodpecker on the button until a chime emanated from the panel. The silver doors slid open, and the dumfounded face of a dead woman greeted her. With the doors no longer there to hold her up, the body flopped forward. Kirsten jumped back in shock, leaning against the wall to recover. Her gaze went from the dead woman to the blood-spattered interior of the elevator cab and then to the ceiling.

“Albert, what have you done…”

inted red by the spatter, bands of light pulsed down the walls as the elevator made the lonely climb to the penthouse. One button among many on the touchscreen had a bloody fingerprint, an ominous portent of where Albert had gone. Kirsten kept taking her E90 out of its holster and putting it back, unsure if she would need it. Her breathing came shallow; she broke out in a cold sweat as she went over all manner of possible scenes she could walk into once the doors opened. The thrum of the lift vibrated through the air, making time crawl. The floor counter ticked higher, marching ever closer to a hundred and seven.

The sound of gunfire echoed from above, punctuated here and there by men screaming and the occasional falter in the lighting. First in anger, then in pain, their voices wailed, shaping the horrifying images in her mind. Kirsten pounded on the door, feeling imprisoned and powerless, helpless until the metal box released her. She considered calling for a tactical unit, but dismissed it. They were trained to deal with living psionics; most of them could not do a damn thing to a ghost. Yeah, their lasers could
eventually
wear a spirit down but there would not be much of a building left afterward.

Nikki doesn’t need to see this.

The doors snapped open at long last, revealing an executive corridor with a bloody lilac rug and black walls. Smoke filled the air and the foil confetti of expended ballistic ammunition littered the floor. The smell of gunfire mixed with the silence as the thick carpeting absorbed the sound of her sprint.

The whistle of a passing breeze came from up ahead as she passed three more dead men. All wore black suits and two slumped over rifles. They looked like a private security team after stepping in some fresh crap. Her promise to Henry Motte seemed more and more foolish as she surveyed the carnage. Whatever did this could not be the Albert he knew.

It might be kinder to destroy him
.

A trace of femininity―the Mitsu―mingled with Albert’s throaty rasp in the distance. “Go ahead, Lucian. Shoot me.”

Kirsten advanced past broken onyx statues to the outer office she remembered from her astral journey. Her heart paused in the grip of an icy claw when she saw the cracked sens-helmet on the chair and a video game device on the ground, and droplets of blood all over the sofa.

Oh, no, please no…

A clear barrier separated the inner office from the howling wind on the patio, save for where a corpse held a sliding door open. Another man sprawled dead, face-first in the glass at the end of a crimson smear, his eyes locked in a grimace of horror and agony. Kirsten raised her weapon and crept to the yawning portal, dreading what she would see.

A cute, twenty-something Mitsu in a business vest and a grey micro skirt stood at the edge. Long streamers of teal hair whipped in the violent gale. If not for the exposed metal peeking out from a bullet gouge in her cheek, she would pass for a real woman. The impact of dozens of shots peppered her torso, and she had lost her shoes. A manic grin spread across her face, pushing cute into surreal evil.

Now she understood what Dorian meant about uncanny.

The little girl, Marisa, pedaled her feet in the air, held out over the edge. The doll’s hand held a fistful of her dress at her throat, and the child clung with a white-knuckled grip to its wrist. One shoe slipped free and glided off on its way to the street more than a hundred stories below. Her face streaked with tears as she begged her father for help, grimacing as she fought the iron grip. Dread and relief collided in Kirsten’s head, making her choke. The blood on the couch only dripped from the doll’s hand, Marisa was unhurt―for now.

Lucian Talbot stared the machine down from a few feet away, aiming a blood-covered rifle at it. He did not react to Kirsten’s arrival, though the doll’s head turned at an inhuman angle to face her. As it did, its amethyst-hued eyes glowed out from its dark banshee silhouette.

The voice held more Albert than woman. “It appears we have another guest, Lucian. Why don’t you get her a drink or something? Better yet; you’ve been trying to kill her, why don’t you shoot her now?”

Talbot looked at Kirsten for just a second, not wanting to pull his eyes away from his child. With the doll’s stare locked on Kirsten, he edged closer.

“Albert, listen to me.” Kirsten held her hands out. “I can get justice for you, but you have to stop hurting innocent people.”

“Innocent?” A patronizing glare warped the doll’s face. “Lucian Talbot is far from innocent. Or are you talking about the mindless tools you found all over the corridor? Maybe you mean poor Miss Reynolds in the elevator?” He scowled. “None of them are innocent… they’re all part of this leviathan.” The doll waved its free left hand around.

“Marisa isn’t.”

Lucian’s head snapped to give Kirsten a look. “How do you know her―”

“She will be.” Albert cut him off. “One day she will be the queen of this empire. Better she leave this world uncorrupted.”

“No,” Kirsten wailed, “she’s just a child, you can’t!” She fought to keep her emotion in check, having no idea what she would do if he let go.

Albert cackled. “You already got a kid, Evan, is it? This one’s mine.”

“You son of a bitch.” Lucian took another step. “How dare you threaten my daughter!”

Kirsten found it odd the emotion in his voice seemed genuine. She could not comprehend how someone who could so blithely order the murder of his inconveniences valued even one life. The doll bounced its arm, causing the girl to shriek and gasp for air.

“Daddy, help!”

“Don’t worry, sweetie. You’ll like it over here.” Albert’s spectral face exuded through the front of the doll, grinning with yellow eyes. “It’s nice and cold.”

Kirsten expected the glass wall behind her to shatter from Marisa’s scream.

“My God…” Lucian gasped as his voice trailed off into nothing.

“I’ve been trying to tell you people, it’s a ghost!” Kirsten took a step forward but backed off as the doll threatened to lose its grip. “I don’t give a damn about whatever Cerberus is.”

Lucian snapped out of it at the word Cerberus. “Ghost? Are you insane?”

“Okay, you tell me what you just saw then.” Kirsten looked back and forth between the Talbots.

He shrugged. “I thought it was a virus.”

Albert glared. “You are a moron, Lucian. You always have been. That’s why I was going to Simulacris. You don’t even know the goddamn difference between Division 9 and whatever the hell that bitch is.”

Lucian bellowed. “You had no right to take―”

“Cerberus? I had every right to take my own work with me,” Albert fumed.

“Can you guys maybe continue arguing without Marisa dangled over the side?” Kirsten asked in the most unassuming voice she could produce.

“Nice try.” Albert’s haughty laugh made her skin crawl. “That piece of shit took my life. I am going to take his, but not before I make him suffer. There’s only one thing this bastard cares about, only one thing that will leave a mark on his soul.” He shook the girl to add emphasis in time with his words. “I’m going to let
him
live.”

Marisa sobbed, having lost the ability to speak in her terror. Kirsten wanted to lash Albert into oblivion right there, but knew just a little thumb actuator kept the child alive right now. One flick and she would be gone; if the dress did not rip first.

“Albert… If you hurt her, I promise you what awaits you is horrible beyond your wildest imaginings. What the Harbingers will do to you will…”

“Bah, you? You of all people threatening me with fire and brimstone?”

“Albert.” Lucian set his rifle upon the patio. “We can negotiate here. You want me? Take me, let Marisa go.”

Kirsten pleaded. “Lucian, don’t. He’ll just dive off with both of you.”

Lucian approached the doll with his arms raised. He took the free, porcelain-white hand of the possessed machine and clasped its fingers through his shirt. “You have me now, please let my child live.”