Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (28 page)

he patrol craft rose over the edge of the apartment building roof, kicking up a cloud of dust and birds as the ionic downblast scoured a patch of metal. Thin sparks came spidery out of the ground, lapping at the car’s underside. Kirsten twisted the right-hand control stick just enough to rotate the vehicle parallel with a flat spot between two ventilation units and flicked the switch for the wheels. When the mechanical droning noise stopped, she set the vehicle down amid the electric fingers.

Captain Eze’s holographic head appeared at the center of the console, eyes half open as though he had just been asleep. “Wren, I got your message. What’s the situation?”

“I got a lead on where Rene Bollard may be hiding.” She shut down the drive system. “I want to go check it out.”

He ran a hand over his face and shook off the last vestiges of sleep. “All right, let’s hear it.”

“He’s using an abandoned hotel as a hideout, has maybe a dozen gangers under his influence.”

“It’s in Sector 187,” Dorian yelled, though Eze could not hear him. He glared at Kirsten. “Tell him where.”

“That does not sound too difficult, Agent. We can assemble a tactical response team and go in after him. There’s no need for you to get involved. You don’t have tactical training. I trust you have obtained an address?”

She opened the door and got out. Eze’s virtual image leapt from the console to just over her armband, now half the size. She squinted into the wind as it tugged at her hair.

“Wren… What aren’t you telling me?” Eze’s voice sounded smaller now, tinny.

“He’s hiding in 187, sir.”

Jonathan Eze’s pupils shrank; he pursed his lips around a sharp exhale. “That is a complication.”

“It was the first area to be blacked out on the NavMap, K.” Dorian put a hand into her shoulder. “For some reason, it attracted the worst of the gang warfare, then as soon as the police backed off to let them fight it out it got worse. Illegal augs flocked in, it…” He looked her right in the eyes. “I cannot even imagine what kinds of spirits lurk there.”

She glanced at Dorian and made herself solid to him. He squeezed; she put her hand on his.

“The stuff hiding out in there is…” Ad-bots whizzing by distracted his thoughts. “It’s… too dangerous. The military won’t even go in there. The grey perimeter around it has a standing Division 5 detachment to keep what’s in there, in there.”

“Wren, you know the sector is off limits. I…” Eze’s lips curled into a frustrated snarl. “As much as I want to see this son of a bitch fry for killing a cop, I can’t authorize any operation going into a disavowed sector―especially
that
one.”

Disavowed… He sounds like one of
them
now.

“But, sir.” She held her left arm up, bringing him closer. “If we keep letting those areas rot, they’re only going to get worse. It sends a message that they are havens from the law.”

The sound of fingers drumming on a metal desk came over the comm. “Decisions have been made. Retaking those areas failed a cost/benefit analysis―”

“But―”

Captain Eze gave her a look that stalled her interruption. “…and, if the military
were
to retake the disavowed regions, it would just force the criminal element into The Beneath. Down there, they could cause real damage to the city infrastructure. Command wants them up top where they are contained and relatively harmless to the city as a whole.”

“Captain, with all due respect, I don’t think it’s right to let a cop killer go free just because the military is too chicken to go where he’s hiding. If I have to do it on my own time―”

“No.” Dorian shook her. “Those
disavowed sectors
are worse than prisons; let him rot there.”

Eze leaned closer to the VidPhone, enlarging the illusory version of his head. “Wren, it is only out of concern for you that I forbid it. Do not, under any circumstances, approach or enter Sector 187 in pursuit of Rene Bollard.” He leaned back, worry evident on his face. “You are too young to”―his face flashed orange from an unseen blinking light―“Oh, bother. Hold on, Wren. I have an official channel coming in.”

The head faded. She let her arm fall limp. Dorian slid his hand across her back to the far shoulder. Her face shifted with anger, sadness, and frustration. She leaned into him; the scent of his Mediterranean cologne grew stronger.

Vikram emerged from the car, fidgeting. He paced around, occasional stares shot their way, several times he seemed about to speak, but held it back.

“I would rather you didn’t risk your life to avenge me.” Dorian put his arms around her from behind, chin over her shoulder. “It would pain me more to see you die than have him go unpunished.”

She clasped a hand over his, pulling his arm tight to her body. Light from the distant city caught in the smog, diffusing into a violet haze through the silhouettes of distant towers and streaks of glowing ad-bots.

Dorian’s eyes glanced down as her thumb traced the back of his hand. “You can do much better than me. Stop torturing yourself.”

Her head leaned back, against his shoulder. One small twist and she could kiss him. Kirsten stared into the deep green of his eyes, basking in the feeling of a man’s embrace. Her eyelids drew heavy; the urge to lean forward grew.

His finger met her lips; her eyes popped open, and she looked away. He had the smile of an amused older brother. Dorian’s arms relaxed and she moved to the railing, leaning on it and watching the droids.

“Kirsten…” He took a step after her. “I’m old enough to be your father… not to mention dead.”

The absurdity of it made her laugh. “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“You deserve a full life, a family. I know you want one or two of your own someday.” He winked. “There is a man out there for you, somewhere. What about Templeton? You got his PID, but haven’t called him.”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I got the same kind of ‘big brother’ vibe from him that you give off. He’s in his thirties,
later
thirties.”

“Kirsten, you’re twenty-two. You need to live a little, lighten up.”

Leaning against the railing, she turned to smile at him. “Are you suggesting I do a Nicole and swap boys twice a month?”

“Excuse me?” Vikram held up a hand. “Is this pertinent to the issue of three
demons
trying to kill me?”―he flashed a weak smile that faltered back to a flat line―“Again.”

Dorian fixed him with a hard glare, which sent him wandering back towards the car. “Ungrateful little bastard, isn’t he?” He gave her a plaintive stare. “Please don’t do anything silly. Listen to the Captain, stay away from Sector 187.”

She pulled threads of wind-tossed blonde away from her face. “Rene tried to kill me, too. Maybe if he succeeds, they’ll actually go after him.”

“I tracked the bastard for eight months. I know him. If you rattled him enough to chance an attack like that, sooner or later the arrogant son of a bitch will make a mistake.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it.” Dorian moved toward the car, staring down. “Just don’t make a mistake before he does.”

She shivered.

irsten draped herself over the counter of a small coffee shop, her eyebrows scrunched together and flat. She stared at the machine processing her order, spewing brown liquid and beige foam together with a squirt of chocolate syrup at the end. She wanted it so much the cup tilted a hair towards her. The synthetic stuff would have taken half the time and cost a quarter of what this one would. Still, forty credits for her once (now twice) a month splurge seemed a small price to pay for the little escape.

“Easy.” Dorian patted through her back. “Don’t yank it off the machine or you’ll spill it.”

“My TK is too weak to lift a cup of coffee.”

Dorian grinned. “You shouldn’t have ordered one big enough to swim in.”

She let her head fall on her arms, the tip of her nose touched false jade. “Vikram is going to drive me nuts. He was up all damn night bitching and moaning about me doing nothing. He doesn’t have to sleep anymore, so he doesn’t think I do, either.” She stopped, staring bleary-eyed at the wall. “Bathe in… bathtub full of coffee… mmm.” Head down.

Dorian peered out the window at Vikram, still in the back seat of the car, glaring into the coffee shop as if he was late for work.

Kirsten straightened out, rubbing her back. “It’s not like we can do much else but wait for Seneschal to try again. If they have some way to sniff him out, the best chance we have to find them is to use him as bait.”

“Sore?”

“Evan crawled into bed with me last night; something spooked him. For a little kid, he takes up a lot of space.” Stretch over, she crumpled over the counter again.

“I had a dog like that once,” said Dorian, chuckling.

The hollow plastic sound of a cup skiffing into the acrylic made her head snap up. The wonderful fragrance of coffee and chocolate met her senses as she gathered it and supped of the nectar of the gods.

“Any man would kill to be that cup,” quipped Dorian. “Except maybe Armando.”

She snarfed foam, giggling. The clerk gave her an odd look; the sort of odd look one reserves for odd people who burst out laughing for no apparent reason in quiet places. He kept giving her the same incredulous squint as she grinned, waved, and went outside to the car.

Ten minutes later, the coffee was three quarters gone, and they sat seventy stories up by the side of an office building. Kirsten glanced at the mirrored glass; the reflection showed the car as everyone else saw it―her alone.

Riotous sounds came around the corner, projected from a billboard-sized advert droid bearing a Newsnet feed. On its screen, a small cadre of people waved metal poles projecting holographic signs with fear-mongering slogans regarding psionics. A frazzled middle-aged man with wild white hair and a tan coat rasped an interview with reporter Kimberly Brightman.

“So, Reverend Harris, why is your congregation here today?”

“The Lord says suffer not the presence of Satan in your midst. Society has become blind, my dear. The minions of The Devil walk amongst us and yet they are welcomed! They are welcomed by those too afraid of
offending
people to speak out. The Dark One has poisoned the minds of our people such that those who speak the True Word are shunned as bearers of hate.”