The Shadow Fixer

by Matthew S. Cox

  “All right…”

  Teela held out the datapad and played a computer-generated reconstruction of the crash. An amber car-shape labelled C1 flew along in hovercar traffic. The model abruptly fell like a stone, rolling sideways. It flipped over four times on the way down, being almost perfectly upside down when it crushed C2 and C3. C4 swerved around to the left, T-boning C5 and punting it into animated pedestrian models. The video backed up to the moment C1 struck the ground, zooming in on a fragment of metal launching out of the crash and slow-mo showing it flying into the head of a man on the opposite side of the road from where C5 would strike a second later.

  “Is it a problem if I touch the car?” asked Kirsten.

  “Not at all.” Teela shook her head. “We’ve gotten everything we can possibly find from it already. There’s no danger of evidence contamination at this point.”

  “Okay.” Kirsten walked around a bank of diagnostic equipment, stepped over several fat hoses crisscrossing the lab, and approached a wide plastisteel table holding the wreckage.

  The four ion thrusters had been removed as well as the ground wheels. Wire bundles stuck out of the mangled wheel cowlings. A jagged, mostly square, hole in the roof resembling a crudely opened can exposed what remained of the driver’s seat. About three inches of space separated the cushion from where the roof ended up. Blood saturated the interior.

  “Surprised they cut it open to get the body out.” Dorian whistled. “They could’ve merely tilted it up on end and poured him into a container.”

  Kirsten grimaced. It’s not comforting to say he wouldn’t have felt anything. This poor man spent the last few seconds of his life in complete terror. I hope he passed out before he hit the ground. She rested her hand on the smooth metal to the left of the hole and opened her mind to the astral.

  The car gave off a clear imprint of death, which didn’t offer any new information. She already knew a man died in the car. No spirits seemed to be attached to it, nor did the metal hold a lingering paranormal presence.

  “Dorian, can you tell if a ghost made this crash?”

  “Made what crash?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Teela blinked.

  “The hovercar, obviously.” She smirked at him.

  He smiled. “This is a hovercar?”

  “Was,” said Kirsten, playing along.

  “Umm, who are you talking to?” Teela looked around. “You have someone on comm?”

  “No. My partner’s a ghost.”

  The other eight techs in the room froze, staring at her. She refused to look at any of them, forcing herself to act as casual as if she said she enjoyed coffee.

  Dorian walked through the flattened hovercar, stuck his head into a few places, then stood, shrugging. “Can’t really tell. But I’d only feel it if a spirit with serious power touched this vehicle. Remember how I explained it before? Maybe they can check the power management system.”

  “I’m not picking up anything conclusive.” Kirsten tapped her fingers on the wreck. “I can ask them to send a clairvoyant. They can sometimes get information from touching objects. My deal is spirits and stuff.”

  “Darn.” Teela exhaled.

  Kirsten faced her. “Question?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can you tell if the power system did anything strange right before the crash? Such as going in a loop to the capacitors, bypassing the ion thrusters entirely?”

  Teela stared at her for a long moment. “How the heck did you know that?”

  “She’s psychic!” yelled a man on the other side of the room.

  Kirsten and Dorian exchanged a glance. She wanted to bonk her head on something but resisted.

  “Could be,” said Dorian.

  “But there’s no anger or anything embedded in this car.” She looked at Teela. “I’ve seen a ghost cause a crash similar to this once before. Basically looks like the hovercar shuts completely off in midair and drops like a brick with no power.”

  “Yeah…” Teela gawked at her datapad. “The diagnostic module recorded a massive influx of power to the secondary capacitor array five-point-five-seven seconds before it was smashed on impact. All four ion thrusters shut off at the same time, but we can’t find a reason for it. No hovercar operating system is even capable of processing a command to bypass power around the thrusters, especially while in flight. It’s like the electricity itself decided to go where it didn’t belong.”

  Dorian nodded.

  “Ugh. You aren’t going to like what I’m about to say.” Kirsten set her hands on her hips. “I’m going to like it even less.”

  “Huh?” Teela tilted her head.

  “Pretty sure a ghost caused this crash.”

  Teela started to laugh, but at Kirsten’s continued straight face, stared at her. “Wait, you’re serious?”

  “I am.”

  “Why are you not going to like it? I thought you said ghosts are your thing.” Teela tapped her fingers on the datapad. “How the hell am I gonna log this?”

  Kirsten let her head loll back, gazing up at the two-story ceiling of bare metal rafters, powerful lights, and lifting equipment. “Ghosts are going kinda nuts at the moment. Usually, when a spirit gathers enough energy to affect the living, there’s a lot of emotion wrapped up in it. They leave an emotional imprint behind whenever they do anything because most ghosts have to get emotionally revved up to affect solid objects. I don’t feel anything in this wreck. The idea of a ghost killing someone and not leaving an emotional residue is terrifying. Means it’s probably a sociopath capable of killing randomly without remorse or reason.”

  “Damn…” Teela whistled. “Lieutenant?”

  “Hmm?” Kirsten looked down from the ceiling.

  “Don’t suppose you guys have any documentation about this phenomenon for me to compare to?”

  She winced, but kept a straight face. “Unfortunately not. The other incident of a ghost disabling a hovercar happened in a disavowed sector. I didn’t stick around to examine the wreckage.”

  “Darn.” Teela grumbled.

  Kirsten looked at Dorian. “Up for a demonstration? If we knew for a fact a ghost did—or didn’t—make this car crash, it’ll only help us.”

  “The brass won’t take it seriously, but sure.” Dorian shrugged.

  “Demonstration?” Teela pursed her lips. “Such as?”

  “You guys have a hovercar around here you use for testing and such?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bring it in, hook it up to real time diagnostic monitoring. When you’re ready, Dorian will recreate the circumstances of a ghost-induced failure and you can compare the logs to C1.”

  “Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?” Teela grinned, a spark of excitement in her eyes. “I love it!”

  9

  Imminent

  Kirsten’s visit to the RTC added another Inquest to her growing collection.

  She slouched in the chair behind her desk in the squad room, staring at a screen listing all the Inquests pending completion related to the paranormal surge. Filling out reports had to be the worst part of being in Division 0 I-Ops. Well, second compared to having demons try to bite her in half.

  At least it had been somewhat entertaining to crack the worldview of nine technicians. When Dorian made the test hovercar abruptly drop like a brick—all of three inches—they had a little trouble processing what they witnessed. Tara’s diagnostic equipment confirmed similar behavior of the electronic systems inside the car at the time… so at least one other ghost out there in West City could make hovercars drop out of the sky on command.

  Worse, a ghost who could do so without emotion.

  Hmm. She sat up straight and accessed her official logs, searching for the patrol craft’s rear camera recording from the day Dorian took out the Intera assassin. Obvious recordings of ghostly or demonic activity usually ended up classified top secret by Command so as not to set off a panic. The video of Dorian causing the hovercar chasing them to crash didn’t get
classified, since nothing on the camera appeared obviously paranormal, merely a car falling out of the air.

  The other car followed them, 142 feet away according to the patrol craft’s sensors. For no reason anyone watching the video could understand, the glowing cyan light from the four ion thrusters winked out, causing the car to drop like a brick.

  142 feet away. It took six seconds between when Dorian started concentrating and the car shut down. She figured the ghost who caused the crash of C1 had to be either in the car or in another one moving with the same traffic stream. Otherwise, C1 would have gotten too far away from the ghost to suffer a fatal power issue. No reason the ghost couldn’t have been in C1 at the time. The crash wouldn’t exactly hurt them.

  “Crap,” whispered Kirsten.

  “What’s on your mind?” asked Dorian, seated behind her at ‘his’ desk.

  She closed the video window. “Just had a bad thought. It’s most likely true this crash happened due to the action of a spirit. I’m wondering if we have another big bad nasty running around and their presence is what’s stirring up so many other ghosts.”

  “I haven’t sensed anything unusual in the air.” Dorian reclined, putting his feet up on the desk. “Maybe it’s localized to a small area.”

  A beep came from the desk terminal along with a pop-up window announcing an incoming call from [CPT Winfield, N – D2IO].

  “Eep. What could a Div 2 detective captain want from me?” She eyed Captain Eze’s office window, feeling a bit like she ought to have him with her to speak to another captain, but dismissed it as a bit of childish worry. She wasn’t an agent anymore. They’d promoted her to second lieutenant, a real investigator—not a kid with a rare, needed ability. She sat up straight and swiped to answer. “Hello?”

  The head and shoulders of a black man in a nice blue shirt and neat tie appeared on her screen. Hints of age silvered the sides of his hair. He looked more like a lawyer or business executive than a cop. “Lieutenant Wren?”

  “Yes, captain.” She saluted. “What can I help you with?”

  He returned the salute. “I’m investigating a series of suspicious stock trades involving Lyris Corporation. I understand you were at their main office not long ago, the day before the trades occurred. I’m looking into whether—”

  “I stole information?” Kirsten’s stomach knotted up.

  Detective Captain Winfield smiled. “No, of course not. Your record and psych assessments speak quite clearly as to the nature of your character. It never even crossed my mind you are personally involved. Besides, you arrived days after the privileged meeting ended. I’m calling you to ask if you went there to investigate reports of potential psionic espionage.”

  “Oh…” She exhaled out her nose. “No, I went there to investigate unexplained thermal anomalies. As you’ve looked at my record, I’m sure you noticed my specialization is Astral Sense. They wouldn’t send me to investigate a telepath illegally mind reading people unless we had a serious backlog.”

  He chuckled. “All right, then. Just trying to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts.”

  Oh, crap… “Captain, there’s another possibility you probably haven’t even considered.”

  “Go on, lieutenant.”

  She hesitated momentarily about sharing paranormal stuff outside Division 0, but Winfield was a captain and likely had higher security clearance than her. Division 2 still belonged to the National Police Force, after all. Not like she spoke to a reporter. “The incident I investigated occurred in an executive conference room. Their security team recorded a thermal imaging video of the meeting showing a colder region distinctly in the shape of a person who stood there for the entire duration. I’m confident a spirit had been in the room, probably listening to the meeting.”

  “Assuming this is possible, how does it relate to my investigation?” Detective Winfield gave her the same look most people did when she brought up ghosts. Halfway between laughing and ‘go see a psychiatrist.’

  “Astral sensitives are very rare. There are only two on record in West City. Me, and my son. It’s a near certainty other people exist in West City who have the ability to interact with ghosts. However, as the ‘this woman is nuts’ face you’re making right now proves, people don’t like hearing about ghosts. I’m sure other astrals don’t know how to react to their abilities and keep quiet out of fear and wondering if they’re crazy. Also, some spirits have ways of communicating with ordinary people.”

  “What are you saying here?” asked Captain Winfield.

  “I think a ghost might have spied on the Lyris executives and passed along vital information to a living person who then either acted on it or sold the information. May I suggest comparing the content of the meeting the executives had at the time of the thermal anomaly with the suspicious stock trades? They didn’t let me hear any recordings or tell me anything about what the executives discussed.”

  Winfield pursed his lips. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Astrals are super rare, but it’s possible. If the spirit is powerful and old enough, he could communicate with a non-psionic person who knows how to use electronics for that purpose. Cybernetic cat ears are sensitive enough to pick them up in a quiet place.”

  Dorian chuckled. “Most cybernetic ears are able to. You only mention the cat ones because they’re visually obvious.”

  “Shit,” muttered Detective Captain Winfield. “Not sure what’ll happen if it turns out the meeting you’re telling me about did contain the information responsible for these trades.”

  She chuckled. “What’ll happen is we’ll probably end up working on it together. At least until I figure out why the ghost is involved. It might only be a coincidence.”

  “Probably is.” Winfield wiped his hand down his face while emitting a frustrated noise.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” said Dorian, attempting to imitate Winfield’s voice.

  His words matched the detective’s facial expression perfectly.

  To stop herself from laughing at a captain, Kirsten cleared her throat. “Would you mind letting me know if the information in the meeting matches?”

  “All right. I suppose if it does, you will need to be involved. Might take you a bit of work to convince me ghosts exist, though.”

  She smiled. “Easy. My partner can help convince you.”

  “You don’t have a partner,” said Winfield.

  “He’s not officially my partner because there’s no current policy for the dead to be on the duty roster.”

  Detective Captain Winfield stared at her. “We’ll cross that bridge if we must. Thank you for your time, lieutenant.”

  “You’re welcome, captain.”

  The call dropped.

  Kirsten collapsed over her desk, head on her arms, feeling as though she melted into a puddle. “Ugh.”

  “So…” Dorian chuckled. “How does it feel to singlehandedly destroy all faith in the stock market?”

  She shrugged, not sitting up. “So a couple of rich people cry into their wine.” Memories of being at Konstantin’s fancy events killed her appetite for the lunch she missed while at the RTC. “And you’re being alarmist. Nothing’s going to happen from one detective hearing me say a ghost might have spied on a corporation. Plenty of living people spy on corporations all the time and the beloved stock market hasn’t eaten itself yet.”

  “No, but living spies can be stopped. Companies can’t do a damn thing about spirits.”

  “Sure they could.” She huffed and pushed herself back up to sit. “Hire astrals to blockade conference rooms before talking about sensitive stuff. But there aren’t enough of us, nor enough of a threat of ghost spies, to be worth it.”

  “At least one.” Dorian drummed his fingers on his desk. “We’ve got multiple ghosts all losing their minds in the same week. Is this a full moon?”

  “What?”

  He waved dismissively. “Old mythology. People used to believe the phases of the moon affected human
behavior.”

  “Weird.” She puffed at a strand of hair hanging in front of her face. “How’d that start?”

  “Probably the same way people used to believe a god named Apollo carried the sun across the sky in a flaming chariot… before we understood how planets worked. Though, I suppose if you get enough people convinced of a silly story, it can have a psychosomatic effect on them. They believe the full moon made people act crazy, so some people acted crazy during a full moon.”

  “Is it a full moon?” Kirsten opened a GlobeNet browser to check. “Nope. Still… something has to be responsible for this. I haven’t seen such a spike of activity since the Wharf Stalker.”

  Dorian walked around to sit on the edge of her desk. “You’re thinking we’ve got another spirit of similar power out there?”

  “The one who caused the crash, yeah.” She opened another window showing the location plots for the haunting calls and pointed at the middle. “It has to be around here, somewhere.”

  “I hope we’re not gearing up for some sort of major event.”

  She groaned. “Ugh. I really hope not. Let’s go scout the area, see if we can sense any—”

  An alarm tone rang from her desk terminal and armband.

  “Lieutenant Wren.” A tween girl’s head and upper body appeared on the desk terminal in miniature 3D hologram floating over her armband. “There’s a… umm.” She glanced to her left, making a ‘help’ face.

  Someone whispered inaudibly over the line.

  The girl looked back at Kirsten, her expression urgent. “A 21-47 in progress at Twenty-Nine Palms Mall.”

  “Rain check the scouting mission.” Dorian hopped off the desk to his feet.

  “Understood, cadet. On the way.”

  The girl beamed. “Be safe out there.”

  10

  Spree

  For the second time in a day, Kirsten flew at 600 MPH, 1,200 feet above the city surface.

  “Am I being weird and paranoid, or does it seem like they always have a first-timer working my dispatches?”