Dorian laughed. “Most people wouldn’t call ‘you were possessed by a ghost’ a reasonable explanation.”
“I think you’re the first person I’ve ever met who accepted the idea of a ghost without flinching.” She rested her hands on her hips and scanned the room again. “Unfortunately, it happened too long ago for me to get any kind of read. And, he didn’t show up here.”
“Pretty sure the apartment I grew up in had a ghost or two in it. Stuff like that’s all over a city this old… and violent. People who don’t believe in ghosts are just afraid of how weird reality can get.” Quinn smiled. “It hasn’t come back. Never happened to me again.”
Kirsten asked a few usual questions trying to determine if the woman might’ve potentially been in the same location as the more recent victim, or anything that might give away a ‘home’ location for the ghost, but drew a blank. Quinn Parker and Mia Sanchez’s paths never came within a hundred miles of each other.
“That’s all I can think of for now. Sorry for bothering you, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk about an experience like that.”
“Oh, no problem at all. You just made my month.”—Quinn pointed at herself—“This girl is not psycho.” The woman walked her to the door. “Drive safe and stuff. So glad I don’t need to risk that anymore.”
“Thanks. Have a nice day.” Kirsten nodded farewell and headed down the hallway.
“Both victims so far have been in their younger twenties at the time of the attack and on the short side,” said Dorian.
She glanced at him. “If you’re trying to freak me out, it’s not working. I’m aware I’m also in my young twenties and on the short side… but neither of those victims had any defense against spirits. If that bastard thinks he’s going to possess me when I finally find him, he’s in for a rude surprise. Actually, I kind of hope he comes after me. That will only make my job easier.”
“I don’t think he’ll target you out of the blue. You’ve got a certain energy to you that would scare him off.”
“Really?” She looked over at him while hitting the elevator call button.
“It’s gotten stronger ever since you beat the snot out of that giant flea. Any spirit more than a decade or two old would be able to tell there’s something different about you. It might be enough to scare this one off.”
Kirsten stepped into the elevator. “Ugh. I hope I don’t have to chase this piece of shit around the city for years.”
“You and me both. Though, I’m sure I can slow him down enough for you to catch up.”
“This one’s old, Dorian. Don’t do anything reckless. I’d rather run around in circles than lose you.”
He clasped his hands in front of himself, bowing his head with a faint chuckle. “I sincerely doubt he will hit anywhere near as hard as that damn giant flea.”
Kirsten shifted her gaze toward him without turning her head. “Are you not saying the name on purpose or did you forget it.”
“On purpose.”
“Okay. That’s probably a good idea.” She stared at her reflection in the silver doors for a few seconds. “Can demons just pop out of the abyss if you speak their name?”
“No idea. You could ask that expert at the National Archives. Oh, wait… he wound up being absorbed into a giant demon that you threw back down into the Abyss. Oops.”
“Oops indeed.” Kirsten squeezed her fists, furious all over again at Konstantin for influencing her mind.
The doors opened with a ping, letting in a strong, chilly wind. Kirsten’s hair clip gave out and snapped off three steps onto the roof. She stood there for a few seconds trying to channel calm thoughts, eyes closed as her hair whipped around at her face.
“This is turning into not my day real fast.”
Dorian’s hand pat spread a chill over her shoulder. “That’s a trivial annoyance. A day can get way worse than a broken hair clip.”
“Don’t jinx me.” She hurried after the runaway clip, scooped it up, and held it up to examine it. “It only popped off. Not broken.”
He grinned. “See? It’s a good day.”
Kirsten trudged over to the patrol craft, got in, and put her hair back up. “I’ll call it a good day when I do more than waste time chasing empty leads.”
“Patience, young cricket.”
“Isn’t it grasshopper?” She swiped at the console to bring the drive system online.
“I think so. Wanted to change it up a bit.” He winked. “Wake me up when we get there.”
With that, Dorian melted into the seat.
“I’m so jealous. Wherever we go, you’re home.”
Dorian’s faint chuckle came out of the sound system.
10
Blood Pentagram
If desire had any ability to affect the real world, Kirsten’s need to stop the ghost would’ve caused it to appear in the back seat.
Alas, with no idea where to go and nothing in the Division 0 database identifying any matching victims, she found herself staring blankly at the Navcon for a few minutes. Once she accepted she couldn’t do more than wait for another victim or sighting, she brought up the inquest record for Juan Miguel Esparza’s death and keyed in the address for the second victim, Lin Tran.
He’d been found two sectors north of a black zone, again at the edge where the grey surrounding it mixed with normal civilization. She sighed at the screen, wondering why the government decided to disavow the ‘black zones’ and simply erase them from the navigation system instead of sending the military in to clear them out.
Captain Eze likened them to self-contained prisons, being that the conditions inside these areas amounted to incarceration. The government didn’t think it worth it in terms of cost—both lives and credits—to invade one prison only to relocate whatever inhabitants survived to another.
After setting the car to auto-drive, she leaned on the center console and re-read the file on ‘victim two.’
Lin Tran had been found naked, a single stab wound to the heart. This reminded her too much of Konstantin’s victims, suggesting someone else ran around the city summoning (or trying to summon) an abyssal.
“This feels too damn familiar. What’s the connection between rituals and nudity?”
Dorian shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong person there, K. The only thing I can think of would be to conceal forensic evidence that might’ve been on the victims’ clothing. However, if we are dealing with Diablos, they’re neither smart enough to consider that, nor would they care. Most of them aren’t even in the system, and they’d think of the police going after them as a fun day playing bullet tag.”
“Some of those archives have paintings of ‘witches’ dancing naked around fires and so on. Is there something mystical there or is it like the same reason all those ancient statues were always nude?”
“I read somewhere that some ritualists think they collect magical energy wherever their skin is touched by the natural world. But, it could be simple artistic license. Why?”
She paged down the autopsy report. “Just trying to figure out if this is a real ritual murder or if someone’s trying to stage it based on what they see in movies.”
“You never did ask Konnie why he stripped his victims. Then again, he did keep them in restraints for an extended time. It may have been a matter of hygiene, not so much anything arcane.”
She scowled. “These victims didn’t show any signs of long-term confinement.”
“Diablos often keep people they abduct for weeks or months, torturing them with repeated beatings and sexual assaults.”
Bile danced in the back of her throat. “Is there a reason we haven’t rolled in there and wiped them out?”
“I’m sure there is, and it probably starts with a c and ends with ‘redits.’ Though, they are subject to summary execution almost every time they make contact with police, so there’s that.”
Sighing, Kirsten shook her head. “Always money. And they just shoot everyone in a Diablos jacket?”
&n
bsp; “Not right away. Usually, they wait for the gang to shoot first—which if it’s a real Diablo, doesn’t take long.”
“Right. Well, none of these people showed any signs of long-term confinement. They were likely grabbed off the street and killed within a few hours.”
A chime announcing she’d come within a quarter mile of the programmed destination drew her attention back to the windscreen. She took over flight control and steered the patrol craft into a canyon of formerly-silver high rise buildings. Grime and scorch marks had painted the towers on the left side nearly black, while the opposite side of the street had merely dulled to ‘no longer shiny.’ Various holographic signs flashed in pastel colors from ad-bots or window signs at street level, stores occupying the ground floors of cheap apartments.
The low, mechanical drone of the extending ground wheels filled the silence for a few seconds as she flew in to land beside an open-faced restaurant. A handful of people sat on stools behind a cloth curtain covered in giant Chinese characters, only their legs visible. English appeared in small white letters, courtesy of the electronic windows, reading ‘Johnny’s Express Noodles.’
She shoved the gull wing door open and got up, emerging into a cloud of steam laced with the fragrance of shrimp and salt. Hmm. Never did get around to having lunch. The place right by the alley she needed to check out smelled okay and looked reasonably clean—at least to her. Two years scavenging food from trash bins tended to make almost any restaurant feel clean.
Her armband terminal showed a map of the area, leading her past the noodle counter to the alley running along its left side. A colony of plastiboard cartons repurposed into tiny houses stood in and among a milieu of metal dumpsters arranged under a network of fat pipes that ferried garbage down from the apartments overhead. She figured that made the buildings at least 120 years old, since anything built more recently would’ve had in-unit de-assemblers that broke trash down into a contiguous mass of grey slime. Initially, they’d made it beige, but it looked too much like OmniSoy and there had been some unfortunate mix-ups. Of course, cheaper places sometimes did still use disposal chutes instead of de-assemblers for cost reasons.
An unsettling supernatural presence lurked at the edge of her awareness, not as strong as where Juan Miguel had been found, but noticeable. Here, she couldn’t say with certainty that it carried the taint of the Abyss, but it came close. Whatever spirit had been here was dark.
The locals eyed her from their nests, a sea of suspicious eyes lurking in the gloomy spaces among the dumpsters and cartons. Kirsten did her best to look directly at them with her best ‘don’t mind me, I’m not here to cause trouble’ expression. Truth be told, she felt more kinship with these people than with any of the crowd Konstantin associated with. Especially that stuck-up bitch in that sex club. Kirsten’s telekinesis barely ranked as grade one. She struggled to move objects like keys around—but had enough power to tip over a wine glass.
No surprise, none of the vagrants appeared younger than their twenties. The police scooped up vagrant children as soon as they saw them, sending the little ones off to colony adoptions and giving the over-fourteen crowd the option of a boarding program on Earth that ended with their joining the military. Take great care of them young and they love the government.
Her file didn’t show the exact location Lin Tran had been found, though the crime scene images allowed her to approximate a spot about twenty feet deep into the alley. People emerged from their hiding spots behind her, not quite closing her in. All appeared Asian or mixed with Asian, and their expressions gave off curiosity at why the police would be here.
A woman not much taller than her watched from beside a black plastiboard carton with blue NinTek Corporation logos. Her skinny body vanished in a too-large jacket bearing a crude green scorpion logo above the words ‘Jade Scorpionz.’
Somewhere back a few decades, a media channel—Real World Entertainment—started a reality show focusing on gang warfare, giving money and prizes to street gangs that ‘won’ battles or gained territory. For a while, they’d essentially turned both East and West City into a giant sandbox video game. Ever since, gangs from the large and organized to the ones with ten members all adopted cutesy names and logos like sports teams. It galled Kirsten that the government hadn’t shut that show down, but at least it had lost its shock value and sank to what some called a ‘ratings footnote.’
To this day, the black camera orbs with the neon green RWE ‘lightning’ logo were the only bots that could go in and out of black zones without ending up shot to pieces.
Kirsten approached the woman in the Scorpionz jacket. “Hey. Did you know Lin Tran?”
The woman breathed into her hands, trying to warm them. “Who?”
“Your buddy who they found dead here.”
“I don’t know any man dead here.”
She peered into the woman’s thoughts: mostly worry Kirsten would confiscate her new jacket. This woman had seen Lin Tran’s corpse, even watching Diablos dump him here… and ran over to scavenge his jacket. In her memory, the man had been fully dressed when they dropped him off, but the locals had stripped him clean—even his bloody shirt and underwear.
“Right,” muttered Kirsten, turning away. “Thanks.”
One by one, she checked a few other people’s surface thoughts. A handful witnessed the Diablo van. Some participated in the looting. She spotted Lin’s pants on one guy, his bloodstained shirt on another, shoes on a third. None of them knew the names of the Diablos, nor did they much care to.
Kirsten located the exact spot where the body had been dropped. There, she crouched and pressed a hand to the plastisteel ground, trying to open herself up for any latent energies. Lacking any clairvoyant talent, she had no ability to search for visions. A scrap of spiritual energy remained, but weak, no stronger than if Dorian had become angry and punched a wall to blow off steam.
She headed back to the street and ducked under the long tapestry that gave people eating noodles a little privacy from pedestrian traffic. A heavyset bald guy with a thin mustache and a stained apron approached with a big grin.
“Hey, welcome to Johnny’s.”
“Thanks.” She sat on one of the stools, eyeing the holographic menus above him. “Can I get a shrimp-seaweed bowl?”
He nodded. “Couple minutes. Somethin’ bad goin’ on around here?”
“Nothing recent. Just following up on an older case.”
“Ahh, yeah. Poor kid.” The cook looked down, shaking his head.
“Kid?” asked Kirsten, worried.
“Oh, well. To me.” He flashed a wan smile while scooping ingredients into a bowl. “You’re talkin’ about Lin, right? Kid was only nineteen.”
“Yeah. Did you know him?”
The cook offered a one-shoulder shrug, set the bowl down, and threw a handful of shrimp into a wok with some seasonings. Two small robotic arms came to life and kept the food moving as it cooked. “He stopped by here now and then. Lived three buildings over. Seemed nice enough.”
“He have any family around?”
“Not sure. If he did, he didn’t talk much about them.”
Kirsten nodded, reading over the file again. Division 1 had made contact with his parents already and she doubted they expected any killer would ever be found. She didn’t envy those officers the job of talking to bereaved relatives, and also saw no reason to upset the family further by trying to talk to them herself. Even if Lin Tran had some particular issue that caused him to be targeted, she already knew the Diablos did it, and had little expectation his parents would know the name or names of the gang members involved.
She paid for the soup, thanked the cook, and took her take-out meal back to the patrol craft. A few of the fringers from the alley hovered at the edge, watching her. Only one radiated hostility, a fiftyish man with an explosion of wild white hair and beard that made him look like an electrocuted dandelion with eyes.
His surface thoughts contained biblical sounding nonsense. O
ne of Reverend Harris’ anti-psionic morons, or at least someone who agreed with them. He’d evidently recognized the black uniform. She frowned at him, but since the man wasn’t fanatically stupid enough to attack a police officer, she ignored him and got into the car with her late lunch.
The street counter ramen tasted amazing… the sort of meal her ten-year-old self could only have daydreamed about. She savored every bite, giving a mental middle-finger to all of Konstantin’s high society crowd, picturing them gasping and hand waving at someone eating food from an area like this.
“That must be good,” said Dorian.
“Yeah. I think the shrimp are vat grown.”
“Wow.” He glanced out the passenger side ‘window.’ “Never would’ve known that from looking at the place.”
She smirked. “You’re a cop.”
“So?”
“You should know the restaurants with the best food often look like hell. And this place doesn’t look that bad.”
“Exactly why I expected OmniSoy shrimp. This noodle counter is too clean.” He grinned.
The next victim, a John Doe, had been discovered three sectors west and one south from where Lin Tran turned up.
Kirsten landed the patrol craft in an area abutting the remains of a small park/playground much smaller than Sanctuary Park. This one didn’t take up an entire sector, merely half a block. Old play equipment sat largely abandoned and covered in an array of graffiti. If any children lived in the residence towers near this spot, their parents kept them indoors. Probably for the best.
The thought that school hours ended not long ago made her think of Evan, who would most likely be doing some manner of chore around the Division 0 school to work off his citizenship points. Kirsten sighed at the old playground, thinking back to the only time she’d ever been punished with points as a kid in that school. It happened the second week she’d been there, from an asshole instructor who didn’t like her being quiet and afraid to talk to adults. The woman had threatened her with a hundred points if she didn’t answer some question in class. For at least her first six months at the dorm, she couldn’t bring herself to speak over a whisper, and with the attention of the entire class—and an angry adult woman—focused on her, she couldn’t speak at all.
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