The Shadow Fixer

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Shit!” yelled Anson.

  “What?” Kirsten jumped.

  “I, umm. Would you mind letting me log in real quick? I need to email my parents.”

  She frowned. “Nice try. You can wipe your systems out after they copy them.”

  He groaned, slouching.

  “C’mon. Let’s go. Your new bed’s going to be much safer—and less smelly—than this place.”

  Anson offered a sheepish smile. “How about a hundred grand?”

  “My partner thinks I’m too nice. I’m going to pretend you didn’t just try to bribe me because I’m sure you meant it as an inappropriate wiseass joke.”

  He sighed—and tried to run.

  Kirsten swung him around by her grip on his arm, directing him into the table. He collapsed bent over it. She climbed half on top of him and pulled the stunrod off her belt. “Does Japan have fetish vids about one of these going into a body cavity?”

  Dorian cackled.

  “Uhh…” Anson shivered. “Do you want me to seriously answer that?”

  Her stomach did a backflip. “Ugh. I may be small, but I am still strong enough to drag you out of here unconscious. Would you rather deal with the legal system or another contract killer?”

  “Another one? Are you saying someone paid the ghost to kill me?” He lifted his face from the table to gawk at her.

  Dorian whistled. “Probably autoshower manufacturers. How many people ended up afraid to get back into one after this? Or sued them.”

  “It’s a working theory. But the amount of people you pissed off, someone else is going to find you.”

  “Entire point of living out here.” He sighed.

  “I can’t explain how it happened, but the spirit said a living person made him come after you. Sounds like a contract to me.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “I’d rather take my chances here.”

  “Walk with me,” said Kirsten, her eyes glowing white.

  Anson stood.

  She glanced at Dorian. “What are you laughing at?”

  “Hearing you threaten to stuff a stunrod in a body cavity is hilarious.” He snickered. “You’d never do anything of the sort.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t know that.” She frowned, dragging Anson to the door.

  21

  Empathic Harmonics

  Kirsten got lucky, and not in a ‘spending the night with Samuel Chang’ way.

  Her luck involved a NetMini call to him instead. Division 2 didn’t need to physically take possession of all Anson’s hardware. He walked her through connecting to a ‘target’ site so the techs in the police lab could locate the private network and copy it. The process proved surprisingly fast, allowing her to get back to the patrol craft before her ‘sit still’ suggestion wore off.

  While her Inquest concerning Anson involved the ghost, she had no jurisdiction over the non-paranormal, non-psionic hacking crimes. She handed him off to Division 1 upon arrival at the PAC, but remembered the ‘net lore’ about how deep hackers can hold grudges. Unbeknownst to the Division 1 officers in the room, she telepathically warned him to forget she existed. Any attempt at revenge for arresting him would result in ‘hundreds’ of spirits who like her paying him a visit. Again, she’d never ask any of the ghosts to hurt him, but he didn’t need to know that.

  Judging by how pale he turned, she figured no need to worry about him coming back to haunt her.

  She fell into her chair in the squad room a little after three. Evan would be out of school already, probably working on citizenship points. Any day now, he’d be done with them. She called him to check up. Sure enough, he did chores in an empty classroom. A quick ‘where are you and are you okay’ call from his mother wouldn’t get him in trouble, so she didn’t keep him on the line despite wanting to.

  Her attention returned to the search she’d started earlier in the official database regarding Aethervein. According to the copyright registration, Aethervein was the product of one person—not a band. The PID record of a twenty-year-old named Marley Santiago popped up in a sub panel. She looked as though she tried to look closer to sixteen or seventeen between her fashion choice and widening her eyes for the photo. She had on a white-and-pink sweatshirt, heart earrings, and appeared to be wearing pale pink contacts. Marley dyed her shoulder-long hair red on the right, pink on the left, leaving a two-inch-wide snow-white strip between the halves. Tri-color hair didn’t even rate in the top fifty weird fashion quirks of notable musicians, but the overall aesthetic made her look like a high school kid unable to decide between counterculture or hypercute aesthetic.

  Nothing Kirsten could find on the GlobeNet about Aethervein included any pictures, likenesses of Marley, or any fictional band members. Even her ‘official’ page didn’t list anyone as being ‘in the band.’ It almost seemed as if the woman wanted to portray ‘Aethervein’ as an entity unto itself, perhaps an AI or alien.

  She poked the file on Marley.

  The woman had no criminal history, not even a tag for shoplifting or possession of recreational chems. Cops rarely bothered with most common ways people got high. A record of a chem-related arrest most times meant an underage teen’s parents asked the cops to bring them home. Past eighteen, though, the police had better things to do than drag an adult who hadn’t committed a crime somewhere they didn’t want to be.

  Marley, however, appeared genuinely clean. Her file indicated she lived in an apartment in Sector 2980.

  “Okay, Marley… when a ghost says your band’s name as a response to ‘why are you going crazy,’ means I gotta talk to you.”

  Kirsten pulled up the NavMap to set a waypoint to the woman’s address, and stopped short, staring at Sector 2980—right in the middle of the circle of excessive hauntings. She’d estimated the center at Sector 2888, two spaces to the left. The poltergeist she’d responded to not too long ago went nuts in Sector 2838, the adjacent sector to the south of the one Marley lived in.

  “Oh, crap.”

  She re-plotted all the haunts connected to open Inquests. Sure enough with only a few outliers, they formed a ring around Sector 2980, not perfectly at the center, but close enough. Some of the attacks happened quite far away, such as the Beck house—140 miles west from Marley’s apartment. Or the attack at the Ancora Medical facility where Elan Mendoza died, over 260 miles northwest. Anson’s black zone hideout in Sector 1509 plotted 201.8 miles away to the southwest.

  All the distant attacks kinda felt deliberate. The ghosts were different there… Dacre said someone forced him to. Could she be sending spirit assassins out? Maybe the random crap going on around her is a side effect?

  “If she’s somehow able to make spirits do things for her, a few hundred miles isn’t a big deal.” Kirsten rubbed her chin, staring at the dots much closer to the woman’s apartment. “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Hmm?” asked Dorian, walking up beside her.

  “Look at this.” She pointed out the ring of plots. “They’re all generally surrounding the place where Marley Santiago lives.”

  “Who?”

  Kirsten gestured at the other holo-panel displaying the band registration. “She is Aethervein. Nikolas mentioned her, or at least the band when I asked him about the noise driving him crazy angry. The part I’m having trouble understanding is, if this woman is somehow influencing ghosts to do things like contract killings on Elan Mendoza and Anson Edwards, why would she be sending spirits into a frenzy right around where she lives?”

  “I can think of a few theoretical reasons.” Dorian sat on her desk. “One, she is unaware Division 0 has the ability to react to ghostly manifestations and thinks she’s completely undetectable.”

  “Okay.”

  “Two, whatever she’s doing might be unintentional.”

  Kirsten peered up at him. “How does someone unintentionally send a ghost to assassinate a specific person? Twice.”

  “You’re assuming someone wanted Anson dead.”

  She folded her arms, leaning back in
her chair. “He trapped like forty-three percent of West City’s population in their autoshowers. There are probably a million people who want Plasmahawk dead.”

  “True.” Dorian chuckled. “I meant actually putting out a contract, not merely wishing pain on the man. We know Carlos Bennett added Mendoza to a hit list, but there’s no concrete proof anyone figured out Plasmahawk is Anson. And even if both of them ended up on an assassination contract, it wouldn’t prove the ghostly attacks happened because of it. It’s your theory.”

  “Explain how Dacre was so fixated on Anson? Chased him for miles until he got lucky and found a Breach.”

  Dorian shifted his jaw back and forth in thought. “Still could be Anson was the first person Dacre ran into after that woman did something to agitate him.”

  “If he was simply agitated and looking to kill someone, why would he chase the guy across the city? He would’ve passed thousands of other potential victims. Also, he said someone ordered him to hunt the guy.”

  “K, you are well aware of how some spirits become obsessed with things. He might have become frustrated at Anson escaping and literally could not think of anything else other than killing him until you slapped sense into him.”

  “Grr.” She glared at the map plots. “It doesn’t add up. Some of those ghosts are going too far to be random, and if she’s doing it on purpose, it makes no sense to cause so much activity in an area around her. It’s practically a giant neon arrow pointing us right to her.”

  “So, let’s follow the arrow.” Dorian slid off the desk to his feet.

  She smiled. “My thoughts exactly.”

  * * *

  Sector 2891, one square east of 2890, showed up in the Navcon as ‘greying.’

  It hadn’t officially been classified as a grey zone, but then again, no black zone had formed here yet. One sector east, 2892, qualified as ‘dark grey,’ on its way to becoming a black zone. Though it hadn’t collapsed to the point the police abandoned it, the violence in 2892 had gotten so bad the surrounding sectors already started to show the effects of decay before it had gone fully black.

  Kirsten flew into Sector 2890 from the west, thus avoiding going over the worsening area. However, Marley’s apartment sat near the eastern edge of the sector. In maybe another ten years, 2892 would go completely black and take the sectors around it firmly into the grey.

  “Maybe the local district governor will attempt a police surge and take the city back?” asked Kirsten.

  Dorian chuckled. “The Moon might also have a baby. But, if they’re up for reelection, maybe.”

  “I hate that.”

  “Blight?”

  She frowned, guiding the patrol craft lower and hitting the button to extend the ground wheels. “No. I hate how politicians only help people in their districts when they need votes. Why do politicians only do good things when it somehow also benefits them?”

  “Because they’re politicians. People who do nice things because they’re nice things never run for office.”

  “So cynical. It can’t be true. There have to be some people out there who run for office because they want to help people.” She landed on the road about a half mile from Marley’s apartment building, since the Navcon indicated it didn’t have rooftop parking.

  “Okay, perhaps I am exaggerating a bit. Idealists do run for office, but they rarely get elected.”

  “Don’t people want to vote for someone who will help them?”

  Dorian nodded. “Oh, yes. They do. Problem is, even here in the UCF, there’s a power structure at play. The rich, corporations, career politicians… they don’t want anyone outside their club having enough power to rock the boat. When a politician comes along who is more concerned with the wellbeing of the general citizenry at large rather than merely towing the party line and keeping things comfortable for the upper classes… they never quite seem to make it.”

  “Assassination?” Kirsten gasped.

  “No. Ever wonder how when a group is running for a district governorship or a senate seat, the popular one is never the final nominee? The power structure weeds out the idealists and the nonconformists long before they can be a threat.”

  “I hope you’re being cynical.” Kirsten stopped for a red traffic signal, six blocks from Marley’s building.

  “Be nice if I was. They only get away with it because most people are so disconnected, overworked, exhausted, and flat out apathetic they don’t care what the people at the top are doing. I think the last senate primary for my district before I died, something like thirty-eight percent of the eligible residents voted. Most ignored it or didn’t even know about the election.”

  She whistled. “How the heck can people not know?” The signal went green. She looked around to make sure no idiots decided to disregard traffic laws, then accelerated. “I mean, seriously.”

  “Virtual reality. People go to work, come home, and lack the energy to do much more than plug in and forget the real world until they pass out.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No real need to say anything. And you really shouldn’t think about it too much. You’ll only get depressed when you realize there isn’t anything you can do about it.”

  “Dunno.” Kirsten parked in front of the building. “If it really is as bad as you say, it’s like a whole bunch of gas hovering over the city. I may be small, but every explosion starts with a tiny spark.”

  “So you’re going political crusader now?” He phased through the door to the sidewalk.

  She got out, glancing over the roof at him. “Nah. I’m up to my eyeballs in ghosts. But I’m not going to accept it’s impossible. It’s only impossible when everyone gives up.”

  The door sank closed as she walked around the front end of the patrol craft. Four ad-bots zoomed over to her but appeared confused as to what products to hawk. A second later, the bots all bloomed into flowers, metal orbs surrounded by holographic screen petals displaying food.

  “Oh, dammit. I missed lunch again.” Too fast to think about it, she pointed at a chicken Caesar salad wrap.

  One bot did a victory shimmy while the other three spammed her with drink ads. Purely because their artificial sad act worked on her, she ordered a green iced tea from another bot. Four minutes later, two separate delivery bots arrived with her late lunch.

  Kirsten sat on the hood of the patrol craft, eating her food and watching people go by. Most had some visible electronics grafted onto their heads somewhere, tiny blinking lights or little silver M3 ports. A mental sigh slid across her mind at feeling like an outsider. Society moved onward and upward, merging with technology, a world she wanted nothing to do with. Even if implants didn’t have a negative effect on psionic abilities, she still wouldn’t want anything inside her she hadn’t been born with. Her mother didn’t want her. Society didn’t really want her, either. But Evan did. And so did Sam… and Nicole, and most of Division 0 even if having Mind Blast kinda creeped them out.

  Kirsten smiled to herself. I’m thinking of it backward. I reject normal society, not the other way around.

  So what if she lived as an anachronism.

  “Dorian?”

  “Hmm?”

  She finished chewing her last bite. “Did you ever see that vid Technocracy Fall?”

  “Yes. Had to watch it in school, like almost everyone.”

  “Do you think I’m the barefoot girl in a white dress sniffing the single flower growing up from a crack in the plastisteel street?”

  “She wasn’t real… merely a product of Gerald’s imagination. It’s why no one ever tried to talk to her but him, and how her dress remained immaculately white despite the overwhelming grime of the city.”

  “Beside the point. I mean, like… everyone here has at least an M3 port. Am I stupid for not getting one? Should I have been born 200 years ago?”

  Dorian smiled. “Well, you do have one thing in common with Anastasia. You are a spot of purity in this place.”

  “I’m not innocen
t.” She looked down.

  “I don’t mean it like that. Your soul is pure. After everything you’ve been through, your metaphorical dress is still immaculate.”

  She chuckled. “You really think so?”

  “You aren’t at all cynical, so yes.” He playfully punched at her shoulder, imparting a faint chill. “Try to hold on to your idealism. We don’t have enough in this city and people try to kill it whenever they see it.”

  “I’m kinda hard to kill. Ask Konnie.”

  Dorian snickered.

  “Ready?” Kirsten slid off the patrol craft.

  “Of course. So what are you expecting?”

  Kirsten headed for the building, dropping the containers from her lunch in a nearby trash bin. A few locals gave her odd looks. At first, she thought they stared at her for being a cop in this part of the city, but their surface thoughts contained shock at someone actually using the trash bin.

  Too stunned to formulate a response, she entered the building. One bit of good luck in this investigation—Marley Santiago’s apartment was on the ground floor. No stairs or deathtrap elevators in the way.

  She headed down the hall straight ahead to apartment twenty-eight, almost at the end of the hall.

  “Hmm.” Dorian kicked at a piece of trash in the hall, making it twitch. “No one would ever suspect a famous musician would live in a dump like this.”

  “Correct. She isn’t very famous.” Kirsten pushed the doorbell. She didn’t have any solid justification to barge in, merely suspicions.

  “Who the heck are you?” asked a woman’s voice from the panel below the doorbell button.

  “Kirsten Wren, Division 0, National Police Force. I’m looking for Marley Santiago.”

  “There’s a zero?” asked the woman.

  “Yes.”

  “Not sure I believe you. Can you have a normal cop show up and verify? Just trying to be careful.”

  “Can you see me?” asked Kirsten. “Do I look like someone who’s trying to trick their way into your apartment?”