Unloading three pairs of shoes, a few small cases, and a stack of empty underwear wrappers, she pulled at the cord. The entire base came out, revealing a hidden compartment, inside which she found a NetMini and a one-way ticket to Mars tucked into a bright red sleeve. She held up the clear plastic film printed with numbers and barcodes and noted the Redlink company logo. Albert had booked a flight to Mars with a departure date three days after his death.
She scowled at the locked NetMini. Whatever secrets it held would need to be unearthed by the tech geeks. She glared at the black device, wondering what answers it might yield. It turned on without warning and opened to the main screen.
What the hell? I didn’t do that!
“You’re welcome.” Dorian bowed. “Don’t forget, I have a way with gadgets.”
She grinned like a kid that just got away with something forbidden. Her fingers flew over the screen as she sifted through the various files and apps installed on it. Score! A chain of vid mail proved a company on Mars had been courting Albert for employment. They offered him greater influence on the product line than he had with Intera as well as a higher salary.
The string of messages hinted at some manner of breakthrough called Cerberus, but offered no details. Kirsten shivered.
Intera Corporation already proved willing to kill to keep it a secret.
irsten leaned back in her seat, momentarily lost in the scent of her new uniform top. She ran her hand over the material, happy to be rid of the reminder of the attempt on her life. Harsh overhead lights glared off the sides of a hexagonal storage drawer, made brighter by the pure white storage room. Its keypad chirped as she entered a code. When it popped open, she pulled a number of items onto the table.
She turned a mini holo-bar over in her fingers, smiling at the image of the older couple it projected. The photo of a far-off beach with white sand and an ocean of crystalline blue glimmered in three dimensions behind two smiling, sienna faces. Kirsten set it off to the right. The next one projected an image of a boy about eighteen years old, with dark hair and skin. His excited bragging to his older brother about his acceptance to the Mars Academy of Engineering in Arcadia repeated in a twenty-second loop.
He would be almost Kirsten’s age now, perhaps even graduated.
Items likely to be found on a desk moved to the left from the plastisteel drawer to the open side of the table. She examined them one by one, her fingers handling each object with reverence. Kirsten held up the black case of a police ID, staring at the Division 0 emblem on the cover. Her thumb traced over the metal emboss in the faux leather twice before she set it aside with a sigh, unopened. Glossy black sergeant insignia pins lingered in her hand for a moment, followed by a pair of valor commendations.
The last thing she found turned out to be a datapad with a complete report. Mercenaries hired or influenced by a psionic suggestive, Rene Bollard, riddled an arriving patrol craft with military grade laser rifles that tore clean through the armored windscreen. She seldom thought about the patrol craft windows as armor plates, the illusion created by pass-through cameras and high resolution displays made it easy to believe they were made of glass. As far as those rifles were concerned, they offered about the same level of protection as if they had been. The driver never knew what happened, the partner barely lived, and they got away without a trace. She did not watch the video from the car’s recorder.
“Is everything alright?”
She had not heard the door slide open, or Captain Eze approach.
The datapad went dark at a flick of her thumb. “I’m okay.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Someone you knew?”
“He died before I met him.”
“Are you sure you’re not an empath, Kirsten?” He squeezed. “You seem pretty broken up over a man you never knew.”
She began the slow process of returning the awards and certificates of merit to the case, followed by the desk collection. “One miscalculation, one little stupid mistake, and poof.”
“Oh, I see.” Eze let his hand slip away. “He never married. Still worried you will wind up like that?”
She stood, carrying the case in a formal march past a floor-to-ceiling shelf of similar hexagonal drawers, each stenciled with a name just below the keypad. She stopped at the empty slot, turned on her heel, and slid the three-foot long container back into place until it clicked. After taking one precise military step backwards, she saluted it.
“I said he died before I met him, not that I don’t know him.”
Kirsten closed her eyes, shedding a few silent tears as her fingertips traced below the keypad over a name.
Sgt. D. Marsh.
he held the steering control, keeping the patrol craft steady as they hung in midair. Streams of passing bots filled the interior of the car with colored light of every shade and a crescendo of advert jingles. At the approach of a lumbering giant bearing two full-size billboard screens, she nudged the car to the left to allow it to pass.
Thoughts of her last conversation with Dorian mixed with her feelings about the current situation. Not a day went by where she did not think about her mother. The concept that she had been so passionate about her beliefs she could torture her own child grated upon her soul.
He does kind of have a point.
What if she just drowned in self-pity? Could her loathing of religion be just a projection of her feelings about her mother? Kirsten’s opinion that the silver light was something other than God felt as strong as some people’s conviction to the contrary. Did it make her any less a zealot than the people for whom she held so much contempt?
Kirsten sighed, closing her eyes. It felt as if she had been cheated in some kind of metaphysical game. Despite being able to see the other side, she no more understood it than people who could not.
The car rocked with the unexpected passage of another large ad-bot, straining to change its course to avoid them. A quick tug at the stick spun the car around to face the departing billboard; Kirsten glared at it. The near miss could have been a warning from a higher power, an accident, or Intera trying to use hackers to kill her. It could also have been nothing more than her being distracted.
None of the above, it’s my dumb ass that parked at this height.
She brought the car up a few hundred meters to airspace safe from bots.
“Dorian? Ghosts have attachments, don’t they?”
He shrugged. “Well, I suppose some do.”
She looked at her seat, and back to him. “Come on, Dorian… You can’t get more than two hundred yards away from this car without having a panic attack. Maybe if I find Albert’s I’ll be able to ambush him when he returns to it.”
Dorian looked out his window. “Assuming this whole attachment thing is true; wouldn’t that tend to require a strong emotional bond to some object? Some reason for it?”
She concentrated, and held his hand. “The reason is often associated with the object of their attachment, like dying in a car.”
He looked pained. “Albert doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy that had many emotional fixations. His apartment was bereft of anything purposeless. Everything in the place had a function in some way. No art, no decorative kitsch, nothing.”
“So someone has to collect crap to have an emotional attachment?”
Dorian laughed. “No. What I mean is that this guy is a stereotypical lab rat, left-brained to the extreme, all logic and no emotion. I almost doubt he would have an emotional reaction to his own death.”
“Ghosts linger only when they have unresolved issues.” Kirsten squeezed his hand. “Maybe he was pissed off his research got interrupted. Those guys can get really wound up about their work. Maybe Intera dolls are his attachment?”
“Well, since you buy into this whole attachment theory―wouldn’t it need to be one specific doll if that were the case?” Dorian rubbed his chin. “Maybe one he was developing at the lab?”
Kirsten shook her head. “No, then his activity would be focused at
the company building, not on random dolls. Nothing we’ve seen indicates anything paranormal has occurred at the Intera Complex at all. What about his remains?”
“They recovered the body; the killer couldn’t dispose of it after shooting him in the head from six hundred yards.”
“Cremated.” Kirsten pondered. “Well, ashes still have meaning. Remember the guy in LaPorte last June?”
Laughter crippled Dorian for the better part of the next several minutes. “I bet the poor, strung out bastard will never snort any unknown grey powder again.”
Kirsten giggled. She could laugh only because the idiot had survived possession by an angry ghost. “Well, let’s see what happened to his ashes. Maybe I can at least get a read from them.”
At a sudden inspiration borne of her navigation map, Kirsten guided the patrol craft down to the street level and landed at a sidewalk café where the words ‘Kajuraho Indian Cuisine’ hung in wispy holographic letters above the door, tinting the cryonic fog of her landing green. She had wanted to try this stuff since smelling it at Intera; opportunity knocked.
A number of tables huddled against the wall of the place, an attempt to cram as much as possible under two skimpy awnings offering feeble shelter from the rain. While eating, she one-handed her datapad through the police network, searching through the evidence chain and case notes. His father, Henry Motte, had claimed the ashes.
As she read, she lost track of the pace with which she munched on the vindaloo. By the time she realized its level of spice, her face had become bright red. The chicken may have been grown in a tank, but it tasted worlds better than reassembled OmniSoy―even if it hurt. Two glasses of water later, she could breathe again.
“I hope he kept the urn.”
“Very possible.” Dorian smiled. “If he didn’t have any special place to go scatter them.”
“Dorian, if you want me to talk to your parents or brother, maybe give them your effects…”
He held a hand up. “No, I just… don’t.”
She followed him back to the car.
“I don’t want them to think about it again, Adam has just gotten married and…” Dorian punched the door.
“They’ll find Rene.” She rubbed his back. “You’re not angry anymore… you had a few rough years, but you can stop hurting.”
A wounded look came over his face. “You’re not trying to get rid of me, are you?”
“No, I just want you to be happy.”
“You have a ghost to stop.” He dissipated into a cloud of mist, moving through the door before coalescing in the passenger seat.
She fell into the car, staring at him for a moment before feeding the address to the nav. It pointed far off to the south and west, close to the coast. Suburbia, or what remained of it, dominated the area. The ride passed in silence. The patrol craft slipped through the last of the century towers bordering the sector, flying out over a few blocks worth of prewar houses set out like pieces on a massive board game. Each had its own lawn, back yard, and pool. With tall buildings on all sides, it looked like a lush green valley in the endless steel cityscape. She landed on a street devoid of any signs of life.
Kirsten hopped out of the car in front of a modest yellow home. A ‘For Sale’ sign flickered in the wind, surrounded by ancient, broken toys in the process of being devoured by the unkempt grass. A small metal droid resembling a tiny helicopter hovered about, spraying the lawn with nutrient liquid here and there. Despite the presence of houses in all directions, desolation pervaded everything here. She found it eerie; the way the early evening sun seemed to shine brighter in this place, creating an island of light surrounded by the gloam of the city. Flame-orange smog framed the impassive black century towers in the west, making her squint as sun sank amid the rectangular teeth of urbanity.
Looking back and forth among the houses and manicured lawns, she imagined the laughter of children around the abandoned toys and untended gardens. Pervasive melancholy dwelled here, accented by the occasional buzzing of holographic ‘For Sale’ signs on many of the lawns.
The expense of living here created a ghost town.
enry Motte had no alternate address listed. Despite the abandoned appearance of the house, Kirsten hoped he remained here waiting for it to sell so he could afford to move. The thin gate blocking the walkway to the porch opened with a faint squeak of protest. She glanced back at Dorian, who leaned against the car with his arms folded. He thought this visit a waste of time. Nonetheless, she rang the bell. For a moment, nothing happened, and then an old man’s voice creaked through the silence, bidding her to come in.
The lock clicked.
Kirsten startled, seeing no one behind the door as she pushed it open. An elderly man sat in a chair on the far side of the front room with a blanket over his lap. He looked to be a frail seventy or thereabout. Wispy grey hair surrounded his face, and a thin moustache drifted with the passage of his words. Crease marks ran down the sleeves of his powder blue shirt from where it had been folded.
“Hello, young lady.” His eyes glimmered. “It’s nice to have visitors at my age, but no one ever visits an old man like me unless they want something. What is it then, dear? Is your company offering a free trip to Mars or are you looking for converts to join your flock? Perhaps you’re selling cookies?” He chuckled. “No, you seem a little old for cookies.”
Against the backdrop of the oppressive silence, his dry voice felt much louder than it should. Kirsten looked at him and offered a sad expression of consolation. He returned the glance with a nod, and a wistful smile.
“No one lives forever, child.”
“Please, call me Kirsten. I’m here about your son.” She eased herself onto the couch. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to him.”
“I thought that detective had given up on poor Albert.” Leaning his head deeper into the pillow, he turned toward the front window. “He had great ambition, you know, he was very talented.”
Kirsten looked at the decor. “I found some of his files, but I can’t even begin to understand what it means. I believe he was killed by his employer to keep him from taking a job with a different company.”
Henry scowled. “Greedy sons of bitches,” he spat. “They don’t respect their people. They wouldn’t be as big as they are if it wasn’t for men like Albert.” Rage came over him in a rickety sort of way that made her fear more what would happen to him rather than what he would do.
“You’re right, but I am worried about Albert.”
He squinted. “What more could they do to him?”
She winced, trying to choose her words with care. “It’s not Intera, it’s what Albert is doing to himself.”
“Oh, come off it, kiddo.” He waved. “If he’s causing trouble for those…” He paused, swallowing an obscenity. “People, he has every right to.”
Kirsten let her head sag into her hands, staring at the floor. “I’m concerned about what he may do to his own soul. He’s killed innocent people who had nothing at all to do with Intera. I am afraid he might pay the price.”
“How is that even remotely fair?” Henry thumped his fist into the arm of the recliner. “After what Intera did to him you say Albert is the one they want?”
A massive boom rocked the house, shattering the front window and filling the living room with shards of flying glass. Kirsten dove to the floor as the pillow behind the old man’s head exploded into a cloud of feathers. Another shot holed the wall and splintered the floorboards inches shy of her leg.
She scrambled on all fours into the kitchen and scurried behind the counter. With her back pressed against the cabinet, she pulled her E90 and tried to stall the tremble in her hands. As soon as her finger touched the trigger, it chirped to life. Another distant peal of thunder sent a rain of flatware fragments raining down on her and holed the far wall. Kirsten peered through the three-inch hole at the outside; whatever rifle he had sounded huge. Henry Motte came through the wall and looked down, shaking his head. Feathers hovere
d around him, snowing down to the floor.
“Seems they’re a might bit ticked off at you too, kiddo.”
She looked up. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. Once Albert died, the grief took its toll.”
She chuckled. “I mean about the window… they’re after me. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
Hands grabbed her arm as she went through the back door, hauling her around and slamming her face first into the wall. She bounced away, staggering backwards and trying to aim her weapon at the indistinct shape of a man looming over her.
He grabbed for her gun, but she jumped away. Distracted by the attempt to disarm her, she did not see his right fist. Knuckles scraped across her cheek, knocking her through the railing of the deck and sending her to the ground in a cloud of splintering wood.
“Shameful.” Henry Motte ambled out onto the porch. “Who hits a young woman like that?”
Kirsten hit her panic button as she slid backwards on the ground through mulch and raked leaves, keeping her E90 aimed at the deck steps. Her assailant leapt over the railing instead, forcing her to roll to avoid a kick that thudded into the ground.
At least this one doesn’t have claws.
Her cheek throbbed from the punch and splinters of pain riddled her legs and back. The man kicked her gun hand away before she could take a shot and lunged for her head. The rudimentary combat training she got as an I-Ops agent escaped her in the panic of the moment.
She reacted too much like a civilian for her own pride, shrieking and rolling into a frenetic crawl back to her feet. She ducked another kick, firing an ill-aimed blast that left a smoldering line of leaf embers in the ground near his boot. He lunged before she could take a second shot. A series of inhumanly fast punches forced her back against a wrought iron fence at the rear of the yard.
The touch of cold iron through her uniform shocked her back to her senses. Her indignation rose at such a brazen attack on a police officer. A block down the street, a scream that started as fright became terror; she caught a glint in the sky as a man with a sniper rifle hurtled earthward from the twentieth floor.
Division Zero Page 20
