Division Zero

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Help!” the man shouted, seeing Kirsten.

  The male doll’s head snapped around on her, its face coated with fear. Not waiting for it to shove even harder, Kirsten fired. The scintillating laser light pierced its elbow, severing the arm. A rapid second shot put a hole through the wrist on the other side. Free of the tremendous force pushing him down, the man leapt up and hit his head on the opposite counter as he fell to the ground. He scrambled around in a puddle of slick fluid on the floor flowing from the dead manager.

  “Albert! Listen to me, you don’t have to―”

  Kirsten dove to the side, avoiding a hurled can of sauce that exploded on the wall behind her. She rolled to the other edge of the partition and angled over the top for a shot.

  The customer got to his feet, running straight through Dorian on his way to the door. The burst of silver mist coalesced into his usual form as he staggered backwards, stunned by the impact.

  The doll tore a heating lamp free from its moorings, oblivious to the three hundred degree object. As it went to throw it, Kirsten fired, hitting the seething element in its hands.

  Sparks exploded from the heater’s power cell, showering the doll with flecks of burning gel. It had no more reaction than a glower as its uniform caught fire. The look of menace in its eyes flashed to confusion as it lost traction in the slippery liquid and fell. A roar mixed from the voices of a young man and an enraged Albert rattled hanging utensils as it crawled toward her.

  Kirsten leapt back as it punched through the steel cabinet and reached for her leg. Dorian grabbed it from behind, his hands tangible only to the ghost within as he tried to hold it back. The doll pulled forward through his grip, tearing the sheet metal. The ever-pleasant face of the perfect teenaged employee smiled at her as it ripped its way through, eager to take her order.

  Psychotic…

  It dragged itself forward with its one remaining arm, sliding clear of the flapping metal as Dorian fell over backwards. The doll jittered to its feet.

  “Fine, Albert. You can have it your way.” She smirked at her own joke.

  Her eyes flared white as a tendril of brilliant energy formed out of her left hand. She grunted as she whipped it across the doll, trying to add extra power to offset the resistance of the artificial body. Light flickered where the ethereal streamer intersected the doll. Albert’s scream filled the room, eclipsing any trace of the machine’s voice processor.

  The whip tore across the doll’s chest, a blade through gelatin, and she whirled it around in the air above and behind her. The next strike aimed for its head. Albert dove out of the doll and the tendril passed through the mechanical adolescent with no resistance.

  “Oh, my, what a mess.” The doll once more had the voice of a harmless young man.

  As the false teen turned to get a fire extinguisher to put itself out, Albert backed away. He recoiled from her the way most people did to a ghost. Dorian pounced on him, dragging him to the floor with a jiu-jitsu takedown.

  “Please, Albert, talk to me. I don’t want to destroy you.”

  “What do you mean you don’t?” The incredulous voice of the manager came from a spectral form standing up out of the food assembler. Somewhere in an undulating mass of fused hamburger patties, two eyes peeked out. Two burgers moved like lips while he spoke.

  I am never, ever, eating beef again.

  She took a step forward, ignoring the doll as it struggled to pull a mop out of the ruined cabinet. Albert’s face contorted in a combination of anger and panic. His form blurred as front and back traded. No longer face down, he made a familiar clawing gesture. Dorian howled, rolling to the side cradling his gut. Albert leapt through the wall into the alley outside as a missed lash frosted the window.

  “Shit.” Kirsten stared at the door, but went to Dorian’s side. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, it’s only pain. Go…”

  The manager turned as she ran. “Who’s going to pay for this damage?”

  “That’s not your problem anymore.”

  A grating electronic alarm, halfway between a buzz and a siren, deafened her as she hit the one-way door out of the kitchen. The caustic aroma of days-old garbage in a massive dumpster watered her eyes and choked the air out of her lungs. Albert shimmered at the end of the alley at a full run; she sprinted after him.

  Now the cat rather than the mouse, she had to end this before anyone else got hurt. Running like vibro claws chased her, she gasped a request for Division 1 to respond to the restaurant into her comm between strides.

  He darted around a corner, passing through a throng of people, most oblivious to his presence save for a few that shivered. The crowd threatened to sweep her backwards as she tried to shove her way through the onrush of bodies. Her diminutive yell to make way drowned in the advert jingles and sounds of traffic overhead. She thought of firing a laser blast into the air to scare a hole in the crowd, but decided against generating paperwork.

  It would be just my luck I’d shear the nuts off the driver of a passing hovercar.

  Dorian ran through the crowd as well, tackling Albert a second time in a leap that rolled into a fistfight.

  She continued to swim upstream through the river of bodies as Dorian grappled. Albert’s desperation let him keep up with Dorian’s training and they stalemated. A briefcase popped open with the passage of a flailing ghost leg, startling a woman in a charcoal grey business suit. Parked cars cried out in a frenetic symphony of car alarms as their fight rolled through. Just as Dorian got a hold of him, Albert reached up and leapt into a passing advert droid, riding it up into the sky. Embedded waist deep in it, Albert appeared to hold on to the hull with both hands while he sent a shit-eating grin at Dorian.

  Dorian seethed.

  She forced her way out of the crowd to the street. This part of town saw little ground traffic amid the affluent business district where hovercars represented the norm.

  She chanted ‘please, no cars’ in her mind as she ran. Albert’s head poked out of the side of the bot and made eye contact for an instant until he saw the amulet.

  “It’s over, Albert,” she shouted. “I’ll find you wherever you go. Please, let me help you.”

  His face warped with impotent rage as he raked his fingers, claw-like, through the air. Kirsten held both hands up as if expecting to catch the energy he projected at her heart. Squinting, she pitted her power against his, feeling a sensation like one icy fingertip picking at her sternum. She snarled; white astral energy leaked from around her eyes as she gathered the sense of his attack and shoved it back the way it came, overwhelming him. Albert’s sinister grin fell flat an instant before the wave of psionic force sent his borrowed ad-bot sputtering about in an out of control circle. Hologram panels flickered on and off, and the droid veered in wild arcs as the hover unit faltered. After crashing through a citycam pole, reducing it to a sparking orchid of plastisteel and wire, the damaged ad-bot came to a halt half a block over.

  “That’s a naughty ghost’s first trick, Albert. I’ve seen that too many times to count. You won’t scare me off that easily.”

  Albert stared at her, wanting to rip her to pieces, but any confidence he had to that end appeared to have vanished. Albert and his droid turned and raced off. She chased, muttering the occasional swear word on breaths knocked from her lungs each time her boots hit the ground. A sudden glimmer of inspiration broke through his despair and he ducked the rest of his body out of sight into the bot before it zoomed in a severe upward arc, leaving the street―and Kirsten―behind.

  Kirsten stumbled to a halt, gasping, bracing her hands on her knees.

  “There’s gotta be a better way to chase a damn ghost.”

  After a few breaths, she straightened and looked at the distancing point in the indigo sky.

  Where are you going?

  At first glance, the area held nothing of interest aside from the ominous presence of steel and glass; an army of office towers.

  Holding the amulet, she leaned ba
ck with an exasperated sigh and saw a teal pyramid peek through the smog like the North Star. The color drained from her face as she realized what Albert intended to do.

  Lucian.

  lbert sensed his game drawing to a close, and Kirsten figured he wanted to do as much damage as possible before being cornered. Kirsten checked her armband display and exhaled thanks to nothing in particular that the patrol craft remained in range. She leaned against a lamppost to recover from the foot chase as she tapped at the holographic panel to summon the car to her location. The rapid strobe of her car’s lights lit the sides of nearby buildings a few seconds before it came into view. She watched it approach, shivering when it turned right at her.

  “You remember what happened to Milner when he tried the auto drive?” Dorian asked.

  She gulped. “It crossed my mind.”

  “I was still working out some anger issues back then.”

  The car tilted back, landing with a gentle rush of warm ions a few feet away. She leapt through the door and pulled out into the street before it closed all the way, leaning forward to stare straight up through the windscreen. The hover traffic formed an impenetrable curtain of moving lights above them. It would take too long to find an opening, so she gunned the ground drive. Banded rubber tires raced around their impeller cores, shoving the vehicle through a squealing turn.

  Dorian remained silent as she fishtailed around the corner and flew down a six-lane artery. The only traffic on the ground consisted of a handful of roach wagons lingering past closing to catch the desperate wage slaves who were trapped late at the office. Two cyclones of trash spun behind the car as it sucked up all the debris on the seldom-used road.

  After screeching onto the access ramp, she jumped a berm of faux grass and slammed on the brakes. The car slid to a stop in front of the central Intera Tower at the end of a weave of black streaks over a white stone courtyard. She wrestled with the pneumatic door, trying to open it faster than it would go on its own.

  An ominous sight waited for her on the steps.

  Two men in security guard uniforms stood just outside destroyed glass doors, with massive head wounds and disoriented expressions. She ran past them and ducked through the dark grey frame, glancing at them once inside.

  “You’re dead. Go to the light. If you can’t figure it out just wait right there until I come back.”

  The two men turned toward her as she ran off, leaning back as Dorian ducked between them. Ten paces into the lobby, she found their bodies slumped on the floor in front of an abandoned burgundy marble reception desk. Blood and debris littered the entire area.

  A trail of crimson footprints through the teal carpeting led her at a brisk jog to a hallway full of elevators. Once she reached white marble tiles, she crouched to examine one of the clear ones. The holographic panel appeared over her arm, scanning the tracks, and finding no detectable pattern of ridges. A smooth footprint meant it was a doll. Her computer postulated from the shape and size of the blood smear that it was ninety-four percent likely to be female.

  “Looks like he got a Mitsu,” Kirsten lowered her arm and stood. A patch of wall to her left darkened as her armband terminal disappeared.

  Dorian gave her a pointed look. “Didn’t believe me, did you? About the creepy factor?”

  She sprinted over to the bank of elevators. “Great, I just got rid of one nightmare, now I’m going to have a new one. I’ll never look at those kids at CyberBurger the same way.”

  He walked right through the elevator door. “Oh, come on. As if you even eat there. I’ll meet you upstairs; try to circle around behind him.”

  Kirsten’s finger impersonated a woodpecker on the button until a chime emanated from the panel. The silver doors slid open, and the dumfounded face of a dead woman greeted her. With the doors no longer there to hold her up, the body flopped forward. Kirsten jumped back in shock, leaning against the wall to recover. Her gaze went from the dead woman to the blood-spattered interior of the elevator cab and then to the ceiling.

  “Albert, what have you done…”

  inted red by the spatter, bands of light pulsed down the walls as the elevator made the lonely climb to the penthouse. One button among many on the touchscreen had a bloody fingerprint, an ominous portent of where Albert had gone. Kirsten kept taking her E90 out of its holster and putting it back, unsure if she would need it. Her breathing came shallow; she broke out in a cold sweat as she went over all manner of possible scenes she could walk into once the doors opened. The thrum of the lift vibrated through the air, making time crawl. The floor counter ticked higher, marching ever closer to a hundred and seven.

  The sound of gunfire echoed from above, punctuated here and there by men screaming and the occasional falter in the lighting. First in anger, then in pain, their voices wailed, shaping the horrifying images in her mind. Kirsten pounded on the door, feeling imprisoned and powerless, helpless until the metal box released her. She considered calling for a tactical unit, but dismissed it. They were trained to deal with living psionics; most of them could not do a damn thing to a ghost. Yeah, their lasers could eventually wear a spirit down but there would not be much of a building left afterward.

  Nikki doesn’t need to see this.

  The doors snapped open at long last, revealing an executive corridor with a bloody lilac rug and black walls. Smoke filled the air and the foil confetti of expended ballistic ammunition littered the floor. The smell of gunfire mixed with the silence as the thick carpeting absorbed the sound of her sprint.

  The whistle of a passing breeze came from up ahead as she passed three more dead men. All wore black suits and two slumped over rifles. They looked like a private security team after stepping in some fresh crap. Her promise to Henry Motte seemed more and more foolish as she surveyed the carnage. Whatever did this could not be the Albert he knew.

  It might be kinder to destroy him.

  A trace of femininity―the Mitsu―mingled with Albert’s throaty rasp in the distance. “Go ahead, Lucian. Shoot me.”

  Kirsten advanced past broken onyx statues to the outer office she remembered from her astral journey. Her heart paused in the grip of an icy claw when she saw the cracked sens-helmet on the chair and a video game device on the ground, and droplets of blood all over the sofa.

  Oh, no, please no…

  A clear barrier separated the inner office from the howling wind on the patio, save for where a corpse held a sliding door open. Another man sprawled dead, face-first in the glass at the end of a crimson smear, his eyes locked in a grimace of horror and agony. Kirsten raised her weapon and crept to the yawning portal, dreading what she would see.

  A cute, twenty-something Mitsu in a business vest and a grey micro skirt stood at the edge. Long streamers of teal hair whipped in the violent gale. If not for the exposed metal peeking out from a bullet gouge in her cheek, she would pass for a real woman. The impact of dozens of shots peppered her torso, and she had lost her shoes. A manic grin spread across her face, pushing cute into surreal evil.

  Now she understood what Dorian meant about uncanny.

  The little girl, Marisa, pedaled her feet in the air, held out over the edge. The doll’s hand held a fistful of her dress at her throat, and the child clung with a white-knuckled grip to its wrist. One shoe slipped free and glided off on its way to the street more than a hundred stories below. Her face streaked with tears as she begged her father for help, grimacing as she fought the iron grip. Dread and relief collided in Kirsten’s head, making her choke. The blood on the couch only dripped from the doll’s hand, Marisa was unhurt―for now.

  Lucian Talbot stared the machine down from a few feet away, aiming a blood-covered rifle at it. He did not react to Kirsten’s arrival, though the doll’s head turned at an inhuman angle to face her. As it did, its amethyst-hued eyes glowed out from its dark banshee silhouette.

  The voice held more Albert than woman. “It appears we have another guest, Lucian. Why don’t you get her a drink or something? Better
yet; you’ve been trying to kill her, why don’t you shoot her now?”

  Talbot looked at Kirsten for just a second, not wanting to pull his eyes away from his child. With the doll’s stare locked on Kirsten, he edged closer.

  “Albert, listen to me.” Kirsten held her hands out. “I can get justice for you, but you have to stop hurting innocent people.”

  “Innocent?” A patronizing glare warped the doll’s face. “Lucian Talbot is far from innocent. Or are you talking about the mindless tools you found all over the corridor? Maybe you mean poor Miss Reynolds in the elevator?” He scowled. “None of them are innocent… they’re all part of this leviathan.” The doll waved its free left hand around.

  “Marisa isn’t.”

  Lucian’s head snapped to give Kirsten a look. “How do you know her―”

  “She will be.” Albert cut him off. “One day she will be the queen of this empire. Better she leave this world uncorrupted.”

  “No,” Kirsten wailed, “she’s just a child, you can’t!” She fought to keep her emotion in check, having no idea what she would do if he let go.

  Albert cackled. “You already got a kid, Evan, is it? This one’s mine.”

  “You son of a bitch.” Lucian took another step. “How dare you threaten my daughter!”

  Kirsten found it odd the emotion in his voice seemed genuine. She could not comprehend how someone who could so blithely order the murder of his inconveniences valued even one life. The doll bounced its arm, causing the girl to shriek and gasp for air.

  “Daddy, help!”

  “Don’t worry, sweetie. You’ll like it over here.” Albert’s spectral face exuded through the front of the doll, grinning with yellow eyes. “It’s nice and cold.”

  Kirsten expected the glass wall behind her to shatter from Marisa’s scream.

  “My God…” Lucian gasped as his voice trailed off into nothing.