Division Zero: Thrall (55 page)

“I’m not helpless.”

“Yeah, you sure as hell don’t look it. Skinny ass bitch done up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

“They didn’t blindfold me. I’ll kill the first son of a bitch I see.” Kirsten snarled, falling over backwards in a failed attempt to get back on her feet.

“You go, girl. Kick some ass. We halfway out now.” She laughed at Kirsten’s ungainly roll. “So what are you doing here? They grab you just like the others?”

“I’m with Division Zero.” Kirsten grunted, taking another futile stab at breaking the restraints, or at least snapping the elastic. She got one hand around the rubber cord; it was at least an inch thick.

“That sounds kinda military.”

“Police, actually.” Back on her belly, she rested her head sideways on the cold floor, panting.

“You’re a skinny little thing for a cop. Thought all cop chicks were like dudes with boobs.”

“Maybe in Five or Six. I’m more of a detective.”
You’re keeping secrets, K? Neither one of us has much to hide at this point.
She blushed again.

“Oh, so you gonna detect our asses out of here? I’ve been stuck in this cage for two weeks. Least they haven’t taken me out. Guess they’re strugglin’ to find a buyer. My brown ass ain’t so exotic, but a pale thing like you oughta be outta here real fast.”

Kirsten rocked until she wound up seated again. She glared at the wall just past the woman’s head, jealous for a moment her cellmate was not hogtied. “They’re not going to sell us. We’re going to be used as human sacrifices to summon demons.”

“Yeah, right.” The other woman stared down. Ten seconds later, her gaze leapt to the door, and then she fell over sideways in a furious effort to break her cuffs. “Shit! You’re right, these weird motherfuckers are gonna kill us.” She stopped fighting when she ran out of breath. “Why the hell did they take our clothes if all they wanna do is kill us? You got a point though, the one dude was a little harsh to look at.”

Kirsten did not want to admit to being about to get it on with a seventy-year-old man. The mere combination of her last glimpse of Konstantin’s face coupled with remembering his ‘worker’s’ hand touching her brought back the dry heaves. She leaned forward, face on knees, breathing. When the wave of nausea subsided, she spent another minute searching for a voice. “It’s probably to reduce forensic evidence or some weird ritual thing I don’t understand. All the victims found so far were nude. I dunno, maybe the bastard likes the view or maybe you get bigger demons for sacrificing naked virgins. Name’s Kirsten, by the way.”

“Miranda. Heh, guess that’s why I’m still here.” Much of the cockiness had vanished from her voice. “I haven’t been one of those in a long time. Shit, are you really a cop? That means you got backup comin’ right? You’re gonna get us outta here? I don’t wana fuckin’ die.”

“I… I didn’t tell them I was coming here. It was sort of on a, umm… date.” She shivered, as cold as she was ashamed.

“Date?” Miranda wriggled herself seated again. “You were dating an old geezer?”

Kirsten went pale. “Don’t remind me. He had some kind of spirit embedded in this bracelet he gave me. I think it made me see him as if he was perfect.”
As if being chained up in here isn’t embarrassing enough. They were all right. Everyone was trying to warn me. Evan called him old… To a nine year old anyone over 18 is old. He
was t
oo good to be true.
Tears fell from her eyes and slid down her shins.

“So, cop chick, how are you figurin’ our asses are getting out of here? I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty damn screwed. Your ass is thin, but you ain’t making it through the bars.”

Nothing to lose now.
“I’m psionic. Division Zero is a special branch of the police commissioned to deal with psionic criminals. I happen to be the one that gets stuck with all the other stuff, like ghosts.”

“You’re psi… psionic?” Miranda squirmed against the wall until she stood on tiptoe in the corner, chains rattling. “Please don’t kill me. Papa warned me about psionics. Said you come from the Devil.”

“I’m so tired of that bullshit!” Kirsten shrieked. “Fucking made up Satan has nothing to do with it.”

This time her growling struggle to free herself made Miranda whimper as if trapped in jail with a hungry lion held back by a leash that could break at any second. Finding the effort futile, Kirsten glared, lost somewhere between crying at old wounds and getting so furious her heart felt like it would explode. She closed her eyes, seething. Chaos swam through her mind until all she thought about was finding a way to get to Evan.

Kirsten narrowed her gaze at her whimpering cellmate. “Not every psionic can kill people with their mind. Some can just play with emotions, see ghosts, or hear what you’re thinking. No, I’m not reading your mind right now. I try not to just invade people’s privacy. My mother was like you, thought psionics were the Devil’s work. Bitch almost killed me when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry.” Miranda closed her eyes, crying, whispering to God for help. After a moment of nothing happening, she sniffled and glanced down at the floor. “Can you kill people?”

Kirsten took a deep breath, bristling with anger at the fear in the sound of Miranda’s clattering handcuffs, and let it out in a long, drawn-out groan. “Yeah. I got
lucky
enough to be one of the few who can. However, I don’t
like
doing it. It hurts me too… and it just feels, I dunno,
wrong.
”

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t hurt me. Now I know why I’m stuck in here. God wanted me to stop being afraid of psionics.”

Kirsten shifted, unable to get comfortable. “Ugh. Look, I don’t have time to fucking debate theology with you. We’re both stuck in this place, and I know for a fact we can get out of here.”

“How could you know that?”

I bet I could tell this one an angel told me and she’d believe it.
“I’m psychic.”

Miranda giggled, nervously, still trying to squeeze herself into the wall.

Kirsten shivered with rage. Evan was in danger and she could not do a damn thing about it. Like Princess Alsbeth in the Monwyn vid, she sat locked in a long-forgotten dungeon. At least Alsbeth had a beautiful white robe. Unfortunately, there was no great and powerful wizard coming to save her.
No, Princess Wren gets stuck saving herself. You fell for the Prince Charming routine and he turned out to be a geriatric maleficar
. For a moment, she pondered trying to use Beacon to call Theodore or Dorian, but decided against it. Konstantin might have things in this house capable of destroying Dorian, and she did
not
want Theodore to find her like
this
. She studied the lone LED bulb, the walls, the floor, and the bars.
So damn cold.

“Hey, these cuffs came from a sex shop right? Maybe they have a safety release?”

“You into that weird shit?” Miranda blinked.

Kirsten was past blushing anymore. “No, I just hear stories from the Div One guys who find people in compromising situations. This one guy was hanging from his ceiling for twenty-seven hours before he realized the cuffs had a thumb switch.” She scooted over and studied the restraints on Miranda’s legs. “Shit, just keys. Dammit.”

“Can you, like, maybe scoot back to your side?”

“What, you don’t want me to get any psionic on you?” Kirsten squinted. “We’re trapped in here like this and all you can think about is not wanting to touch a psionic? Really? Are you that damn shallow?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Too damn late. So, how’d you wind up here? All of the other victims had no family or anyone to notice them missing. You got people looking for you?”

“I can’t tell you. Please don’t read my mind, it’s not admissible.”

“Did you kill anyone? You gonna kill anyone?”

Miranda shook her head. “No, uhh, I did fantasize about shooting the bastard who put me in this cage.”

“Then I couldn’t care less right now. I just need to get out of here and get to my son before that motherfucking, lying, cheating, son of a bitch, bastard…” Kirsten strained against the cuffs with each curse word, until she broke down and sobbed. The remembered touch of a calloused hand sliding up inside her thigh flashed from handsome highwayman to horror-vid walking corpse. She gagged.

“I snuck in to rob the place. This guy has a lot of expensive shit. Some of it supposed to be priceless. I dunno what happened to me. I’m creepin’ around this museum-like room, right?” She made hand gestures behind her back while speaking. “Then there was this, like, cold on the back of my neck. Like some kinda hand was made outta ice grabbed me, and everything went dark. I woke up like this.” Miranda fidgeted, her fear ebbed enough to let her heels touch the floor again. “Hey, how good are you with your tongue?”

Kirsten’s bawling shut off as if a switch was thrown. “What did you just say? How can you think about
that
at a time like this? I don’t even like women. Hey, wait a sec. You’re all into the God thing, but you were gonna rob the place? What happened to thou shalt not steal?”

“It took a back seat to ‘thou shalt not starve.’ Anyway, that’s not what I mean. If you promise, and I mean swear-promise not to arrest me, I might be able to help us get out.”

“If you could just get out, why are you still here?”

“’Cause, you stupid bitch, I can’t reach.” She bounced like an anxious kid begging for a treat. “You swear-promise?”

“What are you, twelve? This isn’t a goddamned sleep over.” She exhaled hard enough to blow cat litter across the floor. “Fine.”

Miranda swung her head to the side, tossing hair away from a small half-inch black square behind her right ear. It had a light grey stick-figure head with snake-hair stenciled in the middle of it. “

“A medusa.” Kirsten blinked. “You have a Loki Blade don’t you?”

Miranda looked down. “They’re not illegal. Just, well… frowned on.”

“Yeah, I know. Div One loves to do awful things to people who have them. Come on, get down and scoot over―if you can stand to let a psionic touch you.”

“Soz.” Miranda slid down the wall until she sat on the floor, and shifted onto her stomach before crawling closer. She halted, staring up and trembling.

Kirsten fought her way back to a kneeling posture and tried to get her hands on the Medusa plugged into the woman’s head, but between the elastic strap and her feet getting in the way, she gave up. In a fit of desperation, she tried once more to break her restraints.

“Those things hold one-ton cargo boxes down, you ain’t snapping it. Use your teeth,” said Miranda.

Kirsten slipped, falling face-first into the ground. With thoughts of Evan at the tip of her brain, she ignored the pain. Dazed, she repositioned herself and eventually got close enough to nuzzle up to Miranda’s neck.

If Theo sees this, I will obliterate him. I’m not dealing with that taunting for the rest of my life.

“Ok, don’t move,” whispered Kirsten. “This thing is gonna shock the shit out of both of us if I touch your skin with my nose while I’m pushing the buttons. Security feature to prevent self-removal.”

Kirsten waited.

“That means stop shivering.”

“I’m cold and terrified and there’s a nugget of cat litter digging into my ass.”

“Miranda?”

The woman looked at her. “Yeah?”

“
Stop shivering.
” Kirsten’s eyes gleamed with paranormal light.

Miranda went still.

“Was that psionic stuff?”

“Yep.”

Kirsten tilted her head, keeping her nose away from Miranda’s neck. The tip of her tongue found the Medusa box and she bit down on it, squeezing the release buttons on the upper and lower edges. For several seconds, she stopped breathing and tugged. A half-inch metal prong, asterisk-shaped like an M3 jack, gleamed on the reverse side. Just as the tip cleared the socket behind the woman’s ear, a spark leapt from her to the prong, hitting Kirsten in the nose with the force of a light punch. The flavor of tin filled her mouth and her eyes watered out of control. She rolled off Miranda and spat the device into the litter box. After a few breaths, she curled into a ball and used her thigh to cradle her face.

“Shit. Ouch.”

Miranda lapsed into mild convulsions, face-down and flopping. When the fit subsided, she laid still and breathed hard.

Kirsten blinked off the pain, unable to hold her face in her hands or stop her eyes from watering. She flopped onto her back and stared through her legs at Miranda. “Well, what are you waiting for? I swear I won’t arrest you.” The sight of metal on her ankles lit the fires of rage.
I’m gonna kill him.

“It hurts so much.”

Another attempt to break the cuffs with brute force failed. “Dammit, bitch, come on. Does it hurt more than a dagger in the heart? They’re going after my son! I swear I won’t arrest you for breaking in here, having a Loki, or whatever. Dammit, woman, I’ll help you rob the place myself if it saves Evan’s life!”

Miranda battled her way into a sitting position, legs straight forward, and closed her eyes as if meditating. Seconds later, she whimpered and gasped. A line of blood ran into her right hand as small Nano blades pressed their way a half-inch out of the skin on both sides of her wrist. The implanted mechanism pushed the transparent edges apart until they severed the metal restraint. She whined as she moved her arms around front, stretching.

“Come on, come on.” Kirsten rolled on her side and rattled her cuffs.

“I’m so sore; I’ve been chained for weeks. They never took them off.”

“Hurt later, free now.”

Using the tiny Loki Blade like a saw, Miranda hacked at the shackles on her ankles, whimpering. It did not take a lot of force to push the Nano edge through the metal, but she mewled and cried with every ounce of pressure. After cutting the binders from one ankle at a time, she held the blade over the cuff on her other wrist. A series of pitiful whimpers and gasps came out of her as she scraped her arm back and forth. Once she was free of all metal, Miranda kicked the chains to the corner and curled up in a shivering ball. Trickles of blood ran down her legs, dripping from her wrist.

“Ow. It’s s’posed to push against each side of the cuff. Not just cut things like a knife. Shit, that hurt. It’s like I stabbed myself through the arm and wobbled the knife back and forth.”