Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (47 page)

“What? No…” N0ra recoiled. “That’s like being arrested just without any charges.”

“I’m not standard police.” Kirsten winked, waving at one of the Zero Tactical officers. “This girl here is being targeted by a paranormal entity. Please take her into protective custody, use one of the glass rooms.”

The officer saluted. “Yes, Agent.”

Kirsten frowned at her broken right arm and twitching legs. Evan reached around her head and saluted for her.

“They have ghost-proof rooms.” He rubbed his nose. “Magic-body-proof, too.”

N0ra gave Evan a confused smirk. “Umm. Okay.”

“Go with them, the creatures coming after you can’t get through the walls of a special room where you can stay. If you want to talk to a psych, just ask.”

N0ra got up and let the officer walk her out, staring around at the room as though she had forgotten who she was.

“Poor kid.” Dorian sighed. “She’s going to need a lot of therapy; she saw too much too fast.”

“Oh, like I didn’t. I saw”―Kirsten winced as the medtechs peeled the shirt off her arm―“ouch, ow, dammit, frack.”

Evan made an unimpressed face, and then leaned to peer at her twisted and bruised arm. “That’s worth at least a fuck or two, maybe even a moth―”

She covered his mouth with her left hand. “At least wait till you’re old enough to shave.”

He pulled her arm down. “Mom, it’s 2418, it’s not like―”

“I don’t care. You’re nine, and too cute to use those words.”

The medtechs smiled at him.

Evan blushed.

Beep, chirp, twitter
.

Kirsten stared at the silver box in the tech’s hand as it glided up and down over her arm.

“Agent, your arm is broken in three places and there are bone fragments invading some of the ligaments. We’ll need to―”

“Yay. Naked time.” She made a flag-waving gesture with her left index finger. “Fine, let’s get it over with if it makes the pain stop.”

The medtechs helped her stand and guided her onto a hovering stretcher, where they strapped her in for the ride. She rolled her head to the side to give Evan a reassuring smile. Around his spherical mop of hair, a ring of symbols seemed to hover like a halo. He blurred as her focus shifted to a half dozen religious icons for various faiths mounted in a circle on the far wall. Evan held her good hand, walking alongside the stretcher on the way to the door. Every few seconds, a twinge of ice ran down one of her legs.

Kirsten searched the sagging, stained tiles of the drop ceiling for answers as the medics pushed her out into the cool night air, less certain than ever about anything.

irsten sat on the edge of her comforgel pad, adoring the soft warmth of her pajamas. She idly grabbed at the carpet with her toes, fighting to stay conscious while she waited for Evan to finish getting ready for bed. Her hand ran up and down her arm, massaging the memory of the injury away. Evan stumbled out of the bathroom wearing a beard of toothpaste foam, and pajamas.

“You forgot to wipe your face,” she said, offering a tired giggle.

He stopped, blinked at her, then turned around and walked into the wall. “Ow,” he grumbled, then just wiped his face on his sleeve.

“Close enough. You should have napped at the medical facility; you’re up too late.”

Evan plodded over. She pulled him into a hug, patting him on the back. “Night, kiddo.”

He muttered a few incoherent words and turned to face his sleeping bag.

A pang of worry came out of nowhere. Kirsten stood, snagging him by the shirt and keeping him on his feet.

“What?” he whined.

“I want to teach you something.” The grip on his shirt became a hand on the back, and she whisked him over to the front door. “You remember the glass rooms?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to do something similar to our apartment.” She put her hand on the door. “If you focus your energy into the walls, you can make them solid enough to spirits so they can’t get through. Even if you sleep, if they try hard enough you will feel it.”

Interest dispelled some of his fatigue and he put both hands on the metal door.

“Think about wanting to pull a little bit of the astral world into this one. You should feel energy shifting, like a wall of jelly.”

“What flavor?” He grinned.

“Here, look in my head while I do it. It’s a lot easier if you just take in my surface thoughts―it’s hard to explain what it tast… uhh, feels like.”

When she sensed his telepathic peek, she channeled a blockade into the walls. A sense of the apartment’s three-dimensional form spread through her thoughts as energy seeped around and drew the physical and astral realms close. It was more draining than just doing the bathroom, but she was on her way to bed so it did not matter. About three quarters of the way through it, the exertion lessened and the glowing seep picked up speed around the room. Evan was helping. Soon, the line of glowing light met up with its start point and the entire space glimmered in the sublime golden radiance.

They stepped away from the wall, Evan’s eyes wide as he watched the phantasmal light shimmer across the surface and sink into the material.

“That’s awesome.” He beamed up at her once the light had absorbed into the wall. “How long does it last?”

“Until we break the integ… Umm, until we open a door or window, though it will falter after a few days, even if we don’t.”

He nodded, and scampered around the comforgel pad to his sleeping bag. Soon, he was just a little face staring at her from a bundle of blue cloth.

As soon as they approve permanent custody, I’ll get a bigger place. He needs a real bed.

She crawled over the squishy, gelatinous mass, and as soon as her head hit the pillow, the ability to sleep grew distant. Kirsten whined to herself; how was it she was still wide-awake while being so worn out? Rolling onto her back, she stared at the ceiling tiles. Worry was high on the list of suspects, perhaps latent adrenaline from almost dying
again
.

Rolling to her side, she tucked an arm under her head and curled fetal, staring at Evan. For a few minutes, the memory of his calling her mommy brought back a sense of placid calm; in the weeks he had been staying here, he had never quite gotten to that point. In fact, she could not remember him ever using any term to address her directly. He had always walked into view before speaking so he did not have to call her anything at all. Watching him sleep, she did not feel so alone anymore. Even though she did not bring him into the world in a physical sense, she had no doubt she would do anything for him.

A few quiet tears of joy slipped from her eyes, tracing her nose and cheek into the pillow. The mood stalled as her mind returned to her other near-death experience this week. Almost shot dead by a seven-year-old. Kirsten sat up with a hand on her gut, trying to push the same kind of sleepless nausea out of her stomach that plagued her the night after the Saguaro Asylum.

She bent forward, easing the nightstand door open to retrieve the bottle of Synvod. A delivery droid had brought it, at her request, the night she dealt with the Wharf Stalker. She put it away half-gone the next morning. Sleep after the soul collector from the asylum required another quarter bottle.

Her right eye gazed back at her from a thin strip of reflection on the bottle. Her thumb flicked at the glass.
I wonder how mother got started.
Mother always had something on her breath whenever she screamed to Jesus about her Devil-touched daughter.
Did she have to numb herself so she could do such things to her own child?
Kirsten’s lip quivered.
If she didn’t drink, would things have been different?
Her gaze focused past the bottle to Evan.
Did Mother ever tell herself it was only so she could sleep? Only say it was once or twice a year?

Evan’s eyes popped open. The beginnings of a smile faded to a worried stare and he sat bolt upright.

“What’s that?”

The fearful look in his eyes hurt. Mick, his former stepfather, was drunk more than sober. Kirsten thought back to the wash of vodka breath on the back of her head when he tried to kill her.

“Something I”―she stood, walking to the kitchenette―“wanted to get rid of.” She slipped the bottle into the disintegrator chute and hit the button. Yellow light flickered through the hatch seams as the mechanism disassembled the bottle’s molecules into inert matter.

When she settled into bed, Evan climbed onto it. “Mick drinks, too.”

“So did my mom.” Kirsten ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not going to have any more. I only had a little to help me sleep after a bad night, but I guess that’s how it starts.”

Evan relaxed. “Can I sleep with you tonight, I’m…” He fidgeted.

Kirsten held the blanket up so he could crawl in. “It’s okay, they can’t get through the blockade.”

He cuddled up, back against her chest. “Mom? I don’t like the way he looked at me. Is he mad ̓cause I blew up his ninja?”

She held him tight. “I…”
Aww, he’s shivering.
Don’t bullshit the kid.
“Yeah, he’s probably mad. I’ll get him.”

“He’s a weird ghost.”

“He’s not quite a ghost anymore, hon.”

He squirmed to look at her face. “What is he?”

“A bad person that got put where bad souls go, but he got out somehow. I need to make sure he goes back where he belongs.”

“Oh.” He snuggled into the pillow. “Why did you talk to him?”

“I don’t think violence is ever the first or best answer to a problem. There are still pieces of who they were in there, and if I can reach one of those pieces… maybe I can help him, too.”

“Mom? He’s a demon, right?”

“That’s what some people call it.”

He held on to the arm she put across his chest. “They’re lying. Don’t talk. Just smack them. They’re not people anymore.”

Kirsten clung to him like a teddy bear, wondering if he really was afraid ghosts would come after him in the night or if this was for her benefit. She lay for a few minutes, thinking about the sight of Mariko melting away.

“Ev?”

“Mmm?” He sounded as though he was fast on his way to sleep.

“What
did
you do to Mariko?”

Evan’s voice, slow with the onrush of sleep, whispered. “Ran it over.”