“You can see?” asked Maela.
“Yeah. Astrals can see in the dark.” Walter patted him on the shoulder. “Like the one useful thing they can do.”
Evan shook his head, rolling his eyes to himself.
Maela telepathically ‘knocked.’ He smiled, nodding. She linked to his surface thoughts, whistling in awe at the images in his mind. “Why is everything that weird brown color, and like shifting around?”
“It’s the way the astral realm looks. Mom said we’re not really seeing in the dark, but looking into the astral place. She said the astral world is like a reflection of the real world. Usually, it matches, but some stuff like trashcans or cars don’t show up unless they’ve been sitting there for a long time.”
“That’s kinda creepy.” She shivered. “Okay, but now what do we do?”
“Well, the three of us are over here and you’re over there. We should go back and get wet,” said Shawn. “Can you make it to us?”
Maela examined the walls, studying the pipes. “I think so.”
“Whoa.” Walter stared at his hands. “I never lifted something as heavy as a person with telekinesis before.”
“You were scared.” Evan grinned. “That made you stronger for a bit.”
“Guys, get ready to grab me if something else breaks.” Maela climbed up on the wall pipes, tugged a bit to check their strength, then shimmied sideways out over the breach in the floor.
Shawn leaned over the hole and spit. He and Walter chuckled.
Evan grabbed them and pulled them back. “We need to get away from this. That ghost might try to scare someone into falling.”
Maela whined. “Why did you say that now? You couldn’t wait for me to get all the way across. Oh, no. You had to say something creepy and scary when I’m hanging off 200-year-old water pipes over a fifty-meter drop.”
“Sorry,” muttered Evan.
She rushed the last few feet, and kept going a bit past the start of the hole before climbing down. Evan led the way back toward the rainy passage, picking up to a run to get past the six spraying leaks before rounding a corner at the end into yet another section full of pipes and component cabinets.
“We are going to get so damn lost.” Shawn slung water off his arms.
Evan kept going. “No turning back.”
“What are we even looking for again?” asked Maela.
“Any way to go up,” said Evan.
“Dude, we’re at the bottom of the plate. The ladders to the surface are near the top.” Shawn hurried after him.
“We still need to go up then.” Evan shrugged. “Just means we gotta climb more ladders.”
Two passages later, red lettering haphazardly smeared on the walls spelled out, ‘beware of mutants.’
“Is that paint or blood?” Walter leaned closer to the words, sniffing.
“Umm. We should probably go another way.” Maela backed up a step.
“It’s all made up.” Evan shook his head. “Mom said all those stories are to scare people away so they don’t go down here. She never saw a mutant.”
“Why?” Maela brushed at her sleeves, flinging water.
“I dunno. She didn’t say.” Evan shrugged.
“Probably because there’s lots of important stuff to break down here.” Shawn pointed at the pipes and electronics cabinets. “They put all the wires and stuff down here in the plates. Like the power, and the GlobeNet, and all the sewers and water. If someone bad came down here, they could break the whole city.”
A short distance later, the same red lettering adorned the wall with, ‘trez passor will be eated.’
“What does that mean?” asked Walter, squinting at it.
“It means someone didn’t go to school.” Maela’s voice quivered too much to match her blasé expression. “Seriously, it means we need to get out of here, now.”
“Hey, what’s that?” Walter pointed at blinking green lights up ahead.
A round section of wall swelled into the passage. A split double-door that looked an awful lot like a capsule-shaped elevator from a space ship sat at the middle of the curve.
“That’s a way up,” cheered Shawn. He dashed past Evan and ran over to it, pressing a button on the wall.
It buzzed.
“Invalid access,” said an electronic male voice.
Maela stepped up on the hatch. “Oh, we’ll see about that.”
She cracked her knuckles and rested both hands on the panel. The small display screen went from showing the word ‘denied’ to a scramble of random characters, then shifting colors. A moment later, the doors parted, sliding into the wall on either side. The cylindrical chamber behind them appeared reasonably clean, and a whole lot like an elevator. Maela put her arms around Evan and Walter, ushering them inside.
“Hah. Stuff your access.” She held her nose in the air.
“Huh, that’s weird,” said Shawn. “The thing only has one button.”
“Obviously, duh…” Walter faked a shocked expression. “We’re already at the bottom. It can only go up.”
“Right.” Shawn pushed it, but the same buzz and ‘invalid access’ voice happened.
“Ooh! I hate these things.” Maela put her hand on the panel.
“Wait.” Evan looked around. “This might not be a good idea.”
“Are you getting a precog feeling or just being a scared little kid?” asked Maela.
“I’m not sure how to tell the difference when it’s this weak.” He grinned. “But Mom never said anything about there being elevators down here. She used ladders.”
Walter elbowed him playfully. “She also isn’t a techno, right? And she was our age when she came down here. So… she wouldn’t have been able to get this door open to see the elevator.”
“I guess.” Evan sighed.
Maela turned her attention back to the panel and closed her eyes.
The ghost in the black coat materialized out of the wall, grabbing her from behind. Neither her mini dress nor her body reacted to his touch, his hands sinking wrist deep into her sides. Before Evan could even shout, a spike of malevolent energy filled the air.
“Eeeeee!” Maela shrieked.
Flames leapt out of the panel, along with sparks. The elevator plummeted, leaving the ghost behind. Walter screamed, swooning to his knees with both hands protectively covering his groin. They plummeted fast, but not free-fall fast. Gravity increased slightly as the capsule slowed itself before coming to a stop. The doors snapped open with a pneumatic whoosh that threw a weak cyclone around the chamber.
Evan gawked at a street paved with black stuff, lined on both sides by the crumbling remains of high-rises and cars so old they’d collapsed into metal chunks and dingy plastic panels. “Umm. Guys… we went all the way down.”
Maela whimpered.
“Mae?” Evan whirled.
She lay on her side, curled up and shivering. Evan dropped to kneel beside her, and without even thinking about being embarrassed, reached down her shirt to put a hand over her heart. Her skin had become as cold as snow, but only in a small area.
“W-what are you d-doing?” A little blush reddened her cheeks.
“The ghost tried to grab your heart. It’s cold.”
“N-no s-shit.” She couldn’t seem to stop her teeth from chattering.
Evan pulled his hand out and started rubbing her back, trying to build up warmth.
Shawn stared at the burning panel. “Guys, that was the opposite of cool.”
“N-no.” Maela shook her head. “That was fuckin’ cold.”
Evan gasped.
“Aww, watch the bad language around the little boy,” said Shawn in a patronizing tone.
Growling, Maela pushed herself up to sit. “You’re all little boys.” She eyed Shawn. “Okay, maybe you’re not that little. But you’re still nine.”
“It’s okay.” Evan smiled. “Sometimes, stuff happens that’s so bad you gotta swear. Just not in front of Mom.”
“Hey, check this out.
” Walter pulled open a small locker. “There’s like lights in here. We’re already down here, might as well look for another way up.”
“Are you”—Maela lowered her voice from shout to whisper—“nuts? Go out there?”
“Mom said there’s lots of ghosts in the Beneath. They’re mostly nice. One of them will help us.” Evan leaned out to look around. “I don’t see any.”
Maela futilely poked the console. “It’s dead.”
“No one is going to find us here.” Shawn handed her a large flashlight with a yellow battery case. “We can’t just stand here.”
Walter handed Evan a light, but hesitated. “Umm.”
Evan laughed.
“Little Man’s eyes make enough light for us to see.” Shawn laughed.
“Not really.” Maela fussed with her flashlight until it turned on. “Wow. They actually work. Ugh. This is such a bad idea. We’re going to get kidnapped and cooked.”
“Oh come on.” Walter groaned. “There are crazy people down here, not like goblins.”
“Shade goblins do eat kids, but not the marsh goblins.” Evan stepped out of the elevator. “But, this isn’t the Monwyn world, so there aren’t any goblins down here.”
“So your plan is what?” asked Maela. “Find a ghost and ask for help?”
“Yeah, basically.” Evan shrugged. “Anyone got a better idea?”
9
A Crazy Explanation
A beep from the console drew Kirsten’s attention to a flashing panel.
She scrolled back to the first search she started. A record had popped up from six years ago, only a few months before Division 0 activated her. The case involved a woman who had been recorded via Citycam stripping, then chaining herself to a railing at the edge of a black zone. A man nearby saw her from his laundromat and called the police.
Division 6 had rolled in before the locals did much more than take pictures and paw at her. They handed it off to Division 1 once they transported her back to civilization. Her case got filed away as a mental issue despite the woman claiming a complete blackout between traveling home from work and coming to handcuffed to a post.
Kirsten copied the old inquest as a potential related link to her current case, sighed at the list of five murdered (potential) gang members, and stood. “Gotta stop that ghost first.”
“If there is a demon involved with the other thing, that would squarely pull the inquest into your jurisdiction. It wouldn’t be you poaching a P10 to be nice to a kid.”
She locked her terminal and headed off toward the garage. “True. Still. I would prefer it isn’t a demon.”
“You and me both.”
Kirsten set the patrol craft down on the roof of a residence tower in Sector 6640, a middle-class district full of apartments. The parking area contained only two other hovercars.
“Wow. This can’t be a new building…”
“Almost every tower in this area sublets the ground floors for stores or restaurants. Between delivery bots and having anything reasonably necessary within walking distance, no one really ever has to go far. And I’m sure most of them work by senshelmet.”
“That’s almost sad.” She shoved the door open. “It’s amazing they’re not all huge.”
Dorian laughed. “Well, pet hamsters need a wheel to run on. I’m sure they’ve all got treadmills or stationary bikes. And the more expensive buildings have fitness centers. Everything’s all nice and self-contained.”
“Okay, that’s not almost sad. That is sad.” She sighed. “Everyone just isolated like that? No wonder our society is so disconnected.”
“You’ve played Monwyn. There’s a hundred other games like that. People socialize in virtual worlds, making friends thousands of miles away.” He stepped through the elevator doors before they opened.
Kirsten frowned, waiting for it to arrive. The dark burgundy panel slid open, revealing Dorian with a big grin inside a shiny metal elevator cube. “Still strikes me as sad not to go out and see people, do things for real, you know?”
“Everything is electricity going into the brain. Does it really matter if it’s riding a nerve from the eyes and ears, or coming in by M3 jack?”
“Yeah. Being both a psionic and a ghost, you should know there’s energy that wires can’t carry. Humans have a connection to the Earth… though you wouldn’t really know it anymore the way things are.”
Dorian raised an eyebrow. “K, you’ve been playing that elf too much in Monwyn. What’s next, you go running around Sanctuary Park wearing nothing but pointed ears?”
“Asara the Huntress does not run around naked.” Kirsten huffed.
“You haven’t seen all the movies… and there are mods for the games.”
Kirsten gawked. “How do you know that?”
He laughed. “I don’t. But… One: she’s a female character in a popular media franchise. Two: young programmers are horny as hell.”
“I hate that you’re probably right. I just don’t want Evan stumbling across anything like that.”
“He’s too small to even appreciate it now. Wait until he’s like twelve.”
The doors opened on the 66th floor, but she didn’t get out. “Twelve? That’s…”
“When I started trying to peek at certain content on the GlobeNet.” He laughed. “Didn’t have much luck back then, but I tried.”
Kirsten shrank in on herself.
“Oh, shit. Sorry.” He stared at the floor.
“No, no… it’s okay. Not your fault I had a far from normal life. I don’t even know what age is normal for a girl to start getting curious. I went straight from being totally focused on not starving to death to knowing way more than I wanted to about sex.”
“I’d imagine it’s probably around the same. Biological urges are biological urges. Humans are weird about females… nature isn’t.”
She managed to chuckle. “Yeah. I don’t know what I’m going to do the first time I catch him… Yeah. Not thinking about that now.”
Kirsten stopped midway down the hall and rang the bell of apartment 6608.
A little over a minute later, a tiny light winked on at the middle of the door about eye level—which put it a bit above Kirsten’s. “Who is—oh, the police?” asked a woman’s voice. “Sorry, one moment.” The door slid to the left with a soft pssh. A dark-skinned woman in her late twenties of diminutive height adjusted her pink bathrobe before smiling at Kirsten. “Wow, you’re kinda small for a cop. Not used to seeing them my size.”
She’d heard that so often, it didn’t even warrant an eye roll anymore. “Miss Parker?”
“Please.” The woman offered a hand. “Call me Quinn… unless you’re here to arrest me, but I can’t imagine why.”
“No.” Kirsten shook her hand. “I’m Lieutenant Kirsten Wren with Division 0. I wanted to speak to you about an incident that happened six years ago that may be related to a case I’m presently investigating.”
“Umm.” Quinn fidgeted. “Wow. I figured everyone had forgotten about that. People thought I was crazy. I still don’t really understand it at all.”
“Can we talk for a bit?”
“Guess there’s no harm in it. Other than being mortified, nothing really happened to me.” She backed up enough for Kirsten to slip inside, then hit the button to close the door, slicing Dorian in half. His form stretched away from the door, everything past the ‘cut’ blurry and fog-like for a few seconds until he reintegrated.
Quinn strolled into the living room, a long braid interwoven of multiple smaller dreadlocks hung down past her butt. The apartment’s thick pale-beige carpeting held the ghost of her footprints for several seconds.
“That is so annoying.” Dorian scowled at the door. “They never wait for me.”
Kirsten smiled back at him, then put on ‘serious face’ before Quinn caught her. “What do you remember of that night?”
“I was on the way home from the office. Had one of those irritating high-confidential meetings the managers didn’t wan
t online. One minute, I’m sitting in a PubTran car, the next thing I know, my clothes are all gone and I’m hugging a metal post in a dangerous part of town.”
Kirsten opened her armband terminal screen and typed notes as fast as she could.
“Oh, wow… old school. I didn’t think anyone actually used the virtual keyboards anymore. Well, except for kids. Are you like a cadet or something?”
“No, I’m over eighteen,” said Kirsten, still typing. “I’m psionic. Cybernetic implants freak me out.”
“Ahh. Yeah, I read something about that.” Quinn gestured at an archway to the kitchen. “You want some coffee or tea or something else to drink?”
“Thanks, I’m okay. Is the blackout the strangest thing you experienced?”
“No. After I woke up, I couldn’t move or scream. It was as if my body had a mind of its own. Not sure screaming would’ve really been a good idea there, though. Eventually, a bunch of punks came out of the alleys and surrounded me, but a whole shitload of cops showed up before any of them did worse than grope. The moment the police arrived, I got this real strong sense of being pissed off, but it faded.”
Kirsten looked around the apartment. A sleek black net deck sat on a small table in front of the couch, a slim line of cobalt blue light glowing across the front. The NinTek logo also lit up with the same shade of blue.
“Anything?” asked Dorian.
“No… This place is giving off about as much paranormal energy as three-day-old OmniSoy leftovers.”
“Wow that much?” Dorian raised both eyebrows.
She shot a smirk at him before turning back to Quinn. “Has anything else unusual happened to you since?”
“Unusual like that? No. Plenty of weird luck, but nothing even close to that feeling. Do you think I’m nuts too?”
“Felt like you were possessed?”
“That’s a good way to put it, yeah.”
Kirsten shook her head. “No. I don’t think you’re nuts. I believe you were likely the victim of a ghost attack.”
“Oh.” Quinn slouched with relief. “That’s awesome.”
“Awesome?” Kirsten blinked in surprise.
“A reasonable explanation that doesn’t involve me being insane. I’ve spent the past six years worrying if I’m schizophrenic. Been to a few doctors, none of them found any sign of a problem.”
Harbinger Page 10
