Division Zero: Thrall (11 page)

At the sight of a uniform leaning on a tree, the girl skidded to a halt and reversed course, dragging her client out of sight. Kirsten shot a guilty stare at the ground to her right. Dorian edged closer.

“Something wrong?”

She did not look up. “The only reason that isn’t me is I’m psionic.”

He pushed on her arm. “Your logic is flawed. Stop trying to depress yourself.”

“Flawed?” She glanced at him after taking note of Theodore’s presence in the distance. “How so?”

“The most glaring problem is if you weren’t psionic, your mother wouldn’t have tortured you. You’d probably be out of university by now at some boring job. The second issue is the government
does
help street kids, even non-psionics. The ones you see here wanted to stay.”

“They ship them off Earth,” said Kirsten, frowning.

Dorian looked around at the city. “Are you so sure it’s a bad thing?”

Theodore paused amid a group of university students passing a narco-inhaler around. He took it in turn, drawing a breath off it as they all stared at the floating device. Kirsten smirked at him as he went from solid looking to ghostly in her eyes.

“Yeah, that’s the shit,” growled Theodore through a long exhale.

One man fainted; the rest scrambled off in random directions. He laughed as he let his manifestation fade and dropped the drug delivery device on the chest of the unconscious man. Curly black hair wafted in the breeze as he glided to where Kirsten stood giving him a disapproving frown.

“What?” He leaned back on his heels while his pocketed hands rose a bit in a lazy version of a shrug. “They’re in
my
park at night. Fair game.”

Kirsten shoved herself away from the tree she had been leaning on. “You shouldn’t do that to people. You could kill someone.”

“They weren’t old ‘nuff to have heart attacks. Sides, they’ll blame the Zone4.” He groaned. “Such a shame I died before they invented all these wonderful chemicals.”

“If you hurry this along, there’s a prostitute over there.” Dorian waved to the distance.

“Bitsy?” Theodore rolled his eyes. “She’s boring. Just lays there, no energy.” He winked at Kirsten. “Bet you’d be a lot more energetic. Quite a few years of pent up frustration waiting to come out.”

The intent to make her feel awkward backfired. The lash draped out of her hand.

“Whoa…” Theodore raised his hands. “Sorry, girl. Forgot it was that time of the month. What happened to your sense of humor?”

“A couple of Marines,” said Dorian.

“Oh, my.” Theodore swiped wet hair off his face, black-lipstick grin widening. “Share the details?”

Her face went crimson. “You’re a damn pervert, Theo.”

He rendered a formal court bow. “Merci pour le compliment, je suis honoré.”

She released the lash, darkening the area. “Just a conflict of jurisdiction. What did you want, anyway?”

“The Kind seeks your assistance, girl.” Theodore stepped back with his left foot, waving his arm at a line of people that had appeared out of nowhere. “Selenah has seen the next attack.”

“Selenah?” Kirsten asked, tilting her head.

“Perhaps one of the oldest of our number.” Theodore stuffed his hands once more into the saturated pockets of his green trench coat. “Colonists killed her for being a witch.”

“Which colony?”

“Plymouth,” said Theodore, grinning.

“Never heard of it. What planet is it on? Is she here?”

Theodore laughed; some of The Kind shook their heads in dismay at the ignorance of youth.

“It’s not important, and no. She’s with her mortal remains in the Beneath on the east coast. She speaks through the mists. One will be claimed. He is a soul of some age, however stagnant. He has kept to himself, not developed his strength.”

Kirsten lifted both eyebrows. “So you want me to hunt down this old lonely ghost and wait for something to attack him?”

“You are their chosen, Kirsten.” An older man with the bearing of a politician and the body of a weightlifter advanced from the group of Kind. “Yours is not only to protect the living from the restless dead. Your duty extends to protect those of us who wish to exist in peace. A hunter walks among us, girl. A beast of darkness that feeds upon souls.”

“You’re laying it on a little thick, Pops.” Theodore chuckled.

“Just a tad,” added Dorian.

“Still, the governor’s got a point. Abyssals are bad for both living and dead. This one’s a devourer, kid.” For once, Theodore’s larger-than-life presence seemed small. “We need yer help.”

She looked over the dozen or so spirits, finding the change in era of their clothing both intriguing and sad. “Okay. It’s hard enough to track those things down. If you think you know where it’s going to be, I have to take the chance. Where?”

“Sector 3177, rather under it.”

An older-looking female ghost among The Kind grumbled about it no longer being called Beverly Hills.

“The Beneath?” asked Kirsten, sagging into a slouch. The memory of the slime puddle she fell into on her last trip came back, causing a shiver.

“Ayep.” Theodore flung his hands to the sides in another casual shrug, tossing water. “Tonight, probably within an hour.”

“Great,” she said, jogging to the car with an exasperated sigh.

“Some warning is better than none.” Dorian materialized in the passenger seat around his voice.

“I hope this one’s weaker than Charazu.”

His eyebrows flared. “Me too.”

Kirsten grasped the pliable, rubberized handle at the center of the armored hatch, staring at the round-cornered square that blocked entry to the Beneath. She keyed in the police access code and a red square of light turned green, tinting her face to a matching hue. Curious eyes glimmered in the shadows, as tempted by a solitary woman as they were afraid of her uniform. A deep breath carried the metallic flavor of grey zone neglect.

“Too many bad memories down there?” asked Dorian.

She squeezed the rubbery part of the handle, activating the pressure-sensitive control. Pins popped away, freeing the panel to lift on a hinge. A wash of humid, warm air came over her, replacing the industrial taste with something closer to putrescent organic matter.

“I always thought about Mother when I thought about The Beneath.” She slid through the hole and down a metal ladder, pulling the hatch closed via the handle on the bottom. Her voice echoed in the dim shaft. “I barely think about her now, just how foolish I was for not going to the police right away. I thought they’d take me right home to her. I didn’t think they’d believe me.”

Dorian’s voice lacked echo; the sound he made existed only to her, not to hard metal walls. “You wanted to hide from a world you didn’t think wanted you.”

She leapt the last two rungs of the first ladder and jogged to the edge of a catwalk, where she proceeded down a longer one leading to the bottom of the city plate interior. “I was terrified she would find me.”

“How do you want to handle the Discarded this time? Same as last?”

Twenty-five meters below the city, Kirsten paused at the base of the ladder, standing on the lower plate surface. She looked around at the array of girders, tubes, wire bundles, and small square utility lights that formed a virtual starscape. “We shouldn’t run into any here, this area has a colony. I used to steal food from places here.”

“Steal? If there was a colony, why didn’t you live among them?” Dorian joined her at the edge of a hole, where another huge ladder ran down the side of an immense column.

Fifty meters down, the old city waited.

Kirsten lowered herself through the gap, pausing to look up at him before she climbed. “They didn’t look like the nicest people, and I’d just gotten away from six years of torture. I wasn’t looking for more parents.”

He floated down, keeping pace with her as she climbed. “You’re evading something, but I won’t push.”

Quiet until her boots hit a dirt lot, she held on to the rung for a moment without looking at him. “Just another stupid choice.” She shook off the bad mood and forced a smile. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it? This place, down here, used to be one of the most exclusive playgrounds of the rich before everything went to hell. Now it’s beneath a bad part of the city.”

“Yeah, fancy that,” he said. “Some people say everything goes in cycles. So how did you tolerate this for two years? There’s no day, all you have for sky is metal.”

Kirsten shrugged, glancing at a holo-panel floating over her left arm to study a map. “I wasn’t thinking about a lot back then, just about staying alive and away from everyone.”

“Youder. Doanmove.” A dusty male voice emanated from behind a weak flashlight. An old bolt-action rifle protruded alongside it, not quite aimed.

Light gleamed from a sword to his left. “Whatchu want?” asked a female voice.

The third voice was deep enough to resonate in her bones. “Topsider, yew lookin fer trouble or runnin’ from it?”

“I guess you could say I’m looking for it, but not with you. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to make nice with the natives. I’m hunting a demon.”

The tall man with the deep voice blocked her step. “That’s some fancy hardware you got, thar.” A hand, coated in black oily grease entered the light and pointed at her sidearm.

From behind the sword, a silhouette of tattered rags and frizzy black hair leaned closer. “Sheez pretty. Cani keeper?” The woman got closer, near to drooling.

“I’m not a stray dog.” She tried to walk around them, but they moved to remain in her path.

“You don’t want no trouble then, whyd’nt ya gives us that fancy ol’ gun o’ yours as a peace offerin’,” said the man with the rifle.

“Sorry, no. It’s coded to my fingerprint and won’t operate for anyone else. Besides, even if you could fire it, there’s no more ammo for it down here.”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “You’re wasting your breath.”

The three glanced at each other.

Kirsten focused, drawing upon her Darksight. The Astral realm superimposed itself over the oppressive gloom in her vision, a wavering version of the world drawn in sepia. The power also caused her eyes to glow white. The three people in front of her jumped back. Perhaps a quarter mile distant, a large mass of corrugated metal sprawled like some monstrous insect. Distorted faces peered at her from the maze of girders, sheet metal, and wood, straining to see her figure illuminated by flashlight.

The bolt-action rifle wobbled, a sign of the fear that gripped its owner. “Y… You one o’ them robot things?”

“No, I’m…”
These people aren’t going to know or care about Division 0.
“I’m a shaman, and I need to stop a bad spirit before it hurts anyone down here.”

The sword-bearing woman raised her weapon in a trembling hand, edging close enough to sniff the air around Kirsten. Her clothing was a mixture of pre-war items and scraps of random heavy cloth stitched and patched together by string. She circled, head tilting to one side and then the other. “What’s a topsie want withus?”

Dorian drained the flashlight. “These people don’t seem all that much different from the Discarded.”

Kirsten put a hand over her mouth to suppress the urge to laugh at the face the man made as he hit the dead light. “I’ll be gone soon. I’m not here to cause any trouble with your people. Look, get out of my way and leave me alone and I’ll come back in a day or so with some clothes and stuff for you.”

They backed away with careful nods, too spooked by the sight of her glowing eyes and sudden dark to speak. Perhaps Dorian altered the mood in the air. She gave him a wry grin and walked around the sentries toward the gate.

Bevlls, the colony, was a little more than the size of three city blocks. Fortunately, the manor house Theodore described did not fall within its borders. A series of dangling car headlights strung along the perimeter wall surrounded the village with a weak aura of wobbling light. Kirsten skirted it, staying in the dark and out of sight of the sentries.

“Well, they’re certainly more organized than Discarded.”

Kirsten stepped over a fallen light pole. “Not everyone down here is ferally insane. Most of these colonists are hiding from the law or are the children of those who are. Anyway, you see why I avoided them before?”

“Mmm.”

A strong green glow leaked from where a gap in the corrugated metal wall offered a view into a crude hydroponic farm. Several dozen tanks held luminous water and vegetables in various states of maturity. Rows of intense lamps showered them with ultraviolet light focused by hand-bent metal shrouds. Two boys, one in his later teens and one not yet twelve, helped an older man tend to the crops. Copious sweat on their shirtless bodies gave away the temperature inside the chamber. The younger boy measured out some manner of powder and stood on tiptoe to pour it into a vessel full of carrots.

“Some of those look like fish tanks,” said Dorian, blinking.

“Use what you got, I guess. Still, they must have some contact with the outside to get supplies.” They walked another few minutes until her armband beeped. “Oh, we’re here. Hope we’re not too late.” She gestured at a distant property.

The former mansion looked about ready to collapse at the touch of a mild breeze. Fortunately, no such wind penetrated the millions of tons of plastisteel that formed the sky of the Beneath. One of the massive support columns upon which the city stood came down through the roof on the left side. As if some giant speared a pipe through it, the demolition work had gone only far enough to build the strut, leaving the house impaled.