Guardian

by Matthew S. Cox

  “They busted her for Sandman and Flowerbasket? Really?” Kirsten rolled her eyes. “Div 1 must’ve been bored.”

  “They usually only bother if someone’s asking them to get involved… bet it was the parents. Kid with a background like that, it’s not surprising she had some wild years. Still, a medical doctor at twenty-six is pretty impressive.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m not getting anything on Mardrake… might as well go talk to our ACC émigré.”

  A flick of her finger tossed the record of the 1UP clinic from the terminal panel to the Navcon, and the map zoomed out to show the fastest route.

  “Maybe she’ll know how to find Mar―”

  Her NetMini rang.

  “Oh shit. Maybe we’re gonna get lucky.” She leaned over in the seat to get the device off her belt. “Wren.”

  A frightened looking girl’s face appeared in hologram, cloaked in shadow and a hooded sweatshirt. Muted color and lack of detail suggested she hid somewhere dark, and her voice came out as a whisper. “I’m sorry for hackin’ your PID outta the system… I gotta talk to you. You’re a psi-cop right?”

  “Yes. Are you in trouble? How old are you? Where are you?”

  The hood twisted to the left. “Uhh. Fourteen. I really need your help. Can you meet me here asap?” A glossy red pushpin hologram appeared, rotating next to the girl’s head. “Please?” She pulled the hood back enough to expose a lock of light brown hair, pale cheek, and wide, terrified chocolate eyes, but a scarf covered the lower half of her face.

  “Okay.” Kirsten touched the floating pin, and it disappeared. The Navcon showed a second waypoint. “I’ll be there in four minutes or so. Sector 9068? Pizza Heaven?”

  “Yeah,” whispered the girl. “I’m hiding in the bathroom.” A trace of sniffles added to her voice. “Please… they’re gonna kill me.”

  Kirsten flicked on the blue bar lights. “Two minutes.”

  The girl nodded, sniffling, and hung up.

  “You gonna call it in?” asked Dorian.

  “Shit.” Kirsten grumbled. “I almost forgot. Ops, come back?”

  “Copy that, Agent.” A blond male doll appeared in hologram over the console.

  “A minor contacted my personal NetMini requesting help. She indicated her life is being threatened. Logging contact from the location of my current waypoint.”

  “Copy, Agent. Noted. Do you need backup?”

  Kirsten squeezed the sticks. “She looked skittish as hell. Might scare her off if we roll in there heavy. Can you have a tactical unit on standby, close?”

  “You got it, Agent. Be careful.”

  “Careful’s her middle name.” Dorian laughed.

  Kirsten smirked.

  Two minutes and nineteen seconds later, Kirsten dove out of the emergency hover lane at the eightieth story and flew almost straight down. Dorian closed his eyes, tensed, and muttered a series of Arabic words at the window to his right.

  With the nose still pointed at the ground, she slowed to a near hover, levelled the car off, and set down in front of a restaurant built into the corner of an office building. Pizza Heaven took up about a quarter of the first floor of a hundred-story tower, which appeared to contain dozens of different small companies.

  She climbed out and jogged inside, finding about forty people (mostly business casual) arranged around red Formica benches and tables. A man with long, dark hair, a broad chest, and thick moustache waved in greeting from behind a counter full of glass-faced warming cabinets holding pizza slices, calzones, and plastic trays of French fries or onion rings. Despite having eaten not too long ago, the scent of tomato sauce and basil tempted her to get something to bring home for dinner later.

  Kirsten headed for the back, but the bathroom door opened when she was halfway across the room. The girl from the vid call emerged, hands hidden in the sleeves of her too-large sweatshirt. Black tights concealed little about the shape of skinny legs, and bore smudges and a few rips indicative of having spent a brief time living on the street.

  She forgot about food entirely and jogged up to the girl who wound up being about the same height. The kid pulled her scarf and hood down, allowing her long hair to fluff out over her shoulders. Red around her eyes proved she’d been crying. She grabbed Kirsten’s hand, trembling.

  “Where are the people who want to hurt you?”

  The girl sniffled, eyeing the door. “They’re not here. I ditched them. Can we talk?”

  Kirsten followed her to an empty booth, and sat. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really… Thanks though.” She wiped her face on her sleeve. “Can you guys help psionic kids whose parents would kill them if they found out? I don’t mean like be pissed or disown me… literally drown me in the bathtub dead or tie me up and light me on fire.”

  Kirsten gasped, shock faded to anger. “If there’s a determined threat like that, absolutely.”

  The kid seemed to relax slightly. A nervous smile flickered across her lips.

  Dorian frowned. “I’m inclined to believe her.”

  “Calm down. What’s your name?”

  The girl set her arms on the table, fingers half hidden in her sleeves, and picked at her nails while looking down. “Ashley.”

  Kirsten reached across the table to hold her hand. “Hi, Ashley. I’m Kirsten. Division 0 can protect you. I know what you’re going through. My mother almost killed me for being psionic too.”

  “Really?” Ashley perked up.

  “Yes. There’s nothing wrong with you. It happens to… too damn many of us. Do you know what talents you’ve got?”

  “Uhh. Sometimes when I touch things, I get visions of stuff. This guy that’s always around, he left his gun on the counter once and I picked it up to check it out… I was like ten years old. As soon as I touched it, I like had a vision of him shooting a man in the head.” Fresh tears ran down her face. “I never told anyone. The man was tied up on the ground, face down, and Terry shot him in the back of the head.”

  Kirsten gripped her hand a little tighter. “That had to be a hard secret to keep.”

  “Yeah.” Ashley sniffled. “I think he knew I suspected something… I wasn’t very good at acting casual around him. They kept asking me why I was all of a sudden scared of him. And, uhh, I read online that some psionics have like a weird thing with computers and machines and stuff? I’m good with computers but I never went to school for it… it’s like I just know what to do.”

  “Could be technokinetic as well. Might as well give her the usual probe.” Dorian glanced at the door. “She keeps looking at the windows… if she’s clairvoyant, that could be an issue.”

  “Only about three percent of clairvoyants have precognitive ability.”

  “Huh?” Ashley looked at Kirsten for a second before following her gaze to about where Dorian stood. “Who are you talking to?”

  “A ghost who helps me.” Kirsten rubbed the girl’s hand. The gesture brushed the girl’s sleeve up a bit, exposing a red mark across a delicate wrist. “Ashley… Have you been abused?”

  “Umm.” The girl shivered. “Not like that… no. Just mental stuff. My grandfather didn’t do that.”

  “Those are handcuff marks.” Kirsten pushed both her sleeves up, finding a matching bruise on the other arm as well. “What happened to you?”

  “You don’t remember me?” Ashley fidgeted. “You came outta nowhere and saved us from that group of weirdos.”

  “Y-you’re with that cult?” Kirsten blinked at her.

  “Nooo.” Ashley whined. “I’m… just related to them. I don’t believe that bullshit! Uhh… I’m Ashley Harris.”

  Dorian cackled. Twice he tried to say something, but couldn’t stop laughing enough to get words out.

  Kirsten gawked. “You’re that wacko’s granddaughter?”

  Ashley shrank in on herself. “Yeah… He doesn’t know I’m psionic. Now do you believe me? He really would kill me if he found out.”

  “They didn’t take you to a med center?
” Kirsten brushed a finger over the red line.

  “No. Karen thinks doctors are working for Satan too… but they don’t hate them quite as much as psionics.”

  Kirsten glared. She took a stimpak from her belt case and offered it. “Here. That looks like it still hurts.”

  “You’re awesome… thanks!” Ashley fumbled with the safety cap and pushed the autoinjector into her forearm. “I think my wrist cracked. It’s been hurting ever since. Those idiots left me hanging on that pipe for so long. We’d been there for like five hours before you snuck in. I was trying to run away, so I begged Grandpa to let me go shopping for some stuff for my birthday. I’ve only been fourteen for like a week. I acted like I was all into their religious bullshit for a couple months so they’d start to trust me, but Karen insisted on going… and Grandpa wound up sending Terry and Alex along to protect us. On the way into the mall, we saw that big blond guy doing tricks for tips… telekinesis or whatever, and Karen went off on him. Later, when we came out of the mall, they attacked us in the parking lot. I was waiting for them to make the others forget so I could tell them. I couldn’t say I was psionic too in front of Karen and them. She’d have shot me herself.”

  “Ashley, would it be okay if I looked into your mind? To keep everything legal, I need to verify you’re psionic… unless you’ve got something visual you can do like telekinesis.”

  The girl nodded, a flare of eagerness in her expression. “I can sometimes hear what people are thinking when I try real hard, but… okay. You can do it.”

  Kirsten held eye contact with Ashley for a few seconds and pressed her thoughts deeper into the girl’s psyche. Her surface thoughts swam with pure terror: that her grandfather would burn her alive. Probing with specific intent to detect psionic ability bypassed much of her cogent memories, though Kirsten did see enough to prove what the girl had been telling her. The Reverend Harris, fire-and-brimstone anti-psionic preacher, indeed had a clairvoyant, technokinetic, and possibly telepathic granddaughter.

  When Kirsten dropped the mind link, Ashley’s eyes fluttered and she swooned. “Wow that felt weird.”

  “Trouble incoming,” said Dorian.

  Kirsten sat up straight, tall enough to peer over Ashley’s shoulder at three figures storming towards the front door. “Shit. Ops, Wren. That backup would be pretty handy right now.”

  “Copy, Agent,” said the doll.

  A thin figure in a grey suit with a black shirt and priest’s collar led the way, wispy white hair trailing off his head in the breeze. One of the two men behind him, the thick-chested guy with brown hair and an angry scowl, she recognized from the previous incident. The other man looked halfway between the type to go door-to-door with e-bibles and the sort of person one found selling firearms to street thugs. She spotted two handguns on his belt, and a suspicious bulge under his left arm.

  Ashley whirled around in the seat when the door opened. She screamed and ducked under the table, shaking and sobbing.

  Kirsten stood, one hand on her stunrod, as the men approached.

  “Get away from my granddaughter, demon spawn.” Reverend Harris’s voice creaked through his teeth. The wrinkles around his mouth and eyes deepened. “Come now, Ashley Marie. You weren’t given permission to go out today.”

  Kirsten edged closer to him, already seeing red. “I’m sorry, Reverend, but that’s not happening. Ashley is now a ward of Division 0. I’m terminating your guardianship rights as of this moment.”

  “Out of my way, harlot!” His arms twitched.

  Kirsten squeezed the stunrod handle tight enough to make the end glow, and subconsciously fell into a combat stance.

  “You have no authority over the children of the Lord. Take your Devil-stained self out of my sight this instant!”

  “You’re wrong, old man. I do. Now, I’m giving you a direct command by the authority vested in me by the National Police Force. Turn around and remove yourself from my presence or I will detain you for interference of a sworn officer in the execution of their duties… and anything else I can find during the subsequent investigation.”

  “Liar!” roared the Reverend. He thrust his pointing finger at her face.

  Kirsten parried his arm with the stunrod as though it were a sword coming for her head, knocking the old man to the side.

  Reverend Harris spun into his two friends, cradling his arm and overacting pain. “Foul spawn of Hell. You and your kind recoil in fear at the True Path. You fear God and his children, and you seek to spread your lies and propaganda.” He recovered his balance, wagging his finger at her from a safer distance. “No matter how hard you toil, your efforts are futile! Futile! Do you hear me, succubus? I shall not allow you to enslave humanity with your lies.”

  “Kirsten…” Dorian stared at her. “Hold it together. Backup is coming.”

  She tensed and relaxed her grip on the stunrod. “You’re about as religious as that Stromboli over there. It’s not about God at all for you is it, Mister Harris? Control is what you want. All it takes is a little ancient superstition to keep the idiots in line, right?”

  Veins in his forehead bulged. “Dest―” He swallowed a growl.

  Both muscular men behind him exchanged a glance. The one she’d seen cuffed around a pipe looked as wild-eyed as Harris, eager to lunge at her. His black-haired associate leaned away with evident trepidation in his eyes.

  Harris started chanting Bible verses at her, ordering Satan back to Hell.

  “Stop!” yelled Kirsten, a flare of white energy danced across her eyes.

  Harris froze. Over the next ten seconds, the shaking tip of his finger trembled harder and harder. “Y-you j-just used your Devil power on me.”

  Rage swirled in Kirsten’s soul. Here was Mother all over again, only in the guise of a man. She held her breath, searching for calm. Ashley crawled out from under the table and hid behind Kirsten.

  “Wow. I’ve never seen him shut up before. That’s awesome.”

  “Watch your tongue young lady.” Harris glared at her. “What has this minion of Satan done to you?”

  “Ashley has requested protection from Division 0. I have ample reason to suspect her life is in imminent danger in her present living conditions, and hereby terminate your legal guardianship. I will provide the official Inquest number as soon as I trust taking my eyes off you long enough to do so.”

  “Go away,” said Ashley. “You’ve never liked me. You treat me like a goddamn object and―”

  “Don’t take the name of thy Lord God in vain, missy!” screamed Harris.

  “I’m not afraid of you anymore. I’m going with Agent Wren. I don’t ever wanna see you again, you crazy old withered piece of shit.” She squinted at him. “I’m psionic.”

  A second later, Harris recoiled as if burned. “H… her voice in my head. God!” Harris wailed and sank to his knees. He whispered, “My own granddaughter is one of them,” before shouting, “Why have you abandoned me? Why do you mock me so?”

  The same pathetic plea her mother used to bellow at the ceiling made her see red. Kirsten snarled and raised the stunrod. Dorian jumped into her with enough solidity to arrest her lunge and knock her back a step amid a freezing bath of air. She recovered her balance, angry tears streaming from the corners of her eyes. Ashley scurried backward three steps.

  “Kirsten… don’t. I know you think it’ll make you feel better, but it won’t.” Dorian tried to grab her shoulders.

  Reverend Harris pointed at Ashley. “You’re flawed. Defective. Broken. Tainted. You always were a sinner, you little wretch. No wonder your mother killed herself. She knew you were unclean!”

  Ashley glared back, her large eyes shaking in their sockets. “I bet you killed her! I’ll prove it!”

  Paper-thin lips peeled back with a grimace. Harris flared his eyes. “All of you should burn!” A hurled chocolate milkshake splattered over his back. “All of your kind should burn!”

  “Shut the fuck up you crazy old bastard,” yelled a man a few tables
away.

  The black-haired thug pulled a handgun out, the other one drew his jacket aside to reveal a submachinegun, which he gripped. Eleven patrons also produced weapons, including an ancient-looking man who appeared mostly blind.

  The reverend’s continuous calls for psionics to be purged mixed with prayers, blurring into a miasma of sound and fury in Kirsten’s mind. She trembled from anger, trying to tune him out, trying to stop hearing the accusations in Mother’s voice. Daydreams of bashing Harris’s skull in with her stunrod advanced from idle whimsy to serious consideration.

  She had to make the shrieking preacher stop.

  irsten pondered trading the stunrod to her off hand and going for the E-90, but with so many people around, the laser was too dangerous. Reverend Harris swayed back and forth as if lost in some divine experience. Eyes closed, his invocations to God rose and fell from shouts to whispers.

  “Purge them, my sons. Suffer not witches to live.” His eyes snapped open, wild with mania. “That is no longer my granddaughter. She is not of my blood.”

  “Good!” yelled Ashley. “You’re all crazy!”

  Ka-chuck. “I got your back, officer.”

  Harris’s thugs froze. They turned their heads at the same time, eyeing the pizza store clerk who had a massive shotgun leveled off at them.

  “You’ve poisoned my own flesh.” Harris pointed again at Kirsten. “You have poisoned her against God!”

  Kirsten locked her eyes on his. “You’re the biggest liar of all of them, Harris. The only thing you love is the spotlight. The only thing you believe in is controlling others. You use God as a weapon. You have no faith. What happened to you that you hate psionics so much?” The answer flashed in his surface thoughts, a too-fast-to-stop reaction to a question. As soon as she asked it, his brain considered it. His wife had read his mind and left him over what she’d seen. “What made her leave you, Harris? What did she find in your empty little head?”