Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis

by Matthew S. Cox

  “The case walked up to me in a pair of torn jeans and a stolen shirt. I think he was fourteen. Saw the uniform, didn’t understand what kind of cop I was. Said some creepy man was following him. I checked it out. Kid thought he was being stalked by a perv, so I peeked into the bastard’s head and saw what he really wanted to do to the boy.” Dorian’s glare hardened, perhaps the same expression he had on when he killed Kevin Baxter. “I explained it to Captain Lee, was totally honest with her. They wrote it off as the suspect pulling a weapon on me. Hey, the boy’s alive still.”

  “I’m sorry you had to do that. Do I even want to know what the fourth one did?”

  Dorian’s eyes froze over with a thousand-yard stare. “Shani.”

  Kirsten covered a gasp; only one thought came to mind of what someone might have done to her to warrant execution. “Oh, no…”

  A spectral tear glimmered at the corner of his right eye as his head turned. “No. I killed the son of a bitch that attacked Nila seven years ago.”

  van whined into the pillow before his right eye peeled open. He rolled over, his one usable peeper narrowing at the clock. He closed it again, letting out a heavy sigh. Hands balled into fists, his face contorted as he stretched, arching his back with a tiny grunt of displeasure at no longer being asleep. When the post-stretch paralysis faded, he sat up and pulled the sheets off his legs. For some minutes, half-closed eyes stared at his toes through a curtain of sand-colored hair.

  His brain at last registered the chill of the room in his feet and he loosed a disgruntled moan of protest and got up. With one hand pressed to the side of his face, he staggered into the kitchenette, grabbing a chair as he passed, and dragged it to the counter. One hand hiked his pajama bottoms up as he crawled atop the impromptu stepladder and stared at his blurry reflection swaying side to side in the gloss black door of the food reassembler. A real pointing finger stretched forward until it touched its illusory clone, and the device beeped. Evan tottered forward, forehead against cold glass, napping for ten seconds on his feet while the machine worked. When it beeped, he snapped his head up and stared at the offending machine as if he forgot why it just made noise.

  Remembering where he was, he pulled the door open and seized a mug of coffee in a two-handed grip. Holding it under his nose, he took a great breath of its scent and let his eyes close. After two slurps of the too-hot-to-chug liquid, he set the cup on the counter and climbed up next to it. Balancing on his knees, he reached into the cabinet for a bowl and lowered himself back to his unsteady perch. After a few more beeps from the ̓sem, not to mention a sip of coffee or four, he moved to take a seat at the table, merrily munching cereal and sipping coffee.

  He squirmed, kicking his feet back and forth, sending an annoyed glare at the bathroom door and the continuous thrum of the autoshower. With a whimper, he squeezed his legs tighter and focused on breakfast. When the machine noise fell silent, he looked up with a wide grin and bounded out of the chair.

  The bathroom door slid open and Kirsten emerged in a white robe. The sight of her stopped him in his tracks; head cocked, he blinked up at her.

  “Why are you red?”

  He tilted his head to the other side as she made a strange noise and the color in her cheeks darkened.

  “Uhh.” Her voice quivered. “The water was too hot.”

  Not having the patience to delay the urgency keeping him bouncing, he ran past her into the bathroom.

  Kirsten took advantage of the closed door to fling off the bathrobe and wriggle into her just-cleaned uniform. Evan draped against the doorframe with a stupid grin of relief, just as she secured the last strap on her boots. He ran into a hug; she picked him off his feet and fell back onto the comforgel pad with him sitting on her gut.

  “Coffee?”

  “You said my face needed coffee.” He shrugged. “So I made it.”

  “You’re too little for coffee.” She rolled left, landing him on the bed with a gelatinous splat, and tickling him into a giggling fit. “I meant you had a face that looked like a person in dire need of coffee.”

  As his gasping laughter subsided, he stuck his tongue out. “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is you’re nine. We can talk about coffee again when you’re closer to twelve… or sixteen.”

  “Aww, but I like it.”

  Maybe he is mine. She ruffled his hair. “Did you finish your cereal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, get cleaned up and dressed.”

  He gathered clothes and disappeared into the bathroom. The autoshower whirred to life as Kirsten stretched out on the bed, trying to resist the lure of sleep as she gazed at ceiling tiles. Arms stretched to the sides, she lay quiet; the intensity of her grin followed Evan’s re-enactment of his favorite holovid wizard.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to say this.” She exhaled and swallowed an ounce of disgust at her mother. “If there is anything up there, please watch over him.”

  Dorian peered into the back seat for a few seconds before making a quizzical look with his thumb pointed over his shoulder. “What happened to Vikram?”

  Kirsten let go of both sticks long enough to throw her hands up in the air. “He’s a damned idiot.” She guided the patrol craft out of the parking deck, shifted to hover mode, and climbed. “While you were scoping out the hotel, Icarus decided to pay us a visit.”

  He got paler.

  “Relax. I had it handled.” On a gentle ascent, she poked at the NavMap console and programmed a route to the Local Regional Tech Center. As it chirped acknowledgement, she stared in silence at the car in front of them. “He knew.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. According to legend, demons can sense a person’s deepest fears. When they try to use your mother against you―”

  “No, not about Mother; Icarus knew I seem to be able to call Harbingers.” She absentmindedly flicked her thumbnail over the button on the stick. “He wanted me to… wanted to surrender.”

  “Probably trying to fool you into lowering your guard.”

  “Vikram said the same thing, right before he went completely nuts.” The navigation system chimed warning of an upcoming turn. “I believed Icarus, he seemed genuine. Vikram wouldn’t stop… I had to smack him.”

  Dorian laughed. “You, eh… got rid of him?”

  After they rolled level on the other side of a left turn, she exhaled. “No, I didn’t hit him that hard, just enough to get his attention. He ran off. Icarus, too.”

  “Great. So much for hacker on a hook. What does the LRTC have to do with this?”

  Kirsten rolled out of the hover lane, diving towards the blinding white sprawl of the Division 2 Regional Tech Center. From the air, the building resembled an asterisk, the roof studded with various antennas and satellite relays, as well as an enormous transmitter dish at the center, capable of linking with Mars.

  “I want their help finding Vikram again.”

  “How would they possibly help you find a ghost?”

  Kirsten winked, aiming for an open parking space on the southwest arm. “Never underestimate the power of a geek on a mission.”

  An elevator and two pale grey hallways later, her mood was in step with the dark cloud following just behind and above her. Just like the last time she stopped at a tech center, word got around within seconds of her landing that a Zero was in the building. People peeked around corners and out of cubes, as if curious about a wild tiger roaming their hallways; wanting to see it, but terrified of attracting notice.

  Sheets of light, about the size of a piece of standard paper, extended from silver strips mounted to the wall at each corner. Holographic signs contained lime green letters and directional arrows guiding her through the maze of corridors toward the network operations team. A swipe of her ID beeped the door open, allowing her in to a dim room filled with the glow of three dozen terminal screens and about eleven people. Each desk had a spider-like mounting rail with numerous panes of light looming over the operator
, a wall of information threatening to engulf them. Most appeared to be sleeping; the wires running from just behind the ear into their systems told her they were engrossed in cyberspace.

  Dorian whistled, surveying what appeared to be naptime. “This looks to be a cushy job. I wonder how many of them fake working to catch a few zees.”

  The joke lifted her mood. She gazed from one operator to the next, skipping five limp bodies as well as two men who looked away in a panic as soon as they saw her uniform. She considered approaching a tiny, fuchsia-haired woman, until she got the glare of territorial challenge.

  “Guess she feels threatened; she’s not the prettiest girl in the room anymore.” Dorian winked.

  Kirsten had some color run to her cheeks and tried not to laugh. The last two techs not lost to the pseudo-dream of cyberspace were a slender white man in his middle twenties and an Asian fellow about the same age. The thin one frowned at her as soon as she looked at him. His immediate assumption she was an idiot because she was not a tech plastered itself all over his face. He bristled, as if expecting her to come over with some banal user question about how to change the workspace background image on her terminal.

  The last man had been staring at her since she walked in, though not in a creepy sort of way. He froze in place, half twisted in his chair, unable to peel his eyes from the silhouette of black in the doorway. When she made her decision, trotted down the three steps into the sunken tech room, and headed right at him, he whirled to face his terminal. His fumbling attempts to appear to be in the middle of something struck her as cute.

  “Are you busy?” She leaned over his shoulder to look at his chest. “Tech Chang?”

  “Sam,” he blurted. Amid his confusion, his right hand flipped like a drunken moth between offering a handshake and a salute. “It’s actually Samuel, but people I work with call me Sammy. Only my parents call me Samuel, but only when they’re upset. Usually it’s just Sam. Technical Lieutenant Saunders calls me Chang.”

  Dorian turned, snickering.

  “Hi, Sam.” She returned his clumsy salute, and pulled over a chair. “I need a little help with a case.”

  He grinned; a little color appeared in his cheeks as his roundish face glowed. “What do you need, Agent?”

  “I’m trying to find a dead man. He used to be a deck cowboy, and I need to find his ghost before something horrible happens. I was hoping you could use this IPv12 address and maybe come up with a list of places he used to log in from so I have some kind of idea where to start looking.”

  The thin guy, having expected some idiotic stupid-user question, guffawed at the mention of ghost, and went back to his terminals. Dorian wandered over, concentrated, and typed “boo” on his command line. He swatted the holographic keyboard to delete it. Dorian retyped it.

  “Okay, you are quite unamusing whoever you are,” he announced, beginning to go through different screens with feverish determination. “I will find you.”

  Thirty seconds later, Kirsten finished giving Sam all the data about Vikram’s deck and the angry tech two desks over stared ashen at his screen. Kirsten sat with her chin in her hand and elbow on her knee, huddled close to Sam, staring at the same monitor.

  “I’m standing right behind you” appeared on the command line.

  The thin tech stormed over to Kirsten, halting with a heavy stomp and a finger pointed back at the screen. “Are you doing things to my head or my computer?”

  She did not look up. “No, that’s my partner, Dorian, messing with you. He’s a ghost.”

  “You don’t honestly―”

  The simmering tirade ended as Dorian tapped him on the shoulder. Stiff as a toy soldier, he pivoted in place and marched out of the room.

  “I’m gonna get yelled at, you know,” said Kirsten, shaking her head.

  “You can’t tell me it wasn’t funny.” Dorian laughed at the abandoned workstation. “Oh, he forgot to lock his station. That’s a violation of security protocols.”

  All six screens went dark. After hearing Kirsten claim a ghost present, the sudden shutdown of an abandoned workstation sent everyone but Sam ducking behind desk partitions.

  Text flashed by on one of Sam’s terminals, images appeared one after the next on the panel above it. Citycam stills of various points where logins occurred. Sam turned to say something, noticing she was close enough to be touching shoulders with him. He froze, gob smacked.

  She let her head swivel to the right, a stone perched in her palm. “What? Did you find something?”

  All he seemed able to do was muster a dopey smile.

  “Sam?”

  He blinked. “Uhh, yeah. I, umm.” Blushing, he sat up straight and sent an indicative wave at the screen of text. “Got a few hits on the IPv12, physical locations where your guy logged in. The log files tell me this deck signature is associated with the net-handle Dvandva93.”

  “Only five places. Well, that shouldn’t be too bad to check.”

  Sam fell into staring at her eyes again. She straightened; he tracked her face as it rose from the palm of her hand. An amused curl settled into the corner of her mouth.

  “Thank you, Sam. It’s nice to get real help for a change. Whenever I come here I feel like the psionic exhibit at the zoo.”

  He took her right arm in both hands, precipitating an awkward fumble from two-handed grip around her wrist to a normal handshake, only it continued for well past the standard customary duration.

  Beep.

  Sam froze for an instant and dropped her hand as if it burned him, sensing his rudeness. A third terminal screen lit up with a citycam view of a coastal warehouse, drifting patches of fog, and broken windows. Just below it, a flashing line went between red text and block highlight.

  “What’s that?” She leaned in for a closer look.

  He turned toward her, finding her cheek less than twelve inches away from his face. His breath made her eyelids flutter, and her gaze flicked from the screen to him.

  “Sam?”

  “Sorry.” He turned as red as a stimpak. “Someone must have taken the deck, or maybe spoofed the IPv12. It is showing as active right now.” He pointed at the image of the decaying warehouse. “Someone in this building is using it as we speak.”

  “Sector 1405.” She frowned. “Grey zone.”

  The chill presence of Dorian’s hands landed on her shoulders as if trying to give her a reassuring rub. “After 187, this should be a walk in the park.”

  “Think Carter will help out this time?”

  “Chasing ghosts? Doubtful.”

  “Who’s Carter?” Sam tilted his head. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Div 9, and no. Ghost, remember?”

  “Anything thing else I can do for you?” Samuel Chang flashed a hopeful grin.

  Kirsten stood, shaking his hand again. “I’m not sure, to be honest. I’ll know more after I check out the warehouse. My best chance is to get over there before they log out.”

  “No problem.” He deflated onto his desk.

  On the elevator back to the roof, she caved in to Dorian’s unceasing glare. “What? Why have you been staring at me like that?”

  Dorian folded his arms, breaking eye contact. “If you need me to point it out, then maybe I shouldn’t bother.”

  “Oh, Sam?” She shrugged. “He’s just, I dunno… It’s just a techie crush on a female who actually spoke to him.”

  “Not up to your standards?” Dorian lifted an eyebrow. “He’s not exactly a cover model for a trashy romance.”

  It was Kirsten’s turn to become red in the face. “No… I want sincerity. He’s just enamored. Any girl that gives him more than two seconds of conversation probably gets the same reaction.”

  Dorian tapped the side of his head. “Did you peek?”

  “No.” Kirsten emerged from the elevator into a brisk, cold wind howling among the parked hovercars on the roof. A gust almost stole her hair clip.

  “So you don’t know what was on his mind.”


  Distant orange warning lights came on at the end of the southwest wing, flashing around an elevated landing pad intended for larger VTOL craft. Off in the smog, the sound of engines got louder.

  “I can guess what was on his mind.” She pulled the patrol craft door up. “I can’t think about this now; Vikram might be possessing his old deck.”

  “Bet that’s his focus,” said Dorian.

  “Makes sense.” She fell into the seat and pulled the door closed.

  ive blue boxes at the center of a black terminal screen cycled through various shades from cyan to indigo, creating an effect of a rightward moving pulse. Kirsten tapped her fingers on the control sticks, waiting. After ten passes, it stopped, and Nicole’s face appeared in a 2D panel.

  “Hi, whoever you are,” she chirped. “It’s Friday and I’m burning vacation days. By the time you hear this message I’m going to be exploring the historic First Colony on Mars with Edd―”

  Kirsten killed the comm, and tapped a few more buttons.

  “What about Morelli?”

  She grumbled. “Sarcasm much? He’ll make up an excuse. Even if he does fail to talk his way out of helping me, he’d be neurotic and useless. To him, I’m just a lesser shade of Commander Ashford, and now that you scared his pants brown…”

  “You could request a Division 1 escort?”

  “To chase a ghost?” She blew air through her teeth, flipping her NetMini over in her hand. “They’d never go for it.”

  “Are you sure everything’s okay? It’s odd watching you look for help to do anything.” He winked.

  Templeton’s contact info appeared on the little screen.

  “Oh, now I understand.” He watched ad-bots sail by on the right. “You’re just trying to turn it into a date.”

  “No, that’s not it at all. I’m… I don’t want to get killed now that I have Evan to look after.”

  “Even if you do, you could still watch him. He can see ghosts.”

  The car picked up another forty miles per hour. “That’s not even funny.” Kirsten slipped the device back into her pocket and paid full attention to the hover lane. “You’re right, he wouldn’t even be interested. Got ten years on me and… probably looks at me as if I’m a little girl playing dress-up as a cop.”