Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (11 page)

“Check this out.” Nicole pointed. “Forensics went over the scene for more than two hundred work-hours. They managed to piece together a grand total of four point two victims.”

“Point two?”

“That must have been a big bomb.” Dorian grinned.

“DNA said dog.” Nicole sighed. “Poor thing.” Her sadness evaporated with the next intense thought to enter her mind. “Four people, three of which they traced back to the employ of the Lyris Corporation. Seems like they were enforcers or assassins or something.” Nicole sniffed. “Is that strawberry?”

“The crepes. You don’t remember?”

“Oh, right. I was too freaked to eat.” She turned away from the terminal and flipped out her NetMini to order food.

“What about the enforcers?”

“Oh. Yeah. There were three of them, plus the poor shithead they were sent to kill. Their leader went by the name Seneschal. Guess that’s a nickname or something. Who names their kid that?”

The image of a man in his later thirties with mixed Asian-white features filled her screen. Black hair slicked tight to his head, sunglasses, a high-necked black wool trenchcoat.

Kirsten studied him. “Call sign, maybe? Was he military? Kinda looks it. Has cold eyes.”

Nicole picked through the file. “Dalton Chen, according to their HR department. Not much info on his background, I couldn’t find a face match in any military records. Lyris records have him as that team’s squad leader, with the official title of ‘issue resolution manager.’”

“Sometimes they don’t even try to hide it,” said Dorian.

“Next guy called himself Icarus; his real name was Michael Coley.”

The screen shifted, a muscular black man, early thirties, appeared. A thick mass of dreadlocks cascaded over the shoulders of a shiny black coat. His eyes hid behind wraparound silver glasses, though he wore enough of a confident grin for Kirsten to guess the look he gave the camera.

“This guy was ex-military. Had some infantry training; his record has a lot of transfers in and out of auxiliary logistics, whatever that is.”

Dorian looked up. “Covert ops would be my guess. He’s probably the one that set up the demolition charges.”

“Dorian says he might be covert ops.”

“Good thing he’s already dead; he could be dangerous.” Nicole flashed a cheesy grin. “Okay, so we got a question mark and a military assassin. You’re gonna love the last one.”

“Dare I ask?” Kirsten stretched.

The face of a twenty-something Asian woman appeared, staring at the camera as if she plotted six different ways to kill it in the span of two seconds. Something about the look made Kirsten uneasy, as if the eyes had no soul behind them.

“She looks deader than I feel,” said Dorian.

“Mariko Moriyama. Could be a trade from a Japanese company to Lyris Corporation. Says she was a
ninja
.” Nicole waved her arms in a mock of martial arts so feeble even Kirsten felt skilled by comparison.

“You know they still use them.” Kirsten mourned her empty coffee cup. “Real crap storm, if you ask me. Corporations over there just kill each other out in the open, it’s all ritualized and legal somehow. I don’t understand it.”

“It’s all about honor, prestige, and profit,” added Dorian.

“Okay. Remind me never to go there.” Nicole jumped when her NetMini chimed. “Crap, food’s here. Be right back.”

Kirsten scooted back to her terminal, poring over the financials as Nicole ran off. She poked around a bit more to no avail, and then placed a vid call. Within a moment, the bust of a bland-looking man with eastern European features floated atop her desk.

“Can I help you?”

“Good afternoon, I’m Agent Wren of the Division 0 police, West City. I have some questions about a property your company owns. The building at CR 1804 and Morris Ave. It is a high-rise office tower, involved in an incident a few months ago.”

His face remained unreadable. “Kukla Investments owns many properties in both cities. We primarily hold titles while leaving the management of each facility to local entities on a contractual basis. We are a financial services company, and do not deal with the day-to-days.”

“I see.” She swiped her hand through holograms, changing files. “Can you tell me what local entity handles this address, please? It’s a bit odd to me that only Kukla submitted a bid on it, and nothing has been done with it yet. The damage from the explosion has not even been fixed.”

“Please hold one moment.”

The floating head turned into a shifting geometric screensaver. Kirsten drummed her fingers on the desk, staring over the top of blue cubes and catching Morelli giving her the evil eye. Kirsten stretched her arms up, enjoying the shuddering release of tension, and picked at her eye with a middle finger. He squinted and sank back over his desk, averting his gaze. When the blue cubes exploded into individual pixels that reformed into the man from Kukla, she raised her eyebrows a little―just enough to say she expected a smokescreen answer.

“Agent Wren. According to my research, the property is currently on retainer to a holovid production agency planning to use it in the recording of a big-budget feature. The blown-out floor is ideal for their needs. Renovations are scheduled to begin once filming is complete. Unfortunately, I do not have specific dates.”

Crap, that sounds almost plausible.
“I see. I don’t suppose you have any idea why no one else bid on the place?”

“Miss Wren, you seem like a nice enough young woman. Are you naïve to the point of believing government auctions are above manipulation?”

“You admit you fixed the sale? A bribe?”

“I admit no such thing. I merely suggest certain parties who may convey the appearance of being beyond reproach might in fact be far from such a state. It may also be that the mechanism of action by which the building’s fall into government ownership came about―an assassination if I must be so indelicate―frightened other investors away. Of course, there is always its proximity to an undesirable patch of real estate. A… what is the term… seraya zona, I believe you call it?”

The words
Detected
Russian: grey zone
scrolled across the lower edge of the terminal.

Crap squared. Well, this was a wild goose chase.
“Yes. All right, that does make sense. Thank you for your time, sorry to bother you.”

“Always a pleasure to help the authorities.”

Kirsten leaned back in her chair, rubbing the frustration out of her eyes. The suit made sense on the surface, but the answers came too fast, without hesitation, scripted. Something was not adding up.

Nicole glided by, returning to her seat. A small cup of coffee floated away from her bundle of plastic bags and landed in front of Kirsten.

“Saw you looking at your empty like you wanted to tongue kiss it.” Nicole winked.

Slurp. Strawberry latte, just what she had been thinking about.

She sent a dire look at the back of Nicole’s head as she started on what appeared to be salmon on a salad. The girl had boundary issues with skimming surface thoughts. After a moment, Kirsten sighed; anger never quite formed at her friend.
Are you that desperate to endear yourself to everyone?
The thought came without thinking. Kirsten cringed, regretting it right away, but then relaxed. Even master telepaths could not eavesdrop without looking at someone. Despite having two living and loving parents, the divorce had not been easy on Nicole.

“Thanks, it’s just what I wanted.” Kirsten kicked off, rolling her chair alongside the other desk. “Did you find anything about their target?”

“Mmm?” Nicole turned with a fork in her mouth, blinking. She removed it, chewed twice, and swallowed. “Uhh”―blushing―“you’re welcome.” Nicole cringed.

Kirsten patted her on the arm. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah.” The redhead let the fork fall into the salad. “I did. Sorry for peeking.”

“It’s okay; I should just accept it by now. Oh, the maître’d at Grimaldi’s carded me.”

Nicole giggled, a mood change on a dime. Kirsten embellished the story of her rotten date, making Armando/Brian/Douchebag sound like Armando/Brian/Asshole. A few minutes, and most of the salad later, Nicole unlocked her terminal and the face of a twenty-something Indian man appeared.

Short hair, straight and neat, framed a face mixed with confidence and paranoia. The image shifted to profile, making his protruding nose seem bigger. Text scrolled in on the adjacent panel: empty criminal record, a few traffic citations, and a few minor cyberspace infractions.

Nicole mumbled through a mouthful of lettuce. “Vikram Medhi, twenty-four. He graduated from Victoria University with a bachelor’s in virtual security construct design and counter-intrusion. According to this, he worked for Unicostal as a network protection agent.”

“He had to be moonlighting,” said Dorian. “Hit squads don’t usually make a habit of going after defensemen.”

Kirsten slouched. “Could be.”

“He did work for Uni”―Nicole glanced at the empty desk―“oh, you were talking to…”

She reached over Nicole’s arm, pawing through a few screens of holographic text. “The crime scene techs had a theory that Vikram had been in cyberspace for some hours prior to the detonation, and a dead-man switch triggered when they assassinated him.”

Nicole raised both eyebrows. “I guess our Lyris friends killed themselves when they killed Vikram.”

“That would piss
me
off,” said Dorian.

Kirsten tapped her chin. “Do you think a ghost could literally go into cyberspace? I’m wondering if the power outage might have been our friends from Lyris traveling back to the site of the bomb through the network.”

“How the hell should I”―Nicole flashed an overdone expression of stupid―“Right, never mind.”

Dorian paced for a moment; his eyebrows dueled in a contest of altitude. After the fifth circle around the desks, he came to a halt and pivoted on his heel to face her. “Doubtful. Essentially, ghosts are coalescences of electromagnetic energy. In theory, such energy
could
travel along wires, but I doubt they could experience the illusion of cyberspace. It would just be power on a line. I can’t see how it would be worth the effort of learning when we can just float through walls. I’m at a loss to explain the blackout.”

Kirsten’s chair thudded into her desk, causing the holographic financial records to blur for several seconds. She sat up, glanced at Dorian, and blinked. “Maybe not, but you just gave me an idea about something else that has been bothering me.

d-bots parted, creating a tunnel amid glimmering holograms and zooming droids through which the patrol craft threaded. Kirsten slowed and leveled off, squinting at the golden sunlight on the mirrored surfaces of approaching buildings. She evaded a ponderous trash-collection droid as it ascended out of a port midway up the building. Tiny (by comparison) robotic arms at the front end packed the overstuffed hold; an immense rectangular fly cleaning its legs. The patrol craft passed in a gradual banking turn over a large, rounded patio deck, which jutted out from the building seventy stories up. From there, the wall held a concave shape to the top, thirty stories later. Kirsten thought it looked like a giant cup holder, the cavity in the building a perfect match for an impossibly large mug.