“Call for you.” Evan’s voice, just outside the tube.
Kirsten whirled, grateful for the fog, gawking at the pajama-colored blur drawing closer to the autoshower.
“Evan! I’m in the tube, tell them I’ll call back.”
Her NetMini hit the outside with a sharp click, and Captain Eze’s holographic head appeared inside the shower after a brief fit of rainbow static. His eyebrows lifted for a fraction of a second, and he turned away, loosing a hearty laugh at the result of a child’s sense of urgency.
Kirsten wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.
“Call me when you are done, Wren. I need you to check out a site. There is some urgency, but the event is over.”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice shook more than her hands.
He hung up.
The Evan blur moved away to the door, closing it.
Shit, he broke the blockade. She pounded the dry cycle button, hoping Theodore did not notice the opportunity.
After donning a new pair of undies from the white box on the wall, she gathered a towel about herself and walked to the main room. Evan sat on the edge of her comforgel pad, kicking his feet in lazy swishes, his face lit blue by the datapad absorbing his attention.
She sat next to him. “Evan?”
He looked up, grinning. Upset as she was, she could not stay mad at that face.
“If someone calls for me, next time can you please just yell through the door?”
“Why?”
Kirsten explained the indelicacies of just walking in on someone in the shower. “Your”―she exhaled, pausing―“mother might have walked around the house with no clothes on all the time, but I’m not like that. It’s not right.”
“She’s not my mom.” He swung his pout back to the datapad, legs still.
“I’m sorry.” She pulled him into a hug that brought his mood back to normal. “You embarrassed the Captain. It’s not proper for him to see me in the shower.”
His arms threaded around her. “He said it was police stuff. Sounded important.”
“Your turn.” She stood, shooing him at the bathroom.
As soon as the whirr of the autoshower kicked in, she finished getting dressed. By the time Evan was out of the bathroom, she pointed at the tiny table where a plate of ̓sem eggs and toast waited.
It felt so strange having more in her cabinets than a dusty, ten-month-old packet of NinNin Instant Noodles.
Dorian stood at the edge of the roof, arms folded, as if he had been watching the sunrise and just kept staring in the same direction after it had come up. The wind howled, though his hair did not move. At the sound of the door opening, he turned. Kirsten staggered as soon as the wind hit her, gathering her hair into a clip as she forced her way through the gale to the car.
When the door whumped shut, she gasped, enjoying the stillness. “Feeling better?”
He materialized out of the passenger seat. “Quite. The thing with the stunrod was rather enjoyable, aside from the problem of you having to bleed to make it work.”
Kirsten shivered and brought the car online. “Well, I seem to be getting a lot of practice lately.”
“You should have shot the man aiming a weapon at you.” He shook his head. “I understand what you wanted to do, but a dead cop can’t save anyone. Prioritize threats, react tactically.”
The car leapt into the air, making her grunt. “There was a little girl in the car behind them, I didn’t even think about the guy shooting at me.”
“Careful, K. Thinking you’d rather die than live with the guilt of wondering if you could have reacted faster, done something different”―he looked her in the eye―“might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Kirsten picked at the comm panel for a moment in silence.
Dorian held a hand over her arm. “Evan’s different. Every mother should be willing to die for their child.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. She wanted to say she could not value one child’s life more than another’s, but could not verbalize it when she thought about Evan’s face.
“Wren?” Captain Eze’s head shimmered in over the console. “Am I interrupting?”
“No, sir.” She shook off her emotion and straightened up. “Sorry, I meant to call in… was just caught in a conversation.”
Eze glanced at the empty passenger seat, then back to her. “Spirit?”
She nodded.
“There was an attack at the Lyris Corporation building last night, several fatalities.” Two panels opened, one on either side of his head, with security video. “The attackers walked through gunfire as though it wasn’t there.”
“Combat synthetics?” She blinked as Seneschal and Icarus walked into view on the left screen. “How… They’re on camera, how is that possible?”
“There’s been photographic evidence of spirits for centuries,” said Dorian.
She leaned close to the screen. “Yeah, but they look real, not like ghosts.”
“You know them?” Eze’s right eyebrow crept upward.
“It’s related to the blackout trail, I think. Abyssals. Those men are dead.”
Captain Eze glanced about as if searching the archives of his memory for meaning. His face took on a grim stare after a few seconds. “You had better get over there soon.”
“On my way, sir.”
Kirsten punched in a NavMap pin for the Lyris building and spent the ride peeking at the security vids on loop. The two abyssals had, it seemed, taken on solid form and marched straight into the lobby. When security attempted to stop them, Seneschal shot them. She cringed at the confirmation of her fear from the PubTran platform; their bullets could hurt living people. Other camera views spliced in as they moved deeper into the facility. Seneschal took the lead, shooting anyone who dared show themselves in the hallway. Icarus watched the rear, firing on a few security guards attempting to chase.
Bullets passed through them, dots of light winking as the slugs hit without effect. A second after the shot, their clothing mended as if nothing happened. Halfway through the feed, the Lyris guards got the hint and disengaged, fleeing in terror. Lights flickered and died as the abyssals went past, employees cowered under desks and in closets. Finally, they arrived at an office that appeared to be their objective. Seneschal kicked in the door, vanishing out of sight of any cam. Kirsten stopped play, backed up a dozen frames, and traced a square with her finger through the terminal. A tug at the corners of the glowing box magnified the image of a nameplate.
Greyson Kendrick
Director, Issue Resolution and Problem Management.
Kirsten leaned back, wiped her face with both hands, and resumed active control of the patrol craft. “I guess he had a labor dispute with his boss.”
Dorian chuckled. “Not much of a retirement option, I bet.”
A minor course adjustment brought the nose of the car around to point at the Lyris corporate campus. The main building stood 106 stories tall, flanked on either side by a ninety-story sub tower. Curved arches connected them, giving the trio the appearance of a central building hugging its siblings close. All three gleamed in the early morning sun, slabs of mirror against the sky. She circled, looking for the telltale flashing yellow that identified an entrance for hovercar parking. On the back of the left tower, a heavy armored door occupied a space three car-widths across at the center of four rotating warning lights. Kirsten pulled up, front bumper two feet from the door, and looked around for some way to open it.
An orb droid the size of a basketball floated up to the driver window.
“Open the door, please. Agent Wren, Division 0. I’m here in regards to the shooting last night.”
Lens covered the majority of the orb’s face, trails of distant reflected ad-bots crawled over the curvature. Amethyst light glowed from deep within its core, oscillating brightness in time with a placid voice. “No employee identification detected. Entry to the Lyris Corporation employee parking area is restricted to Lyris Corpora
tion employees. Please clear the area.”
Why do they have to program these things to sound so damn arrogant? “That’s because I’m not an employee. I’m with the police.”
“Please stand by.”
Kirsten scowled at the fluttering purple light. Absent of any emotion, the voice taunted her with a blasé attitude, indifferent to five people dying here less than eight hours ago.
“I am sorry, miss. The police have already investigated the scene. I cannot”―the orb shuddered, the inner light turned orange―“I’m so sorry, Agent Wren,” said a different voice. Natural, human sounding. “Stupid automatic programs, one moment please.”
The yellow lights around the door spun faster and a few red ones came on. Seconds later, the massive portal split into four segments, each sliding into one of the corners. Kirsten nosed the car through the gap before they had opened all the way. The orb followed as the same human voice shouted over the hydraulic whine of the multi-ton door.
“Please follow me. Use the emergency parking area.”
It zipped ahead, over the hood, and zoomed down a lane between rows of parked cars. Other droids lazed about through the air, occasionally cleaning a windshield or collecting a discarded cup.
“Free car wash while you work, nice place.” Dorian looked out the window on his side as a shoebox-sized robot sprayed foam over the front of a parked car.
Kirsten navigated the columns, chasing the little sphere until it came to a halt amid a section of plastisteel floor covered in crisscrossing reflective yellow paint. The way it wobbled made her imagine it waving “over here” with an arm it did not have.
“So sorry again for the bother; they skimped on the sentry programs.” The orb floated over to her as she got out.
“I keep getting the feeling corporations think they’re above the law. Haven’t been getting a lot of respect lately.” Kirsten wanted to slam the gull-wing door, but the pneumatics absorbed her anger.
“Please understand, it was a program error. I’m David Ling, head of security. I took over this bot as soon as I became aware of what was going on. Please follow it; I’ll meet you in person at the desk.”
The orb’s inner light returned to violet. She wondered if that meant it would be annoying again. It did not speak; only rotated in place and floated off at the pace of a brisk walk. Kirsten followed it over a small curb, to a glass-walled elevator large enough to hold forty people. Motors at each of the eight corners hauled it along four metal tracks through an exposed central shaft. She got a pleasant view of offices arranged around the open middle, plants everywhere. Artificial birds swooped and darted through hazy rays of sunlight pumped in through fiberoptic lines from the outside to feed the plants.
Dorian whistled. “Is this an office or a mall?”
The elevator stopped, having descended only four floors. The orb hung a left as it exited the cab and went for a wide opening with an inclined motorized floor. As soon as she entered, Kirsten realized this was the inside of the large inter-building archway. People glanced at her, as many checking out the gun on her hip as did her figure. One or two recognized the significance of the black and speed-walked away. She continued to walk rather than let the moving sidewalk do the work, and passed through the uphill archway in under a minute. The orb lingered at the end, having cleared the passage in a few seconds. As she neared, it drifted off to the right.
Another elevator took her to the ground floor of the main tower, past dozens of floors of plants, rerouted daylight, and somber employees. When it stopped, the familiar yellow glow of holographic police warning strips came into view at the end of a hallway to the right. She paused, staring through the glass wall of the elevator at Division 2 techs checking out a bloody trail through the grey carpet.
“Officer?”
She looked ahead; the orb had not waited for her and had to double back to let her catch up. Strange how even corporate robots seem impatient. It led her away from the investigation scene, north instead of east, and stopped by a large black reception desk in the security section. The man waiting for her appeared to be Chinese, possibly early thirties. His plain black suit looked unassuming, not at all as pretentious as she had expected from the VP of internal security.
“David Ling?” she asked, extending a hand.
“Ah, Agent Wren, so nice to meet you face to face.” The voice matched the orange light.
“I trust you understand why I’m here, as opposed to the other officers?”
He paused, measuring his response with a sideways glance at the receptionists. Hand extended, he took a step. “Please, this way.”
She followed him to an office at the corner of the next hallway that was, except for the floor and ceiling, a cube of glass. Holograms of Chinese art, watercolor on paper, shimmered an inch off the transparent walls. The small, egg-sized projectors responsible for them were unobtrusive, almost invisible behind the false floating paper. A few swords and a pair of bo staves hung on pegs. Dorian looked around, shaking his head.
“Hard to do naughty things with the secretary in an office with glass walls.”
Kirsten shot him a look.
David Ling turned to face her, wearing a serious expression. “I do, Agent Wren. I spent an hour this morning talking to Greyson Kendrick.”
He doesn’t feel psionic. “Do you normally see ghosts?”
Dorian took a step as if to punch him; Mr. Ling did not react. “I’d say no.”
David shook his head. “Not usually. I had arrived early as I do every day, so I can hit the gym before I start work. I’d just returned to my office and settled into my morning meditation. Just as I grounded myself, I heard him talking.”
“Fascinating.”
“The mind is a powerful tool if you know how to wield it.” Mr. Ling offered a slight bow. “I have been told you are able to see spirits with much less effort involved. Mr. Kendrick was quite insistent something terrible was afoot and wanted me to do something. Unfortunately, the shock of hearing him broke me out of my state and I”―he chuckled in a whispery rasp―“must admit to being a little too rattled to try again.”
Kirsten glanced around, seeing only Dorian in terms of ghosts. “He’s not here now. I recognized the two men who attacked from another case I am working on. Can you tell me what, if any, relationship Dalton Chen or Michael Corley had with Mr. Kendrick?”
“He was their immediate supervisor. Well, Mr. Chen reported to Mr. Kendrick. Corley and the Moriyama girl were direct reports of Mr. Chen.”
“Mr. Ling, I apologize if I’m being too blunt here, but we both know Seneschal was the lead on a problem resolution team. I usually take that particular euphemism to mean assassins. They were sent to kill someone, weren’t they?”
“I cannot comment on that.” Mr. Ling walked around his desk and fell into the seat, elbow propped on the edge, fingers over his mouth.
She squinted at the worried look he sent at the window. “No, I’m not going spelunking into your head. Unless you’re killing innocent people, I don’t have jurisdiction on corporate espionage.”
“Liar,” taunted Dorian.
Mr. Ling folded his hands in his lap. “Door, close.”
A soft rush of air behind her.
“Greyson was Seneschal’s ‘handler.’ He was responsible for giving him tasks. They were not always assassinations, Agent Wren. Most of the time he rescued abducted employees overseas, or retrieved stolen property, or facilitated the extraction of defecting talent.”
“But he was sent to assassinate Vikram Medhi?”
The name flashed with immediate recognition on David Ling’s face.
She raised both eyebrows at his look of shock. “You seem surprised. We’ve already established I can see ghosts. I met Mr. Medhi at the PubTran station a few nights ago, as what was left of Seneschal and his team tried to kill him… again.”
Ling thrummed his fingers on the desk. Kirsten had seen that face before, the desperate want to disbelieve what he was hearing despite h
aving seen or heard enough to have doubts.
“Anything at all you can tell me might help. I have a feeling Seneschal might have come back for revenge on Greyson for getting him killed.”
“Is that typical? He’s only been dead a short while. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. Hauntings are usually… umm…” Ling waved his hand as if searching for what to say.
“You’re right; most hauntings are far more subtle. Seneschal has become something more than just a simple haunt, and I’m trying to understand what and how. Please, what do you know?”
“Vikram Medhi had been employed, on the side, by Lyris Corporation for several electronic infiltration operations. While he was working for us, he decided to help himself to confidential data belonging to Lyris in violation of our trust. Mr. Medhi then attempted to use said information to extort twice the agreed upon fee in exchange for not selling it to our competitors.”
Dorian shook his head. “Translation: Medhi got some dirt on Lyris and wanted to go to the Newsnet with it.”
“So, rather than pay the blackmail to buy his silence, they sent Seneschal’s team to silence him for good.”
Ling touched his fingertips together. “That would be illegal, would it not? The team was sent to get the data back.”
Kirsten frowned. “It’s a little late to sugarcoat it. Doesn’t much matter what their orders were now. The man who ordered the hit, Greyson I assume, as well as the people who killed Vikram are already dead. There’s nothing to prosecute. A surviving relative might sue the corporation, but you’re lucky; he doesn’t have any.”
David offered a mute nod.
“I doubt they’ll be back; they got what they came for.”
An older Caucasian man in a black suit, as pretentious as she had expected David’s to be, walked in through the glass interior wall. From neck to crotch he was a bloody mess. At least two dozen finger-sized holes, and several larger ones, offered a view clear through him. Kirsten adjusted her stance to face him.
Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis Page 15
