Harbinger

by Matthew S. Cox

  She examined the scrawny young woman, noting a few superficial cuts from the components on top of the fan cabinet as well as an impression of a rounded vent grille on her stomach. “Are you hurt?”

  “I don’t think so. Just freezing.”

  After walking Freya back to the spot where her clothing remained on the ground, Kirsten dragged the man who’d been about to assault her to the patrol craft. The young woman blurred like sped-up video, dressing herself in seconds. Expecting the Harbinger would occupy the back seat again, she stuffed the guy into the trunk. While she had it open, she took an evidence bag for the knives, ammo, chems, and handguns she confiscated from him.

  Freya crept over. “Did that shit really happen?”

  “I’m sorry, but it did. You called the police to report a ghost touching you?”

  “Yeah. I was about to hop in the shower and felt this hand on my tit. Thought I might be having a flashback or something, but it didn’t stop. I scrambled into my clothes as fast as I could move and ran out the door, calling you guys… but something happened to me once I got outside. Like cold hit me from behind and then I was just watching my body do stuff. Those handcuffs… it made me order them from a delivery bot.”

  “Wow, what an asshole,” said Dorian. “Maybe the keys really are in her bag?”

  Kirsten put an arm around her and led her over to the passenger seat. “C’mon. I’ll explain everything.”

  “Where’s that shithead who almost raped me?” Freya looked around inside the car.

  “Trunk.”

  Freya laughed. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Div 1 isn’t gonna come out here to pick up one guy since I’m already here. And… putting him in the back seat isn’t a good idea.”

  She glowered. “No shit. I’d smash his face in.”

  Soon after Kirsten got in, the Harbinger flooded the back seat

  Dorian put a hand on the hood and seeped into the car, not appearing in the cabin.

  “So, umm, what happened?” asked Freya.

  Kirsten pulled into the air. As frustrating as it had been to watch Malden slip away, she at least felt a rush of relief at having shown up in time to stop the worst of it. “It may be a little difficult for you to believe, but you were attacked by a ghost.”

  “I saw that giant shadowy dude. Was that it?”

  “No. He’s…” Kirsten glanced back at the two eye spots in the gloom. “On our side.”

  22

  Lost Puppy

  Confusion had thoroughly set in by the time Kirsten headed down to the school area to pick Evan up.

  Though remarkable, being able to go home only two hours past the normal end of her shift didn’t account for her bewilderment. The increasing sense that something vastly exceeding normal happened came from having a Harbinger follow her all the way to the school. It trailed after her like a giant black balloon with eyes, drifting silent and ominous.

  Fortunately, at a little after 6 p.m., not many children remained at the school.

  She found Evan waiting in the foyer by the main entrance, laughing and talking with the girl that had been with him in the Beneath. Maela looked over at Kirsten’s approach and started to smile, but the Harbinger’s presence made her blanch so white she could’ve passed for a Marsborn. Evan, on the other hand, simply raised an eyebrow. His eyes lit up with astral energy a second later.

  He blinked, surprised, and seemed to disregard it as a non-threat. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt us.”

  Maela glanced at him, edging away. “Umm. Okay. If you say so. Guess you gotta go now. Thanks for hanging out.”

  “Yeah. See you tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” Her expression said ‘as long as whatever’s freaking me out isn’t around.’

  Evan waved at her and ran over into a hug. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hey yourself.” She squeezed him. “How’d it go today?”

  “Pretty good. Specialist Vasquez spent most of the day on General Harlon E. Hewitt.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Kirsten, while walking down the hall to the elevator.

  Evan blinked. “You don’t know General Hewitt?”

  “Sounds kinda familiar.”

  He flailed his arms. “Mom! He basically started the UCF after this guy President Hornburrough got killed by the bad guys. He figured the old politicians weren’t gonna do anything to win the Corporate War, just sit there bein’ scared, so he took over. The Corporates did this thing they called ‘Operation Winter Rain’ and it was like a whole bunch of political assassinations. Because of General Hewitt, there’s still a UCF and we’re not all part of the stinky ACC.”

  “The normal people who live there aren’t stinky.” Kirsten patted him on the head.

  “I know. They just have buttheads for leaders. We have a new girl in class today, name’s Willow. She’s sad ’cause her dad just died, but his ghost is here, too. She knows already that his ghost is here, but I helped them talk to each other at lunch. Someone did something really mean to her but she didn’t want to say anything about it.”

  Wow. They put her into classes already? Guess she’s handling things better than I did. Kirsten sighed to herself. “How did she seem?”

  “Sad. But she’s nice. Kept saying she couldn’t believe how many kids there are with psionics, and she likes that ’cause she doesn’t feel so alone now. She’s a pyro.”

  On the walk to the patrol craft and most of the flight home, Kirsten explained that she’d met Willow already, and that some bad people hurt her dad and tried to hurt her.

  “That’s why you weren’t in the office.” He smiled. “I’m glad you helped her. Sorry for being scared when I couldn’t find you.”

  “I still can’t believe no one noticed you kids missing for hours.” She grumbled.

  “Mr. Short only wanted to play video games. He never watched us when we did cit point stuff. Miss Eisen ran the citizenship period today, and she even helped us clean stuff.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Kirsten landed in the parking area of her apartment tower, still finding delight in the luxury of being able to set the car down in an actual marked space rather than wedge it between machines on the roof. The Harbinger exuded out of the car and followed her across the platform full of cars, down the hall, and all the way home.

  Evan ran straight to the Yume Koujou system. It didn’t seem right for a nine-year-old to put in almost a twelve-hour day between classes and after-school punishment, so she decided not to pester him about homework. They didn’t exactly give the kids all that much at that age, and he’d probably already done it while waiting for her to pick him up.

  She headed to the bedroom, changed out of her uniform to a far more comfortable outfit: a loose T-shirt and sweat pants. The Harbinger stood in the corner of the living room like an avant-garde statue from the fourth circle of hell. Since Evan didn’t seem to mind it, she decided to leave it be. His clairvoyant talent evidently had the ability to sniff people—and even ghosts—out. He picked up a general sense of a being’s intent, good or bad, so anyone he didn’t like or seemed scared of, she would be wary of.

  If not for the abyssal in that stupid bracelet, she’d have listened to his instinct about Konstantin.

  Since he’d been so blasé about having a Harbinger trailing after them, his reaction must mean it wouldn’t hurt them. Not that she really expected it to. For one thing, they couldn’t harm the living. For another, she’d interacted with them a few times and they’d been polite, even pleasant. Well, as pleasant as a creature made of abyssal energy could be.

  While throwing together some chicken-and-noodles for dinner, she debated if Harbingers came from once-human souls or, like They Who Always Were, predated humans. This, of course, set her off on a mental tangent trying to figure out why the universe would create such beings as Harbingers whose purpose appeared to be policing human souls. Did they go after ‘dark’ animals, too? Could animals have dark souls? It didn’t seem plausible to think so.

  H
ow does one race of creature, humans, on this whole planet deserve Harbingers and Seraphim? Are there other races out there on other planets? Humanity can’t be that cosmically significant. She shoved the pasta-chicken dish onto two plates when it finished, hoping she hadn’t overdone it on the garlic, or whatever that green stuff was. Basil? It kinda smelled like it could work with chicken, so she used some.

  “Ev,” said Kirsten in a slightly raised voice. “Dinner.”

  “’Kay!”

  She sat at the table, teasing a fork around the spiral noodles. Staring into the food, she drifted mentally back to being Evan’s age, sitting on the floor of a locked closet, trying to figure out if Mother would give her a half-bowl of oatmeal on any given night. Whenever the ghosts pestered the apartment trying to get Kirsten’s attention, Mother would sometimes refuse to feed her as punishment. Rather than sad and pitiful, the memory made her furious.

  Evan rushed into the kitchen and leapt into his chair. “Ooh. Smells good!”

  He proceeded to attack the food like he hadn’t eaten all day. Morelli made a comment shortly after the adoption finalized that boys devour food like locust swarms. Kirsten had no idea what that even meant, but Evan certainly had no trouble inhaling food. He still looked too damn skinny, but the doctors called him healthy.

  They talked about his day at school over dinner. Evan explained how he’d decided to be friends with Maela even if she was two grades ahead of him since she seemed so lonely. Hearing him so matter-of-factly discuss spending his lunch recess time trying to make her feel better choked her up. If not for having a table between them, she’d have squeezed him until he demanded air.

  Once they finished eating, Kirsten tossed the dishes in the machine. Soon, she planted herself on the couch with Evan smushed against her side. Together, they put on senshelmets and entered the world of Monwyn.

  Between a Harbinger lurking behind her and three active cases, she had a little trouble getting into the game, but eventually surrendered to the fun of running around the forest and firing arrows at orcs, goblins, and pyrodons. She rather disliked the fire elemental lizards. Bad enough having to fight a creature as big as a car that breathed flame, their armor made her arrows feel weak unless she kept running in circles to attack from behind and avoid their giant head plate.

  Much sooner than she wanted, the timer went off. She snoozed it, allowing Evan an extra fifteen or so minutes until they completed a quest to collect twenty-five glowshrooms. Upon returning to the village, Monwyn the wizard pulled an enormous sack of luminous pumpkin-sized mushrooms out of his robe that should in no way have fit in there, and handed it over to a potbellied village alchemist.

  Golden sparkles danced in the air along with a brief celebratory chime to go along with their experience point award. Alas, they both had quite a ways to go to make another level. Monwyn faced her.

  “Guess it’s bedtime. Goodnight, fair huntress.” The tall, bearded Monwyn bowed, then faded away.

  Kirsten thought the logout command. As soon as everything went black, she pulled the helmet off. “Night, brave wizard.”

  He leapt into a hug, then scrambled off to his room.

  The Harbinger remained in the corner, staring impassively at her.

  Wow. Guess those guys don’t get bored.

  She put the game system away, then headed down the hall to kiss Evan goodnight before going to her bedroom. It felt a bit weird to crawl into bed before 9:30, but she did wake up super early… and she’d had a rough day.

  The Harbinger came through the wall and glided over to hang in the corner near her giant plush rune rabbit. Constant exposure to the pervasive dread that surrounded it had almost reached the point of numbness where she didn’t notice it anymore. A sense that death snuck up behind her had ratcheted down a few notches to a feeling more like she did something wrong and didn’t quite know if she got away with it or would wind up in Captain Eze’s office for ‘a talk.’

  Of course, on top of her anxiety over having a spectral serial rapist and an abyssal loose in the city, a Harbinger hanging out in her bedroom barely rated.

  If I can sleep with him in my room, I can sleep anywhere. And wow, he really is acting like a lost puppy that wants a home. What the hell is going on?

  She laughed to herself. Hell indeed.

  23

  Weaponized

  The Harbinger followed Kirsten for the next two days, a silent presence always about twenty feet away.

  Even the rest of Division 0 had more or less acclimated to it, except for an unfortunate panic attack in the shower area, the images of which would haunt several tactical officers for the rest of their careers. Nicole started joking about sponsoring an annual ‘naked hall run’ for charity, though no one thought it a good idea.

  Malden hadn’t attacked anyone else since she’d seen him, though that proved only that any potential victims didn’t tell anyone. Most of his victims probably kept quiet—or at least lied about the being possessed part, fearing they’d be called insane.

  Since the system couldn’t offer any assistance tracking down a ghost or an abyssal, she spent some time looking for information about the Diablos. Even the Div 1 system contained little in the way of criminal record profiles for them. A meeting between Diablos and police went one of two ways depending on if the cops had armor on. Barring the occasional exception where the gang got a hold of weapons civilians shouldn’t own, the standard issue Division 1 patrol armor rendered them impervious to most small arms fire. Leather jackets with ‘trendy evil symbols’ didn’t do much against bullets.

  Every so often, the Diablos would get their hands on Class 4 or larger combat rifles that could punch holes in police armor, but more often than not, exchanges went in favor of the police. Either way, few of them survived arrest. It didn’t seem likely that upon seeing the cops, someone in Diablos colors would dive to the ground and scream out their surrender, so bullets often preceded words.

  Kirsten felt reasonably certain that the Diablos had murdered Juan Miguel Esparza, though identifying the specific person among them who did it would be next to impossible without a literal hunting expedition and telepathy. It didn’t strike her as likely Captain Eze would agree to let her run blindly into a black zone intending to hunt, mind-read, and kill Diablos. She didn’t fancy the idea of that either. If she had any way to disengage from them without killing, she would’ve considered asking. But her getting even close enough to mind read a Diablo would end with someone dead, unless…

  There’s always Suggestion. ‘Go away’ works fairly well.

  In order to settle her conscience about her promise to Rafael, she’d need to reach a point where she believed she had done everything possible to find his brother’s killer and could do no more.

  She also had a strong suspicion that Juan Miguel’s death, as well as the other four murders arranged in a five-pointed star around the black zone at Sector 4196 had been part of a ritual that summoned the abyssal she had no luck finding. Worse, as with Charazu and Avarazel—both true demons or ‘They Who Always Were’ as Konstantin had called them—she would need to find out this one’s name in order to have any hope of destroying it. And, the best way to do that would be to find the notes or materials used by whoever summoned it.

  Of course, so far, the traces she’d picked up hadn’t been that strong. With luck, she merely had to deal with an abyssal—a returned once-human—who escaped the ‘bad place.’ Only, this one felt even stronger than Seneschal, and not by a little bit.

  At least no more paranormal killings had occurred since Santiago Herrera. She considered the possibility that the abyssal might’ve been summoned for specific, targeted assassinations and, having completed said murders, went back where it belonged.

  However, that also meant that a street gang full of dangerously psychotic cretins who barely qualified as sentient beings managed to figure out mysticism to the degree that they could’ve done something like that.

  “Hmm. Hey, Dorian?” She swung arou
nd in her chair to face his desk, behind hers.

  He had his feet up, leaning back in his seat while looking at a datapad. Or at least a ghostly simulation thereof. He moved it aside so it no longer blocked his face. “Yes?”

  “Assuming that those idiots managed to actually summon something, I’m starting to think they might’ve sent this abyssal after a handful of prominent enemies. We’ve gone two days and haven’t had another body turn up with weird black lines. Maybe the abyssal went back.”

  The Harbinger, floating near the wall on the left, shook its head.

  “Great.” She sighed. “So I’ve been wasting time in here when I should’ve been out there looking for it.”

  Again, the Harbinger shook its head.

  “What?” She peered at it.

  It looked down, a vaporous apparition of black smoke somehow managing to convey sadness, and pointed at itself.

  “You’re here to help?”

  It shook its head, then pointed at itself again before making a clawing motion.

  “Perhaps you should read its mind instead of playing charades?” Dorian lowered his feet from the desk. The ‘datapad’ in his hand vanished into silvery fog.

  “No surface thoughts to read. But he can understand me.” She glanced at the holo-panel array over her desk showing case notes, then back at the Harbinger. Again it made a clawing gesture. She wound up staring at its wispy fingers. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” asked Dorian.

  “The answer’s been right next to me for days and I haven’t seen it. Abyssal energy, that weird sense of guilt, five claw marks… The Harbinger.” She blinked at it. “Are you saying you killed those three people?”

  It nodded.

  Dorian about fell out of his chair.

  Morelli eased himself up from his chair and walked out.

  “I thought Harbingers couldn’t harm the living.” Kirsten swallowed.

  It raised its arms in a gesture of frustration, then slouched in a defeated posture.