Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis

by Matthew S. Cox

  “I thought the demon got you. You freaked and started screaming and yelling my name.”

  Kirsten held him tight. “It was just a bad dream… just a bad dream.”

  Who am I trying to comfort?

  “Mom?”

  She did not let go. “Hmm?”

  “Did you have another bad day? You’re all squeezy again.”

  Kirsten cracked up laughing and carried him back to bed.

  egardless of how long she stared at the terminal, the citycam system refused to commit to spontaneous generation of another sweeping power anomaly. As if the dream had not been bad enough, her feelings of impending doom grew with an exponential leap when she got the vid mail from Danita Reed confirming an evaluation meeting with Evan and a staff psychiatrist. Her panic spiked, and then faded when she realized Danita had scheduled it two weeks ago.

  Kirsten could not focus on the map and let her head follow her arms to the desk. It’s just procedure… They have to let me keep him; I’m the only one on the West Coast who can teach him. I’m not nuts. Okay, I am a little young to be a mother, but…

  “Hey.”

  With a shriek, Kirsten spun to the left and clipped a cup of coffee with her elbow. The beverage sailed into space, slowed, and hung in place. A stream of brown liquid glistened in midair as if in zero gravity. Hand over her chest, Kirsten’s shocked panting became an annoyed glare at Nicole for sneaking up on her yet again.

  The redhead’s eyebrows wiggled about, evidence of the massive amount of concentration necessary to use telekinesis on a formless liquid. Mesmerized by the undulating ribbon of wakefulness, Kirsten remained quiet until it was back inside the cup and on her desk.

  “You okay?” Nicole flopped into her seat. “What’s wrong, you look like your cat died again.”

  “I don’t have a cat. How was Mars?”

  Nicole smiled, kicking her boot off the floor to set her chair spinning. “The shuttle food sucked so much, made the café here look like… uhh, bad.”

  “I’m worried about losing Evan.”

  Squeak. Nicole put her boot down to stop the spin. “Why would you be? You two are so cute together.”

  “I’m probably just―”

  “The hotel had these amazing little bath―”

  “―being paranoid. Demons might influence―”

  “―beads. I wouldn’t worry too much, you were perfectly justified―”

  “―the caseworker.” Kirsten sighed, and leaned her head in her hand to wait for Nicole’s energy to fade out.

  “―in taking him out of that home. They locked him in a room, that asshole you lobotomized beat him. Oh, I hope you’re okay with hazelnut; it’s all the corner place had left. So dusty up there, ya know? Like nothing but red rocks and dirt, and mines; the virtual beach in the hotel was lame, could do that here. Hey wait, did you say demon?”

  Nicole stopped with a dumfounded look and wide eyes.

  Wow, not one word about what’s-his-name. Either things must’ve gone south, or she’s trying to be nice. Kirsten gave her the short version; leaving out the neurotic nightmare.

  “I heard three marks means it’s a demon.” Nicole scratched the air as if using claws.

  A weak laugh drowned in a long sip of coffee. “Hazelnut’s fine. Coffee is coffee as long as it is not decaf. That’s a crime against nature. So yeah, once again, I feel as if all I can do is just sit here and wait for someone else to get hurt. Dorian doesn’t think attachments persist after a spirit turns into whatever they are now.”

  Boots lifted, Nicole gave her chair a telekinetic shove. When she was close enough, she patted Kirsten on the back. “Hey, cheer up. You’ll find a way to―hey, I heard you put the car through the wall of a church? I know you’re not a big fan of priests, but isn’t that a bit much?”

  Kirsten clutched the coffee with both hands, elbows resting on her legs. “I didn’t drive into the wall. That was Evan, saving my life. I already told you the reason everyone else had problems with the car was Dorian possessing it. He had some anger issues to work out.”

  “Oh. Was it damaged much? Hey, check out these little Mars earrings.” Nicole turned, showing off marble-sized Mars replicas hanging on either side of her head.

  I’m surprised they’re not being blown out to either side. “No, the little bugger hit the window pretty clean; armor made up for the error. Cute, they go with your hair. Nice and big for a perp to get a hold of and tear out.”

  “Is Dorian here? I don’t feel the usual creepy vibe from his desk.” Nicole squealed, clamping her hands over them. “I’m not gonna wear them on duty.”

  “He’s resting, and you already are on”―the desk terminal beeped―“duty. Hang on.”

  Samuel Chang appeared, in hologram, as Kirsten poked the button. His look of confused determination melted away to a silly grin as his face shimmered with her illusory image on the other side.

  “Hi, Sam…”

  Nicole flashed a coy smile.

  He’s just a tech, Kirsten projected the words into Nicole’s head.

  Sorry, I thought you might’ve found some―who’s Konstantin?

  Kirsten flushed crimson. Not now. Please, just not now. “What’s up, Sam?”

  Nicole shrugged and kicked off from the side of Kirsten’s desk, rolling back to her own.

  “I kept looking around for a better triangulation of the IPv12 you gave me. I got another active hit. Your boy seems to be logged in right now. I got a signal trace coming from Sector 848.”

  She almost sprayed coffee. “Sector 848? Tell me it’s not #1998 City Road 130?”

  “Wow, you really are psychic.”

  Kirsten leapt to her feet. “Thanks, Sam. I owe you one.”

  “Maybe lunch sometime?” Hope seeped through his smile.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Sam blinked. “Really? Where do you―”

  “Gotta run, Sam.” Kirsten shut down the terminal and rounded the desk.

  “Need a hand?” Nicole glanced up. A red light wailed behind her. “Never mind.”

  “No, Nikki. Not sure you’ll help much here and… you’ll see stuff you don’t wanna see.” They’ll probably wind up making you turn on me.

  Driving alone felt wrong. Kirsten kept peeking at the empty passenger seat. Dorian had taken quite a beating in front of the church, sure to the point of being vulnerable to Harbingers―but none came for him. That calmed her somewhat, bringing up the question of justifiable homicide all over again. However, she did not have the time or the inclination to ponder such things.

  Vikram’s cyberspace deck, the one N0ra acquired, got left behind at the warehouse. According to the reports, six security personnel died in the chaos. Lorelei, the drug-boosted goth faerie, had taken a bullet right in the gut and didn’t even notice. Probably would be dead now if not for N0ra running and Kirsten calling it in. The deck, as far as she knew, now sat in the Division 0 evidence room. If Vikram’s digital fingerprint emanated from the blasted out building, it meant one of two things.

  Either he was attempting to influence cyberspace directly, or it was a message sent to lure Kirsten there. The second option seemed the more likely, and all the more terrifying because she went there anyway. She pushed the hovercar to the limit of her skill to control it, approaching Sector 848 within a few minutes.

  Silvery glass gleamed up ahead, except for where the bomb had scarred a ring of black around it. One entire floor was devoid of windows, with an interior dark as though the sun could not breach it. Kirsten nudged forward on the left stick, adding a vertical drop to the patrol craft’s forward motion. Leveling off with the thirteenth floor, she circled about once and eased the vehicle right in through dangling strips of aluminum window framing.

  She ignored the sound of scratching metal as the ground wheels folded down, and guided in for a gentle landing. Leaving the car on, she pushed at the door, nerves keeping her in the seat until the motorized thing clunked to a halt at full open. Kirsten ran a hand over the shee
r fabric of her I-Ops uniform. I miss the armor.

  Her boots crunched on small bits of charred debris as she navigated the shredded remains of a former apartment level. Burned fragments of furniture, the frame of a file cabinet, computer bits, lightpens embedded like arrows in a column, and trash; all lay wherever the detonation dropped them. A glint caught her eye and she crouched by a pile of ashes. Picking at a fragment of gold, Kirsten drew a jade earring out of the debris, a flat square carved with a Japanese character. The image of Mariko’s twisted and demonic face came to mind, melting back how she may have looked before. Her thumb brushed ash out of the grooves in the kanji.

  “Rotten end to a miserable life. For what it’s worth, Mariko, I’m sorry.”

  She tucked the earring into her pocket, not sure what to do with it. Dropping it felt wrong, keeping it felt wrong, and as far as Kirsten knew, the woman had no known relatives. Maybe David Ling will know where to send it. Standing, she took her E-90 out, turned it on, and prowled.

  Aside from the oddity of it appearing to be midnight in here, nothing seemed out of place. Just shy of the spot where the silver circle was drawn, the faint sound of a crying child wafted through the air. The second time she heard it, it stole her breath.

  Shani.

  Kirsten sprinted around the column and vaulted a mangled steel desk. The circle glittered as if in moonlight, despite it not even been noon yet. Kirsten spun in place, listening to graveyard silence. Oh, no, they couldn’t get to Evan through the blockade. How did they know?

  “Shani?”

  Another distant, muffled sob.

  She ran toward the noise, climbing through a thick debris pile by a bank of elevator shafts that weathered the explosion with only minor denting. Behind them, a tangle of drywall, Epoxil planks, and other debris had collected like sand against the pilings of a dock. There was no trace of a girl, a ghost, or anything but the unnatural dark. Kirsten leaned on an exposed metal stud in what used to be a wall to catch her breath, unnerved at how the city outside appeared to be in the throes of midnight.

  A few minutes later, she paced around the circle and became aware of the sense of energy shifting through her body. It was faint, similar to the feeling of sliding your palms over each other a quarter inch apart. There’s something here. I feel it. A breach? I don’t see anything. Memories of her flight to the Intera tower came back, those strange dark spots in the landscape below. She put the laser away, and walked backwards to the only intact desk on the entire floor. After taking a seat on the ground with her back against the metal, Kirsten closed her eyes and tried to calm down.

  She focused on the sense of her own energy within her flesh, isolating it, empowering it, and willing it out into the world. Like leaving a warm bed on a cold morning, the chill of the astral realm embraced the figure of amber light rising out of her body. Vague lines hinted at her curves, her form seemingly nude yet without explicit detail; a being of pure light. No sooner had she departed from her flesh than the great rushing sound of a waterfall overwhelmed her.

  At the center of the silver circle, an oval of ebon hung gaping. Violent swirls of silver energy roiled at the edges, the heart of it complete black. The deafening noise emanated from it, deep and thunderous, growing louder as she floated closer.

  The portal neither drew her in nor pushed her away, though it appeared to be devouring the environment. Despite the violent roiling energy about it, it seemed closed. White flames licked at the writing on the ground, evidence of infused power of some form she had not yet seen. She drifted sideways, following the circle but too afraid to cross it.

  “This is how they got in… This must be a gate.” Kirsten raised a glowing arm, fingers splayed. “I wonder if I could close it.”

  She hovered in an angel’s pose, hands folded to her chest, feet together, head tilted forward. Her mind reached out, grasping for any sense of feeling. It did not take her long to connect with the energy permeating the distortion in space. It possessed a feeling similar to the asylum door; only this was far more potent and much darker. Her power wrapped about it and she strained. The sense of cold came on, as if her naked body had embraced a slab of onyx. Kirsten struggled as if trying to move an object she was strong enough to lift but was too cumbersome to allow a good grip. Evil rippled through her, making her not want to touch it.

  She pulled, twisted, pushed; a soft moan issued from her abandoned flesh as if lost in a nightmare, the sound a pale echo of the loud scream coming from her astral self. The more she struggled, the heavier it became. Kirsten stopped, opened her eyes, and glared. A sheen of white glimmered over the glassy surface.

  Of course. I’m trying to crush stone; I need to shatter it!

  Blackness billowed up from the floor around the portal, flooding the inside of the circle with a column of standing smoke. From within, a creature emerged. Nine feet tall, an elongated body of overlapping chitinous plates balanced on six long spindly legs. Six red eyes in the front end glowed, dying embers in a pit of ash. Four arms, two man-sized and two vestigial, reached for her. Kirsten shrieked, gliding backwards. A dark tendril lanced from its mouth, wrapping her astral form about the throat with the sickening feeling of a tongue so hot it burned.

  It pulled her close, grabbing her by the forearms while its tiny limbs ripped and clawed at her chest; filling her lungs with fire. She stared at the silver thread tracing through the air back to her body from between her eyes. It knows. The creature forced her arms apart, holding her so she could not reach the safety of her flesh.

  Kirsten screamed from the pain in her chest and the searing tendril around her neck. She kicked at it; the attack as useful as it would have been to kick a car trying to run her over. The tongue squeezed her throat; she flailed, terrified at the sound of her body gurgling in its sleep.

  Out of nowhere, the demon lurched forward. Dorian appeared, crashing into its back and sliding up and over its hump. He reached past its eyes to grab its tongue with both hands, letting his weight slip backwards and impale the appendage on the creature’s own transparent teeth.

  Roaring with anguish, it hurled Kirsten through the floor. She tumbled in a disorienting blur as a number of furnished apartment spaces blurred past. When she stopped, she righted herself in the middle of a cluttered living room piled high with months of unwashed laundry. Six cats fluffed up and ran, knocking things over in their haste to get away from her.

  Kirsten glanced at the ceiling, gasped for breath, and grabbed the cord. The astral form lurched upwards, colliding into her skin from below with enough force to knock her standing. Stumbling from the rapid shift from astral to mortal, she careened into a crumbling wall and held on. Dorian whirled about, riding the demon Charazu, a rodeo clown come to save the contestant. He smashed it in the side with his stunrod, the loud click of the simulated weapon on its shell echoed through the cavernous space.

  Claws extended, backward barbs along its forearm grew, and it twisted with a sharp jerk. The motion launched Dorian into the waiting hand. With a grip on both legs, it swung him overhead like a hammer, pounding him into the concrete floor. Then it picked him up and did it again. Back and forth, it slapped him between the same two spots of ground six times. Ectoplasmic smears slid through the dust with each strike; Dorian rag-dolled in its grip.

  Horror at what she witnessed paralyzed Kirsten for the better part of several seconds. This monstrosity towered over her; the top of it all but scraped the ceiling. Its shell glistened as if wet, traces of crimson tinted the material away from pure black where it was thinner.

  It exuded malice.

  Charazu leaned to the right, its three left legs lifting off the ground to add power to a swing intended to bash Dorian into the gate she could no longer see. Kirsten snapped out of her stupor, calling the lash as she ran in.

  The white stream wrapped about its legs, pulling the demon off its footing. Dorian flew out of its hand as a wild swing of its arm launched him. Six hundred pounds of shell and hatred smashed to the ground. Th
e creature loosed a gurgling roar that sounded as if it came from eight mouths at once. The mild red light in its eyes flared orange as she spun through the motion of her first swing and brought the lash straight down on top of its prone body.

  Dust exploded from the ground as the astral whip wrapped over the creature, crushing into it with the force of a massive object. Legs flailed, scrabbling for purchase as it loosed a roar so loud it shattered windows a story above them. Kirsten sagged forward, panting, trying to catch a second wind from the effort she poured into her psionic attack. Luminous orange liquid leaked from a crack in its shell, flowing watery lava that broke into a shower of sparks that hissed and skittered over the cold concrete.

  “Kirsten, help! It hurts!” Shani’s tiny voice pierced the darkness from the left, breaking into sobs.

  She whirled toward the sound. “I’m here. Where are you?”

  No answer came.

  With rage in her eyes, Kirsten raised the lash once more and faced at the ground where the demon had been. It was gone. Twenty yards away, a cloud of inky smoke receded along the floor, the center of which bore a faint resemblance to its face.

  Dorian melted through the ceiling, falling flat on his back next to her. “Well, that was certainly unique.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine.” He folded his hands over his chest, not bothering to get up. “I’m not sure what it was trying to do smashing a ghost into the floor, plus I had a wonderful nap.” He shifted his gaze to her. “Aren’t you going to chase it?”

  “No. I know how to destroy it.” Kirsten pointed at the gate. “It’ll come back when I attack the gate. I gotta find Shani first.”