Division Zero: Thrall

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Womack!” howled Donovan. “Wren, what the fuck is going on?”

  His spirit emerged, staggering off to the side and holding his face. A shadowy form seeped into the air from the corpse. She bisected it with a scintillating thread of light before it could divest itself fully from the dead man. Womack’s ghost leapt away from the energy whip. Kirsten rolled to her feet, sprinting at Donovan with an enraged babble of curses. She swept the lash through both Donovan and Lewis, causing an explosion of black liquid to burst out of Lewis’s mouth.

  Donovan gawked, aghast at the stream of energy coiling about. Fear manifested in Reverend Wallis’s face as his eyes went onyx black. He held his hands out; spoken Latin amplified as if over speakers, called forth a wall of flames that slid up the curtains behind him. The room glimmered in the orange-crimson light and a wave of heat billowed over them on an incendiary breeze as the burning licked at the ceiling. Before the fire could engulf them, Kirsten thrust the astral lash through Wallis’s heart, twisted, and yanked it loose.

  The flames dispersed.

  Wallis wheezed. Black water fell from his mouth, his nose, and leaked like tears from his eyes. He fell to his knees, staring agape. After a cough, he lifted a gaze of utter confusion up at her. His pants darkened.

  “Fuckin’ psio motherfucker,” barked Donovan. He stomped past Kirsten and went for a home run swing on Wallis’s skull with his rifle.

  The Reverend skidded into the podium, knocking it over. Blood covered his now-unconscious face. Donovan stalked after him, flipping the rifle over to aim at the heart.

  “By the authority vested in me by the United Coalition Front, I hereby sentence you to summary execution for the murder of Officer Edward Womack.”

  “Donovan, stop!” shouted Kirsten. “There was a paranormal entity controlling him. That man was just a host.”

  Sergeant Donovan looked away from Wallis, glaring at her. “This fucker did it. He forced Ed to kill himself!”

  Zahn snapped out of her stupor and pulled herself up. “Fuckin’ a right. Kill the son of a bitch.”

  Lewis moaned, gagging on the ichor in his mouth. He made a sour face at the flavor and vomited.

  “ Sergeant Donovan, do not execute this man. Not only is he a possibly unwitting pawn, he may have valuable information. That’s an order.”

  “All due respect, ma’am, but he’s responsible for the death of a squad mate. He ain’t gonna walk out of here.”

  “ Stand down.” Kirsten’s eyes flared with a trace of light. “Secure that weapon, officer.”

  Donovan shuddered; his muscles unable to override the command she put in his mind. Frustration boiled into a scream of rage, then tears as he collapsed to his knees. Womack’s ghost stood over his own body, shaking his head.

  Zahn gave Kirsten a nervous look. “You just… did something to him, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I saved him from a court martial.” Kirsten put a hand on Donovan’s shoulder. “I know you don’t understand this stuff. Please believe me, it was not Wallis’s fault. If I thought he did it, I wouldn’t stand in your way.”

  “We went in at the same time, been squaddies since first deployment back in the 89th.”

  Kirsten patted his shoulder. “Don’t ruin his memory by murdering an innocent man.”

  In the basement under the Faith Pentecostal Baptist Ministries building, Kirsten found a few moments of peace from the bustle of crime scene investigations going on upstairs. Aside from a large room of barely-functional boilers, little seemed out of place. Whenever she closed her eyes, Ed Womack’s helmet exploded again.

  “What, exactly, did you find down here?” she asked, glancing at Dorian. “It’s barren.”

  “Over here.” He walked through a boiler she had to skirt around, pointing. “This is a false wall.”

  She searched, pawing at white-painted bricks laced with green mold until she found a loose one. It turned out to be only a façade, a small hatch that opened to reveal a fingerprint reader.

  “Damn.”

  Dorian stuffed his hand through it, making a face as if he rummaged through a hat full of names. Within six seconds, the door swung open.

  Kirsten pulled aside a metal slab coated in brick face and stepped into a square room containing the nude remains of a man in his thirties. He lay with his arms at his sides. Strange markings covered his chest and his still-open eyes were orbs of onyx. She crept into the hidden chamber, careful not to step on any of the black substance forming a circle around the remains on the bare cement.

  “Look familiar?” asked Dorian.

  “I don’t know him.” She looked over and shrugged. “Should I?”

  “I mean the circle.”

  Kirsten squatted, balancing on the balls of her feet as she got as close as she could without touching anything. “Charazu? But, I… we destroyed that one.”

  Dorian rubbed his chin. “Perhaps. It’s also possible we just sent it home. Someone had to call it here. No telling how long the good Reverend has been under the influence of whatever had him.”

  “No way was that Charazu inside Wallis, it died way too easily. Konstantin said something bout ‘the ones who always were’, ancient demons. Abyssals are just returned mortals.” She stood up, lifting her forearm to her face. “Ops, this is Agent Wren. I’m in the basement, got another victim down here. Need a forensics unit; they’re already upstairs.” She glanced over bizarre scrawling on the walls to an arrangement of candles, knives, and a disorganized mess of old papers. Arms folded, she frowned at Dorian. “I don’t like this at all. Those fanatics, they had no ghosts of their own and the spirits that came out of them were way too strong to be recently dead.”

  “Maybe they weren’t so recent.”

  Kirsten got paler.

  octor Loring’s office smelled of lavender and candle wax; a scent that soon drowned in the fragrance of Earl Grey as the slender woman offered Kirsten a cup. They sat by a small round table, in plush chairs at a ninety degree angle to each other. Pale blue, like the ceiling, they left the women on more equal footing than a couch and a seat behind a desk.

  “I’m sorry if you find this irritating,” said Dr. Loring, as she settled into position and crossed her legs. “Any officer present at such an event is required to have an assessment.”

  Kirsten blew on her tea before taking a sip. “I know. I’m not annoyed at having this session. I’m annoyed at spending time here I could be using to figure things out or be with Evan.”

  “He’s in school now. I spoke with Captain Eze. We both want you to know Officer Womack’s death was not your fault.”

  Kirsten gazed at her lap. “He was throwing me around like I was a little kid. Something possessed him, but I couldn’t stop him. Womack was trying to kill me, then out of nowhere…” Kirsten made a finger gun under her chin.

  “Kirsten, you probably saved the other three officers by keeping his rifle at bay. Given the situation you found yourself in, it’s amazing there was only one fatality.”

  The tea, while warm and comforting, concealed no answers at the bottom of the cup―no matter how long she stared at it. “I told Eze not to send them in. I told them to wait outside, but they didn’t listen to me.”

  “Would it have made you feel any better to have gone in there alone and been overwhelmed?”

  “They had knives. Black silk robes and knives. They didn’t even have clothes on under the robes.” Kirsten scrunched up her face. “Wallis just stood there and laughed, he wasn’t armed. I think I could handle four idiots with composite combat knives. They couldn’t have pierced my armor.”

  “What I’m saying is… everyone involved was acting in accordance with best practice in mind. A detective doesn’t go in alone to apprehend a suspect, especially when they are expected to be dangerous; more so when the extent of that danger is unknown. You share no part of the blame for what happened to Officer Womack.”

  Kirsten stared at the rug.

  “Watching a person die is traumatic. I
f there’s anything you want to talk about, I’m here for you.” Dr. Loring shifted her legs, crossing them the other way.

  After a moment, Kirsten looked up, feeling less awkward at the sight of the warm smile on the clinician’s face. She flicked the side of the cup and stared straight ahead. Behind the desk, a holographic portrait of a young Dr. Loring sat between her parents in their house in the UK. Kirsten giggled at the thought of how a pasty-faced blond man and a beautiful Indian woman could have produced the person opposite her.

  “What are you thinking?” Dr. Loring leaned forward.

  “Oh, nothing.” Kirsten blushed. “I just found the face your father was making to be a little funny is all.” She gestured at the portrait.

  The doctor smiled. “Dad always has some kind of joke going on in his mind. He fancied himself a screenwriter for a while, you know. None of his comedies ever got picked up.” She leaned back. “So you’ve nothing to say further about Officer Womack?”

  Kirsten frowned again. “I feel so bad for his wife. I keep wondering what I could have done differently, but there were so many unknowns. What bothers me the most is the evil smile he gave me before he did it. Rather, the evil smile that thing made him give me.”

  Dr. Loring noted something on her datapad. “You did all you could do. Sergeant Donovan ignored your order to stay outside.”

  “They had orders from Eze; his overruled mine.” Kirsten finished off her tea. “Everyone keeps telling me there wasn’t anything more I could have done, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about watching him die.”

  “This is going to sound a bit strange, Agent, but you don’t seem very emotional about it.”

  “I got all that out last night.”

  More notes. “Still finding comfort in Synvod?”

  “No.” Kirsten shook her head, tossing her hair about. “I… no. Evan’s stepdad was always drunk and hitting him. He saw the bottle and… No, I don’t want to turn into my mother. I mean, I got that out last night while talking to Womack’s wife. I know I’m supposed to keep it professional, but I saw the man die… When she lost it I―”

  “It’s fine Kirsten. You’re not a doll.” Dr. Loring leaned back. “Well, I’m not seeing any obvious red flags. If anything comes up that bothers you, please call me any time of day.”

  “Doc? I went to this function the other day with Konstantin. I couldn’t help but feel so out of place there. All those rich people made me feel like I didn’t belong.”

  “Did they act condescending to you at all?”

  “No, it was all in my head. I…” Kirsten thought about the Devil’s bargain she signed for food. It almost made it out of her mouth. “…just felt so much contempt for them. No one needs so much money when kids are starving in the streets.”

  “You likely have some misplaced blame for the time you spent homeless. You know the statistics, don’t you? There are very few children out there. Our government really is quite keen on that.”

  “Yeah, until they turn eighteen, then they’re out on their ear. It’s all a public relations machine. Be nice to the kids and they’ll grow up liking the government.” Geez, did I just channel Dorian? She stared at the rug, pondering her sense of loyalty to Division 0. Worked for me.

  “That’s a rather jaded viewpoint for someone your age. Look, Kirsten, there are some unfortunate people who wind up in places out of the system’s reach. No society is perfect.” Loring lifted an eyebrow. “I’m curious about your contempt for the wealthy. Do you feel the same way about Konstantin?”

  Kirsten’s awkward kneading of the seat cushion ended with a doe-eyed stare into space. “No, he’s different. He’s not like them. He has a lot of money, but he doesn’t let it change the man inside. I’ve never seen him act like he’s better than anyone because of it. If he was, why would he want poor-ass me?”

  Dr. Loring smiled. “Your classism betrays your fear. You think you’re not good enough for him. He is interested in you because he can see through those feelings of inadequacy to the person you really are inside.”

  Hands clasped together above her heart, Kirsten sniffled. “I’ve been blowing him off so much lately because of the job. I need to make it up to him.”

  irsten stepped out of the elevator and walked through the tunnel connecting the main hub of the police complex with the Health Services wing. Ground traffic slid along the road beneath the elevated walkway, five stories down. Not three steps into the blue carpet, a pair of men in sand colored coats fell in step on either side of her. She waited for a head-sized newsbot to float by outside, and glanced up at the black-haired man on her right.

  “Nine? You two here about Womack?”

  He flashed a government-issue smile. “No, Agent Wren, we had other concerns. May we have a moment of your time?”

  Her fingers got cold. “I guess that’s not much of a request. Lead on.”

  She followed them out into the bustle of the central hub, past the Division 0 entrance and over to the large door emblazoned with an immense ‘9’. The two guards posted there nodded at her escorts; the door opened. Kirsten remembered coming here to visit their network guys, and as per S.O. Elena Carter’s weeks-old instructions, she kept her gaze on the floor until they brought her to a small interview room.

  Once she was seated, their height advantage made her feel as though she were on the wrong end of an interrogation table. “Should I hand over my weapon?”

  The red-haired man’s smile seemed more genuine. “That won’t be necessary just yet, Agent.”

  “While we have our feelers in much of the world,” said the other, “the operations of Division 0 are, for the most part, enigmatic to us.”

  Kirsten folded her hands atop her knees, which she could not press together any tighter.

  “I’m Senior Operative Espinosa.” The black-haired man gestured at his partner. “This is Senior Operative Carroll.”

  Her salute was flimsy. “Sorry, I feel like I’m in the principal’s office.”

  Each man chuckled, for all of two seconds. Both of their mouths formed a flat, emotionless line as if their mirth had been cut off by a switch.

  “What is your interest with Trade Commissioner Vernon, Agent?” asked Carroll.

  Kirsten looked up at him for a moment before she gazed at the wall. “I…” She put a hand over her mouth for a moment and fixed him with worried eyes. “You don’t think I was trying to influence her? I think something else is. I’m trying to find out what, but her Marine Corps security detachment wouldn’t let me anywhere near her.”

  “The possibility occurred to us.” Carroll stood statue still. “However, we have so far been unable to verify you had contact with her prior to her sudden change of policy.”

  “That’s because I haven’t.” Kirsten’s fear gave way to indignation. “I’ll be happy to let Commander Ashford dive into my head and verify it if you want. I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks chasing things that can best be described as demons. I’m not sure who or what is responsible for them getting out of the place they belong, but I think one of them may be influencing the Commissioner.”

  Espinosa broke veneer to raise one brow. “Why would”―he hesitated, trying not to let his disbelief appear on his face― “demons care about trade embargoes with the ACC?”

  “They wouldn’t.” Kirsten folded her arms and glared at the chrome table in front of her. “However, if a live person was calling them here, they would be the one with the political agenda.”

  “Who exactly would it be?” asked Carroll.

  “I’m still working on that. I think it might have been the entity responsible for possessing Reverend Wallis. I haven’t had time to sift through all of his notes; the crime scene crew isn’t done with it yet. As of right now, my best guess is he started dabbling in things he didn’t fully understand and lost control of it.”

  Carroll and Espinosa exchanged a glance too long for a simple evaluation of mood. Kirsten picked at her fingernails, waiting for the
conversation passing over cybernetic implants to finish. Espinosa was the first to look at her.

  “We appreciate your time, Agent Wren. That’s all we have for you right this moment.”

  Kirsten got up and started for the door, but turned. “What about Commissioner Vernon?”

  “There is not going to be an expansion of trade with the ACC.” Carroll walked around the table, as if intending to escort her out of the Division 9 area.

  “Does that mean you’re going to kill her?” Kirsten backed into the door, almost falling through it when it opened on its own. “She changed her mind overnight. It’s gotta be paranormal influence.”

  Espinosa adjusted his sunglasses. “We no longer supsect your involvement, despite you being on record as a suggestive.”

  Small favors. “My suggestion abilities aren’t that strong. I could theoretically make her feel that way for about a minute or two at most. I’m not good enough to leave long-term imprints. If it’s what I think it is, maybe I can get rid of it before you have to murder her.”

  Division 9 used ordinary looking, though armored, hovercars. Kirsten examined the interior from the back seat, running her hand over the supple leather. Aside from a small section of the front dash that blacked out as soon as she got in, the vehicle looked no different than a high-end civilian luxury-sports model, including the Halcyon-Ormyr logos.

  “Nice car. What’re these, about 400k?”

  Carroll chuckled. “Closer to eight. Once our electronics are installed, the number is closer to one point three.”

  “Not that bad when you think about it,” said Espinosa. “Div One Pat-Vees are almost 750 grand, a mil and change with the starburst.”

  “Their seats aren’t this comfortable.” Kirsten felt embarrassed for liking the luxury.

  The men laughed, just enough to be polite. Carroll glanced over his shoulder at her, wearing an almost human-like smile. She had not dared look at surface thoughts to see if they were dolls or living men; the way they acted, it could have been either.