Division Zero (6 page)

A few of the passengers looked at her with raised eyebrows.

He made a dismissive wave. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

She remained silent through several more minutes of paternal nattering, embarrassed at having her father follow her to work like a third grader on her way to school. Kirsten tried her best to tune him out.

The PubTran stopped at a traffic signal. Through the window, she caught a glimpse of a middle-aged guy in a mangled grey suit stumbling around among six lanes of oncoming traffic. Kirsten made a squeaking cringe as a car lined him up for a head-on. He turned to face it just as it hit. The impact dispersed him into a cloud of fog for a second before he coalesced, facing the other way with his middle finger aimed at the driver.

She deflated in her seat. From the look on his face, he had no idea what happened to him. No traces of a wreck remained in the road; he had to have been there for some days now. Kirsten watched his confused wander as the PubTran pulled away. He turned and stared, making eye contact for just a second.

Oh, great, he knows I saw him.
He trotted after the bus, raising his hand in a pleading wave. She hung her head.
I’ll try to find time to come back here later.

“They certainly seem to have taken good care of you at the school, dear.” Her father looked her over. “I’m not so sure about happy, but you look healthy.”

“I’m
fine,
dad. I can get to work on my own.”

A few people on the bus turned to look. An older woman gave her a disapproving smirk while muttering something about drugs. Kirsten looked away from her father, staring through the window. His continued attempts at small talk met with the occasional smirk, but no reply. She figured it made him feel better to ‘guard’ her. As usual, he did what he wanted to do, indifferent to the opinions of the women in his life.

The PubTran came to a halt at the next stop. She kept her head down amidst the jostling of people shuffling on board at the beginning of their daily drudgery. A sudden muting of her father’s continued rambling made her look. A well-dressed man had just taken the same seat, his presence smothering the voice. She snickered at the sight of an extra pair of arms protruding from this man’s chest. His hands swiped at the man’s face, feeling around as if to ascertain why he sounded like he had wet towels over his mouth.

The suit smiled, despite her frumpy sweats.
Six empty seats and he lands in the one right next to me
. The look on his face betrayed the inevitable cheesy introduction. As he started talking, she let the air out of her lungs. Predictably enough, he thought she was a poor, working-class girl he could impress with his salary and suit. She offered a pleasant reply, but did her best to look disinterested. A wave of intensity came from her father, making the man shiver.

“That seat’s a bit drafty.” She pointed up at the roof vent. “You might want to move over one.”

Her father stood out from inside the man and turned on him with an indignant glare. His face softened, realizing the futility of being angry with a living person for not noticing him there.

The man kept trying to make small talk with her for the rest of the ride. She must have had sorrowful eyes, because he had taken on a protector’s tone and tried to ask what was wrong. She did not tell him she felt sad at just another superficial douche wanting nothing more than a place to dock his unit for a few nights. It pained her to ignore men being this lonely, but she wanted more than what they were offering.

Kirsten leapt from her seat before the PubTran came to a complete halt at her stop, the Police Administrative Center. She jogged down the steps onto the metal sidewalk toward the massive office building. She took no small amusement at the stunned look on the suit’s face watching her walk to the police-only entrance.

“Dammit dad, you are going to make everyone on the PubTran think I’m on drugs, talking to an empty seat.”

He followed her through the wall of the PubTran and kept up with her as she made her way through the doors into the lobby.

“I’m just worried. Besides, tell them you have one of those dermal thingees.” He waved his finger around the side of his head. “Implanted comm whatevers.”

She stopped and faced him, knowing that sometimes spirits could learn things in ways she had yet to understand. “Anything specific or just general dad worry?”

“Nothing specific, I um…” He sighed and looked down. “I’m sorry.”

Is that what’s keeping him here, guilt?
Kirsten felt ashamed her only non-surviving relative tried to apologize to her and she did not want him to. Maybe she did resent him for not noticing years of abuse, but if she accepted his apology, he would go away forever.

The idea filled her with paralyzing sorrow.

“I was ten. I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you. That bitch was such a different person when you came home.” Kirsten made her body tangible to ghosts and hugged him. “I wanted you to stay home, but you kept leaving.” She sniffled, her voice faltered. “I’ve been dodging your apology because you’ll go away again if you find peace.” She paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, too.”

The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled. After a long, knowing pause, he reached to take her hand. “I am honestly worried about you. What she did to you can’t be excused.”

She stepped back and looked him in the eye. “Look, dad. I’m fine. I know more about it than you think. I’m not going to do anything that’ll make them come after me, and
you
can stop feeling guilty about mom. It’s not right you’re stuck here and she’s gone on.”

“You don’t think they got her, do you?” He looked off into nowhere with a fearful expression.

Her eyes narrowed as she resumed walking. “If I was writing the laws of the universe they would have. I don’t know if her delusions were true evil or just twisted and cruel. I hope she realized just how wrong she was once she crossed over and there was no fat man in a toga waiting for her by some goddamned gate.”

“Well,” he said through a smile, “I don’t believe for an instant you’re the devil’s child. That wouldn’t say much for me, now would it?”

She turned to answer, but found empty space. Slouching into a sigh, she stared at the floor. No flash of silver came, though she feared he had moved on. Red filled in around her eyes as she fought the urge to cry at the second loss of her father. She could not do that here―not in front of all these cops. Swallowing it, she drew in a breath and held her head up.

The rest of the police complex drifted by in a silent haze. Hallway after hallway passed; filled with a sound borne of a thousand conversations and an uncountable collection of technology. The central node, as busy as ever, filled with members of the various police divisions. She navigated the crowd on autopilot past the halls leading off to the combined command group for Divisions 1, 5, and 6. A stream of Division 1 beat cops, bored and dutiful, wandered past a couple of men from the special anti-cyborg interdiction team who loitered around the entryway cracking jokes and making fun of how an aug had run around for thirty full seconds last night―after his head got blown off. Kirsten shivered at the group of Fives.
Those guys have a death wish.
Two men in bulky, augmented Division 6 armor, front-line assault Marines rotated to in-city duty, stomped past everyone without making eye contact, mission-focused eyes locked dead ahead.

I wonder where they’re going in such a hurry?

She trudged on through a cloud of fist-sized orb droids dancing through the air, not looking up until the pure white of the Division 0 wing came into view.

This walk started every workday for the past year, ever since she opted to move out of the psionic kids’ dorm and get a place of her own. She wanted to avoid the stigma attached to being over eighteen and still living there. She did not want anyone to mistake the luxury of convenience for her needing to be coddled.

Most of her peers wore their uniforms and drove their patrol cars home, but Agent Kirsten Wren was not like her peers. Most civilians misunderstood Division 0. They thought her just a police officer and came to her with things she had no idea how to handle. The ones who recognized the significance of her uniform, recognized her as psionic, reacted quite often like a tamer version of her mother.

Robin, the first point of contact everyone saw here, looked up from the reception desk and waved.

“Morning Kirsten. Ack, are you okay?”

Kirsten forced a plastic smile. “Yeah, I just had a long night after that damn doctor.”

The red-haired woman could have been Nicole’s mother. “I saw the comm channel when that went down. I don’t know how you handle that stuff. My empathy must be on the fritz, I was about to ask who died.”

Kirsten leaned on the desk with a sigh, drawn into a conversation about her dad. It made her feel better to a degree, like having a kind aunt.

When an incoming vid distracted Robin back to her job, Kirsten waved and went through the offices to the squad area. Like a zombie, she plodded to her locker and dropped her bag on the bench with a clank. The small white cat face sticker smiling from the plain steel door shooed away her doldrums just about every morning and made her grin. She held her hand over the scan panel and the storage compartment popped open. The room grew colder as she peeled off the jogging suit and changed into her uniform and everything else that went with it. She closed the door, revealing the well-tanned face of Dorian Marsh lurking behind it. He leaned on the row of lockers; his smile said the sight of her made his day better.

The harsh fluorescent light put a playful glint in his eyes, teasing her with what he might be thinking. His uniform appeared perfect in every detail, matching his hair both in color and in the meticulous care with which he kept them. Even though he was closing in on forty, the athletic lines of his body showed through the snug cloth and sapped her concentration. The scent of some exotic Mediterranean spice clung to him; his presence overwhelmed every one of her senses.

He had been riding with her for a few months since she had been assigned her own patrol craft. Something about him caused her to open up about things she had shared with no one since the shrink who worked with her ten years ago.

She had lived at the dorm since twelve, and had dealt with co-ed showers since sixteen. Still, mixed company in the locker area bothered her a little even if these people felt more like siblings than coworkers―especially given the way she
wanted
Dorian to be looking at her. She put one leg up on the bench and pulled the six side straps of her boot tight one by one. Her face warmed with a blush. “Good morning to you, too.”

“After last night I was sure you’d have been late.”

“You know I don’t drink like that often.” She swapped legs, tightening the other boot.

“Exactly why I expected you to call out sick.” He laughed. “You look like hell.”

“Gee, thanks.” She lowered her foot and looked up at him. “It’s not the vodka, it’s my dad.”

The story of her earlier meeting followed them down the hall, past a small break area, and into her squad room. The words ‘Investigative Operations’ hung in large black letters along the main wall, surrounded with placards of achievement and merit for some current and some not so current officers. White, black, and silver made up the bulk of the area, save for the occasional splash of green from a potted plant or blue from the holographic terminals.

A handful of other agents looked her way as she arrived, some with pleasant smiles and others with worry. Anyone who knew she held a rating in mind blast often avoided eye contact. Kirsten felt better, since she only dabbled. The poor bastards who excelled at it got put on short leashes. Even the high command feared them, as the strong ones could erase a mind back to infancy.

Dorian sat at his desk, fiddling with the terminal as Kirsten fell into the tedious task of typing out the reports from the incident at Saguaro Asylum, the part of her job she loathed beyond all else. She could not see the point in all this electronic paperwork if the government still considered the things she dealt with in theoretical terms.

An eternity later, she slumped forward with a relieved sigh and let her forehead hit the submit button on the holographic monitor. A noise from her gut reminded her she had skipped breakfast―not that her apartment had any food in it to skip.

“Wren!” A voice yelled before she could take two steps toward the cafeteria.

She froze like a scruffed cat, turning her head to look at her immediate supervisor, Captain Eze. He leaned out of his office, waving her over. Once she made eye contact, he smiled and vanished back into the room. She relaxed, knowing by his mannerism he would not be yelling about something.

Captain Jonathan Eze waited behind his desk, arms folded, with a look of concern on his face. The light from the ceiling gleamed on the dark skin of his shaved head. Kirsten closed the door behind her and walked up to the desk.

“Yes, sir?”

Even if he had something to scold her about, the calming way about him made bad news easier to take, and his accent left even bad things sounding reasonable. His large brown eyes were kind; he was motivated by his desire to do right by those who served under him. He gestured at a chair facing the desk and sat down. She had forgotten where he said he came from, somewhere in West Africa―perhaps Nigeria. He mentioned it once, when they had first met, before her knowledge of his person softened the intimidation of his rank.

“Kirsten, a case has just been sent over to us from Division 1. They would like our assessment of something they cannot explain. I am giving this one to you.” He pushed a clear plastic tablet to the edge of the desk with a smile. “Impressive work at the Asylum, by the way. I just got off the phone with Captain Morris. He sends his thanks for getting his people out of there alive.”

Kirsten looked off to the side, biting her lip and picking at her sleeve. “I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

Eze laughed. “Everything we do is out of the ordinary, though it would have been nice if they gave you a little backup.”