Guardian

by Matthew S. Cox

  Appleton paused long enough to check her armband computer. “Uhh, Sacramento I think it was called, and yeah. Smashers were my school’s primary rival going back like seventy years. Bastard shit all over my dreams and threatened to sue me and the school for cheating.”

  “Telekinetic?” Kirsten groaned at the expanse of ladder below, grateful that scaling the side of a fifty-meter tall support column as wide as a small house didn’t trip a fear of heights. Guess I left my fear of heights on an advert bot.

  “Nope. I’ve got a specialized form of precognition. It works subconsciously. Farkas saw me react to one of his players before the kid moved. He found like sixty video clips of me doing that and took it to Division Zero to complain I was cheating.”

  “Precognitive imminence.” Kirsten stepped off the base of the ladder onto rough macadam chunks, the carcass of a street that hadn’t seen a functional car in centuries. She lost a few seconds staring upward at a dingy steel sky, fifty meters overhead, as far as she could see in every direction. At least thirty spirits popped up here and there, curious about the intrusion. A few recognized her and waved. “Ugh. Sorry.”

  Appleton slung a laser rifle off her back after letting go of the ladder. “Was a mess. Farkas wanted me charged with a crime, wanted the last thirteen games changed to forfeits, and tried to sue the school.”

  Dorian clucked his tongue. “Sore loser.”

  “That Farkas guy sounds like a real asshole.” Kirsten frowned at the destroyed city. “Bet that ability comes in handy in a fight though.”

  “Yeah. I got recruited while I was still a junior. They let me finish school first. Turned out I’m a kinetic too.”

  “Predict often goes hand in hand with kinetics.” Dorian exchanged stares with a few ghosts in gang regalia.

  “Predict?” Kirsten took a long step over a puddle of black sludge. Last time I trusted one of those to be only an inch deep, I went under. She shuddered.

  “You say ‘precognitive imminence’ ten times fast in a policy meeting.” Dorian winked.

  Appleton started to walk past her to take point, but stopped. “Your eyes are glowing white.”

  “Yep. I’m looking into the astral realm so I can see in the dark. Wider field than NV. Course, no color… but NV is all green so it’s not much of a difference.”

  “You see anything?” Appleton swept her rifle around. “Supposed to be all sorts of crazy people down here.”

  “There are, but only spirits are near us now.”

  “I can feel them.” Appleton shivered, but her expression gave off excitement. “That’s pretty normal, isn’t it? For psionics to ‘sense’ ghosts and stuff even if we can’t see them.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Kirsten laughed. “I’m not used to people being so friendly. Somewhere between ‘sees ghosts’ and ‘has a rating in Mind Blast,’ people usually run like hell.”

  “Aww.” Appleton gave her a sympathetic look. “Sorry. You’re adorable. I feel lousy you get treated bad.”

  Kirsten clenched her jaw. She means well. “Thanks, but please stop treating me like a little girl.”

  “But you are adorable.” Dorian grinned.

  Appleton got up to a light run, following the old street. Few cars remained other than ones destroyed in the Corporate War. Anyone who’d had anything newer drove out as the city grew overhead a century and change ago. They passed old storefronts and office buildings on both sides, as well as a dentist’s office and an ancient car dealership. Strange light shimmered around Dorian, wafting off him like smoke. The scent of wood-smoke and barbecue gave away a cook fire somewhere close, though Kirsten didn’t want to know what kind of meat it was.

  “What’s that?” Appleton’s voice quivered. “It just went from feeling a little creepy to feeling like a serial killer’s sneaking up behind me.”

  “Dorian probably sensed someone coming, so he’s throwing off fear.”

  “Couple of them, two blocks up on the right.” Dorian pointed.

  Kirsten patted Appleton on the arm and gestured at a group of men in shredded clothing made from old tarps and scrap cloth. They didn’t look crazy-in-the-eye enough to be Discarded, probably only nomads. She made sure they saw her glowing eyes. “Up there. Couple of locals. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  The men sank back into the darkness.

  “What are they running from?”

  Kirsten grinned. “The people who live down here have their own batch of stories and legends. Glowing eyes means I’m either a demon or an android that’ll tear them apart. I even got called an ‘ancient goddess’ once.”

  She glanced up as their progress dot on the nav map lined up with the ‘hard wall’ between city plates. From below, it looked like a trapezoid-shaped ridge running the length of the metal sky. Some committee of the past had expected the elevated city to stop here who knows how long ago… but the population kept on growing. Why didn’t they build on the ground? Guess it’s easier to keep doing what you’re familiar with even if it costs more. She imagined the justifications―creating jobs, compatible with existing infrastructure, blah blah.

  Appleton gestured to the right, raised her rifle, and soldier-walked into what had once been an alley between a café and an auto mechanic’s garage. Kirsten left off a mental sigh at the coffee shop. Nicole had teased her with the suggestion of a strawberry latte that they never had the time to order.

  The way up clung to the side of another of the massive support columns, which plunged down into the ceiling of a four-story retirement home. Appleton headed for the main entrance and kicked the door open on the first try, hard enough to cause it to fall off its hinges after slamming into the wall.

  “Damn.”

  Appleton winked. “Kinetics. Playing sports in school, I never knew I had abilities… just always had this knack for anticipating what the other players were going to do. Training helped me tap other potentials.”

  “So you’re like a doll?” Kirsten stepped over the broken door.

  “Hah. I wish. Not even close to that much power. I’m stronger than people expect me to be, but only in quick bursts. Probably could make myself stronger than a normal person could be… but I can’t touch a doll for raw power. I use it more for speed anyway.”

  Two elderly women’s spirits stood by the door to the stairwell, arguing over slippers. Each thought the other responsible for taking the other’s footwear; both brandished colostomy bags as if about to use them as weapons of war.

  Appleton tensed. “Feels creepier in here.”

  “Some ghosts arguing over shoes. One probably kicked them under the bed without noticing and assumed they were taken.” Kirsten waved at them.

  The ghosts exchanged a glance, ceased bickering, and hurried off down the hallway to a room.

  “You are truly here to help everyone,” said Dorian.

  Appleton led the way to the third floor, where they found the column in a long-abandoned cafeteria, spearing down into the basement. The floor near the hole looked iffy, but it tolerated their weight long enough for them to jump one after the other onto the ladder. Kirsten hurried to keep up with Appleton, who flew up the rungs at an almost superhuman pace. The woman relaxed a little once they’d reached the interior of the next plate.

  “There’s a lot of ghosts down there, huh?”

  Kirsten offered a sad smile. “Yeah. Some of them were ghosts a long time before the war.”

  She checked the armband display. Sixty-three meters ahead, their target, an unoccupied residence tower, waited. Kirsten trotted along a corridor of blue-tinted plastisteel that flickered in the feeble glow from brick-sized LEDs every twenty feet near the ceiling. A bulkhead door at the end led to a crossing hall. She headed to the right, and ten meters later, ducked left past another door into another long straightaway. Storage cabinets on the left held jumpsuits, tools, and parts for city maintenance workers. Kirsten jogged to the end, where a metal door led to a chamber t
hat connected to the underground portion of the building―well, underground in the sense of being below the surface of the city ‘floor.’

  The tall woman readied her rifle and slowed to a creep.

  “What?” whispered Kirsten, hand on her E-90.

  Appleton’s reply came over near-channel comms, inaudible outside of her helmet. “Not sure what’s waiting for us inside. If they’re anticipating this as their exit route, they’re going to have rigged it.”

  She glanced at Dorian and gestured at the door before a few eye-flicks at the HUD menu turned off her helmet’s external speaker. “Dorian is checking.”

  “Can he spot cameras or electronics?” Appleton looked back.

  “Yeah. He’s a ghost. They can feel electricity.”

  Appleton nodded and edged up to the door. Kirsten followed close. Distant shouting echoed from the other side, primarily a woman shrieking what sounded like biblical verse. The tone of it got Kirsten’s blood hot within a microsecond.

  Idiot. She’s inches from being shot in the face and she’s taunting them.

  Dorian exuded out of the wall, stretching a little before he snapped free, looking blurry. It took him a second to shake it off and return to solidity. “Clean. They’re not even watching the top of the stairs.”

  “Stairs?” Kirsten blinked. “Not a ladder?”

  Appleton cringed at her speaking aloud. Over the comm, she whispered, “Quiet. They’ll hear us coming.”

  “Looks like the property owner installed the water heaters, network room, and battery farm below street level.” Dorian gestured at the door. “The physical plant is right through there.”

  Kirsten switched back to comms. “Clear inside. No electronics or people. Stairway at the far left. It’s a basement.”

  “On three.”

  “Go.” Kirsten pulled her sidearm and held it in two hands.

  Three seconds later, Appleton flung the door open and speed-walked inside behind her rifle. Kirsten followed, aiming side-to-side at large boxy machines in two rows. Thick pipes came down from the ceiling to the ones on the left, a rat’s nest of wires tangled around the smaller units on the right.

  Dorian strolled by. “Give me a moment. I’m going to kill the batteries in their weapons.”

  Kirsten gave him a thumbs-up. “Apps?”

  “Hmm?” The woman glanced back and chuckled. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “The guy that didn’t wanna go down here wasn’t too quiet about it. Dorian’s going up to suck the power out of their guns.”

  Appleton’s eyes widened. “He can do that!? I’m stealing him.”

  Kirsten laughed.

  A few minutes later, Dorian emerged from a plain metal door at the far end of the room, and nodded. He had a wild-eyed overcaffeinated look about him. “I can’t fully disarm the woman with the vibrosword. There’s no juice left in the e-mag, so it’s a normal blade now. About her height, thin, dark skinned.”

  Oh, he’s going to do something bad with all that excess energy. Good thing he’s not like Theo. “Clear. One woman with a sword.”

  “Vibro?” asked Appleton.

  “Not anymore,” said Kirsten and Dorian at the same time.

  Kirsten eased the door open and peered up half of a switchback staircase. “Battery’s gone. She could reload if she’s got spares.”

  Dorian twitched. “They’re dead too.” He twitched again. “All five of them.”

  “Or not. Looks like he’s got them under control.”

  A light banging came from above.

  “Damn piece of shit,” said a man with a trace of a Spanish accent.

  “What’s up?” asked a deeper voice.

  “Damn terminal was freakin’ out.”

  “I felt it too,” said a quiet female. “Like we weren’t alone in here. Felt that way ever since we went down the stairs.”

  “Will you cut that spooky shit out?” yelled a shaky voice that made her think teenaged boy. “It ain’t funny at the dive, and it ain’t funny here.”

  “It’s not too late,” wailed another woman who sounded older or at least huskier than the first. “The fires of Hell are lapping at your heels. You may be redeemed if you submit to Him.”

  “Stevie, get started on that hag first,” said the deep voice.

  “I don’t wanna.” A young boy sniffled. “She’s crazy. There’s a nightmare in her head. She wants me to die in a fire.”

  Kirsten crept up the stairs, anger pushing her ahead of Appleton. At the landing between the two sections of stairway, outside communications picked back up, and with it, Chief Larson asking for a status update.

  “Chief,” said Kirsten. “We’re inside. You should have video now.”

  “Copy that, Wren. Proceed with caution.”

  “Understood, Chief.” Kirsten tiptoed up the last ten steps, halting at a half-closed door.

  The four-inch gap offered a view of a wall of old pipes in a room that housed the interface between the building and the city water/sewer systems. Two men in their thirties, one fair-skinned, one as dark as Captain Eze, stood with their hands cuffed around thick pipes. Both had the attire of office workers, light shirts with a strip of buttons leading from the left shoulder straight down to the beltline and plain blue pants. They glared at other people out of sight, muttering the occasional oath to God. To their left, closer to the door, a wild-eyed woman with semi-curly brown hair and a faux-denim jacket over a peach colored dress also had her hands cuffed around a pipe, but kept pointing while she shouted about how these people were sent by Satan and they had no power over her.

  Nearest Kirsten, a young teenaged girl with long, light-brown hair clung to another vertical pipe. She’d lost one flip-flop during the abduction, and her puffy green jacket and jean shorts bore numerous dark smudges the same shade of grey as a smear on her left cheek. The shortness of her arms and the size of the pipe kept the chain on her handcuffs taut and her hands red. She didn’t seem able to move much at all, though she appeared the calmest of the prisoners. Eyes downcast, she almost gave off a feeling of boredom… or resignation that people she’d been brought up to think of as creatures would murder her for sure.

  Electronics in Kirsten’s helmet created amber ghosts where the system detected people inside the room. One man sat at a desk thirty feet away, two others paced about near the center of the room. A slender female shape with a katana handle sticking off her back lounged on a desk closer to the hostages, and a child-sized outline four feet away from the screaming woman fidgeted and bounced as if he really had to pee.

  “You getting this, Apps?” asked Kirsten.

  “Yep. You’re sure your friend’s trick works?”

  Kirsten nodded. “Yep. There’s at least six bullets I can think of that aren’t in me because of him. The suspects are psionic though, so they’re far from disarmed.”

  “Maybe they’re all clairvoyants or telempaths?” asked Appleton.

  “Hey, empaths are dangerous,” said an unknown male voice on the comm channel.

  “Yeah, Apps,” replied the deep voiced guy who refused to go into the Beneath. “Don’t let Director Carter hear you say empaths are wimpy.”

  “No matter what you Hellspawn do, you will not be able to make me forget Him,” shrieked the woman. She rattled her handcuffs, pointing. “Shame on you, taking the form of a child. I see through your lies. Begone, demon!”

  Kirsten extended a fiberoptic from her left forearm and poked it around the edge of the door. The maybe-thirteen-year-old hostage looked up, made eye contact with Kirsten, but didn’t react except to flash a faint smile.

  Using the probe, Kirsten peeked at the room. A tall, blond man in his middle twenties and a Chinese man close in age loomed over a bookish looking child of about ten or eleven. He seemed a little older than Evan, and stood with his hands in his pants pockets, staring down. The woman on the desk had long, black hair and dark brown skin, delicate features hinted at Asian Indian mixed with African. The man at the desk had a
deep tan and thick, black hair and such a look of focus at the screen in front of him she wondered if he’d even notice their entry. Near his workstation, a skinny man in his later teens paced back and forth, rubbing his face and emitting a repeating whine of “oh, man.” All six had the grungy, shredded clothing of off-gridders.

  “Apps… the girl with the sword’s gotta be another kinetic. Only reason she’d be carrying a blade like that. Looks agile as hell.”

  “Don’t astrals carry swords too?” asked another unknown voice on the comm.

  “Dorian was walking all over the place and she didn’t spot him. She’s not an astral.”

  “Negative hits on any of them,” said a female voice so young she sounded childlike. “They’re not in the system.”

  “Put your mother on the line, sweetie,” said a guy.

  Lieutenant Commander Arroyo coughed. “Stop teasing the admin cadets, Sanchez, or I’ll give you her dispatcher’s terminal for a month.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Shit,” said Appleton. “No flashbangs.”

  “I got it.” Dorian winked, a manic grin spreading over his face.

  “On three,” said Kirsten. “We don’t need a flash. Distraction incoming.”

  Dorian sauntered over to the screaming woman, still rambling about hell and brimstone. He looked at Kirsten with an almost regretful stare, as though he wished he could’ve done something like this for her years before. After a three count, Dorian’s body shimmered and became transparent―a sign he had manifested in the mortal world.

  “Will you shut the hell up!” yelled Dorian.

  Everyone froze, staring agape.

  Kirsten burst in the door, E-90 raised. “Police! Division 0! Drop your weapons.”

  Appleton followed, covering the right side of the room. Her focus seemed to be the twitchy-looking kid about eighteen with a jacket on over no shirt, and ripped white pants. “Lasers are faster than psionics, people. Let’s keep this from getting messy.”