Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (8 page)

“I don’t want to take him alive,” he yelled, from the other side of the wall.

Kirsten circled through the corridor into the next room, apparently decorated for a small boy. Dorian, again, had tackled the spirit, but it slipped through his arms and dove at Kirsten. She performed a perfect jiu-jitsu grapple on cold air, reacting with instinct before thinking. The stunrod on her belt turned itself on, and tapped her in the knee.

The rug tasted like foot.

When the flashing blue left her vision, she spat carpet fibers out of her teeth and growled. Pain cascaded in ripples from her right thigh; the stunning effect of the neural shock set her muscles twitching. She snarled, grabbed the bed, and pulled herself up on numb legs. Sounds of glass breaking drew her at a limp into the corridor, back through the dining room, and into the kitchen. She collapsed only once when her leg gave out; by the time she got to the kitchen, the after-nausea of a stunrod shock was in full swing. Dorian tried to wrestle with the spirit, gathering it as if it were a rope of bed sheets sent down the wall of a prison. The head and both hands floated away as he pulled at its wispy midsection, stretching to the other side of the room, hurling glassware and bottles at him.

“Dorian, you don’t want to kill Rene. Not unless he’s an immediate threat to your life.”

“I think I’m a little past that point.” He yanked on the ectoplasm, dragging the disembodied head into a punch that sent it back across the kitchen.

Kirsten lashed, missing by inches. The phantom emanated a keening wail of terror and streaked into the cabinets. “Son of a bitch is fast. Look, if you kill his ghost… You’re already shitting ectoplasmic bricks whenever a Harbinger shows up.”

He stopped pursuing it around the room, breathing hard more out of habit than need. “I…”

Clinking and rattling migrated around inside the cabinets, behind small imitation wood doors. Kirsten turned in place, following the sound, arm poised for another lash. “You deserve revenge, but I don’t want them taking you. Last time was too damn close; I thought it was going to…” She choked up.

A door burst open, and a swarm of knives flew into the air. Kirsten let herself fall straight down, ass to tile. It hurt, but less than a dozen knives. Dorian lunged, armpit deep in the cabinet, and grabbed the spirit by the neck. He flung it out into the room, weathering a barrage of spice jars that ended as it finally realized it was pointless to throw things at him. Kirsten sat with her mouth wide, wondering how landing on her butt could cause her head to ache. She missed an opportunity for a lash due to seeing stars. The food reassembler above and behind her went bonkers, spraying hot sauce, jelly, and peanut butter down on her. She got an arm over her eyes just in time.

“Me too,” he said, adding a growl as he fought to keep a grip on the spirit. “This thing is bat-shit nuts, there’s no reason left in it. Whack it.”

“As soon as I can move.” She groaned, scratching at the floor to try to get feeling back into her legs. “If you kill Rene, I’m not sure I can beg them off you. Please let me handle him.”

“What the devil’s all that damn noise?” Mr. Greene’s bellow filled the hallway.

The poltergeist wrenched out of Dorian’s hands, spirit fog spreading through his fingers. Dorian cursed something about trying to wrestle spaghetti. Mr. Greene appeared in the doorway, staring at Kirsten―the only thing he could see, aside from the mess. The spirit stretched away, flying right at Mr. Greene, shrieking, arms reaching out.

Kirsten slung kiwi jam off her hand as she wound up a lash. The sudden light made Mr. Green look at her. The glittering whip flashed through the air.

Splat
.

She gulped as a sensation of oblivion flickered through the Aether. Mr. Greene looked as though someone dumped a bucket of egg whites over his head, blinking as if slapped. Somewhere behind him, mother and daughter gasped.

“What in the world?” Mrs. Greene poked him with a tentative finger, jerking back from the cold slime. When she saw the formation of knives sticking out of the cabinet doors, she had to cover her mouth to stifle a scream.

“Poltergeist. It won’t be bothering you again.” Kirsten struggled to her feet, rubbing her tailbone. “Sorry about the suit.”

Mr. Greene turned with the motion of a mannequin on a rotary platform, mouth still open, hand still held up. He blinked again at his wife, who moved past him into the kitchen, shaking her head at the carnage.

“Why did that thing come here? What did it want?”

Kirsten washed her hands in the sink, shrugging at Mrs. Greene. “I can’t even begin to guess. These sorts of spirits are not true souls, more of a latent snapshot or a fragment of someone’s personality that gathered enough power to start roaming around. Some think they are very weak demons.”

“Do you?” Mrs. Greene began the process of collecting knives from the floor.

Dorian rubbed his chin, as eager for her answer as the family.

“Well.” Kirsten dabbed at the cut on her cheek with a wet towel. “I know there’s a place I call the Abyss, where evil spirits go when they get purged out of this world. I suppose it is possible for energy to burp back out whenever something crosses into it. That might be what people call a demon. It would just be a returned ghost. One who got out of jail, so to speak. I don’t think there are real
demons
per se. Not in the biblical sense anyway. I’m sure those are just stories made up by people who didn’t understand the supernatural.”

“And wanted to burn it.” Dorian winked.

“Yeah,” she muttered, rubbing the back of her right hand.

ive chrome spheres clacked. The farthest on the right swung into the hanging line, kicking the farthest left into the air. Back and forth, endless repetitive motion creating tiny fireflies of reflected light that danced across her workspace. Kirsten’s right forearm served as a pillow between her chin and the desk; breath from her nostrils fogged the gloss black surface. Her eyes tracked the Newton’s cradle: left, right, left, right, the tapping sound rhythmic―mesmerizing.

Then it stopped.

She blinked. It sat at rest, all five spheres idle.
Did I fall asleep?
She reached out with her left hand―the electronic armguard made for an uncomfortable chinrest―and prodded the toy back to life. This time, two orbs moved on either side.

Click, click, silence.

Her eyebrows drew together. “Figures, I get a broken one.”

Nicole, right behind her, burst into laughter. Kirsten almost fell out of her chair.

“Dammit.” She grabbed her chest. “Don’t sneak up on people. And why is your face so red?”

“Better
I
find you sleeping than Eze.” Nicole adjusted the fit of her uniform top, flashing an impish smile. “Oh, no reason.”

“I’m not sleeping, I’m bored.” Kirsten let her head fall onto her arm again. “Nice. Same guy as last week?” She braced for the impact of the foam stress skull, laughing after it bounced away.

“I’m not
easy
.” Nicole gave her a raspberry. “I have a boyfriend.”

“Who is it?” Kirsten’s gaze followed the redhead to her desk. “Did you skip telling them you’re psionic?”

“He knows. It’s Eddie from Admin.” She checked her face in a small hand mirror.

“Nikki, he’s eighteen, he’s still a kid.”

“Oh, and I’m geriatric at twenty-one?” Another raspberry. “He’s smart. He’s good-looking. He’s psionic too, and he’s in
love
with me.” Nicole blinked. “What do you mean you can’t have the one you want?”

Dorian sighed.

“Nicole Logan, will you please stop―”

“Wren.” Captain Eze’s voice reverberated over their conversation.

They both looked at his door.

Nicole grinned. “Well, he yelled from his desk, so it’s not bad news.”

“At least you won’t be bored now,” added Dorian.

Kirsten pushed herself standing, stretching the past two hours’ worth of sitting idle out of her legs. A wobbling gait carried her into the office of Captain Jonathan Eze. The door closed behind her without a sound.

“Good afternoon, I hope I am not keeping you up.” He grinned, reaching forward to offer her a cup of Qwikwarm Coffee.

She took it, picking at fingernail switches to set cream and sweetness levels before twisting the bottom of the can. The sharp crack of a broken ampule announced the start of a chemical reaction. As she sat, the fragrance of cheap java emerged and warmth spread through her hand. “If this is about the Greene case, it was a poltergeist. They throw―”

“It isn’t.” Eze raised one eyebrow. “What are you frowning at?”

“Do they think spelling quick with a w makes it trendier or something? Why do companies do stupid crap like that?”

Eze pulled his fingers over his chin and chuckled through that same contagious smile that always lifted her mood. “I think your question goes beyond the depth of the mysteries we deal with. But”―he slapped his desk―“I have something that needs your attention far more than protecting the coffee-drinking public from poor spelling.”

The sudden noise and shift in mood from jovial to serious made her jump. Upright, she took on a military posture and nodded. He poked at his terminal, the lights dimmed, and a holographic screen spread over most of the wall to her right. An overhead map of West City appeared. Amber gridlines overlaid an area map, so many it resembled a golden tint. The focus centered in on an area of about twenty sectors square, a hundred mile grid. Between the fine threads of grid demarcation, the image moved.

“Watch Sector 637. This is from late last night, just past 0100 hours.”

With a beep, the screen glimmered and went from static image to moving video. She locked on to the spot he mentioned, eyes sweeping left and right in search of anything out of the ordinary in the twelve-inch square of hologram. Blackness spread out from south, left of center, and expanded to about a mile square before it smeared to the northeast. The trail of absent light grew wider as it traveled, fatter in front like a comet with a long tail. Eighteen miles later, it stopped advancing and coalesced into a circular mass of darkness. From the origin point it ebbed, light returning along its length until the entire thing vanished within several seconds of starting.

“The image makes me think of someone running a black paintbrush tool over the satellite feed.”

He pushed a datapad across his desk. “There were over two hundred ninety thousand reports of power outages along the trail. A localized blackout is responsible for the path you see here. Everything from street lamps to city cams to NetMinis, it all went dark.”

“It can’t be a hacker, the citycams run off direct lines. If a paranormal entity caused this, what the hell is it doing? Ghosts usually suck up power to restore themselves or build up for a big event.”

Eze’s chair creaked into a lean. “It gets better.”

The image zoomed to street level; the point of view plummeted to Earth, pulled up and flew into one of the ubiquitous mounted cameras. Based on the condition of the buildings it surveyed, she assumed it was in, or at least at the edge of, a grey zone. One of the gleaming towers had a dark band around the center, as if someone sliced one entire floor out of a skyscraper-shaped cake.