Division Zero

by Matthew S. Cox

  “I love you, Dad. I’m sorry.”

  he repeating pattern in the drab, beige ceiling became an alien landscape, a three dimensional illusion of unfocused eyes and a semiconscious mind. Time lost meaning and Kirsten could not tell how long she had been lying awake. With the car on the roof, not beholden to the PubTran schedule, she could take her time getting ready. She paused by the door and inhaled, searching for any trace of her father. With a disappointed sigh, she trudged to the elevator.

  On the way to the squad room, Dorian teased her about sleep talking. Apparently, she had named her pillow Templeton. Red-faced, she turned away and fell into her chair with a hot pack of self-warming oatmeal and a hydroponic banana. She pored over the case notes while eating, finding nothing insightful. How little she could do about this ghost until he attacked again gnawed on her. Up until now, the wraiths she confronted had always raged at a particular place, usually the scene of their death, but this one struck all over the city. The crime scenes had little emotional trace evidence, which pointed to sociopathic randomness as a motive; a worst-case scenario. She leaned forward, elbow on desk and chin in hand, tapping her head with her fingers. Division 2 had been unable to turn up any connection between the malfunctioning dolls, and Division 1 had cleared a laundry list of over thirteen hundred possible suspects. In every case so far, the malfunctioning doll had been one of Intera manufacture, a fact that added ten thousand disgruntled ex-employees to the suspect pool. Kirsten scowled at the massive waste of time.

  “What’s wrong?” inquired Dorian.

  “This huge list of bullshit.” She gestured at the holo pane. “Div 1 won’t take me seriously. Why is it everyone believes in psionics, but they all laugh at the idea of ghosts?”

  “For one thing, they can see psionics.” His chair creaked back. “For another, the thought of ghosts reminds them of their own mortality. The mind seeks to distance itself from uncomfortable subjects. Did you find anything?”

  “The only thing I can say with any confidence is the next doll to kill someone will be made by Intera.”

  Millions of Intera dolls dwelled in the West City alone, never mind the ones on the other coast or on Mars. Kirsten closed her eyes, finding herself wanting to ask for help from the Aether. By the time she remembered her half-eaten oatmeal, it had already congealed back into a slimy mass of OmniSoy.

  “How’d the date go last week?” Nicole drifted over and sat down on a chair that rolled in position apparently of its own accord.

  Kirsten shoved the bowl of glop into the trash. “Didn’t we already have this conversation? It went fine until I told him I was psionic. I practically had to take a fire-extinguisher to the restaurant floor.” She folded her arms on the desk and let her forehead fall onto them. “He even left me with the check.”

  Nicole laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Better to get it out of the way now before you got attached to him.”

  That’s what I told you.

  She found Nicole’s dearth of short-term memory astounding, but lacked the energy to get into it now. “Yeah, I guess… He was kind of annoying anyway. Kept calling me cute, adorable, and I dunno, he just felt so patronizing.”

  Dorian looked up from his reading with a smile. “You are cute and adorable.”

  Kirsten let her head fall again.

  “It’s not that bad.” Nicole patted her on the back. “You know there’s a lot of truth to what they say about Zero keeping it in the family.”

  “Oh, that sounds so wrong.” Kirsten lifted her head, giggling. “What’s that in your hair, strawberry?”

  “B-Gel. I just got out of the tank. Idiot got a shot off before I got the gun out of his hand.” Nicole showed off a small hole in her sleeve. “But I got a great vid cap.” She held up her NetMini, projecting a hologram of a man cross-eyed and gaping. “Gonna add him to the Wall of Derp.”

  “Oh, my…”

  “God?” injected Dorian, earning a glare.

  “Are you alright?” Kirsten fussed over her friend.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. The medtechs stitched me up.” Nicole jumped as Captain Eze’s door opened. “Shit, time to look busy.” She scurried over to her own desk.

  Eze beckoned Kirsten over with a wave. After swiping her finger through her terminal to lock it, she followed him.

  “We just received a report of unexplained activity at a parts shop, Cyberwave, over in sector 214. It may or may not be related, but I would like you to check it. If your ghost is fond of dolls, maybe he’s shopping for pieces.”

  “Or maybe he’s drawing power from them. Any specifics?”

  He offered a plaintive shrug. “Not much. It sounds like some items were powering on without being connected to anything, stuff moving around, poltergeist kind of activity.”

  “Are you sure it’s not some pissed off telekinetic tween? Remember what Nicole did to the dorm after her parents got divorced?”

  Nicole held up a middle finger from the back of the room.

  Eze laughed. “How could I forget?” He walked around his desk and patted Kirsten on the shoulder. “The owner is adamant there were no customers in the place at the time, and said his dog went crazy barking. I know it’s a long shot but I would prefer the chance of having more to go on than just waiting for the next body.”

  She stared into the glare of the ceiling lights on a row of tiny carved ritual masks lining the outer edge of the captain’s desk. “No problem, not like I have any plans.” It’ll be my fault if someone else dies.

  Concern spread over his face. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yeah.” She glanced down. “It’s just the ghost from the starport. I don’t want to die like that.”

  He smiled. “I’m sure the odds of a Mars shuttle landing on you are quite low.”

  “I mean… I don’t want to die and have no one around to care.” She looked away from his desk, studying the intricate line art of an illustrated elephant on the wall until the picture changed to a serene painting of a savannah.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Kirsten, you do have people who care about you.”

  Despite the cheese of it, she found it comforting to listen to his ‘Division 0 is family’ spiel again. Officially her captain, sometimes he felt more like a big brother. One of these days, he ran the risk of a hug, even if it would look inappropriate.

  Kirsten crossed her arms. “Thanks.”

  Blackness, empty and foreboding, infiltrated the soft blue at the top of the navigation map, seeping down onto the screen as it scrolled. She drove to the edge of a grey zone, still lived-in places where proximity to the blight had begun to drag the city into its grip. The black zones, named for their void-like presence on the NavMap, played host to everything that wanted to avoid the law. Over time, the area around them often grew as people and businesses fled or died. The store sat distant enough from the black for the street to still carry foot traffic and have working lights. A small crowd of twenty-somethings liberally possessed of cyberware and street couture lingered right out front.

  Some of the women had glowing patches on their cheeks in the shape of hearts, stars, kittens, or skulls. The implanted NanoLED cybertattoos gave off light of various colors that bathed the area in the glow of technology. One man showed off a new right arm; shiny and chrome with ten-inch blades extending and retracting from his forearm. Another dark-haired man in a long, black coat bragged about his latest skill chip as he struck a series of poses―now he knew Kung Fu.

  A few had wires running from behind their ear to a pistol or net deck slung over their backs. Kirsten looked up at the word ‘Cyberwave’ spelled out in scintillating holographic letters above the door. As the patrol craft door sank closed with a thud, the crowd turned to look in unison.

  “Want me to get rid of them?” Dorian glanced across the roof at her.

  “Naah, I got it,” she whispered.

  Some whistled, one clapped, one girl blew her an air-kiss. A faceless voice asked if her mother knew she was o
ut this late, while another man made wild animal noises as he stared at her ass. She paid it no mind and walked up to them.

  “Have any of you noticed anything strange going on here tonight?”

  “There’s somethin’ in dat alley.” One of the men stepped forward out of the crowd, grabbing himself. “There’s a giant worm terrorizin’ bitches.” Dim cobalt lights embedded within a thin strip of metal along the left side of his head flickered.

  “Sounds bad, why don’t you go smash that worm?” Kirsten’s eyes flared with a trace of luminosity; her last few words wound an infinite spiral through his mind, gaining speed and pitch until it became a steady tone.

  The crowd laughed at the shoot-down, but fell quiet as he trembled and broke out in a sweat. His metal arm shuddered into the air, out of his control; he looked back and forth between Kirsten and his errant hand. Shaking from the battle of wills, he screamed. After a moment of silence, the metal fist came down into his groin; he crumpled to the ground in a whimpering heap, assuming the flying-ostrich pose.

  Dorian winced.

  The crowd stared in mute shock.

  Kirsten raised her voice over the piteous moaning. “Now, unless anyone else wants to get frisky… I’m here to investigate a disturbance at this store.” She glared. “Has anyone noticed anything weird they could not explain, aside from Casanova here pounding his berries flat?”

  People either shook their heads or did nothing. With a shrug, Kirsten pushed through them into the shop. For an instant, the crowd helping the man up reflected in the glass door as it swung closed. Soft blue light saturated the room, broken in places by patches of color from holographic ads from various cyberware manufacturers. The dimness soaked the room in serenity, but she sensed nothing paranormal in the air.

  More stuff had been crammed into the tiny shop than its size had a right to hold. Shelves around the walls brimmed to the ceiling with overflowing boxes of cybernetic parts. Skill chips, cat ears, eyes, tails, claws, forearm blades, shock pads, neuralware, comm links, and all manner of civilian-legal stuff. Two more free-standing rows cut through the middle of the room, bearing display models of replacement limbs.

  A thin man, maybe forty, stood behind the counter with a crude appendage of naked steel, visible actuators, and exposed wires for a right arm. Apocalypse chic came as the latest fad through the world of cybernetics, counterpoint to things made to look as real as possible.

  “You Warren?” Kirsten approached after a cursory glance around.

  Under a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, a plain white tank top glowed green from the terminal on the counter. Curtis Warren leaned his weight into the counter, sending a creak through the glass.

  Metal fingers clicked a rhythm upon the clear surface. “Yeah. Sure took you guys long enough.”

  Kirsten cringed from the synthbeer on his breath. “We only got the call twenty minutes ago. There was no report of any imminent danger.”

  His arm whirred as he waved. “I guess. Look, some of the shit was movin’ on its own. The display models grabbed me, and that Mishiro Systems claw over there just kept flickin’ out and retracting. My damn dog went nuts chasing something that wasn’t there.”

  “You have a back room?”

  The metal arm whined out to its full length, pointing. “Naah, just a door to the alley.”

  “I don’t feel anything here.”

  Curtis gestured with wild sweeps of both arms. “Well, somethin’ made my shit go crazy. What good are you guys if you can’t find it?”

  She walked the shelves, tracing her fingers over parts. No residue existed to feel. She paused in place, closing her eyes and reaching out with her mind. Without warning, moist warmth jabbed into her crotch. Kirsten gasped and jumped back, hand on her stunrod. Her anger faded at the sight of a medium-sized dog giving her a sad stare. Brown and black, its tail wagged as soon as she made eye contact. Kirsten avoided its next attempt to get intimate and squatted to pet it.

  “Whatever did this was not paranormal. I don’t claim to know much about technology or cyberware… but I still feel nothing.”

  Warren sighed. “Well that’s just freakin’ wonderful. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  Kirsten shrugged. “If it never happens again, forget about it. If it does…” She paused, looking up at the ceiling. “You could try calling an electrician, maybe there are electromagnetic issues in the building.”

  The arm waved about. “I’ve been here for years, never had nothin’ like this before.”

  That whirring is so damn annoying.

  Dorian wandered through the front door, smirking at Warren. “Never had nothing… wouldn’t that mean there was always something?”

  The dog barked at him.

  “Shush, Bentley.” Warren threw a treat to the dog. “See what I mean? He’s goin’ off again, you still got nothing?”

  Kirsten shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell…” She stopped as a glimmer of strange light came from the back door. “Hold on, I might have just found it.”

  Through the door, the sickly sweet aroma of uncollected trash embraced her. The cold air lent sourness to the fragrance of decaying citrus and last month’s leftovers in an alley so narrow she could almost touch both walls. The dog stopped at the doorjamb, tossing a few tentative barks into the night before ducking back inside to continue yelping at Dorian. Liquid that could only be called water in the loosest sense of the concept slid through a four-inch channel in the center of the alley. The metal walls glistened with a coating of oily muck she could not identify and did not want on her. Thirty yards down, the source of the light floated in midair.

  A glowing apparition of a boy about nine years old, with thick, unkempt, shoulder-length hair, hung with his feet a few inches above the ground. His off-white form was defined to three dimensions by shadows of gold. The outline looked nude though it lacked detail; brush strokes of light in the air hinted at his contours. He wore a sullen pout, drifting around and staring at the walls. He would have been kicking rocks if he could.

  Her heart bottomed out. She could never get used to seeing child ghosts. Even though their sentience persisted and they remained in a sense, she found it overwhelming in its sadness. Except in the rare case of murder, or other extenuating circumstance, children should transcend right away. The risk remained this was an Abyssal trying to trick someone by disguising itself as a child.

  If anyone would fall for that, it would be me.

  She hoped she could keep her wits. If it turned out to be a demon, it would be difficult for her to bring herself to attack him until his appearance changed. With one hand raised in greeting, she walked closer. His head turned, light gleaming through shaggy hair blown by an intangible breeze; he glided back as if to let her pass without moving through his body.

  When she kept looking at him, he blinked. “You can see me?”

  Kirsten offered a sad smile. “Yes.”

  “Are you sad, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  He floated up to meet her at eye level. “Why?”

  The innocence in his face provided a refreshing break from the surly city dwellers she usually dealt with; but the tragedy of a dead boy tore at her soul. The lack of immediate crying or pleading for her to do something specific weakened the demon theory. He hovered, his face tilting forward with expectation as he waited for her to answer. Kirsten stared at the starved little figure of light, unsure if she should feel pity or anger.

  “I’m sad that you died.”

  He made a puzzled face. “I’m not dead… At least, I don’t think I am.”

  She reached out to cradle him but did not risk touching. To Kirsten, ghosts usually appeared like ordinary people. Apparitions of light often indicated a residual haunting, a psionic imprint of a traumatic event, but this boy spoke with intelligence.

  “Confusion is normal sometimes, if it was sudden.”

  “No… I’m really not dead.” He floated even closer, nose to nose, until his castoff light made her fa
ce glow. “See?” He pointed at his forehead.

  When she at last could stop looking into his sad eyes, she noticed the trail of wispy silver coming from the center of his forehead and tracing down the alley into the dark.

  She stammered. “Is that what I think it is?”

  He laughed. “You can see me, but you don’t know?”

  “You’re projecting?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her smile widened as she chirped, “You’re psionic?” The stupidity of asking that question to an astral boy smacked her in the head as soon as she said it.

  “Uhm…” He looked down at himself. “Yeah.”

  “I’m Kirsten, what’s your name?”

  “Evan.” He grinned.

  “Where’s your body?”

  He looked down again, his cheer evaporated. “At home.”

  She bit her lower lip. “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s okay, my―” He wailed, then cringed into a floating fetal position and shivered.

  She forgot herself and tried to hug him, arms passing right through him. “What happened?”

  After she opened her body to the astral realm, she embraced a suspension of warm gelatin. He jumped at her touch.

  “If someone is hurting you, please let me help.”

  Kirsten pleaded with him for several minutes. She prodded him with supportive words until he stopped trying to avoid her.

  “My mom’s shithead boyfriend hits me. I come out here so I don’t have to feel it. Sometimes he thinks I’m dead and stops.”

  And sometimes he doesn’t.

  “Oh, no.” In the back of her mind, her mother’s closet door slammed. “I won’t let you live like that anymore. I’m a special kind of cop. I can get you away from there.”

  An impish grin spread over his face. “What, like short bus special?”

  She laughed. “No, I’m like you, psionic. Does your mother know you can do this?”

  “No. She doesn’t even know her own name.”