Division Zero: Thrall (3 page)

ncora Medical occupied the upper forty floors of a gleaming white-paneled tower in the southeastern corner of Sector 18025. From the moment the call came in, Kirsten had been grumbling internally at the memory of the cold that far north. Typical for a Code-3 run like this, she had brought the patrol craft high above the city and accelerated to 375 mph.

Outside, howling winds and snow swirled around the black hovercar. By the time it reached the ground, it would be rain. Inside, the soft thrum of electronic components underpinned the silence. Kirsten left the autopilot in control for the straightaway and cradled hot coffee to her chest. Enjoying the scent of such divinity felt awkward knowing people’s lives depended on her. She was safe in a warm car while others were threatened by forces they could not explain. However, she was already on the way and could not do anything more than wait for the ride to be over. Despite hurtling toward a dangerous situation, she clung to confidence in addition to the warm mocha.

“At least the damn entity waited for the coffee to be done this time.”

Dorian winked. “I thought you’d be happier it didn’t wait until dark and leave Evan stuck late at the school dormitory again. You okay? You seem rather pensive.”

“I’m just thinking about those idiots from the park last weekend.”

“Is that why you’ve been so clingy with Evan for the past few days? Did you tell Eze you coerced a confession?” Dorian raised a whimsical eyebrow.

“He didn’t ask.” Slurp. “I would have if he brought it up. I’m still trying to sort out if I feel bad about doing it.”

“Well, a few hundred years ago, they would have called it a violation of due process. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good thing. Used to be, a person couldn’t go to jail without Miranda.”

Kirsten finished another sip and looked over. “Miranda who? Is she a haunt?”

He spoke through gaps in his laughter. “Miranda warnings, the whole criminal rights thing police used to have to read to suspects.”

“Oh, back when the criminals had more rights than their victims?” She shook her head.

“Careful, K.” He stopped smiling. “It’s easy to say that off the cuff, but sometimes the law has the wrong person in their sights. The whole thing was meant to protect the innocent from government oppression.” Dorian faced front, his gaze settled on a cargo trailer-sized shipping bot. The lumbering machine was bedecked with flashing lights that colored the nearby rain red and green. “Now we bask in it and no one notices.”

The car compensated for the slow-moving transport, gliding down and left. Kirsten held on to her coffee as the wind knocked them around. The boxy flying robot streaked past the right side, slow to the point of seeming to hang in place.

“I guess. It just… I dunno, I remember reading about it in school and fuming. Mother got better treatment in jail than I got at home. Her judgment came at the hands of other inmates, not the government. They would have fed her and kept her safe until they let her out. I’d have been safer in jail than living with my own damn mother. How twisted is that?”

“What happens when a Div 1 cop does a half-assed summary execution on the wrong guy?”

“Now you’re talking about an entirely different thing.” She took over active flight control as the nav point drew close, guiding the patrol craft out of the clouds in a paced descent. “Summaries have a lot of checkboxes to go through. Even when it’s warranted, half the time it doesn’t happen.”

“Good thing, that.” As they dove out of the storm, Dorian smiled at the orange gleam of the mid-afternoon sun on the city a half-mile below. “Officers who do too many of them usually wind up on the wrong end of one sooner or later. They don’t like to let that kind of information get out to the public. Bang. Oops, he was an innocent man. Now you’re guilty of murder.” He was silent for several minutes as they sank among the towering monoliths of northern West City. “I don’t think I could have been able to do it without
knowing
they were guilty.”

“You mean without reading their minds?” She looked at him for two seconds. “Isn’t that about the same as telling someone to confess truth? It’s not like I added more to it or made him lie.”

“Div 1 officers don’t have the luxury to
know
when someone is lying. They perform summaries based on evidence they can see. Only in those cases, the lawyers don’t get involved in time to make a difference.”

“I knew he did it. Even with his blurted utterance to the arresting officers, a good enough lawyer can worm out of it.” She bled off speed, reaching the level of the fifth story at a hair over eighty miles per hour. “Weren’t lawyers once supposed to just make sure the law is applied fairly, as opposed to looking for any little technicality to let their client get away with crime?”

Dorian grinned. “You have to be reincarnated. You are way too jaded for your age.”

A line of Division 1 cars formed a perimeter in the center of a pentagonal courtyard between five corporate towers. The ground between them and the building lay scattered with bits of plant material and broken terra cotta. Small arms fire emanating from the lobby had destroyed at least six flowerpots large enough to bathe in, as evidenced by shot-out glass along the front.

Kirsten set down behind the row of blue and whites, turning her attention to the screen at the middle of the console. Ancora Medical leased office space from a management company that owned the entire five-building complex. A query for disgruntled employees and reports of violence in the building came back suspiciously blank.

“Either this is the one corporation in the world not run by greedy bastards, or someone’s been tinkering in the network.”

“Yeah,” said Dorian. “I wonder which it is.”

She grasped the door handle, but froze as bullets bounced off the ground in front of the car. A handful hit the hood and windscreen, but the armor plating reduced it to a dull clatter. Kirsten poked the comm.

“Ops, what the hell is going on in there?”

One of the Division 1 officers put his back to his car so he could face her, and waved. “Afternoon, Agent.” His voice came out of her dashboard, words spread out beneath his hologram identifying him as Sergeant Ormund.

“You the senior onsite?”

“Until you got here, yeah.” He chuckled. “Ancora deals with military medical technology, so the building has armed security pods. At first we thought a hacker got into the local network. We cut all outside GlobeNet access, but it didn’t help. Then we figured it was probably an artificial intelligence gone crazy.”

“Since you called me in, I’ll assume that didn’t pan out either?”

Ormund tapped at his forearm unit, which projected small holo-panels containing images of a silver, male humanoid face. “Centurion Investments does not have an AI in their corporate park, however Ancora does. We managed to make contact with him, and he’s as clueless as anyone else about what’s going on.”

“Maybe he’s lying?” She kept her fingers on the door handle, staring at a twitching ball turret in the ceiling just beyond a ring of broken window. “AIs can lie, you know.”

“It let us walk right in and check. When the disconnect didn’t change anything, we brought the link back. Div 2 went right into the network; they say the AI’s telling the truth. The hardware is moving on its own, not driven by any code they can find. We even killed power to sections of the building and the guns continued to fire.” He tapped his foot. “
That’s
when we called you.”

“What can you tell me about the hostages? Have there been any demands? This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’ve never seen an angry ghost take hostages before. They usually just kill… or try.”

“No, ma’am. No demands made to the outside world at this time.” Sergeant Ormund ducked as the sporadic spray gave up on Kirsten’s car and played with the Div 1 patrol craft.

Dorian leaned forward to get a better look into the lobby. “Whatever it is evidently doesn’t understand armor plating. The weapon is designed for antipersonnel use, no threat to the cars.”

“Can you knock the turret offline?”

He squinted. “Not if it is connected to the building’s power system. I can’t shut the entire city off. If a spirit has embodied them, I could try and get control, but then it would come down to how strong the other entity is.”

“Ormund, what about those civilians?”

“Uhh… At last count, there were two groups. We got about twenty employees on the 92
^nd
floor, looks like mostly senior managers and up. The other group is on the 61
^st
floor, in the day care. Everyone else managed to get out during the chaos.”

“Fuck.” Kirsten’s head fell back against the seat. “Why?”

“How should I know,” said Ormund, before he realized it was a rhetorical ‘why.’ “Umm, it’s not as bad as it sounds, Agent. The designers weren’t stupid, there’s no guns anywhere able to fire
into
the daycare. Problem is… the hallway leading
to
the daycare has six of ‘em. The kids are in no danger, but no one short of a full Class 4 borg is getting in there alive.”

The turret harassing the police cars out front kept spinning, but ceased firing.

“Out of ammo? Small favors,” she mumbled. “Well this is a right mess. Alright, I’m going in.”

She ran from the safety of her car to Ormund’s side, behind the wall of Div 1 vehicles. Without the intermediary of a digital pass-through windshield, a spectral glow became visible around the turret. As she got up to run, the sergeant put a hand on her shoulder.

“Agent, I’m sure you know my guys aren’t too keen on that psio shit, but if you need us inside, say the word. We’ll be there.”

Three women and seven men in blue armor nodded at her.

Kirsten squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

The spirit light left the mounted weapon and it hung limp, spent. She bolted across the remainder of the courtyard, hitting the wall with her back just left of the main door. Through the still-intact sliding glass doors, an expanse of white tile and false plants waited. The space was empty save for a young woman in a top the same shade of black as her hair; silver buttons running from her shoulder to hip on the right side. The tall neck of the garment split open in front in a Chinese-inspired collar, and she smiled at thin air as if nothing strange was going on. The lack of surface thoughts confirmed Kirsten’s suspicion.

Dorian wandered through the unopened door. “That’s either a doll or the world’s most unobservant person.”

Kirsten edged out from behind cover, staring at the turret. It tried to spin toward her, but she latched onto the paranormal energy within and held it to the side as she slipped across the lobby and through the doors. They closed behind her with a soft hiss. Holographic birds flitted around the false plants, at least half of which were also made of light. The air smelled crisp and cool, with a hint of cleaning solution. A handful of squat ten-inch black domes scurried out of sight across immaculate white tiles, digital cleaning-roaches fleeing the light; or in this case, the vision of a guest.

“Welcome to Centurion Investment Corporation Tower II.” The woman faced Kirsten. “Which company or individual are you here to see?”

“Ancora Medical,” said Kirsten, heading for the elevator bank beyond a row of plush waiting-room couches.

“Are you sure about that?” Dorian jogged ahead of her. “If a spirit is messing with electronics, do you trust the elevator?”

“Aww.” Her run stumbled into a slouching stagger while staring at the ceiling. “Why is it always sixty plus stories?”

Dorian phased through the door to the stairwell. “Saves you having to pay for membership at a fitness club.”

“I’m sorry, miss. Ancora Medical is currently closed,” said the reception doll. “If you would like to schedule an appointment with either sales, human resources, or legal, please leave your information at the front desk.”

“The department has one I can use for free.” Kirsten hit the door with both hands, shoving it open hard enough to bounce it off the wall.

Metal slamming echoed through an undecorated vertical shaft never meant for the eyes of investors, customers, or upper management. The brisk journey came to a sweaty end at the landing of the 61
^st
floor, where a tiny display screen showed the logo of Ancora Medical, a dove hinted at by a few curved lines.