Harbinger

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Wow… Except for their dealing in illegal stuff, this gang sounds as organized as a corporation.” Kirsten whistled at the screen.

  Dorian smiled. “If they paid taxes, they wouldn’t be considered a gang.”

  “Cynical.” She smirked. “It’s not so much what they are selling, but the way they deal with competition. The Grey Devils are basically Syndicate Lite.”

  “The Syndicate wears nicer suits.”

  “Excuse me,” said Bhanu. “Can I help with anything else here, or are you done with the deceased?”

  Kirsten looked over the holo-panel at her. “I don’t think I can get anything more from the body… and something tells me asking a clairvoyant to read him would not end well. So, yeah. Done with him for now. Thank you.”

  “All right.” Bhanu pressed a button on the side of the table.

  The slab rose back toward the ceiling, then slid into its cubby, which sealed.

  Near the end of the explanation of the Grey Devils, a single line made Kirsten pause, staring at the screen.

  Known to frequently clash with Diablos over territory.

  “Oh… no way.”

  “What?” asked Bhanu and Dorian simultaneously.

  “I thought their being into mysticism was just BS.”

  “Pardon?” Bhanu glanced back and forth from the cabinet to Kirsten. “Who?”

  “Sorry. I was talking to Dorian. The Diablos, street gang. They’re all wrapped up in rumors about mystical stuff.”

  Bhanu shivered. “Yes, I know. I’ve heard of them.”

  Dorian quirked an eyebrow. “You’re not suggesting…”

  “The other killings had a ritualistic nature. Diablos dumped those corpses. What if they really did manage to summon something, and they sent it after this guy like an assassin?”

  “Might want to hold on to that theory until you have something more than speculation to back it up. Command will lose their minds over that.” Dorian eyed the cooler holding Modeus. “Not that I doubt you. In fact, I think you’re right.”

  “Yeah. I really need to—”

  Dispatch broke in, via a young woman’s voice in her left ear. “Lieutenant Wren, please acknowledge.”

  “I’m here. Go ahead.”

  “Your presence is requested in Sector 2928. Division 1 is on scene at a murder site and requesting assistance related to suspected paranormal activity.”

  Kirsten shook the tech’s hand. “Thanks for the help. I need to go.”

  “All right. Good luck with your investigation.”

  “Keep a bed cool for the next guest.” Dorian saluted Bhanu with two fingers.

  Ugh. Kirsten wanted to protest his callous remark, but… worried he wouldn’t be wrong.

  17

  Warped in the Headware

  Sector 2928 consisted of middle class residence towers surrounded by several more sectors of middle class residence towers in all directions. The sameness of the buildings would’ve made finding a particular apartment daunting without electronic navigation aids… but everyone had NetMinis, even most fringers.

  Kirsten followed the Navcon point and set down on the roof of a 102-story building beside two Division 1 patrol craft and an A3HV hover-van with Division 2 forensics team markings. A short elevator ride took her to the 84th floor. The doors parted to reveal an unsettling hallway with reddish-beige walls and burgundy carpet.

  An odd mood in the air made her feel as though she’d stepped into a horror vid. Much like the outside, the sameness struck her as creepy. Red doors stood opposite each other in pairs all the way down the length of the corridor, past a four-way intersection at the likely center of the building. The eeriness faded after a few seconds once her brain adjusted to the paranormal energy saturating everything.

  “Shit,” muttered Kirsten. “The same thing that killed Modeus got someone else. I’m going to wind up chasing corpses for… too long. I shouldn’t even be here now. It’s going to kill someone else while I’m wasting time staring at a body that won’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”

  “At least go through the motions, even if you hurry. It’s an official call.” Dorian stepped out of the elevator. “You can’t just leave… not without an emergency dispatch.”

  “Right.”

  She fast-walked to the intersection, turned right, and approached apartment 8416. A woman in Division 1 armor sorta-blocked the door, but moved out of her way when she approached. Stronger dark energy inside the living room seeped from the walls.

  “Lieutenant,” said the cop, saluting.

  “Officer Lockwood,” replied Kirsten after glancing at the woman’s nameplate. She returned the salute. “What’s the situation?”

  The woman gestured at the apartment, walking in beside her. “We received multiple calls of suspected electromagnetic terrorism. Apartments near this one, including above and below, all experienced a blowout of electronic devices at the same time. We calculated this as the epicenter, and the resident didn’t call to complain, so, we figured he either deliberately set off an EMP device or accidentally set one off while constructing it.”

  Kirsten nodded. “Okay… but something like that wouldn’t make you guys call us.”

  “This place feel funky to you?”

  “Oh yeah.” She looked around. A few wisps of smoke rose from the holo-bar in the living room, several devices in the kitchen appeared obviously burned. The walls brimmed with shadowy energy steeped in guilt, strong enough that the room seemed to be breathing in and out.

  “I feel it too. And I ain’t psionic at all. But, wait ’til you see the dead guy.”

  “Grey Devil?” asked Kirsten.

  “Living in this area? Nah. Dead man was one Zack Rivera, age thirty-six. Bounty hunter. Probably lost two-hundred grand in energy weapons when all the electronics fried.”

  “Let me guess, this guy went after Diablos a lot.”

  Lockwood blinked. “Holy shit, you are psionic.”

  Kirsten went around the couch and crossed the living room to an area set up like a home office. A handful of forensics people and a Division 2 detective milled around doing little more than talking. They all glanced over at her. Most nodded in greeting. One crime scene tech looked away fast, going pale.

  She ignored them and approached the sheet-covered body on the floor. Like Modeus, this man radiated abyssal energy, though the undertone of guilt caught her off guard. From what little she had seen of abyssals, she didn’t think that particular emotion existed in their repertoire. She tugged the covering back enough to examine his face and chest.

  Unsurprisingly, jagged black stains scored the body’s chest, his skin not quite as pale as Modeus had been, but close. For a radius of about two feet from the heart, the body had blanched. Beyond that, he still had a medium brown complexion.

  “Now, that’s not something you see every day.” Dorian whistled. “As if it drained the life right out of him.”

  “That’s… strange.” Kirsten crouched for a closer look. The black ‘burn’ marks on the chest appeared close enough to the ones on Modeus for her to feel sure the same entity had caused them.

  “Yeah,” said the detective, chuckling. “That’s not the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  Kirsten re-covered the body, stood, and started down the hall toward the bedroom in search of spirits or any other energy traces, intending to ignore the cops swapping stories. She peered into the master bedroom at the end, finding only somewhat weaker energy. Officer Lockwood followed, presumably out of curiosity.

  “This case from sixty years ago beats all,” said the detective.

  “You ain’t that old.” A woman laughed. “Come on, stop pulling our leg.”

  Kirsten stepped into the bathroom, which also had little paranormal energy. “I’m just going to check around real quick and get out of here. Whatever did this is long gone.”

  “Agreed,” said Dorian, following her.

  “Think so?” asked Lockwood. “Place feels all s
orts of amped up.”

  “It’s only residual energy. I’m ninety-nine percent sure the killer is a paranormal entity, probably sent here by the Diablos to get rid of this guy, and it’s no longer here.”

  The detective snickered. “Nah, Morris. It wasn’t my case. Heard about it during training after I made the promotion off street patrol. It came up during class one day, left everyone speechless.”

  Kirsten checked a hall closet just because. Still nothing useful, except a few sets of WEC Duster body armor—personal protection made to look like an Old West cowboy’s coat and vest.

  She smirked. Little boys love dressing up and playing with guns.

  “So, this cyber-freak with a whole bunch of headware decides to become a serial rapist… only there’s a twist,” said the detective.

  “Isn’t there always?” asked Morris.

  Kirsten shut the closet door and walked back down the hall into the office area that probably should’ve been a dining room.

  “See, this guy would target women with M3 ports and enough cybernetic implants to suit his little fetish.”

  Ugh. Sick bastard. Kirsten headed for the kitchen, shaking her head.

  “Dude was a serial rapist. He’d tie his victims down, then plug his M3 port into their M3 port so he could experience the rape from the victim’s perspective. See what they see, feel what they feel, total head case.”

  The techs, Morris, and Officer Lockwood all whistled in disgusted awe.

  “That guy had way too much circuitry in his skull,” said Morris. “Totally snapped.”

  Kirsten stopped short. Experience the rape from the victim’s side? Her thoughts leapt straight to her active case with the woman who’d been possessed and dragged to a motel in a grey zone. She turned back, staring at the detective. He looked to be in his early thirties with brown hair, though he had a little grey going on over the ears.

  “Yeah. A real sick son of a bitch.” The detective started to smile, impressed with his own story, but wound up going flat-faced when he noticed Kirsten watching him.

  “Did they ever get him?” asked Morris, a woman in a forensic jumpsuit.

  The detective continued looking at Kirsten for a few seconds before breaking eye contact and glancing at the techs around him. “Yeah… Didn’t go to trial though. His last victim’s father was in Division 5.”

  All the techs—and Officer Lockwood—whistled in a ‘that’s not good’ way.

  The detective went to drink from his empty hand. “Damn. Need coffee.”

  Kirsten walked over to the group. “Excuse me… Detective?”

  “Smith.”

  She blinked. “Seriously?”

  He sighed. “Yes. Seriously.”

  “Wow.” Dorian snickered. “That’s almost as bad as someone actually named John Doe.”

  “What was the inquest number on that case?” Kirsten held her left arm up, opening the holo-panel.

  Detective Smith bit back a laugh. “It’s a sixty-year-old case and what was left of the guy wouldn’t have filled a sandwich bag.”

  “It’s probably just folklore,” said Lockwood. “You know how cops are. Tall tales to freak out the rooks. What kind of twisted son of a bitch would want to rape himself? That shit’s way too sick to be real.”

  Kirsten shook her head. “It is real. And the guy’s not done.”

  “Not done? He’s a splat mark,” said Smith, laughing.

  “I investigate issues related to paranormal entities, predominantly ghosts. An extremely violent death can produce a haunt of exceptional power. I’ve got an active case that sounds an awful lot like that case you were talking about, enough that I need to ask you for that inquest number.”

  “Look, kid.” Detective Smith rested his hands on her shoulders. “You’re way too young to even read that file. Some of the stuff in there would turn your hair white.”

  “I’m not a kid, detective. And I’m sure some of the cases I’ve handled would leave you hiding under your bed sucking your thumb. Trust me, I can handle anything a mortal can do.”

  Dorian gave her a funny look, but said nothing.

  “All right, fine. It’s your psyche to shatter. Gimme a sec to look it up.” Smith took out his NetMini and accessed his police login.

  Kirsten glanced at Dorian.

  “Some things the living can do to each other would affect you. Not going to put those thoughts in your head.” He offered a protective smile.

  Stuff with kids involved. She cringed internally, thinking back to Willow and how she might’ve reacted if the girl hadn’t been pyrokinetic.

  “Here it is. Inquest 23061122CC.”

  Kirsten snapped out of her depressive thoughts and keyed the number into her armband terminal. “You said sixty years. 2306? This is a 102-year-old case.”

  He shrugged. “I guessed. Been a couple years since I actually looked at it. The guy’s long gone.”

  She typed the last few characters before looking up at him. “He’s long dead. Not long gone. You’re a detective. Check Inquest 24181018B2, read what happened, and you tell me what you think about the cases being related.”

  Smith one-finger typed at his NetMini. The screen glare on his face changed from bright to neon green. He read her notes, his cheeks gradually paling over the next few minutes. “Feh. You’re messing with me.”

  “Serial rapist with cybernetics plugs into his victims to ‘feel’ it from their side? Unknown paranormal entity possesses at least two women that we know of and places them in situations to be assaulted, not releasing them until after the assault is finished? I’ll ask you again, Detective Smith… for the sake of argument, consider ghosts to be real. What would that evidence tell you?”

  He eyed his NetMini for a few seconds. “It tells me I’m going to be needing heavy doses of Sandman to ever sleep again.”

  Lockwood, Morris, and two other women on the forensics crew all shivered.

  “I need to track this son of a bitch down and deal with him, but he’s impossible to pinpoint. There’s no pattern to the attacks. He appears to be choosing his victims absolutely at random. Most spirits have a ‘home’ of sorts that they don’t stray far from, but this one doesn’t. I have no idea where to start looking. This old case might just give me enough information to figure out where he, well for lack of a better word, sleeps.” Kirsten sighed. “Thanks.”

  Detective Smith nodded, though still seemed quite freaked out.

  “Please send Zack Rivera’s remains in under Inquest 24181021AF.” She backed toward the door. “There’s not much more I can do here. The entity that did this is gone and I think it was likely ordered to go after this guy specifically. You might want to send a note over to the Gang Crimes Task Force that anyone high up on the Diablos’ shit list might have a disturbing paranormal encounter.”

  “Right,” said Smith. “About that coffee…”

  18

  Victim Number Three

  At several points in her life, Kirsten had read things that made her squirm, made it difficult to sleep, or gave her nightmares.

  Mostly, they’d been scary stories that Nicole dared her to read… and they had nothing on Inquest 23061122CC. The investigation began in 2036, two years before the suspect, Malden Walker, met a brutal—though quick—death. Pris Ramirez had been his forty-seventh, and last victim. By the time he attacked the twenty-year-old daughter of a Division 5 trooper, the entire city knew of his existence. Miss Ramirez had loaded a virus soft into her headware on the off chance she wound up being one of his victims.

  That virus got into Walker’s Neural Interface Unit when he linked to her, and while it didn’t do anything to him that he noticed, it allowed the authorities to track him down. Ramirez never expected her father would boot in the door of the dive motel where Walker had been staying at the time and feed him three high-explosive rounds from an ABR20.

  Kirsten winced at the site images. One showed Sergeant Tito Ramirez standing there like a triumphant hunter with the massive pump-shotg
un-style rifle over his shoulder. Two smoking bits of leg and scraps of electronics clinging to a spatter of red on the walls appeared to be the extent of Walker’s remains.

  That gun is supposed to be used on borgs. Walker only had artificial eyes and some headware.

  According to the inquest, Malden Walker targeted younger women between eighteen and twenty-five who had at least one cybernetic eye and an M2 port (it happened over a hundred years ago before the M3 had hit the consumer market). In all but the first three attacks, after he finished, Walker forced the victims to shower, then placed them nude, hogtied, gagged, and blindfolded into a PubTran car and sent it to the nearest Division 1 station. Some investigators’ comments in the file theorize that he destroyed the victim’s clothing to eliminate potential evidence, while others believed the PubTran ride was intended to inflict humiliation and mental trauma.

  The first three victims, he’d left at the scene of the attack, trapped inside hotel autoshower tubes he’d sealed with duct tape.

  In every case, the victims suffered only minor injuries: bruising from being grabbed and resisting, cuts and skin lesions caused by their struggling against restraints, and of course bruising and abrasion to the genital region. Kirsten (and the original Division 2 investigators) thought it unusual that Walker appeared to go out of his way to minimize injury. Victims reported that he mostly spoke in a sing-song whispery voice, called them ‘delicate flowers,’ and—most disturbing of all, while he’d connected his headware to his victims’ headware, tapping into what they saw, heard, and felt, the women reported hearing his voice in their heads mimicking a woman or a child, screaming at himself to stop as if he were the victim. Most of the women stated that they thought he mocked their pleas, but the original investigators theorized Walker had likely suffered severe abuse as a boy and, for reasons they couldn’t figure out, had some compulsion to continually relive it vicariously.