Division Zero (5 page)

Kirsten sensed it too. The ambiance changed within a second; the neutral chapel felt grim and foreboding, as if doom itself had arrived. Shadows thickened and rapid whispers filled the air as darkness seeped into the edges of the room. Black ether oozed through the walls, forming patches before streaking down in thin lines into puddles on the ground.

She smacked him with a feeble lash while he was distracted, but her fatigue turned it into a limp strike that fell short of destroying his essence. The whispering intensified as the soul collector weakened further. Smoky humanoid shapes rose out of puddles on the ground, shadows cast by people that did not exist. Here and there, pale glinting spots appeared like eyes amid the black, and the outline of shadowy claws danced upon the walls.

She backed away, knowing what approached. Things had been set in motion she dared not interfere with. He spun in place, looking with desperation for any patch of wall not covered in dusk. One of the shadow forms lurched forward, passing just behind him. The doctor yelled as he spun to face it. A second one passed him, making him turn back, and a third, and then another and another until he whirled in a horrified dance.

A dozen emerged from all over the room at once, swarming and engulfing him under a blanket of night. One gloomy hand reached out of the writhing mass, covering his face. With a cry of agony, the pile of Harbingers dragged the doctor down through the floor.

Silence.

Kirsten stood motionless, staring at the ground where the ghost had vanished until the mood in the room returned to normal. She sank into a squat, trembling hands clutched over her chest.

Those creatures were not to be trifled with.

After catching her breath, she recovered her composure and went out through the empty corridors of the old Saguaro Mental Hospital. Flashes of silver light glimmered in room after room behind her, accompanied by the sense of dread lifting from this place.

Kirsten smiled to herself as she walked among the transcendent light toward the exit.

ncessant beeping picked at the edges of Kirsten’s consciousness until the alarm clock dragged her back to the world of the dawn. She raised her arms over her head and stretched under the covers, squinting at the slices of morning leaking through the blinds of her apartment’s lone window. The comforgel slab in which her body lay embedded had been on the fritz for months. No longer calibrated for temperature, it left her over-warm and far from comfortable.

She flung the covers off, letting the cool air wash over her. Sleeping in a short shirt and panties had embarrassed her at first, but the pajamas she so adored left her miserably warm. It presented a question of lesser evils; risk a peeping ghost or lie awake in a puddle of sweat. Standing today proved to be another matter entirely; breathing still hurt. Despite the use of two stimpaks, a line of bruise remained across her ribs where the mace had caught her. She rubbed it with a wince and let out a sigh, wondering why these things always hurt so much more the day afterward.

At least I finally got to sleep without that dream.

After peeling herself out of the Kirsten-shaped hollow in the mattress, she kicked her legs over the side and slumped forward. She braced her ribs with her arm and took a few painful breaths. As her imprint in the comforgel faded, she tuned out the wretched electronic cacophony responsible for her being awake. Her eyes struggled to make sense of the blurry mass in front of her that focused into her toes. After a year, she still could not get used to having to wake up at six a.m. Mornings had felt much easier when she lived in the Division 0 dorm; the commute had been quick, just a walk down a hallway.

A trace of the Synvod she used to chase away the asylum remained in a glass on the nightstand. The scent kicked her in the stomach and the taste of it bubbled to the back of her mouth.

After silencing the alarm, she went into her tiny bathroom. Satisfied by the empty room, she pushed the door closed and held her hand out with her palm against the silvery steel. Faint traces of white light coalesced around the door and slid along the walls until the entire area shone, awash with illumination. Her eyes opened when she finished concentrating, and the glow receded into the walls. Despite the absence of visual effect, she felt safe and secure.

She stepped into the shower tube after dropping her clothes in a heap on the small blue rug. The cylindrical door slid closed behind her without a noise. She examined her reflection in the tube wall, checking on a few small bruises lingering here and there, paying particular attention to one on her shin. The stimpaks had done a decent job of shrinking them to a point where they would be gone within a day or two. Bending down proved to be unwise. The Synvod churned in her stomach, traces of it burbled back into her mouth.

Turning away from her reflection, she spat into the drain and poked at the control console to start the machine whirring. A groan came out of her as warm soapy water filled the tube. Her muscles relaxed under the gyrating pressure of the rotating jets. Basking in the sense of it, her mind wandered.

Will I ever find a guy that doesn’t run away screaming?

So far, the ones that stayed longer than a minute after finding out wanted little more than getting into her pants. Some would call it unethical to peek into their brains, but she would rather cheat the rules a little bit than be hurt. She let her forehead touch the wall, feeling for a moment like a hypocrite for snapping at Nicole for doing the same thing. The autoshower shuddered to a halt. The spray ring whirred its way back into the ceiling and locked, seconds before a tornado of hot air sucked her hair vertical.

I guess telepaths are just lonely
.

When the dry cycle stopped, she pushed the tube open and walked out into the frigid embrace of the bathroom. Taking a seat by the sink, she plucked her e-razor from the shelf. A two-inch strip of intense blue light followed it around the curves of her legs, leaving behind a trail of warm skin as well as smoke wherever any hint of hair had been. With that done, she leaned forward and fixed her face with a few dabs of light cosmetics. The little shard of mirror dangling from a bare metal wire presented an annoying reminder of how the superintendent had laughed in her face last week.

Yeah, he’ll get around to replacing it…

Perhaps an oversized pink shirt with a Hello Kitty face on it did not demand enough respect from the lazy bastard in the basement. All the police training in the world could not overcome her innocent face.
Next time I see him I’ll go in uniform.
She grinned. I-Ops blacks could change her cute into creepy, at least for anyone who understood what they meant. The fear in people’s eyes as they backed away bothered her, but she owed him one; as well as Theodore for breaking the mirror in the first place.

Yesterday’s underwear went into the top of a white box mounted to the wall. She took a clean set, still sealed in plastic film, out of the bottom and put them on. The machine hummed to life as it cleansed, wrapped, and added them to a stack of waiting unmentionables. When she opened the bathroom door, a flash of white light raced away from the seams and sent a shimmer around the entire room.

Standing on the corner a block from her building, Kirsten checked the time and grumbled.
Where the hell is the damn PubTran, it’s three minutes late.

The wind blew restless today; the cheap plastic clasp she had used to hold her hair up threatened to fail at any second. The gale tugged and whipped at her jogging suit, sending the loose-fitting grey material into a flutter audible over the steady stream of hovercars. Forty stories up, they streamed amid tall buildings blocking the sky in all directions. When she looked down, she groaned at an older man standing alongside her with a smile on his face and hands folded behind him.

“Dad, I’m twenty-two now. I think I can get to work on my own.”

The old man’s smile grew wider. He looked to be in his fifties, but his unassuming grey slacks and dark blue flannel shirt made him seem older.

He sidled closer. “It’s a dangerous city, dear. You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

“Not that I’d expect you to have noticed, but I
am
a police officer. I am not defenseless.” She patted the impression of her sidearm in the athletic bag.

“What if I just want to spend time with you, sweetie?”

Kirsten shot him a strained look. “Sure, that’s easy to say
now
.”

Her father deflated. “You still blame me, don’t you?” He sighed. “I guess I spent too much time on the road with the job. Things were… strange at home, you know.”

She slung the bag over her shoulder and folded her arms. He had not taken well to the ghosts that came to visit her as a child. Not wanting to let her emotional state leak out of her voice, she remained silent.

He patted her on the back, a guilty resignation in his voice. “I never saw that side of your mother when I was home. By the time I knew what she was doing, you had already run away.”

She behaved herself for the two days a month you were around. Why do you think I cried so much when you got ready to take a trip?

“Look, dad. What’s done is done. I don’t blame you for anything.” She glanced at him for a moment before looking away, wondering if he believed what she had spent the past twelve years trying to convince herself.

It was the ghosts he ran from, not me.

The PubTran bus shuddered to a halt at the corner with a pneumatic hiss, wrapped in a shroud of vapor. As the doors opened, people filed past her onto it; one or two sent odd looks her way. She trudged up the stairs, grabbing and swinging around a standee post and flopping into a seat with its back to the windows.

Her father took the spot to her left. “Don’t they pay you enough to afford a car? Can’t you take one of theirs home at least?”

She closed her eyes and bonked her head back into the window several times. “I can afford a car; I can’t afford the insurance.”

“Heh, I hear that,” said a man a few seats over.

“Well then, take your patrol unit home.”

She almost blushed. “I don’t know… I’m not sure I want to have it around the apartment.”