The Shadow Fixer

by Matthew S. Cox

  She pointed up at the emergency lights on the roof, which saturated the boat in rapid flashes of intense azure.

  “Oh!” Mr. Koizumi smacked himself on the head. “Something is wrecking everything.”

  The spirit shrugged and proceeded to raise his arm as if to throw the fish—which one of the sons tried to hold on to.

  “Yeah, you.” Kirsten pointed at him. “Why are you messing with the Koizumis? Knock it off.”

  “Fuck off,” said the ghost. He let go of the fish, causing the younger man to fall on his ass, and picked up a stack of disposable bento boxes.

  “Need to get a little closer, got a reach of about fifteen feet,” said Kirsten before shouting, “Last warning. I’d rather help you, but you have to stop destroying stuff.”

  The spirit set the bento boxes down, picked up a handful of fish slices, and hurled them at her.

  A piece of tuna sashimi hit her in the forehead with a wet slap—and stuck. Another bounced off her chest before falling into her lap. Several flew past her, two sticking to the inside of the passenger window.

  Dorian’s grumbling came from the car’s sound system. “It’s going to smell like fish in here for weeks.”

  She peeled the tuna from her forehead and tried to toss it back onto the boat, but the wind caught it, making it fly off to the left. Oops! A small piece of fish falling from 500 feet overhead probably wouldn’t hurt too much if it hit someone. Annoyed, she pointed at the spirit and concentrated on pulling his hand away from the refrigerated display case of fish.

  This ghost resisted more forcefully than she expected, but only due to the previous two aggressive ones being so weak. He growled, attempting to reach for a wad of whitefish, though his hand remained frozen in midair as if held in a vice.

  “Stop wasting food!” yelled Kirsten. I feel ridiculous.

  Snarling, the ghost faced her again, his eyes manic. He stopped trying to grab fish; the sudden release of tension made her rock back in the seat. Kirsten sat back up to the ghost trying to grab a large knife. Mr. Koizumi screamed like a father defending his child and pounced the instant the blade twitched, pinning it to the cutting surface.

  Grr. This ghost is an idiot. She concentrated on the lash, projecting the energy cord out as long as she could. “Need another foot or two closer.”

  The patrol craft drifted left, almost bumping against the large sushi boat.

  She clutched the overhead handle tight, leaned forward, and whipped the lash at the spirit. The last four inches or so snapped through his back, tearing a gouge in his spectral essence as if he’d been grazed by a laser sword—only without all the blood and smoke. He screeched in pain, body twisted up on his toes, left arm flapping. The eight-inch wound shrank closed, shimmered, and once again took on the appearance of an undamaged coat.

  “I don’t want to harm you, but you have to stop vandalizing this boat!” yelled Kirsten.

  “Gah!” shouted the spirit. He whirled, staring at her with an almost ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ expression. Before she could say anything more, he blurred into an energy smear, rocketing off toward the ground.

  “Okay… what the heck?” Kirsten released the lash, leaning out of the patrol craft enough to watch the luminous streak vanish into the plastisteel sidewalk below.

  Mr. Koizumi approached the edge closest to her, leaning on the railing. “You are watching something fall? Did you knock him overboard?”

  “In a manner of speaking. The spirit is gone. Sorry about all the mess.”

  “It is not your fault.” He smiled. “Thank you for saving my best knife.”

  “You’re welcome. Didn’t really want it embedded in my face.”

  “Agreed. That would have been worse than losing it.” Mr. Koizumi exhaled. “So, we really had a spirit on the ship?”

  “Yes.” She shifted ninety degrees to her right, sitting normal in the seat again. “One sec.” After closing the door and opening the armored window, she described the ghost’s appearance. “Does he sound familiar at all?”

  “No.” Mr. Koizumi shrugged. “I have no idea why he would bother us.”

  Disappointed, she nodded, though did feel a little better her favorite sushi chef hadn’t made enemies of a spirit. She collected the rest of the tuna out of the patrol craft and handed it over. “Almost done, just need to go over some basic questions for the report.”

  He tossed the fish bits in a de-assembler. “It’s almost dinner time. Care for your usual?”

  “Are you sure it isn’t a bad time? The ghost made a big mess.”

  “My pleasure. The least I can do.”

  Mr. Koizumi started putting together her usual order of sashimi while she asked the standard post-incident questions. Two other hovercars plus a Division 1 patrol craft pulled up at the boat to order while she monopolized Mr. Koizumi’s attention. One of his sons scrambled to clean up, the other stuck his hands in a sanitizer field before working on incoming orders. Eventually, Kirsten had dinner for herself and Evan sitting in the back, and another Inquest on the pile of Inquests pending final reports.

  The chefs waved as she pulled away from the sushi barge.

  Dorian appeared in the passenger seat as soon as she took flight control back. “Something doesn’t make sense.”

  “A lot of this doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why did that man scream like someone tried to steal his baby when the ghost went for the knife?”

  She sighed. “Nothing unusual there. Some of those professional sushi knives can cost thousands of credits.”

  “Who’d pay thousands of credits for a plain knife?”

  “They come straight from Japan and are extremely sharp.”

  Dorian gave her side eye. “He should use a vibro-blade. Much sharper and a tenth the cost.”

  “If they tried to cut sushi with a vibro-blade, it wouldn’t be sushi anymore. It’d come out cooked. Those things get ridiculously hot. What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s not a full moon.” Dorian leaned back in his seat. “Let’s check over records. Maybe someone disturbed an old mausoleum.”

  She exhaled, lips fluttering. “Wouldn’t the spirits all be going after the people who bothered them?”

  “Probably, but you don’t have anything else.”

  “I do. Sorta. There has to be something at the center of where most of these attacks are occurring. And the old lady mentioned a loud racket. Maybe it’ll be obvious?”

  “Maybe, but when do you ever get so lucky?” He chuckled.

  She smiled to herself, thinking of finding Evan and meeting Sam within months. “Happens sometimes.”

  11

  The Warlord

  Never in Kirsten’s life did she imagine she’d find herself in a blue cheongsam, running around ancient ruins while sword-fighting ninjas.

  However, she presently ran up a stone path somewhere in a rural area of China—as it would have been about a thousand years ago. The men who showed up occasionally to kill her didn’t act like ninjas. She only thought of them as such due to their faces being covered. Not only did masks make it less obvious she fought the same person over and over, it also made it easier to kill them.

  Despite knowing she participated in a virtual reality simulation, it still took her a while to find the nerve necessary to stick a jian into an apparently living person. In the Monwyn games she played with Evan, the sim didn’t convey how it really felt to slice or stab into beings of flesh and bone. The few times she’d been stuck at too close range for Asara’s longbow and had to use the elven longsword, stabbing creatures reminded her of slicing cake.

  Here, in the Division 2 training area, not only did the Chinese jian sword seem heavier than Asara’s fantasy weapon, the simulation let her feel every grind of blade on bone or the variations in squishiness depending on where she stabbed or sliced. It took some work to ignore being squeamish about it.

  Part of her wanted to ask Gabriel to turn sensation off. She never expected to use a sword in a
fight with an actual person. If the blade had to come out, she’d be dealing with ghosts, abyssals, or demons at a point where she’d become too exhausted to use the lash. Division 0 had a few astral sensitives in decades before her, but none had any means of fighting supernatural entities other than astrally binding a physical weapon—like a sword. Ballistic firearms didn’t do anything to ghosts unless each individual bullet was astrally bound. Guns barely irritated abyssals. No one had any data how They Who Always Were reacted to bullets, but she figured ‘true demons’ would laugh at them.

  If the day came when Evan found himself officially part of Division 0, his only recourse for dealing with dangerous supernatural beings would be a sword—or perhaps a laser. The reason Zeroes carried energy weapons instead of physical firearms like other police divisions was due to a Tactical officer fifty-some-odd years ago accidentally discovering laser weapons disrupted spirits.

  Granted, it would take something like fifteen to twenty hits from an E-90—the most powerful handgun-sized laser available—to disrupt a spirit’s essence as much as one swipe from her lash. An astrally bound sword would likely be weaker than the lash, but far better than a laser except for the obvious handicap of having to be close to the angry ghost.

  I just know they’re going to pressure him to sign up… and he’s going to. He wants to help people. She took out her worries over Evan’s future health on the next ‘ninja’ to spring out from behind an old stone column. Gabriel still had the sim running on a low skill setting. She ran the training course today mostly for acclimating to the feel of using a sword in ‘real’ fights, as opposed to sparring with Gabriel, not to push her to the limit of her skills.

  Yet.

  Eventually, every ‘ninja’ would be a serious challenge to beat. Today, however, she defeated them easily. The ones who came right in, she’d wait for them to swing, parry, then counterattack. If the man hesitated, she’d sometimes initiate, but usually let them make the first move.

  The earlier he starts, the better he’ll be able to defend himself.

  She begrudgingly decided to bring the subject up with him. Naturally, she expected the fantasy-obsessed boy to adore the idea of learning sword fighting for real. He’d much prefer magic, but alas, spellcasting only existed in video games.

  Another man shouted a war cry as he jumped from the bushes, sword over his head.

  Kirsten ducked under his initial swing, slashing him across the knee. The man fell over, spinning to slice at her as he went down. She darted forward, avoiding the attack, and kept going. Gabriel would probably have wanted her to finish the guy off, but despite him being entirely made of ones and zeroes, she couldn’t ‘kill’ someone not presenting an immediate threat.

  The meandering stone path up the side of the hill led past multiple smallish clearings littered with the rubble of collapsed stone huts. Each platform, much like a video game, had a somewhat more skilled opponent compared to the basic guys attacking her on the trail. Kirsten fought her way to the edge of the sixth clearing. Past it, a straight uphill path led forty feet to the final ‘palace,’ a red-painted wooden structure surrounding a square area more like a dojo than the residence of a king.

  The warlord waited inside, wearing a ridiculously elaborate outfit, arms folded, frowning imperiously at her. Not exactly realistic for him to stand there watching her fight his minions, but she didn’t run this sim to learn how to fight six people at once. Even Gabriel said the best way to win even a three-on-one when swords are involved is to haul ass—or pull out a gun.

  She knew as soon as she entered the sixth small clearing, two men would rush at her from behind the ruins of a small stone building on the left. This would be her fifth attempt to get past them. The first try, they overwhelmed her right away without her even scoring a hit on one. Subsequent attempts progressively improved. The last two tries, she took one guy out but ‘died’ to the second man as soon as she lowered her defenses to attack his partner.

  Maybe I’ll try focusing on defense this time. Wait for them to make an error?

  As soon as she stepped forward, the men, one wearing blue, one green, appeared and charged.

  Kirsten darted left, dodging the green man on the right while parrying the other guy’s downward chop. Green spun around behind Blue, leaning into a thrust at her face, which she deflected using her blade. Blue slashed at her leg. She managed to reorient her jian fast enough to block while backpedaling.

  “Every opponent has a pattern,” said Gabriel’s voice from everywhere. “Before you can get past any defense, you must find the holes in it.”

  Easy for you to say from up there. Fortunately, her defenses felt noticeably better, coming from reflex and training rather than her trying to remember a specific single technique. She weaved back and forth between the two men, entirely focused on defending herself. In a real fight against two living people, she’d already have used Suggestion to make them stop. One of the other trainers, Mina Hong—who mostly administered urban assault scenarios—made no secret of her irritation at ‘Division 0 prima donnas’ who thought their psionic powers ought to work in the computer. She’d apparently had an argument with Officer Solomon, and Kirsten caught the fallout of her opinion on Zeroes.

  Fortunately, Kirsten didn’t need to go through her urban assault and tactics course.

  The two swordsmen kept pressing their attacks. The clank-clank-clank of swords striking swords echoed over the beautiful mountainside. It didn’t take long for her to make one tiny error and suffer a painful slice to the arm, rapidly leading to two more slices and a fatal stab to the chest—which didn’t hurt at all.

  To prevent mental trauma, any killing blow came with cartoonish video game sound effects.

  Kirsten reappeared at the bottom of the mountain and sighed at the jian in her grip. “I’m never going to get past those two. Do I really need to do this again?”

  “Of course you don’t need to.” Gabriel’s chuckle rolled overhead like thunder.

  She squeezed the sword’s grip. “Okay. I’m just frustrated. Not gonna give up.”

  “Hang on. Let me modify the sim a little.”

  Kirsten shook her head. “I’ve been stuck on this same fight for five sessions. It’s not going to help me learn if I cheat.”

  He remained quiet for a moment.

  A little Chinese girl in a fancy pink-and-red gown appeared at the curve in the trail ahead, fleeing from two men chasing her. Upon spotting Kirsten, she shouted, “Help!”

  Another man sprang out of the weeds, grabbed the girl off her feet, and sprinted up the path, carrying her.

  “Not going to cheat,” said Gabriel. “Merely give you a little motivation.”

  She closed her eyes. “Is the kid really necessary? This isn’t funny.”

  “Not meant to be.”

  “Help!” shouted the distant child.

  One thing about a virtual course, she didn’t genuinely tire from all the fighting, so didn’t need to take a rest break. She did, however, stand there for a moment listening to the child voice repeat her call for help every twenty seconds or so, trying to convince herself a genuine little girl had been kidnapped by an evil warlord. It didn’t take too much for her to get into it. The Monwyn games had a few ‘save the child’ side quests, and she’d become entirely engrossed in the story there. Granted, those had been way more immersive, as she’d often run several quests for the family prior to something happening. Gabriel just kinda threw this kid in here. Having a bandit literally jump out of a bush and grab some kid before running ‘off-screen’ like something from a 350-year-old side-scrolling video game had been so silly it made her want to laugh more than help.

  Deep breaths. There’s a kid in trouble.

  She opened her eyes and marched forward.

  With each nameless thug she sliced down, she thought her way deeper and deeper into the false reality, making up a storyline to go along with it. The girl was the daughter of a beloved king, kidnapped by the man’s sociopathic younge
r brother who wanted to take the throne. This sim didn’t have any real story, merely a bunch of fights for training purposes… but making stuff up helped from a motivation standpoint.

  Having done the scenario now six times, the first two small clearing ‘bosses’ went down easy. She stormed up the next section of path, crossing swords with an opponent every thirty meters, though no fights lasted more than seven seconds. All the while, the kidnapped princess shouted for help—as if Kirsten might forget she existed if she didn’t keep yelling.

  Focused on the need to rescue the girl, Kirsten fell into a rhythm with the swordplay, seizing openings she’d have passed on before, attacking more aggressively.

  In a mere twenty minutes, she found herself at the edge of the sixth clearing again. From there, she looked up the straight incline at the palace. A red-and-gold octagonal ‘birdcage’ with decorative Chinese woodwork hung from a chain at the rear of the structure, behind the warlord. The princess sat inside it, gripping the bars.

  She appeared far too calm, but then again, hadn’t been programmed to be a kidnap victim.

  Kirsten looked away from the girl and thought about Seneschal the abyssal threatening Evan. The simulated ‘ninja’ became abyssals in her head, the girl in the birdcage a stand-in for her son. She charged into the sixth clearing, darting left as she had the past three times, and parrying Blue’s overhead chop. Green spun around to come at her from behind the wall; however, instead of running past the wall into his attack, she pushed through the block, yanking her jian down and slicing Blue’s thigh. She caught his wrist in her left hand, finishing him with a thrust to the chest before Green could finish coming around the wall. The ancient stone barrier had given her a precious three seconds of one-on-one.

  Undeterred by the death of his companion, Green rushed in, slashing at her neck. Kirsten blocked, maneuvering to counterattack, but ended up thrusting down left to parry a rapid reversal strike. They crossed swords four times in three seconds, blinding glints of sunlight flashing from the steel. Green scraped his jian off hers, dropping into a spinning low slash at shin height.