While she explained the situation to him, another Division 0 patrol craft glided through the large, rectangular opening in the side of the building, crossed the parking area, and landed in the next space. The door swung up, revealing her friend, Nicole Logan, already in civilian clothes: half top, microskirt, and ‘cute boots’ as she called them. She, too, had a baggy jacket on, likely to conceal the E-86 she carried in an underarm holster. Kirsten settled for stuffing her weapon into an inside pocket.
“Nikki, I said civilian clothes, not go full catgirl.”
Nicole laughed. “This isn’t full catgirl.”
“You know what I mean. Could you have worn a smaller skirt? This is a serious mission.”
“Maybe she’s trying to blind the bad guys?” asked Dorian, his voice emanating from the NetMini on Kirsten’s belt.
“Ha. Ha.” Nicole rolled her eyes. “I’m not that pale.”
Kirsten and Dorian gave her a ‘yeah you are’ stare at the same time.
“Fine…” Nicole ran around to the trunk of her patrol craft and traded the micro-mini for baggy cargo pants, not caring she had both an audience and a lack of underwear. At least only Kirsten and two ghosts were around to see her.
Even if anyone had been there, people wouldn’t bat an eyelash at her. Some Neko modders walked around completely naked and seldom got more than casual glances—perhaps because most people considered them nuts, but still, Kirsten blushed for her.
“All set.” Nicole slammed the trunk. “Are these boots okay? Or should I avoid anything with heels?”
“You know my luck with heels.” Kirsten showed off her flats. “But those things don’t have big heels. I’m planning to cheat as much as possible. If we get into a hand-to-hand fight, we’ve already screwed up.”
“Nice.” Nicole nodded. “Eze cool with us going off the leash?”
“Yeah. As long as everything we do is directly related to recovering the girl. He’s reaching out to Div 1 already. Our part of this is to get in there, locate and secure the kid, then dig in and keep her alive until backup shows up.”
“How’d you score on the UAT course?”
“The what?” asked Kirsten.
Nicole whistled. “Oh, shit. You never ran the urban assault course?”
“I know what UAT means. Making a sarcastic comment about how it went for me.”
“What did you score?”
“Didn’t finish. Died a third of the way in. They didn’t make me repeat it since ‘all I do is talk to ghosts.’”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “Girl, you seriously need the training if you’re gonna be doing crazy stuff like sneaking into corporations. This is like spy movie stuff.”
“Spies don’t have Suggestion and Mind Blast.” Kirsten looked at Wilbert. “Nor ghosts helping them.”
“True.” Nicole looked around. “So where is it?”
“Another building. C’mon. Didn’t want anyone there seeing a pair of police patrol craft going too close. If they get spooked, they’re going to blow the girl up.”
Dorian slapped Wilbert on the shoulder. “Did you disable the detonator in the firebomb?”
“I don’t know how bombs work.” Wilbert shrugged.
Kirsten and Dorian face-palmed at the same time.
“Wait.” She pointed at him. “You possessed this kid but you don’t know basic ghost stuff, like draining electricity from stuff or making electronics shut off?”
“I did kinda live in my own little world. Never possessed anyone before this. Didn’t realize how easy it was.”
Kirsten raised an eyebrow. “It’s not supposed to be easy. Even non-psionic people have a good chance to resist a spiritual possession. If you think possessing people is easy, you either have a talent for it or you’re not being truthful about having no experience at it.”
“Maybe the control this guy used on him gave him hyper-focus?” asked Dorian.
Wilbert grimaced. “Well, perhaps I’ve been helping myself to some scientists so I could continue the work I’d been doing. Nothing dangerous or bad. Honest.”
Dorian gestured in a ‘let’s get going’ way. “Time is wasting.”
“Yeah.” Kirsten hurried toward the elevator. “We go down to street level, outside, and into the Sencor building. I’ll make the security people at the desk issue us badges. Then we can walk in and go to wherever Kena is being held. Whatever we need to do short of killing people to get there, we do.”
“What if they point weapons at us?” asked Nicole.
“Shoot them.” Dorian smiled.
“What he said,” muttered Kirsten. “Or TK disarm them.”
“I can’t hear Dorian.” Nicole raspberried her.
Kirsten grumbled mentally. “If they point weapons at us, do whatever you normally do when criminals point weapons at you.”
“Got it.” Nicole grinned.
At the middle of the parking area, Kirsten approached a wall with five elevators and pushed the button to call one. “Obviously, we use self-defense. I meant we don’t run in there guns blazing and kill everything.”
“Right.” Nicole put a hand to Kirsten’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay? You know me better than that.”
“Yeah.” Kirsten stepped past the doors as soon as they opened. “Just making sure you understood I’m not telling you to kill everyone we see.”
Nicole followed her into the elevator and poked her in the side. “I know you better than that.”
Kirsten exhaled. “Thanks for helping me on this.”
Dorian pushed the button for the ground floor.
“No problem. I love this stuff.” Nicole grinned. “Besides, you’re a lieutenant now and I’m just a TO. I kinda had to.”
Kirsten raspberried her back. “I didn’t give you an order. Call me a bad officer, but it feels weird to ‘give orders’ to my former roommate. I’ve known you since I was thirteen.”
“Problems of being smart and talented.” Nicole tapped her foot.
“Yeah, yeah…” Kirsten swallowed, too worried about Kena Carlin to find much of anything funny.
The elevator descended to the ground floor, letting them out at the innermost end of the lobby, opposite the doors out to street level. Giant backlit silver letters spelled the word Innova on the wall to the left beside a logo that might’ve been a cockroach crawling out of a pineapple… or merely an abstract design of shapes. Kirsten hurried across the lobby, disregarding two small silver orb bots floating over to say hello and offer their assistance to visitors.
Once out on the sidewalk, Wilbert took the lead. He moved in a series of blurry sprints, too fast for a living person to keep up with. Whenever he realized he’d left Kirsten and Nicole behind, he’d stop and wait for them to catch up.
Rather than go to the front entrance, Wilbert hooked a left into an alley beside the Sencor building, heading for a ramp leading down to a parking area below surface level. He kept going across a large, open room containing hundreds of ground cars to a bank of elevators along the wall.
Dorian made a contemplative face at the security camera.
“Wait here a bit, okay?” asked Wilbert. “I’m going to soften things up for you. The elevator goes to a small lobby and a security checkpoint.”
“All right.” Kirsten lowered her voice to an almost-whisper. “Suri, please send Captain Eze a message and tell him we’re in the building.”
The NetMini in her jacket pocket beeped twice.
Wilbert floated up into the ceiling. Dorian shrugged, then followed.
“So creepy,” said Nicole.
“What?”
Someone used a ghost to kidnap some kid? Nicole shivered. You know Command is going to want to keep that quiet. It’ll freak people out.
“Yeah.” Kirsten sighed at the ceiling, then looked into her friend’s dark blue eyes. It’s only one person who can do this. Once I find him and bring him in, no more ghosts working for corporations.
Nicole nodded. Shitty the corporations gotta involv
e a guy’s daughter. One thing going after him, but the kids? Below the belt.
“Again, yeah.”
They stood there for a few minutes, waiting. Two women and a guy, all in suits, emerged from the mass of parked cars, heading toward the elevators.
“Like, seriously, can Dad take any longer to come let us in?” Nicole overacted an exasperated sigh. “Dunno why he wants me to be here at all. I’m too old for this stuff now. This tour crap is for thirteen-year-olds, like you.”
Kirsten didn’t have to work hard to pretend to be a teen. Nicole, at least, looked her age. Amazing what an extra two inches of height did for people’s perceptions of age. She’d be twenty-three in another month. However, she could pull off seventeen or eighteen with the right attitude.
“You know he’s busy,” said Kirsten in a morose voice. “Too busy for us.”
“Aww, don’t be like that.” Nicole hugged her.
The employees went into the elevator, paying little attention to them.
As soon as the doors shut, Nicole released the hug.
“Thirteen? Really?” deadpanned Kirsten.
“It’s the innocence in your expression… and the epic shortness.”
“Five nothing isn’t epic shortness. It’s ordinary shortness.” Kirsten exhaled. “Sorry. I’d laugh but…”
“Kid in danger, I know. It’s fine.” Nicole eyed the wall. “Speaking of ‘Dad’ taking too long to come get us, do you want to try Plan B or keep waiting?”
“Another few minutes.”
“Okay.”
A holo-panel activated on the wall near the elevator a little over a minute later, displaying the face of a man in a dark grey security uniform. “Kirsten?”
“The heck?” asked Nicole.
“Wilbert?” Kirsten approached the screen.
“Yes.” The security officer smiled. “Borrowing this man for the time being.”
In most cases of possession-by-ghost she’d observed, the victim had a trancelike demeanor and slurred speech. Seeing this security guard acting natural convinced her Wilbert had far more experience at possession than he’d admitted to. A ghost wouldn’t be able to make a person act so normal unless they’d had a ton of practice. If Wilbert possessed other scientists to continue his research, he would have needed to master the art of possession to be able to perform fine tasks, likely why the suspect she chased chose him for this job.
“Why?” asked Kirsten.
“As I said before, to make your job easier. I put the poor kid in this position, unwillingly, and I have to do as much as possible to fix it. I’ve taken care of the security control room. Possessed the manager. Any alerts come through this guy, so no one is going to warn the IRT you are here.”
“IRT?” Kirsten raised an eyebrow.
“The issue resolution team. Basically, thugs willing to do whatever the corporation wants done. Most companies have a group they refer to as the IRT, even the more law-abiding ones… though those tend to be defense teams or act only in retaliation or rescue capacities.”
Kirsten waved for him to get going. “I am aware of the concept, just not the acronym. All right. We’re on the way in. You said she’s on sublevel two?”
“Yes, but you can’t get to it from the parking elevator. You’ll need to go up to the ground level, get past the check in desk, and head down the main hallway to the central intersection. The blue elevator will access the basement levels. You’ll need an access badge with high clearance to get to sub-two. Maintenance access works only for the first basement. I’ll stay here at the control room and keep them in the dark as much as I can until you get to her.”
“Okay.”
Nicole frowned. “I better get the chance to break at least one nose.”
She and Nicole stepped into the elevator when the door opened.
“I’m sure you’ll get the chance. There are people guarding her.”
Nicole cracked her knuckles.
The elevator went up one level, opening to a plain lobby area decorated mostly in unpainted plastisteel. Floating blue glowing letters spelled out the word ‘Sencor’ in front of a blue-on-black stylized circuit board wall behind a large security-slash-reception desk. Both entrances to the building’s interior stood behind weapons scanners. Signs nearby advised all employees to check any firearms with the desk before entry, not an uncommon arrangement. Something like eighty-four percent of the adult population carried a gun.
Kirsten approached the security desk, targeting a late-twenties guy in a uniform similar to the man Wilbert possessed, sitting closest to the scanner on the right.
The man smiled. “Hi. You ladies must be new. Don’t recognize you.”
A random object on the left end of the desk fell to the floor, attracting the attention of the other three security people.
“First day.” Kirsten leaned up on her toes and stretched closer to him, lowering her voice. “I forgot my ID badge. Please give me an ID badge. Full access.”
The momentary glow of white energy in her eyes reflected in his. He stared at her for a few seconds blank-faced, then got up and went over to a cabinet at the middle of the desk, from which he took out a blank badge. Once he returned to his station, he inserted the badge into a socket beside his terminal.
“Hmm. Odd. It’s asking for a supervisor approval. One moment.” The guard poked a button on his holo-panel. “Mr. Torres, need you to look at this.”
“What is it?” replied a voice from the terminal—the man Wilbert possessed. “Oh, yes, she’s clear. Proceed.”
“Great. Thank you, sir.” The guard nodded at the screen, pushed a few more buttons, and handed her the badge. “Here you are, miss.”
“Thanks.” Kirsten smiled politely while taking it, then headed around the desk to the door, scooting around the weapon scanner.
The guy jumped up and ran over. “Hey, you gotta go through the scanner.”
Nicole glanced left. A woman security officer yelped as her chair slid out from under her, again attracting the attention of the other two.
“We did,” said Kirsten. “You saw us go through it.”
He blinked. “Oh. Sorry. Long day. Go ahead.”
Kirsten hurried to the door, swiping the ID badge to open it.
“You are scary, you know that?” whispered Nicole.
“Yeah… I know. You don’t have to remind me why Div 9 is as likely to deal with Suggestives as we are.”
“Lucky for you, you’re also an angel.”
“I just play one in the holovids.” Kirsten clutched her left arm tight to her side, cradling the weight of the E-90 in the jacket so it didn’t flop around so obviously.
They passed a few small conference rooms and some bathrooms before reaching a square room with corridors leading out at the center of every wall, one leading back the way they’d come from. The intersection node contained several clusters of cushioned seats and small tables, holographic plants, random art objects, and of course, elevators. Most of the elevators had silver stripes on the wall around them, but two larger ones—cargo elevators—had blue lines framing them.
Seven people ranging from expensive suits to business casual sat on the assorted chairs, most absorbed in their NetMinis. Two security officers, a man and a woman, loitered in front of a vendomat, annoyingly right between the cargo elevators.
Attempting to act casual, Kirsten approached the elevator on the left.
The security officers’ conversation stopped.
“You don’t look like maintenance,” said the male guard.
“Or even employees.” The woman approached. “How’d you two get in here?”
Kirsten glanced up at her. “The front door, why?”
“Are you here to visit your mother or father?” The woman pointed at the other elevators on the opposite wall. “You want those. These go to the basement.”
“I know.” Kirsten stared at the woman. “You look like you need to pee really bad.”
At the flare of light in Kirsten’
s eyes, the male officer reached for a stunrod on his belt. Nicole focused on him. He struggled to pull the stunrod out of the ring it hung from, but his hand appeared fused to his belt. The woman gasped, squeezing her legs together for a second, then hurried off down the hall to the bathrooms.
Kirsten locked stares with the man. “Calm down.”
He stopped fighting Nicole’s telekinetic force.
“We have permission to go downstairs,” said Kirsten.
The man’s eyes fluttered.
Kirsten peered at the other employees in the room. No one seemed to be paying much attention to them, everyone too fixated on their devices to notice security officers making odd faces or squirming like a kid in dire need of a bathroom break. She swiped her ID badge at the silver panel on the wall, opening the large elevator, then darted inside.
Nicole telekinetically swiped the stunrod from the guy, caught it out of the air, and followed.
Kirsten pushed the button marked S2. The door closed.
“Hey,” said the voice of the possessed security manager from overhead. “Got a ping in here someone’s going to sub-basement two. Must be some interesting stuff down there if they auto-notify security every time someone goes there. I silenced it. Dorian and I are on the way. There isn’t much more I can do here but keep this guy out of our way.”
“You’re not going to hurt him are you?” Kirsten peered up at the brightly lit ceiling.
“Nah. No need. Binders and a toilet bowl work well enough.”
Nicole laughed.
“Oh, by the way,” said Wilbert. “You’re about to run into the IRT. Those guys will probably shoot at you unless you’re wearing maintenance uniforms. They might try to detain you, instead, since you don’t look dangerous. Go straight from the first room, turn right at the first intersection, left at the second, go past the next one, then left again. If you see a fire-suppression bot in a charging cradle, you’re in the right place.”
The elevator doors opened.
Kirsten debated pulling the E-90 out but decided against it, hoping to capitalize on the ‘not looking dangerous’ thing. As much as it annoyed her to be mistaken for a teenager, if being mistaken for a fourteen-year-old helped her avoid hurting people, she’d embrace it.
The Shadow Fixer Page 34
