The Shadow Fixer

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Umm…”

  “Relax.” Kirsten smiled. “No one died. Bending rules, remember? You didn’t do it on purpose. Psionics are in a delicate place as far as society is concerned. If the people in this building understood what happened, they’d make life rough for you.”

  “Just a little,” whispered Marley. “I’m sorry… I had no idea.”

  “Kirsten, since my terminal’s only as good as my memory… pull up our file on Placid Rain. I’m tempted to think there might be something relating it to Telempathy.”

  She accessed the Division 0 database. Sure enough, the file record indicated a person on Placid Rain frequently experienced an increased level of potency in Telempathy—but also a significantly decreased resistance to it. Not necessarily a problem unless two empaths got into a bigger brain contest.

  “Could explain her range and power.” Kirsten rubbed her sinuses. “And the tingling.”

  “What?” asked Marley.

  “Do you always take Placid Rain before performing?”

  “Yeah. It helps me get into the right head space. Makes me feel like I’m becoming the music, floating out into the universe with it.”

  “And it may also be lubricating the mental pathways, making her unable to stop herself from radiating.” Dorian tapped his foot. “Still doesn’t explain why she’s making ghosts go haywire.”

  Kirsten held her arms out to either side. “That’s the part I don’t understand. Telepathy and Telempathy don’t work on spirits.”

  “Neither does Mind Blast, but you can lash,” said Dorian. “Maybe she has some undocumented power symbiosis?”

  “Feel like being a guinea pig again?” asked Kirsten.

  “As long as she makes it stop before I do anything harmful or too embarrassing.”

  Kirsten looked at Marley. “How am I feeling right now?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Seriously. Concentrate on me and think about wanting to know what my emotions are.” Kirsten prepared herself for something psionic, but not having Telempathy, had little to no defense against it. If she sensed things going out of control, she’d need to erect a Mind Block fast.

  “Umm…” Marley stared at her, eyes still glowing from Astral Seeing. After a moment, she cringed. “Are you like so frustrated you want to scream but you’re kinda also like ‘aww, lost kitten.’”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Kirsten smiled. “You just read my emotions.”

  “You think I’m a lost kitten?” Marley set her hands on her hips.

  “Well, you do dress like a fourteen-year-old obsessed with cute. And… I expected to find an outlaw psionic driving ghosts crazy on purpose. Once I realized you might be doing things unintentionally, my mission here changed.”

  “Gotcha. And yeah, I like cute. It’s part of the whole Aethervein persona.”

  “Can you read Dorian’s emotion?”

  Marley focused on him. “Is he about half bored to tears, half scared like a monster’s waiting to ambush him, and half heartbroken?”

  Dorian stiffened. “Close.”

  The astonishment of someone apparently getting Telempathy to work on a spirit left Kirsten speechless. She figured his fear of monsters came from his worry Harbingers might not have gotten over their interest in him. Heartbreak? Easy—Nila. Maybe his family, too. Any telempath could claim to pick up sadness on a ghost and be right nine times out of ten… except maybe if they read Theodore. Some spirits adored being ghosts.

  “Okay. I’m no longer confused,” whispered Kirsten. “I’ve gone to awestruck.”

  “Now you sound like one of my fans.” Marley laughed.

  “It’s unusual to be able to affect spirits with mind-related psionic abilities.” Kirsten whistled.

  “Might not be.” Dorian rubbed his chin. “Astrals are incredibly hard to find. It’s not as though we have a large sample size to study in order to understand what they’re capable of. You can’t use Telepathy on spirits. Doesn’t mean it’s particularly rare.”

  “Hannah—Division 0’s East City Astral—can’t do it either. And she’s at the peak of psionic power. Wait, I think she’s fourteen now, but still at the top of the curve.”

  “Whoa, you guys hire kids?” Marley whistled.

  “Only in rare situations like astrals.” Kirsten sighed. “Command thinks dealing with ghosts is tame and easy, harmless.”

  “I’m guessing by the way you said that, it’s anything but.”

  Kirsten scratched the back of her head, laughing cheesily. “Yeah, kinda. But I’ve been finding the crazy stuff. Demons… Ghosts usually are fairly tame.”

  “Don’t wanna know.” Marley held her hands up.

  “Okay, so… I understand now.” Kirsten grabbed Marley’s hands together. “There have been a ton of ghosts going bonkers around here for the past two weeks. I think you are playing your music here, maybe writing new songs, and when you get super into it, you start letting your emotions radiate out into the world. It’s affecting living people and ghosts. Only, it’s having a crazy powerful effect on spirits.”

  “Oh, no…” Marley looked down, her expression as somber as if she’d been told her parents had been killed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Are you going to tell me I can’t make music anymore? I’d die…”

  “No. I’m sure you’ll be able to control it with a little practice. I can help you with Astral stuff, but Telempathy is out of my reach. We have people who can help you figure out how to use and control your abilities. You can even still use them when you do concerts, but you will have to disclose to the audience they’ll be experiencing telempathic mood tweaking.”

  Marley brightened. “Seriously? It’s legal?”

  “As long as people know what they’re getting, yeah. Not much different from taking mood altering drugs willingly. Gets a bit complicated if you’re doing it intentionally without telling anyone. However, up until now, you didn’t know.”

  “Is it true you guys make every psionic join?”

  “We ask, but it’s not required. You’ll need to register, but it’s for your protection. We’ll help you figure out your abilities and how to use them for free. Might be some testing involved since astrals are rare and you seem to be able to use Telempathy on spirits. The research helps you, too.”

  Marley grinned. “Wow, you feel like a kid getting birthday presents. Okay, since you’re like totally posi-vibing, let’s do it. Can I go now?”

  “She likes helping people.” Dorian patted Kirsten on the shoulder.

  “Umm, is it against the law for me to do the empathy thing on people to see how they feel?” Marley kneaded her hands together.

  Kirsten shook her head. “Reading emotions is okay. Changing them on someone is not so okay, unless you’re doing it in self-defense.”

  “How can tweaking someone’s emotion be self-defense?” Marley blinked, confused.

  “Someone’s trying to attack you… make them terrified so they run away.”

  “Ahh. Cool. I can do that?”

  “Most likely. Telempathy is not my area of expertise.” Kirsten opened her armband terminal and started another Inquest file, plus a registration process form. “If you’re serious about wanting to go meet some people right now, we can definitely do it.”

  “Cool. And wow. I guess this is really why my fans are so loyal—and oh, shit…”

  “What?” Kirsten looked up from the screen.

  “Did I drive Zenn crazy? I didn’t know I could do any of this…”

  Kirsten pondered. “You said he was stalkery and possessive?”

  “Totally.” Marley grabbed two fistfuls of her hair. “Like insanely.”

  “But he didn’t really go off the deep end until he was spying on you while you played music.”

  “Right…” Marley let her arms drop at her sides. “Oh. Umm. So you think the music affected him?”

  Kirsten tapped a finger on her forearm guard. “It’s hard to say without examining him. If he’d prev
iously heard your music, it’s possible he became addicted to you in the same way your fans do. His obsession could be ordinary crazy, or conditioning as a result of repeated exposure to your subconscious power.”

  “Wow. Seeing her in concert has to be better than most chems.” Dorian chuckled.

  Marley grinned. “I’m usually high on stage, so yeah. It’s a trip. I’m as rainbowed as everyone listening. Have you ever tasted colors?”

  “No,” said Kirsten and Dorian simultaneously.

  “You’re missing out.” Marley winked.

  “Not my scene.”

  Dorian nudged Kirsten. “She’s the good girl.”

  “Yeah, pretty much. Not gonna argue since he’s right.” Kirsten shrugged. “Before we go, let me try and teach you how to Blockade. If you can do it, you can shield your apartment so you stop whacking a ghostly hornet’s nest every time you compose or practice.”

  “Okay…” Marley twirled around twice, then stopped short. “Umm, am I in trouble?”

  Kirsten resumed typing into the registration form. “No, not yet. You haven’t done anything deliberately wrong.”

  “You are lucky.” Dorian pointed his thumb at Kirsten. “After the week you’ve given her chasing ghosts all over the city, any other cop would have found everything they could to charge you with.”

  Marley laughed nervously. “Umm, sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay. I believe you.” Kirsten smiled.

  “What’s this blockade thing?” asked Marley.

  “Let’s go to your studio, which I assume is a fairly small room… and I’ll show you.”

  “This way.” The girl hurried off down the corridor.

  “Think it’ll work?” asked Dorian in a low voice.

  Kirsten exhaled. “I really freakin’ hope so.”

  22

  Moments of Happiness

  Pale orange light from the Comforgel pad saturated Kirsten’s bedroom.

  She lay awake, staring up at watery patterns crumples in her bed sheets cast around the indistinct shadow of her body on the ceiling. The constant din of hovercar traffic outside lulled her into an almost meditative state.

  For the first time in her life, she couldn’t fall asleep due to an absence of anxiety.

  Two weeks of back-to-back 21-47 calls all traced to one unwitting psionic throwing raw emotion into the world. Not everything made complete sense, but she had to admit the notion of a single ghost, much less two, working as a contract killer exceeded even her limit of stretching plausibility. Maybe if the same spirit had attacked Elan Mendoza and gone after Plasmahawk, she’d have more doubts. Despite not seeing the ghost at the Ancora Medical building, they’d left enough of a residue in the room for her to tell it hadn’t been Dacre.

  She couldn’t come up with much of an explanation for how Marley’s psionically amplified music sent at least two ghosts off like guided missiles after specific people. The attack at the Beck house appeared completely random. Neither Johanna, her daughter Tamsen, nor the woman’s wife, Arielle, had done anything to make them a target as far as she knew. It had to be simple coincidence for agitated ghosts to attack Mendoza and Plasmahawk, totally unrelated to them both likely being in the crosshairs of assassins.

  “People can act weird when their emotions go out of control. Why not ghosts?”

  She imagined Dacre or some other ghost gliding by close enough to Marley’s apartment, getting caught in the storm of her music, and zooming off in a random direction before attacking like a drunk guy irrationally furious at a PubTran kiosk. The old woman she’d asked to leave the Twenty-Nine Palms mall food court had to ‘live’ in The Beneath. Perhaps her old house sat directly—or almost directly—below Marley’s building. No way could the actual music have penetrated twenty-five meters of city plate and been audible all the way down on the natural surface… but the psionic radiance must have carried it like radio waves transport sound.

  Marley’s power obviously didn’t work over electronic transmissions, or the people listening to her music via the GlobeNet would have also experienced the emotional effects. She’d never heard of anyone being able to use psionic powers over a Vidphone call or via NetMini. Then again, no one should be able to effect spirits with Telempathy, either. Maybe a powerful enough Technokinetic might develop a symbiotic power to use abilities like Telepathy on someone via video call someday. She shivered at the thought of mind-reading over unlimited distance.

  If anyone ever manages to do that, Division 0’s going to keep them under constant surveillance. Wouldn’t be surprised if C-Branch tries to get them.

  “The crazy surge is over…” She exhaled hard and closed her eyes.

  Being excited at the hope of a boring day tomorrow seemed odd, but also awesome.

  Faint giggling came from the hallway.

  Kirsten opened her eyes to glance at the clock: 2:07 a.m.

  Why is he awake at this hour?

  She closed her eyes. Evan giggled again.

  Most parents would get annoyed. Kirsten didn’t have much of a reference for how a mother should be. Her mother became annoyed over any sound, even during the day. Nocturnal giggling would have earned serious punishment. Not like Kirsten would have ever giggled as a child, not after age six when the ghosts started showing up asking for help. She didn’t blame the spirits. If her parents had been normal, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Even if they’d abandoned her at the Division 0 dorms for being psionic, she’d have eventually been able to laugh again before she grew up. But no, she had to get the psychotic religion-obsessed mother who thought everything she didn’t like came from some made up Devil, and everything she didn’t like could be cured by pain and cruelty.

  Evan’s mother had been horrible to him, too. Unlike hers, the woman didn’t actively torment him. She ignored him, laying around the house high all the time, and usually naked. Her boyfriend took care of the physical abuse. Evan probably didn’t giggle very often at home either.

  Hearing the boy sounding happy now made her cry tears of joy. She didn’t even mind him being awake so late.

  Evan giggled again.

  Curious, Kirsten peeled the sheets away and got up. Her long sleep shirt draped around her knees as she crept out into the hallway, sneaking up to his room.

  “… fell out of the tree with a crashing bang, sending all the chipmunks running off screaming,” said the voice of Kirsten’s father. “Ice cream went all over the place, one scoop landing directly on the blue rabbit’s head.”

  Evan laughed.

  Kirsten crept closer, peeking in the door.

  Her dad sat on the edge of the Comforgel pad, holding a datapad, no doubt open to a children’s story. Despite the millions upon millions of video games, holovids, and other interactive media, enough people still enjoyed reading for writers to keep making books. Also, no one ever ‘played a bedtime video game’ to their kid. She couldn’t tell if he held a real datapad, or the device manifested as a projection of his spiritual being.

  Kirsten pressed a hand to her chest at the base of her neck, choked up. She vaguely remembered her father reading to her once or twice. After the ghost stuff started, Mother forbade her from almost everything remotely fun, nice, or possessing an ounce of warmth. The woman thought punishing her continuously would appease the man in the sky she worshiped so he’d ‘fix’ Kirsten back to normal.

  Dad defied her a few times, but Mother could hear mice fart at a hundred paces. She always caught Kirsten whispering to ghosts, begging them to go away and not make her mother angry. Of course, she heard every time Dad read her stories. He probably gave up on it because he knew she punished Kirsten for it the next day.

  Her father made silly faces while narrating the voices of different characters in the story. Being a ghost, he could make his voice do things a living person couldn’t. Evan stared at him, utterly enthralled.

  Watching her father be silly to amuse Evan stole the breath from her lungs. Such a special moment, seeing the boy she’d
found in such horrible conditions grinning and bright-eyed like any ordinary child who’d never had to wonder if they’d live to see the next day. She couldn’t have even whispered, too overcome with happiness for her son.

  Faint whirring near the floor attracted her attention briefly to a silver disc bot making its way along the corridor, scrubbing the carpet. When it reached the square of dim light coming from Evan’s bedroom, it paused, rotating as if peering into the room. She imagined the cleaning bot being happy to see Evan full of joy, too, though in reality, it likely sensed the unusual electromagnetic presence of Dad and didn’t know how to react.

  Not wanting to ruin the special moment, Kirsten watched in silence for another minute, then carefully backed away and returned to bed. She pulled the sheets up to her chin, sighing at the ceiling. It finally occurred to her she didn’t feel the least bit jealous.

  Kirsten closed her eyes.

  It’s okay, Dad. I was terrified of her, too.

  * * *

  The dreaded alarm went off as it tended to do every weekday morning.

  Going from bed to autoshower to kitchen went by as such an automatic process Kirsten felt as if she’d teleported straight from bed to standing beside the counter trying something new: pancakes. Okay, so she cheated buying premixed liquid in a squeeze bottle. Anyone—even her—could cook pancakes when she only needed to squirt the beige goo onto a warm, flat pan. After the first charcake, she realized she needed to flip them over.

  Evan murmured something unintelligible behind her.

  She peered back over her shoulder.

  The boy, eyes closed, walked naked out of the hallway into the kitchen and approached the reassembler.

  “Forget something?” asked Kirsten.

  Evan stood in front of the ’sem for a moment, swaying as if about to collapse at any second. “Mmm.”

  “Ev?”

  He murmured a non-word while fumbling around blind for the buttons on the ’sem.