Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (53 page)

Don’t use stimpaks on burns.
Day one of the training manual.

She shrieked herself hoarse, drifting into a delirium of endorphins. An army of microscopic machines destroyed scar and regenerated good tissue; she felt every single tiny biting mouth.
What did Konstantin say?

His voice drifted through the misery. “I’m sure you will be able to stop it, now that you know its name.”

Its name.

“Kirsten!” Dorian shouted. “It’s loose.”

Tremors in the ground, rumbling as it stomped at her. So much pain.
I don’t want to move.
She thought about getting up, but couldn’t.

“Mommy!” Evan’s voice was only in her imagination, but he got through.

She sat up, once more focusing her psionic energy at the demon. Its charge became a forward stumble, right through her effort to halt it.
Oh, he’s pissed.

“Charazu!” she screamed. “Your name is Charazu, and by that name I command you back to the Abyss.”

The demon faltered, the battle of opposing forces went completely in her favor in a split second. Six legs swept out from under it and the massive suspended body crashed down. She surged with so much power her eyes radiated glowing blue-white energy. Charazu burst into silver flames and slid twenty meters into the elevator bank. The resonant boom of crushed sheet metal echoed dozens of stories up and down. She forced herself to stand and staggered after it.

“Charazu, you have no power in this world. I do not allow you to remain here.”

Scintillating light streaked across her view. This time, the lash split the shell wide open. Charazu wailed. All the menace of before changed, lending a pleading tone to the demonic sound. Legs and arms flailed, a remnant of its tongue lolled out through jagged teeth, spraying black gunk.

“Charazu, I commend you back to the Abyss.”

Kirsten put her hands together as if holding the lash like a two-handed sword. She whipped it around and over her head, and a sensation left her mind as if an impaled knife had just slipped out of a head wound. The intense drain of power brightened the astral whip and detonated what remained of Charazu into an explosion of gore that blew back and away from her in a cone.

“Back to the Abyss!”

She sagged forward and fell to her knees. Piece by piece, fragments of shell liquefied into puddles of tar. Seconds later, they became watery and appeared to soak into the concrete. Faint wisps of energy exuded from the splatter, whispering as the portal sucked them in. Blood dribbled over her upper lip, the worst nosebleed she ever had. One hand to her face, she sat back, too tired to breathe.

Dorian approached. “Kirsten… look.”

She turned. The portal flickered into view, silent roiling energy at its edges.

Her trembling hand wobbled before her eyes. The effort to use her power came on with the sensation of needles in the brain. More blood seeped through her fingers.
I couldn’t bash it… it looks so much like glass.

“Dorian…” Kirsten crawled through the dusty debris-strewn mess until she found a length of rebar. Clasping it with her bloody hand, she pulled the metal in line with both the astral and physical world. It hurt to use even that minor power, but far less than a lash. Her blood soaked into the steel, leaving the bar clean.

“Got it.” Dorian took the bar and approached the gate.

Kirsten put both hands over her nose to stem the tide of blood.
Damn stimpak case is empty.
A great shattering rumble rolled over, delicate twinkling of glass combined with the sound of a bomb going off. Spectral winds ripped past, fluttering her hair. Dorian slid to a halt on his back next to her, looking surprised, bent rebar in hand.

“Well… it broke.” He tilted his head to smile at her, not bothering to sit up.

The unnatural darkness lifted from the shattered space, allowing just-past-noon daylight to wash over them.

The sun is so warm.

irsten knelt still for some minutes, chest on fire, wrists sore, neck burning, and a rod of pain through her mind. Dorian grunted and managed a slight manifestation―enough to rub her shoulder. She sniffled.

“Why are you crying?” He squeezed.

“I…” She looked at him. “I’m having those silly thoughts again.”

Dorian chuckled. “Partners often have a close bond, but it’s different than lovers. You deserve a live person. I will never be able to give you children. I’ll always be here for you, but I can’t be what you need.”

Kirsten shrank into herself, offering a reluctant nod. “Yeah… I know. I still love you though, even if it isn’t that kind of love.”

“I’m ready,” said a deep voice.

She looked up at Icarus, back in one piece. He swayed as if standing took all his concentration. She asked Dorian for help with a look and he pulled her to her feet.

“All right. Thank you for saving my ass. I’m sorry it’s this way for you, Icarus.”

Icarus chuckled. “Michael. Please, call me Michael. I can’t argue I did a bunch of awful shit in life. I got put where I belonged, I ain’t gonna bemoan it. I just don’t have the stomach for it anymore. Honor and valor and all that… Damn corporations don’t have any of it. Go ahead and call me a taxi, eh?” He closed his eyes.

“Admitting it is a start. I don’t know how it works down there but… there’s hope.”

She beckoned.

Dorian squeezed her hand as the mood changed. Within a moment, the area filled with whispering darkness. Michael nodded at the sound of myriad whispering. He held his arms out.

“Come, I am ready to go.”

One large Harbinger exuded from the mass, gliding up to him. It matched his arms-wide gesture and leaned its vaporous head back. Kirsten, still clinging to Dorian to stay on her feet, bowed at it as much as her pain allowed.

Michael took a step towards it, but the Harbinger’s gaze came down, and it slipped backwards into the rolling wall of darkness, leaving Icarus to stare at Kirsten with a quizzical look. The same look settled over Kirsten’s face as a shimmering cloud of silver unfolded through the air. The light spread outward from a point, causing the mass of Harbingers to recede further.

Ribbons of silver energy emerged from the center, spreading up and to the sides in a shape semblant to wings. Between them, the body of a woman emerged. Alabaster skin glowed with blinding purity; long white hair streamed behind her, lofted by an intangible wind. She wore nothing aside from light, sheets of it wrapped about her body like the robes of a Greek statue.

“Michael Coley, twice you have accepted your proscribed fate, and you chanced oblivion to spare the life of one who you once considered enemy.” The woman gestured, and a silver-rimmed doorway opened.

Beyond it waited a man, similar in appearance to the creature floating there; only he had
wings
of fire instead of threads of light. He bowed in a welcoming way as people, perhaps Michael’s ancestors, faded in around him.

Michael took a step back. “There are more deserving souls than I.”

“A determination you have not been tasked with making.” The floating woman smiled.

He bowed, his body bolstered. No longer seeming hurt, he vanished into the doorway and it collapsed around him.

Kirsten did not move the entire time, making no sound other than a mild squeak when the strange woman faced her.

“…Angels?” Kirsten whispered.

“You must have questions, though my time here is short. Know that I am a being of energy. I am mercy. Your kind once called us Seraphim, but such a word only brings to mind a concept. Such concepts can be tainted by belief, twisted by men for their own ends.”

She remembered a wispy tendril of light just before she smashed into the advert droid. “Thank you.”

The woman floated higher, energy ribbons spread to the sides. “We are guardians of another world who stand against the ancients who dwell within the Abyss. Our kind are not necessary in the realm of man. My presence here is an after-shadow, permitted by Charazu’s trespass. Kirsten Wren, we have chosen you as our instrument in this place, a warden between worlds.”

I guess that’s why you keep saving my dumb ass.

The Seraphim smiled, and reached a hand to rest atop Kirsten’s head. “Indeed, but we have limits, and you have more to do. Darkness comes, be ready.”

Head spinning, Kirsten found herself flat on her back, pain and fatigue gone. When a bright light jabbed her in the eye, she sat up, squinting past her arm at a blue helmet around a silver visor.

“She’s alive.” A man’s voice crackled through an external speaker on the armor.

Division 1 officers filled the area, as well as a small number of forensic techs. Captain Eze got out of another all-black patrol craft and jogged over. Kirsten looked down, finding no trace of injury aside from the dried blood on her hand.

“Kirsten…” Eze came to a halt at her side, helping her up. “Your bio monitor sent a distress call, I was concerned that…”

She stretched, examining herself. “Yeah, I got my ass kicked again but… Nothing ten stimpaks couldn’t handle.” Kirsten picked at the empty belt case.

“What happened?”

“Let’s just say I’m going to wind up in Burckhardt’s office in the morning after you send my report up the ladder… assuming I didn’t just dream all this.”

“That bad?” He raised an eyebrow.

“No, that
weird
.” She glanced at the runic circle.

The immutable silver lines had become trails of powder eroding away on the wind.