“Okay. Where can I find him?”
“He’s squatting in an abandoned residence tower in Sector 6059. Grey zone near the 6060 black.”
“That’s ten miles from 1UP.” Dorian waved through his desk terminal bar. A holo-pane scrolled open in midair already on a sector map. “6059, 6060, 6061 – where 1UP is.”
Morelli jumped in his seat, staring at the ‘empty’ desk.
Kirsten eyed her remaining half of a sandwich. “Give me like ten minutes. Should I go in civvies not to rile up the locals?”
SPO Garber shook his head. “No offense, Lieutenant… but if those guys saw you in civvies you’d need an armed escort of marines to keep the locals off you. You, uhh, look young. Better go in uniform. Those guys seem out of it, but they understand what the black uniform means. They know you don’t care about chems.”
Yeah… even street thugs are terrified of psionics. “Nikki… Forrester… you guys free?” Kirsten glanced over. “I’d rather not have to kill anyone today.”
“I don’t wanna lose this CI, but we won’t let anything go down. If you need backup, we’ll be there.” SPO Garber saluted.
“Appreciate it, Garber. You might’ve saved his life…” She swiped to end the call and inhaled the last few bites of her spicy chicken before heading to the locker room to grab Psi Armor.
Despite being bulky and annoying, she’d developed a fondness for the feeling of protection. It might not stop as much as the Division 1 armor could, but it also weighed about half. A little mental exertion activated the ‘classified’ stuff inside it, adding that field effect, so it wound up being more or less on par. Going into a post-haunting crime scene didn’t bother her in the standard uniform, but going to talk to a chem merchant in a bad part of town, she wanted something more between her and bullets than thin fabric.
The closer Kirsten got to the Nav point, the worse the condition of the city around her became. At first, the decline manifested as a lessening of advert bots. Next, the thick garden of holographic signs mounted to walls thinned out. Twenty seconds more and some missing windows appeared sporadically on both sides. A block later, almost all of the windows were gone. Signs of life gave way to fluttering strands of plastic film trailing in the breeze from the locals’ failed efforts to stop the wind from tearing through their squats.
Kirsten guided the patrol craft down to the level of the third story, skimming over a street jammed up with five-decade-old ground cars. An occasional spark crawled along the ruin below as the energized downdraft of ion engines blasted the ancient metal. Nicole followed at an uncharacteristic safe distance. As grey zones went, Sector 6059 tended towards dark, the kind of place Division 1 left alone unless they brought fifteen people and an armored vehicle.
“They’re watching us,” said Dorian. “I don’t see anyone going for a weapon…”
She flicked her thumbnail at the crosshatch texture on the control stick.
Dorian kept his eye on the shadowed alleys. “They probably think we’re chasing a psi criminal… Even fringers don’t want to be cannon fodder for a rogue psionic.”
“Heh. So they actually are afraid of something enough to tolerate police.” Unable to decide if she felt insulted or comforted, she grumbled to herself until the digital windscreen showed a giant red thumbtack stuck in the roof of a building ahead on the left. “We’re here.”
“Copy that,” said Nicole over comm.
The grime-darkened façade of a laundromat streaked silver where bullets had glanced away from the metal greeted her as she landed. Dim blue light glowed from within, glinting on jagged shards of grime-dusted glass embedded in the frame of a long-gone storefront window. Human shadows slipped away from nearby alleys, vanishing deeper into the urban deterioration. Kirsten stared into the building, her attention drawn to the small shapes of rats crawling around the old washers and dryers.
Dorian blurred out of the passenger seat, coalescing a short distance away from her door outside. He walked through the knee-high front wall of the building, his shape soon indistinguishable from the interior.
Kirsten glanced down at the shiny black armor over her thighs. She teased a little psionic energy at it, causing the matte grey trim to glow violet for an instant. Okay, it works. What am I so nervous about? It’s really damn hard to kidnap a suggestive. Dorian emerged from the building at the same time she got out and put her helmet on.
“One guy inside. He’s got three sentry guns. Small caliber, probably Class 1. More than likely intended for rats.”
“Are they hacked?” She approached the door, with Nicole and Forrester two steps behind.
Dorian gave her a used-hovercar salesman’s smile. “They didn’t fire at me.”
She rolled her eyes. At the door, she paused to listen. A voice inside assured ‘General Grok’ that the fleet would fail if they dared to attack the Terran Alliance. Holovid. The front door scraped plastic cartons and broken glass to the side in a clean arc over fading green tiles. Inside, a wide room contained a counter with dry-cleaning racks behind it on the left by some benches for people to wait, and on the right, the room stretched twice as deep, packed with old credstick-operated washers and dryers. A dense film of mold/dust/chemicals coated the place, save for a discernible trail in the gunk that led around the end of the counter to the back room. Thick hanging ribbons of once-clear plastic obscured the room beyond, glowing in the flickering bluish light.
The ceiling shuddered under the roar of movie starship engines.
“Fizzle?” She drew the E-90, but held it down and to the side.
“Damn,” said Forrester. “How can anyone live like this?”
“I wouldn’t call this ‘living.’” Nicole whistled, looking around. “I’d almost rather be in the Badlands.”
“You’d look good on a leash.” Forrester chuckled.
A plastic crack of armored fist on armored shoulder followed. “Go to Hell, Randy. It’s not all like that out there. They have towns.” Nicole grumbled.
“Yeah, but them towns get raided.” Forrester shifted at sudden motion to the side. Whatever made the noise backed away from two laser rifles. “Man. This has got bad idea all over it.”
“Fizzle,” yelled Kirsten. She followed the path of clean floor to the end of the counter, freezing at the tiny sound of an electric motor whirring in three-second spurts. “Division 0.”
The sound of a space dogfight cut out to silence. A second later, a nervous male voice called out, “Oh, that is being the awesome. Come in!”
“Turrets, Fizzle.” Kirsten crept closer to the plastic curtain.
A metallic creak preceded the squeak of shoes and a few beeps. “Is safe.”
Kirsten brushed the plastic strips out of her way with her left hand, and raised the E-90, following it into the doorway. The rails that once carried dry cleaned clothes passed overhead, uphill along a short corridor to her right, before hooking a sharp left at the end. Beyond the turn, another room waited, packed with tables covered in newish looking machines linked by hoses and tubes.
A skinny Indian man in a pink tee shirt and olive-drab fatigue pants waved at her from the top of the incline. The turret next to him came up to his knee, and looked more like a toy than a weapon; small as it was, the three-barrel rotary mechanism made it a threat. 6.5mm isn’t too bad, but when there’s eighty of them hitting you…
The sentry gun had ceased sweeping side to side, so she relaxed―a little. “Fizzle?”
“Yep.” He backed up, beckoning them with a wave. Her armor’s HUD highlighted a handgun in the waistband of his pants behind his back, though his body language seemed nonthreatening.
He’s happy to see us. No trap.
Kirsten bit back the urge to grumble at Nicole for being free with surface thought skims. Perhaps the girl had a point. Being in this place tended to provide probable cause. She holstered her laser pistol and walked up to meet SPO Garber’s confidential informant.
He offered a handshake. Only because of Nicole’s a
ssurance did she accept. When they clasped hands, she locked stares with bright blue eyes.
“Thanks for coming… I was afraid you guys might not wanna come out here.”
Nicole scoffed. “You could’ve come to us. This place is a deathtrap.”
“Yeah. Even without all these science projects.” Forrester used his rifle to indicate at least thirteen boxy machines. Some sat quiet, others bore flickering LEDs, a few vibrated and thrummed. Twitching hoses carried neon-colored liquid between chambers. “First time I been in a drug lab.”
Kirsten tensed. Of course… Garber had said chem merchant, but the true meaning hadn’t hit her until Forrester’s comment. This guy was manufacturing narcotics; even if they were the sort of common cheapery that the police didn’t bother with, she didn’t want to breathe anything in here.
“You guys are cool with it, right? I ain’t brewin’ nothin’ serious.” He smiled. “Little ‘basket, some Smileys, Sandman… all low grade shit.” Fizzle walked backwards to a desk where a living room sized holo bar had been spliced into a standard desk terminal unit. “I’m gonna take a gun outta my pants so I can sit down without hurting myself. Okay?”
Nicole and Forrester swiveled to almost aim at him.
“Easy and slow,” said Kirsten.
Fizzle turned to show his back, removed the handgun with two fingers, and set it on the table before sitting down. “Damn thing ain’t comfortable to sit on.”
“So, our mutual friend said you’ve got some paranormal things going on here?” Kirsten approached him while looking up and around at the walls. Tattered plasfilm posters, mostly of sci-fi holovids and characters thereof, hid behind cobwebs dense enough to support children climbing them. “You really should dust once in a while.”
Fizzle laughed. “You’re funny for a cop. Yeah… I’ve been seeing some weird shit.”
“Not to offend you or anything, but it’s strange to see a person of your ethnic background with blue eyes.” Kirsten took an image capture of his face via her helmet’s electronics.
He grinned. “Not offended. ‘Bout seven months ago, my previous lab blew up. Bunch of shitbags decided to muscle in on my operation and sent some bullets through the wall. Lucky spark set everything off. I caught a spray of glass in the face.”
“Ow.” Nicole sucked air between her teeth.
Forrester shook his head. “I thought you didn’t make any of that nasty shit?”
“The phase one solution for Sandman is… vaporous. After it’s been catalyzed, it’s inert… they caught me at the perfect wrong time. Anyway, yeah, left me with a buncha glass where my eyes used to be. I had some cheap ass ‘lectric ones for a while, but I hear from Deadcrow that some street doc had a set of eyes on the shelf he wanted rid of.” Fizzle shook his head. “Now I kinda have a feeling why. Maybe I been samplin’ too much of my own stuff, but I’m seein’ shit.”
Kirsten twisted to look at Nicole. Watch this guy. I’m gonna close my eyes for a minute. She opened herself to the surroundings, reaching out with a psionic feeler. Energy nearby had a surprising amount of strength. Perhaps the ghost had been about to attack him seconds before she walked in. She wandered a few steps forward, following an increase in charge, certain from the way it felt that the same entity had been here.
“You finding something?” asked Fizzle.
Kirsten opened her eyes and stared at a mattress so foul she didn’t want to touch it even with armor on. Three transparent cartons on a plastisteel cargo box turned nightstand held something that may have once been pizza bites, but had separated into three layers of liquid, brown, clear, and yellow-orange. “Yeah. You’re not imagining things. The man those eyes came from isn’t happy about it.”
“Shit.” Fizzle folded his arms. “Shit twice.”
Kirsten moved to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. “I need to know where you got them from.”
“I met up with these bad dudes in 6851. We went into the black nearby, real skivey lookin’ place. Like a basement outta some old mental hospital. Straight outta a slasher vid. Stank like old shoes. Ripper doc place… Mardrake I think.”
“Dammit.” Kirsten grumbled.
“What?” Nicole walked over. “What’s a Mardrake?”
Kirsten ran a hand over her helmet, and tapped armored fingers for a few seconds while thinking. “This guy gets killed by an organ harvester, his parts go all over the place, and the ghost is going from person to person trying to kill them or take his pieces back. It’s the same spirit here.”
“K…” Dorian waved from the far side of the nasty mattress. “Check this out.”
He pointed at a silver holo-bar the size of a man’s index finger, a standard picture display. When he poked it, a shimmery transparent image of Fizzle appeared, seated in the same chair. A naked Seraphina perched in his lap, teeth clenched around a chain attached to both of her nipples by clamps. She reached cuffed hands up behind her in an effort to ‘hug’ Fizzle’s head. The young woman looked emaciated, pale, and snarled at the camera with an air of rebellious menace.
“Son of a bitch…” Kirsten stared at the picture a second longer before whirling on Fizzle. “How do you know her?”
He raised his hands. “She’s freaky like that. Used to buy from me, but I haven’t seen her in a while. Guess she finally got her wish.” Fizzle looked downcast, and shook his head.
“Her wish?” Kirsten narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re seeing that girl?”
“I…” He sighed. “I wanted to, but I guess she’s not that type. I always thought she considered me nothing more than a casual fuck buddy. Didn’t want more. She’s all on the whisp so hard, like she’s trying to fry her lungs and check the hell out.” Fizzle pulled one leg up to hook the heel of his sneaker on the chair, and rested his chin on his knee. “Sarah said she didn’t ‘want’ to die, just didn’t care if she did, but I knew what she meant. She wanted to, but was afraid to kill herself. Girl did so much whisp, she’s gotta be gone by now. That shit’ll chew up your lungs. I… stopped making it ‘cause of her.”
Her thoughts were full of mint… Kirsten lowered her guard and put a comforting arm around him. “Hey… She’s not dead.”
Fizzle looked up, his eyes wet. “She’s not? You know her?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen her.” Fuck! Son of a bitch! Kirsten wanted to smash something, but kept an exterior of complete calm. “Now I know what her ‘medical condition’ was.”
“New lungs,” said Dorian.
She looked at him. “Yeah. And how much do you want to bet our ghost is genetically compatible with her.”
“Motive, means, and resources.” Dorian shook his head. “This is bad, K. It’s going to get ugly if you butt heads with a senator.”
She looked at him, mouth open, but couldn’t think of anything to say before Fizzle grabbed her hand.
“Hey…” He stared into her eyes. “If you see her… tell her I want there to be more for us. I’ll leave all this shit behind if she’ll stop hating herself.”
“Aww.” Nicole sniffled.
“Thank you, Fizzle. You were a big help. Bigger than you know. Now I have somewhere to go.”
“Wait, what? You’re leaving? What about the… thing haunting me?” He stood.
“He’s not here now. You might’ve just given me the means to find him… If anything happens again, let our mutual friend know, and he can contact me. Also, it might help if you said you had no idea the eyes were stolen.”
“Doubtful,” said Dorian. “I think this one’s too angry to care.”
“Yeah, maybe, but I can’t sit here waiting.” Kirsten started to leave, but paused by the little sentry gun. “Fizzle… if you’re serious about Seraphina, you might want to consider getting out of here first. Show her you really mean it.”
Kirsten stared at his sad smile for a few seconds, nodded, and hurried back to the patrol craft.
“Where to now?” Dorian’s voice entered the car before he coalesced in the passenger seat.
/> Nicole and Forrester jogged to their vehicle. Muted thumps of closing doors came from behind.
“Morgue. I’m going to see how Oliver is doing.”
irsten banked the patrol craft to the left to dodge a green-camouflage DS2 lifting off from the roof of the Regional Tech Center. A light snow swirled about at altitude, though the ground below showed no accumulation. The DS2 flashed its lights twice, a gesture of greeting as it passed. She wobbled the car side to side in response, as it lacked running lights, and headed for the larger of three roof landing pads surrounding the dome-shaped main building of the RTC.
“I’m sure Seraphina has this guy’s lungs. Attacks of being unable to breathe, the presence of the ghost in the room with her… Senator Winchester has the resources to set something like that up. What pisses me off is he could afford fixing her the right way.”
“Good luck proving it.” Dorian drummed his fingers on his knee. “And don’t even think about compelling him to confess. One whiff of psionic manipulation of a senator gets out and all of Division 0 is going to be in deep shit.”
She glared at him. “You know me better than that. I intend to find proof. That’s why we’re here.”
Kirsten landed in a spot reserved for police vehicles and sprinted through a light pattering of freezing rain to the entrance. Two white-walled corridors later, she rode an elevator down to the fourth basement level and emerged in air as frosty as the outside, only far less wet. Her boots squelched on the white linoleum as she passed dim freezer rooms, six per side. As it had the last time she’d been here, the place felt more like the set of a horror movie than an active medical facility.
The chill that spread down her back at the thought of Eli Hassan came from nerves alone. He had to have been another shell. She forced fear aside and hurried up to the large U-shaped desk in a room serving as a T intersection in the hallway. Oliver Murphy snoozed in his chair, headphones on, his puff of black, curly hair wild in all directions. Asleep, he looked even more like the pudgy frat boy everyone liked.
Guardian Page 40
