Division Zero: Thrall

by Matthew S. Cox

  “ Skittles,” said the woman with the decorative arm, pointing it at the truck.

  Kirsten nodded, edging in the direction of the truck. “Everyone just calm down, okay? If I was here to make trouble for you, I wouldn’t have come alone.”

  The fringers traded stares as she slipped into the shadow of the cargo-mover’s cab, past a primary drive wheel half again her height. Inch-high letters spelled out Peterbilt-Grumman-Mack along a strip just below the windscreen. She glanced at the handholds where the operator could climb the stationary central hub to the door nine feet in the air. Someone had used them as storage bins for small bits of electronica. The heavyset kid turned the music back on, but at a less oppressive volume.

  “Dorian, keep an eye on them, please.”

  He nodded, letting Kirsten turn her full attention to the massive transport. Behind the huge drive wheels, the truck had two axles of load-bearing tires as tall as her chest. Fifty feet of trailer stretched toward a square of light on the concrete wall, within which the shadow of an enormous cat hovered. She expected to find a housecat sitting close to a lamp.

  Kirsten peered around the corner of the truck, under the wavering cloth that acted as a door. Bunk beds lined both walls, reminiscent of the sleeping quarters of a military starship. A small crew ladder on the left side took her up to the cargo deck, six feet off the ground. As soon as her face cleared the level of the floor, she froze. Next to the second pair of bunks on the left, a slender woman sat cross-legged as if meditating, perched on a pile of dingy pillows, wearing nothing but the hair draped over her chest and prominent ribs.

  Her slate grey mane was long enough to reach the floor and sprouted two large cat ears that twitched in time with the beat of the music outside. The woman was fashion-model thin, with a delicate doll-like face that looked as though it would crack at the slightest touch. Fangs peeked out of her parted lips, and her eyes―right one gold, the other green―were half open, the left much wider than the gold. Vertical feline pupils closed to thin streaks of black amid the color, and drool fell in drops from the end of a tongue resembling a larger version of a cat’s.

  Kirsten looked to the side, embarrassed as though she’d walked in on someone in the bathroom. On the floor behind the cat girl, a grey-furred tail swished, crinkling through plastic wrappers. A standard M3 interface wire continued from the end of the extra appendage, circling the lower bunk where it plugged into a battered cyberspace deck. Large and boxy, it had the appearance of military surplus hardware. The words Titan Alchemist ran across the front in steel letters made to look bolted on.

  “Be nice to the kitty.” Evan’s voice filtered through her memory. Son of a bitch. Kirsten shivered with worry. He is a precog.

  “Excuse me?” whispered Kirsten. When the girl did not react beyond twitching ears, she repeated it, louder.

  The slender woman shook her head as if shrugging off the effect of a sedative. Her eyelids equalized level, slit pupils widened. After a few seconds of woozy staring, metal claws sprang out of her fingers. Ten six-inch blades glimmered in the light of a portable electric lamp. The woman raised her arms and, much to Kirsten’s surprise, hissed.

  “ Calm down.” Light danced over Kirsten’s eyes as she climbed the rest of the way in to the trailer.

  The Neko-Chan’s tail tripled in visible width as all the hairs stood on end. Her ears went back, then swiveled one after the other to face forward.

  “Sorry for walking in on you, I’m not here for you. Someone said you might be able to help me with something.” Kirsten looked at the wall. “Uhh, go ahead and get dressed.”

  “Why?”

  Oh, brother. One of those . “Umm, because you’re naked in public?”

  “This is my home, it’s not public.”

  Fine, whatever, I have better things to do than argue with an exhibitionist. “I’m Kirsten. I guess you’re Skittles?”

  The sound of claws snapping back into their implanted sheaths made Kirsten jump. Skittles shifted around and sat sideways, draping herself over the pillows. “Yeah.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what happened to the cargo this truck was carrying when it went missing. It’s obviously not here. Ink implied you were the one who stole the truck?”

  Skittles gasped, sliding backward under the bed until the wire coming out of her tail almost pulled the deck to the ground. “Please don’t arrest me. They’ll kill me.”

  Kirsten squatted to look at the woman cowering under the bed.

  Dorian stooped, snapping his fingers and making a “pspspsps” noise, as if trying to call a cat.

  Red-faced, Kirsten thumped him on the thigh, turning so Skittles couldn’t see the desperate need to laugh on her face.

  “She’s not really a cat. An actual cat would be going nuts at me,” said Dorian, standing straight again.

  Once she had ‘serious face’ back, Kirsten skimmed the woman’s surface thoughts. The woman’s mind-voice narrated in calculated French, forcing her to rely on images and feelings. “Oh, no, Miette. I’m not here to take you back to Europe, and you can lay off the scared shitless act. I know you’re faking it for sympathy.”

  “How do you know who I am if you’re not here to take me back?” Acted terror thinned out to contained aggression. “You working for him? Ambassador Montpierre owned me for three years. When he came to UCF, I run away. I will die before I go back.”

  I can see you thinking about it. Sorry for invading your privacy, but I am in a rush. I won’t take you back. I’d arrest the bastard for human trafficking if I had the jurisdiction.

  Skittles’s jaw gaped, eyes all the way open. “You’re psionic?”

  Kirsten braced for it. “Yeah, but I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  “Oh. It is okay, he has gone back to Europe.” She crawled out from under the bunk and sat up, fear and aggression gone―replaced with sudden cheeriness. “You’re one of those special cops, right?”

  “Yeah…” Kirsten raised an eyebrow. Is this girl nuts?

  “ Good, that means you don’t give an excrement about cyberspace.” Skittles examined her fingernails with a devilish grin. “I’m a naughty kitty sometimes.”

  “Well, as long as you haven’t hurt anyone I can overlook it. I really need to find out what happened to the cyberware this truck was carrying.”

  Skittles folded her arms, pouting. “That copulating illegitimate person.”

  “What?” Kirsten blinked.

  Dorian laughed himself to tears.

  Skittles grumbled in French, sighing as she turned her head to the right. A thin sliver of silicon slid out from behind her jaw with three square sockets on the upper surface and the underside. Only one of the six receptacles had a chip in it. As soon as it appeared, it slid back into her skull. Kirsten covered her mouth to hide the gasp of shock at the lack of a human ear.

  “English is a chip. I don’t really learn it well yet. It does not give me the fun words. I stole this cargo for a cyberdoc in trade for work. My friends got truck, he got ‘ware, I got parts. Only, the feces-head did it wrong.” Skittles grabbed her tail and shook it at Kirsten.

  Dorian cackled.

  “You’re hurt?” Just like Evan said.

  “It has the fire of nerves when I plug in and plug out. I like this more than wire in head, but the anal aperture did not put it in right.”

  Dorian examined the tail. “Synthetic. Very expensive. Almost indistinguishable from real living tissue. Looks like her ears are the same way.”

  Skittles ears thwapped backward in two quick motions, angling in the direction of Dorian. She squinted at the far end of the trailer, as if searching for the source of a sound.

  “Guess that’s why her tail fluffed up when she got scared,” muttered Kirsten.

  “Who are you talking to?” Skittles’s ears went back. “I hear someone whispering.”

  “A ghost. Are you psionic?”

  “The ears could just be that sensitive,” said Dorian. He yelled, causing the cat girl to
spin to face him.

  Skittles tilted her head left, held it there for a few seconds, and tilted it right.

  “So, you gave the parts to a cyberdoc here?”

  “Yeah, but he did bad job. I will show you where he is if you psionic him. Make him fix my tail. He won’t do it for free, even though he copulated upwards.”

  Dorian laughed.

  Feline ears thwapped.

  Kirsten debated the ethics of her request for a few seconds. “So he paid you for work by installing your tail, screwed it up, and then wants to charge you more to fix it? Okay. If the story is true, I will talk to him.”

  Skittles wrapped herself around the largest pillow, poised to chomp on it. She scooted around to expose her back to Kirsten and raised her tail. “Pull wire out so I can leave trailer.” She bit down.

  The fur-covered appendage felt natural, like the tail of a great cat. Kirsten cringed inwardly at the warmth in her hand, unsure if she should be repulsed or intrigued. Pitiful whimpering came out of the woman as she grabbed the M3 plug stuck into a concealed socket at the tip end. Skittles trembled; that fear was real.

  “Just pinch the little release button there and pull the wire out,” said Dorian. “Standard neural interface port. Kind of clever actually, tapped right into the spinal cord via the tail extension.”

  “You know how I feel about cyberware,” whispered Kirsten.

  She squeezed and pulled the wire and tail apart.

  The woman screamed into the cushion, shuddering and sweating for several seconds before the wave of pain subsided. Her right ear flapped with sporadic twitches mirrored by facial tics and a bouncing leg on that side. Skittles sat up with a puff of pillow-foam stuck to her fangs. After giving Kirsten a pathetic stare, she huffed and launched it onto the bed.

  Kirsten clasped Skittles by the head and thumbed her eyelids open wider. The right eye dilated more than the left. “That looked like it hurt. I don’t like the way it only affected one side of your body. I should get you to a hospital.”

  “It only hurts when I plug in or plug out. Electricity leaks to nerves. It copulating inhales.”

  “That’s going to cause brain damage, if it hasn’t already,” said Dorian.

  Kirsten checked the woman’s pulse. “Are you certain this cyberdoc of yours can fix this?”

  Skittles stood and stretched, making Kirsten turn away embarrassed. “He has to. I do not have money for legal doctor. I do not have job for health plan, and am too old for free help. Ready?”

  “Uhh, aren’t you going to get dressed?”

  “Why?”

  Kirsten, blushing, flailed. “Because you have to. People don’t just walk around outside with no clothes. That’s just inviting creeps to…”

  Skittles’s fingers sprouted metal claws again. She grinned. “Can try, can die.”

  “Actually, it’s rather common among people with an addiction to feline body modification.” Dorian shrugged. “Technically it’s illegal, but who has the time to bother with streakers when there’s a dozen murders a day.”

  The slender creature pulled the hanging plastic to the side, about to exit the trailer. She shivered in an oncoming blast of outside air. “Okay, okay. It’s cold, I will do the clothes.” She rooted around under her bunk, going through several garments in sniff-test before settling on a loose-fitting tank top with a metallic cat-face on it, a knee-length lacy black Goth skirt (with tail hole) and combat boots.

  Dorian grinned. “If you ever got cyberware, this is kind of what I pictured you looking like.”

  Kirsten glared at him.

  “You have sneakers that meow, cat stickers all over your locker, that giant pink sleeping shirt with the white cat head on it, a kitten on your NetMini―”

  Making herself solid to spirits, Kirsten grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the far wall. “Liking cats and wanting to be one are two entirely different hobbies,” she mumbled.

  Skittles giggled.

  “She’s got copulating great hearing,” said Dorian, pointing over Kirsten’s shoulder.

  “I am not the offended,” said Skittles, after springing to her feet. “At first, Montpierre forced me. His men took me from the street, and I woke up in a cage with ears and tail. He is a very strange man.” She ran her fingers through her hair, grooming her ears in the process. “I have decided to like it.”

  “You could always get the stuff removed…” Kirsten cringed through a smile. You poor girl.

  “Non. Too late. My old ears are gone, my eyes are changed―DNA surgery. Cannot undo. And, normal Miette would not survive on street.” With that, she pounced, flying over Kirsten’s head and out the back of the trailer, landing on all fours in a wary crouch. A few seconds later, she sprang up and beamed.

  “Guess she’s ready to go,” said Dorian.

  Kirsten followed the fast-walking, occasionally skipping, Skittles through streets packed with ruined cars and broken storefronts. The reek of the piss-soaked stairway at the far corner of the parking garage had painted the back of her throat with a scratchiness she could not cough away. Four blocks away from the parking garage, Kirsten put her hand on her sidearm as the surroundings worsened. Skittles paused, squatting to examine a dandelion sprouting from a wind-collected pile of dirt, leaning in and sniffing at it. The more she watched a grown woman act like some combination of oversized pre-teen and feral animal, the more pity she felt. Kirsten half-expected the woman to eat the plant.

  “Even in this place, we find a way to live.” She glanced up at Kirsten. “Like this weed.”

  “Miette?”

  “Hmm?” Skittles stood and continued in her previous direction, now walking backwards, offering a fang-baring smile.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  The woman spun forward, adopting a stiff-legged, arm-swinging fascist march. “They don’t give one copulation what the executives do to little people. Montpierre could have shot me in the head right in front of them, and they would have only female dogged and complained for having to make the cleanup.”

  Dorian was in tears, laughing.

  “I mean here. There are programs for women who―”

  “I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.” Skittles bounded to the top of an overturned cargo-hauler, glancing down past her dangling tail at Kirsten. “I already paid him back.”

  Not feeling up to the task of a fourteen-foot vertical leap, Kirsten walked to the cab end and squeezed through a gap between it and the wall. Skittles dropped down as she emerged and led the way through the ground floor of an abandoned building to an alley packed with wrecked cars. The scent of smoke wafted by: burning plastic mixed with charred meat and a hint of wood. Skittles squatted low to the ground, her legs vanished amid her billowy skirt save for the tips of her boots.

  “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you seem rather blasé about what he did to you.”

  Skittles gave her a measuring look, frowned, and looked at the road while stroking her hand repeatedly down the length of her tail. “I maybe said more than was. I got caught with my claws in the data jar. Montpierre chose me from a line of people to be sent to a work camp. He paid my sentence, so I was his pet for a couple of years.”

  “That’s slavery!” blurted Kirsten.

  “Bleh. So was camp, but it would have been much bad. He did me a favor, really. As much illegitimate person he was, he never did the hitting. I almost feel the sadness for making it look like he supported the resistance.” Skittles climbed over a dead car.

  Kirsten, with more effort and less grace, followed. “What happened?”

  “I spent months making a false GlobeNet person and using it to help the resistance. I left clues to make seem tiny errors each time I went in. When the BSE closed in, I had left enough trail so they think like Montpierre was behind the avatar.”

  “BSE?” asked Kirsten.

  “Bureau de la Sécurité Èlectronique.” Skittles flipped about, walking backwards a few paces. “Police on the Cyberspa
ce.”

  “ In Cyberspace,” said Dorian.

  Skittles’s left ear thwapped against her head twice. “Whatever… in, on. Stupid chip.”

  Dorian jumped at the shock of being heard.

  Kirsten laughed at seeing a ghost startled by a live person. “Augmented hearing has been known to hear ghosts. A long time ago, they used to record them with sound equipment.”

  A whispery rush came from behind, causing Kirsten and Dorian to turn to the rear while something else beyond their senses pulled Skittles’s attention to an alley up ahead. A shadowy figure, transparent, with two glowing red spots for eyes, raced through them. Long spindly arms formed of black vapor trailed to the sides as the sound of several voices cackling in whispers echoed. Kirsten whirled as it ran through their group, facing the entity as it came to a halt thirty meters ahead by the alley Skittles stared at.

  Gangers. From the look of their long black coats emblazoned with a calligraphic red D, a pack of Diablos. Numerous weapons, including pistols, submachine guns, and swords of various sizes glinted in what little moonlight made it through the glowing indigo smog. Kirsten’s body went rigid. Two women would be an irresistible treat for them.

  The wisp waved its hands through the air in a gathering gesture toward the gangers before extending a long pointing gesture at Kirsten.

  “Kill… Kill…” The phantom whisper sounded as if it came from the back of the mind rather than the ears.

  “ Damn, it’s not gonna take much to drive them over the edge,” said Dorian.

  The Diablos shook their heads; one or two stumbled into a nearby wreck. Guns came out, faces twisted with the onrush of murderous glee.

  Kirsten grabbed Skittles by the shoulders and shoved her to the street against a crushed passenger van. “Stay down.” She popped up, aiming over the smashed front end at the gang. “Don’t you dare. Put those things away and keep walking.”

  “K, they’re Diablos. Even without that shadow, they would be a problem. They shoot at cops for fun.”

  “But they’re compel―” She dove as four men raised submachine guns and lit up the van with automatic fire.

  Fragments of metal, upholstery padding, and glass rained down over her. Skittles sat, back against the van, picking at her nails and brushing the occasional scrap of car off her skirt.