Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis

by Matthew S. Cox

He looked off to the side. “I’ll find him sooner or later.”

  “By the time you are strong enough to be a threat to him, he’ll be dead.”

  Now Dorian wore the pissed-off face.

  “Excuse me, young lady. You can’t leave your car there.” A middle-aged Asian woman in an expensive suit approached from the door of a small office.

  “Please stand back, ma’am. I’m responding to an emergency call at this address.”

  “You don’t look like the police. They don’t have black cars, and they don’t wear black uniforms. Are you filming?”

  An orb droid the size of a fist whirred out from behind her, clicking and beeping as it recorded still images of Kirsten, the car, and the area.

  “Go back to your office; I don’t have time to explain. Call it in if you want, this is a Division 0 investigation.”

  “Wait… the psionics?” The woman blinked.

  Here we go. “Yes. Please let me―”

  “Oh, my! You’re a real psionic? What’s it like? Were you born that way, or did you decide to become psionic later?” The woman poked and pawed at Kirsten, enamored by just touching her. “Can you read my mind? Do you know what I had for dinner last night? Can you tell what my son’s name is?”

  In Kirsten’s imagination, the woman was in an arm bar, bloody nose pressed to the hood of the patrol craft. In reality, she smiled. The overbearing curiosity was almost as bad as fear.

  “Mrs. Koga, I really must insist you get out of my way before someone gets hurt. I am sure Jimmy is fine, and the tempura was amazing. Now please.”

  With the grin of someone who had just met a holovid star, the parking manager raced back to her office.

  “Admit it, you enjoyed that a little bit.” Dorian fell in step at her side.

  The elevator followed a central shaft through the building. Down seven floors, it opened to reveal a large atrium chamber. Each of the four walls contained the front face of a huge apartment made behind the façade of a freestanding house. Shimmering holo-projectors created the image of open sky along the ceiling; and judging by the existence of drains, it simulated the weather.

  A giant flowerbox of sorts surrounded the elevators, separated at the center of each side by a path to the courtyard. On the west side of the garden, a black man in a silk suit stood near a woman in an ivory-colored gown. Between them, a girl of about twelve sat on the edge of the garden in a smaller version of her mother’s dress. Mother and daughter had their hair up, held in place by an interlocking arrangement of delicate silver strips. All three were thin, with high cheekbones. The daughter stared with a sullen face at the ground; her father appeared on the verge of screaming. It seemed only the mother’s presence had prevented an all-out war.

  “Careful,” said Dorian. “I know how you get around rich people. You’re already in a bad mood; keep it professional.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Greene. We got a call about possible paranormal activity? I’m Agent Wren, Division 0.”

  The man nodded at her, reluctantly accepting a handshake that ended as fast as he could. “I am worried my daughter might be psionic. I need to know so we can get her fixed.”

  Mrs. Greene glared. The girl sniffled.

  “Excuse me, fixed?” Kirsten fumed.

  “Well, you know.” He waved his hand in a rolling gesture. “Cured. I’ll not have psionics in my family.”

  “It’s not a…” goddamned “…disease, or a choice. You’re either psionic or not; it doesn’t just happen out of the blue one day.”

  “It’s not the sort of thing this family needs associated with it. I have a reputation to maintain.”

  “Kirsten…” Dorian put a hand on her shoulder.

  She closed her eyes and let the air out of her lungs. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Well, things have been breaking. Plates, holo-bars, her younger brother’s toys flying around.” The mother explained symptoms reminiscent of a classic poltergeist.

  “I found it online… Sometimes this happens around twelve or thirteen with girls.” Mr. Greene’s eyes bulged ever so slightly from his skull. “Most times it goes away, but it’s only getting worse.”

  The daughter shuddered, her body language apologizing for her existence.

  “It’s just as common for boys, Mr. Greene. Girls are just more sympathetic in movies. Where is your son?”

  “He’s at my mother’s.” The woman spoke up. “He was not taking the disturbance well. Before you ask, no, it did not stop when he left.”

  Kirsten approached the daughter. “Hi, sweetie. Can I bother you for a minute?” She turned to Mr. Greene. “Shall I assume if she is psionic you’ll no longer want her and I’ll be taking her back to the dorm?”

  The girl burst into tears, covering her face with both hands.

  “You can assume if the son of a bitch does that, I’ll be taking my daughter to a new apartment, without him.” Mrs. Greene put an arm around the girl who leaned into her, glaring up at her father with hurt eyes.

  Kirsten liked Mrs. Greene.

  “Alexis. Will you please look at me?”

  Alexis Greene wiped her cheeks dry, swallowed, and did as asked. Kirsten gazed deep into her soft brown eyes, past the all-too-familiar shame. The young girl’s surface thought chatter swelled and faded as she dove deeper, probing for the telltale signs of psionic ability. Dorian waved his hand past the girl’s face, getting no reaction whatsoever. After a few minutes of concentrating, Kirsten straightened up and turned to face the parents.

  “Well, there is a problem. But it’s not Alexis.”

  “What is it?” Both parents asked at once.

  You’re a miserable excuse for a father. She forced a neutral look. “She is not psionic in the least. That means you have an actual spirit in your house.”

  Mr. Greene flashed a broad smile at his daughter. Alexis glared, having none of it.

  Dorian wandered around the garden, standing behind the women of the family, smiling at Mr. Greene.

  “A spirit? Like a ghost?” Mr. Greene’s voice went up in time with his eyebrow. “You don’t honestly expect me to bel―”

  Mr. Greene turned into Mr. Grey.

  Kirsten looked at the streams of color-lit water in the fountain, trying not to laugh in front of them. By the time Mrs. Greene and Alexis turned, Dorian had ceased his manifestation. Mr. Greene walked without a sound to take a seat next to his wife, staring into space.

  “I could help you with this issue, but, seeing as you don’t want psionics in your house, I suppose I’ll just go back to the station.”

  Mr. Greene raised his hand. “Wait. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to the daughter you were ready to throw away for being different.” Dammit.

  Dorian winced.

  He looked up with a numb expression. “It’s been crazy.”

  “Don’t make excuses, make amends. You realize you basically just told me that I am a sub-class person.” Kirsten turned, took two steps, and stopped. “Which one’s your apartment?”

  Mrs. Green pointed; her husband studied the ground.

  Kirsten walked to the door, tapping a police override code into the holographic display above her forearm. A chime came from the panel on the wall and the doors slid open with a soft squeak. Dorian went in first, smiling back over his shoulder.

  “You handled him pretty well. Are you okay? That seemed a little too close to home.”

  The living room had a few items out of place: a small vase on the ground leaking water, holographic picture bars knocked askew, and a spilled bowl of decorative nuts. The kind of irregular and strange-looking objects people leave in bowls on tables to look nice, not for eating. Carvings of wildlife flanked the primary holovid player, a life-sized wooden jaguar on the left, a majestic elephant on the right.

  “Yeah, I’m not dwelling on that bitch anymore.” She moved into the dining room, whistling at an onyx table big enough for twelve. “I think I’m going to find Rene.”
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br />   “You don’t want to get mixed up with him,” he said, shaking his head.

  A jade lion flew from a shelf, missing her by an inch. She whirled, just in time to see a spectral smear vanish into an enormous animated electronic painting of a nebula.

  “Yeah.” She ran after it, down a corridor among bedrooms. “I do. He hurt you.”

  Dorian went wide, going through the wall. She skidded to a halt by the door to Alexis’s room, judging by the holo-posters. Inside, Dorian rolled on the ground atop a suspension of white vapor. The apparition had a defined head as well as two hands, with little more than smears of fog between them. Human at a basic level only, the shape of the head hinted at male. It punched at Dorian’s chest; his smirk called it a minor nuisance.

  “He’ll have lackeys again. You will hesitate before killing them, since they’re just dominated.” He grabbed it about the neck, trying to hold its bobbing head up, a lead weight atop a noodle. “Lash it.”

  The spirit went wide-eyed, and a teen’s entire collection of concert holodisks rippled from wall-mounted shelves at her. Kirsten held up a hand to guard her face, but yelped and dove to the side when several hit her hard enough to break skin.

  “Ow, son of a bitch.” She touched a cat scratch on her cheek. “I can suggest them to go away.”

  “What do you plan to do with him once you catch him?” The sound of punching emanated from the room. “Command is quite wary of suggestives.”

  The flurry of objects subsided, and she whirled into the doorway. Threads of poltergeist wrapped around Dorian, making a clean strike impossible. “They’re not fond of mind blast either. Yay for me I can do both. We take him in alive, he can’t suggest anything with an inhibitor on.”

  Dorian flew into the ceiling, causing a lamp made of three rose-shaped LED bulbs to flicker. An assault of school-issue datapads fouled Kirsten’s aim. The spirit wisped through Dorian’s fingers and darted into the next room. He reformed on his feet, chasing after it.

  “I don’t want to take him alive,” he yelled, from the other side of the wall.

  Kirsten circled through the corridor into the next room, apparently decorated for a small boy. Dorian, again, had tackled the spirit, but it slipped through his arms and dove at Kirsten. She performed a perfect jiu-jitsu grapple on cold air, reacting with instinct before thinking. The stunrod on her belt turned itself on, and tapped her in the knee.

  The rug tasted like foot.

  When the flashing blue left her vision, she spat carpet fibers out of her teeth and growled. Pain cascaded in ripples from her right thigh; the stunning effect of the neural shock set her muscles twitching. She snarled, grabbed the bed, and pulled herself up on numb legs. Sounds of glass breaking drew her at a limp into the corridor, back through the dining room, and into the kitchen. She collapsed only once when her leg gave out; by the time she got to the kitchen, the after-nausea of a stunrod shock was in full swing. Dorian tried to wrestle with the spirit, gathering it as if it were a rope of bed sheets sent down the wall of a prison. The head and both hands floated away as he pulled at its wispy midsection, stretching to the other side of the room, hurling glassware and bottles at him.

  “Dorian, you don’t want to kill Rene. Not unless he’s an immediate threat to your life.”

  “I think I’m a little past that point.” He yanked on the ectoplasm, dragging the disembodied head into a punch that sent it back across the kitchen.

  Kirsten lashed, missing by inches. The phantom emanated a keening wail of terror and streaked into the cabinets. “Son of a bitch is fast. Look, if you kill his ghost… You’re already shitting ectoplasmic bricks whenever a Harbinger shows up.”

  He stopped pursuing it around the room, breathing hard more out of habit than need. “I…”

  Clinking and rattling migrated around inside the cabinets, behind small imitation wood doors. Kirsten turned in place, following the sound, arm poised for another lash. “You deserve revenge, but I don’t want them taking you. Last time was too damn close; I thought it was going to…” She choked up.

  A door burst open, and a swarm of knives flew into the air. Kirsten let herself fall straight down, ass to tile. It hurt, but less than a dozen knives. Dorian lunged, armpit deep in the cabinet, and grabbed the spirit by the neck. He flung it out into the room, weathering a barrage of spice jars that ended as it finally realized it was pointless to throw things at him. Kirsten sat with her mouth wide, wondering how landing on her butt could cause her head to ache. She missed an opportunity for a lash due to seeing stars. The food reassembler above and behind her went bonkers, spraying hot sauce, jelly, and peanut butter down on her. She got an arm over her eyes just in time.

  “Me too,” he said, adding a growl as he fought to keep a grip on the spirit. “This thing is bat-shit nuts, there’s no reason left in it. Whack it.”

  “As soon as I can move.” She groaned, scratching at the floor to try to get feeling back into her legs. “If you kill Rene, I’m not sure I can beg them off you. Please let me handle him.”

  “What the devil’s all that damn noise?” Mr. Greene’s bellow filled the hallway.

  The poltergeist wrenched out of Dorian’s hands, spirit fog spreading through his fingers. Dorian cursed something about trying to wrestle spaghetti. Mr. Greene appeared in the doorway, staring at Kirsten―the only thing he could see, aside from the mess. The spirit stretched away, flying right at Mr. Greene, shrieking, arms reaching out.

  Kirsten slung kiwi jam off her hand as she wound up a lash. The sudden light made Mr. Green look at her. The glittering whip flashed through the air.

  Splat.

  She gulped as a sensation of oblivion flickered through the Aether. Mr. Greene looked as though someone dumped a bucket of egg whites over his head, blinking as if slapped. Somewhere behind him, mother and daughter gasped.

  “What in the world?” Mrs. Greene poked him with a tentative finger, jerking back from the cold slime. When she saw the formation of knives sticking out of the cabinet doors, she had to cover her mouth to stifle a scream.

  “Poltergeist. It won’t be bothering you again.” Kirsten struggled to her feet, rubbing her tailbone. “Sorry about the suit.”

  Mr. Greene turned with the motion of a mannequin on a rotary platform, mouth still open, hand still held up. He blinked again at his wife, who moved past him into the kitchen, shaking her head at the carnage.

  “Why did that thing come here? What did it want?”

  Kirsten washed her hands in the sink, shrugging at Mrs. Greene. “I can’t even begin to guess. These sorts of spirits are not true souls, more of a latent snapshot or a fragment of someone’s personality that gathered enough power to start roaming around. Some think they are very weak demons.”

  “Do you?” Mrs. Greene began the process of collecting knives from the floor.

  Dorian rubbed his chin, as eager for her answer as the family.

  “Well.” Kirsten dabbed at the cut on her cheek with a wet towel. “I know there’s a place I call the Abyss, where evil spirits go when they get purged out of this world. I suppose it is possible for energy to burp back out whenever something crosses into it. That might be what people call a demon. It would just be a returned ghost. One who got out of jail, so to speak. I don’t think there are real demons per se. Not in the biblical sense anyway. I’m sure those are just stories made up by people who didn’t understand the supernatural.”

  “And wanted to burn it.” Dorian winked.

  “Yeah,” she muttered, rubbing the back of her right hand.

  ive chrome spheres clacked. The farthest on the right swung into the hanging line, kicking the farthest left into the air. Back and forth, endless repetitive motion creating tiny fireflies of reflected light that danced across her workspace. Kirsten’s right forearm served as a pillow between her chin and the desk; breath from her nostrils fogged the gloss black surface. Her eyes tracked the Newton’s cradle: left, right, left, right, the tapping sound rhythmic―mesmerizing.
/>   Then it stopped.

  She blinked. It sat at rest, all five spheres idle. Did I fall asleep? She reached out with her left hand―the electronic armguard made for an uncomfortable chinrest―and prodded the toy back to life. This time, two orbs moved on either side.

  Click, click, silence.

  Her eyebrows drew together. “Figures, I get a broken one.”

  Nicole, right behind her, burst into laughter. Kirsten almost fell out of her chair.

  “Dammit.” She grabbed her chest. “Don’t sneak up on people. And why is your face so red?”

  “Better I find you sleeping than Eze.” Nicole adjusted the fit of her uniform top, flashing an impish smile. “Oh, no reason.”

  “I’m not sleeping, I’m bored.” Kirsten let her head fall onto her arm again. “Nice. Same guy as last week?” She braced for the impact of the foam stress skull, laughing after it bounced away.

  “I’m not easy.” Nicole gave her a raspberry. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “Who is it?” Kirsten’s gaze followed the redhead to her desk. “Did you skip telling them you’re psionic?”

  “He knows. It’s Eddie from Admin.” She checked her face in a small hand mirror.

  “Nikki, he’s eighteen, he’s still a kid.”

  “Oh, and I’m geriatric at twenty-one?” Another raspberry. “He’s smart. He’s good-looking. He’s psionic too, and he’s in love with me.” Nicole blinked. “What do you mean you can’t have the one you want?”

  Dorian sighed.

  “Nicole Logan, will you please stop―”

  “Wren.” Captain Eze’s voice reverberated over their conversation.

  They both looked at his door.

  Nicole grinned. “Well, he yelled from his desk, so it’s not bad news.”

  “At least you won’t be bored now,” added Dorian.

  Kirsten pushed herself standing, stretching the past two hours’ worth of sitting idle out of her legs. A wobbling gait carried her into the office of Captain Jonathan Eze. The door closed behind her without a sound.

  “Good afternoon, I hope I am not keeping you up.” He grinned, reaching forward to offer her a cup of Qwikwarm Coffee.