Division Zero
Author: Matthew S. Cox
Date: 2014-03-05 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Paranormal; Urban Fantasy; Fantasy; Cyberpunk; Mystery; Futuristic; Action; Crime; Suspense
Description: Most cops get to deal with living criminals, but Agent Kirsten Wren is not most cops. A gifted psionic with a troubled past, Kirsten possesses a rare combination of abilities that give her a powerful weapon against spirits. In 2418, rampant violence and corporate warfare have left no shortage of angry wraiths in West City. Most exist as little more than fleeting shadows and eerie whispers in the darkness. Kirsten is shunned by a society that does not understand psionics, feared by those who know what she can do, and alone in a city of millions. Every so often, when a wraith gathers enough stre

A Division of Whampa, LLC
P.O. Box 2160
Reston, VA 20195
Tel/Fax: 800-998-2509
http://curiosityquills.com

© 2015 Matthew Cox
http://www.matthewcoxbooks.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information about Subsidiary Rights, Bulk Purchases, Live Events, or any other questions - please contact Curiosity Quills Press at info@curiosityquills.com, or visit http://curiosityquills.com

ISBN 978-1-62007-726-9 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-62007-727-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-62007-728-3 (hardcover)

1. Start Reading
2. About the Author
3. More Books from Curiosity Quills Press
4. Full Table of Contents

nchanted by a fleeting daydream of the perfect fairy-tale wedding, Kirsten watched imaginary guests mingling through the dark spots between trees. Evan grabbed her arm with both hands, shaking her out of the fog of an idyllic day. Fanciful organ music retreated into her thoughts, replaced by the reality of whistling wind and distant commerce. The tiny nature preserve, five square miles of green contained in a flowerbox of silver high-rise buildings, was not safe from the music of advert bots. She blinked at him, as if surprised by his sudden proximity. The sight of the boy’s defensive posture over Shani made her smile. The look of urgency in his eyes took it away. The little girl seemed confused at the sudden end to their play. Kirsten looked to her left, as if an explanation could be found on the sienna face of Nila Assad.

“Mom…” He pulled at Kirsten’s arm. “Something’s in the bushes watching us.”

“Where?” She put a hand on his shoulders. “Did you see anything?”

Evan shook his head. “No. I just had that creepy feeling like something was there.”

Kirsten frowned at the expression on Nila’s face. “I don’t think it’s a…” Pervert. Shani didn’t see anything. Evan’s too scared. He wouldn’t be this rattled if it was just a man. “…living person.”

Nila tensed after Kirsten’s telepathic message and reached for her daughter. The glare she sent into the bushes melted to worry. Shani hopped up on the bench while Evan remained standing, arms folded, eyes fixed on the spot. Kirsten worked her E90 out of her too-small purse.

“You know,” said Nila, “you can wear it on your hip. You don’t have to hide it; besides, it’s against policy. What if you needed it in a hurry?”

Kirsten brushed her thumb over the molded grip. “I guess… I’m just trying to feel normal for one day this month.” She rubbed Evan’s shoulder. “Stay here with Nila, I’ll be right back.”

“You’re not going alone, are you?” Nila put a hand on Kirsten’s arm.

“What else can I do? Should we leave the kids here while we run off? Or bring them with us after who-knows-what?”

Evan turned so Shani could not see the frightened look he gave Kirsten. Mom, you did kill that bad ghost, right?

Kirsten stood, and her shoes meowed as they absorbed her weight. Evan cracked up giggling. She sighed, glancing down past her skirt at the pink and white Nomz. The image of Seneschal’s final obliteration came to mind. Yes, I did. Did it feel like him? It was her turn to shiver. It wasn’t the blast of wind inflating her skirt; the thought of another abyssal stalking her son made her blood chill. She smirked at Nila.

This is why I don’t wear skirts. I’m gonna get into a fight and it’s gonna come off, or I’m going to go headfirst into something with my ass in the air. Kirsten blushed at the mere thought of it.

“Kinda.” He bit his lower lip. “Strong.”

Nila grinned, hiding her face in Shani’s hair to avoid laughing at Kirsten’s mental grumbling.

“Stay here and protect Shani, I’ll be right back.” She winked at Evan.

“‘Kay.” He puffed out his chest.

Shani frowned. “He’s just a kid too. Alls he can do is see ghosts.” Evan floated off his feet, squealing from the sudden telekinetic levitation, and landed on the bench sitting next to her. Shani folded her arms. “I’ll probably wind up protecting him.”

Evan looked annoyed for a second or two before he held Shani’s hand. “You can’t TK a creepy spirit, and that’s what’s watching us.”

After a reassuring squeeze to his hand, Kirsten went toward the edge of the wooded area with both hands on her weapon, aimed down and to the right. She felt ridiculous brandishing the E90 while wearing a thigh-length skirt, white sweater, and cat-headed sneakers that meowed whenever she stepped too hard.

Great, I’m the cheerleader from hell.

The mood shifted as she neared the edge of the clearing. Forty yards or so from the bench, a definite unease spread through the area. Dozens of different ad-bot tunes collided at once amid the rustling trees. Whatever energy permeated the air here altered her mood, changing the sound into a sinister calliope that could accompany the carnival of the damned. Primal trepidation swam up her spine. With it came the feeling she would not be able to find her way out of this forest.

Kirsten paused at the edge of the induced growth; for a moment, she forgot the nature preserve only occupied five square miles. It felt endless, beckoning, as if a malevolence within wanted her forever. Wind fluttered her skirt, and the chill on her legs caused a shiver. It took her a moment, as well as a glance back at the three people she considered family, to gather herself.

Something is trying to freak me out.

Squinting, she searched through the foliage for any sign of what caused the twisted mood. It clawed at the back of her mind, wanting to make her feel scared. Kirsten tapped her power, raising an active defense against the spectral ambiance. The fear lessened. A living telempath would not face resistance from her astral ward.

There’s some kind of spirit here.

Nila nodded at the message. Kirsten, with full confidence, straightened her stance and walked into the trees. Whatever it was had not attacked when the kids were close to it, a chance moment when she could not have intervened. If it was here to harm them, why had it not made its move then? Evan said it felt strong, which made her worry she missed an abyssal somewhere along the way. Many of them, at least according to recent research, preferred weeks and months of slow maddening to murder. Certain spirits could derive untold amounts of pleasure from watching a mortal’s slow descent into insanity.

She stepped over a root that encroached on the jogging path and wondered how deep the soil went before it hit the city plate. Enough for trees, apparently. The occasional holographic sign flickered into view as she moved, bearing reminders that visitors to the park were responsible for any litter. Continued tweaking at her mental defenses kept her on guard, but a presence still watched her.

To the right, a spread of debris outlined a space of grass claimed by vagrants. Three crude shelters ringed a nine-foot-wide metal dish filled with ash, a cover from an articulated cargo mover’s wheel motor. Still, she found no larger trace of paranormal energy. Small bits of trash wrapped about trees, flapping in the wind. A bot the size of a shoebox orbited the camp, itching to issue someone a fine for littering. Detecting her motion, it came zooming over. By the time it reached her, its prosecutorial zeal had faded to a disappointed nose-down approach. A small holo-panel sticking out of its side displayed her face―her official ID image.

“Good afternoon, officer. Have you located the parties responsible for this code violation?”

Kirsten smirked at it. “Please tell me you’re not just going to slap a littering fine on the first person you find who isn’t a police employee.”

The floating bot sagged. “Pardon my enthusiasm. I’ve been on this assignment for ninety-three hours now.”

“I hate to throw sand in your lubricant, but the people responsible for that campsite probably don’t even have citizen registrations. You should move on.”

“I can’t,” whined a petulant male voice, “my program does not contain a logic gate for failure-slash-lack of suspects.”

“Well, what will you do if you find the ones responsible and they don’t have a PID transponder to fine?”

It trailed behind her as she walked. “In that event, I am programmed to use verbal compliance enforcement techniques.”

Kirsten avoided another huge root. “You mean nag them to death?”

“ Hmmf.” The floating brick pivoted away, as if offended. “I’ll have you know I perform a very important function.”

“I’m sure you do.”

With a shake of her head, she turned from the patrol bot and came to a halt. The induced fear was pervasive, omnidirectional. She could walk for hours and never find anything just by sight. Maybe who or whatever this is only comes out at night. Ugh, this is a waste of time.
One more try. She closed her eyes and reached out with mental energy. Her influence projected into the astral realm and swam through the emanation teasing at the edges of her mood. She swept back and forth, hoping to feel some sense of direction that would lead her to an entity. After some time, she concluded the effect was an imprint on the area rather than active radiance. A spirit had infused this section of the park with its desire to frighten the living away from its domain.

She let her head sag backward and sighed at the treetops. “Well, not the first time I’ve chased my own tail.”

“You there,” said the bot. “The fine for littering is―” The pronouncement cut off with an electronic scream. “Assaulting a municipal patrol robot is a crime!”

When she opened her eyes, a face was less than twelve inches away from hers. With a gasp, she leapt back and collided with another man behind her. He was all too happy to catch her by the arms and hold on. The sudden shock of a grab from behind left her unable to do much but squirm for a few seconds.

The bot glided up behind him. “Now the total fine is 4,942 credits. Please swipe a NetMini or await the police.”

“Well, well,” said the man in front of her, ignoring the nuisance behind him. “Candy cute. Do your parents know you wandered off alone?”

He did not appear to be much older than seventeen, and had a long, multi-pocketed coat and frizzed-up orange hair. A glowing NanoLED tattoo wrapped around the right half of his face, a dragon drawn in red. The light darkened with his expression.

“Do yours know you’re assaulting people in the park?” She stopped struggling. “You two should go back to school. Not much future in the UCF for people without advanced degrees.”

They both laughed. A mix of warm and cool gathered at the left side of her neck as the man holding her pressed his face close and inhaled.

“Relax, princess. I got some stuff that’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.” He slipped his hand out of his coat, holding a refurbished, refilled autoinjector. “Or, if you’d prefer not to remember it at all…” His grip shifted, fanning two more like cards out from behind it. The purple one still had dried blood on the end.

The way the man at her back held her arms prevented Kirsten from aiming the E90 at the one in front, despite not wanting to kill someone that young. She tried once more to wriggle free, but found her strength lacking.

“This is normally where I would give you one more chance not to make a stupid mistake, but I’ll settle for being happy you two idiots decided to try and grab me instead of some helpless kid.”

“Whoa, Skeev, we found a freak. I think she likes it.”

“Yeah,” she said, as her eyes faded to flat white. “I’m going to love it.”

Her thoughts wrapped around the sentience behind her head. The mind blast knocked the man into a stupor, pared back to the point where it only stunned him. Skeev, or whatever his name was, backpedaled from the eerie glow in her glare. Kirsten shrugged her arms free and raised the E90, her eyes returning to their usual sapphire blue.

“Police, Division 0, on the ground, now.”

Whether by panic, ignorance, or desperation, Skeev howled and charged. Not wanting to shoot him, and not feeling threatened by him, she spun into his attack and guided him face-first into a tree. When he bounced away and staggered to face her again, she kicked, slapping him across the face with one of her sneakers.

Meow.

He flailed his arms to maintain balance. Kirsten advanced on him as he went for a knife, kicking it out of his grip before he had it all the way out of a belt sheath.

Meow.

Skeev backed off, cradling his wrist. He glared, reaching for a pistol.

“ Freeze.” Light flickered through her eyes.

“Ssssomeone lose a cat?” moaned the stunned punk.

The psionic suggestion had such a profound effect on his weak mind that he ceased all motion―even breathing. Onset of a sudden pallor and cold sweat made her worry she’d stopped his heart.

“ Breathe.”

Kirsten grabbed his shoulder and swept his legs, sending him chest-first to the ground. Her hand swiped at her belt, reaching for binders she did not have with her. Crap. She went for her purse. Back on the bench, double crap. The gang punk had a NetMini, though its powder-pink case made her assume it stolen. She relieved him of three handguns, six more knives, and a retractable shock-baton―the cheaper civilian-legal cousin to a police stunrod.

“Bot!” she yelled. “Get over here.”

“Not bad,” said a voice to her left.

Something about the tone made her whirl. A man leaned on a tree, clad in a dingy pair of overalls somewhere between orange and tan. Copious amounts of black grime clung to a dark high-collared sweater, and everything else. He tapped a clod of dirt from heavy work boots and straightened up before taking a step. His bulk would have been intimidating, if not for the sense of his being a ghost.

Kirsten relaxed. “They’re just kids.”

The worker spirit laughed. “Kids with guns, knives, and an itch they wanted you to scratch.”

She frowned at the stolen NetMini. “I doubt I was their first.”

“Yes, officer?” The litter bot zipped over, orbiting about her head in a side-slide.

“Outside the trees by the park edge, there’s a woman with two kids. Her name is Nila. Ask her to call for a Division 1 unit to respond to the park right away. When they arrive, lead them here. Tell Nila everything is fine, just some lowlifes.”

“What about the littering violation?”

Kirsten sighed, pressing the cold E90 to her forehead. “To hell with the littering fine, this is actual crime.”

“But…” It wobbled. “He tried to hit me.”

“Fine, take it up with the Div One officers when they get here.”

The worker ghost laughed. As the frustrated bot raced off to carry out her request, she dragged the mind-stunned assailant over and flung him to the ground near his friend. Backing off, she kept her weapon trained on them. A pang of curiosity laced with guilt came on. She could poke into their memories to see what befell the owner of the pink NetMini, but was hesitant to look. After a moment of pondering, these two idiots did not give her a murderous vibe. Chances are, the girl who owned it was still alive.

She peeked into Skeev’s head, and instantly regretted it.

The other one moaned, sliding one hand to his face. “Ugh, what happened? Why am I on the ground?”

Kirsten got their attention with a laser blast in the dirt between them. “Police, Division 0. You two are both under arrest for attempted rape, assault of an officer of the law, and illegal sexual contact with a minor.” She tried to keep a straight face. “And for attempted destruction of a municipal service bot.”

“What? Minor? That’s horseshit. If you’re a damn cop, you’re old enough!” Skeev seemed ready to cry, his bravado gone.

“I know about what you all did to your associate Blowfish’s sister.”

Blowfish glared at Skeev.

“I didn’t say a fucking word, man, I swear. The bitch was cool with it.”

Kirsten narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you for a hot second. Even if she did agree to have sex with your little gang’s leader, she’s fifteen. I also highly doubt she expected it was going to turn into a group affair. ‘Get off me you fucking assholes’ doesn’t leave much room for doubt. Skeev was stupid enough to try to pull a gun on me. And you!” Kirsten pointed the E90 at the larger boy. “You just sat in the next room and listened to her scream.” Is this what Dorian felt like when he killed those people? She shivered with rage, but forced herself to calm down. “You’re pathetic! By all rights, I should have shot him where he stood. If one of you so much as farts suspiciously, I’ll aerate you both.”

She was glad they were face down and couldn’t see the look on her face. They didn’t need to know she would never make good on a threat like that. More than half of being a cop was sounding the part and hoping you could go home without blood on your hands. The ghost did pick up on her nature and winked. When he sensed his presence no longer unsettled her, he wandered over to stand nearby.

“I was expecting them to choose someone a little… older.”

“I’m not a kid,” she mumbled, “I’m twenty-two.”

The ghost blinked. “No shit. Must be those shoes.”

“Yeah, I know I look like I’m still in high school.”

“Freshman, barely.”

She gave him the finger, making him laugh. “I think these shoes are cute.” Indignation passed, she glanced up at him. “Were you hovering by Evan before?”

“Yeah. Just keeping watch on him. Theodore was trying to find you. He thinks you might’ve missed one of the other things and wanted me to make sure nothing tried to hurt your little guy.”

“Theodore? You know him?”

Skeev and Blowfish looked at each other, and gawked at Kirsten talking to nothing.

“Yep.” The sprit held out his pockets as if modeling his clothes. “I used to be in construction.”

“Anything you want me to pass along?”

“Nope. I’m good. Faulty retaining strap decided to teach me I couldn’t fly. Went about fifty meters from the plate to the real ground. I guess the big man upstairs really wanted to make his point ‘cause the plate slipped its moorings, fell, and landed on me. Biggest piece of my ass left wouldn’t fill an espresso cup.” Kirsten cringed. “Anyway, I like my family better watching from this side, no one to remind me how much of an asshole I was or give me shit for cheating on her.” He shrugged. “Wife was a lot happier with number two, course they’ve both been gone awhile now. My kids’ kids have kids.”

“You one of The Kind?”

“Yep. Name’s Andrew. By the way, those two are getting ready to run.”

Kirsten tensed at the two gangers’ subtle shift of weight onto their arms, in preparation to do a push-up. She thought about Dorian’s story of legging a boy ready to shoot Nila, and aimed at Skeev’s thigh. It felt excessive.

“I’m watching you, Skeev. Prison or crematorium, your choice.”

They relaxed.

“Someday, someone will call your bluff.” Andrew winked.

“Already have, but they weren’t kids.” She looked at him. “So, what does Theodore want this time? Didn’t he get enough of an eyeful the other week?”

“Actually, he wanted to ask you for help. It wasn’t one of The Kind, but a spirit got attacked. Not a great many things attack ghosts.”

“Dammit, there was another one.” She squinted. “Shit. How the hell am I going to find it?”

“Over here, over here.” The overt cheer in the patrol bot’s digitized voice module drifted through the air.

Kirsten unburied her face from her hand and waited. A four-foot-wide orb of cyan hologram emerged from a dim patch of woods. The litter-bot projected random images around itself to make it easier to follow. Two Division 1 officers, in blue duty armor, crunched and snapped through the foliage behind it, arms held to guard their faces from branches despite their helmets.

“Tell Theodore I’ll look into it.” She gave Andrew a determined look and approached the two Div 1 cops.

“What happened here?” The shorter one regarded her service weapon with an air of trepidation.

“I was trying to enjoy a day off in the park, but got a feeling someone was spying on my son and his friend. While I was searching for them, these two jumped me thinking I was a kid. I have a feeling I’m not the first.”

He smirked. “Guess they like them a little young?”

Kirsten’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not as young as I look. The girl who belongs to that pink ‘Mini is only fifteen.”

“Heh.” He grinned. “Never quite sure with Zeroes, I hear they start ‘em early.”

“Only if they’ve got a rare talent that’s unusually strong for the age.” She sighed, caving under their inquiring stares. “Sixteen.”

Officer Burrell gawked at her.

“No, I didn’t read your mind. I figured you saw the look on my face and were about to ask. They sent me out into the field at sixteen. Anyway, these two were going to force narcotics on me and then engage in sexual assault. I identified myself as an officer and the suspect went for a weapon.”

“The bitch’s eyes turned white and lit up! What the fuck would you do?” Skeev howled as the larger cop cuffed him and hauled him to his feet.

Blowfish blinked at the sound of the wind, still woozy from the effects of the mind blast.

“Skeev?” Kirsten took a few steps closer, standing with all her weight on her right leg, gun arm lax at her side. “Be a nice young man and tell these officers the truth about everything you did. Tell them about Amy.”

Kirsten had positioned herself at an angle where only Skeev caught the sudden glimmer in her eye. Skeev went into a frantic rambling confession about what the Red Dragons did to a fifteen-year-old, and regaled his participation in at least nine other assaults in the park. She smiled.

Andrew gave her a scolding head shake. “Now, now. What would your captain say about that?”

She jogged toward the sound of Evan’s approaching voice. “I imagine he’d be happy I didn’t kill them.”

ncora Medical occupied the upper forty floors of a gleaming white-paneled tower in the southeastern corner of Sector 18025. From the moment the call came in, Kirsten had been grumbling internally at the memory of the cold that far north. Typical for a Code-3 run like this, she had brought the patrol craft high above the city and accelerated to 375 mph.

Outside, howling winds and snow swirled around the black hovercar. By the time it reached the ground, it would be rain. Inside, the soft thrum of electronic components underpinned the silence. Kirsten left the autopilot in control for the straightaway and cradled hot coffee to her chest. Enjoying the scent of such divinity felt awkward knowing people’s lives depended on her. She was safe in a warm car while others were threatened by forces they could not explain. However, she was already on the way and could not do anything more than wait for the ride to be over. Despite hurtling toward a dangerous situation, she clung to confidence in addition to the warm mocha.

“At least the damn entity waited for the coffee to be done this time.”

Dorian winked. “I thought you’d be happier it didn’t wait until dark and leave Evan stuck late at the school dormitory again. You okay? You seem rather pensive.”

“I’m just thinking about those idiots from the park last weekend.”

“Is that why you’ve been so clingy with Evan for the past few days? Did you tell Eze you coerced a confession?” Dorian raised a whimsical eyebrow.

“He didn’t ask.” Slurp. “I would have if he brought it up. I’m still trying to sort out if I feel bad about doing it.”

“Well, a few hundred years ago, they would have called it a violation of due process. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good thing. Used to be, a person couldn’t go to jail without Miranda.”

Kirsten finished another sip and looked over. “Miranda who? Is she a haunt?”

He spoke through gaps in his laughter. “Miranda warnings, the whole criminal rights thing police used to have to read to suspects.”

“Oh, back when the criminals had more rights than their victims?” She shook her head.

“Careful, K.” He stopped smiling. “It’s easy to say that off the cuff, but sometimes the law has the wrong person in their sights. The whole thing was meant to protect the innocent from government oppression.” Dorian faced front, his gaze settled on a cargo trailer-sized shipping bot. The lumbering machine was bedecked with flashing lights that colored the nearby rain red and green. “Now we bask in it and no one notices.”

The car compensated for the slow-moving transport, gliding down and left. Kirsten held on to her coffee as the wind knocked them around. The boxy flying robot streaked past the right side, slow to the point of seeming to hang in place.

“I guess. It just… I dunno, I remember reading about it in school and fuming. Mother got better treatment in jail than I got at home. Her judgment came at the hands of other inmates, not the government. They would have fed her and kept her safe until they let her out. I’d have been safer in jail than living with my own damn mother. How twisted is that?”

“What happens when a Div 1 cop does a half-assed summary execution on the wrong guy?”

“Now you’re talking about an entirely different thing.” She took over active flight control as the nav point drew close, guiding the patrol craft out of the clouds in a paced descent. “Summaries have a lot of checkboxes to go through. Even when it’s warranted, half the time it doesn’t happen.”

“Good thing, that.” As they dove out of the storm, Dorian smiled at the orange gleam of the mid-afternoon sun on the city a half-mile below. “Officers who do too many of them usually wind up on the wrong end of one sooner or later. They don’t like to let that kind of information get out to the public. Bang. Oops, he was an innocent man. Now you’re guilty of murder.” He was silent for several minutes as they sank among the towering monoliths of northern West City. “I don’t think I could have been able to do it without knowing they were guilty.”

“You mean without reading their minds?” She looked at him for two seconds. “Isn’t that about the same as telling someone to confess truth? It’s not like I added more to it or made him lie.”

“Div 1 officers don’t have the luxury to know when someone is lying. They perform summaries based on evidence they can see. Only in those cases, the lawyers don’t get involved in time to make a difference.”

“I knew he did it. Even with his blurted utterance to the arresting officers, a good enough lawyer can worm out of it.” She bled off speed, reaching the level of the fifth story at a hair over eighty miles per hour. “Weren’t lawyers once supposed to just make sure the law is applied fairly, as opposed to looking for any little technicality to let their client get away with crime?”

Dorian grinned. “You have to be reincarnated. You are way too jaded for your age.”

A line of Division 1 cars formed a perimeter in the center of a pentagonal courtyard between five corporate towers. The ground between them and the building lay scattered with bits of plant material and broken terra cotta. Small arms fire emanating from the lobby had destroyed at least six flowerpots large enough to bathe in, as evidenced by shot-out glass along the front.

Kirsten set down behind the row of blue and whites, turning her attention to the screen at the middle of the console. Ancora Medical leased office space from a management company that owned the entire five-building complex. A query for disgruntled employees and reports of violence in the building came back suspiciously blank.

“Either this is the one corporation in the world not run by greedy bastards, or someone’s been tinkering in the network.”

“Yeah,” said Dorian. “I wonder which it is.”

She grasped the door handle, but froze as bullets bounced off the ground in front of the car. A handful hit the hood and windscreen, but the armor plating reduced it to a dull clatter. Kirsten poked the comm.

“Ops, what the hell is going on in there?”

One of the Division 1 officers put his back to his car so he could face her, and waved. “Afternoon, Agent.” His voice came out of her dashboard, words spread out beneath his hologram identifying him as Sergeant Ormund.

“You the senior onsite?”

“Until you got here, yeah.” He chuckled. “Ancora deals with military medical technology, so the building has armed security pods. At first we thought a hacker got into the local network. We cut all outside GlobeNet access, but it didn’t help. Then we figured it was probably an artificial intelligence gone crazy.”

“Since you called me in, I’ll assume that didn’t pan out either?”

Ormund tapped at his forearm unit, which projected small holo-panels containing images of a silver, male humanoid face. “Centurion Investments does not have an AI in their corporate park, however Ancora does. We managed to make contact with him, and he’s as clueless as anyone else about what’s going on.”

“Maybe he’s lying?” She kept her fingers on the door handle, staring at a twitching ball turret in the ceiling just beyond a ring of broken window. “AIs can lie, you know.”

“It let us walk right in and check. When the disconnect didn’t change anything, we brought the link back. Div 2 went right into the network; they say the AI’s telling the truth. The hardware is moving on its own, not driven by any code they can find. We even killed power to sections of the building and the guns continued to fire.” He tapped his foot. “ That’s when we called you.”

“What can you tell me about the hostages? Have there been any demands? This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’ve never seen an angry ghost take hostages before. They usually just kill… or try.”

“No, ma’am. No demands made to the outside world at this time.” Sergeant Ormund ducked as the sporadic spray gave up on Kirsten’s car and played with the Div 1 patrol craft.

Dorian leaned forward to get a better look into the lobby. “Whatever it is evidently doesn’t understand armor plating. The weapon is designed for antipersonnel use, no threat to the cars.”

“Can you knock the turret offline?”

He squinted. “Not if it is connected to the building’s power system. I can’t shut the entire city off. If a spirit has embodied them, I could try and get control, but then it would come down to how strong the other entity is.”

“Ormund, what about those civilians?”

“Uhh… At last count, there were two groups. We got about twenty employees on the 92nd floor, looks like mostly senior managers and up. The other group is on the 61st floor, in the day care. Everyone else managed to get out during the chaos.”

“Fuck.” Kirsten’s head fell back against the seat. “Why?”

“How should I know,” said Ormund, before he realized it was a rhetorical ‘why.’ “Umm, it’s not as bad as it sounds, Agent. The designers weren’t stupid, there’s no guns anywhere able to fire into the daycare. Problem is… the hallway leading to the daycare has six of ‘em. The kids are in no danger, but no one short of a full Class 4 borg is getting in there alive.”

The turret harassing the police cars out front kept spinning, but ceased firing.

“Out of ammo? Small favors,” she mumbled. “Well this is a right mess. Alright, I’m going in.”

She ran from the safety of her car to Ormund’s side, behind the wall of Div 1 vehicles. Without the intermediary of a digital pass-through windshield, a spectral glow became visible around the turret. As she got up to run, the sergeant put a hand on her shoulder.

“Agent, I’m sure you know my guys aren’t too keen on that psio shit, but if you need us inside, say the word. We’ll be there.”

Three women and seven men in blue armor nodded at her.

Kirsten squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

The spirit light left the mounted weapon and it hung limp, spent. She bolted across the remainder of the courtyard, hitting the wall with her back just left of the main door. Through the still-intact sliding glass doors, an expanse of white tile and false plants waited. The space was empty save for a young woman in a top the same shade of black as her hair; silver buttons running from her shoulder to hip on the right side. The tall neck of the garment split open in front in a Chinese-inspired collar, and she smiled at thin air as if nothing strange was going on. The lack of surface thoughts confirmed Kirsten’s suspicion.

Dorian wandered through the unopened door. “That’s either a doll or the world’s most unobservant person.”

Kirsten edged out from behind cover, staring at the turret. It tried to spin toward her, but she latched onto the paranormal energy within and held it to the side as she slipped across the lobby and through the doors. They closed behind her with a soft hiss. Holographic birds flitted around the false plants, at least half of which were also made of light. The air smelled crisp and cool, with a hint of cleaning solution. A handful of squat ten-inch black domes scurried out of sight across immaculate white tiles, digital cleaning-roaches fleeing the light; or in this case, the vision of a guest.

“Welcome to Centurion Investment Corporation Tower II.” The woman faced Kirsten. “Which company or individual are you here to see?”

“Ancora Medical,” said Kirsten, heading for the elevator bank beyond a row of plush waiting-room couches.

“Are you sure about that?” Dorian jogged ahead of her. “If a spirit is messing with electronics, do you trust the elevator?”

“Aww.” Her run stumbled into a slouching stagger while staring at the ceiling. “Why is it always sixty plus stories?”

Dorian phased through the door to the stairwell. “Saves you having to pay for membership at a fitness club.”

“I’m sorry, miss. Ancora Medical is currently closed,” said the reception doll. “If you would like to schedule an appointment with either sales, human resources, or legal, please leave your information at the front desk.”

“The department has one I can use for free.” Kirsten hit the door with both hands, shoving it open hard enough to bounce it off the wall.

Metal slamming echoed through an undecorated vertical shaft never meant for the eyes of investors, customers, or upper management. The brisk journey came to a sweaty end at the landing of the 61st floor, where a tiny display screen showed the logo of Ancora Medical, a dove hinted at by a few curved lines.

“Planning to play chicken with six turrets at once?” asked Dorian.

“Don’t give me that look,” she rasped. “I can barely breathe.”

“Now there’s one thing I don’t miss.”

Kirsten forced a weak smile and pulled herself standing once again. The trudge up the next thirty-seven floors left her legs wobbling. She fell into the door, hanging on to the push bar to keep from falling over.

“I’m not sure what sucks more, this or jumping off a building.”

“Falling ninety stories inside an elevator, I think, would be worse than either.”

“You have such a way with words, Dorian.”

A few paces inside the door, she found a vendomat offering drinks. Half a bottle of spring water was gone before the conscious parts of her brain were involved in any decision-making processes. She finished it off, rolling limp against the wonderful machine. Her shaking legs became amusing.

“Kirsten, look out,” Dorian yelled, lunging.

She ducked and spun, yelping at the sight of a softball-sized orb bot zooming at her with a pair of sparking prongs extended from its leading side. Kirsten managed to get her hands around it before it made contact. The cold metal object strained to get closer; its hover inducer pushed it toward her chest with enough force to pin her to the wall.

For several seconds, she held it at bay while staring at the spikes creeping closer. Dorian grabbed it through her hands. The sudden shutdown left her struggle unopposed, and she flung it away. It careened off the wall and thudded to the ground with the acoustic grandeur of a dropped cannonball.

“Where the hell did that thing come from?”

Dorian pointed down the hallway. “Automated non-lethal internal security.”

She pulled her E90 out, but thought better of it and switched to the stunrod, holding it like a bat. Another orb shot around the next corner and swerved at her. Taser prongs popped out of it as it careened toward her abdomen. Kirsten leapt to the side and swung. A dull clank reverberated down the hall as plastisteel stunrod met ten-pound orb bot, diverting its flight into the side of the vendomat. Sparks surrounded it as its prongs dug into the metal box. Two seconds later, it emitted a cloud of thick black smoke and a loud report comparable to a gunshot.

Kirsten had not moved since the instant of contact; the loud bang made her jump and let the stunrod slip out of her grasp. Its tip-first impact with the ground caused a flash of blue before it fell flat. “Ow.” She gasped, clenching her hands into fists. “Oh, damn. Okay, that was a bad idea. I can’t feel my fingers.”

“I would have shot it, personally.”

“You’re a better shot. It’s not easy to hit those little things.”

Dorian waved dismissively. “The stun only lasts a few seconds, just catch them.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Why don’t you just take them out of the air?”

“Duck,” he said, reaching to his right.

At the sight of a shimmer of energy drifting into his hand, she leapt to the side. Number three, now an inert ball of metal, fell through the space where she just was.

From around the corner, a woman’s voice screamed, “This is pointless!”

A gunshot silenced the din that erupted in the wake of the shout. Kirsten sprinted to a holographic banner bearing the placard: “Executive Conference Room 3.” She peeked through the gap in the door, observing a number of well-dressed people sitting around an expensive looking onyx table. All eyes fell upon a dark skinned woman in a plum-colored dress.

The woman clutched a huge orange rubber ball to her chest, as if hiding behind it would shield her from another gunshot. A spherical turret in the ceiling trained a single-barrel weapon at her as a digitized machine-voice decreed: “Write!” Her shaking hand uncapped a permanent marker, and the squeak of felt upon rubber broke the quiet.

“You may as well join them,” said a voice, a mix of static and man. “Come on in. Don’t think I won’t unload on these simpletons if you raise that weapon.”

Kirsten gave Dorian a meaningful look before she nudged the door open. She slipped into the room, keeping her E-90 pointed down. A group of executives stared up with the expected combination of confusion and pleading. In the center of the immense conference table, a spirit stood waist-deep in the surface. He appeared dressed for an outdoor excursion, complete with backpack and the kind of ridiculous hat full of fishing lures a tourist would buy. From an inch below his ribs, his body went transparent; the part through the table looked as she imagined ghosts appeared to normal people when they chose to do so. The man lacked any sense of recognition at the sight of her, and had his right hand stuck through the screen of a terminal meant to control audio-visual presentations.

The woman holding the ball finished writing and passed it to her left. Pointing with his free hand, the spirit yelled at the sweating heavyset man now holding it. Spectral lips moved, but the voice came from speakers in the ceiling.

“Your turn, Doug. Write.”

Kirsten stared at the thin ghost, making no secret that she could see him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Team building exercise!” he shrieked, using the shrill war cry of an enraged techie. “They have to write something good about the person on their right and then pass the ball to the person on their left.” The spirit went wide-eyed manic. “It’s good for morale! We’re all one big happy team here, right?”

When no one said a word, the ceiling turret put a bullet into the wall.

“Right,” cheered everyone, in a nervous drone.

“Once the ball makes it around the room, we’re going to break into groups of five and do team charades. Just to keep things upbeat, one member of the losing team is going to get shot in the backside.” The ghost cackled. “Good news though, the new benefits program you just signed on for covers superficial damage to the ass.”

“What the hell is going on?” asked an older black man in a grey suit, hissing the question through clenched teeth.

“That particular wank-stick is Joseph Xavier Freeh,” said the spirit. “CEO of Ancora Medical. Personally, I’m hoping his team loses at charades.”

Kirsten set the E90 back in its holster and held her hands up in a disarming gesture. “Calm down. Clearly, you have some kind of problem with Ancora. I checked their records and couldn’t find any issues with former employees. Tell me what happened and I can help you.”

“What happened is that someone has hacked into our network. Why the hell haven’t the police done something?” Mr. Freeh glared at Kirsten.

“It’s not a hacker, sir. It’s a ghost. Does anyone here recognize a white, light-skinned possibly Hispanic man in his middle-to-late thirties with short brown hair. Little on the nerdy side, big nose, dressed like he’s going to go fishing.”

Two of the executive board gasped. The ball turret swiveled at Kirsten, the ghost’s face flashed to abject rage. Kirsten summoned a wave of psionic energy, projecting it into the spirit and knocking him out of the table. Sparks flew from the AV terminal as it died, and the turret went limp. His fury whirled into a chaotic tangle of panic, though he managed only to scream “What the―” before Dorian came through the wall from behind and tackled him.

As the ceiling gun whirled around in a circle, beeped, and folded back into its recess, Kirsten waved at the door. “Everyone, out.” She leaned into the wall to avoid getting trampled. “Ormund, this is Agent Wren. It’s safe to come in. Please clear the day care.”

“Copy,” said the voice in her ear.

“Any fatalities?”

“No, ma’am.”

Dorian manhandled the other spirit with ease, wrestling him to the ground and putting one knee in his back.

“Okay, buddy. What happened?”

“Wha? You can see me?” he screamed.

“I’ve only been staring right at you for the past few minutes. Are you that dense?”

“This one isn’t too old.” Dorian smirked at her. “I wouldn’t lash him; you’ll destroy him in one pass.”

“Destroy? What the hell are you talking about? I’m already dead.”

Kirsten pulled a chair away from the table and fell into it. “Look, you’re a ghost. That’s true. I get the feeling you have some kind of issue with this company. Unfortunately, I can’t allow you to hurt the living.”

“I’m surprised she hasn’t ended you already,” said Dorian, forcing the man to look up at her. “She’s real sensitive about kids, you know. There’s a whole daycare full of them downstairs put at risk because of you.”

“Dave… Dave Alvarez. I used to work for Ancora as a systems administrator.”

“Did they have you killed for some reason?” Kirsten cocked an eyebrow. “Last I checked, sys admins are pretty replaceable. What did you steal?”

“Nothing, ouch dammit, let go.” He wriggled under Dorian for a few seconds. “They didn’t have me killed, it was a stupid team-building exercise. They made us go camping out in the Badlands. They said it would be safe. This giant, fucking werewolf-from-hell with metal claws shredded me.” He flailed. “And a half-dozen of our security team.”

“No one forced you to go out there.”

Dave scowled. “You have no idea what it’s like. If you wanna get promoted, you have to do everything. All these stupid little fluff meetings, holiday parties, special morale events.” He rolled his eyes at the wall. “They think it brings us”―his voice lapsed sarcastic―“closer as a team and enables us to reach new plateaus of productivity in the next quarter.”

“So you were going to team-build them to death?” asked Dorian, trying to suppress the urge to laugh.

“I dunno…” The fight left him. “I just wanted someone to see how stupid it was. I died for no reason other than where some stupid executive’s dart landed on the list of lame shit to do. You know they made us use our vacation time for it too, right? Yeah, I could have backed out, but they notice these things. People who back out don’t get promoted. People who back out stay low level admins for years.” Dave deflated and let his face fall to the ground. “Of course, Walter is still alive.”

“You’re frustrated, I get that. Killing people won’t help. Believe it or not, it’ll just make it worse for you. Do you have any family left I can talk to for you?”

“Three daughters and a wife. They’re scraping by. My eldest, Liz, can’t get a job at her age, fifteen, due to all the damn dolls taking low-skilled work. They can’t afford to move to a colony.”

“I’ll make you a deal, Dave.” She waved at Dorian to let him up. “I’ll take all the information you can give me about the camping trip and send it over to an investigative team that looks into corporate misbehavior. Ancora may not want to endure the stink of an inquest. For your part, you leave these people alone. I’m willing to trust you, since I’m sure you care about your family.”

“Yeah,” said Dave, standing and dusting himself off. No longer through the table, he resumed a solid appearance. “All I wanted was for them to acknowledge they were careless. I don’t think they’ll cave in though, they made us all sign waivers before we went out there.”

“The detectives will look into the deaths of the other security staff as well. If they coerced you to go out there and then forced you to sign off on liability, a judiciary panel will have a field day with it.”

“I don’t imagine Mr. Freeh would want to see it on the NewsNet,” said Dorian.

Kirsten grinned. “Good idea.”

Amid the bustle of emergency crews tending to the wounded, Kirsten found Joseph Freeh surrounded by a trio of assistants. He bellowed at one girl who seemed younger than Kirsten as if the ‘network breach’ was her fault. She took notes on a datapad in preparation for a torturous system review he intended to drop upon their engineers.

“Mr. Freeh, a moment?” Kirsten walked up to him.

“More police nonsense? It damn well took you people long enough.” He shooed his assistants off to the side. “Caramel latte, extra shot.”

“A coffee man, I can respect that.” She put on an earnest face. “Mr. Freeh, about what just happened here. One of your company’s employees is lingering after death as a ghost. He was killed by some marauding genetic disaster while attending a corporate team-building event. Camping in the Badlands?” She blinked.

“That was last year. It was McNamara’s idea. The man’s a survivalist. He intended it purely for the adventurous crowd. The employee had every chance not to go. He knew the risks.”

“Dave puts it in an entirely different light. Corporate culture twisted his arm. He was afraid he wouldn’t get promoted if he didn’t attend. On top of that, the company forced him to sign a waiver of liability on a dangerous, foolish trip he had no choice but to participate in if he did not want to sabotage his career. Dealing with ghosts is a touchy subject, Mr. Freeh. It’s not like I can haul him off to jail or hit him with a fine. I can either destroy him or find a resolution to whatever issue is keeping him from moving on to the next world. Given the circumstances here, most especially because he did not kill anyone, I’m inclined to give him what he needs in order to move on.”

“And what would that be?” Mr. Freeh frowned.

“Nothing grandiose, he is just worried about his family.”

“Touching.” Freeh looked to his left. “Where is my coffee? Good Lord, man, it’s been almost three minutes.”

“The way I see it, the company is at least fifty percent complicit in his death, as well as the deaths of six or seven security personnel. I’m well aware Ancora strives to maintain a reputation as a squeaky-clean corporation that cares. I’m sure the NewsNet will devour a story about a fatal compulsory camping trip.”

The CEO reeled as if slapped. “You’re dangerously close to libel, Miss”―he peered at her chest― “Wren.”

“Oh, I’m not going to talk to the press. I’m not permitted to discuss specific cases with them. However, I will be filing a request with CIB, that’s Corporate Investigations Bureau by the way, to begin an inquest regarding the deaths. Those investigations are a matter of public record and any reporter digging for dirt on corporations might―”

“Alright.” He held his hand up. “What is it you want?”

“I was thinking you provide one and a half times Mr. Alvarez’s salary to his wife until the day his youngest daughter turns eighteen or until his wife obtains employment sufficient to provide for her family without needing a stipend. Do that, and I might lose my report to CIB.” She started to walk away, but paused. “Oh, by the way, I’d recommend against any more camping trips out there… or at least make it genuinely optional.”

Freeh’s rapid mental math seemed to factor her request far less damaging than a potential media scandal. “Done.”

“What now?” asked Dave.

Kirsten shook hands with Freeh and walked back to her car. “Go home, be with them. When the stipend starts, you might feel a release from this world. Trust the light.”

“Thank you.” He tried to hold her hand.

She made herself solid to spirits and let him. “Behave yourself. Don’t make me regret being a softie.”

“I won’t. Thank you!” David floated off.

“Damn shame,” said a Division 1 officer near the row of cars. “Waste of such a pretty girl.”

Kirsten whirled, her building snarl fading when she realized they weren’t talking about her being psionic.

“Yeah.” His partner let out a long, slow sigh with a weak shake of his head. “Who the hell does a thing like that?”

“What happened?” she asked, moving closer.

They looked up.

“Squad mate just found a dead woman a few sectors south. Just listening to the comm. chatter go by.” He held up his forearm guard, projecting an image of an alley filled with crime scene techs and patrol officers. A nude body lay half under a police blanket. The victim appeared to be in her mid-twenties.

Kirsten cringed. “She doesn’t look like a prostitute. Too healthy. Well, except for being dead. Any weird stuff going on?”

“Nothing anyone reported. We’ll call you if something happens.”

“Great, thanks.”

The squad room was dim when she walked in, lit only by excess light from Captain Eze’s office. She knocked at the door, earning a wave-in once he saw her.

“That took longer than expected.” He smiled, nodding at the couch where Evan slept.

“Sorry, there were so many witnesses to interview. Their tech people grilled me like a slab of salmon. Thanks for watching him.”

“You are most welcome. He was no trouble at all, though he’s been trying to talk to you in his sleep.”

Kirsten smiled. “He’s one of a kind, though I’m sure he’ll have a bratty moment eventually.”

She tossed his backpack over one shoulder before scooping him up. He whined in his sleep, cuddling into her at the disturbance of being moved.

“You don’t have to wake up.” She kissed him on the forehead.

“Mom?” He mumbled, somewhere between asleep and not. “You should break Konstantin’s heart.”

She blinked, staring at him for a moment. The statement, mean as it sounded, came with no malice in his voice or on his cherubic face. Kirsten shot Eze a look of bewilderment. Evan’s hint of consciousness faded as fast as it manifested, leaving him deep asleep once more.

“He’s probably feeling jealous.” Eze winked. “Talk it over with him when he wakes up. Heck, the kind of money that man has… I’m almost jealous.”

She chuckled and cradled Evan close enough to whisper into his ear. “I don’t care how rich he is, kiddo. You are the most important person in my life.”

A trace of a smile curled his lip.

mid the din of a hundred and change sugared-up children, Evan all but dragged Shani by the arm. In his left hand, a flashing plastic box attempted to make the sound of a thunderstorm. The miniature cacophony was lost to the abject chaos of Sector D, originally a chain of kid-tainment places known as Funzones until they got bought out. Evan, being nine, ducked around the crowd, taking advantage of any spaces or gaps.

Be careful!

He spun as Kirsten’s voice entered his mind. She was a few paces behind him in the crowd, alarmed at his sudden departure from the table.

My turn’s up. He waved the flashing box.

Soon the two kids squeezed between bored adults watching a hopelessly uncoordinated boy fail at a gripper claw game. Evan approached an attendant manning the Monwyn the Magnificent sim and stood on tiptoe to hand back the flashing pager. He looked over his shoulder, bouncing, waiting for Kirsten to catch up. Catching sight of the miserable older boy, Evan nudged Shani and pointed.

She gave him a confused look for a second, and grinned. As soon as the boy turned away in defeat, the toy cyborg figure he had been going for flipped out of the pile, seemingly of its own volition, and fell into the exit chute. At the sound of the thunk, the boy whirled to find the toy in arm’s reach, and cheered.

“Okay, kid. You got a half hour.”

Evan looked up at the high school-aged attendant in an ill-fitting uniform, and smirked. He wanted to protest the meager time ration, but it would only waste what he had. “Okay.”

“You know how to work the―”

“Duh.” Evan raced past the operator’s station to a cluster of four pods.

Only one was empty. Inside, two bench seats faced each other, with a pair of wire-laden helmets on each side. Evan took one and sat where it had been. Shani followed, sitting next to him. She frowned at the giant helmet, before giving him an unenthused look.

“Never used a helmet before?”

“No.” Shani put it on. “Just the visor at home.”

“This is different than just watching.” Evan leaned over and slid the apparatus down over her head. “It talks to your brain. It’s like we’re really there.”

“Is it gonna hurt?”

“I fell out of a chair once,” he said, donning his own helmet. “It was pretty cool. Just close your eyes and let it sync.”

Evan settled into the uncomfortable plastic seat, letting the weight of the Senshelmet drag his head against the pad behind it. A tingle of energy spread through his mind. A digitized female voice spoke the word “synchronizing.”

When he felt cold stone under his bare feet, he opened his eyes. The vision was disorienting, he appeared not to have a body at all, and stood at the center of a ring of figures from the Monwyn movies. Faint theme music played in the background. Without a second’s hesitation, he pointed at the man himself. As soon as the subsequent flare of brightness faded, Evan found himself on a dirt path deep within the mythical forest of Cymril. The thick blue robes, black boots, and fiery staff of Monwyn the Magnificent replaced his ordinary clothes.

Monwyn the Small, as he was still no bigger than Evan normally was, tapped his foot. Within a minute, a flare of radiance glimmered in at his side. Shani, now in the garb of Asara the Huntress, faded in. She leaned forward to appraise the leather skirt, knee-high sandals, and longbow in her left hand. The girl spent a minute making odd faces as she felt her pointed ears.

“This sucks.” She tried to swing it like a bat. “You get a flaming dragon-staff and I get a twig?”

“Really? You don’t know what a bow is?”

“It doesn’t have a string,” she said, adopting an exasperated stance with the bow draped over her hand.

“Asara has a magic bow. When you go to shoot something, it makes arrows out of nothing.”

She held it as if to fire and, sure enough, an arrow appeared.

“Wow, this is scary. It’s so real.” Shani spun in place, holding her hand out in the breeze. “If we get hurt, does it hurt?”

He shook his head. “Monwyn feels no pain. The fangs of darkness shall not dissuade him from―”

The look on her face stalled him.

“It tingles a little, and you’ll see numbers that tell you how much damage you took, but it doesn’t hurt.”

Evan started down the road, with Shani wandering after him. Her curious gazing affected her speed, and he stopped every so often to let her catch up. Not quite ten minutes later, a loud twig snap came from the foliage.

“What was that?” Shani ran up to him. “Did you hear that?”

“Random encou”―he coughed― “Most likely the foul beasts that taint this forest with their unclean presence seek to stop our quest!”

Shani gave him another unimpressed look. Two creatures shambled out of the trees, both about six feet tall and covered in black fur. Their faces were somewhere between canine and ape, with glowing yellow eyes and sharpened fangs. Elongated arms carried a pair of wicked-looking blades spattered with old, dried blood. The beast-men leaned forward, roaring at them.

She screamed.

Evan broke character. “Hey, relax… It’s a video game.”

Her terrified look lingered for another second before she glared.

“We can stop if you want. Maybe you’re too little for this game.”

Her cheeks reddened. “No, it’s okay.”

Shani swiped her hand through the air behind the bow, groping for a nonexistent string. When she released it, a glimmering magic arrow flew into the chest of the creature on the right. Above its head, the number “44” appeared, large and red.

“Nice critical!” cheered Evan.

The creature she shot ran at her while the other went for him. Evan chanted, holding the staff sideways with both hands. Lightning crackled off the end, lapping at the one going for Shani. A waterfall of small blue numbers sprinkled into the air ranging from eleven through eighteen. His damage fell short of killing it before it got close enough to swing. The size of the creature scared the girl despite her knowledge it wasn’t real. She cringed, screaming with closed eyes.

The blade passed with a whiff; a mild tingle ran through her body. She peeked in time to see a yellow 22 hanging over her. Below the number, a stripe of color was green for about nine inches and red for one.

“Asara’s tough. You have more hit points than I do.”

Evan went over backwards as the other creature smacked him with a sword; the critical hit knocked him flat and sent him sliding several feet. His health bar was almost all red now. Shani blinked at the red 67. The digital “bruised and battered” effect added to Evan’s face was comic enough to keep it from being scary.

Her creature attacked again, but this time she leapt away, firing at it twice. Her face was far from confident, more startled by how fast she was able to move in the virtual body of an elf. Both shots stuck in its chest, 28 and 31. The monster collapsed and disintegrated into a small purple gem. She aimed at the second beast-man threatening Evan just as it slid away from him, shoved by an unseen force. Monwyn the Small fought his way standing and planted the staff in the ground before him. He chanted something about Pyrden, Lord of Flames, having a near-tantrum as he howled. Red lightning came from above and hit the staff, making his hair stand up. Seconds later, a three-foot-wide sphere of flaming magma fell from the sky and drilled the furry beast-man into a crater. The ground shook hard enough to make Shani stumble. The number 222 hung in midair amid the smoke cloud.

A blue line appeared above Evan’s head, rapidly shrinking away from eight inches to only a half of one. He fell on his butt, rummaging around his belt for a water flask.

“222 damage? How did you do so much? Are you cheating?”

He held up a finger, chugging from the flask like a famished infant on a bottle. The blue line crept back toward being full. Shani stared at it, folding her arms.

“How does drinking water give you magic back? Water’s not magic. That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Evan gasped for air, re-corking the bottle. “I dunno, it just does.”

She pointed at the crater. A smoking black-furred arm jutted out of it as if to ask what the hell just happened.

“Meteor Doom,” he said. “I’ve played Monwyn games so much I remember the words to the spells, even though I’m not high ‘nuff level to have it yet. That’s why it ate my whole mana bar.”

“What’s mana?”

“The blue line, magic power.”

“Oh.”

“If you want to stop, we can stop.” He stood and dusted himself off. “This game is so realistic it might give you bad dreams since you’re so little.”

“I’m not too small. I’m seven,” she said in a huff. “Besides, I have more hit points than you!” Shani pivoted on her sandaled heel and stormed off down the road.

By the time they reached the Caverns of Woe, Shani had gotten the hang of using her bow, and had even figured out how to call Asara’s spirit wolf companion. They came to a halt in the shadow of a foreboding grey wall covered in gargoyles. At the center, a stone door bore carvings of skeletons and ghouls. He peeked at Shani to make sure the images weren’t bothering her too much, and grinned at her attempt to ignore it. Evan plodded up to the door and set his staff into the ground.

“Spirit of Earth, I call on you.” Evan flung his arms at the gate. “Kel’Gurin, Lord of Stone, hear me.”

The entire wall rocked as though struck with great force, sending a curtain of dust sliding to the earth and dozens of ravens into the sky. The ground trembled, Evan grunted, and the door slammed open. He led the way through thirty yards of moss-covered tunnel that ended at a long stone staircase. At the bottom, the cave opened into another forest. Unlike the last, the trees here seemed warped and twisted, their bark gnarled into the likeness of wailing souls.

“What’s more outside doing in a cave?” Shani frowned. “This is silly.”

“We’re not at the Cavern of Woe yet, we just went through a zone transition.”

A pack of road-weary bandits emerged from the shadows, daggers at the ready. The look of desperate greed on their faces faded away to terror as the four-foot tall wizard readied the Staff of Dragons.

“Crimony, that’s Monwyn…” gasped one, just before he turned and ran.

The sight of a dozen grown men fleeing in panic at the “intimidating” nine-year-old in a robe made them both laugh.

Evan sat in black stillness, a low whine building out of the silence until his voice echoed within the inert helmet. “Aww, we weren’t done yet.”

“Half hour’s up kiddo. I can put you back in the queue.”

“I don’t think we’ll be here long enough for that, let some other kids have a turn,” said Kirsten.

He reached up and pulled the helmet off. Fresh air felt cold. Shani had already shed hers, and leaned into the pod from outside.

“It felt like two hours,” she whispered, rubbing her legs. “I’m tired.”

Kirsten picked her up. “Time is different in the net, sweetie. You’ve actually been in there for about forty minutes. They gave you a little extra time.”

“Do we haveta go yet?” Evan poured himself out of the pod, reluctant to relinquish his favorite game, trying to move with muscles weary from sitting still so long.

“It’s only noon. We can stay another hour.” She winked. “But, you do have to eat lunch now. You worked up quite a sweat in there.” Kirsten gave the attendant a worried look. “You should play some games where you’re not just lying still. It’s not good for you.”

The teen in the Sector D shirt waved her off. “It’s fine, he just gets into it. Best score I’ve seen in a long time. The body doesn’t realize the muscles aren’t working. That’s one of the reasons we limit ‘em to a half hour.”

Evan followed her back to the table, taking a seat by a waiting plate of chicken bits and fries. Shani leaned on Kirsten’s side, as interested in sleep as she was in her food. He attacked his meal, eager in his recounting of his adventures as Monwyn.

“The game has an AI running it, so it knows when you say the spells right.”

Kirsten nodded, as if she knew what he meant.

“The home version isn’t as powerful; you gotta find spellbooks before you can use each spell.”

“Is that so?” she said, smiling. “Guess they had to come up with some reason to come play this one instead of staying at home.”

“There’s a GlobeNet client, but you gotta have a plug to play it.”

Kirsten shivered. “Helmets won’t work?”

“It’s ranked.” He paused to slurp down some iced tea. “Past level fifty, it’s too hard. Helmets are too slow. Can I play Orbs?” He stood on his chair to point at a booth.

“Shani wanted to play that car game next.” Kirsten glanced down at the sleeping child in her lap. “But, she’s napping. When she wakes up, you should play what she wants to play.”

“‘Kay.” He jumped off the chair and ran over to the Orbs game.

Evan joined a row of other kids lined up in stalls facing a large, dark, cube-shaped area filled with blacklight. Neon-hued orb bots of various sizes and speeds darted about, targets for a toy laser pistol. Based on a combination of accuracy, how long it took a player to hit targets, and the size of the ones hit, an alien-invasion holovid playing in the background changed outcome. One could either save the world, or watch it burn.

He spent a moment chasing a tiny green ball that zipped about at great speed; his target fixation allowed too many slow ones by, imperiling the virtual humanity behind the target field. When he realized he had missed enough to doom the city, he tried to hit as many basketball-sized creepers as he could in as little time as possible.

Alas, MegaCity burned.

The start button was an inch from his hand when Sleepy Shani stumbled out of the crowd. He tossed the toy pistol back into its holder. “Cloud Cars are on the other side.” He took her hand.

“Okay.” She wiped her eyes, and yawned.

Evan decided to avoid the bulk of the crowd by following the outer wall. Rather than wade through lines waiting for the various amusements, game stations, or vending booths, he followed a carpeted path along rows of largely ignored vendomats. Older teens lurked there, clustered in groups. Some kissed, some groped each other, and several gave him territorial glares. He got the distinct impression the back-end of Sector D was not for little kids. He wondered if the guy in the giant mouse costume out front knew what was going on back here.

At the midpoint of the room, shouting echoed from a connecting hallway that linked the amusement place to the mall. Evan slowed, curiosity drawing him toward it. Shani set her heels in the rug, pulling against his arm.

“No, don’t,” she whispered, “not without your mom.”

She cringed when the voice shouted again.

“How many times you think you can pull this shit? Huh?”

“Come on, Zee, you know I’m good for it. I just gotta work some stuff out,” said a voice trying at the same time to be quiet, yet still audible over the crowd.

Evan let go of Shani’s wrist so he could get closer. He peered around the corner, stalled by her grabbing his other arm. One man in a black jacket with spiked red hair had another man, skinny to the point where his bones showed through clothing, pinned to the wall between the bathroom doors. People wandered past them, going from the mall concourse to Sector D or the other way around.

“You said that last week, you little shitbag.” Zee punched the thin man in the gut. “You owe me two grand already and I don’t think you’re gonna get it. You’re so damn strung out you can’t even stay on your fuckin’ feet without a wall to lean on.”

“Evan, get your mom.” Shani tried to pull him away from the corridor, but he held fast.

Zee pulled a gun, stuffing it under the other man’s chin. “I oughta just get this over with, right here.”

“Zack, please…” the man whined.

“Yeah, too many eyes here.” Zee backhand-pistol-whipped the druggie, knocking him to all fours. “Get the fuck outside.”

“Leave him alone.” Evan took a step, raising his voice.

Zee ignored him.

“I said, leave him alone.”

Shani whirled back and forth, unsure if she should stay there or run shouting for Kirsten.

“Fuck off, kid.”

“You don’t have to kill him,” said Evan.

Evan, no. You don’t have magic in the real world. He’s gonna kill you! Shani screamed into his mind.

The boy froze, staring up at Zee. Shani ran to his side, trying to pull him back into Sector D. The gang punk pointed his gun at Evan while the skinny guy coughed up blood and puked on the floor.

“Only sayin’ this once, cowlick. You―”

Shani wrenched the gun away from him; the telekinetic yank severe enough to break his trigger finger. The weapon slapped her in the chest with a hollow thud, and she clamped on to it.

“What the fuck…” Zee had no reaction to his ruined digit. “Little fuckin rugrat wants to die, don’t you?” He pulled a knife from the back of his belt and stomped toward them.

Shani shoved the gun at Evan, somewhere between not wanting to touch it and giving it to him. He fumbled it into a firing position with both hands.

“Freeze, scumbag.”

At Evan’s yell, people finally noticed what was going on.

The high-pitched electronic chirp of the firing circuit arming caused Zee to stop. For several seconds, Evan’s adrenaline kept his hand steady. When the tip of the gun wobbled, Zee grinned and took another step.

“That’s my gun you got, kid. Let’s have it.”

“Don’t get any closer. I mean it.” Evan took a step back.

“You ain’t gonna shoot nobody. You’re shakin’ like a scared little brat.” Zee took another step. “Even if you fire that thing, you’re gonna miss. You don’t give it to me now, I’m gonna break your neck.”

“Evan? Shani? Where are you?” Kirsten’s shouting pierced the panic in the crowd behind him.

“Here!” screamed Shani.

“My mom won’t miss. She’s a cop.”

Zee’s eyes went right to the silver E90 in the hand of the blonde forcing her way through the fleeing people, the one person trying to get closer to the kid with a gun. The sound of Kirsten’s voice eased Evan’s trembles, and he found some of Monwyn’s confidence again.

“On the ground, now. Hands behind your head.” Evan used the gun to point at the floor.

After a glance over the boy’s head, Zee broke and ran in the direction of the mall. He shoved a teenaged girl face-first into a water fountain and knocked an elderly couple to the ground. Evan sighed, letting his arms fall slack.

“I’m not shooting him in the back.”

At that instant, Zee’s jacket flipped up and over his head. He twisted, losing balance, and careened into a wall of rental lockers ten feet shy of the mall concourse. Shani grunted, pulling one hand through the air. Zee’s pants dropped about his ankles and he fell over. The little girl kept her focus on him, holding the cloth in place about the squirming thug.

Evan laughed, pointing. “He’s got Space Ranger boxers!”

Kirsten skidded to a halt by the kids, swiping the gun away from Evan. “What the hell are you doing?”

“He was gonna kill that guy.” Evan pointed at the whimpering semiconscious man lying in a puddle of vomit and blood.

“Drop it, lady!” shouted a voice from behind. “Hands in the air, kid. You’re under arrest. Smith, Protocol 2 the little girl.”

Shani kept her focus on Zee, keeping him bound in his clothes. Evan gasped and clung to Kirsten’s side. Kirsten glanced over her shoulder with an ‘are you kidding me?’ face. Two men in the white and grey uniforms of Bakersfield Mall Security edged up behind them, pistol-shaped electro-stunners at the ready. Both looked like they were ready for Assault Marine boot camp.

“Agent Kirsten Wren, Division 0 Police. Stand down. What the hell is protocol 2?”

“Rapid removal of an innocent bystander to a position of tactical safety. Please drop your weapon. Don’t make me escalate. This area is under the watch of BMS, you’re in our jurisdiction here. We are authorized to use stunners if we have to.”

“She’s a cop, numbnuts,” grumbled Evan. “Notice she’s got a laser pistol.”

The one on the left, Smith, had his stunner trained on Evan. He twitched when his arm lifted to point at Kirsten’s gun. The look in his eyes made him seem concerned at what a small boy would do to him. Either that, or he desperately wanted to shoot someone.

“Is there something wrong with your ears, or are you just plain stupid? I told you I’m a police officer.” Kirsten sent a dire look at Smith. “Put that stunner down right now. If you shoot my son with that thing, I’ll cram it up your ass and hold the trigger down till the battery’s dead.”

Evan covered his mouth and gasped.

Smith squirmed at the thought.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Kirsten glared.

“Sergeant Lloyd Benning, 1st Brigade, Bakersfield Mall Tactical Response Squad.”

She sighed at the ceiling. “Damn. Mall cops. You’d think you were on the front lines of Mars or something.” She held the ballistic pistol under her arm and fished her ID out of her back pocket. At the sight of it, both security men gawked. Kirsten stomped over and swiped a set of flexi-cuffs from Lloyd’s belt after tucking the confiscated gun in the back of her own.

Shani released the telekinetic hold of Zee as Kirsten pounced on him and wrestled him into the temporary restraints. All the while she fought with him, he glared at Evan, who simply smiled and waved at him. Kirsten wound up sitting on him, NetMini in hand.

“Need a blue and white at Bakersfield Mall by Sector D.” She glanced at Zee’s victim. “Send a medical unit as well.”

irsten held up the ten-inch cylinder, making a face at the viscous green-brown liquid inside. The outer surface reacted to her touch, lighting up with buttons and a display pad―nanotech embedded in the outer layer. She thumbed the virtual button until the display read 2 TBSP, and upended it over the pan. A squirt of the requested amount of olive oil spattered about, causing her to shriek and jump away.

“You’re s’posed ta put the oil in the pot before you turn the stove on,” said Evan from the main room.

She glanced at him, flopped on the comforgel bed, nose in a datapad. From the look on his face, she inferred he was busy with homework and not something fun.

“Oops.”

Holding the spatula like a dueling saber, she poked at two slabs of vat-grown chicken dancing and popping about in the oil. She squinted at several small plastic bottles of spice, trying to figure out which ones belonged in a project involving said poultry. Nearby, a datapad sat propped up on the empty box the ‘starter spice kit’ came in. She stared at the demonstration animation, attempting to learn the process by which people cooked actual food. What she had in the pan did not look anywhere near as good as the pictures on the screen, however at thirty credits a hunk, the chicken would be eaten regardless of what condition it was in at the end of her thermic assault.

“Mom?”

She smiled just hearing the word come out of Evan. A word, which had for so long been an object of horror in her mind, was now as far removed as it could be from that thought. He leaned into the doorway between her tiny kitchenette and the rest of the apartment, looking defeated.

“Hey, kid.”

“I need help with this homework. I don’t know how to answer this.” He trudged over, datapad dangling from his grip.

“I can’t read it right now; I’m trying not to destroy dinner. What’s the question?” She squinted at her pad. “What the hell is thyme? Did they spell it wrong? I’m supposed to add time to it? I guess it wants me to let it sit longer.”

Evan shrugged. The datapad animated a small bottle labeled ‘thyme’ upended over the food and shaken.

“Oh, it must be some kind of seasoning. Bother, we don’t have any. Black pepper works.”

“Umm, I gotta write about the Corporate War. This one guy says the government started it, this lady says the corp-rations started it. I gotta watch these videos and write a ‘pinion on which one I wanna believe and give at least two ideas how the war could have been prevented.”

Kirsten almost dropped the spatula. “What the hell? You’re in third grade, what kind of question is that?”

He dug his toe into the rug. “History.”

She jumped when the hunk of meat spat hard enough to flip over. “Well, I kind of got the condensed version at the department school. I…”

Evan wandered over and patted her on the back. “It’s okay if you don’t know. Why didn’t your mom let you go to school?”

The heat off, she yanked the pan from the stove and jammed the spatula under the meat. The chicken landed atop pasta bows she had made long enough ago to be cold. She used the reassembler to generate mixed vegetables; the horror of her attempt to cook hydroponic ones drowned amid suds in the sink. Evan trailed her to the table, letting his datapad clatter to the side of the plate.

“She did… online.” Kirsten stared at the food. “She was careful to make everything look just normal enough to the outside world. I’m confused… That question sounds like something they’d ask in eighth or ninth grade, not third.”

He ate with one hand while poking at his datapad with the other. After a few minutes, he scowled at it.

“What?”

“This datapad is broken. I’m touching the icon for my history homework, but when I open it, it’s labeled Pol Sci 101.”

“Let me see that?” Kirsten took the pad, examining the page headers inside the presentation.

She backed out to the main menu, which took on a far more childish appearance than the layout of the quiz. A cartoon Mars pioneer smiled, pointing at a note indicating history homework for Mrs. Wolf’s third-grade class. When she poked it, the datapad went into a splash screen introduction to a sophomore-level political science course.

“That isn’t your homework, hon. I think the teacher sent a corrupt link.”

“It was probably Abernathy playing a prank.” He smirked.

“Oh wow, is he still there?” She giggled, sighed, and got somber. “I wonder what’s keeping him here. He was such a sweet old guy.”

Evan rolled his eyes. “He’s only nice to girls. He keeps messing with me since I can see him.”

“What is he doing?”

“He’s like a giant five-year-old. Stupid little pranks.”

Kirsten fiddled with his datapad, getting a new link from the system that went to the proper assignment. Third grade-level questions about early Mars colonization.

“There, that’s the right homework.”

His pout made her laugh. “Thanks, Mom. I could’ve had an excuse tomorrow.”

“You don’t want to make a habit of cutting corners like that. Unless you want to move to Mars or some far-off colony when you’re old enough to have to work, you need to get through university.”

“I’m gonna be like you when I’m big.” He beamed.

“Then do it because I’m asking you to. You might feel differently about it when you grow up. It’s better to have options.” She paused a moment to adore the sparkle in his green eyes.

She managed to get one decent picture of him with her NetMini before he started making silly faces. When their laugher died down and they remembered the food, Kirsten reached out and put a hand on his arm.

“Ev, if you don’t want me seeing Konstantin… If you feel like I’m not giving you enough attention…”

He stared at the mixed vegetables. “I guess it would be cool having a dad, but I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“Why do you think that?”

“He looked at me mean. He’s probably a rich weenie that hates little kids.” Evan frowned. “And he’s old.”

Kirsten stared into space for a moment. “He’s a sweet man, Evan. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. Konstantin is…”

“Mom?”

She blinked. Her arm lowered to the table, drawing her gaze to the gold serpent bracelet, Konstantin’s gift. The sight reminded her of how much money he had already spent on her, and brought a twinge of embarrassment at the thought. The amount was trivial to him, but felt on the verge of crazy to her. She saw his face in her mind again, that roguish smile, that well-weathered skin, that Turkish coffee.

“You okay? You look strange.”

She fanned herself. “I’m fine, hon. I think I just put too much pepper on this chicken.”

Evan shook his head. “No such thing as too much black pepper.”

“I agree,” said Theodore, as he phased through the wall. “The boy’s got good taste.”

Kirsten sat upright. “Hi, Theo.”

The ghost circled the table, long olive-drab coat open and drenched. Scraggly black hair framed a pallid face, still wearing the same wry grin he usually sported when sneaking up on her in the shower. For once, his pants were not blood-soaked and his fatal bullet wounds not apparent. The puddled boot prints he left on the kitchen floor faded away in seconds; however, he did bring the scent of wet dog with him. Evan shifted in his seat, making a face as if he were in deep thought. His eyes lit up with a faint light as he turned on his ability to see ghosts. The gesture was casual, taking him only a second or two. He spotted Theodore and paused chewing long enough to attempt to mumble a greeting through a closed, full mouth.

“It won’t be too long before you can see them all the time,” said Kirsten. “It took me till twelve to get there…” Of course, I spent a few years trying to ignore them.

He grinned.

“Sorry to barge in on ya while you’re eatin’.” Theodore wandered around to the empty side of the table, acting the part of leaning on the back of an unused chair. “We may need your hel―what happened to that pork?”

“It’s chicken.” Kirsten frowned.

Theodore looked at the array of cooking materials around the stove area and cracked up. “Oh, damn.” He cringed.

Kirsten’s gaze darkened, attempting to bore through the table. She pouted at the plate while the sense of failure crawled up her spine in search of tear ducts from which to escape. When, exactly, was I supposed to learn how to cook, Theodore? When I was locked in a closet or living on the street?

“He forgot what it’s supposed to look like. Theo hasn’t touched food in, like, forever.” Evan showed no sign of slowing down, shoveling another large hunk in his mouth. “Ifm goomf.” He rushed to swallow. “It’s good!”

She could have pulled him over the table to hug him.

“Yeah, well, I guess you gotta start somewhere. Maybe I can ask around The Kind. I think there’s a chef or two in there somewhere. Might be able to talk them into giving you some lessons.”

Kirsten leaned back in the chair, smirking at Theodore. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Evan adding more black pepper. She shook with muted laughter. “I guess. Now I know why everyone just uses reassemblers. Why go to all that trouble when you can just hit a button.”

“Better to have options,” muttered Evan with a sly wink.

She laughed. “What did you need help with?”

“There’s this guy, Hank. Been dead maybe fifty years or so. He used ta hang out by this Chinese place, what used ta be a smoke shop years ago.”

Evan let some broccoli crumble out of his mouth. “Who buys smoke?”

Kirsten felt just as clueless but didn’t let on.

“You’ve heard of Nicoderms or Nicohalers, right?” Theo gestured at Kirsten. She nodded. “Okay. Well, back before the war, people used to get the same kind of effect from inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco. The places that sold stuff related to it were called ‘smoke shops.’”

The boy made a face. Kirsten blinked.

“Breathing in smoke? Like, on purpose?” Evan coughed just thinking about it.

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it. Worked for weed too.” Theodore stared wistfully at the ceiling.

“People smoke weeds?” The look on Kirsten’s face made him laugh.

“Not weeds, weed. Marijuana.”

“Oh, yeah, they still do that in the Beneath,” said Kirsten.

“You ever―”

“So what about Hank?” She stared at Theo.

“Well he died of the old LC, decided to haunt his favorite smoke shop even though it killed him. He stayed there even after it shut down and turned into a bar, and then a Chinese restaurant.”

“Oh, yeah. I think I remember the place… I’ve been there, the owners were complaining about loud coughing in the middle of the night. The ghost seemed harmless.”

“Yeah, he was.” Theo made no effort to be subtle about staring at her chest.

“Was? If he’s gone, maybe he just decided to transcend.”

“Poor guy comes to Sanctuary Park two nights ago, raving about how some thing is after him. He wanted protection from it. Course, he couldn’t describe anything but a weird feeling. The way he rambled on ‘bout being watched and seeing eyes… It was surreal hearin’ a ghost talk the way the living talk about us. We figured he’d finally cracked. Last night, Willie said he caught a glimpse of somethin’ scoping out the park. Whatever it was, damn thing didn’t want to tangle with all of us at once, ‘specially not The Kind. Now, we got a feelin’ somethin’s stalkin’ spirits. We’re not sure if it needs to pick weaker ones, or was afraid of a crowd. Some of The Kind are nervous. They’d like you to check it out.”

Kirsten gazed at her plate for a few seconds and grinned at Evan, who was forcing himself to eat the vegetables after coating them with the pepper/olive oil residue from the chicken. She stood, tossed her plate in the dishwasher, and faced Theodore. “I think I remember the place…” She fidgeted with her bracelet. “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed lately. That couldn’t have been more than a few months ago, but I’m drawing a blank. Remind me where it was?”

“Sector 3338, shopping district.”

“Oh, right… Next to that huge stationary sign. I don’t understand how anyone in that area can sleep at night; that thing is so bright. Okay. Ev, get your shoes on.” She peeled her sweats off and gathered her uniform.

“I can go with you?” He cheered and leapt from his place at the table with such energy he almost fell flat. “Are you going to the office?”

After donning her uniform pants, she shrugged the top on and tucked it in. “No, I just don’t want anyone to mess with me. I’m not leaving you here alone, and that’s a fairly safe part of the city.”

Kirsten held Evan’s hand as they went to the roof. When the elevator door parted, she smirked at the patrol craft. It sat tilted with the right front end on a small bank of pipes. This building was not made for hovercar landing and there was no unobstructed place to set down. The flattest parts were too close to the edge. She wanted to move to a bigger, nicer place where Evan could have his own bedroom. Hesitation kept her here for the time being. If the custody request was denied and they made him go back to the dorm, she could not live in the new place.

She pulled him into a hug.

He gave her an uncomfortable smile and whispered. “Mom, what’s wrong, you’re getting squeezy again. Not in front of Theo.”

Kirsten relaxed, letting Evan run ahead to the car. Dorian faded into view just outside it, and Evan immediately launched into a fit of pleas for help learning how to shoot. Apparently, his performance at the orb game annoyed him. She watched them for a moment, idly picking at the serpentine band of gold around her right wrist. Dorian became Konstantin in her mind, a father with a son.

Wearing a silly grin, she strode to the car and got in. Theodore hesitated.

With one hand on the door about to close it, she glanced up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Ehh…” He gestured at the vehicle. “I got this thing about riding in the back seat of a police car.”

“The partition is down,” she said. “Get in. Besides, you can float right through it.”

Sector 3338 glowed in a mixture of red, green, and white light. It was still early, as far as the city was concerned. At a touch past eight, people filled the streets as they went among the various stores that still operated walk-in locations. An endless parade of glowing eyeliner, mechanical hair ornaments, and the latest upper-middle-class fashion trends went by.

Delivery bots swarmed about, a tangle of automated traffic management as dozens of merchants competed for airspace. Boxy ones stopped, waiting for others to pass before they pivoted and raced off. Some shot up vertical while others nosed through purpose-built hatches in the sides of buildings.

As she had hoped, the people who noticed her uniform gave her a comfortable distance. She kept a firm grip on Evan’s hand, walking ahead of Theo and Dorian, who discussed the current crisis at length.

Up ahead, the metal sidewalk glowed with emerald light. Holographic Chinese symbols filled the window of a corner property, saturating the area in their glow. If not for having just eaten, the scent in the air outside the place would have lured her in. She stopped a few steps from the door, waiting for Dorian and Theodore to catch up.

The owners of the Jade Crane went as far as possible to recreate the ambiance of China inside the building. Pale hardwood floors, bamboo plants, and large full-wall paintings of rolling green landscapes lent the space a foreign quality. She looked around, seeing no trace of ghosts other than the two she arrived with. However, on the dark brown stone of an electric waterfall fountain, a faint luminous patch caught her attention, as if a spoonful of glowing paint had splashed on it.

“This must’ve been one big smoke shop,” muttered Kirsten.

A busty, tall brunette in a low-cut gown distracted Theodore. “They expanded. This place is doing well.”

Kirsten felt a twinge of inadequacy compared to the woman, until her right arm reached out from under the table to grab a wine glass―metal from armpit to fingertip. Gleaming enamel white and covered with floral engravings, it was close in profile to the size and shape the limb should have been. White Orchid arm, that’s over a million creds.

“Can I help you, officer?”

The man’s voice provided a welcome distraction from the sight of a cyber-prosthetic. Kirsten unconsciously rubbed her arm as she smiled at a man in a dark suit, Asian with some other things mixed in.

“I’m following up on a previous investigation here. There was a report of unusual activity about a year ago? Unexplained coughing.”

“Oh, yes.” He let an electronic menu slip back into a holding box. “I remember hearing about that. It had persisted up until a few days ago.”

“It’s stopped?”

“Yes, there was a disturbance the other night. We filed a report with the police, but they haven’t done much yet. We lost about sixteen thousand credits worth of fish.”

Kirsten wandered toward the stain on the fountain. “Cooler failed?”

“No, officer.” He pointed at an H-shaped aquarium along the top of a partition wall among tables. “They were exotics for display, not consumption. The strange thing was how all of the dead ones were in the same place.” The man gestured at the central strut of the H. “We found them floating yesterday morning. A technician could find no problem with the tank, though the log recorded a severe temperature drop during the night, but only in a small area.”

“Heck, I could kill fish,” said Theodore. “The little buggers are pretty sensitive to cold. Just stick my hand in the tank and poof. Hank may have lashed out at the restaurant for replacing his beloved smoke shop.”

“I don’t think so.” Kirsten leaned close, studying the aquarium. “He’d been here for years and never did anything that overt before.”

Dorian swiped a finger through the smear. “This is residue. An entity got into a fight in here, or at least, something hurt one.”

“Thank you, I’ll just be a few minutes looking around. I’ll try not to get in anyone’s way.” She smiled at the host as he backed off, and closed her eyes. Evan’s hand slipped away. “Don’t wander too far.”

“I won’t.”

Her mind opened in an effort to read ambient energy. Weak imprints lingered here and there, confirming a spirit had been here. Theodore was close to her when she opened her eyes; she jumped back with a yelp that quieted the room by several decibels. Now embarrassed at drawing attention to herself, she scowled at him.

“Dammit, Theo, don’t do that.”

Dorian encouraged him to give her some space and glanced at her. “Feel anything?”

“There was something here, not much of an imprint though. It doesn’t feel like he was obliterated, but I can’t find the sense of peace that usually saturates an area after a transcendence.”

“K…” Dorian pointed.

She spun to follow his gesture, and gasped at the sight of Evan. He had crouched, one hand on the floor amid another blotch of glowing matter. He trembled, staring wide-eyed into nowhere with an expression as if someone was about to shoot him. Kirsten ran to him, sliding to a halt on her knees with her hands on his shoulders.

“Evan?”

He didn’t react.

“Evan!” She shook him. “Evan, snap out of it.”

A well-dressed man at a nearby table leaned around. “Is he all right? Should I call a MedVan?”

Mouth still open, Evan blinked once and broke out of whatever trance had taken him. After a final severe shiver, he swallowed and wiped the cold sweat from his face. His trembling subsided, and his breathing returned to normal.

“Thank you. I think he’s okay.” She stood as Evan did, refusing to let go of his hand. “What was that?”

He stared up at her. “Fear.”

“Obviously.” Theodore shook his head. “You looked about ready to piss yourself.”

Evan glared at him. “Was not. It wasn’t my fear.” He looked at Kirsten. “Someone was real scared here.”

“ Oh, that explains it,” said Theodore with a smirk. “The kid’s a telempath.”

“Nooooo,” whined Evan with an exasperated sigh. “You’re just not scary.”

Dorian chuckled, much to Theodore’s chagrin.

“He’s not a telempath, Theo.” Kirsten pulled Evan into a hug, stroking her hand over his hair. “He’s mildly clairvoyant. He probably caught a psychometric reading from the residue.”

“Mildly clairvoyant? That’s like saying you’re mildly a cop. He either is, or isn’t. Question is, does he train himself how to use it?” Theodore gestured at him.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” cried a sour-sounding voice. “Forcing your psychic nonsense on an innocent little boy.”

“Oh, shit,” muttered Dorian. “Self-righteousness at two o’clock low, coming in hot.”

A middle-aged woman ambled over, shaking her finger. Kirsten’s gaze shot right to the gold cross pin on her lapel. She recognized the icon of Reverend Harris’s vehement anti-psionic Fundamentalist Church of the Redeemer.

“Psionics aren’t a choice, dammit. I’m not making him anything. He was born with his gift, as was I. No amount of screaming at your invented God will change that. How dare you judge us for being different. Don’t you see how fucking hypocritical you are”―Evan covered his mouth to hide the urge to laugh at Kirsten’s language― “if your so-called God is real and as all-powerful as you say, then psionic people could not exist unless he made them.” Kirsten vibrated with anger, turning red. “You don’t even believe your own bullshit.”

The woman, and half the room, gasped. When shock wore off, she ranted in scripture. Something in the back of Kirsten’s mind snapped at the all-too-familiar sound of a woman’s voice invoking God at her, and she reached for her stunrod with a shaking hand, tears in her eyes.

Dorian jumped in front of her. “Don’t… not worth it.”

Theodore held up his hand and flashed a rogue’s grin. “I got this.”

offee, as divine as it was, did not hold the answers of the universe. It did not even hold the answers to the questions she had at that moment. An egg-on-a-roll sat unopened on the dash between the control sticks, clear plastic clamshell fogged white with steam. Outside to the right, a morning crowd shuffled along on their way to work or a PubTran station. Not even the fragrance of peppered eggs teased an appetite out of her gut.

“You okay?” The cool presence of Dorian’s hand settled on her right shoulder.

She looked at him, still red-eyed from a fitful sleep. “Thanks for staying with me last night.”

“Don’t let the bitch get to you. Besides, she’s got her own issues now.” Dorian chuckled.

Kirsten managed a weak smile and took a sip of her wake-up elixir. “Yeah, I’ve never seen a grown woman shit where she stood before.”

“Theodore certainly has a knack for the dramatic. I’ve never seen a crowd clear out of a restaurant so fast.”

“Guess she believes in ghosts now.” She reached for her breakfast. “Think I’ll get more than two bites before we get a radio call?”

Dorian made a fanciful series of arcane gestures and touched both index fingers to his temples. “I foresee you might be able to finish your food.”

“It wasn’t fun getting stuck there till eleven.” Chomp. “Do you think the brass will believe my report?”

“Well,” said Dorian, “if you had taken a swing at that woman, you’d have had a different sort of explaining to do. You did tell the truth. A spirit caused a disturbance, and you made sure he won’t do it again. Like you always say, what are you going to do, haul Theo to ghost-jail?”

“I wasn’t gonna beat her; just, you know… bzzz… silence.” Kirsten shivered. “I had to make it stop. I couldn’t listen to that again.”

“You hit a nerve. You made a valid point she had no rebuttal for, so she just tried to shout you down.”

“Yeah.”

The comm. lit up. “Agent Wren, copy?”

She stared at the box of crumbs. “Well, I did finish it,” she mumbled. “Wren here, go ahead.”

“Agent, there is a request from Division 1 for your expertise.” A NavMap pin popped up on her console. “A dead body was found approximately twenty-six minutes ago, and they would like you to have a look.”

“Any strange events reported?” Kirsten leaned to her left, peering upward before bringing the car airborne.

The holographic dispatcher shook his head. “Nothing they have included in comm. traffic at this time.”

“Alright, notify them I’m en route.” She glanced at the map. “ETA four point two minutes.”

Kirsten slipped through the usual array of Division 1 hovercars parked in such a manner as to create a blockade in front of an alley. The scene was quiet, even their emergency lights were off. A Div 2 van had landed just inside the barricade, and the area swarmed with forensic techs. Dorian walked through the open driver door, dispelled for an instant into a cloud of fog.

“At least we’re not in the arctic again,” he said.

“Yeah, I should thank this guy for having the courtesy to get murdered where it’s warm.” She walked up to a man in a long charcoal-grey coat who was observing the techs study a dead man. “You must be Detective Kiering. Agent Wren, Div Zero.”

He glanced at her; his features said Mexico but his skin tone said Sweden. “Morning, Agent. Thanks for coming. Look, this may be nothing, but the buzzards had some questions they couldn’t answer.”

“What can you tell me?”

“Well…” Detective Kiering swiped his hand over a datapad, backing up several pages. “Luckily for us, the deceased had an ImDent. His name was William Arris, former security guard. System shows a relatively clean record. No major crimes. A few applications for Division 1, but he got denied.”

Kirsten glanced about, finding no signs of a spirit. “Any idea why?”

“He had frequent association with individuals known to work for the Syndicate. Brass didn’t want to risk an infiltrator.”

“I guess that makes sense. Any chance it had something to do with his death?”

“It’s an angle I’m still looking into. I couldn’t find anything yet, but there’s some very odd things. Tech Hollings can fill you in.” He indicated a petite woman on one knee over the corpse.

Wide eyes like amber set in chocolate glanced up at the mention of her name.

Kirsten gave Kiering a nod and walked toward Hollings. After one more glance around failed to find a ghost other than Dorian nearby, she looked at him. “Mind wandering around a bit, see if he’s hiding somewhere?”

“Sure.” Dorian jogged off and ducked through a wall.

“Tech Hollings?” asked Kirsten, offering a hand.

The woman stood, clinging to a portable scanner as if it were a security blanket. She had a round, innocent face, tinged with fear. For once, Kirsten felt tall.

“Is something wrong?” Please don’t be scared of me.

“Ma’am.” Tech First Class Hollings, being equivalent to a Corporal in rank, saluted her and stood rigid. “I just have a creepy feeling about this one, ma’am. I… You’re psionic, aren’t you?”

“That is one of the things they ask on the Division 0 job application, yes.” Kirsten hooked her thumbs through her belt, taking on a full-body sag of exasperation. “I’ll try to make this quick so you don’t have to be near me any longer than necessary.”

“Oh.” Tech Hollings looked down. “I… It’s not that. Sorry, I’m not one of those people who thinks psionics are bad. I’m freaked out by the scene, not you.”

Kirsten let her arms fall lax. “What’s wrong?”

“This body doesn’t feel right. You know, most times I check out a dead person I almost feel like they’re watching me. Like I’m not alone. I, you know, talk to them and tell them I’m gonna do all I can to figure out what happened to them so we can catch their killer and such.”

“Sometimes, their spirit might actually be there. That’s nice of you to reassure them.”

“This guy… I didn’t get that feeling.”

Kirsten squinted at her. The glimmer of luminosity in her eyes made Hollings gasp.

“Did you just do something?”

You’re psionic, aren’t you? Maybe you don’t even know it.

Hollings shivered. Her surface thoughts shifted to fear she might get in trouble for hiding from Division 0.

“Hey,” said Kirsten, soothing. A sisterly arm went around the shorter woman’s back. “It’s not illegal to stay under the radar. A lot of people do. That’s why you can feel them. I can’t get much of a sense of what your talents are; I bet you never tried to develop anything. You have the potential though. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You know where to find us if you ever want to talk about it.” Kirsten paced around the dead man. “So, what can you tell me about this guy? Did you call me in for something more than just not feeling watched?”

The woman relaxed, letting her diagnostic tool fall away from her shirt enough to see the screen. “I couldn’t find an obvious cause of death, not with this thing.” She patted the box. “However, there is some abrasion damage to the bones of his wrists and ankles, as if he had been wearing metal binders for an extended period of time. I also found fine particulates embedded in the skin of his back, buttocks, and legs. It comes up as crushed soy hull, and some of it was… kitty litter.”

“Crushed soy hull?” Kirsten pondered. “There’s tons of places that process soybeans. OmniSoy alone has a hundred facilities in West City, never mind East and off-world.”

“Certain micro particles on the soy shell fragments phenotyped to pollen from olive trees native to the region around Tel Aviv, which appear to be from around 1000 BCE.”

Kirsten blinked. “Where would he have come into contact with that?”

“According to his personal record, he was employed as a night guard at the West City Archives, specifically, the museum wing.”

“Oh.” Kirsten sighed. “Maybe he was getting busy at night and did the deed on top of some old thing. Is there any way to determine how long the, umm, pollen was on him?”

“Not exactly. Some of the soy shell bits got into his skin, causing mild inflammation. I’d say he was in prolonged contact with it for a few days maybe.”

“So, someone held this guy prisoner for a few days.” She squatted, peering under the sheet.

The nude man lay with his arms at his sides, as if on a morgue table. He seemed older in the face than he should be. His skin was too grey, wrinkled and dry, and his eyes had turned black.

Kirsten recoiled at the surprise of it.

“See what I mean? Tissue analysis of his eyes shows nothing to explain the pigmentation of the sclera or the collapse of the iris.”

“He smells like chemicals.”

“There is residue of a common non-abrasive cleaning solution on his chest. Someone gave him a rub down with a disposable wipe. Not very useful to trace, you can find them in just about every apartment in the city.”

“Can I touch him?”

Hollings cringed. “You shouldn’t, it could interfere with the lab work later. I can only do so much out here.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “If you think it’s the only way, I won’t say anything.”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t want to be responsible for contaminated evidence.” Kirsten squatted, holding her hands just over the body.

Something tugged at her mind: faint, almost beyond notice. She probed at the sensation, offering and withdrawing energy until she came to the determination the body possessed an absence of paranormal forces to a degree it reacted as a manner of sponge. Not powerful enough to do all that much, more like a chunk of inert metal left near a magnet too long that picked up its own feeble field.

“I couldn’t find anything,” said Dorian.

The sound of his voice opened her eyes.

Hollings glanced around and shivered. “Okay, now I get that feeling again.”

“My partner’s here.” Kirsten winked at her, and stood up with a hand on her forehead. “I’ve never seen this before. The body is so blank it’s trying to absorb psionic energy.”

Dorian gave the dead man a curious look. He stooped and put a hand on the corpse’s shoulder, and vanished. The body’s mouth filled with luminous fog, which drew itself down the throat a second later.

When the eyes shifted to look at Kirsten, Hollings all but fainted. Dark ichor cried forth, streaking ebon lines down the dead man’s cheeks.

The corpse looked left, then right, then back at Kirsten. The hand twitched. Hollings scooted behind her, clinging.

“What the fuck?”

“Calm down, it’s just Dorian being a dick.”

The body wheezed.

“Get out of there.” Kirsten folded her arms.

Dorian’s hand peeled out of the corpse’s arm, reaching up. Hollings had no reaction.

“Little help…” A breathy wheeze came from dead Mr. Arris.

Kirsten concentrated for a few seconds, rendering her body solid to spirits, and took Dorian’s hand. A hearty pull dragged him free, and the corpse once again became inert. The confusion on his face stalled Kirsten’s imminent grumbling about scaring the poor tech half to death.

“I didn’t intend to jump in,” said Dorian. “However, I think I learned something.”

“Hang on.” Kirsten patted Hollings on the arm. “I know this isn’t gonna help much, but try not to freak out. The dead don’t get back up. I have a ghost following me around and he jumped into that body. The next crime scene you go to, the body won’t move. Don’t dwell on it.”

Hollings offered a dumbfounded nod and a deep breath.

“I don’t think I can do anything here. Aside from the blackened eyeballs, I can’t find any evidence to support paranormal events. Unless something else comes up, handle this like a normal case.”

Dorian fell in step at Kirsten’s side as she made her way back to the patrol craft. “There is something unusual there.”

“What?” She paused, a few meters from the car.

“I haven’t exactly had a lot of practice jumping in bodies, but the one time I did try it, I had to overcome the bond between the corpse and the spirit who used to own it. Remember how you tracked Albert? The same link.”

She pursed her lips.

“Well, Mr. Arris over there had no link. In fact, the damn body pulled me in the instant I touched it. I did not want to jump in. He’s been dead too long anyway, right in the midst of rigor, I couldn’t move much. Even making the eyes slide around was tiring.”

“It could mean he did transcend. If the soul moves on to the next place, wouldn’t the link break?” She took another step toward the car.

“I believe so, yes. But, it still doesn’t explain the”―he made a double-fisted pulling gesture into his body, that would have thumped if his chest was solid― “yank.”

“I don’t like it either.” She drew the last word out into a sigh. “To claim jurisdiction on this murder, I need more than a little tuggy feeling on a ‘partner’ command doesn’t even believe I have.”

“What about that?” Dorian asked, pointing up.

Her gaze followed the line of his finger left and into the sky to a large NewsNet bot. In the peculiar way the human mind tends to do, as soon as she looked at it and recognized the face of Kimberly Brightman, she picked the reporter’s words out of the ambient din of advert jingles. In the background, a prim, grey-haired woman with dark skin stood behind a podium of microphones. Kirsten had the feeling she was familiar, the two guards in military armor in the background made her think government official.

“…has announced that she is open to discussions regarding the abolishment of trade embargoes with certain regions affiliated with the Allied Corporate Council. As you know, for years now, Commissioner Vernon has adamantly refused to consider open trade agreements with the ACC, citing numerous human rights violations. This morning’s announcement comes as quite a shock to parties on both sides of the debate. Let’s go now to our Lunar Correspondent, Amy Gordon at Copernicus, with the latest reaction from the Senate.”

The image shifted to a young, fair-skinned woman with short orange-blonde hair and hazel eyes, caught off guard by the sudden shift of feed. Grey and black dominated the scene behind her, with most of the upper reaches of the video a clear view through the Copernicus dome into space. The city behind her, like most of the moon, appeared in black and white―with the exception of full-color advert bots flying around. She stood at the base of a long staircase into an elaborate stadium-like building, with a dozen soldiers in white-on-grey camouflage armor at the top. The gold and blue banner of the United Coalition Front hung on either side of a row of doors.

Her ‘do I have to deal with these people’ scowl down the street was obvious, sending Dorian into a fit of chuckling. The Lunar reporter startled, went wide-eyed in the direction of the camera, and put on a false smile.

“Thanks, Kimberly. I’m here at the Senate chambers, where reaction to Commissioner Vernon’s announcement has been mixed. Former allies immediately decried her change of stance, and leveled accusations of bribery or coercion. I had a chance to speak with Senator Garr a few minutes ago. If you recall, he was in favor of opening trade with the ACC.”

The video cut to an older white man in a suit so expensive it shined. He blathered on about the plight of the lower classes in ACC society, drawing justification for a trade agreement by how it could only benefit poor people who had no influence on what their government did.

“That’s such a load of horseshit I can smell it from the moon,” said Dorian. “If he thinks for one second the ruling class over there will let one credit get to the people, he’s dangerously deluded. It would be like paying them to keep shooting at us.”

“But…”

Dorian held up a hand. “Not on Earth. On Mars. You’ve spoken to some of those vets. The ACC keeps a pleasant face on down here, but up there it’s a whole other story. We have enough trouble holding on to our piece of Mars with the Martian Liberation Front bombing everything they can; giving the ACC more resources is insanity.”

Kirsten felt like a ten-year-old watching elders discuss things she neither cared about nor understood. With a lamenting smirk at the car, she muttered “yeah.” Her awkwardness at having no political knowledge waned at a sudden spark of worry. “Dorian, do you think it’s a little odd Vernon changes her mind on something so significant like this?” She glanced back at the Division 2 crew loading William Arris’s body into a van.

“That man had nothing to do with her office.”

“He worked at the West City Archives, didn’t he? That’s still government work. All it takes is access to a computer terminal on the hard net. Maybe we missed an abyssal and it possessed him, used him to get into the government building, and somehow got to Vernon?”

“That’s kind of a reach. Why would a demon care about politics?” Dorian tapped his chin with a finger for a few minutes. “I don’t know. I didn’t get the feeling the body had been in contact with an abyssal, but I’m hardly a scholar on the subject.”

“Maybe I should go check, just a quick meeting. Won’t take long.” She ducked under the rising gull-wing door before it was all the way open.

The flight to Sector 2408 took forty minutes, over two-thirds of the city. The West City Administrative Complex consumed an entire sector square, as well as infiltrated the adjacent ones. Unlike most of the surrounding construction, the main building of the WCAC was only four stories above ground. Most of it went down, protected. Rumor claimed it extended into the earth, more than fifty meters below the surface of the elevated city plates.

She glided to a landing just outside the perimeter wall and drove through the checkpoint gate after a show of ID and a two-minute verification wait. Military personnel clad in generic-green camouflage armor with gold visors littered the area around the stairs. The silhouette of the body armor made it difficult to tell which ones were women; height proved the most reliable means.

Kirsten ignored them all watching her as she went up the stairs. The lobby was a grandiose affair consisting of chrome and black marble. Clusters of benches and plants ringed ornate columns, and the cavernous space held many glass tube elevators. Open to the ceiling, the reception area occupied the bottom of a shaft that offered a view into all four above ground floors through glass walls.

Most surprising of all, the two men and one woman behind the onyx desk all had surface thoughts, and all of them were concerned at the presence of a psionic in this building. She frowned, paying them no heed, and walked up to a large obelisk bearing a directory hologram. Her reflection stared back at her from the shiny ebon glass just behind a five-foot tapestry of light inscribed with names and titles. Commissioner Claire Vernon’s office was listed on the third floor.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the woman receptionist muttering while keeping a worried gaze on her. Kirsten almost punched the elevator button, emitting a heavy sigh.

“That didn’t take long.” Dorian looked around. “What’s got you in a mood so fast?”

She slid through the opening doors, spinning in time to meet the receptionist’s glare before they closed. “Three idiots at the front desk scared shitless of a psionic.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally here, K. This is a place where there are more secrets than people. There’s no security protocol on a brain.”

Her burning glower lifted to the floor counter. “I guess.”

Six figures in Marine Assault armor formed a horseshoe around the elevator as she emerged on the third floor. One close to the center lacked a helmet, seeming to be in his later forties, all-white hair in a neat military brush cut. He raised a hand at her approach.

“This is a restricted section, miss. Visitors are required to go through the receiving area downstairs.”

“I’m not a visitor; I’m here on official police business. I need to see Commissioner Vernon.”

He regarded her for a quiet moment, almost as if he had expected someone like her to show up. “Under what inquest number?”

As Kirsten’s mouth opened to speak, the other five Marines twitched, itching to raise their weapons. She lost her voice at the sight.

“Miss?”

Her eyes flicked back to him, noting the word ‘Gerard’ stenciled on his chest by a stack of chevrons. “I don’t appreciate being threatened, Sergeant. You do realize Division Zero is every bit as legitimate as One or Nine.”

“I’m sorry, Agent. It is a matter of national security. Your jurisdiction does not extend to military installations. Do you have an inquest number?”

“I am investigating a suspicious death that may be related to the Commissioner’s sudden change of heart. My purpose here is to determine if she is under any paranormal influence.”

“Agent Wren, it is only due to your credentials checking out that you’re not being detained already. I can’t let you inside without an official inquest and an order from CENTCOM.” He advanced, taking hold of her right forearm in a grip far less than comfortable. She tensed―old instincts die hard. “Tell us who sent you and we’ll go easy on you.”

She tried to jerk her arm away, but scarcely moved him. Dorian bristled, though his angry glare went unnoticed. Sergeant Gerard smirked at the terror seeping through her eyes and let go. It took her a few seconds to recover any sense of confidence.

“You think someone sent me to reprogram the Commissioner?” She blinked. “I’m a damn astral, not a mind-wiper. If you think I’m someone’s tool, sent here to do some political dirty work, do you really believe I’d just walk in through the front door?”

Gerard crossed his arms. “I don’t know what to think when Psios are involved, so I don’t. I follow orders. The only way you’re gettin’ in there to see Vernon is if my commanding officer tells me to let you in.”

She glowered, furious at her public reaction to being grabbed, furious at their disregard of her authority, and furious at not being trusted.

Dorian put a hand on her back. “Come on, K. If you push it, you are going to wind up in a C-Branch detention center where no one will ever find you. Anything you say will just make it look more suspicious. Evan needs you.”

The name washed over her shoulders like ice water. “I have reason to think she might be under an external influence. If you see anything unexplained going on here, please call us.” Kirsten backpedaled into the elevator, not taking her eyes off Gerard until the doors closed. Alone with Dorian, her face softened. “I hope I’m wrong about this.”

He seemed to gaze through the wall at the Marines. “I’m sure we’ll find out.”

ind whistled through the trees of Sanctuary Park. Kirsten shivered more from the sound than from feeling cold. The dancing pattern of moonlight, interspersed between leaf-shaped shadows, lent a foreboding solitude to the night. A young woman in glowing makeup with brown hair came around a bend in the false bricks, leading a man twice her age. Silver material wrapped about her; a garment just tall enough to cover her breasts with a narrow strip of cloth. Her skirt was transparent, offering a plain view of lacy violet undergarments.

At the sight of a uniform leaning on a tree, the girl skidded to a halt and reversed course, dragging her client out of sight. Kirsten shot a guilty stare at the ground to her right. Dorian edged closer.

“Something wrong?”

She did not look up. “The only reason that isn’t me is I’m psionic.”

He pushed on her arm. “Your logic is flawed. Stop trying to depress yourself.”

“Flawed?” She glanced at him after taking note of Theodore’s presence in the distance. “How so?”

“The most glaring problem is if you weren’t psionic, your mother wouldn’t have tortured you. You’d probably be out of university by now at some boring job. The second issue is the government does help street kids, even non-psionics. The ones you see here wanted to stay.”

“They ship them off Earth,” said Kirsten, frowning.

Dorian looked around at the city. “Are you so sure it’s a bad thing?”

Theodore paused amid a group of university students passing a narco-inhaler around. He took it in turn, drawing a breath off it as they all stared at the floating device. Kirsten smirked at him as he went from solid looking to ghostly in her eyes.

“Yeah, that’s the shit,” growled Theodore through a long exhale.

One man fainted; the rest scrambled off in random directions. He laughed as he let his manifestation fade and dropped the drug delivery device on the chest of the unconscious man. Curly black hair wafted in the breeze as he glided to where Kirsten stood giving him a disapproving frown.

“What?” He leaned back on his heels while his pocketed hands rose a bit in a lazy version of a shrug. “They’re in my park at night. Fair game.”

Kirsten shoved herself away from the tree she had been leaning on. “You shouldn’t do that to people. You could kill someone.”

“They weren’t old ‘nuff to have heart attacks. Sides, they’ll blame the Zone4.” He groaned. “Such a shame I died before they invented all these wonderful chemicals.”

“If you hurry this along, there’s a prostitute over there.” Dorian waved to the distance.

“Bitsy?” Theodore rolled his eyes. “She’s boring. Just lays there, no energy.” He winked at Kirsten. “Bet you’d be a lot more energetic. Quite a few years of pent up frustration waiting to come out.”

The intent to make her feel awkward backfired. The lash draped out of her hand.

“Whoa…” Theodore raised his hands. “Sorry, girl. Forgot it was that time of the month. What happened to your sense of humor?”

“A couple of Marines,” said Dorian.

“Oh, my.” Theodore swiped wet hair off his face, black-lipstick grin widening. “Share the details?”

Her face went crimson. “You’re a damn pervert, Theo.”

He rendered a formal court bow. “Merci pour le compliment, je suis honoré.”

She released the lash, darkening the area. “Just a conflict of jurisdiction. What did you want, anyway?”

“The Kind seeks your assistance, girl.” Theodore stepped back with his left foot, waving his arm at a line of people that had appeared out of nowhere. “Selenah has seen the next attack.”

“Selenah?” Kirsten asked, tilting her head.

“Perhaps one of the oldest of our number.” Theodore stuffed his hands once more into the saturated pockets of his green trench coat. “Colonists killed her for being a witch.”

“Which colony?”

“Plymouth,” said Theodore, grinning.

“Never heard of it. What planet is it on? Is she here?”

Theodore laughed; some of The Kind shook their heads in dismay at the ignorance of youth.

“It’s not important, and no. She’s with her mortal remains in the Beneath on the east coast. She speaks through the mists. One will be claimed. He is a soul of some age, however stagnant. He has kept to himself, not developed his strength.”

Kirsten lifted both eyebrows. “So you want me to hunt down this old lonely ghost and wait for something to attack him?”

“You are their chosen, Kirsten.” An older man with the bearing of a politician and the body of a weightlifter advanced from the group of Kind. “Yours is not only to protect the living from the restless dead. Your duty extends to protect those of us who wish to exist in peace. A hunter walks among us, girl. A beast of darkness that feeds upon souls.”

“You’re laying it on a little thick, Pops.” Theodore chuckled.

“Just a tad,” added Dorian.

“Still, the governor’s got a point. Abyssals are bad for both living and dead. This one’s a devourer, kid.” For once, Theodore’s larger-than-life presence seemed small. “We need yer help.”

She looked over the dozen or so spirits, finding the change in era of their clothing both intriguing and sad. “Okay. It’s hard enough to track those things down. If you think you know where it’s going to be, I have to take the chance. Where?”

“Sector 3177, rather under it.”

An older-looking female ghost among The Kind grumbled about it no longer being called Beverly Hills.

“The Beneath?” asked Kirsten, sagging into a slouch. The memory of the slime puddle she fell into on her last trip came back, causing a shiver.

“Ayep.” Theodore flung his hands to the sides in another casual shrug, tossing water. “Tonight, probably within an hour.”

“Great,” she said, jogging to the car with an exasperated sigh.

“Some warning is better than none.” Dorian materialized in the passenger seat around his voice.

“I hope this one’s weaker than Charazu.”

His eyebrows flared. “Me too.”

Kirsten grasped the pliable, rubberized handle at the center of the armored hatch, staring at the round-cornered square that blocked entry to the Beneath. She keyed in the police access code and a red square of light turned green, tinting her face to a matching hue. Curious eyes glimmered in the shadows, as tempted by a solitary woman as they were afraid of her uniform. A deep breath carried the metallic flavor of grey zone neglect.

“Too many bad memories down there?” asked Dorian.

She squeezed the rubbery part of the handle, activating the pressure-sensitive control. Pins popped away, freeing the panel to lift on a hinge. A wash of humid, warm air came over her, replacing the industrial taste with something closer to putrescent organic matter.

“I always thought about Mother when I thought about The Beneath.” She slid through the hole and down a metal ladder, pulling the hatch closed via the handle on the bottom. Her voice echoed in the dim shaft. “I barely think about her now, just how foolish I was for not going to the police right away. I thought they’d take me right home to her. I didn’t think they’d believe me.”

Dorian’s voice lacked echo; the sound he made existed only to her, not to hard metal walls. “You wanted to hide from a world you didn’t think wanted you.”

She leapt the last two rungs of the first ladder and jogged to the edge of a catwalk, where she proceeded down a longer one leading to the bottom of the city plate interior. “I was terrified she would find me.”

“How do you want to handle the Discarded this time? Same as last?”

Twenty-five meters below the city, Kirsten paused at the base of the ladder, standing on the lower plate surface. She looked around at the array of girders, tubes, wire bundles, and small square utility lights that formed a virtual starscape. “We shouldn’t run into any here, this area has a colony. I used to steal food from places here.”

“Steal? If there was a colony, why didn’t you live among them?” Dorian joined her at the edge of a hole, where another huge ladder ran down the side of an immense column.

Fifty meters down, the old city waited.

Kirsten lowered herself through the gap, pausing to look up at him before she climbed. “They didn’t look like the nicest people, and I’d just gotten away from six years of torture. I wasn’t looking for more parents.”

He floated down, keeping pace with her as she climbed. “You’re evading something, but I won’t push.”

Quiet until her boots hit a dirt lot, she held on to the rung for a moment without looking at him. “Just another stupid choice.” She shook off the bad mood and forced a smile. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it? This place, down here, used to be one of the most exclusive playgrounds of the rich before everything went to hell. Now it’s beneath a bad part of the city.”

“Yeah, fancy that,” he said. “Some people say everything goes in cycles. So how did you tolerate this for two years? There’s no day, all you have for sky is metal.”

Kirsten shrugged, glancing at a holo-panel floating over her left arm to study a map. “I wasn’t thinking about a lot back then, just about staying alive and away from everyone.”

“Youder. Doanmove.” A dusty male voice emanated from behind a weak flashlight. An old bolt-action rifle protruded alongside it, not quite aimed.

Light gleamed from a sword to his left. “Whatchu want?” asked a female voice.

The third voice was deep enough to resonate in her bones. “Topsider, yew lookin fer trouble or runnin’ from it?”

“I guess you could say I’m looking for it, but not with you. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to make nice with the natives. I’m hunting a demon.”

The tall man with the deep voice blocked her step. “That’s some fancy hardware you got, thar.” A hand, coated in black oily grease entered the light and pointed at her sidearm.

From behind the sword, a silhouette of tattered rags and frizzy black hair leaned closer. “Sheez pretty. Cani keeper?” The woman got closer, near to drooling.

“I’m not a stray dog.” She tried to walk around them, but they moved to remain in her path.

“You don’t want no trouble then, whyd’nt ya gives us that fancy ol’ gun o’ yours as a peace offerin’,” said the man with the rifle.

“Sorry, no. It’s coded to my fingerprint and won’t operate for anyone else. Besides, even if you could fire it, there’s no more ammo for it down here.”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “You’re wasting your breath.”

The three glanced at each other.

Kirsten focused, drawing upon her Darksight. The Astral realm superimposed itself over the oppressive gloom in her vision, a wavering version of the world drawn in sepia. The power also caused her eyes to glow white. The three people in front of her jumped back. Perhaps a quarter mile distant, a large mass of corrugated metal sprawled like some monstrous insect. Distorted faces peered at her from the maze of girders, sheet metal, and wood, straining to see her figure illuminated by flashlight.

The bolt-action rifle wobbled, a sign of the fear that gripped its owner. “Y… You one o’ them robot things?”

“No, I’m…” These people aren’t going to know or care about Division 0. “I’m a shaman, and I need to stop a bad spirit before it hurts anyone down here.”

The sword-bearing woman raised her weapon in a trembling hand, edging close enough to sniff the air around Kirsten. Her clothing was a mixture of pre-war items and scraps of random heavy cloth stitched and patched together by string. She circled, head tilting to one side and then the other. “What’s a topsie want withus?”

Dorian drained the flashlight. “These people don’t seem all that much different from the Discarded.”

Kirsten put a hand over her mouth to suppress the urge to laugh at the face the man made as he hit the dead light. “I’ll be gone soon. I’m not here to cause any trouble with your people. Look, get out of my way and leave me alone and I’ll come back in a day or so with some clothes and stuff for you.”

They backed away with careful nods, too spooked by the sight of her glowing eyes and sudden dark to speak. Perhaps Dorian altered the mood in the air. She gave him a wry grin and walked around the sentries toward the gate.

Bevlls, the colony, was a little more than the size of three city blocks. Fortunately, the manor house Theodore described did not fall within its borders. A series of dangling car headlights strung along the perimeter wall surrounded the village with a weak aura of wobbling light. Kirsten skirted it, staying in the dark and out of sight of the sentries.

“Well, they’re certainly more organized than Discarded.”

Kirsten stepped over a fallen light pole. “Not everyone down here is ferally insane. Most of these colonists are hiding from the law or are the children of those who are. Anyway, you see why I avoided them before?”

“Mmm.”

A strong green glow leaked from where a gap in the corrugated metal wall offered a view into a crude hydroponic farm. Several dozen tanks held luminous water and vegetables in various states of maturity. Rows of intense lamps showered them with ultraviolet light focused by hand-bent metal shrouds. Two boys, one in his later teens and one not yet twelve, helped an older man tend to the crops. Copious sweat on their shirtless bodies gave away the temperature inside the chamber. The younger boy measured out some manner of powder and stood on tiptoe to pour it into a vessel full of carrots.

“Some of those look like fish tanks,” said Dorian, blinking.

“Use what you got, I guess. Still, they must have some contact with the outside to get supplies.” They walked another few minutes until her armband beeped. “Oh, we’re here. Hope we’re not too late.” She gestured at a distant property.

The former mansion looked about ready to collapse at the touch of a mild breeze. Fortunately, no such wind penetrated the millions of tons of plastisteel that formed the sky of the Beneath. One of the massive support columns upon which the city stood came down through the roof on the left side. As if some giant speared a pipe through it, the demolition work had gone only far enough to build the strut, leaving the house impaled.

She ducked through the collapsed gate and jogged the length of a driveway large enough to host a Gee-ball game. It ended at a circle surrounding a long-nonfunctional fountain of broken cherubs. After a mournful glance at the cracked, winged babies, she faced a once-white house covered in a hundred years’ worth of dark smears. All manner of grime, industrial chemicals, and waste rained from the solid canopy overhead.

Sensing the presence of something in the house lent a pronounced eeriness to the sight of the decaying building in a world cut off from the sun. Kirsten stared up, listening to the intermittent drip of muck from the interlocking panels overhead. She glanced at several pipes routed through girders and struts along the underside of artificial ground made of mile-square plates twenty-five meters thick. As far as she could see in all directions, metal went into the endless dark.

“It’s sad here.” She rubbed her arms. “Like these old buildings miss the sky.”

Dorian went past her into the house. “Now you’re getting a little too metaphysical.”

She followed. “Hello? Is there still a spirit here?”

Her voice echoed from moldy walls. To her surprise, much of the interior furniture, art, and vases remained intact. She dusted her finger over the end of a delicate bannister where a curved staircase led to the second floor, and frowned at the stain on her skin.

Dorian studied some of the artwork. “There’s definitely a spirit here, the place hasn’t been looted.”

“Damn right,” said a crotchety-sounding man as he strode through a closed set of double-doors.

The man looked older, seventy or more but in (except for being dead) good health, if not a bit on the chubby side. Thick white hair and a moustache added to a shimmery red smoking jacket created an affect as though he were the long lost son of Hugh Hefner and Captain Kangaroo.

Kirsten whirled to face him, looked right at him, and waved. “Hi.”

He screamed, folded his arms over his face and lifted one leg. “Dammit, girl, don’t do that!” The spirit trembled for a few seconds before he put his leg down and leaned at her in a menacing posture. “I’m the one supposed to be scaring you.”

She giggled. “You couldn’t scare anyone; you look like a sweet, old man.”

“You can see me?” He glared. “Damn it all to hell. I suppose you’re here to cart me off to that damnable home.” Relaxing, he tapped a finger over his lips twice while making a serious face. “No, it’s probably too late for that”―he leaned at her, raising his voice to a yell― “since I’m dead.” He burst into a cacophony of off-key laughter.

“I know you’re a ghost,” she said. “I’m here to―”

“Allan Smithee.” He extended a hand.

Dorian raised an eyebrow at him.

“Hi Allan, I’m Kirsten… Look, I―”

“Bah, your friend there’s a killjoy. Name’s actually Kantor.”

She folded her arms with pursed lips, wondering if she should dare try to speak again.

“We’re chasing a wild goose,” said Dorian. “Some old spirit on the east coast thinks you’re going to be attacked by an abyssal soon.”

“Me?” Allan paced in a circle, grumbling in a grandfatherly sort of way. “What would an abyssal want with me? I just keep to myself.” He paused with a dawning look of enlightenment and a raised finger. “Demon, huh? Must have been a film critic.”

“Your movies couldn’t have been too bad if you were living here.” Dorian gestured at the decay surrounding them.

“I can’t complain, though the place has lost a bit of its allure, I’ll admit. So, why do you think this thing is after me?”

Kirsten bared her teeth, somewhere between a forced disarming smile and a look of complete confusion. “I don’t know.” She relaxed, exhaling. “Best guess was that you’re a very old spirit who never grew in power. You would be a potent easy meal for an abyssal that devours spirits.”

Allan harrumphed about for a moment, complaining about the lack of mortal visitors upon which to practice being a ghost.

“Ever thought about leaving the house?” she asked.

“No, not really… What was that?” Allan whirled about, shivering as he faced the double doors he entered through.

“What―” Kirsten froze as the creeping cold feeling that just washed over Allan hit her next.

Blackness exuded through the slats in the door. The sight of what appeared to be another wraith brought icy memories of pain to her left breast. Kirsten gestured for Allan to get behind her. The older ghost scurried around as a figure similar in appearance to a Harbinger reformed out of the thick ebon mist. Seven feet of billowing vapor with the vague hint of a head and two arms, it resembled one in all respects save for the eyes: twinkling specks of crimson rather than the baleful white she was used to seeing.

The dread it emanated was also stronger.

Dorian’s image distorted, drawn toward it in stretching tendrils as if it desired to absorb him. He grunted, struggling to back away, but could not break the pull. Kirsten shifted herself solid to ghosts and dove into his chest. They hit the ground, sliding over dusty carpet as it bunched over ancient hardwood. Dorian gasped, making a face as if a full-body suit of duct tape had been torn away from his bare skin all at once.

“Guess we know why The Kind were scared of this thing… Get out of here, D.”

He wheezed; fatigue laced with shocked agony.

Allan fared somewhat better, able to step back from the creature. The way he moved made her imagine a great wind trying to push him toward the manifestation. Unlike Dorian, he did not begin to unravel.

Kirsten jumped up, channeling her psionic energy at the dark spirit. A sense of its form spread through her mind as her abilities clashed with it. She held her hands out, pushing against the demon’s advance. Allan backed through the enormous foyer while she held it off. Inky smoke roiled as it fought off her influence; crimson eyes burned to bright orange. It stared at her.

“Mommy! Help!” Evan screamed from her earbud, sounding like a sudden voice-only call.

Kirsten expected a creature like this to play mind games. However, having it simulate his voice in a way that seemed more believable than being behind her caught her off guard. Her concentration lapsed at the alarm in the child’s voice, allowing the creature to slip forward. It lunged at her, plunging an icy hand into her chest, just at the base of the throat.

It pulled, dragging a ghostly image out of her. Living eyes rolled back into her head as her spectral form peeled loose. Ghost-Kirsten struggled against the hand around her throat as her body convulsed behind her. As the separation moved down past her ribs to her hips, she found the presence of mind to stop fighting physically. Desperation rode a wave of psionic energy, which hit the abyssal with tremendous force, blasting it apart into a diaphanous cloud.

Kirsten’s spirit snapped back into her body hard enough to launch her into the wall. White wainscoting crumbled around her as she bounced away and rolled into a heap of splinters and plaster dust.

“Kirsten!” Dorian shouted when she remained limp on the ground.

The abyssal glided into the room, ignoring her and going straight for Allan. He backed into a corner, attempting several wizard-like gestures that had no apparent effect on the demon. A painting flew, passing harmlessly through the mass of shadow. Allan flung a couch, skidding it across the room; the humanoid shape of black flowed around it.

Kirsten’s eye popped open. She grinned. Allan’s screaming drowned out the clatter of debris as she stood; shouting that got louder when he noticed her moving. She stalked up behind the demon as it loomed over the old ghost. The soft soles of her boots muted her steps. As it began to draw Allan’s energy inward, Kirsten called the lash in mid-swing.

A scintillating strip of blue-white light extended from her hand, coiling about as she whipped her arm. The creature sensed the energy manifest, but could not turn in time to move. She tore the astral tendril through the manifestation. The strike felt as if she had slashed a mass of jelly with a sword. The familiar tension of impact tugged at her brain.

What had once been perfect black flared to bright crimson. The wraith-like shape became a bright roiling mass. Its polyphonic scream shattered windows and vases and knocked the rest of the artwork off the walls as an energy wave burst forth. It washed over Kirsten, causing her to shriek and fall to her knees. Shuddering, she wailed all the air from her lungs, paralyzed by burning pain. Her body cried without conscious thought at the overwhelming agony. The closer she was to the creature, the more it felt as if her flesh seared away.

“Thanks, Mom.” She snarled, and forced herself to stand through the pain.

An upswing of the lash stalled halfway through the creature’s mass, stuck. Kirsten howled and grabbed the tendril with both hands. Her eyes glowed with the intensity of two tiny holes into the center of a white star. The psionic weapon swelled in width, the expansion rode down the length into the abyssal’s form as she poured more energy into the attack.

Seconds later, it exploded.

Kirsten lay on the floor where the blast of hot demonic ichor left her. The lash flickered and went out. Once again, a trip to The Beneath covered her in vileness. Hardwood never felt so comfortable. Without Darksight on, she found it peaceful, as if her eyes were closed.

“You okay?” Dorian’s voice, above her.

“I think I’m going to donate some credits to that group calling for the abolition of boiled live lobster. I know what they feel like now.”

arly morning dreams found Kirsten in pleasant surroundings. A boat, small and wooden, ferried her along a street filled with water past ancient buildings with waving, smiling people. Konstantin stood at the rear, guiding them with a pole, singing in some butchered attempt at Italian―the closest her imagination could get. She was barefoot, clad in a loose-fitting white dress, and a wide-brimmed hat ringed with flowers, like some old-school Degas painting. She tugged at her neckline, exposing more and more of her chest to his approving smile.

“Mom?” Evan’s voice emanated from Konstantin’s lips.

Kirsten moaned.

“Mom?” Konstantin shrank into Evan, in pajamas. “Mom, the shower’s out of suds.”

Her eyes cracked open. She found herself lying on her side, staring through sleep-crumbs at an annoyed, wet, and naked boy. A plastic cylinder as big as his thigh dangled upside down in his grasp, obviously empty.

“Put something on.” She pushed herself up, sitting.

“I’m wet.” He pointed at the bathroom. “The shower ran outta suds while I was in it.”

Kirsten gave him a bleary stare. His birth mother had not bothered to clothe him much; using every scrap of credit she got her hands on to buy drugs. Kirsten took the empty soap canister, having nothing else to do but laugh at his lack of shame.

“Go back in the bathroom, I’ll order more.”

“‘Kay.” He wandered into the kitchen.

“If you’re going to eat, at least wrap yourself in a towel. Don’t drip all over the place.”

“‘Kay…” He changed course.

Kirsten thumbed at her NetMini, putting in an order for two cartridges of Sudzy-Kleen. She rolled her eyes at the crime against language perpetrated by people in the name of marketing.

Evan, towel around his hips, emerged from the bathroom and dragged a chair over to the counter. When he climbed up and leaned his forehead against the ‘sem, she giggled.

“Didn’t I ask you to wait a few years for coffee?”

“This doctor on the net said it’s good for you,” he whined. “I’m only making a small. Please?”

Kirsten bit her lip, finding it hard to resist his half-closed eyes and round face. “You know those articles don’t mean much. The experts will agree with whoever the money comes from.”

He thought for a minute, fidgeting with the towel to keep it in place. “Does that mean the ones who say it’s bad are lying too?”

Checkmate.

At least, checkmate for her sleep-deprived brain. “Fine, a small one. Make me one while you’re over there.”

“‘Kay.” He grinned and plunked his forehead against the door again, staring at the flickering sparks inside.

She gathered herself out of bed and stretched, skritching him on the head as she plodded past him to the apartment’s only window. A delivery bot tapped a spindly metal arm on the glass a moment later, dropping off two canisters of autoshower soap.

Evan got the tamed-down version of the story of last night as they shared coffee. When he finished his, he sprang from his seat, grabbed one canister and ran out of the towel into the bathroom. Kirsten slumped on her elbows, watching his shadow in the light the bathroom cast on the main-area floor as he installed the new cartridge. For a moment, she felt terrified.

Was this a good idea? Can I handle having a kid? I’m only twenty-two. I… I don’t have anyone to fall back on for help. What if I can’t handle him? What if the caseworker walks in and he’s streaking around? Am I supposed to yell at him for that? Will it cause mental scars if I make a big deal about it? She let her forehead fall on her arms. The autoshower started up. Evan soon lapsed into his recitation of his favorite lines from the Monwyn vids.

Kirsten draped herself to the side, staring over the table at the lit bathroom. A contented smile spread over her face. Have a little faith in yourself, K.

Hospital white hallways passed in a haze of anxiety. Evan was safe at school, and Kirsten walked across the Division 0 portion of the police complex toward the admin wing. A large room semblant to a library added a touch of brown and black to the otherwise antiseptic place. Four teens in admin duty uniforms sat at the tables using a combination of terminals and old books to research various things. One girl stared at the holographic screen without moving, navigating the system by willpower alone.

Kirsten leaned on the wall below the nameplate for Dr. Susan Loring and watched the admin cadets work for a few minutes. The door opened with a squeak, revealing the smiling brown face of one of the department head-docs. She had an exotic look, with high cheekbones and thin features. If not for being six feet tall, Kirsten would have called her a caramel elf.

“What’s on your mind, luv?”

Kirsten let her folded arms fall at her sides. “Just thinking about these admin kids, wondering if I should’ve gone that route.”

She followed her in, flopping on the couch while Dr. Loring took her position at a nearby chair. Like most psychologists Kirsten had ever worked with, her office had many bookshelves piled with actual paper books and an uncountable number of small statuettes, sculptures, and magnetic toys. This was one of those rooms decorated in blues and greens, attempting to make deliberate use of calming colors.

“I understand the decision was not all yours,” said Dr. Loring, a hint of regret in her words.

“Yeah, they knew about the lash. At least Evan can’t do it; all he can do is see them. They don’t have any reason to force him out into the field.”

“You don’t want him out there?”

“Of course not.” Kirsten smiled. “I don’t want him to get hurt. I mean, it’ll be his decision when he’s eighteen.”

Dr. Loring thumbed her datapad. “How have you been dreaming lately?”

Kirsten smirked. “You don’t have to dance around it, Doc. I haven’t had the nightmare again. I’m sure I’ve dealt with it.”

“Oh?” Dr. Loring perked up. Long slender fingers curled over the top of her datapad as she leaned forward. “Please, would you talk a little more on that?”

“As long as you don’t think I’m crazy. You know I can see ghosts and you work with psionics all the time so I guess you won’t.”

The doctor smiled.

“Well, when I was working on the Motte case, I ran out of ideas. I knew Intera Corporation was hiding something, but I had no way to get inside. They had assassins coming after me, so I didn’t want to go through the front door. I didn’t care what the living were up to at the time; I was hoping to find a trace of Albert there. I knew I had the potential for astrally projecting myself, but I never tried doing it before.”

“I remember you said Evan was projecting when you first met him.”

Kirsten flashed a sad smile. “Yeah, I thought he was a ghost at first.” She picked at the gold serpent around her right wrist, her sadness chased away by the thought of Konstantin’s arm around her. “This is gonna sound silly, but I visited him in the dorm, hoping he’d teach me how to do it.”

Dr. Loring leaned back, skimming through her electronic notes. Blue light changed the tint of her beige suit-jacket. “Your rating is far higher than his in Astral Sense. Shouldn’t you have been better at it?”

“Rating is just potential. Individual abilities like that take practice. I might have tried once, I don’t really remember it. Projecting is strange. I felt exposed, naked almost. It’s just a body of light.” Kirsten moved her hands through the air as if tracing a woman’s outline, and sat back staring at the wall for a full minute. “My mother would sometimes paddle me in front of her friends like it was some big ‘hey, look how awful my daughter is’ event: tea, cookies, and a screaming bare-assed child. I’m not really sure how many times it happened, I just remember them all cackling at me. They thought it was funny.”

“It’s possible from that you developed gymnophobia?”

“Huh?” Kirsten looked over.

“It’s a fear of nudity, both your own and seeing others without clothes. You might even realize it is an irrational fear. Do you have a problem with undressing to shower?”

“I don’t think so; I don’t have a problem showering. I mean, I have to blockade the bathroom before I get in the tube, but I only do that because I’ve had two incidents. I’m no Neko-chan, or whatever they call themselves. I don’t enjoy exhibitionism, though some of the dresses I’ve worn lately haven’t been too far off.” She blushed.

“Incidents?”

“Peeping ghosts. Getting put in a med tank was mortifying, but I don’t have nightmares about it. I don’t think I’m gimmophobic or whatever you said. I can shower just fine when I have privacy.”

“Okay.” Dr. Loring tapped in some more notes. “Have you considered the possibility you have a negative self-image? That can happen in cases where a person has been subjected to an authority figure who constantly belittled them.”

“Now you sound like you’re trying to talk me into walking around topless. What’s next, getting a tail or cat ears?” Kirsten offered a silly smile, picking at the bracelet. “Konstantin thinks I’m pretty.”

“You’re dating?” Dr. Loring sat up with a raised eyebrow. “Interesting, I directly mention your mother and you have no reaction at all.”

“Yeah. He’s Russian, smart, rich, handsome…” Kirsten lost her dreamy face and shifted on the couch. “That woman has no more power over me.”

“Sounds like you finally had a little good luck for a change. Anyway, back to your dream?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m very lucky to have found Konstantin. Maybe the world’s trying to make up for the rough start.” Kirsten interlaced her fingers over her stomach. “I got a sense of how to project from Evan, looking at his thoughts while he did it. I got it to work, but when I saw my body behind me; it was so startling I panicked. I think I blacked out and woke up inside my nightmare.”

“Some manner of lucid dream?”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

Dr. Loring rested her arms on her lap, over the datapad. “It’s a dream where once you realize you are dreaming, you have some degree of control over it. Events within a lucid dream can feel as though they happen in reality. People often do not realize they’re dreaming at first, but once they do―they can exert their will into the dream-world and change things.”

“This is where I was afraid you would think I’m cracked. It didn’t feel like a dream at all. It was like I was eight again, back at home and locked in the closet. I tried to get out, but I made so much noise Mother heard and came over to punish me. It wasn’t the same as the dream, though. In the nightmare I had no control, I was just stuck re-living the night she broke my leg over and over again. This time, Evan was there, telling me to come out. I figured he was shouting at me in the real world, but it was as if he was telling me to get out of the closet. To run.”

Dr. Loring nodded.

“I did, I defied her. I finally wound up changing into a grown-up before she could paddle me. I wouldn’t let her hit the little girl on the floor again. I knew Mother was dead. I knew it was some kind of vision or dream or something. I lashed her. Dorian thought my fear of her had been preventing me from projecting, like I didn’t want to be exposed.”

“It’s a plausible theory. So you have not had the nightmare again since that event?”

“No. I got the feeling there was some kind of presence helping me get through it. I had this strong sense of peace and relief come over me when I woke up, like… I dunno.”

“A religious experience?”

“Hah.” Kirsten laughed. Her mirth lasted a few seconds before it faded to a tentative giggle, then silence. “Umm… I never thought about it that way. You know, Dorian said she was just a psychotic person using God as an excuse. I mean, if there even is a God, maybe he finally got tired of Mother making him look bad.”

Dr. Loring chuckled.

“I still don’t know. I’ve seen the doorway to the other side, where spirits go. I can’t look through it, but for all I know there’s only positive energy there, not some old man in a toga.”

“Do you still have feelings of anger toward the religious minority?”

“Only Reverend Harris,” Kirsten said with a sarcastic frown. “It’s not the concept of a divine I hate, it’s people who use it to hurt others. Especially an idiot calling for psionics to be rounded up and burned at the stake.”

“That is progress for you, Kirsten. It’s hard to hate a theoretical construct. Maybe someday humanity will mature enough not to need a Santa Claus for grownups. However, just because a person is deluded into thinking there’s a higher power out there doesn’t make them worthy of hatred or scorn.”

Kirsten sat up. “According to Dorian, the religious once persecuted the atheists. Far enough back, they even killed them for it. Kinda funny how they’re the majority now.”

Dr. Loring switched her posture, crossing her legs the other way. “Perhaps flying into space routinely and not finding Heaven helped. I suspect it was a challenge for a society spread over multiple planets to cling to a belief system that put the Earth as the center of reality. Do you think someone out on a colony world goes to the same heaven or hell when they die?”

“There is somewhere we go when we die, Doc. I’ve heard the voices of long-dead relatives call out of these silver doorways. If there is a Heaven, it can’t occupy the same plane or dimension as this world. It wouldn’t be above the clouds.”

“Well, it seems you have come to terms with what your mother did to you. As you must assume, the board is a little concerned given the horrific abuse you suffered. There is some worry that under sufficient stress you may…”

Kirsten shifted on the couch, staring at Dr. Loring. The mental image of what her child self looked like―tiny, battered, shaking―formed in her mind. She sent it into Dr. Loring’s head, causing the psychiatrist to drop her datapad.

“I know this was different because I saw myself from the outside in that dream. There’s no way in hell I could ever do that to a child.” Kirsten wiped tears. “Never.” She slouched. “I am afraid I won’t do something right, though. I don’t exactly have a role model of parenting to go by. I don’t want to mess him up, but I will never hurt him.”

The doctor stared at her, bending forward as her fingers probed the carpet in search of the lost datapad. A fingernail hooked it, pulling it into reach. She sat up, tapping at the edges of the plastic device. It took her a few minutes to gather enough composure to speak. “That… image you just flooded me with. That was you?”

Kirsten gathered her arms tight to her chest. “Yeah. At first, I thought the vision was making it look worse to torture me. Then I remembered how bad things really were. I don’t care what Evan does, I’ll never be capable of any of the things she did to me. If anything, I’m afraid I’ll be too lenient on him.”

Dr. Loring leaned forward and back, offering a slow nod as she pursed her lips. “How does he feel about your Russian superman?”

A twinge of nausea flipped through her gut. She fussed with the bracelet, spinning it around her narrow wrist. “There is some tension. He thinks Konstantin dislikes him. For a little while, I wondered if Evan may just be jealous of another male figure in the picture. You believe he called him old? The man’s only a year or three older than I am.”

“That’s kind of Freudian.”

“Huh? I dunno what that means. He isn’t throwing fits or tantrums or even protesting when I go out. He… I don’t know, Doc. It’s like he’s worried about me, and there’s no reason for it.” Kirsten shuddered, trying to keep her breakfast down. She broke out in a sweat. “If that relationship becomes any threat to his well-being, I’ll call it off with Konstantin. Evan’s more important to me than anything.” She drew in a sharp breath, sweating, shivering.

“Are you alright, Kirsten? You look feverish.”

She grimaced at the wall. “I was in The Beneath last night, maybe I picked something up. I’ll head over to the infirmary when we’re done.”

“Good enough. In the manner of your adoption request, you haven’t demonstrated”―Kirsten sagged, her eyes reddened, breathing went shallow―“any significant mental issues that would lead me to challenge his placement.”

Kirsten squeaked, clutching her hands to her chest.

“Also, given you’re the only Astral Sensate of any note in the entire region, command is encouraging the idea. I’m going to recommend that they approve your request. Danita did have some reservations about your living arrangements, however. You’ll have to do better than give him a sleeping bag on your floor.”

“Oh!” Kirsten jumped to her feet. “I was gonna get a bigger place, but I was terrified they’d deny me and then the giant apartment would just make me think of him.” She sagged onto the couch again, heart racing. “I’ll definitely move. We’ll get a place.”

Dr. Loring gave her a quizzical look. “You should get over to the infirmary, Kirsten. You look normal again. Do you feel feverish at all?”

“No,” she blurted through a grin. “I feel awesome.”

irsten draped herself on Konstantin’s arm in the back seat of the white stretch hovercar. It had been almost a week since she had seen him. His presence had come on like a rush of a little girl seeing a military father back after a yearlong deployment. He didn’t seem to mind her clinging, entwining his seized arm through hers until he held one of her hands. White high-heeled shoes sat on the floor, legs tucked up under her on the pale grey seats.

Shimmering silver fabric clung to her body, held in place by a choker that verged on being too tight. The garment left most of her back exposed; however, unlike her green dress, it remained secure over her front with a hem that ended at mid-thigh.

“Do you like the gown?”

Her open-mouthed grin closed as she nodded. “It’s lovely.”

Kirsten rested her head on his shoulder, one finger idly picking at the inch-tall metal ring around her neck. The tight-fitting band, coupled with her subservient posture, caused an out-of-nowhere crash of shame. Woozy, she let go and sat up with one hand on her head.

“Are you alright, my dear?”

She glanced at him, then forward. “I… The choker is a little tight. I don’t think I’m getting enough air.”

Konstantin brushed her hair aside and tugged her closer by the metal ring. The gesture did little to lessen the feeling of being another of his possessions. Too sick to resist, she clasped her hands to her gut and let him move her. He squeezed something behind her neck, the device chirped, and loosened.

“It’s adjustable. Is that better?” He tugged at the fabric, making sure it sat over her collarbones properly.

Her hands slid from stomach to lap as he nudged her face around with a finger on the chin and kissed her. As if he had special powers, the touch of his lips chased away the tightening knot in her gut. Konstantin leaned away, smiling with half-closed eyes at her stunned expression.

“Yes, that’s better.” She put a hand on her throat, fiddling with it.

He took her hand again, stroking the back. “You still seem on edge.”

“In the Badlands, gangs abduct people and keep them as slaves. I met a spirit who died like that, wandered all the way to the city. There was so much shame in her. I couldn’t get her to grasp the concept of latent self-image. She couldn’t make the collar go away, probably still out there somewhere. Her spirit won’t be free until she gets justice, and there was no convincing command to go after the bastards who killed her. This choker feels a bit like a collar to be honest.” She offered a weak smile.

Konstantin gestured at the roof. “Then you shall be rid of it. How do you fancy blue?”

“Oh, you don’t have to buy me another dress. I’m just feeling a little claustrophobic. Really, it’s fine.” Am I? What the hell is wrong with me? Why is my stomach doing backflips? Maybe I’m just afraid I’ll wake up from this dream.

“I insist. I want you to be at ease and enjoy our night.”

She blushed. “Aren’t you speaking?”

He chuckled. “Yes, I have to entertain the underlings for a short while. After that, the evening is ours.”

He spoke in Russian to the driver, who altered course. Kirsten stared at her knees, feeling awkward and guilty about making him spend more money. Nothing she said changed his mind, and as the car began its descent, she slipped her shoes back on. They landed on the roof of a Mallplex in Sector 214, an area of the city that functioned as the playground of the wealthy. She found herself clinging to his arm as they crossed the hovercar parking area to an elevator, wondering how she’d gone from police officer to arm decoration.

The walls shifted upward in regular flashes of light bands. An unsettling tickle returned to her gut as she gazed at the reflected couple on the silver doors. The blonde sylph hanging off the arm of the handsome billionaire seemed like some helpless debutante incapable of functioning on her own. She bristled at the look on her own face and shifted a half-step right. Konstantin glanced at her adjustment from full-body lean to three-fingered handhold.

“Are you sure you’re well, dear? You seem to be out of sorts tonight.”

She found the nausea lessened with her eyes closed. “I feel guilty you’re spending money on me again because the neck was a little tight. This dress is fine, there’s no need to replace it. What you spent on it could feed six families for a week.”

“Tell you what.” He pulled her into a peck on the cheek. “Tomorrow morning I’ll donate some credits in your name to whatever charity sends food to the disadvantaged.”

“I’d rather you do that than buy me another dress.”

The elevator doors opened.

“Too late, we’re already here.”

He led her by the hand through an opulent open-air mall corridor. Rose-marble tile floors turned white wherever they reflected the strong overhead lights. A strip of starry night sky was visible past artificial birds through the center of the hall, despite their being seven floors down from the roof. Couples sat in the shade of trees; the food court at the Sector 214 Mallplex was the ‘high end’ of dining for the “well off, but not wealthy” crowd. Somewhere in the distance, a small girl had a fit about the wrong color shoes. Kirsten found the source and offered a sympathetic look at the beleaguered older man weathering the verbal assault from a ten-year-old in an outfit as expensive as what Kirsten wore. He’s got the patience of a saint. Damn, kid, I’d have been happy to have shoes at all at your age.

Men and women in gleaming white armor, spotless save for a black TMC on their breast, wandered in pairs. The mall security personnel, unlike the last ones she ran into, were in the employ of Triton Manufacturing Corporation rather than the holding company that owned the building. At least eighty percent of the items for sale in this place were made by TMC, a mega-corp that engulfed, over the course of the corporate war, a wide variety of manufacturing and consumer-goods industries.

The security officers appeared to pay more attention to the workers than the customers. Kirsten thought this odd, pondering it until she realized Konstantin had led her distracted self into a store and a clerk was trying to talk to her. She wasn’t a doll and couldn’t have been older than seventeen. Live workers in the mall? Not dolls? Kirsten squinted a dire look at some of the security staff. Oh, I get it. Watch the poor people working for the elite, make sure they don’t steal.

“Hi,” she said to the girl, before looking up at Konstantin. “This really isn’t necessary, I―”

He shushed her with a nod, and took the datapad out of the clerk’s hand and offered it. “Just pick something, don’t worry about it. We’ve got to be there soon.”

Now she felt guilty about making him late for his big presentation. She grasped the eight-by-eleven inch device bearing images of faceless female bodies in gowns of various sizes, styles, and color. Konstantin had suggested blue, and for whatever reason, it stuck with her. Kirsten handed the pad back to the woman while making an embarrassed face at the wall. The girl took it and turned on her heel. A smile replaced her surly teenage glare as she waved for Kirsten to follow her. She passed a few benches and fake plants and walked into an area full of partitions separated by ivory-colored curtains with faint silvery speckles. Within each chamber, a metal disc about three feet across rose a few inches up from the floor.

“I’ll need you to take the dress you’re wearing off. Keep your undergarments on though.”

Mechanically, she reached up and opened the choker, letting the garment slide over her hips to the floor. For a moment, a twinge of shame hit her as she realized she was bare-breasted in a room full of other women about to have their purchases created to size. The sight of Konstantin peeking through the door at her sent a fireball of adrenaline up through her abdomen. Shame shifted to thrill in an instantaneous flash. Having him watch her on display stirred feelings deep within she had never entertained.

Forgetting at once about the shame of spending such amounts on clothing, she stepped onto the pad and turned to face the clerk. The teen looked away to be polite, noticing the bright red color of Kirsten’s face―though it was not embarrassment anymore.

“Please lift your arms away from your sides.” The girl poked at a holographic terminal just outside the now-closed curtains. “When it starts spraying, hold your breath.”

A metal spider descended from above, spinning and whirring about with an array of strange attachments. Green laser light drew glowing lines upon her paleness, shrinking and forming to her contours. Two seconds later, they flickered and went out. Eye-watering chemical fumes surrounded her as the device sprang to life in a flurry. It started at her neck, spraying in passes. Viscous blue muck adhered to her skin, a color change that expanded down over her chest. Kirsten closed her eyes, trying to hold still while being coated in a substance with the consistency and feel of cold cat vomit.

Breezy chill passed over her ribs, down her back, and onto her thighs. Her arms hovered upward, no longer due to conscious thought. Her face cringed in a grimace appropriate for being dipped in something nasty. Furious robot appendages continued to spin around her, fussing and pulling at the material. More spray on the thighs thickened, pulled into a loose-fitting knee-length skirt as the clicking machine printed the garment onto her body.

The slime changed texture before her eyes, forming into discrete threads of seven different shades of blue. What had just been liquid became cloth. The garment left her shoulders bare and took on the feel of silk. Two robotic arms pinched it between her shoulder blades, and a rush of cold air hit her. In the span of only a few seconds, the machine slashed the gown to the small of her back and stitched in a nanomesh fastener. A thumbnail sized faux sapphire seated at the upper edge, just on her collarbone, came last. Squeezing it would open or close the back.

The material fell away from her thighs, no longer sticky, draped as though it had not just come out of a tiny nozzle. Silver dust, hundreds of thousands of spent nanobots from the glop, snowed around her. She gave the metal spider a wary look as it retracted into the ceiling, taking that as a cue to emerge from the private chamber. The clerk was waiting for her, holding a matching silk stole. Kirsten let the girl put it around her shoulders, thanked her, and met Konstantin outside by the front desk. He had the old dress folded over one arm and gave her a broad grin. She squirmed, unable to shake the memory of the dress in liquid form.

He held his free arm to the side. “Even better than the last.”

Without thinking it over, she walked right into his waiting caress. “You really shouldn’t have.”

Konstantin bowed at the clerk before escorted her through the mall. “When I accompany you to a proper store in Milan or Paris and spend thirty thousand on a garment, then you can feel guilty. Think no more of this than you would of a hydroponic coffee.”

Forty credits is a far cry from six thousand. She fidgeted at the dress. How do they have the nerve to charge that much for something out of a spray nozzle. Kirsten wore a traitor’s mask all the way back to the car, thinking about the people out in the city searching trash containers for their next meal.

Dull murmuring faded away to the faint clamor of people eating. A serenade of metal utensils upon actual China plates offered a soporific backdrop to distant muted conversations. Konstantin’s table was at the front, amid a patch of shadow cast by the elevated podium. Kirsten knew not one person here; her seat toward the stage-side of the round table gave her a better view of the room than the speaker, who had just spent the past forty minutes droning on about the majority buyout of RedEx by Vostochno-Sibirskaya Kholdingovaya Kompaniya. VSKK, as it soon became shortened to, was one of the few corporate entities of the ACC permitted to trade within the UCF.

Centered in the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Federal District, which managed a precarious balance of continued membership in the ACC while adopting a style of “citizen-management” compatible with the views of the west, the VSKK had not set off too many red flags. Most of the “Berlin-Moscow Crowd”, as Konstantin called them, had no interest in trading with the UCF―they wanted to own it. Kirsten suffered through a rather boring diatribe about how the “idiots in Moscow” think old-world government is dead, and capitalism is the true destiny of man.

“Not that it matters much what the Senate thinks,” said a pale, skeletal-thin older man with wild, puffy white hair and a sheer powder-blue suit. His tone carried an air of puffed up superiority that rankled Kirsten at hearing it. From the waist up, he seemed thin, but his ass had to weigh two hundred pounds alone. “RedEx is legally headquartered on Mars, and no matter what people on either side say, Mars will get its sovereignty sooner or later.” He pointed a fork with a nugget of ham on it at Konstantin. “You think I jest,” he said, before snatching the ham in his teeth. “but thmf”―he chewed until he could speak again― “the MLF is only gaining support. And RedEx hasn’t paid a single credit in taxes in two years.”

“It’s true,” added his wife, the only kindred soul in the room. Like Kirsten, she seemed miserable here. “They’ve been challenging the legitimacy of the UCF to collect taxes on Martian soil. Even if their claim is baseless, it’s kept them tangled in litigation for twenty-four months.”

A younger man hastily swallowed some frightening white blob-like mass. “They know they’re going to lose, but by the time the judiciary hands down a verdict, they will cry bankruptcy with all their assets in shadow accounts.” Kirsten left the blob sitting on her plate untouched, the only one at the table to do so. She couldn’t even watch him eat it. He gestured with his fork. “They’d be stupid not to, and there’s nothing the tax bureau will be able to do about it.”

Two glasses of wine, a mostly full belly, and scintillating conversation about corporate tax law allowed her one final glance at the nattering rich that packed the room around her before she faded out. Blackness came underlined with random voices calling about the filet being a hair too cold or too overcooked. One woman’s wine wasn’t dry enough. Another whined endlessly about how her domestics steal small objects out of spite.

A sense of vertigo overtook her. Her fall out of the chair landed in a muck-filled tunnel. Coarse cloth scratched at her skin as she pushed herself into a seated position. Bare toes squished through ink-black ooze, and her steps went ankle deep in whatever coated the metal ground. Twelve-year-old Kirsten yawned and stretched before clasping her hands to her growling stomach. Her dress was a large square of canvas with a hole in the middle for her head; a belt made of an old electric cord held it around her waist. Exposed ribs on both sides acted as a continuous reminder of how cold it was in the Beneath.

It was time to make the long climb through pipes to the surface world while she still could. In another year or two, she would be too big to fit and have to find a way get the hatches open―or be stuck down here like everyone else. She stretched before creeping out of the shaft that led from the hollow where she had created a nest of old pillows, cloth scraps, and whatever toys had been left behind down below. She slept in the lower reach of the city plate, high above the Earth. The ground had more room, and less slime, but it was also dangerous. Up here, through a gap too small for an adult to fit, she found a safe place to lay her head down.

No longer noticing the way her feet squished on the metal floor, or even how bad it smelled, she thought about the fragrance of the giant trash boxes in the outside world and got hungry as she walked to the nearest ladder. The pipe she needed to climb through was some distance away, in a place where loud machines rattled all hours of the day and everything stank. She would have made her lair closer, if not for the noise and the reek. No one, not even the dead friends who kept an eye on her, could sleep there.

She climbed down the ladder, noticing a dingy man in overalls and a red cap grinning at her as her toes touched old pavement. At the time, she had thought him friendly; in this dream, Kirsten’s adult mind knew why he was smiling. She knew what he was staring at while she descended. Crude canvas ponchos tied with wire hid little from an observer below.

Her memory of what he said blurred into tonal noises and slow motion gestures. He offered food, but she had to pay for it. The man seemed nice. He kept smiling, waving cans at her with pictures of stuff that looked edible. She nodded in the dream. Her voice came as a high-pitched murmur, words lost to the fog of time.

Yes, she wanted food.

Sure, she could do him a favor.

Her arm entered her field of view, holding his hand as she walked with him. A few blocks away, past warped and broken houses, a little brown door led to a room with a grungy mattress, a table, and a few chairs. Kirsten was innocent, but not stupid. Even without skimming his surface thoughts, which she did, she knew what he wanted. She knew what the favor was. She glanced down at her toes, and tried looking up with her best pleading, begging stare. Perhaps guilt would overtake lust.

Blurry blue flannel covered the arms of the indistinct figure standing there, gesturing at the door. The first clear words she recalled were, “Your choice, kid. I ain’t about to force nothin’.” He tapped two octagonal cans together, each about the size of his palm. Both bore markings: UCFM-PSK. He backed away and took a seat in a folding chair, leaving an unblocked path to the door. “Military ‘personal sustenance kit.’ They’re fresh, better’n anything you’ll find down here. No mold, no rat shit, hell… even heats itself up. It’s here if you want it. I got water―clean water―not that black gunk.”

Hunger was overwhelming. How bad could it be? People do it for fun all the time. Mother was up there. Every time she crawled to the surface, Mother might be waiting. This man did not seem like he would hurt her. She trusted him more than Mother. She wasn’t little anymore; food not from garbage seemed like a lost treasure.

Her hands moved without thought. The wire-belt fell across the tops of her feet, letting the improvised garment flutter loose. She sat on the cold, damp mattress, staring one last time at the door. The growl in her stomach grew louder as she scratched at her gut. Now, she could not make eye contact with him. Why am I ashamed? She clung to the rough cloth, shivering from fear as well as cold. She wished she had more practice begging, maybe she could have guilted him into feeding her instead. The boy had tried to get her to go begging with him on the surface. He wasn’t afraid of people like she was.

He also never came back. She hadn’t seen him in two weeks.

“Okay,” she said, “but, can I please eat one first? Just in case…”

“Osure.” One of the cases plopped onto the mattress next to her. “You thinkin’ I might kick ya out afterward ‘n welch. Well, I ain’t the mean type, and I trust ya, girl. You don’t look like the stealin’ type. We got a deal?” He moved to sit next to her on the bed, arm around her back.

She jumped at the touch, fearing the kind of hand Mother would lay upon her. His was different, warm, comforting. The man’s voice fell away to the warble of indistinct remembrance as he said comforting things and kept petting her hair like a cat. Kirsten stared at the metal octagon in her hands, salivating at the promise of untainted food. She listened to his thoughts; he would not harm her―she was precious.

The crack of the lid, yielding to a grimy little finger, startled her awake amid the remembered hiss of the chemical warming agent and the smell of beef stew.

Kirsten shot upright in her seat, bringing a startled end to some discussion about an investment opportunity on Venus. The taste of military field rations bubbled in the back of her throat; almost to the point of bringing her fifteen-hundred-credit dinner up. At the time, the mystery meat had been as if her mother’s invented God had come down from his ivory tower in person and bestowed such a feast upon her. If only she had not had to pay for it in blood.

As the faceless man said, it was her choice. She could have walked away; she could have scrounged for scraps, but she wanted filet mignon.

She wanted Konstantin.

A rising tide of shame set her eyes in search of the nearest bathroom. She had to get away from these people. She was not one of them. Inside, she still felt like a dirt-covered orphan that snuck into a room full of rich people. The sight of her plate struck her as shameful. There were others out there, still living as she once did. Every minute spent among such arrogance and greed reminded her of where someone like her belonged.

Konstantin’s hand found her shoulder. The minute she looked into his red-brown eyes, she forgot all about her past. Self-loathing and contempt for the wealthy vanished, leaving her biting her lower lip like a schoolgirl. He leaned in close, planting a polite kiss on the cheek by her left ear. Kirsten shivered with excitement and flashed a wicked smile as she fantasized about what Konstantin would do to the man who made her trade herself for food.

“I am sorry for bringing you to such a droll event. If I were able to, I would happily have spared you such an evening. Alas, I could not extricate myself.”

“Oh.” She put one hand over her heart. “I’m sorry for falling asleep. At least I woke up before I fell out of the chair. That would’ve been mortifying.”

He kissed the back of her hand and stood amid the sound of his name reverberating through the dinner hall of the Imperial Hotel.

“I give you Konstantin Dobrynin, CEO and chairman of VSKK.”

The audience swelled into the muted clap of gloved hands and polite men. His touch lingered on her arm as long as distance allowed, their fingers slid through each other until her hand fell at her side. As if pained to do so, he pulled his gaze away from her and smiled at the crowd while he moved onto the stage.

“ Thank you, Yevgeniy.” Konstantin bounded up to the stage, shaking hands with the man and adding a healthy back pat. Audio gear in the podium flooded the entire hall with his voice. “The buyout of RedEx was a long, time-consuming process involving hundreds of hours of careful negotiations…”

Kirsten slouched in the seat, tuning out the boring details. His lustrous voice seemed far less enthralling while discussing market share and growth predictions. She stared at her now-clean hands, at the peach-colored polish on her nails. Far from the finger that plucked open the can of military rations ten years ago. If only I knew I could use suggestion back then. Kirsten gathered a napkin to her face and cried in silence. She sniffled, allowing a brief red-eyed glance up at Konstantin, who continued to rumble on about the particulars of a giant fish eating a little fish. However, this was different. According to him, the giant fish was simply pulling the little one under its fin and protecting it from bigger, meaner fish. VSKK was a protector within the corporate sea.

She crumpled the napkin into a ball in her lap, unable to listen to him or bear the sight of any of these people who never found a whiff of garbage to be appetizing, or had to let someone take advantage of them just so they could eat. The canned stew left a mark. After hiding in her lair for two days, she had gone topside through the ever-shrinking pipe. Kirsten remembered sitting just outside the thing, wondering how many more times she would be able to squeeze herself through it to escape the dark. That day, something scared her more than Mother. The idea of that man waiting for her, of having to do that again, caused her to lie down in the alley and sleep on the surface.

He couldn’t fit through the pipe.

Kirsten looked at the room, bound to her chair by the fear that all eyes would be on her if she stood up and ran out. She let herself slip half into dreaming. Boredom and disdain for the people around her conspired to lift her out of her present now. The world above had felt cavernous the morning when she awoke in the alley. For two years, she had lived under a metal sky with ghosts as her primary caretakers. When she did climb through the tubes to the surface, she did so at night so Mother could not find her. People saw her that morning in the daylight; police came for her while she rooted through a trash processor looking for something to eat.

I really did freak out. She chuckled to herself, remembering how it took three grown men to hold her down. To their credit, they did not restrain her or lock her in the back seat. When she used up all her energy thrashing and begging them not to make her go home, they talked. The medtech figured out what she had done for food, but the woman’s first reaction was as if someone attacked her. I think her name was Beth. The poor woman was so stunned when Kirsten admitted to doing it willingly for food that she cried. Naturally, such information went into the report. She could not avoid the issue with the psychiatrist later, the one the caseworker brought her to see after she had cleaned up.

The doc said he had done a horrible thing to her. Kirsten, perhaps as a defense mechanism, did not look at it that way. She rationalized it as a trade―a need for a want. She needed food while he wanted a girl. When the doc asked her for details, so the police could find her attacker, she had told him Ritchie already threatened to kill the bastard and probably did by then. When Kirsten explained Ritchie was a ghost, the doc laughed it off. His afro almost went straight when she turned on Darksight for proof and her eyes glowed white .

Division 0 picked her up an hour later. Doctor Smith, or whatever his name had been, never sent any information to them. Zero had no idea what she did, or how little it seemed to bother her. Kirsten, lifting out of the daydream, wondered if there was something wrong with her. An event like that should have damaged her.

Compared to Mother, it was nothing.

She stared at the empty wine glass, looked for a waiter, and thought of Evan. No more. I’ve had enough. The empty glass went back on the table. Memory of that night faded as she thought about his little voice cheering for his favorite wizard. The warmth of him sitting in her lap, the scent of his hair, the way all the sharp bony bits of his body could find all the tender parts of hers made her smile. She sighed at Konstantin, still blabbering on about how the RedEx acquisition would benefit both sides. Fuck these stupid rich bastards.
I should be with Evan right now. Frowning into her hands, she leaned forward, hating everything about this place. Konstantin is so stupid rich it’s embarrassing. I don’t belong with him.

Nausea came on without warning, the taste of memory-rations and whatever unrecognizable, overpriced mess was on her plate mixed in her throat. She staggered to her feet and shuffled through the shadows to the restroom. No one seemed to notice her amid the crowd; she almost heard a giant clock ticking, waiting for the hover limo to turn back into a pumpkin.

In spite of the sickening coral-hued décor in the bathroom, the urge to vomit faded the instant the slamming door cut her off from the thousand wealthy people. She wet her hands and wiped her face, dabbing carefully with a microfiber towel to preserve as much of her makeup as she could. The cold water felt wonderful.

“What’s the prick’s name?” The voice sounded female and carried the burden of years of smoking.

Kirsten looked up, seeing nothing in the mirror. To her left, a bleach-blonde who was either in her early forties, or later fifties with a lot of work, leaned against the counter. Purplish-black marks ringed her neck, hashed with the unmistakable imprint of rope. The mink stole around her shoulders stared at her as well, as if on the verge of laughing.

“Sorry?”

“I said, what’s the prick’s name?” The woman took a drag on a cigarette mounted to the end of a long black wand.

Kirsten offered quizzical stare at the device and took a step to the side, coughing. “Is that a cigarette? You must be kind of o―I mean you must’ve died a while ago. I wasn’t dumped; I just don’t fit in here.”

“Ahh, poor girl in Tinseltown.” A modicum of politeness caused the woman to blow smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Where you from, kid? You have an Ohio look about you. Did they just tell you what you had to do to the director to keep the part?”

“I have no idea what you mean. I’m from West City. I am poor though, not sure why Konstantin wants me. He’s got so much money, he could have some biotech firm build him the perfect woman in a vat.” She pouted at herself in the mirror. “Except for that being illegal.”

“Call me Linda, hon.” The woman offered an aristocratic handshake. “Bit late for stage names I suppose. Men like him want one thing, and it ain’t your money, honey.”

“It’s me that’s having doubts. I don’t know if this is a good idea.” She leaned on the counter as a dizzy spell swam through her brain.

“Looks like he slipped you a Mickey or something, dear. Well, don’t you go signing any pre-nup. What you should do is turn the tables on the lout. Give him the ol’ innocent wide blues, get him to skip the paperwork, then walk off with half his money.”

“That’s awful.” Kirsten gawked. “I could never use someone for money.”

“Well, sweetie, I’ll forgive you that. You’re still young. There’s two kinds of people in this world: those who use others and those who get used. Your little Russian sweetie out there didn’t get to where he is being an angel.”

“Konstantin is different!” she snapped, backing off, lowering her voice. “He loves me.”

“Mmmhmm, they all do, Norma Jean, they all do.” She took another long drag. “Right up until they stop.” She tapped the marks on her neck.

Kirsten blinked at the ghost, wondering if she got the name wrong on purpose. “I’m sorry, did he get caught? Do you need me to do anything for you?”

“Oh, they got him alright. Jimmy went to death row screaming how it was all my fault, how I drove him to it. His own security cameras got him kicking the chair out from under me”―Linda scowled― “paranoid bastard. Course, cancer got him before the state could do it. At least I had a little fun a few years later driving him crazy.”

“So he fell for the wide blues, huh?” Kirsten smirked.

“ Hmpf.” Linda became bored with the conversation and wandered through the wall.

At the sound of the applause rising outside, Kirsten checked her makeup again and scurried out.

Kirsten knocked on Nila’s door with her forehead, a repetitive tapping in time with a mantra of “I’m a dumbass.” The door snapped open, causing bonk number eight to hit nothing. Nila, wearing a knee-length brown t-shirt that bore the logo of the Manglers Gee-ball team, shook her head.

“You’re back early. Guess you chickened out again?”

“I… It just didn’t feel right.” Kirsten ducked under Nila’s arm and walked inside.

Nila rolled into a cross-armed lean against the wall. “The night couldn’t have been that bad, you’re still wearing shoes.”

Kirsten laughed and covered her mouth at the sight of Evan asleep on the couch. “It was boring as hell. Yanno, it’s so strange. We got back to the limo afterward and he was really letting me have the romantic thing. I just kept thinking about Evan every time he started kissing me.”

Nila let the door close and followed Kirsten to the kitchen. “That’s a little creepy, don’t you think?”

“I felt worried, like something bad was happening to him. I know it’s silly. You would have called me, but I just couldn’t shake this feeling.” Kirsten stopped, lifting an eyebrow. “What’s with the look?”

“ It’s probably nothing. Evan zonked on the floor while they were playing some game. He sat up all worried, calling for you. Poor little guy was having a bad dream. He seemed to think you were being eaten by a dragon.”

“Maybe he’s getting too into that Monwyn thing.” She suppressed a giggle. “It’s still a little weird we both had odd feelings.”

“You want coffee?” Nila padded around Kirsten to the counter. “Neither one of you are precognitive, are you? Wait, weren’t you wearing white or silver when you dropped him off?”

“No thanks on the coffee. I’m going to bed as soon as I get home.” Kirsten kicked off the high heels. “Yeah, he bought me this dress on the way there after I said the choker was too tight. I hope it comes off, it was sprayed on.”

“ Now I know something’s wrong, you never turn down coffee.” Chuckling, Nila gathered some of the loose fabric and felt it. “Feels like cloth.”

“Nano-assembled right on me. Felt like a giant cat horked all over me. No, I’m not a precog. They didn’t find any evidence of it in Evan either, but he’s so little who knows. Still, nothing happened to me tonight.” Did he sense my dream? Why would he? It doesn’t bother me much. Kirsten stared at the counter. Am I afraid of sex? Is that why I keep running away from Konstantin?

“Hey,” said Nila, snapping her fingers in front of Kirsten’s eyes. “The way you look, you should just sleep here tonight. Are you sure you should be driving?”

“I’m sober; I had two glasses of wine three hours ago. I’m just tired.” She paused, watching Evan breathe. “Maybe I will. Can I borrow something to sleep in?”

She leaned on the kitchen island, smiling at the back of the couch where Evan slept as Nila jogged off and returned with another oversized shirt. After a brief trip to the bathroom to change, Kirsten crawled onto the couch, lying on her side between Evan and the back. As she put her arm over him, he drifted out of his slumber long enough to smile at her before snuggling into the cushion.

Nila offered them a blanket and cut the lights on her way into the back hallway. Kirsten clung to him like a wolf protecting her cub. Evan stirred, muttering something in his sleep.

She leaned her head forward and breathed into his hair. He squirmed, muttering.

“Pick strawberry.”

alt stung Kirsten’s eyes as she stumbled through the too-bright corridor toward the locker room. The dark blue t-shirt and sweat pants clung to her, soaked through. She had felt worse than this once before, but it had taken leaping from the eleventh story of a building several seconds prior to a massive explosion to get to such a level of misery. This was just a virtual ass-kicking.

She kicked off her sneakers, peeled away her sticky garments, and poured herself into an autoshower tube. Gabriel said the pain was only in her mind and it would go away soon. She wished soon would hurry up and get there.

“Hey,” shouted Nicole, her voice muted by two tubes―the one she was in as well. “How’s the hand-to-hand training going?”

Kirsten looked left; Nicole had hopped into the adjacent shower. Kirsten felt a twinge of embarrassment come on, but kept it in check. Hey. Kicking my ass. I don’t feel like shouting.

Okay, chirped Nicole in her mind. What happened? It’s only ten and you look like you’re ready to pass out.

The cascade of hot water jets coaxed her brain out of simulated reality; pain washed away with her sweat. Started working on sword styles today with Gabriel. I got stabbed six times and lost my right arm twice―virtually.

Ouch. Nicole wiped a bit of fog away to maintain eye contact. Running the thing super-hot flooded it with mist. I just spent the past hour doing boring jogging. Maybe I’ll let Gabriel stab me tomorrow.

Kirsten laughed. He’s married.

Now who’s the minx? Nicole winked. I could use a brush up on hand to hand techniques. She examined her fingernails. Telekinesis makes me lazy sometimes.

After the dry cycle wound down, Kirsten got back into uniform and flopped on the bench, staring at her boots as if attempting to work the quick-cinch closures with her mind. They obligingly fastened themselves. An event that shocked her until she realized Nicole was sitting next to her.

“Geez, you look drained.” Nicole put a hand on her forehead. “Oh, wow, you showered with your bracelet on?”

Kirsten covered the gold snake with a protective hand. “I don’t wanna lose it. Konstantin gave it to me.”

“You’ve practically got little heart-shaped bubbles popping over your head. Wow, you got it bad. You guys get it on yet?” Nicole stuck her legs out. Her boots rose into the air, oriented themselves and slid on her feet. A second later, the fasteners all closed at once.

“Does that ever get boring?”

“No. So when do you think you’ll do the deed? You know, he’s so rich and handsome, he’s probably hung like a mouse.”

Kirsten blushed and squirmed. “I dunno. Maybe when―” Her NetMini rang. She gave Nicole an apologetic look and pulled it out.

“Saved by the bell,” said Nicole, winking, and got up. “Gotta do a ride-along today with Div 1. Psionics are behaving themselves for the time being, so it’s like this tactical exchange thing―oh wow, you wouldn’t believe this chicken place we found.” Nicole fumbled with her NetMini. “Bad part of town, but they raise their own real chickens. Live animals! Can you believe that?”

Kirsten held up a hand. “Hello?”

“Division 1 knows all these little places with the best food.” Nicole kept going.

The face of a middle-aged Hispanic man faded into view in hologram. Kirsten tilted her head at the trace of familiarity in his eyes. She might have recognized him without all the bruises.

“Agent Wren? I’m sorry to call you like this, I know it must be breaking some rule somewhere, but I need to talk to you.”

He’s a little old, I guess you like that though.

Kirsten swatted at Nicole’s shoulder, shooing her away with a grin. Perv. “Have we met?”

“I’m Father Carlos Villera, remember the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary? The ninja?”

“Oh.” What little color there was in Kirsten’s face faded. “Yeah. What―”

Nicole draped herself over Kirsten’s shoulders. “A priest and a ninja, I gotta hear this.”

Will you behave yourself? “Did something happen? You look hurt.”

“Some miscreants attacked me a short distance from the building. They did not seem interested in robbing me. They had a strange energy about them, a darkness similar to the little mess you made here.”

She cringed. “Sorry.” Her armband display showed a clean calendar day for the first time in weeks. “I got nothing on my schedule, I’ll stop by as soon as I can get there.”

Nicole stood up. “Wait, you’re going to church?”

“No.” Kirsten scowled. “I’m going to a church to talk to a man about a mugging. I’m not going to church.”

“Even after all the, like demons and… Ooo”―Nicole clung to Kirsten, hiding, staring over her shoulder― “that guy is huge.”

That time, Kirsten looked before her brain caught up. Nicole was talking about the muscle mass of a Division 5 officer. Easily seven feet tall, tattoos intended to make him appear to be a cyborg covered his entire back and arms. Kirsten blushed at her misinterpretation of Nicole’s outburst.

“I gotta go. I suggest you leave this room before you ruin your relationship with Eddie. You really are incorrigible.”

Oh, I’m just looking. Nicole winked. No harm in looking, right?

Careful, Nikki… Some guy complains, you could get sent to mandatory sensitivity training for harassing him.

The big guy glanced in their direction long enough to notice a pair of women in Division 0 uniforms looking at him. All the color ran out of his face and he scooted to the end of the row and used an open locker door to hide his body from them, rushing to cover up.

Nicole found it amusing. Kirsten teased at her bracelet, no longer caring what random people thought of her being psionic.

She had Konstantin.

Dirt and trash whirled about in several miniature cyclones as the patrol craft settled into the parking lot of the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary. The usual crowd of homeless that often blocked off the front was nowhere in sight. Dorian blurred through the door, appearing just outside the car and spinning in a slow survey of the area.

“Police were here within the hour.”

“I didn’t know ghosts could use clairvoyance.” Kirsten climbed out and shoved her door downward, closing it with both hands. “How do you know that?”

“We can’t.” He gestured across the street. “Notice how empty it is here? The only people in sight are those two tourists from East City who seem to be lost, and that PubTran employee fumbling for his NetMini by the apartment down the block. It takes about an hour and a half for societal equilibrium to return after police leave.”

“You make it sound like I’m tainting the environment.” She stared at the approximate spot where a demonic ninja almost killed her.

Dorian squeezed her shoulder; the solid contact snapped her out of the worry-trance. “We might slow down the process of recovery, but it takes at least three patrol craft to cause the scatter effect in this part of town.”

She took a heavy breath, trying to forget the memory of an icy sword in her leg. “You’re touching my shoulder.”

“I’m getting a lot of practice lately, hauling you out of the way of bullets.”

“Ha. Ha.” Chuckling, she went to the door of the church and hesitated. “Am I supposed to knock here or just walk in?”

Dorian didn’t stop, phasing through the wall.

Kirsten found the door open and walked in. “Hello? Father Villera?”

The front room of the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary looked much as she remembered it, minus the patrol craft embedded through the window and the debris. The wall had been patched. From the outside, it looked no different. Inside, the newness of the section was obvious. The scent of food wafted through the air, the smell of something with an abundance of garlic that had lingered on a hot plate for too long. Rows of chairs still surrounded a small hand-made pulpit; a forgotten grease-stained blue cap was draped half-off the cushion of one.

“In here,” said a voice with a mild Spanish accent. “First room on the left.”

Father Villera sat on the edge of a Comforgel pad in a room just large enough to hold it plus a tiny desk. He looked as though he had fallen down a flight of stairs and landed on his face. Kirsten gasped, approaching in two quick steps and offering him a stimpak.

“What happened to you? Here, use this.”

He took the four-inch red, plastic cylinder from her, squeezing it in gratitude. Wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled at her, muttering, “Not only the face of an angel, the heart as well.”

Kirsten went crimson.

He chuckled. “I guess you speak Spanish.”

“Enough to get by. I can’t keep up with a pair of angry wives or two guys cheering at Gee-ball.”

“Frictionless,” he said. “People from my homeland watch Frictionless matches. Gee-ball is a coalition abomination.”

She found the inflated contempt in the voice of a so-called priest amusing.

Dorian snickered. When Kirsten gave him a quizzical glance, he waved her off. “You’re too young to understand, and it wouldn’t be at all funny to you after a belabored explanation.”

“Try me?”

“I’m sorry?” Father Villera looked up.

“Oh, I was talking to Dorian.” Kirsten gestured at him. “Sorry, it’s probably rude to talk to a ghost with a person around.”

He gave her the look people always did when they heard the word ghost. His other eyebrow went up, presumably as he remembered Mariko’s violent demise in the center of his church. The bushy grey eyebrows settled down and he nodded. “Go on.”

Dorian cleared his throat. “Well, Gee-ball is played in a large three-dimensional area about a hundred yards long and twenty-five yards tall. All the players wear grav suits and try to carry a metal ball through a ten-yard square goal suspended at the center point of each of the long ends. It’s pretty violent and dangerous for the players. Frictionless, on the other hand, involves a ground-skimming orb that players are only allowed to kick. They’re stuck on the floor, though their special boots can send the thing flying fast enough to break the leg of an unwary player. Sometimes they bank shots off the side across the entire field. In Frictionless, the goals are wider, and on the ground.”

“You haven’t told me anything I don’t already know,” she said, frowning.

“Europeans look down on Gee-ball. They always have, even the ancient sport it replaced. They used to make fun of the name ‘football’, since kicking the ball was a remarkably rare part of the game.”

She scowled. “Well that’s five minutes of my life I won’t get back.”

“I warned you,” said Dorian. “Don’t be mad at me. I told you it wouldn’t be worth it.”

The hiss of a stimpak spun her around in time to watch Fr. Villera’s facial bruising lessen. “Sorry, Father. Why do you think I can help you more than the patrol officers?”

“You’ll see in a moment.” He sat back, hands on his knees. In seconds, all the bruises returned. Despite his best effort to remain stoic, he cringed.

Her hand went to the small of her back, the spot where she had been scratched. “Abyssals?”

“They looked like ordinary street thugs, except for their eyes. All black.”

Kirsten shot a pointed look at Dorian. “Just like that body.”

“Only these were still up and about,” said Dorian. “Perhaps poor Mr. Arris was dead a lot longer than we initially thought? Maybe something was just borrowing his skin.”

She faced the priest again, putting a hand on his shoulder and closing her eyes. It took a few seconds, but she found it. Paranormal energy swirled around him. The sense of it was far weaker than the scratch, and she purged it with barely enough exertion to alter her sedate expression. She offered a second stimpak; the bruises stayed gone this time.

“I am not sure what you did, but I thank you, child.” He held her hand. “I am concerned that these creatures, for I do not think they were men, will return. I wanted to ask you for your help. The regular police dismissed it as a common mugging.”

“I don’t think they will set foot in this place,” she said, looking around until the presence of a wooden crucifix on the wall made her examine the floor, unable to bear the sight of it.

Dorian backed into the hallway and glanced toward the front. “They don’t have to walk inside to shoot through the windows.”

“If they were trying to kill him, they would have shot him already.” Kirsten studied the priest. “Why do you think they attacked you?”

“I was hoping you would be able to explain that. I could tell there was something dark about them, something beyond ordinary. I invoked the Lord upon them and they recoiled.”

Kirsten suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

“Something troubles you, child?”

Not suppressed enough.

“Umm.” She shot a guilty look at the door. “I don’t mean to offend you personally; I don’t have much love for religion. My mother wasn’t happy having a psionic child and thought I was something from the Devil. She was abusive.”

Father Villera blessed himself, and again took her hand. “Perhaps you can find peace in talking about it?”

Kirsten stared at him. Why am I even considering saying anything to this guy? Religion only exists to control how people think, to keep them complacent. She sighed, slouching. “She would lock me in the closet to have quiet time and wait for Jesus to come save me. She’d invoke the Bible at me as though she were trying to cast spells or some such bullshit. Ghosts talk among themselves. Word spread that I could see and hear them, and they came looking for help.” Kirsten sat on the Comforgel pad, half an arm’s length away from him. “I was happy to at first, I was so lonely in there. Mother thought I was talking to ‘my dark master’ and started burning me with the stove. When I ignored the ghosts because I didn’t want to get punished, they got mad and threw things around the house at all hours.”

“And your mother blamed you for it.” He squeezed her shoulder.

Something caught Dorian’s attention and he drifted out of sight.

“Burning escalated to beating. She broke my arm a couple times, leg twice, more ribs than I can count. Of course, she hid it all from my dad. All in the name of some invisible man in a toga who doesn’t even exist.”

Father Villera chuckled. “Kirsten, mankind has always sought ways to explain things science has proven inadequate for. Humans have an elemental need to feel there is something greater than all of us, something that’s ‘got our back’ so to speak.”

“How many people have died in the name of religion over the years? Heretics, witches, infidels? So many people claim to follow a ‘loving’ God, but they’re so willing to hate and kill anyone who doesn’t believe the same fairy tale. All the peace and love stuff goes out the window the minute someone questions their invisible man.”

Father Villera smiled with the face of a grandfather she never knew. Right away, she felt guilty for losing herself in her rant, as if she’d been trying to poke him with a stick to see how much he could take.

“I’m sorry.” She looked down, voice soft. “I grew up with one extreme, and I’ve seen things beyond this world that I can’t explain either. There’s a silver doorway, there are voices of long-dead loved ones. I guess it could be some kind of Heaven out there. I still don’t think there’s a singular ‘god’ entity, just positive and negative forces―like cold and hot. I…” Saw an angel… or Seraphim as it called itself. Yeah, sure, he’ll think I’m freakin’ nuts. Oh, screw it. “I saw something the other day.”

“Oh?” He seemed content to let her vent.

“After my son crashed through your church, remember what I told you about Harbingers?”

He nodded.

“Well, there is something else, beings opposite to them… I get the feeling they are fewer in number and perhaps stronger. Maybe there are different kinds of Harbingers too, though. I’ve seen big ones and little ones. The other ones called themselves Seraphim. I don’t know what they are. I met one after I had my ass kicked back and forth for ten minutes. I could’ve been delirious.”

“You would not be the first person to claim a visitation from such a being. It has happened numerous times in the course of human history.”

“Yeah, and they get called nuts, put away, or burned at the stake. The people who use religion as a political tool can’t bear to hear things that break their grip.”

Father Villera chuckled. “Perhaps it is a good thing so much of society these days is blind to it. The church has little sway in the life of the average citizen anymore. I am content to do what I can for those who need help. It does not matter to me what they do or do not believe. I know what I believe, and for me that is enough.”

She stared at him. For the first time she could remember, she looked at a religious person without a trace of contempt or the urge to get as far away from them as fast as she could. Mother used God as a sword. Father Villera used him, her, or it, as a stimpak. Kirsten studied the soft orange glow in the gel pad, muted by the sheets.

“You have a good heart, child. You did not deserve what was done to you. I ask only that you keep an open mind. Do not become that for which you harbor such contempt.”

The strange urge came out of nowhere. Kirsten wanted to tell him about what she did, about why she fled the Beneath. For some unknown reason, she needed him to tell her it was not her fault.

“Father…”

“Yes?”

“They’re back.” Dorian appeared in the doorway, pointing. “Three of them.”

Kirsten stood. “Umm, never mind. My partner just said those thugs are back.”

Father Villera paled.

“I’m going to have a word with them.” She adjusted her utility belt.

“I have a better idea,” said Dorian, following her to the front.

Through the dim light in the main room of the strip mall store-turned-church, the shadows of three figures moved in a patch of light. Just past noon, the sunlight filtering through the haze above the city created a shadow puppet show upon the ground. Black sweatshirts, hoods up, and matte-black Nylcron pants fastened by a trio of silver buttons by each pocket lent them an ominous air. The sight reminded her of modernized Shadewizards from the Monwyn vids―only they lacked skull-tipped staves.

“What’s your idea?” she asked.

“Those three don’t look like the type who could mastermind anything more complicated than the self-cooking mechanism of a Nippy-Nom burrito, and even that may be asking too much.”

She grinned. “I don’t think I can mind-read abyssals.”

“Exactly why I was going to suggest you scare them off, and I’ll follow them. Maybe I can find their boss, or at least overhear something.”

“Won’t abyssals see you?” She paused at the end of the hallway, just before it expanded into the front.

“If anything, these morons are just possessed. I walked circles around them a minute ago and they didn’t react.”

“Sounds like a good idea. If it doesn’t work, I’m sure they’ll come right back here.”

Kirsten strode through the church area, shoving the double doors open with an authoritative heave. “You three,” she barked, drawing the E90. “Hands out of your pockets. You’re wanted for questioning in the matter of an assault.”

Hissing chuckles leaked from them. The one to the far left lifted his head enough for her to see pale grey skin and black eyes.

“Okay, we can play that game too.” She put the gun away and called the lash, spinning it around before flinging it to the side in a showy gesture. “You obviously don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

The middle one leaned into a hiss, causing an icy tickle at her heart. Kirsten gathered her psionic energy in a defense, resulting in a backlash that flung the teen on his ass. Wow, these guys are pretty damn weak.

“Was that supposed to do something?” She advanced, raising the lash. “Don’t worry, boys. If you’re still alive, this won’t hurt at all.”

They scattered, scrambling off to the left at a full run. Dorian set off after them, vanishing down a side street. With a faint whoosh, the tendril receded back into her hand. A brief gust of cool wind carried the scent of Mexican spices. Damn, now I want one of those instant burritos. Bright light pulled her gaze skyward as a billboard-sized hologram slid out of an alley. A newsbot as big as a two-seat car turned ninety degrees to its left, and glided down 500th street. The panel contained a full-on view of a nude corpse; a three-second loop of the image before a blue-gloved crime scene worker grabbed the lens. NewsNet slowed it down, giving the public a lingering view of a tall, slender woman with short, blonde hair. An ad panel opened at the corner, claiming she “looked this good dead” because she used Lifespring™ beauty care products.

The revulsion of such public disregard for the deceased gave way to Kirsten’s notice that the body appeared to be in too-good health to be a streetwalker. The posture, arms at the sides, reminded her of Mr. Arris.

I wonder if her eyes are black too. Gah, how can they show that? Have a little respect.

Kimberly Brightman’s voice entered her awareness as the angle of the newsbot brought her within reach of its directional speakers. “…discovered earlier this morning has been identified as Miss Uma Donn.” The image shifted to a beige-paneled century tower behind a sculpture resembling a massive cybernetic component cradled in a number of incomplete circles. Kimberly stood in the shadow of the oversized neural interface unit in its nest of giant steel C’s, attempting to interview a stern-faced woman in tan security armor. No sound came from the brief clip, until the reporter’s face took over the holo-panel. “Tara Lawrence, chief of security for EnMesh Corporation, Miss Donn’s former employer, had no comment about the events. Some on the GlobeNet claim Miss Donn fell victim to corporate espionage.”

Kirsten sighed, finding herself unable to pull her gaze off the thirteen-foot holographic image of a dead woman flying through the air past the church. The ad now offered funerary services. The image changed to show Kimberly standing in an ancient-looking Victorian-era room, adjacent to a man apparently crafted from bronze. Several parts of his face had open spaces that provided a view of whirring gears and blinking lights inside him. The words ‘Live from Cyberspace’ scrolled along the bottom of the image.

“I’m here with Anachronis, one of the preeminent figures of the GlobeNet inner circle.”

“Thank you, Kimberly. Clearly, there is some conspiratorial angle to this event. I have information which leads me to believe Miss Donn was attempting to defect to a rival corporation. In all likelihood her”―his face took on a forced smile amid a fluttering of clicks and snaps― “transfer failed. EnMesh, or any corporation for that matter, does not often let its top-tier talent go too easily.”

“Anachronis, you are accusing a UCF-held corporation of assassinating one of its own employees? Surely, you don’t think such things happen here?”

The grating metal chuckle slithered down her spine. He sipped from a martini glass that appeared to contain oil, with a gear on a toothpick. “I assume by your question you also believe this illusion of difference in our gov―”

An advert for EnMesh Neural Interface Units took over the screen, promising six percent improvement in all cybernetic component response time. Kirsten went back inside the church, wondering about the second body found in similar circumstances. It nagged at her as odd, but with no clear evidence of a paranormal event, she had no standing to get involved.

Fr. Villera tended to a large food reassembler, connecting a fifty-gallon drum of OmniSoy to its pick up line. She jogged over to help him move it, laughing as the elf-thin girl and the old man did all they could do to jockey it into position. She felt weak until she realized she had done eighty percent of the work. Maybe those sessions with Gabriel are paying off.

“They’ll be here soon. Would you mind helping out a bit until your”―he cast an uneasy glance at the front doors―“partner comes back?”

“I suppose, unless I get an urgent dispatch.”

Kirsten set up tables, putting buckets of plastic forks and knives out among piles of napkins, smiling at a few vagrants that filtered in. Taking a position behind the long table, she helped hand out bowls of reassembled food―beef stew. The fourth bowl had her unable to make eye contact with anyone.

When a lull in the line came, Fr. Villera leaned on the table. “What is bothering you? It is what you wanted to ask me earlier, no?”

“Is it bad to, umm”―Kirsten could not continue looking at his face, and repositioned the empty bowls waiting in front of her― “I had to eat. He had real food. I was so damn hungry.”

“Someone took advantage of you?”

“I lived in the Beneath after I ran away from home. I was so afraid of my mother finding me, I snuck topside at night to pick food from trash crushers.” Kirsten stared out over the crowd. “I didn’t know there were places like this. A boy, younger than I was at the time, said he got real food from begging and wanted me to go with him during the day. He never came back.”

Father Villera put a hand on her shoulder. “Chances are he got picked up by the police. Look at you now. What would you do if you found a little boy in dire need?”

Kirsten cried a little, thinking of Evan. Of course. Why did I assume something bad happened to him?

“Only a weak man takes advantage of a desperate person. He should have taken charity on you and just fed you. What he did to you was reprehensible.”

“I should have said no. Who knows what I could have caught, or if he would have killed me, or…”

“You tread down a path which leads only to destruction and self-loathing. Life sometimes gives us choices with no good answers. There is no purpose in taking on blame for the evil of another.”

“But he said it was my choice. I said yes. I let him…” Kirsten stifled her emotions, forcing a smile as a poor couple approached, astounded to see a uniformed officer handing out food. She gave them a bowl each, waiting until they had wandered away to a table before continuing. “I’m more upset with myself than him. I never really thought it bothered me much; compared to my mother, he felt caring.”

“Think about it, girl,” said Father Villera. “You were starving, desperate. You picked through others’ trash hoping to find something to eat that wouldn’t poison you. Was there really a choice for you to say no? A decent man would have shared what he had willingly. I can understand why you did what you did. I do not think less of you for it.” He kept silent a moment as three more vagrants shuffled by, bowing with gratitude for their meals. “I’m sure He would forgive you.”

Kirsten handed another bowl of food to a grungy middle-aged woman, and smiled at the priest. “Thank you, Father.”

orian returned a half-hour later. His gait was unhurried, his smile confident. Kirsten excused herself from behind the table and walked over to him. A few of the vagrant men checked her out as she passed, distracted from their free meal. The smell of the beef stew carried less shame than before, but still she wanted to avoid it. She met him just outside the door.

“I know that grin; you found something, didn’t you?”

“Yep.” He motioned to the east. “They went about two miles and a block or two south. There’s another street church there. According to the sign, run by a Reverend B.G. Wallis. All three of our friends went through a side entrance from an adjacent alley.”

Kirsten squinted in that direction. “They went into another church? So much for the holy ground theory.”

“Well, just because the word church is on the front door, doesn’t mean it is one.”

Whatever she had been about to say stalled in the back of her throat, turning into a sigh as she glanced from Dorian to Father Villera. “This is so confusing. No wonder it’s such a mess.” Staring over the crowd, it occurred to her that all of the people eating had been watching her the entire time. She skirted the table, past the end of the line. “I have a lead on the punks who roughed you up, Father. I’m going to go follow up on it before this uniform chases away more people in need of food.”

Villera muttered something, waving his hand at her. “ Vaya con Dios, mi hermana .”

Kirsten smiled. “ Gracias, Padre.”

Dorian’s grin irritated her to the point of blurting halfway to the car. “What?”

“ I’m just not used to seeing you being so pleasant to a religious person.”

She poked at her forearm guard. The patrol craft’s door was open by the time she reached it. “Didn’t you spend the better part of the last six months trying to convince me it wasn’t the belief, it was the person?”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be amused.”

The frown in her reflection mocked her from the polished black roof. Dorian sank into the passenger seat through the closed door, leaving her to grumble at the smog overhead. The noise of exasperation stalled to a curious squeak. Two blocks down, another newsbot had a familiar face on it―the man from Konstantin’s reception a few days ago.

She fell into the car and patched into the news feed. Kimberly Brightman was in mid interview, discussing the recent acquisition of EnMesh Bionetics by Kukla Investment Corporation. Scrolling text along a red stripe at the bottom of the screen identified the man as Yevgeniy Suvorin, Majordomo of Kukla. The image came up a few seconds before it cut to Kimberly in the studio; lemon-blonde hair aglow from off-camera lights.

“With me here in the studio is Dante Howell, West City Financial correspondent.”

The image shifted to a dark-skinned man in his later thirties. His iridescent grey suit gave him the look of a shark that sprouted a human head.

“The recent acquisition of cybernetics giant EnMesh by Kukla Investments has turned many heads in the financial world today. As one of the United Coalition Front’s leading producers of so-called ‘fusion’ components intended to bridge the gap between biological and mechanical, the transaction has many concerned. Graeme McCullough, CEO of EnMesh, who has been notoriously cagey about corporate mergers, did not have any comment for the press. As you may know, Mr. McCullough has refused no less than fourteen separate buyout offers. Most of these came from other, larger, biomedical firms seeking to incorporate a cybernetic division. Many analysts, myself included, find it bizarre he should agree to sell controlling interest to what is primarily a real estate holding company.”

Kirsten swiped at the screen, muting the volume. What little she had heard already had her wanting a pillow. She looked at Dorian and frowned.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you had stock in EnMesh? Since when did you care about financial news?”

“That woman they found dead this morning worked for EnMesh, didn’t she?”

“I think you’re right.” He rubbed his chin. “Still, corporate issues aren’t your neck of the woods. I’m quite sure the CCTF has it under control. Look, they’re talking about it now. The merger is stuck pending regulatory approval.” He grinned at the face she made. “Lip reading.”

She glared.

“Okay, fine.” He pointed at the scrolling comment text she had failed to notice. “Corp Crimes is auditing it.”

Her head hit the seat hard enough to knock her hair clip out. “Ugh, what the hell is wrong with me? Why am I getting so wound up?”

“That man on the news appears to be an associate of Konstantin. Perhaps you are worried some legal troubles may come his way?”

A giant Monarch butterfly got into a boxing match with a moth somewhere in her stomach. “Konstantin wouldn’t do that!” she snapped, glaring.

Dorian blinked, too stunned by her reproachful tone to say anything.

Guilt flashed over her, chasing away the spike of irrational anger that had come on out of nowhere. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I yelled at you. It’s like I’m fourteen again and defending whatever that singer’s name was. Konstantin can’t be involved with anything illegal.”

“Can’t? Or you’re terrified he might be?” Dorian waited a moment. “And by the way, that boy couldn’t sing without his electronics.”

“He wasn’t bad.” Kirsten pouted at the console.

Dorian hummed. “Yes, he had so much talent he vanished when he wasn’t a teenager anymore.”

She fidgeted with the gold snake bracelet, spinning it around her wrist. “I…” The moth tried to escape the Monarch. Kirsten covered her mouth with a hand, trying to will away the nausea. “Konstantin is a sweet man who has too much money and wastes some of it on me. Whenever I’m with him…”

“You feel like you’ll make one wrong move and wake up.” Dorian eyed the glittering ruby eyes in the bit of jewelry. “Seems as though you’re quite attached to at least some of the credits he spent on you.”

“I think about his smile whenever I see it.” She stared off at the endless train of ad-bots passing overhead.

Dorian shifted, unable to find a way to sit that satisfied him. “Shall we check out that other church then?”

“Yeah.”

Two miles later, Kirsten landed in front of a decaying building that looked as though it had once been a small factory. White paint flaked in large slabs from the plastisteel panel wall, worse around small barred windows done over with multicolored dyes in an attempt to recreate the image of stained glass. A holographic sign above the door displayed a golden cross surrounded by shimmering wisps of cartoony fire next to the words “Faith Pentecostal Baptist Ministries – Hon. Rev. B.G. Wallis. Come find the Holy Spirit!”

Aside from the colorful windows and the sign, the building seemed like the sort of place a person would not want to walk into alone at night. A group of young men propped up against the wall gave her the eye as she crossed the sidewalk and went up the stairs to the front door. To the right, three loading dock rolling gates appeared to be welded shut.

“I get the feeling no one comes here for a free meal―unless they’ve got an appetite for bullshit.”

“Now there’s the Kirsten I know and love,” said Dorian, following her through the door.

The inside held a strong scent of damp carpet with a hint of mold. Brown Epoxil panels, with simulated wood grain finish, cozied up an area full of old-fashioned pews. Free-standing partitions flanked a small altar, folding murals of stained glass depicted blotches of random pastel colors around more crosses.

“Feel anything?”

“Nope.” Dorian shook his head. “You?”

“Nothing.”

A low wooden creak worthy of a cheap horror vid emanated from a hallway beyond the area that resembled a stage dressing of a church. Kirsten moved along the back row of pews, entering a gap in the wood panels which led to a corridor dripping with leaky pipes and buckets positioned to catch water. Two large men in suits, both muscular and dark as the night, came to a halt when they spotted her. A few yards behind them, the yellow rectangle of an open door glowed with light from an office.

“Can I help you?” asked the one closer.

Nothing feels paranormal about him. “I’m looking for a couple of punks that mugged an old man. They were seen fleeing into this building.”

“Maybe we should’ve tried the side door?” offered Dorian.

“There is no one here but Julius and myself, and the Reverend Wallis. Our services are on Sunday only.”

“So what are you doing here on a Thursday? Does the Reverend live here?”

Neither of the men seemed to find her tone amusing. “I’m afraid we must ask you to respect the sanctity of these grounds.”

Kirsten squinted. “Your Reverend Wallis has advert bots cruising around the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary trying to poach Father Villera’s faithful. Then, a couple of guys decide to beat the hell out of the guy and come running back here. I don’t know about you two gentlemen, but I find that a bit suspicious.”

The other man slid to the side of his companion, their bulk blocking the hallway from wall to wall. He glared hard, as if weighing the odds of getting away with manhandling her out the door, or worse. “You badmouthin’ the Rev, we gonna have words.”

Julius raised a hand. “Easy, Daryl. Look, officer. My cousin here’s quite protective of Reverend Wallis’s reputation. Casting aspersions as to the integrity of his character has put him in a bad way.”

“Not as bad a way as he’ll be in if he doesn’t get out of my way. You two do realize I have the authority to pursue a suspect anywhere outside of military jurisdictional zones. If your reverend is so benevolent, and he has nothing to do with ordering the attack on Father Villera, then I shouldn’t find anything to ruin his reputation.”

For a moment, the dripping water was thunderous.

Daryl’s nostrils flared as he fought to contain rage. Kirsten squinted at him.

“Come on, Daryl. You want to twist my head off? Take a step. See what happens.”

“Surface thoughts?” asked Dorian.

“Yep,” she muttered, hand on the E-90. “What are you hiding, Daryl? Do you know those three?”

“Whoa, shit.” Julius put a hand on Daryl’s chest. “Please forgive my associate, he has anger management issues.”

Kirsten glared for a moment. “Very good, Julius. You’re right, I am Division 0. Most people don’t recognize the uniform. Now, please, before your ‘associate’ winds up sucking his thumb in the corner, get out of my way.”

“Is there a problem out here?” asked a velvety voice from a doorway behind the two men.

A skeletal-thin figure, just as dark, emerged from the open door, clad in a violet suit and black-and-white shoes that looked as if he had stolen them from a gravslide lane―the special ones they make people wear not to ruin the smooth, Epoxil-board floors. Not much in stature, he stood only an inch taller than Kirsten, which became apparent as he slid between the two behemoths and stopped with an extended hand.

“I am Reverend B. G. Wallis, what can I help you with, officer?”

She permitted a half-hearted handshake, mesmerized by the sheen of light on top of his smooth, bald scalp. A trace of a salt-and-pepper gaotee ringed his mouth. Ridge lines defined the absence of long-worn eyeglasses just behind his ears. Wrinkles broke the glass-like sheen of his forehead as he lifted both eyebrows with an expression of concern.

Kirsten shot a challenging glance at Daryl, before shifting it to Wallis. “I was wondering how stiff the competition is between you and Father Villera’s sanctuary. A couple of punks attacked him earlier today and ran back here after I confronted them.”

“I see.” He leaned back, left arm across his chest holding his right elbow while he rubbed one finger over his lips. “Your first assumption is that members of Faith Pentecostal participated in an act of violence?”

Kirsten made it a point to stare at Daryl. “Oh, violence was the last thing I’d ever suspect from a religious person. These two looked about ready to throw me through a window.”

“Please forgive them their doubts. I’m sure you hear this quite often, but police usually wear armor, blue armor, and don’t show up alone. My associates mistook your intentions.” He closed his eyes, gesturing at her with open palms. “You say these individuals are hiding in my church. Perhaps, even if they did come here, they are hiding not from you but from some malevolent force which compelled them to violence against a fellow man of God.”

“If they wanted a church to hide in, they were right outside one. Why run all the way here?”

Reverend Wallis overacted a look of being insulted. “Oh, my. Are you insinuating my church is any less holy than Father Villera’s? You know I tire of those who think our faith is any less genuine because we spice it up with energetic hymns.” His voice took on the cadence of a preacher as he paced about the narrow hallway. “How a man communes with his Lord is a matter between him and the divine.” He gestured at the ceiling. “Who sits in a place of judgment that can say where one dwells within a place of sanctity and another, by virtue of his difference of opinion, does not?” He leaned toward her. “Tell me, officer, do you have faith? Are you redeemed?”

Her porcelain features flashed rouge. “I’ve seen the silver doors souls take to get to the afterlife. There’s no fat man in a white robe waiting with a checklist. I don’t claim to know what happens on the other side, but I do think that this”―she waved her arm at the fancy room behind her― “is all meant to save people from having too many credits.”

“A lost soul.” Reverend Wallis sucked in a long breath as he brought his hands together over his heart. “Clearly you have been tainted by the society in which we live, a society that rejects God for trappings of the material world. I would enjoy the opportunity to speak to you about Him, though you have to be ready to listen. I’m sure you know what it’s like to be persecuted. People with your”―he pursed his lips, searching for words― “special talents are often the victim of hatred based on superstition and misleading information. As such, I’m fairly certain Division 0 would not react well to the public perception they foment discrimination based on religious observance.”

“Yeah,” said Julius. “This one ain’t got no respect for the works of the Lord. She’s just here to give us a hard time.”

“This guy’s good.” Dorian pointed at Wallis. “He’s going to keep you talking while the three idiots run out the back door. I’ll try and catch them.”

Dorian sprinted off, turning himself just solid enough to knock Daryl into the wall as he went through him.

“What the…” Wallis gawked at Daryl, as the big man floundered and crashed to the ground in a mass of mop handles and upended buckets.

Julius leapt away from a splash of dirty collected drip-water. Wallis grabbed on to the bodyguard’s arm and chanted prayers in a loud wail.

“Cast aside the evil one, trust your salvation to Him!”

Kirsten grumbled. Oh, give me a damn break. This guy’s faker than Trinity Barber’s tits. She left behind the screaming reverend, sensing no abnormal energy in the air and having nothing solid enough to risk getting into a PR war with someone who has had a lot of practice smiling at holo-cams.

“Not a damn thing.”

Dorian’s voice woke Kirsten from a fitful nap. The driver’s seat reacted to her change of posture as she sat up and wiped her eyes.

“What?”

“I couldn’t find a damn thing. No trace of them in the building or outside of it. They either took off before we got there, or they never existed. Snooped around a little inside, the good reverend was busy assuring his boys you wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Damn. Yeah, he pretty much threatened to cause a massive PR scandal for us if I didn’t back off. I wish I had enough to go on to call his bluff. What the heck am I gonna tell Father Villera?” She pulled out her NetMini. “Guess I’ll advise him to stay in the church and call me if anything strange happens.”

irsten could not recall the last time she had blushed as hard or as often as she did after walking through the door of Decadenz. Attending the overpriced nightclub was Konstantin’s idea; apparently, he and the owner were friends in the ‘old country.’ With the exception of the security staff, few of the waiters or waitresses wore much, if any, clothing. The ones who did wore clothes made either of leather, steel, or some combination of both―and the garments did not always cover the sensitive spots. She kept her gaze nailed to the floor, allowing Konstantin to guide her through the crowd. Snippets of conversation floated over the techno-warble of music leaking in from the ceiling, giving her the impression any of the staff would be available for a price.

The dress he had given her, via delivery bot an hour before picking her up, amounted to a long strip of black silk wound serpentine around her body. Myofiber strands, the synthetic muscles of cyborgs and dolls, permeated it and let it cling where it needed to cling. She could not help the feeling it would fall off at any second. Given the atmosphere she refused to look at, she wondered if Konstantin had planned for it to come off in a hurry.

That thought did little to bring a natural color back to her face; in fact, she was as red as a fire suppression bot by the time she stumbled over the first step of a spiral staircase. Konstantin steadied her with both hands, unable to contain his laughter at her expression. She opened her mouth to apologize for falling into him, but ducked away with a gasp as a waiter passed by wearing only a leather hood.

Konstantin leaned close, kissing her cheek before whispering. “The upstairs is more refined.”

With one silk-gloved hand clinging to a narrow metal railing, she navigated the tight passage to the second floor. At the end of a short corridor, a pair of stark white nudes, one man and one woman, waited on either side of heavy blood-red curtains. At their approach, the figures reached over and opened them. Kirsten risked enough of a look to register a lack of surface thoughts.

Dolls. She exhaled. That’s a little less awkward.

Inside, the room had a feel more akin to that of a restaurant than a sex club. Red carpet with a pattern of black diamonds covered a space with two dozen tables either round or square, spread at even intervals through the room. Six more nudes sat on pedestals, two on each wall, done up as statues from Greek antiquity. Three men struck athletic poses, while three women held large water jugs on their shoulders. Like the ones in the hall, none had any surface thoughts.

Guess they couldn’t find real people that perfect looking.

Konstantin went to a table on the left side, joining another couple already there. The woman, perhaps in her later twenties, sat absorbed in the contents of her NetMini’s screen. Pale, with long ebon hair, her gradient lipstick darkened from apple-red along the edge to deep crimson where her lips met. The floor-length blue gown was slit open the entire length, held on by a series of decorative silver chains every six inches.

Her companion, much like Konstantin, wore a conventional suit in a dark shade of slate over a plain black shirt and no tie―in contrast to Konstantin’s red ascot. His look of displeasure at his woman’s ignorance of him in favor of a small electronic device broke apart to a glance of hungry appraisal at the sight of Kirsten.

Kirsten studied the latest addition to her collection of high-heeled shoes, a shiny black pair held to her ankles by hand-tied silk ribbons. She found it utterly ridiculous they cost even more than the automatic pair capable of slithering around her legs on their own. However, the feeling of them tightening on had passed her threshold of creepy; a tentacle winding around her leg―no matter what it was made from―was too much.

“Is this the girl you’ve told us so much about, Konnie?”

Kirsten looked up at the familiar tone in the woman’s voice. Her awkwardness at wearing a revealing garment in a place like this evaporated, replaced with jealousy. When she realized she stared across a small table at Trinity Barber, holovid star, her friend the Monarch returned. Kirsten held her stomach, forcing a stupid smile.

“Oh, heavens, Konnie… She looks like she’s just come off a shuttle from some hayseed colony.” The woman fanned herself, making a haughty high-society laugh Kirsten loathed. “I don’t think she’s going to be interested in joining us. Is she even old enough to drink?”

Konstantin shot the actress the hardest stare Kirsten had ever seen him make at anyone. “She is not for sharing.”

Trinity leaned back with a gasp, before she leaned in and purred, “Finally found one to keep, Konnie? Is this one even eighteen yet?”

Kirsten stared. Not only did an instant dislike for this woman form at the sound of her privileged laugh, the repeated use of ‘Konnie’ came off as belittling. She was about to blurt when the light changed, brightening at her side.

A thin woman, in a black halter top, miniskirt, and knee-high boots approached, smiling at everyone. She introduced herself as June before taking drink orders. Kirsten asked for iced tea.

“You’re adorable,” said Trinity, wearing a plastic smile. “Where did you find this one, Konnie.”

Fortunately, Kirsten’s new shoes were shiny enough to offer her something to stare into. She amused herself for a few minutes wondering whatever became of Brian/Armando. This place felt strange; none of the other guests reacted at all to the presence of a well-known actress despite most of the world, even the ACC, knowing her name. Entire GlobeNet sites existed devoted to debating her true age. Some said she was over a hundred, a brain in a doll body. Others figured she was the latest in a series of clones, while others argued she existed only as a digital entity. Something had to be up, the woman looked to be somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, yet she had been in vids for at least fifty years.

Obviously, she’s real.

A third man swooped in, standing between Konstantin and the other as-yet-to-be-introduced man. He looked older, a rough fifty or healthy later sixty, and was short but stocky. He had a whimsical gleam in his eyes, but had an air about him that suggested he had been on the wrong end of war more than once in his life. Like Trinity, he ignored Trinity’s date and chatted with Konstantin in animated Russian.

“I’m Michael,” said the other man, making a slight bow. “Kleenex.”

“Michael Kleenex?” asked Kirsten, a trace of a giggle in her voice. “What a unique name.”

“Oh, no.” He smiled. “I mean, I am a Kleenex. Or, at least as long-lived as one.” He smirked at Trinity. “She’ll wipe her nose with me in a day or two and move on to someone else. Just a body to keep her arm warm tonight.”

Trinity rolled her eyes.

She’s paying him more attention than I thought. “Sorry to hear that, but you know how these people are.” Kirsten faked a gasp. “Oh, I’m sorry; did I say that out loud?”

“Missing your dirt ball already, sweetie?” Trinity narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going to last too long in the city, I’m afraid. Tell me, how did you get into film? Anal or oral?”

You’re about to find out why the world is terrified of psionics. Kirsten’s knuckles whitened as she clasped the E-90 through the purse in her lap. “I’m not an actress; I don’t work on my back.”

Venom hung in the air between the women. Kirsten could not recall ever disliking someone as much so soon after meeting them, possibly excepting Lucian Talbot. “Look, we got off on the wrong foot; I’m with the police, I met Konstantin during a case.”

“Oh.” Trinity stiffened, giving Konstantin a disbelieving look. “A police woman. I suppose the night will be rather dull after all.”

Even without peeking at Trinity’s surface thoughts, Kirsten could tell the woman was annoyed at him for wasting his time on a peasant. She contemplated a telekinetic nudge of a wine glass, but decided against it. Instead, she studied her shoes again.

Michael, at least, seemed amused by Trinity backing down from a verbal sparring match. The rugged man departed after offering the table a warm smile and bow. He did not bother to introduce himself to Kirsten, and the others appeared to know who he was already.

“Alexi owns this place,” said Konstantin in a whisper. “We were in the same unit a few years ago.”

“You were in the army?” asked Kirsten, raising an eyebrow.

“Indeed.” He took a sip from a drink which glowed green. She did not want to know what the opaque blue blobs floating in it were. “It is not like they give people much choice over there.”

“I thought executives were exempt.”

Konstantin chuckled, the mirth glimmering in his eyes made her forget all about Trinity and the mortifying surroundings. “I was not born wealthy. What I have now is the product of hard work, luck, and being in the right place at the right moment. A little obscure knowledge also helps.”

She squinted at him. Does that woman really expect all four of us will wind up in bed later?

Konstantin’s coughing fit put all eyes in the room on him. He held up a hand as if to indicate he was fine and patted his chest a few times. “I had some wild moments in my younger days.” He leaned in close and kissed the side of her neck. “Since I’ve met you, I need no one else.”

The warmth from his face washed around her neck and ran down her spine, riding a faint tremble into her lap. She held his hand and gave him an adoring stare that lasted until June returned with their entrees. The food had been better at Toko, but he’d come here to meet his friend more than for their cuisine.

“What did you discuss with Alexi?” She slid a fork into the inch-thick perfect square of swordfish on her plate.

“Just business. He and I trade stock tips. The UCF frowns on such things, calls it ‘insider trading’, but don’t worry. All of that is going on back in Europe. It is an expected part of business there.”

As if challenging her date’s self-evaluation of being as wanted as a tissue, Trinity fell into an airheaded conversation with Michael. She made the occasional remark to Konstantin about one of her films, or something she wanted him to donate money to, but as far as the actress was concerned, Kirsten no longer existed.

The feeling was mutual.

“Have you made arrangements tonight?” asked Konstantin. “I would very much like to you accompany me home this evening. You’ve been quite elusive.” He winked.

Kirsten smiled. “Evan’s at Nila’s. He’s expecting to spend the night.”

“Excellent.”

Here I go again. Is this another military ration? Do I really love him? I know he wants me in bed, but do I want me in bed with him? She studied the ridge of his chin, the ‘I shaved a day ago’ discoloration that lent an irresistible toughness to him. Her inner debate waned; doubt was a balloon losing air, spiraling into the dark recess of her mind. Kirsten felt happy until Trinity made a comment about her face resembling an orphan puppy wanting a home.

I think I liked silver shoes better. She stared at the billowing black bows behind each ankle formed by the silk ties. I hope I don’t have to run in these. I am going to break my damn neck.

The ring of her NetMini almost shocked her out of the seat. Nila’s holographic head appeared in midair over the table. “Hey, Kirsten, Is everything all right? Evan just had spaz moment. Insisted I call you and make sure you were okay. Oh my God, is that Trinity Barber?”

The actress grinned and waved at the hologram.

So damn fake.

“Yeah, Konstantin knows her.” I wonder if they had sex. She’s done it with him, hasn’t she? She’s trying to do it now. She wants to take him away from the little peasant girl he loves.

Trinity screamed as her wine glass leapt into her lap, and continued screaming all the way to the ladies’ room. Kirsten’s telekinesis was too weak to cause her feet to collide and trip her, though she tried. Michael assumed he had swatted it by accident, as the peak of Kirsten’s jealousy occurred while he was reaching for the peppershaker in the middle of the table. Konstantin’s eyes were sharper; he gave Kirsten a soothing look and rubbed her thigh under the table. A consoling rub, not the rub she actually wanted.

“What just happened?” asked Nila.

Kirsten squinted at the muted yelling behind the door. “Spilled wine, nothing.”

“Well, she’s going to be in there until a bot brings a new gown.” Michael leaned back, expecting a lengthy wait.

Evan’s face slid up under Nila’s chin. He smiled at Kirsten. “Hi, Mom.”

She forgot all about Trinity; every bit of jealousy vanished. “Hey, sweetie. I’m fine. Just having dinner.”

He nodded, making a sad, apologetic frown. “Sorry, I got scared.”

“ Oh, Evan, you don’t have to feel sorry for being worried about me.” She blew a kiss at him. He caught it with his hand and pasted it onto his cheek.

“Sorry for butting in to your date. Enjoy the rest of your night.” Nila hung up.

“Please don’t mind him, he’s…”

“It’s fine,” said Konstantin. “A boy his age is bound to have some issues with jealousy. We can move at any pace he is comfortable with.”

Her NetMini rang again before she could get it into the purse.

“Oh, what the hell now?”

Tech Hollings appeared when she answered the call. “Kirsten? Can I talk to you?”

“Sure, hold on a sec.” Kirsten stood. “I’ll be right back, this is work. Need some privacy.” Kirsten took one step toward the bathroom and hesitated at the continued screaming.

Konstantin pointed at a row of ornate red doors along the wall opposite the entry stairs. Kirsten nodded, scurrying as fast as she felt balanced on the new heels. Having wide silk bows on each ankle felt strange and girly―she almost liked it. She picked the fourth door at random and found it locked. The next one opened, and she ducked into a dark space. Her knee bumped something soft that felt like a chair, and she sat on the edge. The hologram of Tech Hollings made the swaths of exposed skin on Kirsten’s body glow.

“What the hell are you wearing? How is it even staying on?”

Kirsten turned red again. “It’s powered. Myofiber. What did you need?”

“Another body was found an hour ago. Someone went out of their way to hide this one. It got found in a lowest level of a parking garage in a grey zone. It was total luck we found it. Couple of Joyboys carjacked a suit from Sector 300 and used his vehicle for about a half hour before ditching it. Recovery crew went in after it; found it parked on a bag that stank to high hell.”

“Lovely.”

Reacting to Kirsten’s word, the room lit up with rose-colored light. She found herself seated on the point of a heart-shaped cushion, just big enough for an amorous couple. The headboard glimmered with an assortment of metal restraints, and a panel on the wall held other things, some indelicately obvious in their purpose while others looked frightening. Kirsten did not know exactly what the strange things were, though the implication of their general function was evident.

“Whoa. Holy shit, Kirsten… I mean, Agent Wren. You looked so… umm… wholesome. Where the hell are you?”

Kirsten froze, she wanted to crawl into a black hole and leave reality. All she managed to reply with was a hoarse squeak.

“Guess you had no idea where you were either.” Tech Hollings laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t say a word. You can’t fake that kind of embarrassment.”

No longer wanting to touch the thing she sat on, Kirsten sprang upright. She didn’t want to make contact with anything in here.

“I… had no idea.”

“Don’t sweat it; you should give some of those things a whirl sometime if you’re bored. Anna talked me into playing with some toys a year or so ago, glad she did. Anyway, the second body had the same black eyes as the one we called you in on. Same withering, though it was decayed. I put the time of death at least two weeks ago. He is in the lab now being checked out. You’re gonna love this next part.”

“What?” No matter which way she turned, something she was ashamed to look at was right in front of her. Wow, I really am Norma Jean… whatever the hell that means.

“According to his ImDent, his name was Carlos Rosa. He was the Deputy Director of Security for the West City Municipal Complex.”

Kirsten squinted. “That’s too much of a coincidence. I have to check out that body. Can you get me in there?”

“I should be able to.”

“ Thanks.” Kirsten cut the call and leapt at the door, all too eager to be out of that room. Head spinning, she got back to her seat and fell into it. “I―”

“Have to go?” Konstantin offered, smiling.

Now it’s me faking the call and running from dinner, but it’s not fake. “A body was found. I need to check it out. It’s bothering me.”

“I’m sure bodies bother most people in your line of work. Was there something ‘special’ about it that has Division Zero’s interest up?”

She leaned on her elbow, making doe-eyes at him for a moment. “Well, the body seemed aged too much, and the sclera were black. Also, there was no ghost wondering what happened.”

“Does every dead body have a wayward ghost next to it?” He tilted his head back.

“No, some move on right away, but usually in the case of naked people found dead in alleys―they have questions. There’s more though.” She leaned back, letting her arms dangle limp in her lap. “This guy was high up the food chain in security at the Municipal Complex, but there was no mention of his death or that he was missing on the NewsNet. Also, the trade commissioner’s office is at that complex.”

“ How is that strange?” He leaned an elbow on the table, studying her face.

“Well… you have the commissioner suddenly changing her mind about trade arrangements with the ACC after refusing to open hearings on the subject for years. She’s a die-hard member of the Old Guard and doesn’t trust anyone born outside the UCF. Commissioner Vernon is even suspicious there’s a secessionist movement in the north which wants to re-establish a separate Canada. Don’t you think it’s a little strange a security manager from her building shows up dead, with blackened eyes, and then she changes her mind so quickly?”

“Coincidental, I think. What possible connection could there be?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. It bugs me though. Sounds so similar to the way the EnMesh CEO, Graeme something, flipped after years of resisting trade, and they found one of their engineers dead in the same condition.”

Konstantin sipped his wine, his moment of thought interrupted by a chuckle at the delivery bot floating up the spiral staircase to the bathroom door. “It does indeed appear to stretch the limits of coincidence.”

“I think there might be some kind of spirit messing around with people, sort of a Theodore with malice instead of perversion.”

“Theodore?” He lifted an eyebrow.

“He’s a ghost who keeps sticking his head where it doesn’t belong.”

Konstantin squinted at the wall. The flick of his thumbnail over the neck of his glass sent a ping into the air every few seconds.

“Sorry, I… Talking about dead people is killing the mood.”

His eyes went to her while the rest of his face remained stony. After a few seconds of staring, he smiled. Kirsten felt ashamed of herself for feeling relief at not having displeased him. She looked at her empty plate. Is this what love is supposed to feel like? Why do I feel so dependent on him already? Damn you, Mother. All I ever wanted was for you not to hate me. Now I’m doing the same thing with him.

Kirsten almost screamed when the NetMini rang again. It was Nila.

“K, I’m sorry to be a pain in your ass.” Evan’s crying echoed in the background. “He just came out of a nap, he’s hysterical. Wants you. I can’t calm him down.” Nila lowered her voice. “He’s sobbing like three-year-old.”

The pinging ceased. Kirsten stared at the motionless thumb, no longer flicking the glass. The stem, like her, seemed fragile in his grasp.

“Tell him I’m coming.” Kirsten stood. “Konstantin, I’m so sorry. Evan’s having a fit and I can’t leave him alone.”

“It is alright, Kirsten. Go to your son.” He smiled.

Is that anger or disappointment. “I’m sorry.”

“You could use one of the nests,” said Michael, gesturing at the red doors.

Konstantin chuckled without looking at either of them.

I stare at shoes, he has his wine glass. Kirsten stooped to hug him, but he caught her hand and kissed it.

“Such a thing is too crass, I fear. No rose opens before its time.” He let her hand slip through his fingers. “Please allow me to offer you a ride?”

Alexi emerged from a concealed door and approached the table at a brisk stride.

“Looks like you’re busy. Besides, I don’t want to impose any more―I’ve already ruined the night.”

“The fault is mine.” Konstantin stood. “I should have known better than to subject you to such coarse surroundings. How unlike the rest of the world you are, Kirsten.” He flashed an alluring smile. “In the company of angels.”

She blushed.

Alexi put a hand on his shoulder, whispering in Russian.

Kirsten excused herself, covering her eyes as she passed through the debauchery of the first floor. She scooted past a codpiece-wearing doorman, unable to resist a laugh at the fuzzy yellow smiley face between his legs, and walked to the curb. Despite the chill, the outside air brought with it a sense of relief. The oppressive atmosphere of the club gone, she was free of the vicarious embarrassment from the goings on, as well as her own feelings of inadequacy. Once again, Konstantin had taken her to be surrounded by people in his social strata, and she did not feel any more welcome this time around.

NetMini held to her lips, worry for Evan came through in her uneasy tone. “PubTran Taxi please, current location.”

The device beeped. “Service request accepted. A car is en route to your location. Thank you for using PubTran.”

orry gripped Kirsten in a chill worse than the wind that found every gap in the clingy black ribbon passing itself off as a dress. Within a few seconds of being outside, Konstantin had become the last thought on her mind. What could have made Evan panic? Oh, please don’t let him have nightmares of his birth mother. She fidgeted with the gold bracelet, tapping her foot. Anxiety over how angry Konstantin had seemed added out of the blue to her concern for Evan. His eyes had not done a good job of concealing it. The uncharacteristic urge to run back inside and beg his forgiveness collided with her need to protect Evan.

The impact left her doubled over with a knot in her stomach.

Mechanical whirring to the left attracted her attention toward the closest cross street to a club she hoped she would never see again. Expecting the PubTran, she forced herself to stand as she swallowed a trickle of bile. Rather than a small blue-grey car, a pair of head-sized orb bots glided out onto the sidewalk. They paused, rotating about until they faced in her general direction.

Kirsten frowned at them; they did not offer her a ride out of here. They did, however, offer her mind a respite from her attempt to choose a lesser angst. Just as she started to turn away, disregarding them, small iris doors snapped open with a click. Dim cobalt-blue light rings surrounded the inner-workings of a ballistic handgun mechanism inside the sphere; both of which aimed at her.

“Shit!” she yelled, forgetting about the ten thousand credits of silk wrapped around her, and dove to the ground between two parked cars.

The sound of screaming pedestrians, gunfire, and shattering glass filled the night. With the initial shock gone, she crawled to the street side and wobbled up into a squat against a white FMC Comet, a ground-only car that tried to be luxury and sporty at the same time. Why would anyone spend a hundred grand on a car in this city? Fragments of shot-out windows snowed over her.

While the orbs continued to calculate the odds of their bullets piercing the car with enough velocity left in the projectile to kill their target, Kirsten yanked her purse open and got her hand around the E-90. At that precise moment, her NetMini lit up, playing an audio message.

“Thank you for choosing PubTran for your transportation needs. We apologize for the inconvenience, however it appears you are involved in a violence-event at this time. We are unable to provide you with a conveyance until such time as the violence event has ended. If you do not survive the violence event, please pass along PubTran Corporation’s consolations to your next of kin.”

Kirsten gawked at her bag. “NetMini, call Captain Eze.”

Nothing.

The shooting paused; light and shadow shifted through the interior of the car as the orbs repositioned. Glowing hover-inducers flooded the street with wavering light.

“NetMini!” yelled Kirsten.

If the small slab-like device had arms, it would have folded them. “My name is Siri.”

“I don’t give a flying eff what your name is, I’m being shot at. Call Eze.”

Silence.

Two bullets tore through the car just by her head. Kirsten gasped and backpedaled. Her left ankle wobbled on the high heel beneath it. She fell on her ass a half second before a ripple of automatic fire shredded the door she had been leaning on.

“If you can’t even respect me enough to use my proper name, then why should I care you’re being shot at? I have feelings too,” said a petulant voice from her purse.

The orbs glided around the front bumper, finding an unobstructed line of sight. Sprawled on her rear end, she fired one handed. An azure beam surged between the orbs, causing them to swivel inward as if looking at each other. The one on the right dropped several inches straight down as she fired again, neatly avoiding her shot.

Her third try clipped the other one, leaving a glowing cosmetic scorch on its shell. She fired twice more, hitting only clouds, as she scooted backwards and hid behind the car. Before the orbs could chase, she rolled onto her knees and leapt into an awkward run. The dress, wound around her body down to her shins, hobbled her gait for a few strides. It sensed her effort to sprint and slid up under its own power, forming a short skirt rather than a winding cloth strip. Now that she reached a full run, black silken bows thwapped past each other as her ankles crossed in stride. Shots clanked off the metal sidewalk, glancing into nearby buildings or cars. A few helpful citizens had joined in, taking pot shots at the spheres with even less success than her attempt.

I’m taking Evan back to the Funzone, and I’m going to spend two hours on that silly orb game. Flailing her arms to control what amounted to a perpetual state of falling over, Kirsten cringed under a spray of sparks as she ducked a corner. Her right heel-strut skidded out from under her on the turn, dumping her into a tumble. After coming to a halt, Kirsten curled up and tugged at the bow, which defied her. She scowled at the crippling things tied on to her legs. Every damned time I wear heels… Covered in rainwater and discarded nutri-bar wrappers, she gave up trying to untie the knots and sat there, aiming two-handed at the corner.

When the first orb came around, she fired. The shot went straight through it, causing the internals to flare bright orange before the entire thing detonated in a spray of flaming bits. The other one hesitated. Bands of blue light two blocks down the alley slid along the surface of buildings, castoff glow from more hover units. Three orbs in a group zoomed toward her.

“What the fuck?”

Kirsten fumbled at the side of a trash-crusher box, looking for a handhold to pull herself up. She looked around with a quick left-right glance. Satisfied it was clear, she jumped up and ran in a careening, ungainly wobble. Half a block later, she wiped out again and landed flat on her chest in a forward slide. Her stomach and thighs squeaked on the plastisteel surface. Adrenaline did a wonderful job of hiding the pain, and she crawled as fast as she could on numb knees behind another large dumpster as bullets clicked off the ground behind her.

She huddled in a seated position with her back against the fragrant metal, yanking at the strips of silk around her ankles. The knots slipped loose, and she kicked the shoes across the alley.

I am never wearing shoes I cannot run in again. Who the hell is after me this time?

An orb came over the top of the trash-crusher, pointed straight down on her. She yelped, and lunged forward as it fired. Kirsten somersaulted upright, having a great deal more traction and balance with no shoes. She was grateful the orbs’ strength was in how difficult they were to hit; their targeting system left quite a bit to be desired. Despite that, flecks of debris and shattered projectiles were at the backs of her legs like a swarm of angry hornets as near misses chased her twenty yards down the alley to the nearest corner.

This time, she did not wipe out on the turn. Kirsten leaned hard into a sprint, pumping her arms and timing her breaths with her footfalls. At the end of the block, the area seemed to have gone downhill rather fast. The Decadenz club, a haven for people with too much money and too little self-respect (in Kirsten’s opinion) was close to a grey zone. She whirled around a right turn, and pressed her body against a building that stank of piss. Hair down and wild around her face, she panted while aiming at the spot from which she expected the spherical assassins to appear. Sweat ran in trickles down her back. Kirsten did not want to know what she had stepped in that caused her feet to stick to the metal surface.

Her finger teased at the trigger, waiting. Great. I’m in a goddamn grey zone wrapped in a glorified scarf. This is not my night. “NetMini…”

A squeaky “ hmmf” came out of her purse.

“I am so getting a NinTek next.”

She almost felt bad for the tiny voice that burst into tears.

“Don’t give me that. You’re being a little bitch while I’m getting fucking shot at!”

“I’m sorry,” it chirped. “But, you’re always so rude to me.”

The orbs appeared. Kirsten fired. The alley flashed with deep blue light from each pulse. Forty yards away, two of the murder balls blasted apart amid orange-yellow fire. Free of the weight of the orb, one hover core took off skyward like a missile, leaving a brilliant trail of sparks. It managed to reach the tenth floor before its spiral trajectory caused it to smash into the wall with a dull clank. It bounced between buildings on either side of the alley a few times before it detonated in a dazzling shower of sparks that crept like spiders down the metal walls.

Kirsten ducked away from the corner as the remaining two orbs ripped full-auto in her direction. Cringing from the noise and debris spray, she decided to run rather than risk popping out for another shot. The sensation of her soles peeling and unpeeling off the ground, picking up any stray piece of light trash, brought her dinner back into her throat. The scent of garbage and urine in the air only got worse the farther she ran.

After another left, a grey concrete building came into view. None of the street level windows had any glass left in them. The interior was dark and wide open―but sunken. Without a second thought, she hopped up onto the windowsill, which was about knee-high from the sidewalk. Finding the place empty, save for a few cube desks and upturned chairs, she jumped down and ran to crawl into a hollow under one of the sturdier looking workstations.

Roaches the size of butter sticks scurried out of her way as she tucked herself into a ball. The whirring, electronic noise of the orbs outside grew louder; then faded. She wanted to sigh with relief, but held it in. Shivering made enough noise already. Tucking her E-90 between her knees, Kirsten grabbed her NetMini. A pink cartoon kitten-face displayed with fat raindrop-tears flying out of its eyes.

“Please don’t make a sound,” she whispered.

The kitten nodded and faded out to the normal control interface. At least the models with AIs recognized their owners, and she did not need to put in a passcode. Kirsten stared at her filthy toes and frowned at how little her garment covered.

“I called for help” scrolled through the air just above the device.

Kirsten thumbed her way through several screens, placing an order for an athletic suit and sneakers. She paid the extra fifty credits for “super rush” delivery. At the sound of hover-inducers returning, she clamped the screen to her chest to hide the holographic emitter’s light. The orbs went by again, missing her. A minute of nauseating, cold silence passed with her staring at her now-grimy legs. The E-90 offered some reassurance, just from holding it.

Light swam over the walls as a rectangular bot floated into the room. She tensed, squeezing her weapon tight. As the source of the glow edged around the desk, she leaned out from cover and aimed at it. A handful of yellow holographic exclamation points and question marks appeared in the air around it. “Please, no hurt” appeared below a cartoon child’s face.

She relaxed.

The delivery bot shuddered, nosing closer to her as though it was a battered dog.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m getting chased by orbs.”

It pivoted back, abandoning the hesitance in its approach. The delivery bot sniffed at her purse where the NetMini was and chirped.

“Shh.” Kirsten waved in a ‘keep it down’ gesture. Amazing how these things seem to convey mood.

The front doors clicked open, and she removed two boxes. After a happy little wobble, the delivery bot whirled about and took off. She shredded both plastic cartons, removing a one-piece dark blue general-purpose athletic suit. A pinch at the gem on her collarbone rendered the expensive body-drape limp and it fell off, leaving her clad only in panties for as long as it took her to leap into the new garment. A quick-mesh fastener closed it from crotch to throat. The grey sneakers adjusted themselves to her feet at the touch of a button.

Kirsten looked down at herself and scowled. Amazing how not being half-naked makes me feel confident. Now, she wanted to go bot hunting rather than hide. Don’t be stupid, they’re still orbs. A jogging suit won’t make you a better shot. Not wanting to waste so much money, she rolled the expensive body drape into a silk log and stuffed it in her purse. Konstantin would be pissed at me if I lost it. Oh, no. Maybe I should go back for the shoes.

She spun to face heavy metal scraping behind her. A refrigerator-sized cabinet, some manner of old network storage array, glided out of the path of a large assault bot. The body was as big as a guard dog, with eight gunmetal blue legs pulling it through a gap in the wall. It shifted, angling itself at her. Kirsten did not give it the chance to fire. Several blasts split it in two jittering halves, her Class 4 laser making short work of its armor plating.

Kirsten kissed the E-90. Sure, there were higher-classed laser weapons, but both were rifle sized. As far as pistols went, there was nothing more powerful without going into plasma weaponry―which the police could not get their hands on. Sure, the E90 had over-penetration problems most times―but she adored it at that moment. Dots of light swarmed at the far end of the room, the size of a quarter of a city block. The derelict office she chose to hide in was, for the most part, wide-open space with only a few walls. The pursuing orbs had gone around the building, having missed her. Now, catty-corner to where she stood, they decided to cut through the ground floor rather than move around the outside.

“Dammit, how the hell did they find me?” She shot once, a near miss, before running for the window.

From the inside, the bottom of the window was at the level of her face. Kirsten leapt up, hitting the windowsill with her chest as she wrapped her arms over it. Thunder roared; bullets pulverized the concrete around her to dust as she pulled her body through the hole and slithered on her belly into the alley.

“Someone tracked your order,” said the NetMini.

“Dammit. Who?” Kirsten crawled through puffs of powderized concrete chasing bullets through the wall above her.

“How should I know? I’m a NetMini, not a GlobeNet Neural Interface Deck.”

Kirsten scrambled to her feet as a lull in the shooting came. The sneakers made her feel faster. A short sprint later, she ducked behind a crashed hovercar embedded in the wall of an abandoned building. The ground in the area was etched and pitted by Cryomil that long-ago leaked from the wreckage. With one hand keeping the E-90 pointed at the window, she climbed through and seized her NetMini in her left hand.

“Where is my backup?”

“I have no idea,” it said. “I’m not on the department network, all I can do is make vid calls.”

“Did you call them?”

It made a soft chirp. “System logs do not show an ack.”

“Ack?” Kirsten blinked. “How did you not get an ack? You sent it?”

“The most likely scenario― “

Kirsten fired at the first orb to show itself.

“―is that the transmission was intercepted.”

She glared at the wounded orb spinning out of control. It tried to re-aim, but the damage kept it moving in the flight of a drunken moth. The bot had been a difficult shot before, now it was futile to try given her sense of skill with the weapon. At least the erratic movement ruined its aim as much as it prevented her from hitting it.

“Memory dial six,” said Kirsten.

“Calling,” said the NetMini.

“Patrol craft,” added Kirsten’s recorded voice.

Her chosen ‘ringing’ animation of a prancing white cat bounded across thin air in hologram for a little more than sixteen seconds before she heard the standard departmental voicemail announcement. Command did not permit personnel to customize the vidmail greeting in their patrol units, both for reasons of personal security as well as making it easier to trade assigned vehicles.

“Dorian? Are you there? Please tell me I left the damn speaker on. If you can hear this, I need a hand. Getting chased by a damn hacker and his pet bots.”

Static.

“Dammit.” She gazed at the indigo smog above her, lined with glowing green-white threads of hovercar traffic and ad-bots. I could beacon for him but… no way, not calm enough. Shit!

Another orb poked out of the window. She fired, chasing it back inside. It tried again, with the same result. The third time, it popped up and right back down. She held her fire. The damn thing is baiting me… why?

She spun at the sudden whine of a hover-inducer behind her, facing to the rear as another orb careened around the corner. Not bothering to shoot, it flew straight into her gut. She crumpled over it, carried into the air several feet before she slid away and fell onto the dead hovercar.

Despite being stunned and winded from the hit, she retained the presence of mind to hold on to her weapon. The orb continued to rise; unaware it lost its passenger for several more seconds. When it did, it flipped over and rocketed down. Kirsten flung her arm across her body, using the momentum to initiate a roll to the side. The fifteen-pound solid plastisteel ball smashed into the hood, denting it, and bouncing her to the street. She wanted to curl in a fetal position and cradle her stomach. Normal breathing felt like a distant pleasant memory at that moment.

Damn thing must be out of ammo. She forced herself onto her back and had the E-90 up and ready when the orb leapt at her for another try. Her aim was a split second slow. The shot gashed the side of it open, knocking the sphere into a wide spark-trailing arc that glanced off the building across the alley with a bell-like clang. Unable to fly any more, it swiveled to face her on the ground. She let her arm fall to the side, almost laying on the traction-coated driving surface. The trigger squeeze caused nothing. The readout showed the E-mag at two percent charge; not enough juice for the powerful laser core to get even one more shot.

“Shit.” She rolled upright.

Running again, she took the first left, went one block and a half and skidded through the next possible right. Two orbs waited for her, causing her to squeak to a halt on her new sneakers. With a startled yelp, she leapt back before they could shoot and continued straight. The orbs chased her around the corner, weapons extended but not firing.

A lone orb foiled her next attempt at a left turn in a similar manner. Another pair emerged from a street two blocks distant, forcing her to turn right. No orbs blocked that path and she sighed with relief until another one came out of an alley and caused a rapid left turn. Leaping over trash piles, Kirsten screamed at her NetMini.

“Siri, please get me some backup. Division 1, Five, Six, hell, even goddamn Nine. I don’t care, get someone out here!”

“I’m sorry, Kirsten. There is a lot of signal interference here. You’re off the map now, the closest relay point is approximately 1.44 miles to your relative northwest.”

“I’m in a damn black zone?”

“I’m sorry, Kirsten. There is no navigational information available for your current GPS location.”

“I’m in a damn black zone.” Kirsten all but shrieked as another sudden orb forced her to turn.

Panic lessened a dozen paces later, enough for her brain to reboot. Why aren’t they shooting anymore? They can’t all be out of ammo. It’s like… She stumbled to a slow jog. They’re herding me somewhere specific. She clung to her empty weapon for security. “They could’ve hit me, I bet. They’re trying to get me to go somewhere… What the hell is going on?”

“Eleven point three percent of victims of stranger-initiated sexual assault survive. Your odds will increase to seventy-three point nine percent if you inform your attacker you are a police officer.”

“Gee…” Kirsten gawked at her purse. “Thanks, Siri.”

“If you are being pursued by an organ-harvester, your odds of survival are somewhat less. Would you like to hear the―”

“No thanks.” She came to a halt and stuffed the empty weapon back in the purse.

Alone, off net, and with no charge left in her only E-mag, Kirsten surprised herself at how little fear she felt. For a few seconds, she entertained the fantasy of having ordered additional E-mags instead of clothing better suited for running and gunning with bots in the middle of a slum. As long as there was a living person behind this attack, she still had mind blast.

She was not going to be anyone’s victim.

Bullets danced across the ground, a shot obvious in its deliberate miss. Her brain figured that out a few seconds after she resumed running for her life. Okay, asshole. Fine, you want me, I got somethin’ for you. She went around another corner, ushered by the orbs through a series of turns until she found herself at the opening of a dead-end alley packed with trash-crushers. Spent autoinjectors covered the street in a glittering Christmas patina of red and green plastic. The area stank of chemicals and human waste; the aroma of synthetic booze and vomit was noticeable on every third breath.

“Alright, shithead. I’m here.” Kirsten folded her arms, scanning the alley for any sign of movement.

Given the surroundings, she expected organized crime or a gang. They probably saw me in that slinky thing and thought I was a damn call girl.

“Come on out, already. I’m not a damn escort, and I’m not at all interested in working for you.”

Her voice echoed. The orbs filled in behind her, all four of them, still not shooting. She gave them a dismissive smirk until she noticed the tiny clicking noises they made. They were still trying to shoot her; they had run out of bullets.

A loud metallic thud made her spin forward, as the sound of wrenching metal broke the silence. Two trash-crushers skidded to the side and tumbled over, flung out of the path of a spider-bot with a body as big as a car. A rotary cannon emerged from its back and blades extended from its two front legs, raised like the chelicerae of a massive tarantula.

No surface thoughts. Nothing to mind blast.

Time seemed to slow as she whirled away from it in search of anywhere to dive for cover. She faced into blinding light coming at her fast. Arms crossed over her face, she threw herself to the ground amid the roar of a machinegun. Heat just shy of painful bloomed over her from above while the clatter of eighty rounds per second struck armor plating. A great concussive smash shook the air in the dead end.

Silence.

At the jangling of a small metal rod upon the ground, Kirsten’s head popped out from under her arms. The orbs were nowhere in sight. Hissing came from behind her, where a Division 0 patrol craft sat at the center of a cloud of fog and fumes. Ion drives shot lightning across the plastisteel from where the emitter ports touched the ground. The electricity flickered azure through the rolling mist. At the nose end, a mangled heap of metal spider legs curled over the hood. Dorian emerged through the closed door, jogging to her side. He crouched, the strain visible in his expression as he summoned the energy to become solid enough to wipe a trickle of blood from her chin.

“Am I going to have to start following you around?”

Her attempt to laugh hurt. “Guess you got my vidmail.”

“Yeah. This car’s getting quite the body count. A demon, a ninja, now a tarant bot.”

Kirsten would’ve laughed if it didn’t hurt so much.

She forced herself to stand, cradling an arm over her stomach as she leaned the other on the wall for support. Dorian opened his mouth as if to speak when the patrol craft shifted and slid backwards with a horrible scraping metal screech. Kirsten leapt backwards, not enough air remained in her lungs to voice the scream she tried to loft. Red lights and a menacing posture lent a sense of anger to the massive arachno-bot. The crash had reduced the barrels of the rotary cannon to a twisted ruin that flew to pieces when it tried to spin them up. Only the vibro blade-tipped legs remained for weapons. Kirsten swiped at Dorian, trying to cling to him as her body reacted with primitive terror.

Dorian glanced at it, his eyebrows drawing together in an unimpressed glare. A wisp of pale energy surrounded him for an instant and faded. The giant machine took a step closer before it shuddered, swayed, and collapsed to the ground―drained of power. One vibro blade flapped at them. He squinted, and the mass of metal went limp. He shook his head as if perturbed by the interruption.

Kirsten giggled, forcing herself solid to spirits before falling into him. He carried her to the car and waited for the automatic door to open. Alas, without the armband computer of her uniform, it did not recognize her.

“I’m not that messed up,” she said, reaching for the handle.

Dorian eased her into the driver’s seat, where she nudged the still-active car two feet straight up so she could extend the ground wheels before even closing her door.

“ Ops, this is Agent Wren. I need backup to my location… and a medic.” Kirsten let herself breathe for a moment before poking at the car’s comm. panel. Evan’s face appeared in hologram in the middle of the console.

“Mom!”

She hated the look on his face. He had obviously seen blood. “I’m fine, hon. Are you okay? Nila said you were upset.”

Now he looked embarrassed. “I was scared. I had a bad dream,” he whispered, no doubt trying to prevent Nila or Shani from hearing. “I nightmared Cappin Ezzeh was tellin’ me something bad happened to you.”

Son of a bitch, he’s a precog. Kirsten shivered. He’s gotta be. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Someone tried to hurt me, but they didn’t know who they were dealing with. I’m fine.”

He wiped his eyes. It took a few minutes―and the sound of approaching sirens―to convince him to let her off the line.

“He’s a precog, Dorian. Evan had a dream about me dying.”

Dorian cocked an eyebrow at her. “Precogs see the future for anyone, almost at random. The boy’s seeing danger in your future. Such things have been known to happen with clairvoyants without predisposition to precognitive ability.”

Kirsten could not stop shaking. “If he’s a precog, C-Branch is gonna take him in the middle of the night.”

“Now you’ve been watching too many fiction holos.” Dorian held her hand. “Chief Carter can overrule anyone other than the Senate when it comes to matters of psionics. Don’t panic yet. So far, it’s only been you he’s had dreams about. Guess it means he loves you.”

She smiled through tears. “Yeah, you’re right. They didn’t find precognitive aptitude when they ran his battery. It’s gotta be clairvoyance.”

“Most likely.” Dorian glanced to the right as several Division 1 patrol craft landed, lights aglow. “It is well documented that clairvoyants with a strong emotional bond to a person will feel it when the person is in danger. A precog would’ve seen it a week ago, not shared it while it happened.”

“Agent?” asked an armored woman to her left.

Kirsten squinted at the mounted lights on the helmet and shoulder pads pointing at her. “Yeah. Some asshat sent an army of killer bots after me. No, I don’t have any idea who or why, but I am going to find out―even if I have to invoke the dead to do so.”

“Umm. Medic, over here.” The Patrol officer stood up and leaned on the door. “Think she took a shot to the head.”

irsten traced her fingers over the four E-mags on the left side of her silver equipment belt as she stood behind Tech Chang in the network operations section of the Regional Tech Center. A jogging suit and sneakers had felt like putting on tangible confidence; her duty uniform made her feel superhuman. Fear and humiliation had gone down the drain of the autoshower following twenty minutes in a tube to repair whatever ruptured in her gut from the kamikaze orb. She had not paid attention to the doctor’s explanation―a combination of not caring to know and being too happy to be out of pain.

Kirsten glanced around while Sam worked, raising an eyebrow at a dozen incense cones on the workstation of the arrogant tech two desks over. The look on her face caused a chuckle from the pink-haired woman across the room.

Sam looked up. “He’s trying paganism this week. I’m not sure who did what to his system, but he’s convinced it’s possessed. Something happened to it he could not explain from a technical standpoint.”

Dorian laughed himself silly.

“Got something, Agent,” said Sam.

She stooped over his shoulder to look at the screen. He sat motionless, staring at her face. When he said nothing in a minute, she looked at him. They stared at each other for a moment more. He risked a smile. Kirsten felt guilty.

“Sam? Thanks for helping me out here; I hope you don’t think I’m taking advantage of you or anything.”

“No…” his face snapped forward, blushing. “I was just thinking of the dinner you mentioned a while ago. We, umm.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been very busy lately.” She picked at the bracelet. “I’m not trying to play with you, Sam. I meant that. We’ll go out. I just need to find time.” She leaned on the desk as a pang of nausea swam through her gut.

“What was that?” asked Dorian.

“I had a fifteen-pound orb bot fly at full speed into my stomach. Doc said I might feel pains here and there for a few days even though everything is fixed.”

“I got a signal lock on those bots.” Sam shook off his puppy-eyed stare and lapsed into professional mode. “I was able to filter out the signal from two dozen advert bots. Whoever did it routed the control signal through the GlobeNet into ComTec’s private network. Through that, they used the ad-bots as a citywide antenna. It didn’t affect ComTec’s operations. Even if they noticed it, I doubt they would have cared.”

“They’d have asked him to pay for the bandwidth, but let him do it,” she grumbled.

“Convinced it’s a man? It’s a hacker. You could be chasing a woman or even a little kid.”

Kirsten went stiff.

Dorian rocked back on his heels. “No, they’re not going to execute a kid for trying to kill a cop, but I still wouldn’t want to be them. Relax. Most kid hackers don’t do the assassination thing.”

She shook her head and looked at the terminal. “That the address?”

“Yep,” said Sam.

“You’re awesome.” She kissed him on the cheek, leaving him limp in the chair as she ran to the door.

“Nicole,” yelled Kirsten, sprinting through their office area. “You bored enough to go tactical with me?”

“Huh, what?” She peeled pink and white Hello Kitty headphones off, the last birthday gift Kirsten had gotten her. “Did you say something?”

Kirsten jogged past her, shouting. “I’m going tactical, wanna come along?”

“You know it!” chirped Nicole, chasing her friend into the locker room.

Kirsten had just about stripped out of all the hard bits: belt, arm guard, boots, in preparation for donning Psi Armor when Eze rushed through the door. Nicole had stripped down to her underwear and had one leg in a mesh stim-suit when she gave him a stare like a child caught stealing cookies.

“Wren, what’s going on?” Eze halted nearby, hands held out in an inquisitive gesture.

Undeterred, Kirsten pulled leg plates out of a locker. “Tech got a fix on the shithead that sent those bots to kill me. I’m going after him.”

“K, you should put a stim-suit on.” Nicole shrugged the mesh over her shoulders and pulled the zipper up.

Kirsten stared at the five flat cartridges held tight to Nicole’s bare skin. “I got stimpaks on my belt. No time.”

“Yeah but these”―Nicole tapped one of them― “go off automatically when you get the shit kicked out of you.”

“ Fine.” Kirsten dropped the armor and slipped out of her Division 0 blacks.

Eze turned ninety degrees to his left to avoid the impression he was staring at two women in their underwear. “Are you sure you don’t want to leave this to One? They can handle a hacker.”

Nicole skipped the uniform, going right for the armor. At the look Kirsten gave her, she laughed. “The armor is enclosed, plus it’s damn hot. It’s like wearing two uniforms. You’d know that if you wore it every damn day.”

Kirsten slipped into a stim-suit and replaced the uniform blacks on top of it.

Nicole shuddered. “You’re gonna overheat.”

“I’ll be fine.” She clipped on leg armor and grabbed the chest plate. “Captain, I think something paranormal may be involved here. I don’t remember pissing off any corporations lately, and I can’t think of who might want to kill me this week.”

Eze laughed; a nervous sort of sound more worry than mirth. “You’re going to take some Division 1 backup with you.”

“Sure, as long as they are willing to get the hell out of there if things get weird.”

He nodded and went off to make the arrangements with his counterpart ‘across the hall.’ Kirsten slipped on the armored gloves, cinched the fasteners closed, and grabbed a helmet. She spun, finding Nicole armored up and tapping her foot.

“Wow, you didn’t need help getting it on. I’m impressed.”

Kirsten grinned. “Let’s go pull a plug.”

Drifting in silence, the black patrol craft angled downward and descended to the level of the fifth story. Sam’s trace flickered in the corner of Kirsten’s eye, a pulsing yellow line through the muted blues of a city map. Nicole gawked at a mass of twisted I-girders protruding from the side of a building abandoned before she was born.

“Missile?”

Kirsten glanced to the right. “Yeah, looks like it.”

“We’re gonna need thicker armor.”

“That happened thirty years ago,” said Kirsten. “The Steel Reaver uprising, when the military forced them out into the Badlands.”

Nicole stared at the dark grey shapes, buildings emerging from the low-hanging fog, and whistled. “Why did they sell cyberware to crazy people?”

“They probably weren’t crazy when they got―”

“This is a good plan,” blurted Nicole.

“―it.” Kirsten guided the car around a building, bleeding off more altitude as she flipped the switch to extend the ground wheels.

The women stared at each other for a moment.

Nicole blinked first. “What?”

“Just waiting for you to finish. You always talk over me when you get excited.”

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do, and this time―”

“He won’t expect just two of us.”

Kirsten found the switches for the emergency lights above her head fascinating. I was gonna let you finish first. “Yeah.”

The next three minutes passed without conversation as Kirsten navigated through a gap in the wall of an old building. Parking inside an abandoned office on the third floor concealed the car, protecting it as well as keeping their presence here under wraps.

“You need any help with the helmet?”

Kirsten crossed her arms and tapped her foot, waiting for Nicole to finish putting hers on and look up.

“Guess that’s a no.” Nicole tapped the side of her head-armor twice until the HUD lit up. “I’ve been shot in the head too often, time for new electronics.”

“Once is too often.” Kirsten blinked.

“Naw, they had little class two pistols. Can’t get through this armor, but it was like getting punched by a doll.”

“You have strange hobbies.” Kirsten whispered, drawing the E-90. She found herself checking the charge meter to ensure it was at one hundred percent, which translated to about twenty-four shots. She raised her left arm and studied the tactical holographic map that shimmered in above it. “Okay, down to ground level, one block over, and underground.”

Nicole nodded, not speaking.

Kirsten led the way, followed by Dorian and Nicole. She found it strange―but reassuring―how ditz-Nicole could flip on a credit chip and turn into tactical-Nicole. Her thoughts returned to when she had gone off on that ganger, Sicario. It was anyone’s guess how much of that was acting tough or if she really would have killed the man for shooting at her, even after he was disarmed. She hoped the girl she had dormed with as a teen couldn’t kill so casually.

Two floors of debris-laden offices later, Kirsten struggled with a metal door at the ground floor. She grunted and shoved into it as hard as she could, but succeeded only in getting an inch of gap. Winded, she rolled away and caught her breath while leaning on the wall by where a fire extinguisher used to be.

Dorian walked through it, returning a few seconds later. “There’s a desk and six chairs barricaded against it.”

Nicole holstered her E-86 and cracked her knuckles. Palms outstretched, she glared at the door and concentrated. The door rattled, dust swirled about, and a faint creaking groan of stressed metal filled the air. The upper and lower edges of the metal door warped outward; Nicole’s telekinetic assault left her in a light coat of sweat.

“K… need a spike, say somethin’ that’ll piss me off.”

Kirsten stared at her. “Umm…”

Nicole’s eyes flicked to her for an instant, and back to the door. “I know you won’t mean it, I just need a surge of anger to move this damn thing.”

“Your parents wouldn’t have divorced if you weren’t psionic.”

A massive rush of air flooded down the stairwell as the door, and everything behind it, vanished. Seconds later, a loud hollow whump of the desk striking the wall of a building across the street echoed over itself several times, laced with the delicate sound of breaking glass. Clattering continued for several seconds as smaller bits of debris fell to the ground. When the dust cleared, Kirsten found Nicole staring at her, tears streaming down her face. The fatigue of such a psionic exertion did little to dull the accusatory look in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Nikki, You asked me. Come on, you know what my mother did to me for being psionic.” Kirsten stared down. “I wished all they did was divorce.”

“Yeah.” Nicole slid her hands under her visor and breathed. “You didn’t mean it. We were both problems ‘cause of what we are.”

“Can we maybe hold off on the sobbing on each other’s shoulder bit until after we get the moron who tried to kill me?”

Nicole nodded, wiped her hands down over her face, and drew her sidearm. She loosed a sharp exhale and found her usual pleasant expression. “Okay. Let’s do it, but you owe me an orange bomb.”

“The glass it comes in is the size of your helmet, that much alcohol would kill you.”

“Hah.” Nicole laughed. “You’ve never seen me drink, have you?”

“She’d at least wind up in a medical tank if you drank one alone.” Dorian smirked.

Kirsten made a ‘yeah, probably’ face at him, and led the way through the door and across a gutted lobby. A C-shaped clean mark on the floor indicated where the reception desk had once been. Nicole whistled again.

“Wow, they even stole the fake plants.”

“Likely scavenged anything they could get their hands on for survival out here,” said Dorian.

“Why don’t they just live where civilization still exists?”

“Who?” asked Nicole.

“Sorry, I keep forgetting you can’t hear him.”

Nicole blinked. “Who?”

“Dorian.”

The redhead went rigid as if ice water had just gone down her back. “He’s here?”

“Shh! Get down,” whispered Kirsten, as she followed her own advice.

A pair of orb bots across the street glinted in the waning afternoon sun. They circled the crushed remains of a steel desk, embedded in the wall of the facing building. Kirsten stayed out of sight, watching their motion as rendered by the tactical armor’s sensors. Amber wireframe lines projected on her close-up view of a solid wall.

“If they come in here, which they probably will considering the desk-shaped hole in the wall”―Dorian shot Nicole a disapproving smirk― “our hacker friend will know something’s coming. If I knock them out in the street, it will look like a system malfunction.”

Kirsten held up a hand. “If you zonk the bots, won’t that make him think Div Nine jammers?”

“Or a Div Five EMP rifle.” Nicole went wide-eyed. “Those things are so cool!”

“Depends on how savvy our hacker is,” said Dorian, stroking his chin with one finger. “Both of those would have static on the display prior to shutdown. I drain the power, they just konk out. Unless he notices the lack of static, we’re made.” Dorian grumbled. “We have to risk it. If they see you two running for cover, it will be worse.”

Nicole tapped at a virtual keyboard over her left arm. “They probably have thermal, maybe motion detection.”

A woman’s voice, thick with accent and nervousness, filled her ears from the comm. “Agent Wren, this is Sergeant Fernandez, Division Six. We’re in position around you. We got one target on thermal, and bunch of EMF signatures.”

“Copy, Sergeant. Keep safe distance until I verify there is no paranormal presence here.”

“Roger, Agent. Don’t gotta tell me that twice.”

Kirsten jumped a second later at the sound of two heavy metal spheres clanging against the plastisteel road outside.

“He’s blind, come on,” yelled Dorian from outside.

Even knowing only she could hear him, Kirsten cringed at the sound of shouting. “Come on, it’s clear,” she whispered, grabbing the ridge of a blast hole and vaulting through it.

Dorian waited between two inert orb bots, standing in the shadow of the desk. Kirsten flattened herself against the wall, staring up at the crumpled metal jutting out overhead. She looked from it to Nicole.

What? asked Nicole, telepathically.

I didn’t think about how much it would hurt, I’m sorry. Kirsten glanced up at the desk.

Nicole gave her shoulder a light shove. My fault, I asked. Didn’t you want to save the sappy shit for later?

Kirsten held up her left forearm, checking the signal map floating above it. Yeah.

She put a leg through a window and climbed into a dim space filled with piles of disassembled office cubes. Off-grey cloth-paneled squares, disassembled cube stations, stacked almost to the ceiling in haphazard clusters created a maze full of rats only a touch smaller than an average feline. The creatures shifted to glare at her as if challenging the intrusion of their domain. As Dorian entered, their aggression evaporated and they scurried out of sight, swarming over each other and squealing.

“Stay close to me, please.” Kirsten gave Dorian a pleading look.

I thought we’d have gang problems here. Nicole lingered outside, surveying the area.

“There’s enough rumor about the Steel Reavers still being in this area that other gangs are afraid to try and move in,” muttered Kirsten, as she kept a wary eye on the floor for more rats.

“Why do you sound scared?” asked Nicole, sliding off the ledge to her feet inside. “Is there another demon here?”

“Big ass rats.” Kirsten pointed at the nest-piles.

“Rats?” Nicole jogged over and shook her head. “Seriously? You’re afraid of rats? They’re kind of cute.”

“Cute? They were bigger than the cat you seem to think I have.”

“I thought your cat died?” Nicole faked a pout.

Kirsten held a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture as she pointed at a thick black wire sheathed in an outer layer of fluorescent lime plastic running along the ceiling. The outer transparent layer contained a honeycomb pattern in metal filament. That’s gotta be his relay. I bet it goes to an obelisk transmitter on the roof.

Nicole pulled a knife. Kirsten grabbed her arm.

No, cut it and it will warn him we’re coming. If he was ready for us, his balls would be all over us. I don’t think he knows we’re here.

With a hand over her face to stifle the urge to laugh, Nicole winked. When we get outta here, you should surprise that Russian of yours. You need it bad.

Confusion lasted for the duration of one blink before she realized what she said. Dammit. Orbs. You know what I meant.

Kirsten frowned at the floor, noting a large amount of debris: planks, bits of old chairs, odd scraps of cube farm connectors, and a handful of old reassemblers. As she took her first step in search of clear floor, bright amber streaks of light came into view. Kirsten held her left hand up and made a fist. Nicole froze as Kirsten’s helmet swung around to face her.

IR triplines.

They may have been explosives or simple alarms, though Kirsten crept forward as if one misplaced boot would kill everyone in the city. Six devices and twenty meters of corridor later, she let herself breathe again. Less light made it to the interior hallway, a dark shade of blue painted with the images of bounding, grinning stuffed animals sitting on a cloud. The smell and flavor of mildew hung in the air, no doubt emanating from a patch of mold growing on the drywall around a sign indicating the day care center was to the left.

Past the life-sized cartoon animals, Kirsten followed the signal trace. The corridor veered right, heading along a series of floor-to-ceiling windows through which the ruin of the company day-care was visible. A first-generation nanny doll slumped against the far wall; dark green mold had grown through its primitive artificial skin to give it the appearance of a fuzzy zombie.

Nicole aimed at it. “If that damn thing moves, I’m gonna scream.”

“There’s no power in it. If it moves, you should scream,” said Dorian.

“Dorian said it’s got no power. I don’t feel anything either, so… it won’t move.” Despite knowing it was inert, Kirsten could not keep from staring at the dead machine as she crept through the room. She felt like a six-year-old staring at the evil doll in a rocking chair by the window, waiting for it to move.

A squeak cracked the air as Nicole’s boot found an old toy.

Kirsten almost fainted.

They went still.

What does this guy have that you’re so tense? Nicole’s eyebrows crawled together. I thought we were going after a deck jockey?

Kirsten lowered her E-90, trying to breathe. I don’t know. I guess the eerie emptiness has me on edge.

Nicole squinted. Are you sure you don’t feel anything spooky? You usually don’t get this rattled by empty rooms. Heck, the stuff you’ve seen, I’m surprised anything scares you.

Eyes closed, Kirsten reached out with her mind in search of any source of paranormal energy. Dorian’s presence shimmered like a light in the dark. Something else was there as well, something malevolent and close. Close enough to touch her. Small… weak… evil…

I don’t like that. You’re getting paler.

Nicole’s voice in her mind carried the shock of fingers snapped past her eyes. She jumped, spinning once. Her fearful expression melted into one of annoyance. I do feel something, but it’s weak. Could be a victim of the Reavers, maybe a Harbinger nearby. I don’t see anything.

Kirsten suppressed the urge to shiver. She did not want to say it aloud, or even telepathically, but the feeling had been dogging the edge of her conscious mind for several days. In fact, the only time she could remember in recent memory where she did not feel as though something had been following her was when she visited Father Villera. As comforting as the thought was, it scared her more with the idea whatever it was had been afraid to enter the church.

That could only mean one thing.

On the far side of the daycare classroom, Kirsten forced open a maintenance door and took a narrow cinderblock-walled corridor into the boiler room. Between two massive furnaces, a cluster of electronics hid beneath a dingy olive-green tarpaulin. Four fuboxes, military-grade fusion generators, hummed. The three-foot cubes were designated as portable, at least for anyone capable of lifting the weight of a small car.

Inch-thick black cables ran from them through an improvised trapdoor made from a large slab of rusting metal. Sounds of a violent video game leaked through the gap created by the wires.

“One moment,” said Dorian, as he sank through the floor.

Kirsten made a face at the giant half-inch slab. That’s gonna make a lot of noise.

Nicole shook her head. I can move it quiet, but it will take a while.

Dorian emerged through the floor. “You’re lucky, K. Adult male, about twenty-five to thirty. He’s alone, but he’s got a mess of orb bots on shelves.”

The trapdoor wobbled as Nicole concentrated. Kirsten kept her weapon trained on the hole as the slab floated upward at an agonizing pace. Faint squeaks came from crude hinges welded to the floor, too soft to be noticed among the sounds of digital warfare below. On delicate telekinetic fingers, the hatch moved until it touched the wall behind it. Nicole sagged, again out of breath.

“It wasn’t too heavy, I’m just tired from holding it up for five minutes.”

Kirsten nodded and lowered herself down a cheap portable ladder their quarry had positioned by his exit. Heavy pipes and rat-chewed wire bundles lined both walls of a narrow passageway crossing beneath the abandoned office tower. Forty yards away, a human outline glowed in the multicolored plasma of an enormous holo-bar display. The room shook with the sounds of explosions and machinegun fire, with the occasional interruption of a combat aircraft going overhead.

Wow, retro-gamer. He’s using a screen.

The pitch of Nicole’s telepathic giggle made Kirsten’s back muscles tighten. She raised her arm, E-90 out. With one final glance at her armband screen to confirm the signal source, she tiptoed forward. A VIP escape elevator shaft occupied the front part of the room, blocked off by armored doors indicating it was still unused, no doubt waiting at the upper floor.

She edged past several freestanding mesh shelves full of bot parts, power cells, and strange bladed weapons too small or unwieldy for a person to use. As she shrugged past the end of the shelf, she adopted a solid two-handed grip on the laser and trained it on the man’s head. Unkempt, shaggy black hair sprouted from under a dark blue wool cap, raining down over a ten-year-old military jacket four sizes too big for its wearer. He slouched back in a chair, fingers a blur through a pair of intangible holographic controllers. Two deck wires extended out of the hair at the back of his head, one draped left and one right. Both connected to net decks.

“Police! Hands where I can see them.”

The man did not react in the least, continuing to pilot his virtual soldier down a narrow Martian trench. Kirsten tilted her head at the oddity of watching World War II unfold on Mars… with aliens. Game designers get the good drugs. She peeked at his surface thoughts and backed out immediately with a mild headache. The man had two thought patterns occurring at once; half his brain was in the middle of cyberspace trying to break his way through a door, while the other played a game in the real world.

Kirsten snorted air out of her nose to chase away the smell of a body a month overdue for a bath, laced with the sweet fragrance of Flowerbasket.

“Good thing we were so quiet coming in,” said Nicole as she stomped past and made a ‘come here’ gesture with her hand.

Earbuds tore loose from his head with audible pops. Stunned by the feeling of it, the man clamped his hands over his ears.

Kirsten edged a step closer. “You there, this is the police. Keep your hands where I can see them. You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of an officer of the law.”

“He tried to kill you,” said Nicole. “I hope he resists, so I can shoot him myself.”

“Panic code alpha!” wailed the man. “Wipe sequence whiskey tango fox―”

The wires popped out of the back of his neck, courtesy of an annoyed telekinetic. He fell face-first over his desk, from screaming to corpse-like in one eighth of a second. Crashing, banging metal made Kirsten jump, as a shelf on the right side of the room upended itself and fell into a cloud. A digitized metallic roar scraped through the air near two glowing points of red light in the dust.

A four-armed humanoid bot, about six feet tall and made of unpainted shiny plastisteel, lurched out of a pile of debris. On each of its four arms, an assault rifle mechanism chirped to life and swiveled forward. The two upper, larger arms had mounted tri-barrel rotary cannons while the smaller pair one-armed standard weapons. Automatic ammunition feed chutes emerged from ports along its sides, extending to connect while the weapons spun up to firing speed.

Freeze. Kirsten’s eyes glowed.

It ignored her psionic command. “Pathetic mortals, you have trespassed in the domain of Mordac the mag―”

Clank.

The skeletal bot’s emergence from the pile of junk continued forward, culminating in a headfirst meeting with the poured concrete ground. The spinning cannons bucked and jumped as the barrels clattered to a halt on the floor. Kirsten’s shaking E-90 continued aiming at its back for a full minute after it ceased moving. Dorian winked.

The hacker moaned. Kirsten swiveled on him.

“On the floor, now!” she yelled.

He fumbled at his coat, as if reaching for something inside.

Nicole flung an arm outward. The man’s hat flew off and his head jerked upward as if someone had a fistful of hair. He swayed forward, at his desk, and proceeded to smash his own head into the surface six times in a rhythmic beat. After the last hit, he slid down, unconscious and bleeding from the nose.

“Son of a bitch,” growled Nicole.

She ran up on the body and kicked the chair out from under him. With all the delicacy of an inebriated moose, she threw him to the floor and relieved him of a pistol and two grenades.

“Hey, easy.” Kirsten put a hand on Nicole’s shoulder. “We’re here to arrest him, not beat him to death.”

Nicole did not look at her as she gathered the man’s arms together and cuffed him. “What difference does it make? He tried to kill you. They’re gonna execute him anyway.”

“Nikki, you don’t want that on your conscience.” Kirsten rolled the guy over and propped him into a seated position against his desk. “Besides, he’s just a contractor. I want to know who hired him.”

A stimpak to the side of the neck woke him. Thick blood bubbled out of both nostrils as he shifted, testing his ability to brute-force his way out of the police-issued binders. He gazed at Kirsten, then Nicole, and smiled.

Nicole grabbed him by the lapels of a shirt so dirty it looked sticky, hauling him up to his feet. “He’s gonna make a stripper joke. I’m just gonna kill him so I don’t have to hear it again.”

“Hey.” Kirsten grabbed her arm. “Let me talk to him first.”

He groaned as Nicole forced him into an ungainly backward lean over the desk with her forearm pressed into his throat.

“Try me, jackass. You attempted to kill a cop, who also happens to be a close friend of mine. I could end you right here and get a medal for it.”

The grin, and the color in his face, faded.

“Look…” Kirsten stared at him. “You did send your little bots after me. By all rights, the law says you’re supposed to die for attempt murder on a cop. I know it wasn’t your idea. You guys never do anything without getting paid for it. Just tell me who hired you and I’ll put in a request for commutation to life.”

“I… If you kill me, you’ll never find out.” He thrashed backward, a futile effort to evade Nicole’s grip.

The redhead’s stunrod leapt on its own from her belt to her hand. “Please do that again. Look, K, this piece of shit isn’t worth it. Just mind-read him, get what you need, and let the law do its thing.”

He stared at the weapon, all fight leaving him at the sight of it flying.

“Kirsten…” Dorian reached toward her.

She glanced at him, then glared at Nicole. “Nikki, that’s not the way we do things.”

“He tried to kill you, will you stop being so nice to him?” Nicole shoved her arm into his throat. “He ain’t gonna say a damn thing. Bastard isn’t even afraid of us. Hell, I’ll do it.”

“Kirsten!” Dorian yelled. “Get her away from him, now!”

Nicole glared into the man’s eyes. Kirsten jumped forward to grab her friend by the shoulder, but was too slow. The instant a telepathic link formed between the suspect’s brain and Nicole’s, the man fainted on his feet. His face sagged into a drooling caricature, eyes rolled back into his head, and he exhaled a dark crimson mist from his mouth and nose, which Nicole breathed in.

The redhead staggered away, gagging, losing her grip on the stunrod as she stumbled to her knees and held her head. Kirsten ignored the unconscious man falling to the side and shook Nicole by both shoulders. When there was no reaction, she gathered her astral energies and felt a presence within her.

The room blurred, and Kirsten slammed into the wall fifteen feet away, upside down. Telekinetic force pinned her while Nicole stood up and flashed a demonic grin. Her deep blue eyes had faded milky white and nearby veins darkened into a raccoon mask. She glanced down at herself, cupping her breasts in both hands.

“This is nice. I should take women more often,” said a male voice. Nicole shook her head with a dismissive sigh. Kirsten struggled to look away as Nicole pawed herself. “No, that would be a bad idea. I’d never get anything done. Such rage inside this one. Yes, I can use this.”

Dorian tackled Nicole. The telekinetic crush ebbed, letting Kirsten peel away from the wall and land flat on her chest, bracing for pain. Between getting drilled into cinderblocks and falling, she expected to hurt―but felt nothing. I love this armor. She sat up, amid shrieking that vacillated between Nicole’s chirpy pleas for help and a dark quasi-feminine laughter. Shelves and debris shuddered behind Dorian, telekinesis tried to fling the insubstantial man away, to no avail.

Kirsten summoned the astral lash, bathing the area in harsh shadows and scintillating blue-white light. Nicole hissed at it, shoving and pounding at Dorian as she fought her way up to her knees and tried to slide away from the spectral whip. His eyebrows went up, unprepared for such strength. With Nicole possessed by something, his grip was tenuous at best, as if wrestling with a gelatinous mass.

“Please don’t hurt me, we’re like sisters!” Nicole added a childlike pitch, the voice now more female, making a face to match the request.

“This won’t hurt Nicole at all.” Kirsten spun the tendril around in preparation to strike, but sailed butt-first into the wall a second time. She bounced away and landed sitting.

Nicole (rather what was inside her) loosed a mocking laugh, pointing at her. “Ha, ha. Can’t reach me.”

Kirsten snarled and ran at her again, kept just out of reach by a casual emanation of telekinesis. Boots squealed as she tried to run through an intangible wall. The lash swiped back and forth inches from Nicole’s face, making the creature laugh even louder.

The entity’s amusement faded as Dorian’s running leap from behind drove her forward like a Gee-ball player’s check. Kirsten, emboldened by knowing the lash could not hurt the living, tore the weapon through Nicole’s chest. It snagged as if striking something solid.

“Get out of her!” roared Kirsten as she pulled back on the energy thread.

Tension gave out as if the entity inside her friend ruptured. The lash came free, and Nicole fell to her knees in a drunken sway. Black liquid oozed from her ears, nose, and mouth as the sense of a weak obliteration rippled through the air. Kirsten swished the lash through again, feeling no trace of contact with anything.

Nicole whined, scrunching up her face. “Thib if so”―she spoke as if her mouth was full, and coughed up a blob of black jelly―“fucking nasty.” She coughed again, this time just liquid. “It’s oozing from everywhere .” She shivered. “I feel like I went skinny dipping in hot noseblow.”

“How is that different than those damn gel tanks?”

The most pathetic, pouting face Kirsten had ever seen on a grown woman stared up at her. “That stuff didn’t come out of me.”

“Well, I think our hacker was compelled,” said Dorian, scowling at the ichor. “I doubt there’s going to be any electronic trail to follow back to whoever sent it.”

“I’m still gonna bring him in. Maybe Ashcroft can find something.” Kirsten breathed a sigh of relief after checking and finding him still alive. “At least they won’t execute him now.”

Nicole tried to gather her dignity and wobbled to her feet. Every motion made her wince. Kirsten rushed to her side to help her stand.

“I’d rather know who wants to kill you,” said Dorian.

Kirsten gazed into space. “I’m sure they’ll try again.”

irsten held Nicole’s hand in the quiet dimness of the cyberspace rogue’s lair. The redhead trembled, wearing a face of abject disgust. She tried to move as little as possible, standing in a posture reminiscent of a toddler with a burdened diaper. The hacker remained unconscious, lying on his side and secured in binders. Nicole’s grimace deepened onto a scowl.

“What?”

“I’m pissed this idiot gets off the hook after he tried to kill you.”

Kirsten squeezed Nicole’s hand. “He didn’t try to kill me, the entity inside him did. Either way, he’s probably got a pile of illegal stuff in here. I’ll let Div One sort him out.”

“Fuck this; I can feel slime creeping down my legs.” Nicole let go and waddled across the room to a curtained-off area, opening her armor as she went.

“You’re not seriously going to…” Kirsten followed. “He doesn’t even have a tube, that’s an old-world bathtub. I doubt the water’s even hot.”

“I don’t care.” Plastic clatters rang out as armor hit the ground.

Nicole disregarded modesty. Kirsten cringed as each piece peeled away from her with an audible slurping noise. Her panties hit the wall and stuck, a soot-colored mass of ooze. Nicole froze in a posture as though cold water went down her back.

“It’s still coming out. Is that… normal?” Nicole gagged, spitting up another glop. “It tastes like bad eggs smell.”

Kirsten shrugged, waving a hand around. “Sure. As normal as getting possessed by a creature from the abyss and forced to attack your best friend. I have no idea. I’ve never seen it before. Uhh, it feels tainted. You probably wanna get it out of you as fast as you can.”

Nicole stepped into the tub, hiding behind a hanging plastic sheet. Kirsten cringed away from the sight of dark syrup gliding down pale legs. The same substance continued to seep from her nose. A screech of metal preceded a squeal of shock.

“Told you the water would be cold.”

“I d-d-don’t c-c-care,” Nicole said through chattering teeth.

“I’ll order you some new undies.” Kirsten fiddled with her NetMini.

Soon, the sound of tromping boots flooded the only passageway in. Kirsten felt embarrassed for Nicole as a Division 6 assault unit in green-camouflage armor stormed in. A gold-visored suit approached and peered down at Kirsten. She tilted her head, amused by the distorted reflection of her face on his helmet.

“Agent Wren? I’m Sergeant Hunt. We’re here to secure the area while the rat squad runs around lookin’ for cheese.” The visor snapped open, revealing a face the color of chocolate; shaved bald. “Sorry we’re late; the front room had a bunch of toy soldiers.”

“Wow.” Kirsten raised both eyebrows. “Div Two is actually coming out here to a grey zone?”

Sgt. Hunt laughed. “Yeah. Is that the guy who tried to kill you?” He kicked the unconscious man.

Other men in the same assault armor cleared the sides of the room, sweeping for listening devices as well as trip mines. Not one of them paid any undue notice to a naked Nicole sloshing around, waist deep in cold, grey water. One did take a protective position near her, with his back turned.

“What happened?” Sgt. Hunt motioned at the abandoned armor and the bathing redhead.

Kirsten pointed at the black stuff. “Spirit possessed her. I destroyed it, but it uhh, started leaking out of uhh, everywhere.”

Most of the advance team shivered.

Wow, they almost look like they believe me. Where’s the fearful look? Oh, right. Div Six rotate out of the Marines. These guys aren’t afraid of shit.

Kirsten’s NetMini beeped. The delivery bot was at the entrance, refusing to enter this structure. She met it outside near two large A3Vs. Each of their six giant wheels was as tall as she was. The lead vehicle, camo green with a manned 30mm turret, had Division 6 markings. The other, slate blue, had no weapons and disgorged a Division 2 investigation team. Two women and two men jumped out before she recognized the fifth person―Sam Chang.

“Hey…” she said, as she reached up to take a small box from the bot. “What are you doing out here?”

Sam slung a metal case over his shoulder on a white nylon strap and picked up two larger ones. “They were looking for volunteers to come check out a hacker pad. I heard you were working on the case and couldn’t resist.”

Kirsten glanced off to the side, a touch of blush in her cheeks. The man radiated schoolboy crush. Almost as soon as she thought it, she felt guilty. I’m Konstantin’s girl. I shouldn’t be looking at other men. Her hand pressed into her stomach to forestall a mild onrush of nausea.

“You feeling okay, Agent?” Sam put one case down to offer a hand. “You look pale. Is it my cologne? You seem to become ill whenever I see you.”

She smiled through the pang of discomfort in her gut. “I’m always pale.” After a deep breath, she tucked the box under her arm. “Come on, I’ll walk you in.”

Tech Chang followed her through the building as she passed on the details of what happened.

“… and Dorian drained all the power out of it. That thing could still be dangerous if it’s got a backup battery or something.”

He nodded. “I’ll disable it before I check his network.”

Once inside the lair, Kirsten tossed Nicole the box. The Division 6 troops had little reaction to her unwrapping a brand-new towel and drying off, though the tech crew had not gone through co-ed military training (or active duty) and either stared dumbstruck or blushed. Sam, however, focused on the inert walker bot more than Nicole and her purple towel.

And this is why I wore my uniform blacks under the armor.

Nicole gathered the towel about herself, shivering and pouting at her. Thanks for the towel and undies. The uniform would have been soaked and slimy too, right? I’d have peeled that shit right off.

Kirsten laughed, startling Sam by the apparent spontaneity of it. Good point. You sure you’re okay? Not feeling any strange emotions at all?

Nope, I’m good. My nips could cut glass right now, but I’m good. Nicole took one of the hacker’s shirts and swabbed out the interior of the armor before putting it back on.

While Nicole dressed, Sam waved Kirsten over. “I got nothing here that really jumps out at me. Nothing from Intera”―he winked― “and nothing that appears connected to anything you’re working on. Heh, apparently your hacker found Jesus.”

“Dammit. This can’t be random.” Kirsten’s scowl turned into an eye roll at the mention of Jesus. “What does that mean?”

“Looks like he did a job for a preacher a few days ago. A Reverend Wallis sent him ten thousand credits.” Sam shook his head. “Must not have been a very dangerous job.”

“Wallis?” Kirsten stomped over. “Hold on a second, you’re telling me this scumbag was working for Wallis?”

“Wait, you know the name?” Sam leaned away from the fury in her sapphire eyes. “Uhh, yeah. Hold on, I’m going to try and find a citycam feed of their meeting.”

Kirsten fumed, pacing back and forth as she waited for him to navigate a series of menus. He reached up and pulled one holographic panel forward, stretching it out to a forty-inch screen before he poked it in the middle. Video showed the interior of a dimly lit restaurant. From the décor, it appeared to be a run-of-the-mill chain place frequented by working-class people.

Glare from the late-afternoon sun reflecting on the faux-wood Epoxil table blurred the image for a second until the recorder compensated. Sam zoomed in, filling the screen with the image of two men. Kirsten scowled at the smug grin on the face of Reverend B. G. Wallis as he spoke over a cup of coffee. A Class 2 doll waitress―human in appearance with faint lines at the joints and mouth―dropped off a large plate of chicken wings coated in bright orange sauce.

“Can you get sound?” Kirsten leaned closer.

“No, this is a citycam recording from several days ago. If it were happening real time, I could try the directional mic. With a place like this, there’s so much ambient noise resonating in the glass, it would take me an hour or two to filter out the voices you want.”

The deck jockey, who had since been removed from the area by Division 6, reclined in the seat with a face as though he owned the restaurant and everyone in it. The arm he did not drape over the back of his seat waved about. He appeared to be entertaining an offer that just barely approached high enough to consider.

“I think your boy’s name is Julio Ramirez,” said Sam.

“You reading lips?” asked Kirsten.

“No, it’s in the banking records.”

Reverend Wallis produced a small, flat box, which he slid across the table and patted. A quick twist of his fingers spun it so a latch faced the man. Julio pondered it with an appraising frown before swinging his arm over the bench seat in a reluctant gesture of interest. He lifted the lid, disturbing a small sheet of paper inside. At that point, threads of static appeared in the citycam feed while the restaurant’s interior lights faltered. The doll waitress fell over, face first into a coffee pot.

Julio Ramirez stared agape at the box, at what appeared to be a plain sheet of white paper, four by six inches, with a faint curl at the ends. His expression would have fit being told his entire family had been murdered. The doll got back up, whirled about with a look of confusion, and resumed its duties. Two seconds later, Julio sat up straight. Gone was the slacker-slouch and fringer arrogance. The man nodded once at the Reverend and got up to leave.

B. G. Wallis pulled the entire plate of wings closer, having it all to himself.

“Back it up four and a half seconds.”

Sam nodded and did so.

“There, look.” She pointed at the paper in the shadow of the half-open lid. “It’s got writing on it. Play forward, one fifth speed.”

The image crept forward as Julio’s hand moved the lid upward. As if shying away from the light, the crimson writing evaporated from bottom to top. Julio’s eyes fluttered and his expression changed, giving the impression he inhaled something unpleasant.

“What the hell is that?”

Kirsten nibbled on her thumbnail. “I’m willing to bet something happened there the camera didn’t pick up. If I had to guess, I think the Reverend Wallis knows quite a bit more about these abyssals running around than he’s admitted. Sam, please send me this video. I’m gonna need it for my report.”

Motionless, the patrol craft hovered fifty feet in the air two blocks away from Faith Pentecostal Baptist Ministries. Daylight grew long as the time crept up on six. Kirsten stared over the hood at the distant building, trying to make room next to her guilt for contempt. Evan expected her to say she was working late again; his lack of complaining hurt worse than a screaming fit. I hope he knows I have to do this, and I’m not losing interest in him.

“Wren? Have you heard anything I just said?”

She glanced away from the building, facing the spectral rendition of Captain Eze drawn in hologram. “Yes, sir. I’m to wait outside for backup.”

“Officer Logan is upset you asked her to stay behind, you know. I saw that look in your eye; I don’t want you charging in there alone.”

“I’m not alone, I have Dorian with me. Besides”―the frustration in her voice eased to concern―“Nicole already got possessed once today, this guy seems to be able to control weak demons. I’m afraid of what this guy might be able to do to her.” She glanced away from him, out the side window at approaching blue-and-whites. “She’s a close friend, sir. I might hesitate if things go bad. These Division One guys aren’t gonna be much more help.”

“The good Reverend doesn’t just have paranormal allies, Wren. He’s got at least two thugs, and I don’t want a repeat of what happened at the Motte residence. This is as much a show of force as anything else.”

Kirsten grumbled to herself as four Division 1 patrol craft pulled up alongside hers. A touch longer, the primary differences were the color scheme and the vehicle-grade laser in a bubble above the passenger seat. She felt a twinge of jealousy at the fear and awe those cars inspired, while all her black one got was curious looks.

“Be careful in there, Kirsten.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, trying not to sound too much like a scolded child.

“He might have a point.” Dorian waited for the hologram to fade out. “You do have a habit of charging in alone without thinking. You got a little someone counting on you to come home alive now.”

Kirsten waved at the closest patrol craft and nudged hers forward into a gradual descent. The cabin filled with a mechanical thrum as the street-tires unfolded through their protective doors and locked into place. “I know. I just can’t dwell on that when I’m”―she clenched her jaw as she pulled back on the stick, easing into a perfect landing― “out here. Hesitating is just as bad as―”

“You need to stop beating yourself up over that.” Dorian walked forward through the hood of the car, pausing just past the bumper.

Kirsten shoved the door open and patted the helmet back on her head. “Whenever I see Shani, there’s always a glimmer of terror in her eyes for those first few seconds.” She exhaled. “I guess it’s an improvement over running away.”

“Kids are resilient. She knows you couldn’t have hurt her. Give her time.”

“Agent Wren,” said an approaching man in blue armor. “I’m Sergeant Donovan, what’s the situation?”

She found herself eye-to-pectoral with an enormous dark-skinned man in Division 1 tactical armor. In addition to the large ballistic pistol on his hip, he carried a UCF M2402―a compact Class 3 battle rifle chambered in 8mm caseless. I guess they’re not here to arrest anyone. The rigid set of his cheekbones gave away his military bearing. Just as she thought him handsome, a pang of unease hit her in the stomach. Kirsten clenched her jaw and hid any outward sign of it. What the hell is wrong with me now?

“My captain requested you here in the event my suspect has people working for him.” She looked up again, not aware her hand cradled her gut. “I don’t know precisely what he is capable of, but I am certain there are paranormal forces at work in there. To be completely honest with you, Sergeant, I don’t think it’s a good idea for your team to go in there.”

Sergeant Donovan rendered a grim nod, his face caught in the half-grin, half-wince of an NCO in a position to be able to ignore the word of an officer. “Ma’am, Captain Eze said you would try to go in alone. We have orders from him to escort you until such time as we confirm the number of ordinary hostiles in play.”

Kirsten glared at nothing in particular. Sometimes Eze is too much like a protective dad. Why doesn’t he trust me? Her eyes narrowed as she imagined his response, narrated in her head in his voice: “It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s the people inside the church.”

With a series of hand signals, Donovan sent two of the patrol officers, Rivera and Polk, around back. “Zahn, Womack, Lewis, you’re with me inside. Edison, you and Simons cover the street.” The four officers advanced on the main door of the wide one-story building, with Donovan taking point. Edison and Simons remained outside, watching the front and sides.

Kirsten, E-90 out, followed close behind.

“Eze does have a point,” said Dorian. “What if he’s got a dozen fanatics in there?”

She shot him a look of irritation mixed with worry. “Something isn’t right.”

Dorian pulled his sidearm out. “A reverend may be summoning creatures out of the abyss. Of course something isn’t right.”

Sergeant Donovan booted in the front door, M2402 raised. Infrared range-finding lasers streaked through the dust, flickering amber rays visible due to the armor’s optics. Donovan’s voice flooded the area, projected from loudspeakers on the side of his helmet.

“Attention: This is the police. We have an arrest order for one Benjamin Gerome Wallis the Third. Be advised this building is now under police lockdown. All occupants are to surrender immediately. Anyone exiting the premises in violation of this lawful detention order is subject to lethal force. All persons are hereby ordered to lie face down upon the ground, arms and legs spread. Failure to comply may result in bodily harm.”

Officer Zahn, the only female among them, fired without warning into the wall to the left. Her rifle spat two three-round bursts through cinderblocks. Daryl, one of Reverend Wallis’s musclebound thugs, slumped out of a doorway and landed dead on top of a long rifle. His dark face held a lifeless stare, streaked with grey dust and blood. His right hand fell away from a pistol under his jacket.

“Never ceases to amaze me how these idiots forget we can see them through walls,” said Zahn with a smirk.

Kirsten’s blood ran cold: both from the casual way in which the officer killed a man as well as the lack of a ghost. Her alarm lessened as she thought he might have been a synthetic, but realized the blood was not white. Even the ones that transcend right away should be there long enough for me to see.

“Gentlemen, I am sure there has been a misunderstanding.”

The voice emerged from maroon curtains set up behind a pulpit fancy enough to seem out of place in a repurposed commercial building. Reverend Wallis stepped through a gap in the hanging cloth, still in his expensive grey suit and gleaming black wingtips. He had his arms to the sides, palms facing up in a devotee’s gesture. Behind him, four figures in archaic black hooded robes emerged. Like ancient monks, they held their arms folded before their chests, hands tucked into sleeves.

“Reverend,” said Kirsten. “We have some things to talk about. I need to ask you some questions about Julio Ramirez.”

Wallis closed his eyes. His head shifted left as if slapped by a weak phantom. “Ahh, Miss Wren. That is unfortunate.”

“You’re an Astral, Wren, right?” asked Officer Womack, the tallest, while jabbing his rifle through the air at Wallis. “On the ground, Padre, the Zero here can still interrogate your ass as a ghost.”

“Hold on.” Kirsten held up her left hand, keeping the E-90 poised at the followers. “No one needs to die.” She shot an uneasy sidelong glance at Daryl’s body. Was he even alive? What the hell…

Reverend Wallis drew in a sharp breath, raising his voice in a preacher’s cadence. “Jesus made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” The Reverend swung his arm to point at the Division 1 officers. “I say to you now, you are the oppressors. You trade not in coins but in our freedoms. You are the unrighteous trespassing in a house of God. So shall you be driven out!”

At the end of his rant, Wallis’s dark, bald scalp dripped with sweat that meandered through deep ridges in his forehead over wild, raised brows. His eyes burned with the fury of a zealot, though his only weapon was a wagging finger. The four robed figures all screamed at once, flinging their arms to the sides. Knives concealed in their sleeves gleamed in the dim light as they raised them and charged.

All four Division 1 officers fired. Kirsten aimed at Wallis, waiting for him to do something, but all he did was stand there pointing with an imperious sneer. A hail of 8mm slugs shredded the charging fanatics; the closest one skidded to a bloody halt more than six feet away from the line of blue. Kirsten’s eyes watered at the presence of ballistic propellant fumes. Wallis’s sanctimonious expression faded to one of amusement as he lowered his arm and smiled at them through the haze of smoke.

Dorian frowned at the dead, glancing from metal knives to armored officers. “Maybe you had a point about religion and stupidity going hand in hand.”

“On the ground, now!” roared Sergeant Donovan.

Wallis ignored him.

The officers advanced. When they moved among the corpses, dark ethereal wisps surged out of the dead. Bodies lifted skyward as the energy exuded from their backs. Although the officers could not sense the specters, they did see dead men float.

“What the fuck!” yelled Zahn, as she pumped more bullets into the corpse. Gore spattered about as the energy seep leapt through the azure muzzle flare into her chest.

“Get away!” Kirsten shrieked, attempting to gather her psionic energy to latch on to the nearest one.

It slipped through her fingers and jumped into Officer Womack, right in front of her.

Donovan whirled about, taking a step away, but one of the shadows swam into him from behind. He stiffened, rose up on his toes, and staggered down to his knees. The fourth officer, Lewis, an average-sized man, roared with panic and fired just over Wallis’s head as another spirit flew into his chest with enough force to knock him over backwards.

Dorian turned on his heel as Zahn pivoted her rifle around in a suicidal orientation. He leapt onto her, wrestling the entity inside her for control of the weapon. “Kirsten, they’re…”

Kirsten dove away from Womack’s attempt to smash her over the helmet with his M2402. Sergeant Donovan grabbed her from behind and lifted her off the ground, holding her for the tall officer to shoot. She growled, more angry than scared. This is exactly what the fuck I was worried about. I hope Eze is watching this shit in real time. The lash unfurled from her left hand; the sight of it at last brought an end to Reverend Wallis’s imperious laughter. She flicked it to the rear, wrenching it through the semisolid mass it found. It flowed through her own body as a not-altogether-unpleasant sensation of coolness, drawing a howl out of Sergeant Donovan as though she had lit his nether bits on fire.

He fell to the side, vomiting black ichor with such force his nostrils became spray nozzles painting the inside of his visor. Womack fired at her. The lash sucked back into her hand as she shifted her mental exertion to her suit. Feeding from her energy, the Psi Armor empowered itself with a kinetic field. Dull grey stripes along the arms and legs of the gloss black material glowed bright violet. The slugs hit her in the chest, knocking her into a flat, bouncing slide as the near-frictionless interaction between the force field and the floor did nothing to slow her down.

Gasping for breath from the impact, Kirsten spiraled legs-first into the front wall. Sergeant Donovan gurgled something unintelligible as he reacted to Womack and Lewis both aiming at Zahn, who appeared to be having a seizure while wrestling with Dorian. Kirsten scrambled to her feet as Donovan jumped at Lewis while firing a single shot into Womack’s thigh. The slug bounced off the armor with a loud click, though the impact shoved the leg out from under the big man. Donovan bowled into Lewis as Dorian caught Zahn with a leg sweep and knocked her down.

Kirsten sprinted and dove on Womack as he stood back up, feeling like a twelve-year-old trying to wrestle a pro Gee-ball player. She wrapped herself around his weapon and kept it aimed away from the other officers. Sergeant Donovan manhandled Officer Lewis, tossing the average-sized man around like a toy. Dorian knelt on Zahn’s back, punching her repeatedly in the head and ribs.

“Dorian, what are you―” Womack spun her into a column, knocking the wind out of her. She did not lose her grip.

“I’m hitting the entity, not her.” He changed his grip, foiling Zahn’s attempt to bring her sidearm to bear on Donovan. The pistol went off, adding two new spots of daylight to the ceiling.

The Reverend, hands folded, watched the fracas with an amused smile. He made no move to involve himself in the goings-on, nor did he leave. Kirsten tried to glare at him, though it was all she could do to keep Womack from machine-gunning his squad mates. Twice she tried to call the lash, and twice she went face-first into wooden pews.

Helmet… good.

“What the fuck is this?” yelled Donovan.

“This is why”―Kirsten raised both legs to absorb another attempt to smash her into the wall― “I wanted you to wait outside.”

Her boots ground into the drywall as she pushed against Womack’s much greater strength. She squirmed around, staring at the side of his rifle. A tiny telekinetic nudge hit the magazine release, dropping his remaining fifty-something shots to the ground with a metallic clatter. She squeezed his hand, forcing him to fire the round in the chamber into the wall.

“All units do not, repeat, do not enter!” Donovan yelled into his comm. “Contain anyone trying to leave, but do not enter the building under any circumstances until Zero okays it.”

“Thanks, little late but thaaaaa―”

With the rifle useless, Womack hauled it (and Kirsten by virtue of her being wrapped around it) over his head and slammed her down on the floor. The hit left her paralyzed for an instant in the center of a dust cloud. A weak gasp slipped out of her as he went for his sidearm.

Dorian, rolling on the floor, twisted Zahn’s arm and managed to get the weapon out of her grip. He hauled her around by a fistful of spectral matter somewhere around her collarbone and pinned her back to the wall. His ghostly sidearm formed in his hand and he ‘fired’ twice into her face. Zahn’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she convulsed. Black ichor ran out of her nose, ears, and mouth.

Kirsten had no faith her body would listen to her in time to get out of the way of Womack’s pistol. The huge, possessed man leaned over her, attempting to aim at an angle to skip a bullet under her visor plate. She held her hands up, latching her power onto the paranormal presence inside him. Womack’s arm shuddered, the pistol lifted. A bullet skimmed over the top of her helmet. Kirsten stopped breathing, focusing all she had on pushing Womack’s arm away.

“Zahn! Wake up! Zahn!” Donovan, pinning Lewis to the ground, shouted at the convulsing white-eyed woman slumped against the wall.

“ She’s fine,” yelled Dorian out of reflex. “I just killed the thing inside her.”

Womack flashed a sudden grin before he ceased fighting her, and let her push his arm up―tucking the pistol under his chin. He fired. His silver visor exploded in a wash of blood and skull fragments. The seven-foot-two man collapsed to the ground.

“No!” Kirsten screamed, unable to hold back tears. “God dammit, no!”

“Womack!” howled Donovan. “Wren, what the fuck is going on?”

His spirit emerged, staggering off to the side and holding his face. A shadowy form seeped into the air from the corpse. She bisected it with a scintillating thread of light before it could divest itself fully from the dead man. Womack’s ghost leapt away from the energy whip. Kirsten rolled to her feet, sprinting at Donovan with an enraged babble of curses. She swept the lash through both Donovan and Lewis, causing an explosion of black liquid to burst out of Lewis’s mouth.

Donovan gawked, aghast at the stream of energy coiling about. Fear manifested in Reverend Wallis’s face as his eyes went onyx black. He held his hands out; spoken Latin amplified as if over speakers, called forth a wall of flames that slid up the curtains behind him. The room glimmered in the orange-crimson light and a wave of heat billowed over them on an incendiary breeze as the burning licked at the ceiling. Before the fire could engulf them, Kirsten thrust the astral lash through Wallis’s heart, twisted, and yanked it loose.

The flames dispersed.

Wallis wheezed. Black water fell from his mouth, his nose, and leaked like tears from his eyes. He fell to his knees, staring agape. After a cough, he lifted a gaze of utter confusion up at her. His pants darkened.

“Fuckin’ psio motherfucker,” barked Donovan. He stomped past Kirsten and went for a home run swing on Wallis’s skull with his rifle.

The Reverend skidded into the podium, knocking it over. Blood covered his now-unconscious face. Donovan stalked after him, flipping the rifle over to aim at the heart.

“By the authority vested in me by the United Coalition Front, I hereby sentence you to summary execution for the murder of Officer Edward Womack.”

“Donovan, stop!” shouted Kirsten. “There was a paranormal entity controlling him. That man was just a host.”

Sergeant Donovan looked away from Wallis, glaring at her. “This fucker did it. He forced Ed to kill himself!”

Zahn snapped out of her stupor and pulled herself up. “Fuckin’ a right. Kill the son of a bitch.”

Lewis moaned, gagging on the ichor in his mouth. He made a sour face at the flavor and vomited.

“ Sergeant Donovan, do not execute this man. Not only is he a possibly unwitting pawn, he may have valuable information. That’s an order.”

“All due respect, ma’am, but he’s responsible for the death of a squad mate. He ain’t gonna walk out of here.”

“ Stand down.” Kirsten’s eyes flared with a trace of light. “Secure that weapon, officer.”

Donovan shuddered; his muscles unable to override the command she put in his mind. Frustration boiled into a scream of rage, then tears as he collapsed to his knees. Womack’s ghost stood over his own body, shaking his head.

Zahn gave Kirsten a nervous look. “You just… did something to him, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I saved him from a court martial.” Kirsten put a hand on Donovan’s shoulder. “I know you don’t understand this stuff. Please believe me, it was not Wallis’s fault. If I thought he did it, I wouldn’t stand in your way.”

“We went in at the same time, been squaddies since first deployment back in the 89th.”

Kirsten patted his shoulder. “Don’t ruin his memory by murdering an innocent man.”

In the basement under the Faith Pentecostal Baptist Ministries building, Kirsten found a few moments of peace from the bustle of crime scene investigations going on upstairs. Aside from a large room of barely-functional boilers, little seemed out of place. Whenever she closed her eyes, Ed Womack’s helmet exploded again.

“What, exactly, did you find down here?” she asked, glancing at Dorian. “It’s barren.”

“Over here.” He walked through a boiler she had to skirt around, pointing. “This is a false wall.”

She searched, pawing at white-painted bricks laced with green mold until she found a loose one. It turned out to be only a façade, a small hatch that opened to reveal a fingerprint reader.

“Damn.”

Dorian stuffed his hand through it, making a face as if he rummaged through a hat full of names. Within six seconds, the door swung open.

Kirsten pulled aside a metal slab coated in brick face and stepped into a square room containing the nude remains of a man in his thirties. He lay with his arms at his sides. Strange markings covered his chest and his still-open eyes were orbs of onyx. She crept into the hidden chamber, careful not to step on any of the black substance forming a circle around the remains on the bare cement.

“Look familiar?” asked Dorian.

“I don’t know him.” She looked over and shrugged. “Should I?”

“I mean the circle.”

Kirsten squatted, balancing on the balls of her feet as she got as close as she could without touching anything. “Charazu? But, I… we destroyed that one.”

Dorian rubbed his chin. “Perhaps. It’s also possible we just sent it home. Someone had to call it here. No telling how long the good Reverend has been under the influence of whatever had him.”

“No way was that Charazu inside Wallis, it died way too easily. Konstantin said something bout ‘the ones who always were’, ancient demons. Abyssals are just returned mortals.” She stood up, lifting her forearm to her face. “Ops, this is Agent Wren. I’m in the basement, got another victim down here. Need a forensics unit; they’re already upstairs.” She glanced over bizarre scrawling on the walls to an arrangement of candles, knives, and a disorganized mess of old papers. Arms folded, she frowned at Dorian. “I don’t like this at all. Those fanatics, they had no ghosts of their own and the spirits that came out of them were way too strong to be recently dead.”

“Maybe they weren’t so recent.”

Kirsten got paler.

octor Loring’s office smelled of lavender and candle wax; a scent that soon drowned in the fragrance of Earl Grey as the slender woman offered Kirsten a cup. They sat by a small round table, in plush chairs at a ninety degree angle to each other. Pale blue, like the ceiling, they left the women on more equal footing than a couch and a seat behind a desk.

“I’m sorry if you find this irritating,” said Dr. Loring, as she settled into position and crossed her legs. “Any officer present at such an event is required to have an assessment.”

Kirsten blew on her tea before taking a sip. “I know. I’m not annoyed at having this session. I’m annoyed at spending time here I could be using to figure things out or be with Evan.”

“He’s in school now. I spoke with Captain Eze. We both want you to know Officer Womack’s death was not your fault.”

Kirsten gazed at her lap. “He was throwing me around like I was a little kid. Something possessed him, but I couldn’t stop him. Womack was trying to kill me, then out of nowhere…” Kirsten made a finger gun under her chin.

“Kirsten, you probably saved the other three officers by keeping his rifle at bay. Given the situation you found yourself in, it’s amazing there was only one fatality.”

The tea, while warm and comforting, concealed no answers at the bottom of the cup―no matter how long she stared at it. “I told Eze not to send them in. I told them to wait outside, but they didn’t listen to me.”

“Would it have made you feel any better to have gone in there alone and been overwhelmed?”

“They had knives. Black silk robes and knives. They didn’t even have clothes on under the robes.” Kirsten scrunched up her face. “Wallis just stood there and laughed, he wasn’t armed. I think I could handle four idiots with composite combat knives. They couldn’t have pierced my armor.”

“What I’m saying is… everyone involved was acting in accordance with best practice in mind. A detective doesn’t go in alone to apprehend a suspect, especially when they are expected to be dangerous; more so when the extent of that danger is unknown. You share no part of the blame for what happened to Officer Womack.”

Kirsten stared at the rug.

“Watching a person die is traumatic. If there’s anything you want to talk about, I’m here for you.” Dr. Loring shifted her legs, crossing them the other way.

After a moment, Kirsten looked up, feeling less awkward at the sight of the warm smile on the clinician’s face. She flicked the side of the cup and stared straight ahead. Behind the desk, a holographic portrait of a young Dr. Loring sat between her parents in their house in the UK. Kirsten giggled at the thought of how a pasty-faced blond man and a beautiful Indian woman could have produced the person opposite her.

“What are you thinking?” Dr. Loring leaned forward.

“Oh, nothing.” Kirsten blushed. “I just found the face your father was making to be a little funny is all.” She gestured at the portrait.

The doctor smiled. “Dad always has some kind of joke going on in his mind. He fancied himself a screenwriter for a while, you know. None of his comedies ever got picked up.” She leaned back. “So you’ve nothing to say further about Officer Womack?”

Kirsten frowned again. “I feel so bad for his wife. I keep wondering what I could have done differently, but there were so many unknowns. What bothers me the most is the evil smile he gave me before he did it. Rather, the evil smile that thing made him give me.”

Dr. Loring noted something on her datapad. “You did all you could do. Sergeant Donovan ignored your order to stay outside.”

“They had orders from Eze; his overruled mine.” Kirsten finished off her tea. “Everyone keeps telling me there wasn’t anything more I could have done, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about watching him die.”

“This is going to sound a bit strange, Agent, but you don’t seem very emotional about it.”

“I got all that out last night.”

More notes. “Still finding comfort in Synvod?”

“No.” Kirsten shook her head, tossing her hair about. “I… no. Evan’s stepdad was always drunk and hitting him. He saw the bottle and… No, I don’t want to turn into my mother. I mean, I got that out last night while talking to Womack’s wife. I know I’m supposed to keep it professional, but I saw the man die… When she lost it I―”

“It’s fine Kirsten. You’re not a doll.” Dr. Loring leaned back. “Well, I’m not seeing any obvious red flags. If anything comes up that bothers you, please call me any time of day.”

“Doc? I went to this function the other day with Konstantin. I couldn’t help but feel so out of place there. All those rich people made me feel like I didn’t belong.”

“Did they act condescending to you at all?”

“No, it was all in my head. I…” Kirsten thought about the Devil’s bargain she signed for food. It almost made it out of her mouth. “…just felt so much contempt for them. No one needs so much money when kids are starving in the streets.”

“You likely have some misplaced blame for the time you spent homeless. You know the statistics, don’t you? There are very few children out there. Our government really is quite keen on that.”

“Yeah, until they turn eighteen, then they’re out on their ear. It’s all a public relations machine. Be nice to the kids and they’ll grow up liking the government.” Geez, did I just channel Dorian? She stared at the rug, pondering her sense of loyalty to Division 0. Worked for me.

“That’s a rather jaded viewpoint for someone your age. Look, Kirsten, there are some unfortunate people who wind up in places out of the system’s reach. No society is perfect.” Loring lifted an eyebrow. “I’m curious about your contempt for the wealthy. Do you feel the same way about Konstantin?”

Kirsten’s awkward kneading of the seat cushion ended with a doe-eyed stare into space. “No, he’s different. He’s not like them. He has a lot of money, but he doesn’t let it change the man inside. I’ve never seen him act like he’s better than anyone because of it. If he was, why would he want poor-ass me?”

Dr. Loring smiled. “Your classism betrays your fear. You think you’re not good enough for him. He is interested in you because he can see through those feelings of inadequacy to the person you really are inside.”

Hands clasped together above her heart, Kirsten sniffled. “I’ve been blowing him off so much lately because of the job. I need to make it up to him.”

irsten stepped out of the elevator and walked through the tunnel connecting the main hub of the police complex with the Health Services wing. Ground traffic slid along the road beneath the elevated walkway, five stories down. Not three steps into the blue carpet, a pair of men in sand colored coats fell in step on either side of her. She waited for a head-sized newsbot to float by outside, and glanced up at the black-haired man on her right.

“Nine? You two here about Womack?”

He flashed a government-issue smile. “No, Agent Wren, we had other concerns. May we have a moment of your time?”

Her fingers got cold. “I guess that’s not much of a request. Lead on.”

She followed them out into the bustle of the central hub, past the Division 0 entrance and over to the large door emblazoned with an immense ‘9’. The two guards posted there nodded at her escorts; the door opened. Kirsten remembered coming here to visit their network guys, and as per S.O. Elena Carter’s weeks-old instructions, she kept her gaze on the floor until they brought her to a small interview room.

Once she was seated, their height advantage made her feel as though she were on the wrong end of an interrogation table. “Should I hand over my weapon?”

The red-haired man’s smile seemed more genuine. “That won’t be necessary just yet, Agent.”

“While we have our feelers in much of the world,” said the other, “the operations of Division 0 are, for the most part, enigmatic to us.”

Kirsten folded her hands atop her knees, which she could not press together any tighter.

“I’m Senior Operative Espinosa.” The black-haired man gestured at his partner. “This is Senior Operative Carroll.”

Her salute was flimsy. “Sorry, I feel like I’m in the principal’s office.”

Each man chuckled, for all of two seconds. Both of their mouths formed a flat, emotionless line as if their mirth had been cut off by a switch.

“What is your interest with Trade Commissioner Vernon, Agent?” asked Carroll.

Kirsten looked up at him for a moment before she gazed at the wall. “I…” She put a hand over her mouth for a moment and fixed him with worried eyes. “You don’t think I was trying to influence her? I think something else is. I’m trying to find out what, but her Marine Corps security detachment wouldn’t let me anywhere near her.”

“The possibility occurred to us.” Carroll stood statue still. “However, we have so far been unable to verify you had contact with her prior to her sudden change of policy.”

“That’s because I haven’t.” Kirsten’s fear gave way to indignation. “I’ll be happy to let Commander Ashford dive into my head and verify it if you want. I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks chasing things that can best be described as demons. I’m not sure who or what is responsible for them getting out of the place they belong, but I think one of them may be influencing the Commissioner.”

Espinosa broke veneer to raise one brow. “Why would”―he hesitated, trying not to let his disbelief appear on his face― “demons care about trade embargoes with the ACC?”

“They wouldn’t.” Kirsten folded her arms and glared at the chrome table in front of her. “However, if a live person was calling them here, they would be the one with the political agenda.”

“Who exactly would it be?” asked Carroll.

“I’m still working on that. I think it might have been the entity responsible for possessing Reverend Wallis. I haven’t had time to sift through all of his notes; the crime scene crew isn’t done with it yet. As of right now, my best guess is he started dabbling in things he didn’t fully understand and lost control of it.”

Carroll and Espinosa exchanged a glance too long for a simple evaluation of mood. Kirsten picked at her fingernails, waiting for the conversation passing over cybernetic implants to finish. Espinosa was the first to look at her.

“We appreciate your time, Agent Wren. That’s all we have for you right this moment.”

Kirsten got up and started for the door, but turned. “What about Commissioner Vernon?”

“There is not going to be an expansion of trade with the ACC.” Carroll walked around the table, as if intending to escort her out of the Division 9 area.

“Does that mean you’re going to kill her?” Kirsten backed into the door, almost falling through it when it opened on its own. “She changed her mind overnight. It’s gotta be paranormal influence.”

Espinosa adjusted his sunglasses. “We no longer supsect your involvement, despite you being on record as a suggestive.”

Small favors. “My suggestion abilities aren’t that strong. I could theoretically make her feel that way for about a minute or two at most. I’m not good enough to leave long-term imprints. If it’s what I think it is, maybe I can get rid of it before you have to murder her.”

Division 9 used ordinary looking, though armored, hovercars. Kirsten examined the interior from the back seat, running her hand over the supple leather. Aside from a small section of the front dash that blacked out as soon as she got in, the vehicle looked no different than a high-end civilian luxury-sports model, including the Halcyon-Ormyr logos.

“Nice car. What’re these, about 400k?”

Carroll chuckled. “Closer to eight. Once our electronics are installed, the number is closer to one point three.”

“Not that bad when you think about it,” said Espinosa. “Div One Pat-Vees are almost 750 grand, a mil and change with the starburst.”

“Their seats aren’t this comfortable.” Kirsten felt embarrassed for liking the luxury.

The men laughed, just enough to be polite. Carroll glanced over his shoulder at her, wearing an almost human-like smile. She had not dared look at surface thoughts to see if they were dolls or living men; the way they acted, it could have been either.

Thirty minutes after her interrogation ended, the two Division 9 agents walked her right through the military checkpoint and to the door of Commissioner Claire Vernon. Kirsten allowed herself a small degree of vicarious pleasure at watching the Marines squirm under the gaze of her escorts. She envied their authority for all of a moment before pouting at the floor. I’d rather be liked than feared.

“What’s the meaning of this?” blurted the Commissioner as the three of them barged in. “This is quite irregular.”

Claire Vernon stood up, still behind her desk, fixing the intruders with an imperious glare. Her greying hair formed a halo of light shades around her dark face; steely eyes glared at Espinosa. Of the three, he seemed to carry the most authority. He did not seem impressed by her rank, her attitude, or the expensive dark red skirt-suit worth more than a month’s salary.

Kirsten stared at her, reaching out with her psionic senses. As soon as her eyes flickered with white light, Commissioner Vernon’s antagonistic demeanor pivoted about to fear. She backed away, tripping over an Oriental throw rug and landing in her chair, which rolled away another two feet.

“I felt something.” Kirsten searched for the sense of a presence she felt for the first several seconds. It slipped away as if she had tried to grab jelly with her bare hands. “There was definitely something there. It’s gone now. It’s afraid of me, hiding.”

Carroll blinked at Kirsten.

“Who are you people? Why are you in my office?” Commissioner Vernon held a hand to the side of her head and read something on her terminal screen that slackened her jaw.

Kirsten glanced at Espinosa. “She’s missing a week. Just wondered why the date jumped ahead eight days.”

Vernon glared. “What? You’re Division Zero, aren’t you? How dare you look in my thoughts!”

“ Ma’am.” Kirsten spoke with as little emotion as possible, raising her hands. “I’m only here for your benefit. Someone is trying to manipulate you.”

“Get out of here this instant! You’re trying to influence me, aren’t you?”

Kirsten pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, ma’am. I’m trying to”― prevent Division Nine from assassinating you as a political liability― “find out who or what is already influencing you.”

“Anything?” asked Carroll.

Another sweep around the room brought only a mild sense of unease. “I’m afraid I can’t do anything until it comes back. I could always give it a few hours, wait around here in case it returns.”

“Are you all cracked?” asked Vernon. “I’ll not have a psionic in my office under any circumstances. It is a matter of national security.”

Carroll put a gentle hand on Kirsten’s arm, tugging her toward the door. “Come on,” he whispered. “You did all you can. If she goes to Miami now, it’s not your fault.”

“It’s good to see you are yourself again, Commissioner,” said Espinosa. “Please consider your recent decisions in the interest of national security.”

Vernon froze, exchanging stares with Espinosa. “Exactly who do you think you are, talking to me like that?”

He showed no trace of being intimidated; his voice became icy. “Let’s just say I’m someone who hopes not to have to meet you again.”

Espinosa spun toward the exit, flaring his sand-brown trench coat. The office door closed with a faint squeak behind him.

irsten’s butt hit the chair at the same instant her NetMini, desk terminal, and armband communicator lit up. Before she could answer, Eze saw her at her desk and hung up. She stood and was already walking toward his office when he opened the door. The look on his face could have been worry or anger; she hoped for the former.

“Yes, sir?” she asked with an innocent smile, slipping through the door and closing it.

He did not sit down, instead walking past her. “Follow me.”

Shit. He sounds nervous. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” He went out of the squad room, turning right down the hall outside.

She jogged to keep up with his stride. “Whatever I did that got you yelled at.”

“Are you taking after Nicole now?”

The trace of a smile accompanying the question made her feel a little less nervous. “No, I just read the look on your face.”

“I’m not sure what happened, Wren.” He paused, exhaled, and made eye contact. “But we’re about to find out.”

When the doors opened, she realized they had gone to the command level. As Eze walked, she tidied up her uniform as best she could before following him. Three doors later, he exchanged salutes with two tactical officers guarding either side of an impressive armored door and waited for them to key it open.

Inside, the command staff waited behind a long table. Division 0 Chief Jane Carter, Deputy Director Johannes Burckhardt, and West City Regional Director Mikhail Kovalev. Carter, seated in the middle, had her grey hair up in a neat, lopsided bun held in place with two Japanese sticks. Mikhail could have been Dorian’s father, with coffee-colored skin and a pleasant expression that seemed never to lack a trace of a smile. Burckhardt, on the other hand, was an older, balding man who glared at everyone under him with thinly-veiled contempt. Kirsten, perhaps due to the rarity of her talents, earned an almost neutral look from him, quite the accomplishment.

Kirsten entertained the brief wonder if Jane Carter was any relation to the gazelle from Division 9. Can’t be. Sr. Operative Carter is about as psionic as a doorstop.

Eze stopped a step before Kirsten did, standing just behind her and to the left, where he rendered the customary salute to the executive board. A few seconds after Kirsten’s salute snapped back to her side, a holographic fourth person appeared to Mikhail’s left. East City Regional Director Ravindra Kumar. She was the youngest of the lot, barely past forty. Like Carter, she was a telempath.

“Good afternoon, Agent Wren,” said Carter. “We wanted to meet with you and clarify what is going on with the Trade Commissioner.”

“ We received quite the alarming Vidcall.” Burckhardt motioned toward his terminal. “She thought someone under our command may have influenced her decision on the trade agreement.” He poked at a glowing spot on the gloss black table, reading a screen just out of sight. “You happen to be a grade three suggestive, agent. That seems a little, suggestive?”

Only Burckhardt smiled at his joke.

“All due respect, sir,” said Kirsten, voice wavering. “You know that’s not powerful enough to cause a long-term change in behavior.”

Kirsten couldn’t hide her battle of anger and fear from Carter’s telempathy.

The Division 0 Chief smiled. “Calm down, Johannes. You always expect the worst of people.”

“Her psych profile is incompatible with that course of action,” said Ravindra.

“What’s wrong, Agent? Why the sudden spike of sadness?” Carter cocked her head.

“I always feel like people won’t believe me when I start talking about paranormals. Someone appears to have found a way to recall spirits from the Abyss. I’m not entirely certain myself if I believe they are ‘demons’ in the true sense of the word, or just dark ghosts. However, someone out there has found a way to use them to influence people.”

Burckhardt rolled his eyes. Mikhail seemed worried. Carter sat back, staring at her fingers as she fussed with a nail.

Kirsten directed her gaze at Burckhardt. “Sir, please review the archival footage from two days ago. Inquest number 24180912A1.”

Carter keyed something into her table terminal, and a large screen to Kirsten’s left lit up with the recording of her helmet’s camera during the attempt to arrest Julio Ramirez. Filling in with explanations where the paranormal manifestations failed to appear on video, she illustrated the moment where Nicole became possessed and attacked her. Ravindra covered her mouth when Nicole flashed the wicked, murderous grin.

“The entity that had been in Jose jumped into Nicole at the moment she read his mind. Fortunately, it was quite weak. One good lash destroyed it.”

All four of them, even Burckhardt, squirmed in their seats as Nicole described the ooze leaking from every orifice.

“I see. So you believe someone has”―Carter waved her hand around―“summoned these entities? With the specific intent to influence people?”

“It looks that way, ma’am,” said Kirsten, “Based on events surrounding Reverend Wallis, I’m hopeful he may be able to provide us with some answers.”

“Your report”―Mikhail leaned forward to look at his private screen― “indicates you believe the Reverend was under the influence of an entity as well.” He massaged his chin. “Would that not imply there is someone else involved?”

“I found a large quantity of documentation in a hidden sanctum below the church, sir. I have not yet had a chance to review it as it has been designated crime scene evidence.”

“Agent Wren, we are going to block mention of anything related to this case from the NewsNet.” Carter leaned on her elbows, lacing her fingers together. “What I am about to say does not leave this room, do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kirsten nodded.

“Understood, ma’am,” said Eze.

“Division Nine is presently unsure of the exact nature of the influence, but they have declared Commissioner Vernon compromised. The final vote on the trade measure is scheduled one week from tomorrow. If she does not resume her normal policy in time for the vote, they will be retiring her.”

Kirsten gasped.

“One hour ago, Commissioner Vernon asked us to disregard her complaint regarding your so-called attempted influence. She said it was a simple misunderstanding.”

“The entity came back,” said Kirsten. “I’ll go right―”

Carter held up a hand. “No, keep your distance. The NewsNet is on her now since she made a public statement contradicting her earlier position of support for the Free Trade Agreement. Now that she’s changed her mind and is in support of it once again, they are too close. We must have incontrovertible evidence proving something other than a living psionic was responsible for influencing her before we act. We are concerned with public perception if you, or any member of Division Zero, are seen near her.”

Kirsten blinked. “You’re just going to allow Nine to murder an innocent woman for the sake of good face-time on the news?”

Carter sighed. Mikhail shifted uncomfortably. Burckhardt grumbled at her, earning a glare. Ravindra smiled, respect and sadness in her eyes.

“I am perfectly capable of doing what needs to be done, Johannes. That I am a woman does not matter. That I object to their methods does not matter.” Carter looked at Kirsten. “You, more than most of us here, should know how it feels to be hated for being different. I’m sorry to broach such a sore subject, but I must consider the lives of all psionics over one political figure.”

“It still doesn’t seem very ethical.” Kirsten sagged.

“Do something about it then, Agent.” Mikhail sat up straight. “You have seven days to turn up the kind of proof we need to prevent the public from developing an erroneous opinion. Of course, you must understand our position. If the public believes psionics are using government figures as puppets…”

“It’ll be open goddamn season on us,” grumbled Burckhardt. “I don’t see why we’re even waiting the week, or why we don’t just fix it.”

Carter leaned her head into the fingers of her right hand. She had the look of a mother with an obnoxious teen son. “Johannes, if we go in there and do that, it will only add a nugget of truth to the conspiracy theorists. Even if we were undoing a suggestion, they’ll say we did it in the first place and only removed it because we got caught.”

“ In all fairness”―Ravindra raised her voice for attention―“the ACC loathes psionics. They kill our kind on sight. To insinuate they would use them, or that a psionic would be complicit in their activities is beyond belief.”

“There are some who do.” Mikhail slipped into a heavy Russian accent. “You can either work for us, or”―he made a finger gun at his temple― “work for God.”

“You have one week,” said Carter, letting her hands fall clasped on the table, “before Nine retires her. I hope you’re right. Dismissed.”

Kirsten saluted, gave Eze a weary look, and walked to the door.

irsten’s fingers dug through her hair as she leaned harder into her hands. The table full of paper scraps had no discernable feeling on them: no eeriness, no latent psionic imprints, and no nagging sense of dread―nothing. She stretched over the back of the chair, staring at the dim, overly blue lights in the evidence room. Desperate for a solvable problem, her mind began the task of trying to classify the drop-ceiling tiles as either dark grey or slate blue, but she covered her eyes and loosed a frustrated moan.

The evidence tech jumped at the sudden noise. She glanced over, finding him holding a pair of light pens up as if warding off a vampire with a cross.

“Are you kidding me?” She glared. “I’m a damn psionic, not a demon. How did you get assigned to Division Two if you’re that damn stupid.”

He lowered his arms, and improvised holy symbol, offering a weak smile.

“Spare me. Psionics are no more dangerous than a normal person walking around with a firearm or a sword.”

“Guns don’t read minds,” whimpered the tech.

“No, they don’t.” Kirsten squinted at him. “You have some naughty little secret you’re afraid will get out?”

“N-no, it’s just…”

“General idiot fear?” She shook her head. “You probably think I mind controlled your boss into letting me in here. Actually, the order came down from the brass. National security, you know. Besides, you’ve had this stuff for days now. They should have every molecule of evidence scraped off it already. Do you guys just get off on keeping detectives away from crime scene evidence until it’s catalogued by someone who works two hour shifts two days a week?”

“It’s not her you should fear.” Dorian’s glassy whisper scraped through the air.

The man jumped, whirling to his right.

Kirsten covered her face with her palm.

“It’s us.” Dorian pushed his face through the veil and winked.

Despite expecting it, she jumped when the evidence tech shrieked and ran. “You’re turning into Theodore.”

He paced around the room, stopping closer to her. “You think so? Honestly, I think Theo would have followed him and mocked him for soiling himself.” He leaned over the table. “You look like your cat died.”

The unexpected familiar remark made her laugh. “You’ve been hanging around Nicole too much. These papers are useless. I can’t make any sense of this crap, and there’s no energy on them at all. Whenever I open my mind I just feel this faint glimmer of a presence to my right, but it keeps moving away when I turn toward it.”

“Are you sure you’re not just reading me?”

“No, it’s not as strong as you are. It’s different too. It fades in and out, almost like it senses when I feel it and retreats.”

“Maybe the entity from Vernon followed you here.” He looked around. “I don’t see anything.”

“What the hell did you do to Calloway?” bellowed a large woman at the door.

Kirsten jumped at the sound, spinning toward a slate blue jumpsuit that appeared to be wrapped around an Assault Marine with an almost-female face. Kirsten slid off the chair and backed away, hands up, glancing at the woman’s uniform, noting her name and rank insignia.

“Nothing, honest. He was giving me shit for being psionic, and my partner gave it back to him.”

“You don’t have a―” Chief Tech Sontag became a veritable mannequin, stuck pointing at Kirsten.

Dorian manifested for a few seconds, winking at her. Once he was invisible again, he laughed. “Damn, that’s a big woman.” He faced Kirsten. “That is a woman, right?”

“Tech Sontag… Sorry about him, he’s quite protective.”

With her finger still pointing forward, CT Sontag spun about-face and walked away. Dorian succumbed to a fit of laughter.

“That’s probably how Theodore got started being a”―her NetMini rang; she answered― “Wren.”

Tech Hollings appeared, a holographic bust floating over the small device. “Agent, we got another stiff. Female this time, no ImDent. Same as the others, black eyes and looks… uhh, drained.”

“Send me a nav pin, I’m on the way.” Kirsten gave Dorian a ‘help me’ stare. “This can’t be a coincidence, and I’m not getting anything from the paper.” She leaned out through the door to shout into the basement of the Division 2 Tech Center. “Calloway? Are you hiding under a desk? I’m done in here; need you to secure the room when I leave.” She folded her arms, foot tapping. “I swear… damn mundanes.”

Kirsten pulled the black tarp down, covering the nude body of a young woman with skin the color of creamed coffee. Her eyes, as all the ones before, had become orbs of black. Unlike the other three, sanitation bots discovered this one bent over a restaurant’s trash crusher. If she disregarded the unusual ‘withering’ effect, the deceased appeared to be close to Kirsten’s age. Long brown hair with gold highlights had the look of high-end salon work. The identification algorithm estimated her round, delicate face as mixed Latin and Indian ancestry.

TFC Hollings stood a few feet away behind a portable terminal that cycled through thousands of ID images per second. As Kirsten backed away from the body, Hollings looked up from the screens. “You feel anything?”

Kirsten moved around, watching the system search for an identity match. “No, it feels just like the others. A tiny bit of eeriness in the air, but that could just be the city at night.”

“I thought this one was different at first, until I got a good look at the eyes and the, umm, drained look on her face. The way we found her made me think sexual assault, but the scanner says that occurred after she was dead.”

Kirsten turned greenish. “After…”

Dorian winced. “Damn animals. She had the same eyes as the others. Some street trash probably found her and, uhh, moved the body.”

Speaking in slow, measured breaths to keep her late dinner in her stomach, Kirsten tried not to think about what happened. “Or, whoever is doing this knows we’re looking into it and they tried to dress it up as a murder/rape.”

“If that were the case, why not assault her while she’s still alive? Postmortem sexual contact does not seem compatible with the psych profile of the killer leaving the bodies posed like we have been finding them.”

The clinical tone in Hollings’s voice left Kirsten wondering if she should be offended or confused at the suggestion. “Someone’s summoning demons; maybe they needed to kill her as a virgin.”

“You better hurry it up with Konstantin then”―Dorian winked― “so you’re off the list.”

Hollings glanced down at the terminal. “I’m sorry, Agent. I didn’t mean to make you blush.”

“Oh, it’s not you.” Dorian doesn’t know. I’m not going to tell him. She thought of Konstantin and a sudden sense of peace settled over her. Of course, I’m supposed to see him in an hour. I should bring image caps of those papers; maybe he knows what those damn stick figures mean.

“Agent?” Hollings snapped her fingers in front of Kirsten’s face. “Are you okay? You look like you’re daydreaming.”

“What? Oh, no, I just―” Kirsten blushed, picking at the serpent bracelet. “I was just thinking about my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, whoa…” Hollings lifted an eyebrow. “Finding a victim of necrophilia always makes me think about my girl.”

“I…” She paused. “No, he’s a scholar that works with ancient texts. I was hoping he could help me with this damn case.” Kirsten searched for composure―and her normal pallid complexion. “So, anything on this one you can tell me?”

“System’s putting her age around twenty to twenty-three. Same as the rest, the field kit can’t find the cause of death. She’s got the black eyes, epidermal damage consistent with rapid aging, but the underlying bone structure is in a state you’d expect for her age. The sexual assault occurred after death, there’s no bleeding or bruising despite the tearing.”

Kirsten shivered.

“Oh, you saw the bruise around the neck and on the left collarbone, correct?” asked Hollings. “We pattern matched it to a NinTek Warrior.”

“So, whoever killed her has at least one cybernetic arm.”

Hollings jumped as the terminal beeped. “Bingo. Alaina Munoz, age twenty two.”

Dorian put an arm around Kirsten’s back. “Easy, they’re not hunting you. The age is a coincidence. By the way, the whole virgin thing is a myth. I was just kidding.”

Kirsten decided to become angry at whoever killed this woman instead of her past. “I don’t think there’s many virgins left in this city at that age.”

His glance shifted from confusion, to understanding, to pity.

“Not now,” she whispered, and raised her voice toward Hollings. “Any file on her?”

“Yeah, looks like she was a junior marketing agent at RedEx. Guess there’s a fair amount of money in ferrying OPC back and forth to Mars.”

“OPC?” Kirsten blinked.

“Other People’s Crap. Miss Munoz was well paid; she shouldn’t be in this part of town.”

Kirsten’s NetMini beeped. “Hang on.” She fished it out of her pocket.

Dorian grinned. “Popular tonight, aren’t we?”

Konstantin’s face appeared when she answered. Kirsten whirled, taking the crime scene out of his field of view. “Konstantin!” she cooed. “I’ve been thinking about you. I’m sorry I’m a little late; I’m still out in the field. I’ll be ready by ten.”

He made a guilty face. “Dearest, it’s my turn to be sorry. I can’t seem to get the lawyers off the vid tonight. I have a special hearing I must attend in person. It’s a bureaucratic mess trying to get permits approved for this project at the Archives.”

Kirsten bit her lip. She wanted to bawl at the news; warmth filled in behind her eyes as her resolve to keep a professional face on crumbled.

“At least you can pick Evan up early tonight,” said Dorian.

Woozy, she blinked and shook it off. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“I’m sorry?” Konstantin gave her a playful smile. “Are you having a telepathic conversation with someone I can’t hear?”

“Yeah.” Was a faster option than trying to explain Dorian. “A friend was trying to cheer me up for not getting to see you tonight. I found some strange scribbles I wanted to ask you about.” A mild pouty tone infiltrated her voice. “I was hoping to show you later.”

Konstantin chuckled. “I can look at them soon, Lyubimaya. Believe me, I’d much prefer to be with you than waste my evening in a room full of lawyers at a zoning committee.”

“I guess it’s only fair. Work has made me take off on you twice now.”

He said something to her in French, winked, and ended the call. For all she knew, he just told her to go jump off a bridge―but it sounded romantic.

“So, Agent Wren…” Hollings fussed with her slate grey jumpsuit while staring at the ground. “If I go in for an assessment, are they gonna make me join?”

“Not unless you want to.” Kirsten went to put a hand on Hollings shoulder and wound up getting a surprise hug.

Hollings burst into tears. “I’ve never even told my parents. I’m so scared of how they’ll react. I’m not sure my dad could handle having a daughter that’s, umm…”

Kirsten patted the woman on the back. “Psionic isn’t a dirty word, you can say it. You don’t need to go it alone.”

“What if they hate me?”

“The department won’t tell anyone anything you don’t want them to know.” Kirsten set Hollings back to arm’s length and rubbed the back of her hand. “Not every parent takes it well. Mine didn’t. If not for Division Zero, I’d probably be dead by now.”

Her NetMini rang… again.

“Oh, for the love of―” Kirsten stared at the smog layer, fumbling in her pocket until she found it. “Wren. What is it this time?”

Father Villera blinked at the petulant greeting. “Is this a bad time, Kirsten?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Father. The stupid thing’s been ringing constantly all night.”

“Three times.” Dorian held up three fingers. “It’s gone off three times.”

She gave him a sidelong glare, grinning. “Did those thugs come back? Oh, I think I found out why they came after you.”

“No, they have not returned. Look, Kirsten, a little girl just came in here looking for food. She’s too young to be out on the street alone, but she told me something you need to know. It wasn’t a confession, so I can share it with you. From her description, it sounded like she witnessed a murder.”

“Shouldn’t you be calling Division One?” asked Kirsten.

“Certain details the girl mentioned made me think the killing had ritualistic overtones. I think she witnessed some manner of sacrifice.”

“Holy sh―crap. I’ll be right there.” She hung up. “Hollings, I need to run. I’ll swing by tomorrow and we can talk about whatever you want. If the lab finds anything new, please let me know. I only have a week.”

“A week? What happens in a week?”

Kirsten jammed the NetMini in her pocket, glaring at the body under the tarp. “Another murder.”

he black patrol craft settled in for a landing amid a cloud of vapor and fleeing debris. Seeing the front door of the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary ripped from its hinges, Kirsten hit the emergency lights. The area flooded with azure camera flashes as she got out and readied her E-90. Even at this hour, she found the lack of people in need of a decent meal disturbing.

Kirsten ran to the door, aiming through the opening. The scent of ballistic propellant lingered in the air, mixed with something attempting to smell like chicken soup. Blood streaked the ground in the main room, amid overturned and smashed tables. One arcing smear led off into a rear hallway. She one-handed her weapon and used the pistol grip to hit the backup call button on her forearm guard.

Dorian gestured at the ground. “Kirsten.”

A bare footprint in blood, by size a child’s, pointed out the door. Partial prints continued along the ground, all but impossible to see at night after several meters on the black traction coating. A wheezing moan sent her lunging toward the back of the strip mall church. She shoved her way through the bank of chairs left in disarray, rounding a corner into the hallway that led to the kitchen.

Father Villera lay on his side at the end of the blood trail, where his strength to crawl had given out. His right leg and arm bled from superficial gunshots. At the sight of Kirsten, he stopped trying to move and rolled onto his back, limp.

“Thank you,” he said to the ceiling, before gazing at her. “It looks worse than it feels.”

“What happened? Is there anyone still here?”

“No,” he croaked, “The man who shot me ran out after that girl.”

Kirsten looked back and forth from him to the door. “Dammit.” She fumbled with stimpaks and fed him three, one after the other. “Who shot you?”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Color returned to his face as the injection of nanobots got to work repairing his body. He spent a moment catching his breath. “A man showed up a few minutes after I called you. He demanded to know where the child was. I told him she left, but I’m not a great liar.” His attempt to laugh caused him to wince. “The girl saved me. Go, I’ll be okay until the MedVan gets here. Find her before he does.”

“Are you sure?”

Father Villera squeezed her hand, nodding. “Yes, yes, I am sure. Go, the girl needs you. I can feel it.”

Kirsten jogged to the doorway and examined the bloody footprints. “Damn, I miss that visor already.”

“You could always transfer to tactical; you seem to wind up getting shot at more than they do.” Dorian walked through the wall to stand beside her.

“I don’t want to stack the odds.” Kirsten concentrated for a few seconds, causing her eyes to glow with the use of Darksight. The wavering vision of the astral world superimposed on reality. Faint traces of life energy caused the blood to glow phosphorescent. “Think about how often I get my ass kicked now in I-Ops when I’m not supposed to. I don’t even want to think about what would happen to me in Tac.”

Dorian laughed.

Kirsten stalked after the fading trail of small, bloody footprints. Past the corner, they went in a straight line. She held one hand to her earbud, verifying over comm. backup was en route to the church.

“There is one injured civilian on scene, GSW to right arm and right leg. Looked non-life-threatening, he appeared to respond to stimpaks. I’m in pursuit of one assailant.” She poked a key on her forearm guard to transmit her location.

“Hey, bitch!” rasped a voice from a recessed alcove to an old apartment building. “Nice ass, gimme a thousand credits if you wanna keep it lookin’ so nice.”

She whirled, aiming at a vagrant wielding a silvery plastisteel axe. At the sight of a glowing-eyed cop with a laser pistol, he babbled and took off at a full sprint, losing his grip on the weapon. Dorian wandered over and glanced down at the glinting edge.

“Fun, isn’t it? I think he pissed his pants.” He squatted. “Hmm, where’d he get a thing like that?”

“Is that a battle-axe?” Kirsten scrunched up her face. “Seriously? Is everyone into Monwyn?”

“It’s a military boarding-party axe. Marines still use them for ship-to-ship combat in space. It’s a lot harder to put a hole in the hull with one of these. Sudden implosive decompression makes everyone sad.”

“Get off me!”

The scream sounded like a tween girl. Kirsten’s boot crunched as she spun in that direction and sprinted. A dull metallic thud reverberated through the air. Heavy, as if something large had smashed into a trash crusher. A man’s voice screamed in pain.

“Little brat. I was gonna make it painless, now―”

The growl was cut off by a meaty smack, followed by the sound of a pipe clanging to the ground.

Kirsten went right, chasing the noise.

A girl’s enraged roar rang out. “You moron, I can see the flows of time. You think you can kill me?”

The angry growling morphed into a surprised shriek followed by the kind of screaming often reserved for the victim of a cheap slasher holovid. Kirsten hooked her arm around a light pole by a battered PubTran terminal to swing a tight left turn without falling over. A half-block ahead, a man in a long black coat held a twig of a girl in a bear hug from behind. She looked to be about eleven, with light brown hair, and had more dirt smeared on her than was on the alley surface. Her too-tight pink shirt bunched under his arms while legs wrapped in baggy green pants flailed. Her soles glinted red in the streetlamps―dried blood. Repeatedly, she smashed the back of her head into the man’s chest. Each hit echoed from the sheer metal walls, but had little effect on him.

“Police! Let go of the girl and don’t move a damn muscle.” Kirsten skidded to a halt, sighting over her E-90.

The man spun with an arrogant snarl. Kirsten’s still-glowing eyes startled him enough to weaken his grip and let the girl squirm loose. Rather than run, the enraged tween lunged at him. She grabbed on to his belt and dragged him off his feet, holding him over her head. As she hefted the large, armored man to the point of standing on tiptoe, she stared at Kirsten with glowing green eyes. Her pupils looked like dark holes next to the luminous whites.

Lace.

“Oh, shit,” said Dorian.

Rage gave way to terror at the sight of someone in a police uniform. The girl spun around and hurled the man into the side of a trash crusher. Judging by the dent, that was his second meeting with it.

Seeing her about to run, Kirsten raised a hand. “ Stop!” Her eyes flickered with the psionic command.

The rail-thin girl stared, motionless save for a mild facial tic. She took a step back, whirled, and sprinted off, bare feet squeaking on plastisteel.

“What the…”

“Suggestion isn’t infallible, you should know that. Strong willpower can sometimes resist, and the kid is on Lace. There’s no brain in there right now to control.”

“God damned cops.” The man picked himself off the ground, wiping blood off his chin with the back of his arm.

“Hold it, asshole.” Kirsten aimed at him. “You’re―”

He went for a gun. Kirsten fired. The cobalt blue beam left a half-inch hole through his armor, his torso, and the trash box behind him. Flames licked at the inside of the wound, filling the air with the scent of burnt meat. A gurgling wheeze escaped him; the body fell to its knees, and went face-first to the alley, leaving an angry spirit in its place.

“Now, where were we,” she said, stalking at him. “You didn’t think you were going to get out of answering questions by committing suicide by cop, did you?”

He had not, at least judging by the look on his face, expected the current turn of events. The ghost fled, making it a point to avoid the corner of the building.

Dorian laughed and gave chase. “Find the kid, I’ll get this idiot. Never fails to amuse me when the newbies run around things.”

Kirsten nodded and fell sideways into a sprint. “Hey, kid, where are you?” Yeah, right, she’s scared shitless of me, like she’s gonna say ‘over here, officer.’ Yep. I am a natural blonde.

She ran, trying to think in the manner of a terrified child. It wasn’t too much of a stretch. Three blocks down, a handful of older teens congregated around a nude (and quite retired) sex doll. Missing panels of faux-skin exposed the metal interior, including where the most important part of such a doll had once been. No one was using a square, wire-filled hole that big for anything other than storing a bottle of synvod. The doll’s mouth hung open, emitting tinny music.

“You guys see a little girl just run by?”

“Maybe,” yelled one kid. Lemon blond, he had a series of luminous red and blue NanoLED tattoos forming Native American warpaint on his face. The usual assortment of knives and cheap handguns accessorized his shredded-looking clothes. “A little tittie might refresh my memory, how ‘bout a flash?”

“How about you tell me? ” Her eyes flickered. “Is that enough of a flash?”

The others went rigid and quiet. Pink cotton-candy hair moved as the one living girl among them leaned forward. She pushed one of the dolls nipples and shut off the music.

“Uhh, that way, turn left by the finger.” The punk pointed. “Why the fuck am I telling a cop this?”

“Because you’re a good civic-minded boy.” Kirsten winked, and went in the direction indicated.

After taking a corner by a seven-foot tall spray-painted middle finger, Kirsten ran for two more blocks before she staggered to a jog which slowed to a walk and an eventual stop after another dozen steps. She felt winded, but not to the point of gasping for air. Come on, kid. I’m not gonna hurt you.

“Hey, kid? Are you still here? The priest said you saw something. I want to help you.”

Kirsten’s voice echoed into the darkness of several alleys and a number of abandoned buildings. She advanced, stooping to look under old cars or piles of debris. Dorian appeared at the end of an alley, looking pissed. She waited for him to catch up and gave him an expectant frown.

“Not my fault this time.” He held his hands up. “I’m over my 200 meter thing. Umm, yeah. Our guy must’ve been one piece of work; he only made it about a quarter mile before they got him. You didn’t call in artillery, did you?”

“Harbingers already? No, it wasn’t me. Shit the guy must’ve been on their radar already…” She shuddered. “Lucky thing we found the girl before he could…”

Dorian smirked. “I don’t think that’s what he wanted her for. He said he was going to make it painless, sounds like something an assassin would say. I think he was trying to get rid of a witness.”

“I guess an assassin would get their attention, but it still seems fast.”

He rubbed her shoulder, causing a shiver at the cold. “I hate to break your illusion, K. Harbingers don’t think crimes against children are any worse than crimes against any other innocent soul. I’m betting the guy had something to do with the abyssals we keep finding. That kind of thing is what really gets their knickers in a twist.”

Kirsten spun about, sighing. “I lost her.”

“Over there.” Dorian pointed. “Probably in that old car. I can feel someone alive in there.”

“Creepy.” Kirsten jogged over.

“All the things you’ve seen and me saying I can feel the presence of the living is creepy?” Dorian laughed.

“I guess that is a bit lame, huh?”

Kirsten peeked through the grime-encrusted window of a car that had not driven since many years before she was born. A small figure huddled in the back seat, curled into a ball with her feet crossed. Her head lifted. The whites of her eyes glowed lime green, like the back end of a firefly.

“Hey, sweetie.” Kirsten cooed through the cracked glass. “Easy, kiddo. I’m a friend.” She tugged at the handle.

Shivering, the child did not show any reaction to the door creaking open. She shook at a near convulsion, sweating as if it were a hundred and ten degrees out, despite it being the middle of September. Her surface thoughts came on in a disorienting blur. Reality liquefied. The skin of Kirsten’s face melted away in the girl’s thoughts, leaving the skull to chatter behind eyeballs swinging on nerve fibers.

“Holy shit.” Kirsten cut off mental contact. “This kid is fucked up.”

“Be careful. Judging by all that sweat, she’s in the midst of the comedown phase; but she’s still probably stronger than a grown man.” Dorian grumbled. “I’d love to find the son of a bitch that gave Lace to a juvenile.”

Kirsten glanced at him. “You don’t need another summary on your conscience.”

“It wouldn’t be on my conscience, K. Any Division One cop would end whatever waste of humanity was responsible for getting a kid hooked on that shit. It’s a damn death sentence. It’s so addictive, people have died from missing a re-dose by hours.”

“Hey, kiddo, come on. You need some food. Let me get you somewhere safe, alright?” Kirsten reached toward her.

The girl watched the hand get closer and closer to her leg. Just before contact, she lunged forward and stomp-kicked Kirsten in the face. The impact knocked her out of the car and onto her back, seeing stars.

“You okay?” asked Dorian.

“Yeah…” Kirsten blinked and spat. “She stepped in coffee.”

When the girl leapt out of the car, Kirsten rolled left and got an arm around the child’s legs, taking her down. She seized the skinny waif by an ankle and hauled her back far enough to get a hand on the shoulder before the fit of shrieking and thrashing went into full gear. An elbow to the gut lifted Kirsten off the ground and took all the wind from her sails. She fell, both arms wrapped around the girl’s shins to arrest her flight.

The kid rolled over, clawing at Kirsten’s face. She ducked, wrestling to get control of the urchin’s arms. She still had enough strength left to overpower Kirsten, reversing the hold and climbing on top of her. Her grip on the child’s wrists slid up grimy forearms as the girl forced her arms down and got her hands around Kirsten’s throat.

What the fuck! This kid is trying to kill me? “Hey,” she croaked. “ Stop!” Kirsten’s eyes glowed white for an instant.

This time, the suggestion stunned the girl into a series of facial tics. Kirsten took advantage of the mental shutdown to flip the child onto her chest and gather her arms behind her back.

“She’s too skinny for binders, use the riot ties,” said Dorian.

“I’m not restraining an eleven-year-old.” Kirsten thought back to how patient the Division 1 officers were when they hauled her off the street at that age.

“I know what you’re thinking, K. You weren’t on Lace. This kid can really hurt you. Do you want to let her force you into a situation where you have to shoot her? What if she tries to leap out of the car while we’re in the air?”

Kirsten sat back on her heels, pinning the girl down while she secured her hand and foot with plastic strips. “I…”

“It’s for her own safety.”

The girl wailed and thrashed. The plastic creaked.

“Might want to put on three pairs,” said Dorian.

Kirsten brushed hair off the girl’s face, caressing the side of her head and whispering in a soothing tone. “Easy. Calm down, I’m not here to hurt you. Everything’s going to be okay. You’re not in trouble.”

She gave up fighting, going limp on the alley. The whining came next, whimpered pleas for freedom. Kirsten reached for her uti knife to cut the girl loose.

“Don’t. She’s playing you.” Dorian put a hand on Kirsten’s before she could get the knife off her belt. “Don’t trust anything she does until after detox. All she wants to do is run off and find more Lace. Might look like she’s only a child, but she will kill anyone who gets between her and another dose.”

A pat down found no weapons, but Kirsten felt something in the girl’s right pants pocket.

“Careful, don’t just jam your hand in there,” said Dorian. “Could be a needle.”

With great care, Kirsten extracted a one-inch long clear plastic ampule about as big around as a large drinking straw. One end had a white cap and built-in needle; the other contained a drop or two of a luminous green liquid, the same color green that shone from the whites of the little girl’s eyes. Kirsten scowled at the injector, and frowned at the dark, V-shaped scars on the side of the thin, dirty neck.

The girl stared at the spent injector, as if the drop or two within it was the difference between life and death. She wriggled, eyes begging Kirsten to let her have the last bit.

Kirsten, now crying, looked up at Dorian as she struggled to hold the child down. “You’re right. I do wanna shoot the guy that gave it to her.” She sighed, poking at her armband to call the patrol craft to her location.

eal, as it turns out, can suck the life out of anything when overdone. Kirsten frowned at the walls, at the men jogging past her in the same color scrubs. Even the cushions of the bench she sat on were stuck somewhere in the no-man’s-land between green and blue. She glanced up from her meditative hatred of the hue as a commotion three doors to her right attracted two medtechs as well as a real doctor at a full run.

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees and fingers twined, staring at the floor between her boots. “I’m pretty sure it’s pointless, but I’m half tempted to try praying.”

Dorian, seated to her left, chuckled. “If it makes you feel better, it’s not pointless.”

“I dunno. Why do we keep searching for a parental figure when life gets out of control? The minute people find themselves in a situation beyond reason, they reach for the man in the sky.”

“People have been debating that question for centuries, K. Humans need to feel like they’re in control. When they lose that feeling, they have to explain it. Random circumstance is so cold and impersonal. The concept of a deity is the perfect scapegoat for bad luck or a valve to channel away guilt at good fortune. Something bad happens, and God must have wanted it to. Something good happens, and he must like you more than everyone else. It’s a way to disavow personal responsibility or just plain bad luck.”

Kirsten laughed. “I guess I have Judas in my family tree.”

Dorian became solid enough to give her a light shove. “The self-loathing thing does not work for you.”

She looked up from the floor to say something, but glanced to her right. The girl from the alley, now clean and wearing a form-fitting hospital smock, walked barefoot into the hallway past a group of staff. A series of plastic tubes hung loose, dangling from adhesive patches on her left arm all the way up to the sleeve, which ended an inch south of her armpit. Head down, she trudged as if being sent off to punishment.

Nearing, she glanced over at Kirsten and approached to within inches of the bench. The child’s eyes no longer radiated green light, though a dull pea soup color had stained the whites. Bony arm raised, near-skeletal fingers curled in a wave at Dorian.

“Hi.”

Kirsten, trembling, reached out and put her hand through the girl’s shoulder. Finding the child insubstantial, she broke down in sobs. Dorian patted her on the back.

The girl sat on her right, swishing her feet back and forth as she plucked at the smock where it stopped at mid-thigh.

“The seat is cold.”

Kirsten gathered her composure and forced her body solid to spirits. She grabbed the girl’s hand and squeezed. “What happened? Why are you out here?”

“They’re still working on me,” said the girl, in a tone close to bored. “I was watching them do stuff to me while I was on a table. I guess something went wrong ‘cause they got all freaked out and threw me in a fish tank. I don’t really want to see it. It’s slimy.”

Kirsten, still crying, giggled. “I hate those tanks.”

Dorian got up and jogged toward the commotion.

“I’m Kirsten.”

“Brooke. Sorry for kicking you in the face.”

“It’s okay. I know you weren’t in control. Father Villera called me to help you.”

Brooke glanced up at her. “He’s nice.”

“You should go back to your body before they try to wake you up.” Kirsten forced a nervous smile, hoping it was not too late.

“Why?” Brooke frowned. “I’m gonna die anyway. I got nowhere to go, better I just kick off now before I get raped.”

Kirsten pulled her into a spongy hug. “No, you’re too little. What are you, eleven? I was on the street too at your age. It’s not hopeless.”

Dorian jogged over, waving at Kirsten until she looked up. “Brooke crashed. From what they’re saying, it sounds like her heart gave out. Two doctors are trying to resuscitate her now. Don’t have a lot of time.”

“I wanna go away.” Brooke squirmed, trying to stand out of Kirsten’s grip. “My grandpa is calling me from that way.” She pointed down the hall.

“What about your parents?” Kirsten squeezed her.

“My parents are dead. They were fuckin’ gang trash anyway. Shot by cops, good for ‘em. They deserved every bullet.” Brooke stopped swinging her feet. “I don’t want to be in this world anymore.”

“No! Don’t say that. The system is good to kids, you’ll get placed with a new family.”

Brooke glared. “Yeah, I’ll sit in a damn government facility till I’m seventeen before they find someone willing to let a scrawny Lace-head in their house.”

“What about colony adoption?” asked Dorian. “There’s no waiting list there.”

Brooke gave up trying to get her arm away from Kirsten’s death grip and slouched. “Yeah, girls go quick. They want baby factories up there. I’ll get married off at fifteen and spend the next twenty years pregnant. Yeah, that sounds so much better.”

Dorian offered a wistful smile. “I think we found someone more jaded than you are. I’ll admit it’s a bit of a chance, but at least eight out of ten colony settlements are much healthier than living on Earth these days. Some even have trees. You might be happy with an adoptive family.”

Brooke grumbled. “Why do you care?”

Kirsten drew a breath to answer, but all that came out was a squeak as a distant man’s voice shouted the F word six times before yelling, “Come on, kid!”

“Brooke, you’re a child. You don’t get to make decisions like this yet.” Kirsten stood, dragging the girl to her feet. “I’m taking over as your temporary guardian for the next few hours. You are going back where you belong.”

“No!” shrieked Brooke, thrashing.

“Brooke.” Kirsten grabbed the girl’s head and forced an eye-to-eye stare. “Listen to me. This is not negotiable. You’re letting what happened to you ruin your life. Your life hasn’t even fu―fudging started yet.”

Brooke’s eyebrows drew together. “Fudging? Really? I’m not four.”

Kirsten attracted odd looks from the hospital staff as she struggled to drag an invisible, flailing child down the hall. Every so often, a flicker of silver thread appeared at the girl’s forehead; as if reality could not decide if she were a mere projection or a true ghost. Brooke’s panic intensified as she found herself lacking the abnormal physical strength she had become accustomed to having. As a ghost, she was trapped in Kirsten’s psionic hold.

All the while, Brooke wailed. “No, get off me! Let me go! I don’t want to wake up.”

A man, wearing a light SecurMesh vest and armed with a ballistic pistol blocked the door to the procedure room. “I’m sorry, officer. There’s a critical patient in there. I can’t let you in.”

“No shit. I’ve got her damn ghost in my arms right now. If you don’t let me in, she’s going to die.”

“I want to die! Get her off me!” wailed Brooke.

Alas, the guard could not hear her.

The man smirked. “You’re either shit nuts or one of those damn psionics. I don’t care which it is, I can’t let―”

“ Go away.” Kirsten growled, eyes aglow, bracing a squirming Brooke against her chest.

The security guard wandered off with a dumbfounded gawk, and Kirsten booted the door panel. With a soft hiss, the plastisteel barrier parted down the center and each half slid into the wall. Inside, Brooke’s lifeless body hung in a tube filled with peach colored gel; long hair fanned out around her starved-thin frame. A cloud of blood wisped around teeth; her mouth agape, no breath pushing it out. Two doctors, three medtechs, and a nurse all whirled at the sudden entrance. The techs and nurse moved to intercept.

“Out of my way if you don’t want to lose her!”

Perhaps it was the commanding tone in her voice, or her strange undulating gait, or perhaps it was sheer desperation; the doctor closest to the tube held his hand up at them. Kirsten dragged the protesting spirit to the edge of the tube. Dorian waited at the door, arms folded.

“You are not giving up. I won’t let you. I won’t let you die on the street. You have too much life left ahead of you, and I’m not gonna let you throw it away!”

Brooke’s ghost stared at Kirsten, stunned by the emotional outburst from a complete stranger. “Why the hell do you care?”

Kirsten grabbed the ethereal child by one shoulder and a fistful of hospital tunic and hurled her through the glass tube. Proximity to the body drew the wispy form in, distorting her into a blur of light. The floating girl convulsed, and an explosion of crimson burst from her mouth and nose, rolling into a diaphanous cloud. Bruises and scratches covered the small, malnourished body floating in front of her. Kirsten shivered at the memory of the same marks all over her own arms and legs.

Face pressed against the glass, Kirsten closed her eyes. “Please, God, if there is one…” she whispered. “Don’t take her yet.”

Dorian decided not to comment.

Seconds of silence passed, and the angry cacophony of the equipment changed to pleasant beeping timed to the rhythm of a heartbeat. Kirsten shifted; on the left side of the room, a large holo-panel showed a magnified view of thousands of crablike nanobots reconstructing muscle, cell by cell. It looked like an army of alien walkers invading a red landscape.

“We got her,” said the female doctor.

Kirsten looked up; Brooke’s chest moved with the rhythm of breathing, the red by her mouth swirled back and forth through her teeth with moving fluid.

“Get those nanobots on the cardiac tissue right away.” The male doctor wagged his finger at the three medtechs, gave Kirsten a confused stare, and jumped onto a different control console.

Stay with us Brooke. I’ll be here when you wake up. Please don’t give up.

The child’s eyelids twitched as Kirsten’s voice entered her thoughts. A hand clasped around Kirsten’s right arm. The nurse. He indicated the door with a faint head motion, as if asking her if she thought she should leave. The implication was, of course, that she should. Kirsten glanced once more at Brooke, a desperate smile forming at the sight of the girl’s eyes moving beneath the lids. Still solid to spirits, she leaned on Dorian and made her way to a closer bench out in the hallway.

That was teal too.

“I wonder where that security guard wound up?”

“Don’t care,” muttered Kirsten. “A few more seconds waiting might have…”

He squeezed her shoulder.

“I know. I can’t keep them all.” Kirsten made a voiceless chuckle. “She’s not psionic anyway, she’ll be happier with a real family. I don’t want to keep her; I just want to keep her alive.”

“You’re giving Evan a real family.” Dorian patted the back of her hand.

“Agent Wren?”

She glanced left and up at a pair of Division 1 officers. Like most in the city, they were of indeterminate ethnicity with brown skin. Kirsten felt like a phantom by comparison.

“Yes,” she said, standing and returning their salute. “What can I do for you?”

“We got a report from the hospital about a minor with a Lace issue.”

“Oh, you’re looking for who to go kill?”

The patrol officers exchanged a glance before the man offered a resigned shrug. “Yeah, basically.”

Kirsten covered her face with both hands, hating herself for not objecting to the idea. “Not sure yet. We’ll have to ask her when she wakes up.”

irsten leaned on the edge of the hospital-sized comforgel slab, holding Brooke’s hand. The head of the bed angled up, and a teal blanket covered the girl to the armpits. People came and went past the door. For almost an hour, she sat in silence and watched blurs of color go by while listening to the distant din of the hospital. Voices, both real and AI, occasionally came over a PA system to summon a doctor or medical technician to one crisis or another.

Brooke twitched in her sleep once or twice over the hour, raising false hope. Kirsten slumped back in the chair, attempting to manage her feelings of guilt for leaving Evan at Nila’s overnight yet again. She toyed with the idea of taking a day off and spending it with him, but with a one-week deadline to prevent an assassination, she could not. Kirsten did not want to burden him with the weight of what hung over her head; the simple explanation of trying to prevent someone from dying was enough. Evan did not need to know the police would cause the death.

Brooke moaned in her sleep and opened her eyes. She convulsed, and sat upright with a feral gleam in her eye. Kirsten leaned over and put her right hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“Hey, calm down. I’m here, you’re safe.”

The girl lunged for the side of the bed; Kirsten held her down. Weak from the surgery and with no Lace in her system, the task was a simple one.

After a futile effort to get away, Brooke flopped limp. Kirsten gathered her hand once more, earning an accusatory frown. The girl stared at the ceiling for a moment, and raised her left hand. It fell on her chest, then slid up into her chin, popped up straight, and finally came down on her face where she wiped her eyes.

“What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Apparently, Lace withdrawal can cause violent flashbacks for the first few hours. You can break your arm or leg from flailing around. They gave you something to protect you against that. Even if you have a seizure, your muscles shouldn’t have the strength to do damage.”

“Let me go. I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, first of all, you’re in no condition to even get out of this bed. Right now, you’ll need help getting to the bathroom.”

Brooke blushed.

“Secondly, you were on Lace. Right there, that warrants mandatory detox. There’s a couple officers outside who want to have a nice short chat with whoever gave it to you.”

Brooke folded her arms, frown deepening. “No one gave it to me. You can tell them to go away.”

Kirsten lifted the girl’s arm, tracing a thumb over the back of her hand as she examined a delicate wrist. “You’ve probably got Greybones. Same thing I had at your age from being out there alone. All the chemicals you’ve been walking around barefoot on, breathing, basking in… they leach at your body.”

“My bones are grey?”

“No, just brittle. It’s just called that because most sufferers live in grey zones, or worse places.”

The girl tugged her arm away, staring at her fingers as she fussed with the blanket. “Maybe I missed a few vitamins.”

Silence lingered for a moment. Brooke glanced at her, holding her arm up.

“You had this too? How’d you go from street kid to cop?”

“Well, maybe not quite as advanced. I’m sure the Lace didn’t help. Come on, look at me.” Kirsten held her arms out. “I’m barely a hundred pounds.”

“Try a hundred and ten.” Dorian winked. “You’re perfectly healthy, K.”

“How did I become a cop? Well, mostly because I’m psionic, but aside from that, I decided to trust someone. Father Villera called me, Brooke. He said you came to him because you saw something.”

The tremble made Kirsten grab her hand again; this time Brooke didn’t object. “I don’t wanna think about it.”

“Whatever you saw, those people can’t hurt you here. Do you remember the man who attacked you at the church?”

“Sorta. He wanted to kill me, right?” She coughed.

Dorian paced around the foot of the bed. “Lace users often experience memory gaps. They can go a week or two at a time in a primal state where they operate only on animal instinct. Higher brain functions tend to shut off.”

“Yeah.” Kirsten reached with a tissue to wipe bloody sputum from the girl’s chin. “I got him.”

“You killed him?” Her hand clenched.

Kirsten looked down. “I’m not proud of it, but the idiot did point a gun at me.”

“What a moron.” Brooke scowled. “You only point a gun at a pig if you wanna get killed.”

“Oink.” Kirsten smirked.

“Uhh, sorry.”

“Why were you out on the streets? Who gave you the Lace?”

“No one, geez.” Brooke huffed. “I stole it from some South Fork weenies.”

“Why?” Kirsten’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Why would any kid take that shit willingly? It’s deadly.”

“I heard it made you super strong, and I wanted to defend myself. Almost got caught by the Diablos once. I didn’t wanna be anyone’s bitch.” Brooke glowered, and lifted an eyebrow at the morose expression on Kirsten’s face. “I don’t need the pity party.”

“There are better ways to avoid that than taking Lace.”

“How’d you do it then?” Brooke pushed the control on the bed to sit up higher. “If you didn’t take Lace, and you were as skinny as me, how’d you fight them off?”

Kirsten stared at the wall for a while. “I hid in The Beneath. There are pipes down there too small for men to fit in. But getting used by a gang isn’t much of a worry down there anyway.”

“I guess not. There’s monsters though. You might get eaten.” Brooke grinned.

“Yeah… there are.” Kirsten let out a long breath. “I’m glad we got you off the street before anyone could…” A tear ran down her cheek.

“Rape me?” Brooke shifted, staring at the impressions her feet made in the blanket. “I’m sorry.”

Kirsten stared away, reddening. “I’m not sure I’d call it that. I traded myself for food. I wasn’t forced or anything.”

Dorian did a double take and rushed to her side. “Kirsten… I… you never said anything.”

“I didn’t let it bother me. I had to eat, didn’t I? He had unopened military rations. I’d been stealing garbage for two years. Besides, he was gentle.”

“Doesn’t make it right.” Dorian fumed. The look on his face said he wanted to kill someone.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Brooke.

“You saw him before, the man sitting with me on the bench in the same uniform. He’s a ghost.”

Brooke went pale. “Was I really dead?”

“No, honey. You were projecting.” Kirsten gave Dorian a weak glance, hoping for affirmation. He was too busy stomping around by the window to notice. “Your body was still alive, you just fell out of it.”

“I don’t wanna stay dead.”

“Good.” Kirsten squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”

Brooke stared at the wall, quiet for a moment, and broke out in a sweat.

Kirsten wiped the girl’s face. “Are you hot?”

“Freezing actually.” Brooke scrunched her face up as the towel made another pass. “So, you were someone’s bitch?”

Now it was Kirsten’s turn to be quiet for a moment. “No, it just happened once.”

“The Beneath?” Brooke gave her a scolding frown. “Well no wonder you had to. That was your problem, there’s no damn food down there. Plenty of Nippy-Noms up here to steal from. Sometimes they gave me food for helping out… mopping and shit.”

A wistful smile spread over Kirsten’s face. “Yeah. I guess it was stupid of me to crawl around in the shadows for so long.”

“Why’d you run away?” Brooke tried to scratch her nose. Her arm flopped anywhere but.

Kirsten wiped it for her. “My mother tried to kill me.”

Brooke grumbled. “At least yours noticed you. Rita was more of a mom to me than my mom.”

“Who’s Rita?”

“‘Nother one of the gang bitches. She’s dead now too. Got shot up by a couple of Hatchetmen… pussies. They went runnin’ from the main rumble with the South Fork idiots and wound up dragging the firefight with them through where we were sleeping. Old Mack never even woke up.”

“All that’s behind you now, Brooke. There is no reason for you to stay on the street. Trust me; take advantage of it while you’re still a minor. You can get placed with a family and go to school. If you stay on Earth, you really need higher education. All the crappy jobs are taken by dolls. That’s not so much of a problem if you are open to the idea of colony adoption. I’ll be honest, Brooke, there’s a waiting list to stay on Earth.”

Brooke waved her feet back and forth, pondering.

A woman in a white uniform entered, throwing a pleasant smile at both of them. She sidled up to the bed on the side opposite Kirsten and set some things on the table: a white cylinder about three inches long and a thumb’s-width around, a derm patch, and a tangle of tubing.

“What’s that?” Brooke leaned away.

“You’re going to feel a spot of cold, hon.” The medtech swabbed the girl’s left bicep with an alcohol wipe before applying the adhesive derm. “There’s no needle in this, just a pad. It’s very cold, so it might feel a little shocking. This medicine will help your body recover from the awful stuff. Little tiny machines will go swimming around inside you and collect all the bad chemicals from your body.”

Kirsten, still holding Brooke’s other hand, stood. “Umm, don’t they usually flush Lace out in the tank?”

The medtech brushed the hair out of Brooke’s eyes, examining them. “She was on Lace long enough to cause deep tissue damage. Her heart walls have thinned, her muscles were in very bad shape due to insufficient nutrition and the stresses of the drug. The surgical team had to reconstruct many of her ligaments. A body her size is not meant to lift four hundred pounds. We were all amazed she could still move at all.”

The woman attached one end of the thin tube to the derm patch, the other to the cylinder, and secured the device to the girl’s arm with tape. Two taps created a holographic control screen in midair above the capsule of medicine and the tech dialed out a dose. A series of dashes lit up on the derm patch in dark blue, creating the illusion of rotary motion on the flow meter as the medicine wound its way down the tube to the patch. When the line of liquid reached the derm patch, it beeped, and clicked.

“Ow.” Brooke winced as she tried to grab the patch. Her arm moved three seconds after she wanted it to, and flopped like a fish out of water. “It burns.”

Kirsten gathered the girl’s hand and tried to comfort her without disturbing the patch.

“It’s so cold it feels hot,” said the medtech. “Please try to relax and let the medicine work. She has been on Lace for several months. The sudden absence of it could prove fatal. Normally, the doctors would use an induced coma to mitigate the effects of violent withdrawal; however, they feel she would not tolerate it well in her weakened condition. They almost did not want to risk the muscle relaxers. When she was in the tank, we almost…”

“Yeah, I know exactly how close it was.” Kirsten and Brooke traded a knowing glance. “If she’s that tenuous, shouldn’t someone stay with her in case she has an attack?”

The medtech nodded. “Sure, but our staff doesn’t have that kind of time. This is a government med center. The HSO won’t pay someone to sit here with one patient. If you want a dedicated nurse, go to an Amaranth Corporation medical pavilion. You have to understand this is a highly unusual situation. Normally, Lace-addicted individuals are detoxed over the course of a few hours while unconscious in a tank. This patient is too delicate for that procedure; we need to take it slow. Most juveniles exposed to Lace as long as she was don’t last long enough to come in for detox at all. Depending on how she responds to the first round of this”―the nurse tapped the cylinder on Brooke’s arm― “she’ll be in the gel again tomorrow for some additional surgery to rebuild her muscles and bones. If she makes it through the first twelve hours with no major issues, they will be able to finish the detox tomorrow. There is also scar tissue in her lungs from an old infection we need to remove. At any moment, she could go into a violent episode with little to no warning. I’m afraid as soon as you leave we’re going to have to strap her down so she doesn’t hurt herself.”

Brooke gasped, clinging to Kirsten’s arm with both hands.

“So you’re just going to leave her in a room alone and tie her to the bed?” Kirsten stared aghast. “What about the muscle relaxers?”

“You’ve never seen a Lace teardown, have you?” The beleaguered woman sagged. “What else can we do? Our budget can only stretch so far. If she throws a fit and smashes her own skull, the NewsNet will be all over the hospital claiming we killed her. It damn sure won’t be the government that takes the blame for a dead street kid. I can’t stay with her, I have four dozen rooms to check, and Jerry called out sick again, so I have to cover his too. I got an old guy one floor up who keeps throwing his bio collection reservoir at the wall. If you’d like to go clean that up, I’ll gladly sit with her.”

“I’ll stay.” Kirsten put an arm around Brooke. “There’s no way I’m going to leave her like that. It’s cruel. It’s not a medical necessity, it’s bald-faced stinginess.”

“She may have a psychotic break once her deep unconscious realizes no Lace is coming.”

“But she’s no stronger than a person her age should be now, right?”

The medtech nodded. “Yes, weaker due to the wasting and muscle relaxers.”

“Then I can hold her down if I have to,” said Kirsten, gripping the girl’s hand.

With a shrug at Kirsten, the medtech went for the door. “It’s your pretty little body to bruise if you want to.”

Brooke glared at the woman in white.

The medtech glanced back with a softer face. “If this city had more cops like you, it might not suck so much.” She looked at her wrist, sighed at the time, and trudged out while grumbling about moving to Mars.

A moment later, Brooke flopped back onto the bed.

“Excellent interview technique,” said Dorian. “That just earned you a lot of trust.”

Kirsten shot him a dark stare.

“Thanks, but who’s gonna want a Lace-head.” Brooke pouted, then coughed.

“By the time you get out of here, your eyes will be white again and the Lace will be out of your system. You don’t have to tell anyone about it unless you trust them. Sometimes people have to do bad things just to stay alive.”

Dorian’s face was a mixture of shock and pity.

The girl settled in, as if about to go back to sleep.

“Brooke? You went to Father Villera because you saw something. I really need you to tell me about that.”

“My throat hurts.”

Kirsten moved to the edge of the bed, hovering over her. “If you want, you can just think about it. I can see it in your head if you let me.”

“Will it hurt?”

“No, I promise it won’t.”

“Okay.”

“Open your eyes, look at me, and think about what you saw.”

The telepathic connection gave Kirsten a brief glimpse of her own face before the room fell away, as though her point of view went over backwards into a deep well. The hospital room flew off into the blackness above her, melting into a spiral of colors from teal to grey. She focused on the concept of the specific memory, tumbling through the dark until the cold wetness of rain-soaked alley seeped through her clothes in the tight confines of a space beneath a trash crusher. Kirsten recognized the random scraps of cloth in which her point of view snuggled as a street urchin’s nest. If not for the city light leaking in from the alley, it would have been just like her old home, even down to the stink of chemicals and urine. Everything had a strange green tint―the memory of a Lace user.

Voices shouted nearby, evidently the reason for the girl waking up. The words blurred by Brooke’s fitful memory and terror, becoming demonic roars and growls rather than agitated men. Kirsten watched―a spectator with no control. A grimy hand reached into view as the child crawled to the edge to peek.

Four men stood around a squirming female figure in a black silk robe. Chrome binders gleamed stark against coffee-colored ankles; a silk bag covered the head of a struggling woman. The sound of a scream attempting to get through a mouthful of cloth was louder than the whispering that originated from the man who stood at her feet. He, too, wore a black robe, but also a shiny mask covering his face beneath the hood. Gold filigree circled the eyes, descending to thin gold trails that ran down the cheeks. The black surface glinted, as if covered in minute flakes of silver.

The man at the woman’s head was the one who tried to kill Brooke. On the left and right, two others dressed in coats and body armor held her bound arms by the elbows. She thrashed as if she knew her death was imminent, though her protests stilled as the man at her feet swung his left arm and aimed his palm at her. Her body arched, shuddered, and fell still. Her head wobbled about as if drunk; violent struggling became half-hearted squirms.

The men on either side pulled open her robe down the center, exposing her nakedness to the sky as the chanting man knelt over her. He traced some manner of stylus over her, apparently writing, though Brooke’s angle prevented seeing what he drew on her skin. Kirsten shivered; reading the traumatic memory forced her to share in the terror the girl felt at the sight. It took a moment to divest herself from the inherited fear and resume.

Red light glowed from the eyes of the mask. The raspy chanting grew louder; the language was one Kirsten had never heard spoken. It sounded menacing and guttural. A sense of being unable to breathe came over her, part of the memory, when he raised a wicked gold and silver knife to the clouds in his right hand. The blade was wide and single-edged, tiered into three waves each about four inches long. In his left, a glowing violet gemstone the size of a baseball pulsated with pale light.

Brooke covered her eyes for a moment, looking back up just in time to see the masked figure plunge the decorative dagger into the helpless woman’s chest. She gurgled and went still. Brooke, now Kirsten, stared at the wobbling handle in the shape of a gold dragon’s head.

Light within the great stone flickered brighter as he held it over the dead woman. Vaporous white swirls rose from the still-warm corpse and attempted to form into the image of her ghost, distorted by an irresistible force drawing it into the gem. Energy streamed from the body’s eyes, swirling into a tornado of white light consumed by the precious object. Withering spread over the dead woman’s chest, and the glow faded.

The disembodied voice of a terrified woman screamed. The sound cut out as the gem devoured the spectral essence. He held the stone aloft with reverence, as if a priest conducting a mass.

After retrieving the dagger, the mask wearer strode out of view, followed by the two men that had held the victim down by her arms. One had a metal hand. The last man gathered the robe closed over the corpse and stooped to pick her up, pausing when he looked straight at Brooke.

He must have seen her eyes―green lights in the dark.

He advanced, and Brooke scrambled out of her cramped space. The man grabbed at her, but was woefully unprepared for the little urchin being strong enough to throw him into the air. Kirsten released the telepathic link as the alley blurred up to a superhuman run, already knowing the rest of the story.

Brooke had fallen asleep.

Kirsten got off the bed and settled into the chair, cradling her face in both hands. Terror had come from the mind of someone else, but it took her a moment to get over it. She breathed deep and let her head go back, not moving for a while until Nila’s hologram appeared above the NetMini.

“I’m at the hospital. I’m fine; I’m just staying with a kid I found. Is Evan okay?”

“He’s asleep. He didn’t have any fits tonight.”

“Please tell him I’m very sorry about getting stuck out here again. I can’t leave this girl alone. Lace… eleven-year-old.”

Nila gasped. “I hope you killed the bastard she got it from”―she lowered her voice, glancing to the side― “I don’t mind watching Evan, he’s a good kid. He knows you’re doing what you have to do. Hang on.” She winked, grinning. “The bratling’s awake.”

“Thanks for watching him. I’ll be a few hours. Take care of Shani; I have another call to make.”

Kirsten flipped through the contact list and poked an entry. Six rings later, the sleep-weary face of a dark-skinned woman in her later thirties appeared.

“Kirsten?”

“Hi Danita, I’m sorry to wake you up. I need your help.”

“Did something happen with Evan?”

“No. Everything’s perfect with him.” She smiled. “I’m at the hospital now with a girl named Brooke. Both parents are dead, so she’s been alone for about a year. She’s not psionic, but I wanted to ask if you could take her case and make sure she gets placed with a good family, possibly colony settlers if she warms up to the idea. She needs special handling, and you go way beyond just ‘resolving cases.’”

Kirsten stared at Brooke’s twitching face, all too familiar with the kind of bad dreams going on behind her closed eyes. “This girl needs someone who cares.”

he patrol craft slid through the early morning city, following a diagonal path over the city grid. Its black reflection glided over silver windows, sliding closer and drifting away with each passing building. Civilian hover traffic flowed several stories below. The pass-through display on the armored windscreen compensated for sun glare, allowing her to see as she followed a ribbon of light leading to the navigation pin. Kirsten flicked on the autodrive and sat back with a fresh cup of hot mocha coffee in both hands. The fragrance and warmth were soothing; she drew in a deep breath and basked in the orange light of the rising sun.

“I’m sorry. Some things I didn’t want to re-live.”

Dorian shook his head. “I’m not at all upset at you for not saying anything. I’m furious with the bastard who used you like that. I killed a suggestive for molesting a girl older than you were then. I’m pissed.”

“Now you know why I never told you. I knew it would upset you and there’s nothing to be done about it. I wanted to spare you the… pain.” She stared into the distance for a moment. “I’ve thought about finding him, making him apologize or just kicking his ass.” Kirsten held the cup to her lips, closing her eyes at the sweet warmth settling into her stomach. “Course, I’d probably just feel bad for him and bring him food. How screwed up was I to think he was so much nicer than Mother? I’d have rather stayed with him than gone home.”

Dorian didn’t laugh. “He did it to you; he’ll do it to some other girl.”

“It was ten years ago, Dorian. Besides, there aren’t that many children down there. What few there are live in small colonies with their parents. Hard to keep secrets in those little villages; justice down there is harsh. He’s probably dead already by now, especially if Ritchie made good on his threat. Besides, he didn’t force me to do anything.”

“Waving meat at a starving dog isn’t forcing it to do anything either.”

“I could have walked away. I could have gone up top and begged. I could have gone dumpster diving again. No, I have to accept some of it. I wanted the easy way out for once. It didn’t hurt… much. He was so nice and I was lonely.”

“You were twelve,” Dorian grumbled. “I’m gonna go find the son of a bitch.”

“Let it go. I don’t even really remember what he looked like―all I see is a faceless man in a flannel shirt. I still smell him.” She put her nose over the cup again. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. That’s an old life. Why does it bother you so much? I haven’t let it affect me. I went into that little shack with both eyes open. I knew what he wanted.” She sat for a moment, squeezing at the control sticks. “I’m sorry for not being innocent like you thought I was.”

“Stop. No part of that was your fault.” Dorian put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re more innocent than most, still.”

She banked the car into a wide left arc and descended to the roof of the Regional Tech Center. “I’ve been here so often lately, they must think I’m considering applying.”

“I doubt it, you’re a Zero.” He winked. “That’s sort of a long-term career.”

“Yeah.” She returned his wink. “They don’t even let you out when you die.”

“Hah.”

The open-case morgue occupied the entirety of the fourth sublevel. An immediate chill rolled into the elevator as the doors opened. For a moment, Kirsten wondered if anyone was down here, given the dim lighting. A white linoleum corridor stretched forward into a floor that resembled an abandoned hospital from a spooky horror vid. Frosty air filled her lungs as she stepped out; the temperature was low enough to smell cold. Her boots squeaked on the over-waxed floor.

She passed six doors on each side arranged in facing pairs labeled A through F. The corridor expanded into a larger area with a wide U-shaped desk, big enough for a half-dozen workers. It, too, was empty.

Kirsten turned in place, glancing at two offshoot passages that led to either side from the clerk’s area. Signs identified various rooms along the left hall as a number of scanning stations, file storage, and lastly, a hazardous materials locker. To the right, it seemed to be mostly offices for people important enough to have their names on placards. The only door with light coming out from under it was the men’s room.

“Shall I go hurry things along?” asked Dorian, with an impish grin.

Kirsten snickered. “This place is creepy enough; you’ll scare the guy to death.” She glanced at the hallway once again, tapping her foot.

Minutes later, a tall heavyset man in a white lab coat over dark clothes came trundling out of the bathroom. Long curly black hair cascaded down to his waist, and his jowls rocked with each footfall. He paused a moment when he realized she was there, and swiped at his hair to attempt to make it more presentable.

Konstantin, you are not. More like the chubby guy on the dorm floor everyone likes, but no one considers dating.

“Hel-lo.” He stumbled over what to call her while staring at her chest.

“Looking for rank insignia or just checking me out?” She winked. “Agent Wren, Division Zero.”

“Oliver Murphy,” he said, extending a hand. “Sorry, don’t get a lot of live people down here. Specially not pretty ones.” He chuckled, flashing an awkward smile. “What brings you to the halls of the dead?”

“I need to see the remains of certain homicide victims related to a case I am working on. Inquest 24180827A2.”

Oliver navigated around the giant desk and took the nearer seat along the left side of the U. Holographic panels sprang up around him as he swiped his meaty hands through the air. “According to our records, there are four bodies tagged under that case. Room D. I think Eli is in there working on something. Your ID should open the door; give me a holler if you have an issue.”

“Thanks.”

Twenty feet away, Dorian leaned toward her. “He didn’t seem to care you’re psionic.”

“I’ve got a boyfriend.” Kirsten spun the serpent bracelet around her wrist.

Dorian glanced at the wall. “There you go again, making that doe-eyed face.”

“What’s your problem with Konstantin? You’re not jealous are you? You’re the one that kept reminding me we had no chance.”

“Oh, I’m not jealous. You do deserve a living man. It’s just… I don’t know. You’ve always been strong and independent. To see you acting like some kind of helpless arm-clinger, it’s just not right.”

“You’re being jealous.” She winked. “I’m just having a little fantasy.” Her mirth faded. “I’ve been so alone for so long with no one but me around to pat me on the back and say it’ll be alright. Let me enjoy it for a little while.”

She swiped her ID over the door at Storage Room D. It chirped and slid open. A silver-walled chamber covered in square doors gleamed in strong blue light. On the left side, by an open door and extended body-tray, a Middle Eastern-looking man with a mass of fluffy, curled hair and a sharp chin jumped and glared wide-eyed at her. The name “Hassan” peeked through the glare of a name badge hung on his coat.

“Wow, the only thing missing from the sudden turn-and-stare was a horror movie organ,” she whispered. “Hellooo mad scientist. I wonder what he’s doing with that body.”

“I’m trying to figure out what sort of small animal died on his head.” Dorian cracked a whimsical grin.

Kirsten bit her lip to avoid laughing.

“Who are you?” Hassan asked.

Her eyes went to the blood-spattered glove and the laser scalpel. “Agent Wren, Division Zero I-Ops. Bodies pertinent to a current investigation are in here according to Mr. Murphy at the front desk. I won’t get in your way.”

On the far wall opposite the entrance, four adjacent doors lit up with white borders. Oliver’s voice echoed over a PA system. “Agent Wren, I tagged the drawers you need.”

“Thanks.” She walked through a full three-sixty turn, unsure if he could hear her.

Hassan appeared to lose all interest in the dead man in front of him as he swiveled to watch Kirsten pass. She pulled open the first door, cringing away from a fall of cryonic fog before a loud sucking hiss drew it back inside. The door motored itself open as a tray slid out bearing a sheet-covered figure. Upon reaching full extension, the platform lowered down from head-level to an elevation more suited for examination.

“VT activate,” said Kirsten.

A holographic terminal appeared next to her in midair, accompanied by a tiny glowing speck in the ceiling from the projector. She poked at virtual keys, navigating through the archives to the records for this body.

“Carlos Rosa, former Deputy Director of Security for the West City Municipal Complex.” Kirsten pulled the sheet away, exposing the body.

He had turned greyish-white and his chest was spattered with blue stains. Faint markings appeared in the skin, no doubt revealed by whatever substance they sprayed on him. She jogged over to Hassan’s work cart and helped herself to a pair of surgical gloves. He gave her a suspicious squint. Kirsten peeked at his surface thoughts, but they were in Arabic. A distinct sense of distrust came through on an emotional level.

She gave him a semi-hostile glare and walked back to Mr. Rosa. “Keep an eye on him,” she muttered. “I got a bad vibe.”

“You haven’t done enough Flowerbasket to ‘get vibes’ off people,” said Dorian.

After snapping on the gloves, she stood up on tiptoe and poked at the chest. “These look like the same markings I found in the circle. Konstantin called it Sumerian.” She dropped back to her heels and flipped through the medical report.

“ They found the fatal wound―looks like a stab through the heart.” She traced her finger over the holographic text while reading. “The medical examiner determined that someone regenerated tissue in the wound, likely with specialized nanobots, to disguise the cause of death. It seems like they only noticed it due to a small error in the boundary layers between tissues. The graft failed to adhere over a six nanometer span on ‘Victim Two’, and a recheck found the same ‘tissue plug’ in all four bodies.”

Later portions of the file contained medical scan data showing mild damage to the bones of the wrist and ankle, consistent with physical restraint over an extended period. Kirsten thought back to Brooke’s memory. That victim, undoubtedly Alaina Munoz, had metal binders on.

“Whoever is doing this holds the victims for some time prior to killing them,” she muttered, half to Dorian, half to herself.

She tapped a button at the end of the tray, which slid Carlos back into the cooler. The next bay held the remains of Uma Donn, a design engineer from EnMesh. Her injuries were consistent with Carlos’s, down to the presence of ancient pictograms present on the skin of the chest. Unlike Carlos, she had turned red and purple around that spot. Kirsten dug through her M.E. report, finding a note indicating a suspected allergic reaction to the chemical agent used to remove the markings.

No trace of the ink remained for identification. However, the ink had lessened the exposure of certain skin cells to the cleaning solution, allowing the medical examiner to reveal the writing with a different chemical that reacted to it. The cells with lower exposure remained paler, while the rest stained blue―more Sumerian writing.

“I’m hardly an expert here, but the pictographs look to be mostly the same with only a few different symbols.”

Dorian rubbed his chin.

Alaina Munoz was in the third tray, not as decomposed as the others except for the unnatural withering of the face and upper chest. Kirsten drew a sharp breath and looked away, unprepared for the spike of emotion from seeing the body of someone she watched die. The same writing existed on her. She had suffered more bone damage.

“Looks like she died fighting. She almost broke both wrists trying to get away.” Kirsten swallowed her sadness, looking away from Dorian to the dead woman. “Whoever did this to you is going to pay for it.”

“Alaina Munoz worked for RedEx. Why would they go after her? They don’t make any political decisions; they just transport parcels to Mars and back.”

“Maybe we’re looking at this wrong.” Kirsten almost tapped her finger to her lips, but hesitated with a dubious glance at a finger that had touched a corpse. “Maybe it isn’t government at all. Maybe it’s just organized crime looking to set up some kind of smuggling operation?”

“ Fourth victim…” Dorian squinted at the virtual terminal and it flipped a few pages over. “William Arris, a security guard for the West City Archives. What the hell does he have to do with smuggling or government?”

Kirsten glowered, thinking. “There’s lots of old stuff there. Maybe whoever is doing this needed to steal something from the archives? What if he needed to find this writing on a scroll or something?”

Dorian laughed. “You’ve been watching Monwyn too much. There’s no such thing as magic scrolls.”

“Fine, an old book then.” Kirsten glanced sideways at Hassan, who huddled away from her over a NetMini.

Dorian’s laughing eyes hardened. “He’s telling someone you know too much.”

“You speak Arabic?” Kirsten whispered.

“My family is originally from Egypt, K. Couple generations ago, but I figured I should keep up tradition.”

She pulled the stunrod off her belt and stalked toward Hassan. When she walked away from the body of William Arris, the tray chirped and retracted itself. The noise made Hassan turn, face twisting into a grimace of murderous panic.

Dorian ran past her at Hassan. “Whoever he’s on the line with just said ‘kill her.’”

“Okay, shithead. Put the scalpel down.” She traded the stunrod to her left hand as she put the other on the handle of the E-90 on her hip.

Hassan muttered at her in Arabic, as if he knew no English, while attempting to smile.

“What’s he saying?”

Dorian cringed. “Quite a few unpleasant things about women; you really don’t want me to translate. He’s just babbling random insults.”

“You at least have to have an English chip to get this job, Hassan. Don’t give me that shit. Who did you call to warn I know too much? Who are you working for?”

He turned as if to run, but whirled back and threw the contents of a flask at her. Kirsten dove away from the dark liquid, her hand left the E-90 in the holster as her arm moved to shield her eyes. Hassan hurled the empty plastic container at her before he ran for the door. Dorian blurred past him, grabbing the edge of a body cooler door and swinging it open as hard as he could fling it. Eyes over his shoulder on Kirsten, Hassan ran full speed into the swinging three-foot square slab of plastisteel with a dull, meaty clank .

He landed flat on his back, moaning.

Kirsten rolled onto all fours as Hassan staggered to his feet. Dorian tried to tackle him, but succeeded only in leaving a layer of cold slime on his chest. Hassan stood, swiping his hand through the residue with a wild, panicked look. He shot a stare at Kirsten and sprinted for the door, leaving his lab coat in her grasp as he rolled out of it and ducked through the door. She chased him to the left, past a rather startled Oliver, and to the right where he dove through faux-wood door and slammed it a half second before she crashed into it.

“Hassan, where do you think you’re running? You’re in the middle of a god damned police facility!” Kirsten screamed and kicked the door.

She wobbled back, rubbing her leg. “Damn, tough doors.” Out came the E-90. “You have two seconds to open this door or I’m opening it for you.”

One laser blast melted the retaining bar and flooded the air with the glue-plastic stink of molten Epoxil. The door swayed ajar. Kirsten raised her boot to kick it, but dove sideways at the sound of a gunshot. A bulge in the door showed where the dense material trapped the slug. Rolling onto her back, she aimed through her knees. Another shot―no bulge.

Silence.

Dorian leaned through the wall. “Clear. He shot himself.”

Oliver leaned around the corner at the end of the hallway. “What the fuck?”

“I wish I knew,” she snapped. “Call for a forensics team down here.”

Hassan’s brain dripped from the ceiling of the formerly nice office of Ellen Gomez, Chief Medical Examiner of West City. Shattered fragments of NetMini were everywhere; he had evidently put the device between the gun and his chin before firing. Kirsten leaned on the doorjamb, seething.

“No sign of a ghost,” said Dorian. “I don’t feel harbingers either. Either he was a shell, or I missed him.”

“I don’t know why he shot the ‘mini. The call traces are in the network.”

Dorian nodded. “True, but with the ‘mini destroyed, it’ll take them a few hours to figure out what IPv12 to trace.”

“Why do I feel like I’m digging myself deeper into a hole?” She glanced to the left as a handful of Division 1 officers and a crime scene crew rounded the corner. “I just can’t catch a break, can I?”

“Maybe you should have a little faith.”

She blinked. “Great idea.”

wo hours later, Kirsten landed the patrol craft in front of the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary. At a little past one in the afternoon, the sun illuminated the sides of buildings adjacent to the parking lot, orange fire shimmering over silver towers. It failed to pierce the smog right overhead. The effect created a halo of otherworldly light at the edges of a darkened space where a significant number of people waited in line for food. She found the presence of a line reassuring; it made the place seem far more welcoming than it had been the other night, though the quality of the light kept her on edge.

“This is creepy,” she said as she stood. “It looks like it’s going to rain just on this parking lot.”

Dorian walked through the car to join her. “That’s just the smog layer, not much wind today.”

A handful of advert bots prowled the line of unfortunates waiting for a free lunch. Kirsten drew a breath, about to mock them for attempting to sell things to people with no money, until she realized they were recruitment ads seeking laborers and crew for colony work.

She ducked through them, finding Father Villera behind the long table where he doled out meals. He nodded at her, handing off his duties to a volunteer who appeared to be a university student. The girl waved at Kirsten and took Villera’s spot at the table.

“I got your message, come on. We can talk in the back.” He ambled around a table full of people eating and headed for the back hallway.

Kirsten followed him, edging to the side as he eased a plain door closed behind her. The room was quite sparse in decoration. Aside from cheap false-wood paneled walls, a steel desk, and several bookshelves, a plain cross hung on the wall opposite the door. Something about the pale beige-orange walls made her feel a little nauseous. The four-inch Jesus stared at her; she looked away. Even twelve years after running away from home, she couldn’t bear the gaze of a little carved man.

“Have you any news? What of that poor girl?”

“She’s fine. It was scary for a little while, but she’s in the hospital recovering from the drugs. She told me an interesting story about what she saw.” Kirsten described the ritual killing.

Villera paled as he limped around and sat at the desk. After blessing himself, he looked up. “I am concerned. It sounds to me like there is more to this than a simple serial killer.”

“I never did find out who was responsible for bringing Charazu into the world. They’re still out there. There’s no connection between the victims. One was pretty high up, but one was just a minimum wage museum guard. One was an engineer, and another worked in advertising. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Who they were may not be important. This person may have just sought random targets of opportunity. Each killing was likely a sacrifice to the darkness.”

“There is evidence they were held for some time prior to their deaths, but there was no sign of torture or sexual abuse.”

Villera waved her off. “No, that wouldn’t fit. Souls are the currency of the damned. He’s using them to pay a tithe. The only question I have is if each one results in a minor spirit or if he is collecting them as an offering to a more significant entity.”

“I thought it was Reverend Wallis, but he was a thrall of something as well. I destroyed an abyssal that had possessed him. He didn’t remember a thing. I still don’t really believe I’m dealing with demons.” Kirsten slumped into a metal folding chair.

“You are young yet, Kirsten. Faith can sometimes take many years to find us.”

She chuckled. “I’m not a big fan of religion, Father. No offense. I didn’t have the greatest experience with it growing up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I told you about my mother already. She couldn’t deal with having a psionic child, thought I was a minion of the Devil. I can see ghosts, spirits, and apparently demons. When wayward haunts came to me for help, she thought I was praying to Satan. It got pretty, uhh, bad.” Kirsten rubbed her hand, the spot Mother used to burn. “All the while she did those things to me, she kept calling on Jesus, asking why he’d done this to her. As if my very existence was some kind of punishment for her to suffer through.”

Father Villera leaned forward over the desk, extending a hand. “There are three kinds of people in religion, my child.”

After catching herself giving him a patronizing look, she took his hand.

“Some seek to use the word of God as a tool to hurt and control others. They care not for the meaning of scripture, only seeking to profit off fear and superstition for their own enrichment. Most of those do not have any true faith at all. They are usually the most vehement defenders of ideas, loudly challenging any dissent and refusing to permit any discussion that contradicts their views.”

She nodded. “Yeah, like trying to argue with a three-year-old. They know they’re wrong and there’s nothing they can say to validate their point―so they just scream and throw things.”

Father Villera chuckled. “Then, you have people who expect God to knock on their door every time they call on him, and yet they blame him for everything that goes wrong in their life as if they were the only person to exist in the entire world. As if God himself came down and decided it was their turn to suffer. They take no responsibility for their own lives or decisions. On the more extreme end, some look to use their beliefs as an excuse to permit the inexcusable.”

She fidgeted, staring down. “Yeah.”

“Some people are content to accept faith for what it is. They do not question why things happen and they do not make wishes as if on a genie. For them, it is simply enough to know he is there. There is no purpose in baiting those who do not believe. I know in my heart what I believe, and a man is no lesser for disagreeing with me. One cannot force another to find faith; it must find everyone in their own way.”

Kirsten smirked at the desk. “Nice try, Father. I’m still not sure if I’m ready to believe in an invisible man in the sky. I’ve talked to dead priests who couldn’t understand why what they saw after death was different than what they believed all their lives.”

“Perhaps what we believe in life affects what we see after it.” He smiled as she let go of his hand, and reclined. “When you are ready, you will know. You may never believe, and that is fine.”

“For a priest, you sure seem to know a lot about abyssals.”

“Who do you think had to deal with them before psionics came around?” He winked.

“Any ideas where I could start?”

“You mentioned there was writing on the victims’ bodies? Have you looked into the meaning of it?”

“I’ve been wanting to. I know someone who can translate it.”

Father Villera stood up. “Sounds like a good place to start.”

“I doubt the killings are random,” said Dorian. “There is too much planning involved.”

“ Thanks, Father.” Kirsten shook hands. “Time for me to start poring over data in search of a pattern. Oh, the people who attacked you were connected to this somehow. Whoever is doing it must view you as a threat.”

Father Villera glanced at the gold ouroboros around her right wrist. “Indeed… he must.”

irsten stared at the white text scrolling through the blackness of her holo-terminal. The after-hours lighting left the squad room dim, making her feel even more like she spent too much time there. Distant whirring echoed about as automated cleaning bots sprayed lemon-scented chemicals into the air. Without even looking, she lifted her feet as a flat, round bot scooted by in front of her chair―7:13 p.m. on the dot.

Ugh, I am here late way too much.

She stared at faces. William Arris, a security guard from the West City Archives. He had no financial trouble, no criminal record, and was a former Marine. Whoever took him out had to be strong enough to handle someone trained for combat while being quiet enough to do it without discovery. Records indicated Arris had a four-day weekend, but no one had seen him since he left work at the end of his Thursday overnight shift. He did not report in for work on Tuesday, and his body was found the following Friday. No family reported him missing, and the only traffic on his NetMini account was his shift supervisor going crazy trying to reach him. Kirsten was so tired she found the series of vid mails depicting the supervisor falling ever further into a desperate frothing rage funny.

Konstantin has an office at the Archives; perhaps he could shed some light on what happened. He has a lot of pull there, she would ask him if anything was stolen.

Carlos Rosa was easy to figure out. He was the de-facto head of security at the West City Municipal Complex. Already, his death was being used by the military as leverage in objecting to the privatization of security. Kirsten knew Commissioner Vernon had been―and probably still was―under the influence of an abyssal. She glared at the wall again, annoyed at Carter and the Division 0 command council for demanding incontrovertible proof before acting. She felt uneasy at the prospect politics outweighed a woman’s life, but the sad reality of a public backlash against psionics was all too real. As bad as it could get for them now, a scandal involving accusations of mind control and espionage by a psionic against such a high-ranking government official would be a disaster.

Pitchforks and torches time.

The next face belonged to Uma Donn, a multi-PhD research engineer for EnMesh Biomedical. Like Arris, she had no criminal record, debts, or any suspicious marks in her record. Also, like Arris, she had no family. Kirsten paused, tapping her chin. No family. No one to report them missing too early. EnMesh was recently purchased by Kukla Investments. No connection came to mind between them and the Archives, or between them and the trade commissioner.

A twinge of revulsion rippled through her as the face of Alaina Munoz appeared on screen. She looked so young, and Kirsten had vicariously watched her die. No matter how much she wanted to stop it, the vision rode in on the sense of an eleven-year-old’s memory. All she could do was witness it happen. Everything came hand-in-hand with the emotions of a young girl, leaving Kirsten trembling for several moments until she remembered the fear was not her own.

The young woman had worked in the marketing department of RedEx. So far, nothing newsworthy had come out of the interplanetary shipping company. Nothing, except for a recent buyout by VSKK. There was no connection between them and the commissioner either, and no link between them and the West City Archives. None, except for…

Kirsten’s hand fell out from under her chin and slapped onto the desk.

Konstantin is the CEO. She fired an awkward glance at Dorian as something did a backflip in her stomach. After a few breaths, she grinned. Of course, if someone knew EnMesh was about to be purchased by VSKK, they might try to sabotage things by killing one of their scientists. That made sense. If there was anything in VSKK’s network, Konstantin would be able to find it.

That just left EnMesh and Kukla disconnected from everything else.

Kukla, why does the name sound so damn familiar?

Her mind raced as she thought about the phrase ‘Kukla Investment Corporation.’ She heard the voice of an Eastern-European man talking about corporate property. In silence, she stared at the ceiling lights for several minutes before it hit her: #1998 City Road 130, the building where the silver circle was. Purchased by Kukla Investment Corporation. She sat back in the chair, arms limp at her sides. Is it a coincidence? They buy all sorts of things.

She pulled her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. No, too much of a coincidence. Kukla buys a building where Charazu is summoned. Then, they buy out a company that has an employee murdered by someone summoning demons. RedEx has thousands of employees. Even a random killer could have chosen one of their employees by chance.

A smiling, balding face with large ears flashed in her mind. Yevgeniy Suvorin, majordomo of Kukla Investment Corp. Friends with Konstantin. Kirsten bit her fingers. There was the link. That was too much to ignore. Everything swirled around those two men. It had to be Yevgeniy, or at least someone working under him. They wanted to take over VSKK and destroy Konstantin. That’s why he researched ancient Sumerian. Someone must have been after him since before he left the ACC. He needed to defend himself from it.

There had to be a proof trail somewhere in the system. Some transaction, some communication, something that would lead her to evidence the Council would accept. Konstantin has been dealing with it for years; Commissioner Vernon only had a few days left.

Her NetMini ringing all but knocked her out of her chair screaming. Kirsten trembled as she answered it, so wound up with worry she could not stop shaking. When Konstantin’s face appeared, she squeaked.

“Is everything all right, Lyubimaya? You look quite… what is the word, frazzled?” The holographic head gazed around. “You’re still at the office, aren’t you?”

“Yes. This case is really kicking my ass. I only have a few days left to save the next victim.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “You know who next victim will be?”

“Not who the killer is going to take next, but…” She bit her lip, lowering her voice. “I shouldn’t say anything…”

“ Don’t say it over the line then. I would like you to accompany me to a boring event I must attend tonight. It would be intolerable without you.”

Kirsten whined. “I want to, but I have so much I have to get done. That woman is going to die if I don’t find some kind of proof. It’s going to take me hours just filling out reports.”

“I’m sure your captain will understand. He wouldn’t want his best astral sensitive to burn herself out. Surely, he does not expect you to work all night without at least having dinner?”

She twisted at the bracelet, staring at the screens. “I…” Can’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t…

“I’ll send a car for you.”

Kirsten’s face slackened into a zombie’s glassy stare. “Okay.”

The limousine came to a halt at the end of a pier, aglow in the castoff light from a large corporate yacht. Kirsten stepped out as the automatic door swung open. Two silver disks on each shoulder held a drape of black cloth across her chest, an extra mantle over a high-necked black gown that hung to her ankles. Of all the dresses Konstantin had bought her, this one, by far, covered the most skin. He waited at the dockside end of the boarding ramp, holding his arm out to her as she approached and took it.

“You look radiant, my darling.” He kissed the back of her hand. “Quite fetching with your hair wild; it suits you.”

She flushed and smiled at the ground. He started up the ramp, pausing as she took a step after him.

“Flats?” He grinned.

She blew air out of the side of her mouth. “Every time I wear heels, I wind up barefoot and getting shot at. I’m hoping to skip that part tonight.”

He made an appraising face. “Fair enough.”

At the top of the ramp, Kirsten froze, gripping Konstantin’s hand hard enough for him to glance at her. Yevgeniy was standing at the rear of the open deck, flanked by three young women and two men of similar age. She looked away before he noticed her staring, tucking into Konstantin’s side.

“What is wrong? You seem suddenly afraid.”

Tell him. Wait, no… Yevgeniy might hear me. If he is the one, there could be things lurking. I still feel that presence right behind me. Too many innocent people here. “Oh, I’m just not good on boats. I never learned how to swim.”

Konstantin glanced at Yevgeniy, winked at her, and led her to a table in the shade of an overhanging upper tier where soft music drifted above the sound of the ocean. She picked a seat with her back facing the wall, giving her a view of the entire main deck save for one row of tables behind her. He sat, waving at a steward who poured champagne.

“We seem to continue to have these strange, difficult situations. I did not realize you had a fear of water travel.” He smiled at her lack of reaction to the boat getting underway. “Or, perhaps there is some company here you are not fond of?”

Kirsten found no answers at the bottom of her champagne glass. Yeah, you’re still a rotten liar, K. “I’m a mess about the case. I’ve found some evidence that has me worried about you. The bodies we keep finding had the same kind of writing on them as the circle I asked you about.”

He narrowed his eyes at the distance. “Really? They found writing on them? How… curious. You think there is a connection to Charazu? I thought you banished it?”

“There has to be something else involved. There is a living person responsible for summoning things. Every time they kill someone, they’re sacrificing them to something bigger than Charazu. I don’t want to say anything here. Too many ears.”

“Charazu was a true demon; it never lived a mortal life. However, it wasn’t what I would consider very powerful.” He offered a pleasant nod. “I shall trouble you no more about it tonight. At least, not while we are here.” He winked.

“So, what are they celebrating?”

“My company apparently just purchased some shipping outfit. These decisions are made by people a few levels down.”

Kirsten stared at him. “Aren’t you the CEO? Didn’t you have to approve it?”

“Such innocence in your eyes.” He chuckled. “Your naivety is beautiful, Kirsten. I have a majordomo who handles most of the day-to-day things. My role is more one of appearing at droll functions like this and smiling for the NewsNet. Without you here, I could not tolerate it.”

An hour of random conversation about vacations at a mountain chalet and other fanciful things he planned once she could take vacation passed in a blur. She held his hand across the table for most of it, forgetting about the case, Commissioner Vernon, and all the work she still had to do. Did it really matter? She could quit; Konstantin had so much money she would never have to work again. Her mind drifted through a daydream of her, Konstantin, a fireplace, bear-fur rug, and no clothes.

He excused himself to make some brief remarks at a podium about the acquisition of RedEx, assuring everyone there no significant adjustments were planned for anyone in upper management. As far as the company was concerned, the only thing to change would be a name somewhere in a records system no one but lawyers ever look at.

Kirsten spent the time of his speech watching Yevgeniy. His surface thoughts went by in Russian; all emotions and images she could make sense of focused on the breasts to his left and right. She scowled at him. Pig. Her angry glare lingered until Konstantin walked in front of her. No longer able to see Yevgeniy, she smiled.

“Well, now that the unpleasantness is over with, we have the rest of the night.” Rather than sit, he extended a hand.

The boat had returned to port, timing its arrival for the end of his remarks. She took his hand; finding herself clinging to his side as if he would protect her from Yevgeniy―despite the man not removing his eyes from his two female companions once to gaze at either of them, save for a brief handshake when Konstantin had taken the podium.

He walked her to the limo, holding her hand as she got in. After easing her door closed, he joined her via the other side and resumed holding her hand. “See now, Kirsten. No one is shooting at you, and you still have your shoes.” Konstantin stroked his thumb over the back of her hand. “Are you sure you would rather be alone tonight? Perhaps we can seek the sanctuary of my estate and discuss the particulars of your investigation. I might be able to make sense of the inscriptions you found on the dead, if you have images.”

Talking about dead people was not the most prominent thought in her head at the mention of going to his mansion. A brief daydream took her back to that night on the curb when he kissed at her neck.

“I’d love to.” She could not look at him without turning scarlet.

He smiled the grin of a man about to get something he had waited long for. The black dress grew warm as her body reacted to his proximity. Kirsten’s mind raced. Would he try to get her in bed tonight? Would she say yes? Her breathing sped up in time with her heart. She fidgeted, finding it strange how worked up she got at the mere thought of it. Without a distraction, she would be there and back again before they ever got to the manor house.

Not growing old alone had been one of Kirsten’s primary goals for the better part of the last three years. Each time she got close to finding someone, the P word (psionic, that is) brought things to a flaming halt. Now she was with a man who didn’t care about her gift. The prospect of being with a man grew closer. Wonder at how different it would be than her first time made her tremble. This would not be an act of desperation; this would be pure bliss.

Her hands flew to her stomach as though a force punched her. The heat in her face and chest went ice cold as her arousal crashed to dread. Her thoughts shifted to Evan, an out-of-nowhere sense of horrible trepidation that something bad had happened to him. Konstantin’s hand on her back snapped her out of the daze, but made the queasiness worse.

“Are you feeling well, Kirsten? Please don’t tell me the fish was bad.”

“You’re going to be mad at me. I have the worst feeling about Evan. It’s too strong to be nerves. I… he’s clairvoyant; he could be calling me for help. Something’s wrong.”

Konstantin’s eyes narrowed into slits. He spent a moment staring out the window to his left.

The gurgle from her stomach occurred loud enough to make the driver glance back. Konstantin brushed the hair off her face, his own expression softening. “You are a devoted mother. I would very much like you to have some of your own one day.” He nodded. “Very well.”

She grabbed his arm. “I’m really sorry, Konstantin. I don’t know why this keeps happening. Maybe he’s just having separation anxiety. Maybe I could just call him and we could still”―she doubled over from pain― “no, please, I have to make sure he’s okay.”

“I understand, Lyubimaya.” He patted the hand resting on her thigh. “I shall make arrangements for a private night, just the two of us. Tell me when you are ready.”

Kirsten blinked. “Of course. I want to be with you so much.” She fell against him again.

He held her until the limo stopped outside Nila’s building, and escorted her into the lobby.

“Perhaps I can wait here?” He winked. “Go, check on him. If all is well and you are feeling better, we could yet continue our special night.”

Kirsten stared into his eyes, feeling the strength leak from her legs. “Okay, that―”

“Mom!” yelled Evan.

The boy squeezed himself through the elevator doors before they opened all the way, running to within ten paces of the couple, bare feet smacking loud over the lobby tiles. Powder-blue pajamas hung loose around him as he came to a halt and stared death at Konstantin.

“Mom, I need you.” He shivered, balling his hands into fists.

The sight of him twisted the knot tighter in her gut. His calm, almost threatening tone, scared her and washed any thought of a romantic evening out of her mind. She ran to him, scooping him up and holding him tight.

“You shouldn’t be out here with no shoes, the floor is ice cold. You’re shivering.”

He held on to her shoulders, never once taking his eyes off Konstantin. Kirsten gave Evan a kiss on the side of the head, stroking his hair and offering an apologetic look to the man she adored.

“Do not worry.” Konstantin smiled. “He is at that age. He does not like having competition for such a remarkable woman. Soon, he will understand it is not competition. Do let me know what he is fond of so I can treat him on his birthday. Shall I drop the two of you off at your apartment?”

Evan let his head rest on Kirsten’s shoulder, whispering, “Can we take a Pubcar?”

Kirsten winced; her helpless expression asked a question her lips could not.

After a bow, Konstantin walked out. Kirsten carried Evan into the elevator.

“Let’s grab your things from Nila’s place, and we’ll go home. Did something happen? Did you have a bad dream?”

“No.”

“You don’t like him.” Kirsten exhaled.

Evan shrugged. “He’s old. You’re too pretty for him.”

She laughed, making a goofy face as she tweaked his nose. “He’s not that old.”

He clung as the elevator doors pinged and closed. “Sorry for bein’ squeezy.”

Kirsten sprawled on the floor at Evan’s side after tucking him into his sleeping bag, stealing a few minutes of time with him before he passed out. She thought about Doctor Loring’s nod of approval, and about getting him a real bed. The sound of him breathing in his dreams made her feel tired. With heavy limbs, she forced herself up, staggered to her cabinet, and peeled the dress off. She squinted at herself in the small mirror, taking note of the dark smears under her eyes. After checking to make sure Evan was still out, she slipped out of her undies and into her pajamas. The bracelet snagged on the sleeve, causing her to hold her arm up and stare at the carved serpent eating its own tail.

Konstantin told her it symbolized life, the endless cycle of death and rebirth. She tugged at it, twisted it, and found herself unable to remove it. She squeezed the head, looking for a mechanism to unclasp the fangs from the tail. After losing ten minutes, and realizing she came close to falling asleep on her feet, she gave up.

Screw it, I haven’t taken it off since he gave it to me… Sleeping in it one more night won’t kill me.

She looked at her home terminal, thinking about the reports she needed to type up. “To hell with reports, they can wait. I’ll be no help to anyone as a zombie.”

Kirsten tiptoed to bed and felt her body all but melt into the Comforgel pad. For once, the damn thing lived up to its name. When sleepy Evan peeked over the side, she gave him an approving wink, and he climbed up and cuddled against her. He had not said much about that night, only told her he had another bad dream about twin gold metallic dragons devouring her. There, in the warm semiliquid mass of comforgel, with a contented Evan tucked under her right arm, Kirsten almost felt blessed.

irsten’s eyes opened with a mild stab of pain as thick eye-crumbles failed to keep them sealed. The reason for her sudden consciousness became apparent as sixty-some pounds of terrified boy shook her via a two-fisted grip of her pink pajama top. At a subconscious level, she remembered him being unaffected by Theodore’s presence. Obvious fear on his face meant one of two things: either he had a nightmare, or something more dangerous than a perverted ghost was nearby. Clarity came to her mind, and with it came an explanation for why she could not breathe. Evan sat on her chest.

“Mom,” he whispered, “there’s a monster in the bathroom.”

She clasped his hands, extricating his fingers from her shirt. At this point, nightmare or actual monster was up for debate. “Okay, I’ll check.”

He scooted around behind her as she sat up. She slipped out of bed and grumbled at the clock. Her body protested the tease of only five hours sleep as she plodded over to the bathroom door and pulled it open.

Amid a swirl of black vapor, a humanoid figure glared at her with bright white eyes. Its skin had the sheen of polished black leather, muscles angular and thin. Insectoid mandibles opened, peeling skin away from a more human-like set of silver teeth concealed by the flaps. Rather than feet, its legs ended in sharpened bone spurs; in the hollow of where intestines should be, several infant-faced serpents writhed, each as big around as a forearm. White skin striated with dark veins stretched, dripping dark violet ichor as the demonic cherubs snarled.

Kirsten had about enough time to blink before it raised two three-fingered hands in a shoving gesture. Telekinetic force slammed into her, hurling her off her feet and out into the living room. She smacked into the wall above the bed, falling face-first into the Comforgel pad as Evan scrambled out of the way, screaming.

The impact knocked her senseless. Her mind shouted at her to move, but the muscles did not listen. Evan’s continuous howl moved from right to left in a circle, followed by hissing and the scraping of chitin.

“Mom!”

His shriek pulled her through the full-body pain. Pushing up from the bed, she gathered her feet under her as the creature hauled Evan into the air upside down by his right ankle. He focused his own astral power at the mass of serpents, which wavered about in their effort to bite him. The creature stepped away as Kirsten staggered toward it, drawing back its free hand to plunge claws into Evan’s exposed belly.

“No!” Kirsten roared. She wrapped her mental energy around the abyssal’s essence and shoved with all of her desperation.

The demon blurred into a streak of black, rocketing into the wall as if hit by a nonexistent PubTran bus moving near a hundred miles an hour. Solid again at the point of impact, black gunk spattered out of its mouth. Evan fell to all fours and scrambled to his feet. The creature slid to the ground. Its head crunched around to face her, eyes narrowing.

Evan skidded to a halt on his heels, backing away from her and diverted to the bathroom. Confused by the fearful look he gave her, Kirsten felt hurt for an instant before she spun at a moving shadow. The sheet loomed over her from behind, wraith-like, and engulfed her. She screamed with anger as it dragged her onto the bed, coiling around her in a boa’s embrace.

Cloth covered her head, tightening around her neck as it crushed her legs together and squeezed the air from her chest. Kirsten squirmed, forcing one hand up to her throat to fight the twisting linens for air.

Heavy thuds moved past her, bone spurs stabbing carpet-covered concrete. The light slap of Evan’s feet on the bathroom floor punctuated his continued screams. She thrashed, losing a second or two to panic before her training took over. The sheet isn’t physical. Psionic energy burst forth as she called Evan’s name in her mind. The sheet billowed out to a sphere around her, trembled, and popped like a bubble fluttering to the bed. She flung it off just as a tremendous boom reverberated out of the bathroom, followed by an uneasy child’s squeal.

“Evan!” Kirsten shouted, leaping off the bed as she called the lash.

The sheet whipped out, tightening around her ankle as soon as her foot hit the floor. Kirsten caught a flash glimpse of the creature smashing its fists against the shower tube, causing the glimmer of an astral blockade to glint in the plastic. Her rush of pride that Evan had managed to do that gave way to anger at the beast threatening him. She flung the lash forward as the sheet yanked her leg out from under her; the tip of the energy stream fell short as the cloth serpent hauled her backward. Thunderous pounding continued in the bathroom, the noise as though cannons fired.

Kirsten clawed at the rug, trying to pull herself away. She rolled onto her back, swiping the lash through the bedclothes. The sense of a tiny oblivion burst through the room, and the sheet ceased moving. She kicked it off her leg and sprang upright, turning to find the large demon right behind her. An involuntary scream flew from her throat as she jumped back, tripping over the bed and landing on her back. It descended on her, clawed hands pinning her arms, puncturing her skin while its intestine-serpents unwound. The size of babies, the malformed faces of five little old men hovered over her. Tiny lips twisted into sinister grins, revealing blackened gums studded with rotting teeth. They wavered about as each nudged the others away in an effort to get a closer look at her.

They screamed all at once and lunged forth to devour her.

Kirsten cringed away, feeling nothing but a faint awareness of slime running over her neck. Weight no longer held her down; claws no longer pierced her arms. Her head rolled straight, gaze fixed upon the ceiling. Calm overtook her, as if everything now made perfect sense. She knew exactly what needed to be done.

“No, no, no!” screamed Evan. “Stupid machine.”

Now soaking wet in his pajamas, he pressed his face into the tube wall trying to see into the bedroom. It was quiet there, but he did not trust the sound as much as he did the feeling in his gut. A shadow changed; Kirsten sat up, pivoted, and planted her feet on the carpet.

“Did you kill it?” he yelled, to no response.

Her hand grasped the E-90, lifting it from the nightstand and caressing it as she held it to her chest. A heel turn pointed her at the bathroom. Evan backed into the other side of the tube, squinting at the assault of soap-laden water drenching him. Something didn’t feel right.

“Stupid shower came on.” He grumbled, banging his elbow on the console twice.

Kirsten stepped into the light, a bruise around her right ankle visible under the pink leg of her pajamas. Her sleeves darkened crimson from midway between wrist and elbow, blood trailed over the E-90 and dripped on the tile floor.

Pat… pat… pat…

He stared at her face, at the horrible, evil, murderous grin. The weapon lifted; jet-black eyes sighted over it as the laser pointed right at him. It wasn’t Kirsten.

Pat… pat… pat…

“Mommy!” he screamed, slapping his hands on the tube. “The demon got you!”

She got super-squeezy every time he called her Mommy. He hoped it would be enough to snap her out of it. The weapon trembled. He remembered her saying she could never hurt him. Evan stood his ground, getting angry at the creature for attacking his real mother.

“Mommy!” He roared, as much as a nine-year-old can roar. A wave of psionic energy flew out of him, trying to knock the bad thing out of her.

Kirsten blinked; something hot, tears perhaps, ran down her cheeks. One second she was lying on the bed with those horrible little faces hovering over her. Now she was standing―with a gun pointed at Evan. Her breath sputtered in an erratic gasp as she forced her arm down. Evan smiled and pointed at the mass of blackness exuding out of her like sweat.

“Behind you!”

She whirled. The abyssal slid into the bedroom, dragging itself along in a forearm crawl. The sudden ejection from a possessed host seemed to leave it crippled. Kirsten tapped all of her rage and her horror at what the creature almost made her do. The lash traced outward into a tendril of flickering energy. A twist of her arm coiled it, projecting it into a downstroke she raked through the slinking abyssal. It howled; a deep bass roar accompanied by a cacophony of tiny infant-like screams before it exploded in a cloud of inky fog.

The sense of obliteration came over her, the headache which so often followed a hard mind blast close on its heels. She fell to her knees and went over forward. Bloody hands clutched at the tile; the sight of red ignited fires in her arms where claws had pierced. A rush of warm, humid air hit her from behind. Evan emerged from the tube through shimmering flecks of light from the dissipating blockade.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

Kirsten crawled around to face him, sitting back on her heels. He looked miserable, soaked and dripping in his wet pajamas. Such guilt came over her, she cried.

“You said you couldn’t hurt me. I knew you wouldn’t.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

She pulled him into her lap, cradling him water and all, and mumbled apologies into his hair.

“Mom?”

“ Yeah?” She sniffled, and raised her head to look him in the eye. “Yes?”

“You’re still bleeding. Take a stimpak before you get sick.”

Kirsten made a noise somewhere between laughing and crying. Evan tugged at her until she stood, and had to drag her to the bed. As she sat on the edge of the Comforgel pad pushing a stimpak between two claw punctures on her arm, he traded his soaked PJs for a dry towel.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“It’s four in the morning.”

Arms folded to his chest under the terrycloth wrap, he walked right up to her with a serious face. One droplet of water fell off his nose. “Are you going back to sleep?”

Kirsten leaned out and ruffled his hair. “Mocha.”

he din of voices tugged at the edges of her consciousness. Kirsten moaned: a noise that began deep in her brain as a request for a few more minutes of sleep, but entered the world as a monosyllabic grunt. Her right forearm balanced over her face, and as her sphere of awareness widened, she noticed the absence of Evan. Her most recent memory was of him curled up next to her. With another groan, she moved her arm, letting it arc upward before falling heavily onto her gut and sliding off. Cold floor across the back of her knuckles reminded her she was on a sofa in the squad room.

She pawed at the cushions, searching for the missing boy, sitting up after she found no trace of him. White socks at the end of her black leggings confused her. She did not remember taking her boots off, or even putting her uniform on. Morelli was the only other person in the room, and as usual, he made it a point not to look directly at her at any time.

“Dorian?” she rasped, forcing herself to swallow.

Morelli fumbled something small and plastic, which clattered to the floor.

“Evan went to school about an hour ago. Someone from the dorm came to escort him over.” Dorian coalesced nearby. “I’m to tell you Eze wants to see you when you wake up.”

Kirsten held her face in both hands, elbows on her knees, trying to rub wakefulness through her eyelids. “How long was I out? Wait, Eze can see you?”

“No, he just spoke assuming I was here. It’s about ten now. The two of you arrived a little after six in the morning. Bad night?”

She stared at her boots, unable to fathom how to work the five fasteners along the outer edge. The act of sliding her legs into them made the task automatic, and she stretched away the discomfort of a too-brief sofa nap.

“An abyssal came after us in the apartment last night. Bastard thing got me half-awake, slipped into my head. My defenses weren’t ready.”

Dorian put his hands on his hips. “Evan gave me the rundown.”

“Someone tried to get me to…” She pivoted toward Eze’s door. “Now I’m pissed.”

“Oh, shit.” Dorian held his hands up. “Look out.”

“Dammit, I’m serious.” Kirsten managed to stop glaring by the time she entered the captain’s office. “Sorry for passing out like that, sir. I had an event at home last night.”

“Yes, so I hear.” Eze looked away from his terminal, chair creaking as he leaned back. “The boy filled me in.”

“Did he sleep at all?”

Eze laughed. “He said he’d nap in math class. To be honest, I’m not sure if he was kidding.”

Sounds like something my kid would say. Kirsten smiled. “Sir, I’m at a loss. I have scraps of things that don’t make sense and some theories―but no evidence I can take to the council.”

“Alright.” Captain Eze steepled his fingers to his chin. “Let’s hear it.”

She sat facing the desk, casting a brief glance over the row of four-inch ceremonial African masks. “Okay, I went to the morgue…” Shit, I forgot to type the reports. “I had a suspicious feeling about some recent deaths. I went to the RTC to follow up on it, and found evidence of what appears to be some kind of ritual murders. While I was there, one of the clerks called to warn someone I was getting too close. Then he tried to kill me. I chased him, but he shot himself and destroyed his NetMini in the process.”

Eze reached toward his terminal, swiping through a few screens. “I read what Div Two filed; however, the investigation has stalled pending your reports. Do you think Hassan acted of his own volition?”

“I never got the chance to find out. I didn’t see a spirit lingering after he died, nor did I feel Harbingers around. If he had a ghost, he ran off before I got into the room.”

“If?” Eze leaned back with a raised eyebrow. “I did not think spirits were optional.”

“I…” She gazed into space. “Dammit, I have so many reports to write up. The incident at the Pentecostal place, B. G. Wallis. The people the Div One officers killed had no ghosts; they were bodies worn by demons. I still don’t know if they were killed ahead of time, displaced, or stolen from a morgue.”

“So there were just abyssals inside them?”

“I think so, sir, yes. They were dark spirits; however, they were weak. They ran at armed officers with nothing but knives. They were trying to get killed, like some kind of trap.”

“I spent two hours with Chandrasekhar yesterday afternoon.”

“Who?”

“Division One Bureau Chief. I had to give a statement about what happened at the church. He asked how you were doing.”

Kirsten frowned at the little masks. “I couldn’t save Womack. The man was so strong, he threw me around like a rag doll.”

“They don’t blame you. You tried everything you could think of to keep them outside. It was my error insisting they accompany you.” He tapped his finger on the desk and met her stare. “I wanted to apologize for over-coddling you.”

“No offense taken, sir.” She couldn’t quite smile so soon after remembering the death of a police officer. “It’s nice to be cared for. Back to the case, I think the nexus of it is a man named Yevgeniy Suvorin. He is the majordomo of Kukla Investment Corporation. I can’t see any other common thread among the dead.”

Kirsten recounted the bodies. Arris, the security guard from the Archives. Connected via the Konstantin having an office there. Donn, the engineer, worked for EnMesh, which Kukla recently purchased―direct connection to Yevgeniy. The woman, Munoz, worked for RedEx, which VSKK just acquired―connection: Konstantin. The two men appear to be friends, which links both spheres together.

“What of Mr. Rosa?” asked Eze. “Did he not manage security at the Municipal Complex?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Commissioner Vernon is under the influence of a paranormal entity, much the same way one tried to make me hurt Evan.” Kirsten scrunched her fingers into the seat cushion. “I bet they took Mr. Rosa first to get inside, and got rid of him when he was no longer useful. The trade deal being pushed around now would benefit the entire ACC.”

“Need I remind you your friend Konstantin’s company is ACC. Sure, they are in a moderate quasi-republic, but they are still loyal to the ACC when push comes to shove.”

Kirsten’s head shook with an emphatic negative. “That’s the whole point. Yevgeniy is trying to ruin him!”

“What convinces you Konstantin is a target and not an actor?” Eze’s face changed from deep chocolate to a light brown as the holo-terminal bathed him in light from a new page. “He does possess familiarity with the archaic language you keep finding, does he not?”

She gawked at him. “How could you even suggest that? He loves me!” Kirsten covered her mouth with both hands and swallowed. “Sorry, sir.” Her gaze fell into her lap. “I mean, if he had anything to do with it, why would he try to cuddle up to me? I’m the one chasing the abyssals around. Hell, he gave me Charazu’s name―I couldn’t have destroyed it without that. I think Yevgeniy has been after him for years; he had to learn Sumerian to protect himself. Over there, the government just kills people for being psionic. Who knows what the hell they’d do to a person for claiming to be at war with demons. It’s probably no big deal to him anymore.”

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

“Sun Tzu?” she asked.

Eze smiled. “Not exactly. It’s from The Godfather, I think. Did you ever consider he may just want you where he can watch you?”

Kirsten shuddered. “No, that can’t be true. He’s so sweet. I feel safe around him.”

“Have you considered the possibility he is influencing you?”

“I’m a grade three suggestive. If he was doing something to me, I’d feel it. I’d know.”

“Perhaps a telempath?”

“I…” She stared down. “I don’t think so. Telempathic manipulation feels false once they stop concentrating on it. If it’s powerful, it seems genuine in the moment, but the victim always gets a sense that they were manipulated later. I don’t get that from him. I saw one of the murders happen in the memories of a witness.”

“Oh.” He perked up. “What did they see?”

Kirsten relayed the scene of Alaina Munoz’s murder: the four men, the mask, the chanting, and rambled through a ten-minute grumble about Lace and Brooke’s plight. When she reined in the runaway emotion, she gave him a forlorn pout. “I have two men in my head I can see, but I have no way to connect them back to anyone.”

Eze spun in his chair, taking a small black case from the shelf behind him. He whirled back, peeling plastic film bearing a Teradyne logo away from the thin plastic box, which he opened. She sat, quiet and patient, watching as Eze unpacked a blank holodisk and inserted it into a writer on his desk. Four two-inch silver disks on a central spindle vanished into the device as a motorized hatch closed and it spun up to speed.

He leaned forward, left hand on top of the holodisk writer. “Focus on the memory, Kirsten.”

She sat up, hands on the edge of the desk, and locked eyes with him. Relaxing, she let his telepathic feelers enter her thoughts. Kirsten called the murder of Ms. Munoz to mind, trying to pay attention to the faces of the two men holding her arms. Fatigue came over her from projecting it into Eze, and after a moment, she sagged back in the chair, out of breath. When she looked up, she stifled a gasp with her hand. Eze’s eyes had faded to plain white, and the small electronic device beneath his hand whirred and beeped.

After the writer wound down and stopped, he put a hand to his tired face. When he lowered it, his eyes were brown once more. Captain Eze touched a button and the writer whirred open. He put the disk back into its case and handed it to her. “Here, you should be able to get a searchable face print from this.”

Kirsten accepted the holodisk as if it were a holy relic, cupping it with reverence in both hands. “I had no idea you could do that.”

“It is a simple thing, Wren. No different than someone with a wire.” He poked himself behind the ear. “It is just a link between my mind and a device; the writer did all the work.” He winked.

She stood, still cradling the disk, and ferried it out to her desk. Whatever Eze had done transferred her memory onto it as if it were a video recording taken through an old lens. After popping it in her terminal, she spent a few minutes pulling her fingers through holographic panels to move it frame by frame to a point she could isolate a still image of their faces. The distant city had strange artifacts, products of blurry memory or random subconscious flights of fancy. In almost all glass surfaces, a phantasmal version of Konstantin appeared, gazing at her. The faces conveyed no emotion, but every one of dozens stared right at her. He’s watching me. She felt warm inside, hugging her hands to her chest. Absentmindedly, she stroked the bracelet. I guess I’m thinking about him when I don’t realize it.

Aside from mild graininess due to the nonstandard interface between Eze’s brain and the writer, the image surprised her with its clarity. She drew a box around the face of both men. The one holding Alaina’s right arm had his back to Brooke for most of the event; however, she managed to grab a profile image when he shifted to walk away.

She set the system going in search of a facial match and got to typing out the reports and incident forms for everything that had happened thus far. For quite a few minutes, she glanced at Eze with envious squints. When he was just an Agent, filling out reports took him only seconds. Fingers twirled hair behind her right ear as she considered the option of getting headware put in, but shivered. No. No way. I’d rather type all day than have metal in my skull.

Two hours later, she left the search going and took a break to meet Evan in the dorm area for lunch. After a pleasant forty minutes, she returned to find a red square flashing on two separate display panels. On the left screen, a close-up of one man from the telepathic transfer was frozen at the precise instant he appeared to make eye contact with the viewer. The other pane contained a dozen possible matches.

It took only a minute of flicking through the short list for something to jump out at her. A coincidence too glaring to ignore―a man by the name of Randall Morris was a ninety percent match on the face and a security guard for EnMesh Corporation. Kirsten leaned back in her chair, flicking her eyes on the still-flashing images the system attempted to match to the other man.

“Think that’s the guy?”

She glanced up at Dorian, and back to the employee record for Mr. Morris. “Nothing in his file says anything about him having lost an arm or gotten a cybernetic prosthetic. Am I losing my mind or is the relationship to EnMesh strange to you?”

He glanced at the estimated progress bar on the other process. “We probably have enough time to pay this guy a visit and get back before we have anything else to go on. What about the other close matches?”

“Morris is the second most likely match at ninety percent. This guy,” she said, flipping two images to the left, “has been on Mars for the past six months working for a geological survey company.”

Dorian chuckled. “He doesn’t look like a scientist.”

“Private security force.” Kirsten locked her terminal and stood. “Most of the hits are either mercenaries, criminals, or military. Four of them have been in prison for more than a year.”

“Well, let’s go talk to Mr. Morris.”

She took a step for the door, but did a one-eighty toward the locker room. “Yeah. Be right out, gonna grab armor.”

hree minutes into the flight, the location of Randall Morris’s NetMini appeared on the navigation console. Kirsten pulled back on the stick, rising out of the traffic lane as she hit the bar lights. Blotches of abnormal color shimmered on nearby buildings, aftereffects of the windscreen filtering out glare. She let off the stick as the yellow triangle representing the car’s location and orientation lined up with the distant red dot.

Her course resulted in a slalom path between buildings as the hovercar cut diagonally across the city’s grid layout. A quarter mile later, a young man with light brown hair appeared as a holographic floating head in the middle of the console.

“Unit 1815-0I4, request verification for noncompliant traversal of Sector Grid. I’m not seeing any incident alarms active in accordance with your vector at this time.” He blinked at something to his left. “Uhh, 0I4… Division Zero?”

He looks seventeen. “You look new, Lumford. Is this your first week?”

“Holy shit, you are psychic.”

Dorian and Kirsten spoke at the same time, though Junior Tech Lumford only heard her. “Your name is on your uniform.” She leaned into a left swerve around a black glass tower. “Not bad. You’re right about Zero. Do you know what the I stands for?”

“Uhh…” Lumford’s eyes darted around; he stared at something above his terminal. “Investigation, uhh investigative operations.”

“Ooh, you really are new. Still have the cheat sheet on your cube wall.” She smiled. “Yep. What else does that tell you?”

“You’re going to retire someone?” He turned pale.

Kirsten glared, making him jump back in his seat. The holographic head shrank. “No, Lumford. That’s Division Nine. Zero doesn’t assassinate anyone.”

“We’re here to usher in a new era of service.” Dorian spoke in the cadence of a used-hovercar salesman, fists on his hips and wearing a plastic smile.

“Ugh, I hated those commercials,” whispered Kirsten.

“Uhh, I-Ops…” He stared into space for several seconds before looking up. “You’re a detective, not enlisted―an officer.” Lumford remained pale, and fumbled with a salute.

She returned it. “I’m trying to intercept a potential suspect, Lumford. I’m not using the lights to race home for a mid-day fuck break. I’m not Div One.” The same hand she used to salute cut the comm.

“Bad mood?” Dorian raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe I’ll send him a text later and apologize for giving him a hard time. It just pisses me off that these jackasses from One skirt traffic protocol constantly, but when I do it for a real issue, I get the just-out-of-the-academy radio guy who wants to boss a couple of beat cops around.”

“So what’s got you in the bad mood?”

“I just have this feeling Morris isn’t going to get me anywhere.”

Both of Dorian’s eyebrows crept upward a tick. “Really? There’s nothing more than that?”

“I’m worried about Evan, alright? A demon got into my apartment last night and tried to kill us both. So yeah, maybe I’m a little on edge when I get shit for driving diagonally across the city.” she grumbled, twisting her hands around the control sticks. “It feels like whoever is doing this is two steps ahead of me every bit of the way and I feel…” Kirsten’s gaze fell to her lap.

“You’re not helpless, Kirsten. You never were.” He pointed. “Umm, building.”

The crash avoidance got off two warning beeps before she swerved, still faster than the automatic override. She rolled through the maneuver, pulling up past the hundredth-story mark and gliding in a graceful arc over the last two miles. Off to the left, the Y-shaped road bisecting this sector into three small districts gleamed in the waning midafternoon sun. On final approach to Morris’s apartment, she shut off the bar lights and circled.

“Wow, I thought I lived in a dive. The map must be wrong; this looks like a grey zone.”

“Nah, Sector 40 is just a bad part of town. There’s no disavowed areas anywhere near here.”

Landing on the roof proved easier than expected. While not designed for residents to own hovercars, the building had two landing pads for emergency vehicles. While jogging from the car to the door, Kirsten glanced at the slab of light bobbing over her left arm, and confirmed her target was still here―or at least his NetMini was―far below on the fifth floor.

She stared at the floor ticker in the elevator as it counted down.

“Something wrong with your arm?” asked Dorian.

“No.”

“You keep fidgeting with the arm guard.”

“Oh, just Konstantin’s bracelet.” She smiled at the sound of his name.

“You should have left it in your locker. It’s as thick as a finger. It could break your wrist if you get hit in the arm.”

“Someone might steal it.” She put the uncomfortable tightness under the rigid armor out of her mind. “Besides, it will bring me luck.”

“Are you feeling alright, K? I’m not used to seeing you go from anxious and moody to grinning so fast.”

“You grumble at me for being short with the radio guy, and now you’re grumbling at me for being too chipper?” She blinked. “What do you want me to do?”

“Now I know something’s wrong with you, K. You’re not this belligerent.”

She drew in a breath, finger up, but stopped when the doors opened. “Maybe I am just shitting bricks that I’m not gonna be able to save Vernon. Stupid council.”

Kirsten stomped past six apartment doors before hanging a right and passing three more. Turning on her heel, she raised her boot to smash the door in. Wait. Foot down, she slid gloved fingers under her visor to rub her face. I don’t even know for sure this guy is involved yet. Slow down.

“I think you might need a vacation, K―after we figure this one out.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She pushed the door buzzer.

A blink of her eye aimed at just the right spot switched on tactical mode. Sensors in the armor rendered the apartment on the other side of the wall in a wireframe of glowing lines traced over the real world. Toward the back right corner, a hazy figure loped out of a hallway and leaned into the living room.

“Fuck off, I’m not buying shit.”

“Mr. Morris, I’m with the police. I have a few questions to ask you.”

The shimmering outline of a man shuddered and sprinted across the room to what appeared to be a closet door. When he leaned back, he fumbled with a large rifle.

“He’s going for a gun!” Kirsten backed away from the door.

“On it.” Dorian leapt through the wall.

“Console, command override.” Kirsten looked at the apartment door and blinked. A rectangle of yellow light flickered over it, as if the door itself reacted in the manner of a clicked-on desktop icon. “Shit, this is a lot faster than my armband.”

The door snapped open, allowing the sound of Randall Morris’s cursing into the hall. He rattled a power-drained rifle, smacking it with a metal right hand. Kirsten ducked in, E-90 aimed.

“On the floor, Morris.”

He hurled the firearm at her, making her flinch enough to foil her aim as he ducked around a wall and sprinted down a hallway leading into the back. Kirsten wobbled on a loose rug as she avoided the weapon, which stuck into the drywall, and ran after him. Rapid motion and numerous walls thwarted the HUD on her visor. She had no warning as she rounded the corner into the hallway and found a small, black canister bouncing toward her.

“Shi―”

She crossed her arms over her face as the deafening explosion of a stun grenade threw her to the ground and into a sliding skid. The visor blocked out most of the flash, though the concussion left her paralyzed and disoriented. When a large, meaty hand clamped around her neck and lifted her into the air, her brain snapped out of it, but her body did not. Kirsten moaned, trying to get her right arm to raise the E-90, but she felt less coordinated than Brooke hopped up on muscle relaxants.

Randall grinned at his helpless target, taking his time to flutter the fingers of his cybernetic left arm as he balled it into a fist. He twitched as Dorian attempted to grab him, glaring with confusion at the odd sensation.

With only her brain free of the effect of the blast and her vision spared by the visor, Kirsten focused on the presence of Randall’s mind. A rapid assault of psionic energy knocked him loopy. His hand opened and Kirsten fell straight down like a sack of meat packed in tactical armor.

A little cartoon face surrounded by animated sweat droplets appeared on the right side of her HUD. “Stim-suit not detected, automatic adrenaline cannot be deployed.”

“Fuck you, too.”

Randall staggered down to one knee, holding his head. “Ngh, what the hell?”

Dorian continued trying to apply a technically perfect police ass whipping, but the minimal solidity he generated did not have much effect on the titanic Morris. Kirsten dragged herself away, fear and anger conspiring to force her stunned muscles back into compliance. She pulled herself up with the help of a small table full of mock hand grenades from various eras, and whirled into a kick. Her boot caught Randall on the side of the head, knocking him flat. On top of the mind blast, the impact caused him to vomit.

She pounced on his back, gathering his still-human right arm in a chicken wing hold.

“He’s gonna snap the binders with that thing, you need a medusa.” Dorian scowled at his inability to do more than offer advice.

“Don’t have one.” She held the E-90 to the back of Randall’s head. “Don’t move shithead. Console, comms, operations. Request backup, my location. Suspect augmented.”

“Copy that, Agent.” A woman’s face shimmered in on the left side of the HUD long enough to speak three words.

She leaned forward, bracing her left arm across the back of his neck. Her weight balanced half on her knees and half where she sat on the small of his back. Morris grumbled and coughed up a bubble of puke. Kirsten grinned to herself. Even if this idiot won’t talk, all I have to do is ask and he’ll think about it.

“Who are you working fo―”

Question became scream.

Kirsten gaped in shock at the seething hot vibro-blade embedded through the armor on her left thigh. The two-inch wide weapon had sprung to the rear from the elbow of the cyberlimb, and gone deep enough into her thigh to find bone. As if the pain of a stab wound was not bad enough, the hypersonic oscillations heated it beyond agony.

In one motion, Randall yanked the blade out, sending his left arm forward as he came around with a right elbow that knocked Kirsten into the wall. The scent of burned blood and cooked meat rose into the air. He continued the spin to face her and leapt, tackling her flat while covering her helmet with his metal left hand. Plastisteel fingers squeezed. Aiming with hope, she brought the E-90 around and fired. It missed, but it was close enough to cause him to let go of the helmet and grab the gun.

Able to see, she tilted the pistol toward his face and fired. He pulled down to save himself, causing the beam to drag across his left bicep―severing it. What few strands of flesh remained intact succumbed in seconds to the weight of a metal arm, which thudded to the ground between her boots.

Howling, his cauterized stump wagging, an enraged Randall Morris palmed the top of Kirsten’s helmet and rammed her head into his knee. Kirsten fell, dazed. Her armor absorbed most of the impact, but the hit left her staring at a spinning hallway.

Dorian shouted as he forced himself into the world of the living, a trace of glowing skull shimmered through his skin. “Get away from her!”

Seven-foot, 340-pound Randall Morris shrieked with the voice of a six-year-old girl. After soiling himself, he sprinted down the rest of the hallway and dove headfirst through the window. Several seconds later, the deep, echoing whump of a body striking a dumpster rang out. Kirsten tried to stand, but collapsed with both hands on her left thigh, screaming. Dorian dropped to one knee and grabbed her shoulders.

“Go, chase him. Find him. There’s no one else here.”

“I don’t want to―”

“I’m not helpless. Go. Don’t let the fucker get away.”

Dorian closed his eyes, shaking his head. He leapt to his feet and ran down through the floor. Kirsten dragged herself against the wall, unable to hold back wails of pain as her leg moved. Outside, sirens closed in on the area.

Captain Eze’s face appeared on the left side of her visor. “Wren, your armor’s transmitting crazy bio readings. What happened?”

“Got stabbed in the thigh. Bleeding a little.” Kirsten glanced at the scarily large stain on the rug under her. “Shit, I’m in trouble. Nicked the femoral. I shot a cyberarm off this bastard…” She slumped to the ground. “Make sure it gets to Div Two.”

Dorian’s face filled her visor. She looked up, unable to speak. He leaned closer, his hands settled on the sides of her head and slipped down to her shoulders. Lightheadedness came on worse. The last thing she remembered was a blanketing of cold all over and the sound of approaching boots.

Warm.

Weightless.

Goop.

Yay. Naked time. Her hands confirmed it. Well, at least I’m alive.

“Agent Wren, we’re about to drain the tank. You may experience some lingering discomfort in your thigh. The pain is only in your head; your leg is no longer injured.”

She reached up and gathered her hair tight to her neck, leaving her eyes closed as she let gravity take her down to a seated position at the base of the medical tank. Before the doctor said a word, she assumed the position: head down, ass in the air. Choking the breathable gel out of her lungs felt less like drowning and more like a bad flu this time. The clear glass barrier rotated and sank into the floor, letting cold air wash over her. She sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth off on the back of her arm. After a moment of savoring the breeze on her face, she opened her eyes.

The first thing she did was examine the pale strip in the middle of her left thigh, a scrap of brand new skin that did not match the older tissue around it. She held her arms away from her body, cringing at the sensation of the slippery gel all over her becoming sticky at exposure to air. Her attempt to be casual at the situation caused her to slip and fall as she tried to walk to the shower tube unassisted. A medtech and an actual doctor helped her up and wrapped her in a towel. The tech swabbed at her in an effort to remove as much of the substance as he could.

She coughed, spitting up more into a teal tray one of them handed her.

“You may be woozy for a few hours, Agent. You lost quite a bit of blood. In some ways, it was good he had a vibro blade. It partially cauterized the vessel and slowed the bleeding. Also, whatever psionic talent you used to cool your body off helped. I think it made the difference.”

“That would be a ghost saving my life.” She offered a weak smile, and walked with them to the autoshower.

The medical staff exchanged a glance as she let the towel fall.

“After you get cleaned up, you should go eat something.” The doctor looked at her stomach and hips. “Preferably something with protein.”

“Thanks.” Kirsten blinked as she reached out to activate the wash cycle, noticing the gold bracelet still on her wrist. Not even one carved scale was out of place. She glanced at the medical tank for a moment, then back at the jewelry. Strange. I guess nanobots don’t have a taste for gold.

Kirsten looked up from the tray of food, a silly grin aimed at Evan.

He stared at her, still red-eyed. The smile he cracked was only for her benefit.

“Sorry I scared you.”

Evan pushed mashed potatoes around his tray.

“Hey, you helped. They know you’re clairvoyant, sweetie. When you got scared, they came looking for me.”

He pushed his tray across so it was next to hers and crawled under the table to her side. She squeezed his shoulder and ran her hand through his hair. He nibbled on a nugget of battered vat-grown chicken. Watching him tease his food around for another few minutes without eating was too much for her, and she broke into sobs and pulled him into a hug.

After a moment, he squirmed around and stared at her. His look of worry became one of calm, and he smiled. Kirsten gathered her emotions and let him cling, continuing to stroke his hair as he ate as though nothing was wrong. His sudden acceptance made her feel uneasy. Well, I suppose it’s a good sign when a clairvoyant stops worrying about you getting hurt. She smirked. Guess that means I’ll live at least another few months.

irsten fell back in her chair with both hands over her face, a little after eight. The last of the reports done, she finally had a moment to breathe. At the sound of a chime from her terminal, she split her fingers apart to stare through them at the window that popped into prominence. Citycams came up blank for hits on the second face; however, a cross-division feeler got a hit from Nine.

The result was an eighty-two percent match on a man named Nafiz Ajouri, suspected of being involved with international smuggling. Kirsten poked the screen, scooting up to her desk as she read over various details: art objects, historic relics, corporate intelligence, even a handful of cases of reported human trafficking. Fortunately, he was listed as “low” for risk of violence.

She stared at the file image, trying to reconcile it against her memory of reading Brooke’s mind. It was just as likely to be him as not. Profile searches suck. This is next to useless. Kirsten tapped her fingers on the desk, frowned, and crosschecked Nafiz Ajouri against any ACC affiliation with Kukla or VSKK. Kirsten’s head went in a spiral as she followed the spinning ‘please wait’ icon. Somewhere, deep in cyberspace, hundreds of thousands of transactions collided in a spectacular storm of electrons. Vid calls, financial exchanges, medical records, all possible points where the entity of Nafiz Ajouri may have had contact with either company. Two hundred miles away, she imagined a CPU core somewhere got one degree warmer.

“Why are you comparing him to those two companies?”

Kirsten shot upright in her chair, screaming as Captain Eze’s question came out of nowhere from behind. “Holy shit…” She grabbed her chest. “Sir… Sorry.” Blush. “Umm, because I don’t have ninety-one days to check him against every Russian corporate entity.”

He allowed a trace of apology to leak through his smile. “I think you should trust your instincts.”

Beep.

Kirsten squinted. “What the hell is Koloss Venture Capital? How the hell did the search give me that?”

“Probably a few layers in,” said Eze, rounding her desk on the way to his office. “Let me know if you need any assistance.”

“ Can you ask the council to let me sneak up on Commissioner Vernon?”

Eze’s voice echoed from inside his office, a baritone half-shout. “I said assistance, not act of God.”

Kirsten poked the line on the holo-panel. Koloss VC had issued a payment to Nafiz for Ͼ400,000 five months ago. The comments held little of use, something about an expedition to North Africa. Probably smuggling some priceless national treasure into Russia.

The VidPhone on her desk went off, scaring the second shriek out of her in five minutes. Eze got up to give her a quizzical look.

Wren, are you alright? You seem wound rather tight lately.

She looked at him with a sad stare. I have three days left to stop Division Nine from murdering an innocent woman. Can’t you call that off?

He sent a defeated gaze at the floor, shaking his head.

“Kirsten?” Samuel Chang’s smiling face shimmered into view over her desk, a life-sized hologram.

“Hi, Sam.”

“How are you doing?” He leaned on his hand. Even if she could not see his mouth, his eyes told her how wide his smile was.

She tried not to take out her mood on him. “I’m having a shitty week. Quite shitty actually. Post-bad-Mexican-food shitty. I almost bled to death a few hours ago, got attacked in my own apartment by a demon a day ago… Oh yeah, in three more days, the government is gonna murder someone unless I prove them wrong. So, yeah, I’m just fucking peachy keen.”

“If there’s anything I can do for you, Kirsten, please ask. I…” He looked to his right twice, and spun back with a smile. “I have a hit on the cyberarm you recovered. It’s an Intera Iron Claw series. Very similar in handprint to a NinTek Warrior. Factoring in that bizarre withering effect, this arm is a ninety-four percent probable match. It’s only a little weaker than military grade and a competent tweaker can get it up to mil-spec. Civilians need a permit for these bad boys, like energy weapons. I traced the lot number for this puppy to a shipment headed for a body shop by the name of Plastisteel Dreamz. With a z.”

“Of course they mangle it.” Kirsten rolled her eyes. “I’m sure that z increases revenue by twenty percent over an s.”

Dorian cracked up laughing, appearing in the chair at his desk behind her.

“Even when you are angry, you are very pretty.” Sam paled, and seemed embarrassed at having blurted his thoughts.

Kirsten smiled at him. The sudden pain in her stomach barely registered compared to her leg. “Thanks. I gotta find this shithead.” She grabbed her thigh. “This time I’m inclined to interrogate his ghost. Can you send me a pin for that store?”

“Sure thing.” He couldn’t look at her now.

She got up, locking her terminal after the call dropped. “Crap, my tac armor is still getting fixed.” NetMini out. Two seconds later, Evan appeared. “Hey, kiddo. I’m gonna go to a store and check something out. You feel anything bad?”

He made a series of faces, calling to mind his autoshower impression of the wizard Monwyn. “Nope.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

She went to hang up, but he blurted, “Wait, the cat is hurt. Be nice to the kitty.”

Kirsten stared at him. He grinned, waved, and kissed his NetMini. A holographic lip print hung in midair for a few seconds before he hung up.

Dorian raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Don’t look at me, I have no idea.” He let her walk past him toward the door. “Wow, that Sam guy… He’s really smitten with you.”

She shook her head. “So are most techies. What the hell is a ‘high elf’ anyway?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“First time I ever went into the RTC, one of the network boys asked me if I was really one of them.”

Dorian chuckled. “I’m pretty sure he just thought you were pretty, if not a little thin and on the short side.”

She smirked. “I shouldn’t lead him on. I’m going to wind up marrying Konstantin.”

He followed her into the hallway headed to the parking deck, walking through the wall and three people to stay alongside her. “You’re so sure of that? I’ve been keeping quiet up till now, but I gotta say there’s something not right about him. I swear he saw me when we first went to the Archives.”

Kirsten stopped, whirling on him. “All these months you’ve been telling me not to worry, telling me I’ll find someone out there who will love me and not care I’m psionic. Now, I find someone and you’re telling me you don’t like him?” A collision between anger and wanting to cry turned her face red. “I had a thing for you, Dorian, I really did. I”―she flashed a coy smile― “still kind of do. But, as you keep reminding me, you’re dead.”

A few people stopped what they were doing to look at her.

He sucked in a large breath and put a hand over his mouth for a moment. “I’m not jealous, Kirsten. I’m worried.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Eze.” With sudden acute awareness of all the eyes on her, she lowered her voice to a mousy squeak and speed-walked into the parking deck. “He’s the perfect man, and for some stupid reason I can’t even begin to understand, he chose me. Why can’t you let me be happy for once in my damn miserable life?”

When she stopped at the side of the car, he stood in silence, sadness on his face.

“I”―she felt queasy― “I’m sorry, Dorian. I’m stressed out, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.” What’s gotten into me? “You just saved my life…” She willed herself solid to spirits and held on to him, whispering, “I’m scared, Dorian. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

He patted her back. “I asked you to promise me you wouldn’t do anything stupid just to get a man.” Dorian put his hands on her shoulders, pausing until she looked into his eyes. “All I ask is for you be careful. Maybe I’m overreacting, but after eighteen years as a cop, I tend to trust my instincts when I’m suspicious of someone. Something isn’t right.”

She stared at the wall, trying to swallow the nausea.

Plastisteel Dreamz occupied the first four floors of a century tower at the approximate center of Sector 1105. Polished white walls gleamed in wobbling blurs as ten-foot-tall holographic people modeled about the entire way around it. All of the images had cybernetic enhancements: arms, legs, full-body conversions, tails. Some danced, some engaged in choreographed martial arts displays using implanted blades, and some showed off work-enhancing parts designed to boost white-collar productivity.

The two floors above the shop composed a parking deck, while the remaining ninety-four stories appeared to be run-of-the-mill offices. She eased the car through a gap in the wall and settled into a marked space. Still feeling guilty about snapping at Dorian, she ignored a number of cheerful ad-bots on her way to the elevator, which she took to the ground level.

Loud music made her cringe as she walked into a haze of brilliant light. Aside from the dull blue floor, everything in the place was hospital-white. Shelves held model cybernetics and strange sculptures that reconfigured themselves every several seconds in an endless arrangement of stacked geometric shapes. Kirsten was about to ignore a smiling woman in a skimpy dress composed of bands of cloth: one around the neck, one around the breasts, and a strap running down the center to a tiny skirt. About to ignore, that is, until she picked up surface thoughts.

“Wow, you’re alive?” Kirsten blushed. “Sorry, the outfit and that smile, I thought you were a subsent. Only a doll could stay upright on heels so extreme.”

The woman’s smile broadened; her eyes grew intense.

Kirsten stopped, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You’re right. It was bitchy of me. I’m sorry. I’ve been having a rough week, and I guess I am a bitch right now.”

The smile flattened into a line.

“Yes,” said Kirsten extending a hand. “I’m with Division Zero. I did just hear your thoughts. I’m sorry. Again, it’s been a horrible week for me, and I’m just not in the mood for the usual corporate nose-to-ass dog circle.”

Dorian put a hand on her back. “Rein it in, K. Cripes, what’s wrong with you?”

“Uhh.” The saleswoman fussed at her hair, glancing to her right at a white-haired woman behind the counter; the last two inches of the hair cycled through various shades of glowing blue. “Can I help you, officer?”

“Agent. I’m basically a detective. Look, I’m not here to buy anything. I’m trying to track down a component I believe was sold here. I don’t want to take time away from you that you could be using to earn a commission, so if you could point me at a manager or something…”

The smile returned, genuine. “Mirabella will be able to help you.”

“White hair?”

“Yes, that’s her.”

“You know, Kirsten. Half of our job is to make people at ease with psionics, not freak them out.”

She put on a normal, pleasant face while walking to the counter. “She’ll be fine; I just caught her off guard. I would have let it go, but she called me a bitch.” Kirsten glanced up at him. “Don’t say it―I know I was being one.”

“Hi, are you Mirabella?” Kirsten stopped by the counter with her right hand on her belt, perhaps a little too close to the E-90.

The white-haired woman stared in shocked silence, and shivered. “Uhh, I’m sorry. It was just a little Flowerbasket.”

“Relax, I’m not here about anything you did. You haven’t committed any major crimes have you?”

“No…”

“Good.” Kirsten held her left arm up, accessing the data from Sam. “I’m trying to find out who purchased an Intera Iron Claw cybernetic arm with this serial number. More specifically, I’d like to know how he got it without any record of it being added to his medical file. Even better would be if you could tell me if he has scheduled an appointment for a replacement.”

Mirabella leaned over the counter to read Kirsten’s armband display. A wire slipped off her shoulder, connecting her head to the terminal at her left. As the woman read the serial number, it appeared on-screen. In a few seconds, a long list of red text appeared with several bits of it flashing.

“I’m sorry, Agent. The arm you’re looking for was part of a shipment of parts we reported stolen.”

Kirsten squinted. “It was not reported stolen. There’s nothing in our system about a theft report.”

Mirabella swiveled the ethereal screen around so Kirsten could see it. “I don’t know. It says here the entire shipment was flagged stolen-in-transit. It never arrived at the store. Our computer should automatically transmit the loss report to the police after the insurance claim is generated.”

“When did it go missing?” Kirsten looked around the room for any unusual reaction to her presence. All seemed normal.

“Two, no three weeks ago.”

“That report should have hit our system by now. Dammit.” She poked at her arm until Sam Chang appeared. He looked thrilled to see her again so soon. “Sam, can you do me another favor?”

“Yes, of course!”

Dorian gestured at him. “See…”

he schematics of a PGM Model 14 long-haul cargo transport bathed the patrol craft in a calming shade of cyan. Hovering next to the NavMap console, the image of a sixty-foot long truck rotated to face her and then to profile―an animation it had been doing for the past fifteen minutes. Text nearby gave details about the maximum load capacity, turning radius, armor thickness, and top speed of the vehicle. The only stat Kirsten cared about was the transponder value.

“Damn nice of Sam to hack into Intera’s system and find the transponder code for you.”

Kirsten felt an upwelling of indignant rage as she glanced at Dorian, but also sensed its abnormality. Rather than blurt at him, she settled for a giant moth in her gut. “Yeah.”

“You’re sweating. You never worried this much about armor before.”

“It’s not the armor.” She banked the patrol craft into a rightward descending turn. “It’s the stress. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me or how much more I can take this case. You’d think after what Mother did to me, a little stress wouldn’t change my personality so much. I feel so guilty for how I’ve been acting to you.”

“Can I say something at risk of starting an argument?”

She flicked the control to deploy the ground wheels. “Sure.”

“I think you don’t feel like you are part of Konstantin’s world. Sam is closer to your societal comfort zone. He doesn’t make you feel like part of the upper crust you have so much contempt for.”

The glare he expected happened, but rather than scream at him, she started crying and holding her stomach. Dorian reached over and gripped her shoulder. The tears subsided in less than a minute, leaving her gasping.

“Ow. I might be getting a stomach bug or something. I’m getting so sick all the time. Feels like I have a little monster clawing me up inside.”

“It hurt enough to make you cry?” He shook his head. “That’s not good. The doctors didn’t find anything when you were in the tank.”

She got angry, but not at Dorian this time. “I keep having this sense something is following me. There’s gotta be a spirit somewhere messing with me.”

He glanced through the back seat. “Yeah, I feel it too sometimes.”

“Figures,” she grumbled, staring at the NavMap. “Ditched in a grey zone.”

“Well it’s not like whoever stole the transport is going to park it where we’d just trip over it. They did not want it to be found.”

“Good point. I’m gonna stash the car out of sight.”

A Nippy-Nom convenience store occupied the entire ground level of a four-story building on the corner. One face abutted the grey area and had the bullet holes to prove it. She set down on the roof and jogged the fire escape to the street level. Bathing in the garish pink and orange light of the sign made her hungry for an instant burrito, her old staple. It remained an appetizing thought for several more seconds until worry about the case took over.

Her armband display relayed the tracking information from the patrol craft’s computer. A yellow thread traced its way through the dark blue wireframe model of the city, leading her toward the transponder.

“Keep alert, this is still a grey zone,” said Dorian.

She did not look up from the map. “Evan said I’d be fine.”

Dorian tugged at her shoulder until she glanced up. “Kirsten, even if he is a precog, it is far from infallible. They see a most-likely future that assumes you proceed with due diligence. If you go carelessly stumbling around and inviting trouble…” he grumbled.

Kirsten bit her knuckle, glaring down the street. “I’m terrified he might be a precog. So far, when it seems like he’s seen the future, it’s always been something happening to me. Not even himself.”

“Maybe it was more than chance he happened to be astrally wandering the alley that night.” Dorian grinned.

“I don’t wanna start talking about that. If I start throwing the word ‘precog’ around, C-Branch is going to interview him and test him, and…”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. He might have a little bit of precognitive ability, but remember. Something on the order of one percent of psionic individuals do. Of the one percent, only three percent of precogs receive untagged visions.”

“Yeah.” She exhaled.

“All of Evan’s supposed bouts of pre-sight have been tagged to you. There is a strong emotional bond.” Dorian interlaced his fingers in front of his chest, tugging as if he could not pull his hands apart. “He hasn’t seen acts of random violence or anything regarding total strangers. If all he can see is your future, they won’t be interested in him. Plus, he seems to be getting visions in real-time. He freaks out when you’re in danger.”

Beep.

Kirsten had walked off-route, distracted by the conversation. She doubled back and jogged around a corner to find the street blocked off by destroyed ground cars. Thirty yards past the barrier, the lower floor of an old parking garage flickered orange in the glow of several fires and thrummed with heavy techno music. Enough of a gap in the impromptu wall remained for a person to slip through; it gave her the impression the locals created it to bar vehicles. Dark buildings walled in the street to her left and right. Two blocks ahead, the road ended at a T where an enormous statue of a stylized metal hawk flew through a ring of circuit-inscribed metal. Firelight glimmered over the wet street surface, brighter in patches of silvery plastisteel where the traction coating had peeled away.

With a hand on her weapon, she crept through the flickering shadows toward the source of the light and noise. A ramp wide enough for three cars abreast led from the street level down to a basement garage. Repetitious bass thrummed through the poured concrete walls, using the large open space as a great resonance chamber. Kirsten looked up as she descended, wondering if the vibrations would threaten the integrity of the building.

At the bottom of the ramp, she stopped at the edge of the wall and peered around at an assembled crowd. Ten men, ranging in age from later teens through early thirties, arranged themselves around a number of metal cargo boxes filled with fire. Most of them held containers of synthbeer and dressed in the uncoordinated manner of street toughs who could not agree on a common theme. Their hair represented every shade of color imaginable. They bobbed their heads in time with the beat; one guy with black and red streaked hair shouted over it asking about someone they had sent off for food. Dark grey metal horns, about an inch long, jutted out from his temples.

A little further away, a group of four women sat around a table―rather, a repurposed industrial wire spool―cleaning rifles and pistols. The oldest, maybe twenty, held a partially disassembled rifle up to the light with a metal arm. The limb’s contours, defined in shiny grey plastisteel, were no larger than a woman’s normal musculature. It struck Kirsten as creepy, like the skin had been removed to reveal metal underneath. Engravings of winding ivy covered the entire limb from shoulder to fingertip.

The missing cargo transport took up the remainder of the ground floor beyond them, parked sideways along the rear of their encampment. Cloth fluttered from the open trailer like a shy spirit peeking around the edge. Kirsten took a deep breath and walked toward the group. Acrid fumes rolled by in clouds from whatever they burned for heat. Plastic sheeting scratched at the walls up at street level to her left, a somewhat futile effort to make the area more habitable.

One by one, the fringers took notice of her. Kirsten stopped as the awareness of her presence spread back through the crowd, an impulse racing along a nerve to their collective brain. One of the women at the table grabbed two pieces of rifle; the metal-armed one held her hand down and gave her a shake of the head.

Kirsten waited until a fat man in a long coat cut the music. “I’m not here to give anyone a hard time. I’m just trying to track down what was on that cargo transport.”

She weathered appraising stares, while the off-gridders appeared to search for a wordless consensus on how to deal with a solitary police officer. The man with the red/black striped hair slid off the hood of a wrecked car, tugged a crimson leather jacket tight to his shoulders over a dark turtleneck, and sauntered over.

“You got some set on you, chica, coming here alone.” A slow hand reached up and picked at the strip of black plastisteel on her chest with her name and rank etched on it. His roundish face and short hair made him seem boyish. “Wren… That’s a little bird, isn’t it? What’s the zero for?”

The thought Dorian could appear and likely scare the room empty in seconds brought a smile to her lips.

“Careful, Ink, them is psionic cops,” said a voice from the crowd. “Gonna melt your brain.”

“How bout it, chica? You gonna melt my brain.” He touched his fingers to his jacket and flicked his arms to the sides.

“Ink? You must have a lot of tats.” Kirsten kept an unimpressed face.

“Short for Incubus.” He winked, a trace of red light glowed from his eyes.

Kirsten swiped the lash through him from crotch to face. His reaction was a mere shiver. All the bravado fled from his face at the glowing energy strand. A few of the fringers dove behind stacked boxes or destroyed cars.

“Fuckwazat?” he squeaked, body motionless, eyes locked on the white light trailing from her hand.

“I’m also trying to send a couple of demons back where they belong. Incubus is a kind of demon. I didn’t want to take a chance. Did that hurt?”

He swallowed, still frozen. “No. Little cold actually.”

The lash receded as she stopped concentrating. “Good, that means you’re just a poser with cybereyes and not a real demon. We can be friends.” She patted him on the shoulder, and stepped around him. “Look, people. Barring Lace, I really do not care what drugs you have stashed around here or what small-time bullshit skimmers you’re running.”

Dorian stifled a chuckle.

Incubus faced her with a slow turn, cybernetic vampire fangs retracting out of sight as he smiled. “Uhh, yeah. So, about that. She said it was fine. Was supposed to be out of the system and empty. We wanted the truck not what was in it.”

“Who is she?”

“ Skittles,” said the woman with the decorative arm, pointing it at the truck.

Kirsten nodded, edging in the direction of the truck. “Everyone just calm down, okay? If I was here to make trouble for you, I wouldn’t have come alone.”

The fringers traded stares as she slipped into the shadow of the cargo-mover’s cab, past a primary drive wheel half again her height. Inch-high letters spelled out Peterbilt-Grumman-Mack along a strip just below the windscreen. She glanced at the handholds where the operator could climb the stationary central hub to the door nine feet in the air. Someone had used them as storage bins for small bits of electronica. The heavyset kid turned the music back on, but at a less oppressive volume.

“Dorian, keep an eye on them, please.”

He nodded, letting Kirsten turn her full attention to the massive transport. Behind the huge drive wheels, the truck had two axles of load-bearing tires as tall as her chest. Fifty feet of trailer stretched toward a square of light on the concrete wall, within which the shadow of an enormous cat hovered. She expected to find a housecat sitting close to a lamp.

Kirsten peered around the corner of the truck, under the wavering cloth that acted as a door. Bunk beds lined both walls, reminiscent of the sleeping quarters of a military starship. A small crew ladder on the left side took her up to the cargo deck, six feet off the ground. As soon as her face cleared the level of the floor, she froze. Next to the second pair of bunks on the left, a slender woman sat cross-legged as if meditating, perched on a pile of dingy pillows, wearing nothing but the hair draped over her chest and prominent ribs.

Her slate grey mane was long enough to reach the floor and sprouted two large cat ears that twitched in time with the beat of the music outside. The woman was fashion-model thin, with a delicate doll-like face that looked as though it would crack at the slightest touch. Fangs peeked out of her parted lips, and her eyes―right one gold, the other green―were half open, the left much wider than the gold. Vertical feline pupils closed to thin streaks of black amid the color, and drool fell in drops from the end of a tongue resembling a larger version of a cat’s.

Kirsten looked to the side, embarrassed as though she’d walked in on someone in the bathroom. On the floor behind the cat girl, a grey-furred tail swished, crinkling through plastic wrappers. A standard M3 interface wire continued from the end of the extra appendage, circling the lower bunk where it plugged into a battered cyberspace deck. Large and boxy, it had the appearance of military surplus hardware. The words Titan Alchemist ran across the front in steel letters made to look bolted on.

“Be nice to the kitty.” Evan’s voice filtered through her memory. Son of a bitch. Kirsten shivered with worry. He is a precog.

“Excuse me?” whispered Kirsten. When the girl did not react beyond twitching ears, she repeated it, louder.

The slender woman shook her head as if shrugging off the effect of a sedative. Her eyelids equalized level, slit pupils widened. After a few seconds of woozy staring, metal claws sprang out of her fingers. Ten six-inch blades glimmered in the light of a portable electric lamp. The woman raised her arms and, much to Kirsten’s surprise, hissed.

“ Calm down.” Light danced over Kirsten’s eyes as she climbed the rest of the way in to the trailer.

The Neko-Chan’s tail tripled in visible width as all the hairs stood on end. Her ears went back, then swiveled one after the other to face forward.

“Sorry for walking in on you, I’m not here for you. Someone said you might be able to help me with something.” Kirsten looked at the wall. “Uhh, go ahead and get dressed.”

“Why?”

Oh, brother. One of those . “Umm, because you’re naked in public?”

“This is my home, it’s not public.”

Fine, whatever, I have better things to do than argue with an exhibitionist. “I’m Kirsten. I guess you’re Skittles?”

The sound of claws snapping back into their implanted sheaths made Kirsten jump. Skittles shifted around and sat sideways, draping herself over the pillows. “Yeah.”

“I’m trying to figure out what happened to the cargo this truck was carrying when it went missing. It’s obviously not here. Ink implied you were the one who stole the truck?”

Skittles gasped, sliding backward under the bed until the wire coming out of her tail almost pulled the deck to the ground. “Please don’t arrest me. They’ll kill me.”

Kirsten squatted to look at the woman cowering under the bed.

Dorian stooped, snapping his fingers and making a “pspspsps” noise, as if trying to call a cat.

Red-faced, Kirsten thumped him on the thigh, turning so Skittles couldn’t see the desperate need to laugh on her face.

“She’s not really a cat. An actual cat would be going nuts at me,” said Dorian, standing straight again.

Once she had ‘serious face’ back, Kirsten skimmed the woman’s surface thoughts. The woman’s mind-voice narrated in calculated French, forcing her to rely on images and feelings. “Oh, no, Miette. I’m not here to take you back to Europe, and you can lay off the scared shitless act. I know you’re faking it for sympathy.”

“How do you know who I am if you’re not here to take me back?” Acted terror thinned out to contained aggression. “You working for him? Ambassador Montpierre owned me for three years. When he came to UCF, I run away. I will die before I go back.”

I can see you thinking about it. Sorry for invading your privacy, but I am in a rush. I won’t take you back. I’d arrest the bastard for human trafficking if I had the jurisdiction.

Skittles’s jaw gaped, eyes all the way open. “You’re psionic?”

Kirsten braced for it. “Yeah, but I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Oh. It is okay, he has gone back to Europe.” She crawled out from under the bunk and sat up, fear and aggression gone―replaced with sudden cheeriness. “You’re one of those special cops, right?”

“Yeah…” Kirsten raised an eyebrow. Is this girl nuts?

“ Good, that means you don’t give an excrement about cyberspace.” Skittles examined her fingernails with a devilish grin. “I’m a naughty kitty sometimes.”

“Well, as long as you haven’t hurt anyone I can overlook it. I really need to find out what happened to the cyberware this truck was carrying.”

Skittles folded her arms, pouting. “That copulating illegitimate person.”

“What?” Kirsten blinked.

Dorian laughed himself to tears.

Skittles grumbled in French, sighing as she turned her head to the right. A thin sliver of silicon slid out from behind her jaw with three square sockets on the upper surface and the underside. Only one of the six receptacles had a chip in it. As soon as it appeared, it slid back into her skull. Kirsten covered her mouth to hide the gasp of shock at the lack of a human ear.

“English is a chip. I don’t really learn it well yet. It does not give me the fun words. I stole this cargo for a cyberdoc in trade for work. My friends got truck, he got ‘ware, I got parts. Only, the feces-head did it wrong.” Skittles grabbed her tail and shook it at Kirsten.

Dorian cackled.

“You’re hurt?” Just like Evan said.

“It has the fire of nerves when I plug in and plug out. I like this more than wire in head, but the anal aperture did not put it in right.”

Dorian examined the tail. “Synthetic. Very expensive. Almost indistinguishable from real living tissue. Looks like her ears are the same way.”

Skittles ears thwapped backward in two quick motions, angling in the direction of Dorian. She squinted at the far end of the trailer, as if searching for the source of a sound.

“Guess that’s why her tail fluffed up when she got scared,” muttered Kirsten.

“Who are you talking to?” Skittles’s ears went back. “I hear someone whispering.”

“A ghost. Are you psionic?”

“The ears could just be that sensitive,” said Dorian. He yelled, causing the cat girl to spin to face him.

Skittles tilted her head left, held it there for a few seconds, and tilted it right.

“So, you gave the parts to a cyberdoc here?”

“Yeah, but he did bad job. I will show you where he is if you psionic him. Make him fix my tail. He won’t do it for free, even though he copulated upwards.”

Dorian laughed.

Feline ears thwapped.

Kirsten debated the ethics of her request for a few seconds. “So he paid you for work by installing your tail, screwed it up, and then wants to charge you more to fix it? Okay. If the story is true, I will talk to him.”

Skittles wrapped herself around the largest pillow, poised to chomp on it. She scooted around to expose her back to Kirsten and raised her tail. “Pull wire out so I can leave trailer.” She bit down.

The fur-covered appendage felt natural, like the tail of a great cat. Kirsten cringed inwardly at the warmth in her hand, unsure if she should be repulsed or intrigued. Pitiful whimpering came out of the woman as she grabbed the M3 plug stuck into a concealed socket at the tip end. Skittles trembled; that fear was real.

“Just pinch the little release button there and pull the wire out,” said Dorian. “Standard neural interface port. Kind of clever actually, tapped right into the spinal cord via the tail extension.”

“You know how I feel about cyberware,” whispered Kirsten.

She squeezed and pulled the wire and tail apart.

The woman screamed into the cushion, shuddering and sweating for several seconds before the wave of pain subsided. Her right ear flapped with sporadic twitches mirrored by facial tics and a bouncing leg on that side. Skittles sat up with a puff of pillow-foam stuck to her fangs. After giving Kirsten a pathetic stare, she huffed and launched it onto the bed.

Kirsten clasped Skittles by the head and thumbed her eyelids open wider. The right eye dilated more than the left. “That looked like it hurt. I don’t like the way it only affected one side of your body. I should get you to a hospital.”

“It only hurts when I plug in or plug out. Electricity leaks to nerves. It copulating inhales.”

“That’s going to cause brain damage, if it hasn’t already,” said Dorian.

Kirsten checked the woman’s pulse. “Are you certain this cyberdoc of yours can fix this?”

Skittles stood and stretched, making Kirsten turn away embarrassed. “He has to. I do not have money for legal doctor. I do not have job for health plan, and am too old for free help. Ready?”

“Uhh, aren’t you going to get dressed?”

“Why?”

Kirsten, blushing, flailed. “Because you have to. People don’t just walk around outside with no clothes. That’s just inviting creeps to…”

Skittles’s fingers sprouted metal claws again. She grinned. “Can try, can die.”

“Actually, it’s rather common among people with an addiction to feline body modification.” Dorian shrugged. “Technically it’s illegal, but who has the time to bother with streakers when there’s a dozen murders a day.”

The slender creature pulled the hanging plastic to the side, about to exit the trailer. She shivered in an oncoming blast of outside air. “Okay, okay. It’s cold, I will do the clothes.” She rooted around under her bunk, going through several garments in sniff-test before settling on a loose-fitting tank top with a metallic cat-face on it, a knee-length lacy black Goth skirt (with tail hole) and combat boots.

Dorian grinned. “If you ever got cyberware, this is kind of what I pictured you looking like.”

Kirsten glared at him.

“You have sneakers that meow, cat stickers all over your locker, that giant pink sleeping shirt with the white cat head on it, a kitten on your NetMini―”

Making herself solid to spirits, Kirsten grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the far wall. “Liking cats and wanting to be one are two entirely different hobbies,” she mumbled.

Skittles giggled.

“She’s got copulating great hearing,” said Dorian, pointing over Kirsten’s shoulder.

“I am not the offended,” said Skittles, after springing to her feet. “At first, Montpierre forced me. His men took me from the street, and I woke up in a cage with ears and tail. He is a very strange man.” She ran her fingers through her hair, grooming her ears in the process. “I have decided to like it.”

“You could always get the stuff removed…” Kirsten cringed through a smile. You poor girl.

“Non. Too late. My old ears are gone, my eyes are changed―DNA surgery. Cannot undo. And, normal Miette would not survive on street.” With that, she pounced, flying over Kirsten’s head and out the back of the trailer, landing on all fours in a wary crouch. A few seconds later, she sprang up and beamed.

“Guess she’s ready to go,” said Dorian.

Kirsten followed the fast-walking, occasionally skipping, Skittles through streets packed with ruined cars and broken storefronts. The reek of the piss-soaked stairway at the far corner of the parking garage had painted the back of her throat with a scratchiness she could not cough away. Four blocks away from the parking garage, Kirsten put her hand on her sidearm as the surroundings worsened. Skittles paused, squatting to examine a dandelion sprouting from a wind-collected pile of dirt, leaning in and sniffing at it. The more she watched a grown woman act like some combination of oversized pre-teen and feral animal, the more pity she felt. Kirsten half-expected the woman to eat the plant.

“Even in this place, we find a way to live.” She glanced up at Kirsten. “Like this weed.”

“Miette?”

“Hmm?” Skittles stood and continued in her previous direction, now walking backwards, offering a fang-baring smile.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

The woman spun forward, adopting a stiff-legged, arm-swinging fascist march. “They don’t give one copulation what the executives do to little people. Montpierre could have shot me in the head right in front of them, and they would have only female dogged and complained for having to make the cleanup.”

Dorian was in tears, laughing.

“I mean here. There are programs for women who―”

“I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.” Skittles bounded to the top of an overturned cargo-hauler, glancing down past her dangling tail at Kirsten. “I already paid him back.”

Not feeling up to the task of a fourteen-foot vertical leap, Kirsten walked to the cab end and squeezed through a gap between it and the wall. Skittles dropped down as she emerged and led the way through the ground floor of an abandoned building to an alley packed with wrecked cars. The scent of smoke wafted by: burning plastic mixed with charred meat and a hint of wood. Skittles squatted low to the ground, her legs vanished amid her billowy skirt save for the tips of her boots.

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you seem rather blasé about what he did to you.”

Skittles gave her a measuring look, frowned, and looked at the road while stroking her hand repeatedly down the length of her tail. “I maybe said more than was. I got caught with my claws in the data jar. Montpierre chose me from a line of people to be sent to a work camp. He paid my sentence, so I was his pet for a couple of years.”

“That’s slavery!” blurted Kirsten.

“Bleh. So was camp, but it would have been much bad. He did me a favor, really. As much illegitimate person he was, he never did the hitting. I almost feel the sadness for making it look like he supported the resistance.” Skittles climbed over a dead car.

Kirsten, with more effort and less grace, followed. “What happened?”

“I spent months making a false GlobeNet person and using it to help the resistance. I left clues to make seem tiny errors each time I went in. When the BSE closed in, I had left enough trail so they think like Montpierre was behind the avatar.”

“BSE?” asked Kirsten.

“Bureau de la Sécurité Èlectronique.” Skittles flipped about, walking backwards a few paces. “Police on the Cyberspace.”

“ In Cyberspace,” said Dorian.

Skittles’s left ear thwapped against her head twice. “Whatever… in, on. Stupid chip.”

Dorian jumped at the shock of being heard.

Kirsten laughed at seeing a ghost startled by a live person. “Augmented hearing has been known to hear ghosts. A long time ago, they used to record them with sound equipment.”

A whispery rush came from behind, causing Kirsten and Dorian to turn to the rear while something else beyond their senses pulled Skittles’s attention to an alley up ahead. A shadowy figure, transparent, with two glowing red spots for eyes, raced through them. Long spindly arms formed of black vapor trailed to the sides as the sound of several voices cackling in whispers echoed. Kirsten whirled as it ran through their group, facing the entity as it came to a halt thirty meters ahead by the alley Skittles stared at.

Gangers. From the look of their long black coats emblazoned with a calligraphic red D, a pack of Diablos. Numerous weapons, including pistols, submachine guns, and swords of various sizes glinted in what little moonlight made it through the glowing indigo smog. Kirsten’s body went rigid. Two women would be an irresistible treat for them.

The wisp waved its hands through the air in a gathering gesture toward the gangers before extending a long pointing gesture at Kirsten.

“Kill… Kill…” The phantom whisper sounded as if it came from the back of the mind rather than the ears.

“ Damn, it’s not gonna take much to drive them over the edge,” said Dorian.

The Diablos shook their heads; one or two stumbled into a nearby wreck. Guns came out, faces twisted with the onrush of murderous glee.

Kirsten grabbed Skittles by the shoulders and shoved her to the street against a crushed passenger van. “Stay down.” She popped up, aiming over the smashed front end at the gang. “Don’t you dare. Put those things away and keep walking.”

“K, they’re Diablos. Even without that shadow, they would be a problem. They shoot at cops for fun.”

“But they’re compel―” She dove as four men raised submachine guns and lit up the van with automatic fire.

Fragments of metal, upholstery padding, and glass rained down over her. Skittles sat, back against the van, picking at her nails and brushing the occasional scrap of car off her skirt.

“Want me to help?”

“No, stay down. You’re a civilian.”

Dorian flew backwards, tackled by the wispy shadow. Keening wails echoed into the distance as they sailed through one destroyed vehicle after another. Glass froze and shattered seconds after they passed. Kirsten crawled up to the side of the van, getting her feet under her. When the shooting ceased, she popped up and fired twice. Neither scored, but now she had a feeling of where they were. In typical Diablo fashion, none had bothered to take cover behind the cars.

She yowled as a fleck of shrapnel scratched her cheek the second time she ducked. Fragments rained around them. Skittles swatted some glass out of her hair and examined her fingernails.

“Want me to help now?”

“What are you, nineteen? Stay down, don’t get hurt.”

“Thank you, but I’m twenty-six.”

“Why hello, sir!” cheered a male voice, its electronic origin obvious. “You appear to be running low on ammunition. Minos Corporation is running a special on Class 4 M55 PDW ammunition. The 11.5 mm penetrators are precision milled from the finest high-density metals and would be a perfect complement to your compact personal defense weapon. We even have a discount on M40 PDW for your friends with the 10mm firearms. Act now, and you can get 100 rounds for the price of 70. Only seventy-six credits.”

Kirsten’s fingers laced over the crumpled hood of the van. She pulled herself up, ignoring the sting in her cheek, and gawked at the ballsy advert bot hovering among the Diablos. Fortunately, it had their attention for the moment. Somewhere behind her, Dorian growled and cursed. From the sound of it, he was frustrated, but neither scared nor sounding much in danger.

“Hey, bot!” she screamed. “You can’t sell them ammo.”

The large floating sphere pivoted to face her. “Of course we can, they are almost out. They have credits; we have bullets. It’s a match made in heaven.”

“They’re shooting at me.”

If the orb had arms, it would have shrugged. “I am sorry, miss. What our customers do with their ammunition is not our concern. It is a (mostly) free country.”

“I’m a goddamned police officer! Your company will get shut the hell down if I report this.”

The Diablos seemed amused enough to watch this unfold. One tapped the metal ball with his gun. “Only if the bitch lives.”

“ Do you have identification?” The bot wobbled, simulating nervousness.

Kirsten held up her armband as the orb zipped over. It chirped as it read her Police ID codes. “I am terribly sorry, Agent Wren.” It pivoted toward the gangers for a second and spun back. “Can I interest you in any E-mags for that E-90?”

“Get the hell out of here!” she snarled.

It recoiled from her and glided back among the gangers. “I am sorry, gentlemen. By law, since you are engaging in a violence event with an employee of the police services, I am unable to―”

“We’ll pay double.”

The orb hesitated. “I…”

“Hey, ball… we ain’t shooting at anyone right now, we’re just standing here with our cocks in our hands,” yelled one.

“Good point. I shall process your order straight away. How many boxes would you like?”

Kirsten fired, skimming a burn over the side of the orb. It careened into the night, trailing sparks and emitting a digitized scream of “eeeeeeeeee.”

Dorian’s head came out of the wall. “Nice shot.” A black hand wrapped over his face and pulled him back in.

“I was trying to hit it.” She dove for cover again as the hail of bullets resumed. “I hate orbs.”

“Break’s over!” yelled one.

“Want me to help?” asked Skittles.

Kirsten ducked low, looking for a shot at a boot under the van; however, other cars had collapsed to the point where no gap remained between them and the road surface. A meaty smack came from the right seconds before the wispy shadow slid out from the same patch of tarnished plastisteel wall where Dorian appeared a second before.

The shadow spun over in midair, hissing at Kirsten. Dorian stomped into view, catching the wisp as it reared and fled from her. He spun with it, holding it in place and punching while it clawed at his side and back. Kirsten sprang up as the Diablos paused to reload, winging one in the arm. With his coat on fire, he dove for cover. Her second shot went through the mangled vehicle in his direction; she estimated where he landed. The look on the other gangers’ faces confirmed a kill.

“Now you did it, bitch,” growled one. “Now we ain’t just gonna kill you.”

“Like they were going to be cordial before,” she muttered.

“Can you get a shot on this damn thing?” grunted Dorian.

Kirsten huddled low as the gunfire resumed. The cold metal she leaned on seeped through the thin cloth on her back, a reminder of her lack of armor. She concentrated on the lash, drawing a curious gasp from Skittles as six feet of scintillating white energy stretched out from her grasp. The woman crumpled her hands to her mouth, cat-eyes flicked left and right as she locked on to the tip of the wavering light, tail thrashing with anticipatory waves.

Dorian flung the shadow at Kirsten, distancing himself from it as she brought her arm up and snapped the psionic whip through the center of the mass of darkness. The patch split in two and broke apart into shreds of vaporous black ether. It fell in clumps to the ground, forming jellying blobs which exuded smoke. Kirsten blinked.

That thing was either weak or I’m scared out of my mind and don’t realize it.

Skittles emitted a frustrated noise that sounded like “ myarp” and leapt at the lash. She swiped her hands through the air four times, at a speed turning them to a flesh-toned blur. She wound up kneeling on Kirsten’s lap with two fistfuls of uniform, nose to nose with a manic smile.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Does she chase yarn too?” Dorian snickered.

Cat ears flattened. “Your no-see person is very funny. I think it’s from the DNA surgery. Fast small things are”―she shivered― “unable to resist.” She climbed off Kirsten, whining in a demure tone. “Especially shiny ones.”

Dorian stepped up to the van, right by Kirsten. She looked up at him, brushing bits of glass and paint flakes off her sleeves. His eyes glowed as he raised his arm. Soon after, tiny threads of wispy white energy trailed into him. Some of the scratch marks on his arm and face faded away.

The Diablos started bitching about their guns.

“Thanks.” Kirsten smiled, and leapt up with her weapon trained. “Okay, shitheads. You caught me when I’m crunched for time. A spirit just made you want to kill me, so I won’t hold it against you. You have four seconds to disperse.”

“You bein’ a cop makes us wanna kill you. Spirit ain’t got shit to do with it.” The largest of them pulled the trigger of his dead pistol, and growled.

“I am so glad we shifted over to electronic firing circuits,” said Dorian.

“Dorian, that happened before you were born.”

“Want me to help yet?” asked Skittles.

Kirsten grumbled. “Stay down. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

The Diablos tossed their firearms to the side. Kirsten’s forming smile dropped to a look of abject horror as eight men drew swords, axes, and other nasty weapons and charged at her. At least two of the blades emitted the high-pitched whine of vibro inducers. Dorian sapped the power from them as well, allowing Kirsten’s heart to resume beating.

“Run.” Kirsten waved at Skittles. “They’re charging.”

They swarmed over the smashed van, oblivious to the Neko-Chan sitting in perfect calm behind them. Backpedaling, Kirsten fired six times, killing two and wounding one before the other five backed her against a dead car. The lead man roared, hauling a two-handed sword overhead. Kirsten dove out of the way; the blade stopped six inches deep in the vehicle. The horrendous screech of it sliding loose drew a scream from Skittles as she covered her ears.

Another leapt at her with a smaller sword, knocking the E-90 out of her hand as he chased her against the side of a building. She got a grip around his forearm, diverting the blade into the wall just left of her head. With a grunt, she drove her boot into his groin. His eyes half-closed, his mouth agape, he sucked air in through his nose. Dorian dove on him from behind; the spectral assault did little other than cause his coat to flutter.

“He’s on Zerk,” yelled Dorian. “Pain causes euphoria and increased adrenaline. Don’t hurt him, just kill him.”

“Again. That was beautiful. Do it again.” Eyebrows flared up as he leaned his weight into her. He dropped the sword and forced his hands through her grip until he had her by the throat. His other hand pawed at her chest.

“Want me to help now?” asked Skittles, as the other four Diablos at last noticed her.

“Uhh, sure,” gurgled Kirsten, feeling proud of herself for not succumbing to panic. A contest of strength was not one she could win. “ Stop.” Her eyes glimmered with light.

The ganger froze in place, keeping her pinned to the wall, but no longer strangling or fondling her. Kirsten started to issue another command, but stopped at the sight of Skittles walking toward the gangers without fear.

“You boys have ten seconds.” She counted from one to ten. With each spoken number, a single six-inch claw, curved to a wicked point, sprouted from a fingertip.

The Diablos were not impressed.

At ten, Skittles blurred into a smear of grey hair, black cloth, and pale skin that weaved among the gangers. She stopped behind them three seconds later. Her cute, once-white tank top was now spattered crimson. Her motion ceased before any of them reacted to it. Three of the four Diablos fell to the side, covered in numerous scratches. The first had his throat sliced into several flaps. The next had four burbling puncture wounds between ribs where a straight four-claw stab found his heart. Number three clutched at a torn abdomen to keep his intestines inside. The Diablo in the middle of the alley had so many claw wounds to his chest he seemed skinless, but only laughed at her.

“Shit, this one’s got a subderm weave.” Skittles hissed at him, tail flared and circling.

“That is utterly psychotic,” said Dorian.

Kirsten locked eyes with the man holding her and snarled, “ Let go.” The psionic suggestion had immediate effect. She dove away, somersaulting over her E-90 and came up aiming at him. “Dorian, I can’t just kill this guy.”

Skittles blurred again, shredding a hole through the other ganger’s coat. Blood sprayed, but all she did was expose the sheen of dark metallic threads between his skin and muscles.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” he growled, two-handed sword falling woefully short of striking his nimble target. The mass of his weapon pulled him two steps after the miss. “I’m gonna make fur boots out of you.”

“Bind the pistol, I’ll do it,” said Dorian.

“He’s not a threat now.”

Dorian gestured at the dodging cat girl. “What do you think he’s going to do to the next innocent person he runs across? Diablos are probably one of the most dangerous non-aug gangs in the city. They don’t usually kill their victims because they want to savor the psychological damage they cause. They are evil if anything ever was.”

“I am still not going to shoot a defenseless man.”

“What about him?” Dorian pointed at the walking wound chasing Skittles. “He’s trying to kill a ‘helpless civilian.’”

Kirsten sighed. “Helpless…” She squeaked in an attempt to raise her voice, coughed, then yelled. “You, asshat, drop the sword.”

He ignored her.

One azure laser seared through his chest, sending bloody steam out of both entry and exit wounds. The sudden release of tension within the strands of his subdermal armor implant caused strips of meat to snap free, flopping as he crashed to the ground. Skittles seemed unaffected by the gore, as if she had seen far worse in her life, and walked over with her hands held up like a surgeon after scrub.

“Oh, please tell me you’re not going to lick yourself clean.” Kirsten stared.

Dorian cracked up.

“Uhh, no. That’s nasty.” She went over to one of the first Diablos killed by a laser blast and used his shirt as a rag.

Kirsten searched the last man and removed several more weapons before spinning him around and staring into his eyes. “ Walk to Sector 1.”

“What was the point of that?” asked Dorian as the man trudged off. “That’s hundreds of miles away.”

“He’ll get found by Division One somewhere between here and the southwest corner of the city.”

“ The doctor is another block that way.” Skittles pointed with her tail, trotting over while working her improvised rag through her fingers. “Ready?”

Kirsten smirked at the ghostly Diablos trying to figure out why they could no longer pick up their weapons. “One minute. I need to call some associates.”

She closed her eyes and beckoned.

Skittles slid down a metal railing, gliding into a mass of heavy black plastic sheeting. Brightness broke through the seam as she found the entry flap and held it aside for Kirsten. She ducked through, squinting to adjust to the sudden change in light. What had once been the boiler room for an apartment building was now a crude approximation of a medical suite. Two tables occupied the center of the area, flanked by shelves of cybernetic parts―some of which still had blood on them. The more distant table contained the corpse of a filthy dark-skinned man with his chest cut open. A human-shaped outline of green plastic hovered over the body; a doctor covered by a chem suit with an electronic visor. He worked, less than carefully, unwinding threads of neuralware wiring from an exposed spinal cord.

“Hey, Doc,” chirped Skittles.

The lime suit jumped, taking a step back and grabbing a metal band around his right arm. Two dog-sized tracked security bots rolled around a corner: miniature tanks with assault-rifle mechanisms mounted to their chassis, aimed at the cat.

“That’s close enough,” he said.

“Now, Doc…” Kirsten stalked closer. “Why would you assume she wants to use you as a scratching post?”

The doc screeched; spittle coated the inside of his faceplate. “The police? You brought a goddamn cop here? Are you insane? Now I’m going to have to burn the whole place.”

“I’m Division Zero, Doc. I’m only looking for information.”

“Fucking psionic?” He shook his finger at Skittles. “You are fucking nuts. A god damned psionic?”

Dorian sucked power from the overhead lights as he approached; the approaching dark spot sent shudders through the cyberdoc. Blood dripped from the table as strands of neural wiring, still clenched in his fist, tugged taut. The bots swiveled at Kirsten and died on the spot as Dorian consumed their power.

Screaming, the doc abandoned the neuralware, letting the bundle of wires paint a bloody spatter on the floor as it swayed over the edge of the table. He ran through several layers of transparent plastic curtains to a door.

Skittles put her hands on her hips, nodding at Kirsten. “You know how to make an entrance.”

“That was all Dorian.”

The cyberdoc returned with an energy rifle, which he aimed at Kirsten.

“ Drop it.” Her eyes flickered. “Now get over here.”

The weeping man came to a spasmodic halt a few feet away, casting mournful looks back at his abandoned weapon.

“Good.” Kirsten put a hand on his shoulder. “Now, despite your opinion psionics should be rounded up and launched into space, I’m not going to get mad at you. In fact, I’m not even going to arrest you for trading in black market cyberware. That is, of course, if you can assure me all of your parts are scavenged from the already dead. You don’t kill and steal parts do you?”

“No…”

His surface thoughts agreed with his words. “Good. In exchange for letting you slide on the tax evasion, I want two things.”

Skittles seemed quite amused at watching the doc squirm.

“W-what?”

“First, I want to know what happened to an Intera Iron Claw cyberarm with this serial number. Give me everything you know about the man who used it to try and kill me, and I won’t consider you a party to the attempted murder of a police officer.”

The Doc gulped. At this point, the coffee hue of his face vanished behind a thick layer of fog. His breaths wheezed through a respirator not meant for the speed at which he tried to take on air.

“Secondly, I need you to fix the botched installation you did on her tail before it causes permanent brain or nerve damage.”

He babbled, waving an arm at Skittles. “You did, didn’t you? You called the damn cops because of a stupid short. We had a deal. You have to pay for additional work.”

Skittles popped a single claw from her right index finger, shaking it back and forth. “Oh, no, no, no. Not additional work. Fixing the broken feces. Those two bots were all that stopped me from boning you like a fish.” She gestured as if slicing him open. “I could show you what it feels like whenever I use this damn tail. Just stick this right up into the base of your spine and pull…”

“The only question, Doc, is if you fix her willingly or under compulsion.” Kirsten folded her arms, hoping he believed the attitude she faked.

“That… you can’t do that! It’s unethical. It’s illegal.”

“As if what you do isn’t?” Kirsten glared, trying to ignore Dorian’s laughter. “Look, just fix what you screwed up. I’m not asking you to give her free parts. Take a little pride in your work, maybe she sends you more customers instead of plots to cut you open from ass to skull.”

“Oh, now you’re encouraging the trade of illegal cyberware. How do you think Miss Kitty got military-grade speedware?”

“I’m more worried about demons right now, Dorian.”

“Demons?” The doc gawked. “You are nuts.”

“I mean, if you’d rather go down for attempted murder of a police officer and trafficking illegal ‘ware, keep on talking.”

“Fine, fine.” He held both hands up in a gesture of surrender for a few seconds. Relaxing, he fiddled with a holographic panel over his right arm. “What was the serial number?” She read it off. “Randall Morris. Used to work for EnMesh security. Told me he was let go for taking side-jobs of ‘questionable legality.’ Frequent client of mine. He gets shot up pretty bad all the time, needs it strictly off the books to hide it from his employer. Last I heard from him, he got a big paycheck waved over his head from some Russian. He never mentioned a name.”

“Damn,” grumbled Kirsten.

“I can go digging… See if I can find anything on the ‘net once my tail is fixed.” Skittles stripped and stepped up on the raised base of a medical tank against the right side wall.

Kirsten shivered at all the dirt and junk piled around it, wondering just how voracious the nanobots within the gel could be. Could they destroy all the contamination here? “Go on, Doc. Please fix her. I trust you will work better under your own steam than as a mind puppet.”

He gulped, and moved to the control box for the tank. As the clear plastic tube closed around Skittles, Dorian shook his head.

“Mind puppet? Really?”

She gave him a weak smile and a shrug before whispering, “It worked, didn’t it?”

Skittles held her breath until the peach-colored gel reached the top of the tank. Bubbles streamed out of her as she exhaled hard and sucked in the oxygenated slime as though it were no big deal. A tremendous plume of charcoal-grey hair rose upward like an ink cloud in the upper third of the tube. Within seconds, her body went limp as she slipped into the painless grasp of anesthesia.

“She’s rather used to the stuff,” said Dorian. “She has to have military training to be that accustomed to the transition to gel. I bet she’s former Resistance. I wouldn’t be surprised if she got herself sent to the ambassador’s estate on purpose to spy on him. Hell, maybe she was there in case they wanted him dead.”

Skittles’s back split open, and the tail floated free from the body; synthetic nerve connections wrapped around the M3 wire trailed like threads of molten cheese to the base of a modified spinal cord. One by one, they broke away and reattached. Almost puking through her fingers, Kirsten faced to the side, holding up a hand to block her view of the tube while still watching the cyberdoc.

“ This will probably take a little while.” Dorian patted her on the shoulder.

“Yeah, let me know when she’s done.”

mpact knocked Kirsten out of a deep sleep. Spots of light danced around above her as her brain attempted to adjust to the rapid transition to wakefulness. She lifted her head to look at what hit her and found Evan clinging and trembling. A hand on his back made him whimper; as warm as he felt, her touch had to be icy.

“Evan?” Kirsten patted him, and used her other hand to wipe her eyes. “What’s wrong? Is there something in the apartment?”

He shook his head. “No, ‘member we blockaded it.”

She sat up, wrapping him in her blanket. “Bad dream?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?” She kissed the side of his head and held him.

“Dragons were trying to eat you.”

Oh… She enjoyed a mental sigh of relief. Not a precog flash, just an ordinary nightmare. “Oh, sweetie. There’s no real dragons. Are you sure you haven’t been spending too much time with Monwyn?”

Evan sat up to give her a short-lived glare. “It’s not Monwyn’s fault.” He cuddled against her side again. “These dragons were gold. Metal ones. Long and thin like the ones on the Chinese food bots, not fat like fantasy dragons.”

Kirsten peeked into his thoughts, catching a fleeting glimpse of two golden dragon-heads shooting toward her like coiled serpents. It was difficult to gauge size; they filled the entirety of the mental image, surrounded by a burgundy-brown blur. What Evan had last remembered seeing appeared to be the final three seconds before large metal-toothed maws engulfed the point of view. Her voice shrieked in the darkness that followed.

She took a breath to clear her mind. “Are you mad at Konstantin? Maybe you think I’ll love him more than you?”

He stared at her arm, frowning at the bracelet. “I don’t like him. He feels weird.” Evan pushed her hand away.

Realizing the gold serpent on her arm was somewhat similar to his nightmare, she tucked it out of sight under the blanket so he could not see it. She squeezed him. “Evan. Look at me.”

He did, with wide, innocent green eyes.

“There is nothing in this world, or the one after it, that could ever lessen how much I want you to be my son. I won’t let anything or anyone hurt you ever again.”

His eyes reddened, but he did not cry. At least, if he did, the tears fell after he leapt into a hug and she could no longer see his face. “Are they gonna let me stay with you?”

“I got a positive evaluation from Dr. Loring last week. I won’t know for sure for a little while yet, but… Captain Eze said he’d raise hell if they don’t.”

Evan laughed.

Whap.

The noise made her eyes pop open.

Whap.

The second time it had a plastic tonal quality.

Wiff.

Kirsten sat up in bed. Evan stood near the fogged-up autoshower, whipping a towel at the tube as if practicing with a lash. She covered her mouth to hold in the laughter from the sound effects he added. He tried a few more times before giving up and climbing the sink to reach the clean-underwear dispenser. When he came trotting out tugging the briefs into place, he diverted toward her.

“Mom, can you show me how to do the lash?” He climbed onto the bed.

“Did you skip the rinse cycle? Your hair smells like soap.”

“No. The new stuff you got is strong, it hurts my eyes. I wanna learn how to do the lash so when the next demon comes after you I can save you.”

Kirsten giggled into a sigh. “It takes more than astral to do that. You’re not a mind blaster, thank… uhh.” She glanced at the ceiling. Screw it. “Thank God.”

“Why?”

She ran her hands through his hair, trying to avoid the disaster it would be from drying uncombed. “Even other psionics are afraid of people who can mind blast. When someone is powerful with that talent, it can permanently erase brains. It scares them more than death. I don’t want you to get stared at the way I do.” She hugged him. “I’m not very good at it, and Morelli can’t even bear to look at me.”

He pouted. “I hate not being able to fight. What good is seeing ghosts if I can’t stop them from hurting you?” Evan squinted. “What’s a bound weapon?”

Kirsten shoved him face-first into the pillow. “Don’t do that.” She attacked his bare back with tickles until he wailed for mercy. “It’s rude to eavesdrop on someone else’s thoughts.”

Out of breath, he curled fetal and giggled. When he could again speak, he pushed himself upright. “Just for ‘mergencies.”

“It’s dangerous, Evan. A bound item becomes solid to both spirits and living people, but it’s only as useful as what you bind. If you want to hurt a ghost, it has to be a weapon. A sword, a bat, a knife, something like that.”

“Can’t bind a gun?” He made a finger pistol and accompanying sound effects.

“Sure, if you are going to hit them with it. You’d have to bind each individual bullet for it to work. They are so small it wouldn’t do much to them anyway. The hydrostatic shock effect doesn’t work the same way as it does on a person.”

He made the blankest face she had ever seen. “Hy… dro… static?”

Hello, K. He’s nine. “Bullets don’t hurt ghosts as much as they do people. Plus…” She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I told you I could never hurt you. In order to bind something, you have to use your own blood. It allows your spiritual energy to remain on the item for a few hours.”

“I still wanna learn.”

She stared at him, thrilled his ribs no longer stood out so much. He was still thin, but half again the boy she found in that dingy apartment. “Okay, but you are only going to watch me do it. I am not going to cut you, and I am not going to allow you to cut yourself unless it’s an absolute emergency. Do you understand?”

He nodded. “‘Kay.”

With the help of a steak knife and a few spoons, Kirsten demonstrated binding. Much the way she picked up the nuances of astral projection from him, he skimmed her thoughts as she focused the power to see how it felt to do it.

“‘Kay. I think I could do it.” He smiled. “If I had to.”

She collected the empty coffee mugs. “I’m going to hop in the tube now. Promise me you won’t try to do this while I’m in the shower.”

“‘Kay.”

“Evan…” She squinted.

“I promise.” He held his hand up.

Kirsten pounded her desk terminal. A still-talking man’s holographic head imploded into a speck of light and winked out of existence. Several of her squad mates jumped at the sudden noise. Morelli lapsed into choking on his tea.

“That went well,” said Dorian.

Nicole glided by; packages of food floated out of a box she carried and floated to various desks as she passed. Kirsten took her egg wrap, thanking her friend for volunteering to run to the street exit to retrieve everyone’s breakfast.

“EnMesh couldn’t give me a damn thing I didn’t already know. Morris got let go five months ago for ‘conduct incompatible with employment.’”

He exhaled. “Wow, just when I thought the euphemisms were out of control, you find a new one.”

Kirsten drowned her chuckle with a mouthful of jalapeño-laced egg. “Mmm. I love these things, but they are annoying.”

“How’s that?”

“I can’t enjoy coffee for a while afterward, mouth is sore.”

“Iced coffee?”

“Dorian, you’re a genius.” She swiped her hand through the immaterial panels floating over her desk. A moment later, Samuel Chang’s head appeared. “Sam, I hate to bother you… can I ask you for a fav―”

“Sure.” He grinned. “You look good today, less stressed out.”

“Hah.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m just hiding it well.”

“The color in her face is from hot peppers,” sang Nicole.

“Hush, you. You’re whiter than I am.”

Nicole gave her a raspberry. “Not my fault I go from ghost to sunburn instantly.”

Dorian glanced at her. “Didn’t gingers go extinct a few generations ago?”

Kirsten leaned back in her chair, whispering. “Her dad really wanted a blue-eyed redhead. Cost them a hundred grand in embryonic gene tweaking.”

“So, what do you need?” asked Sam.

“Can you get into the system at EnMesh Biomed? I need anything you can find on an employee by the name of Randall Morris. I’ll send over his file now.”

Sam bowed. “Your wish is my command.”

“Thanks.” Kirsten jumped at finding Nicole close enough to breathe on. “Gah!”

Nicole grinned. “Here’s your iced coffee.” She struck a pose. “Not bad for a hundred grand, eh? At least I’m a little exotic. Not everyone gets to be carried to Earth by angels.”

Kirsten went red-faced, exasperated at Nicole’s continued mental eavesdropping. “I didn’t have an angelic parent, Nikki. I only met one, and they called themselves Seraph.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Umm. I dunno.”

“Potato, po-tah-toe,” said Dorian.

Sam looked up all of a sudden. “Oh, Kirsten, I found something on your other suspect. Last night, a citycam picked up a hit on the unidentified man in that video. I managed to find him in the system under the alias of Ajit Emir. He’s a perfect match for your Nafiz Ajouri. Mr. Emir, or whatever he goes by, has quite a record. Nothing individually alarming, but a lot of small-time burglary charges and tax pops. He sells a lot of weapons and drugs and doesn’t claim it. Div One has him listed as an opportunistic warrant.”

“So they’ll grab him if they spot him, but they’re not searching.” Dorian shook his head.

Kirsten blinked. “Sells guns and drugs and all they get him for is not paying tax on it?”

“He sticks to under-the-radar military stims, Flowerbasket, Sandman, and a couple of the harder things like Nightcandy, but he won’t touch Lace or Phindara. All the weapons he sells are civ-legal. All he’s really doing is evading tax. Anyway, I got a hit on a NetMini. CR 408 and Lake Street, sector 418.”

“Thanks, Sam.” She stood. “I haven’t forgotten. I will make good on my promise for dinner. Just, with this damn case…”

“I understand. I heard about the commissioner.”

“You did?”

Sam winked. “I have level 4 clearance.”

Kirsten drove in quiet, setting the patrol craft down in the parking lot of a nameless six-story commercial structure. Subdued red light leaked through curtain-covered windows on the ground floor. She jogged to the door, stopping inches short of grabbing the handle―an enormous bronze phallus.

“Oh, my God.” She reached for the center, hesitated, went to grab the top, paused again, considered the bottom, and sighed.

Dorian cackled.

“What are you, twelve?” She scowled. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

He gestured at the door. “No one ever expects a giant bronze dick in their hand.”

She ignored it and flung the door open. “You… are… impossible.”

Two men, one behind a front desk and one outside of it, stopped kissing to glance in her direction. They gave her the head-to-toe look. The one behind the desk raised a light brown eyebrow.

“Good morning, officer. You’re a few days early, but I have all the employee records ready for you. I assure you, all the vaccinations and immune-boosters are up to date.”

“The only thing louder than his shirt is the pattern on that tie.” Dorian held his arm over his eyes as if staring into the sun.

“I’m not here about your service.” She offered a pleasant smile. “I need to have a word with a client of yours. He’s wanted for questioning in a murder case.”

Both gasped. The man in front of the desk trembled.

“Need me to do anything?” asked the clerk.

She shook her head to the negative. “If things get nasty, hit the deck and stay down till the dust settles.”

The NetMini trace on her armband display led her down a dark hallway of polished wood and blood-red carpet. Every several meters, a small table held a vase or small sculpture. Despite the unassuming exterior, this concealed adult club appeared to cater to men with an excess of money. She stopped outside room 8 and readied her E-90. Azure dots swept back and forth along the barrel, lighting her face in pulses.

Dorian poked his head through the wall. “Looks like one guy. Right of the door. He seems to be waiting for you.”

“Got it.” She burst through, diving to the left, aiming at the wall just inside.

His ambush foiled, the dark skinned man stood motionless, arms aloft. A black leather mask covered his entire head except for open zippers over his eyes. Tight, shiny black pants left little of his scrawny glory to the imagination, and he clung to a stunrod as if it were a divine relic.

Two seconds of silence passed before he let loose a war cry worthy of a mujahedeen and leapt at her. Kirsten ducked to the right, cracking him across the skull with the handle of the E-90 as he went past. He stumbled, gouging a dent out of the drywall with the stunrod before he fell to his knees with his free hand on the back of his head.

She backed up a pace, leveling off her laser. “Drop the stunner and get on the floor.”

The man stood, wild eyes glaring through tiny slits. He took a step closer.

He wants me to kill him. She holstered the E-90 as he lunged in, stabbing for her gut with the sparking, blue-tipped wand. Kirsten spun into him, slamming the hardened armguard into his wrist to deflect the attack as she seized the offending limb with both hands. With a graceful twist, she ducked under his arm and redirected the weapon into her attacker’s throat. Bright blue light gleamed from the eye-slits as spittle foamed out of the bottom of the mask. As tingles reached her hands, she let go, leaving him convulsing on his feet for several seconds before his twitching body collapsed. Every muscle had disconnected from his brain for several seconds.

She wrenched the stunrod out of his grip and held it aloft. Images of the murder of Alaina Munoz flashed through her mind; the struggling young woman held down by this man as his accomplice plunged a dagger through her heart.

“You son of a bitch!” Kirsten shrieked, cracking him twice across the chest with the metal baton.

Brief contact with the stun element caused pain over the entire body, but fell short of the all-out paralysis of a proper application. As the man lay curled on the floor, Kirsten kicked him twice in the gut. “Who are you working with? Why are you killing those people?”

The man wheezed, coughing. “W-wait.”

“Dammit, Kirsten, calm down.” Dorian leapt between them. “You’re acting like I was a few months before my first summary.”

She exhaled, tossing the stunner over the bed before pacing in a tight circle. “Thanks.” None too gently, she rolled the man on his stomach and sat on him. When she tore the mask away, the face staring back at her was not Nafiz. Too young; this man was only her age. A different sort of nausea settled into her gut. “Who the hell are you?”

“Tariq. I”―he coughed― “work here.”

Kirsten got off him. “Why did you attack me? I could have shot you.”

“Nafiz said you were an assassin. He said the Syndicate was sending a blonde woman to kill him.”

“I’m not an assassin, I’m an actual cop.” She squinted. “You did see the uniform, right?”

Tariq wiped the foam from his chin. “I… He said the assassin would dress up like a cop so they could just walk in and kill him and no one would care.”

“Where did he go? Do you know where he lives?”

“No,” said Tariq, arms limp across his lap. “He saw me a few times, once every couple of weeks. He got a vid from some nasty old Russian a few minutes ago. I swear some people just don’t take care of their skin. He asked me to buy him some time. Left his NetMini here so you would find it.”

“He told you to attack a police officer. He could have gotten you killed.” She stomped to the nightstand and grabbed the device.

Dorian stuck his finger through it and the security screen faded out to the desktop image of a calm tropical beach scene.

“That call came in about four minutes ago.” She grumbled.

Dorian narrowed his eyes. “It would have been right when we left the PAC. The only way he could have known is if he is watching you.”

“Or has my phone tapped.” She kicked the bed. “I’m confiscating this.” She waved the civilian-grade stunrod at Tariq, and stormed out.

Tariq grunted and wobbled to his feet.

Kirsten stopped, leaning back through the doorway. “Do you need a medic?”

He poked at his bruising ribs. “Yeah.”

Dorian gave her a chiding look as she called it in.

he network operations room of the Division 2 Regional Tech Center was dim and cool, as always. Kirsten slouched as she trudged down the four black stairs to the sunken chamber. The pink-haired tech woman fired off her usual sharpened glare, while the arrogant one refused to acknowledge her presence. Ever since Dorian shut his terminal down, Kirsten had ceased to exist. From the look of it, he’d moved on to Shinto… decorating his workstation with various hanging ofuda and paper charms. The last thing he had said to her was something regarding the nonexistence of things inexplicable to math or science. She grinned, remembering the face he made when she asked him, via telepathy, to explain that with math.

“Hey, Sam.” She fell into the chair, staring at his desk.

“Geez, Agent Wren, you look like a zombie… just cuter.”

The pink-haired woman made some kind of gagging noise.

“I just had Div Nine wrist-deep in my ass, and elbow-deep in my terminal.” She didn’t react to the gasps. “Metaphorically speaking.”

“What happened?”

“A suspect got warning I was coming for him at about the same moment I left my squad room. They’re checking for hacks, bugs, or listening devices. I couldn’t do what I need to do there, so I’m here. Mind if I use your equipment?” She twisted to point. “Not a word, Dorian.”

He whistled, pacing around.

Sam blinked at the empty space she just scolded. When she looked back at him, he scooted over. “Sure. Ghost?”

“Yeah.”

She pawed at the screens, going for her file node where her notes resided. “I’ve been trying to find some kind of a pattern to these companies, but the only connection I keep coming back to is this guy, Yevgeniy. I’ve been staring at pages and pages of financial records.”

“You guys don’t have a Gnome?”

She buried her face in her hands. “Is that something from the Monwyn franchise?”

“No, it’s an analysis AI, specifically developed for forensic accounting.” He slid over, his proximity triggering a wave of discomfort. “One moment.”

Kirsten smiled at him at the same moment an overwhelming sense of guilt fell on her; the discomfort of having him near enough to feel body heat felt traitorous at the same time welcome. She did not mind Sam so near. Something about him was charming in an awkward sort of way, but she did not want Konstantin to get the wrong idea about what she was doing. With both arms clamped to her gut, she weathered through her guilt and the growing storm in her belly.

An elderly gnome appeared, all two feet of him standing on Sam’s desk―complete with pointed hat and green tunic. The holo-projectors in here were top-of-the-line. As long as she did not try to touch him, he looked real.

“Give him the particulars,” said Sam.

The gnome shifted to face her, bowing.

“Can you please look for relationships between RedEx, EnMesh, Kukla Investment Corporation, VSKK, Yevgeniy Suvorin, and any security employees thereof?”

The tiny old man nodded and leaned back as if staring into the heavens in search of truth. His eyes glowed and flickered, shades of amethyst and green flashed within, creating matching coloration on the sides of his long nose. Kirsten shifted as her chair got bumped from behind. Her shirt open far enough to display the lack of a bra, the pink-haired techie dropped a datapad on Sam’s desk. She leaned forward, over Kirsten.

“Well, that’s subtle,” muttered Dorian.

“Sam, Lieutenant Saunders wanted me to remind you about your end-of-year self-review. It’s late. He wants you to do it before you leave today.”

He glanced at her, offering no reaction whatsoever to the pair of almost-exposed tits in his face. “Uhh, sure. I’ll do it right after we’re done.”

Kirsten glared as the woman walked away. “She must like you.”

Samuel Chang blushed. “No, she never spoke to me before. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think highly of her, she is not a nice person. She must be jealous of you. It is rare to be beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside.”

Fire swam up the back of her throat. Kirsten clamped a hand over her mouth in an effort to avoid throwing up all over his desk. A little metal dragon seemed to curl around her stomach, biting and clawing at her from the inside out. When the initial urge retreated to a grinding pain in her gut, she doubled over and gasped. What the hell is wrong with me?

“I’m sorry.” He offered her tissues. “I did not mean to offend you.”

Dorian put an amazing, cool hand on her forehead. “Kirsten?”

“I’m fine. Had to be bad fruit.” She re-swallowed her breakfast. “I’m glad I got the oatmeal today instead of the usual spicy eggs. Sam, that’s very sweet of you.” She winced. “I’m sorry I seemed like I had a bad reaction to it. I’m just sick with stress over this case.”

“Do you want water?”

She forced a smile through the pain. “That would be wonderful.”

Sam ran off to the break room.

“Kirsten, you’re sweating. You look feverish. Every time you look at him, you grab your gut. Now, either you’re allergic to what he’s starching his shirt with, or you are taking the phrase lovesick too literally.”

“Dammit, Dorian, I’m Konstantin’s,” she hissed, managing to avoid screaming it at the entire tech crew. “Why do you keep trying to pull me away from him? You just―” She gawked. “Sorry. Shit, twice now I’ve snapped at you.”

“ That’s not you talking, K.” He held her head in both hands, peeling her eyes open one at a time to examine them. She shivered at the icy fingers encircling her skull. “You are getting more and more defensive whenever someone suggests the fancy billionaire might not be an ideal match.”

She glanced at the unmoving gnome with its light-eyes, then at the floor between her boots. “Maybe I just want it too bad. Having that kind of security for Evan, it’s more than I could have ever dreamed.”

“You don’t make bad money with the department. Remember that whole ‘merit pay’ thing?” He winked. “It’s not like you to care so much about the size of a bank account.”

“I never had to worry about a kid before. If I have my way, he’ll never want for anything.”

“You know it’s a recipe for a spoiled brat. Sooner or later, his gratefulness at getting him out of the situation you found him in will wear off. As soon as he feels comfortable, he’ll be just like any other whiny, needy, foul-mouthed teenager. The day will come when you’ll beg for the over-sweet little boy to come back.”

“He’s not just being super-nice to thank me for saving him. That’s who he is.”

“Kirsten?”

“Yeah?” She looked up.

“I suggested you might think Sam is cute and you were getting ready to rip my head off. I just said, more or less, Evan is only acting sweet so you don’t get tired of him and kick him out. That, you brushed off. Does it seem a little odd to you?”

“You didn’t mean it.”

“Meaning it is beside the point. I said it to poke you. I’m worried, Kirsten. You’re not acting right.”

Sam edged out of the break room, desperate to extricate himself from a heated discussion with a short, wide-bodied Hispanic man harassing him about his end-of-year appraisal.

“It’s gotta be all the stress: the adoption, the case, the demons. For shit’s sake Dorian, I caught myself praying the other day. I think I’m losing it.”

He chuckled, still looking worried.

Sam flopped in his seat, swiveling to face front just as the gnome came out of its trance. Kirsten sucked down half the water bottle in a single gulp. The diminutive AI waited for her to recover.

“The corporate entities you mentioned are connected. Kukla Investment Corporation has recently acquired EnMesh Corporation. VSKK has recently acquired RedEx. Money has flowed in a back channel between Kukla and RedEx as well, siphoned through accounts linked to another entity: Koloss Venture Capital. Koloss has contributed funds to both EnMesh and RedEx, as well as significant contributions directly to both VSKK and Kukla. Further research indicates Koloss VC owns a majority share in Kukla Investment Corporation. By means of four shell corporations that exist only in Cyberspace, it is also listed as owner of VSKK, a result of some very obscure accounting.”

“ So… basically you’re saying Koloss owns everything related to this case?”

“It would seem that is correct,” said the gnome, nodding for emphasis. “Also, I have found evidence Koloss, via Kukla Investments, has acquired numerous properties in Northern Africa, specifically Egypt. The trail led to thirteen small businesses engaged in historic preservation initiatives, Egyptology, and archaeological expeditions. There have also been significant donations arranged through a network of smaller business entities to the West City Archives as well as the Büro für Geschichte in Berlin, and the Ministerstvo Istoricheskikh Sokrovishch in Moscow.”

“Huh?” Kirsten blinked.

“Museums,” huffed the Gnome, with crossed arms. “Didn’t you get an education?”

“Enough to put me on duty when I was sixteen, more or less only what I needed to know to do my job.”

“Criminal.” The gnome’s stubby arms flailed. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Where is this Koloss VC?”

“It is a phantom. It occupies no physical real estate; however the corporate registry is in Eastern Siberia, ACC.”

Kirsten lifted the bottle to drink more. “Who is in control of it?”

“By virtue of a chain of ownership among six other companies, including VSKK…” The gnome rocked heel to toe. “Konstantin Dobrynin.”

Kirsten threw up.

irsten paced back and forth in the ground-floor lobby of her apartment building. Being at home on a Wednesday, earlier than sundown, lent a bitter edge to the flutter of worry bouncing around her stomach. It exacerbated the wrongness of her feelings; as if some force lifted her out of the real world and planted her in a reality that looked and felt in every way the same―except for a series of tiny flaws which escaped conscious notice, but agitated her subconscious mind into believing something was wrong.

Something was wrong.

However, no matter how much she studied the data dump from the gnome, it still circled back to the unbelievable. She stared down the length of her shimmering, sapphire-blue gown, feeling self-conscious about the milky white of her legs. Thin straps held silver high heels to her feet. They made her think of Armando/Brian/Douchebag. That was the last time she wore them. Why am I wearing these damn things? This isn’t a date, it’s an investigation. Her stomach churned. He’ll know something’s wrong. Ugh, I’m going to blow chunder all over him. Thinking of vomiting made her think of a worried Sam dabbing at her face after she decorated his desk. That brought on another twinge of pain, a dagger in her stomach.

She walked to the glass, staring at the street while clinging to the E-90 through her purse under her left arm. A dull, silvery rectangle sixteen inches end to end, she should be able to get the weapon out in a hurry―and it went with her shoes.

A black limo came in for a landing outside, tossing debris and dust in all directions as the ion drives surged to arrest the effect of gravity. She put on the best smile she could muster. Her gait wobbled, Partly from her continued hatred of high heels, but the rest came from feeling like she had been hung from the ceiling and used as a punching bag.

She made it to the car without tripping, close to fainting when Konstantin appeared out of thin air, opening the door for her. Hologram… Just a f―hologram.

“This was a pleasant surprise, Lyubimaya.” The false image pantomimed shutting the door for her after she gathered the gown around her legs and got in. He appeared at her side. “I am just finishing up a business meeting. We should arrive at the restaurant close to the same time.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” she said, through a Cheshire smile.

He bowed and faded away. She spent the remainder of a fifteen minute ride in silence, concentrating on unwinding the knots in her gut. Barfing all over Sam’s desk was embarrassing enough, but if she did that here with Konstantin, she would never want to go outside again.

As good as his word, Konstantin emerged from the gold-rimmed doors of The Five Corners. Another place where normal people had to wait three months for a table; normal, that was, in the sense of merely being wealthy―as opposed to Konstantin.

As soon as she saw him, the nausea faded. She ran to his side. The closer she got, the better she felt. By the time they settled into a table in the shadow of an enormous ice swan, she shivered with giddiness. Holographic wings around the sculpture moved up and down in time with distant violin music emanating from everywhere. Terraces lined the sides of the dining hall, each of five floors themed to a different geographical motif. Yellow and cream, the vault ceiling made her feel as though she were inside an immense lemon meringue pie. They sat amid a winterscape with staff dressed in white and blue, bedecked with sparkling crystal sequins. Bright azure holograms zipped here and there, snow faeries or fireflies. Above them was Ancient Rome, with waiters dressed in period garb. The third floor contained an amazing collection of African artwork and colorful dashiki-clad waiters. She leaned half out of her chair to peer over the edge of the fourth floor, catching glimpses of Chinese décor.

Konstantin chuckled at the girl-in-wonderland face. “This place is quite astounding, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. What’s on the top floor?”

“Pompeii, I think. Mostly Italian cuisine. It might be Mediterranean though; they change the themes every few months.”

A beep from her purse distracted her. The past twenty minutes, long enough for their appetizer to come out, had gone by in a blur of small talk. Her NetMini flashed an incoming text from Nila: “Evan in panic mode, be careful.” She tucked the device past the pistol, sliding her hand on the grip for confidence.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Lyubimaya.” He gestured with an empty glass at a nearby waitress with long white hair, bedecked in diamond snowflakes and swan makeup.

“Do you know anything about some company named Koloss… It owns Kukla Investment Corporation. That’s where Yevgeniy works, isn’t it?”

“Koloss… I can’t say I’ve heard the name.” He smiled at the ice-princess, thanking her for the refilled drink. “Should I?”

Soft, rubberized handgrips squished between her fingers. Her finger flicked at the trigger. “It turns out you own it. I think…” Dizziness swam over her brain, splitting her silverware into three copies, a mesmerizing dance that held her gaze for a few seconds before they faded back together. “I think… Yevgeniy is trying to hurt you. He’s calling demons, isn’t he? You know it. That’s why you studied ancient Sumerian stuff.” Her hand came out of the purse, off the E-90, and clasped the edge of the table. “You’ve been sending money to treasure hunters in Egypt. You’ve been searching for old books, maybe something that can protect you.”

Konstantin glanced at her with an unreadable face for a moment before the slightest trace of a smile curled his lip. He took a sip of his drink, straight genuine vodka, and set the glass down. “I am impressed, Kirsten. I did not think your people would give serious credence to the existence of such creatures. Yevgeniy thinks he is a threat.” He waved her off. “In truth, he is but a nuisance. I have learned enough mysticism in my years to keep his efforts at worst annoying and at best amusing. His desperation will reach the point where he calls on something he cannot control. Then”―Konstantin seized a stuffed mushroom from the plate and held it up, staring over it― “then, they will devour him.”

Chomp.

Despite it being only a mushroom that died, Kirsten felt a chill run down her bare back. Within a few seconds, his mirth caught on and she grinned. Amid the arrival of the main course―fish for her, pelmeni for him―their conversation wandered far away from anything to do with demons, about-to-be-executed commissioners, or finance. By the time he walked her to the limo, she found herself wrapped around his arm. She had managed to limit herself to one glass of white wine, albeit a large one. Am I drunk? Why do I feel like I’m going to fall over if I let go?

“Mmm,” she cooed. “I’m so happy right now, I feel like nothing matters but being with you.”

“Lyubimaya, you can free yourself from such unhealthy stress. As my wife, you would not need to work. You could spend your days with your boy, and your nights with me. You could sleep the sleep of angels, free of worry.”

Kirsten closed her eyes.

“Alas, I fear you are quite dedicated. I would invite you to my home, but I expect your work calls you.”

She bit her lower lip, pulling herself up by the grip she had on his arm. “I want to go with you.”

“You know not how long I have waited to hear those words leave your lips.” He brushed his cheek across hers; a gossamer kiss on her mouth.

He held her hand as they climbed the steps of his manor house. White walls shifted with shadows cast by imitation firelight from numerous holographic lanterns. Kirsten shivered, gathering her coat close to her back as a shield against the wind. The estate, east of the northern edge of West City, had open grounds free of the burden of city plates. Trees, streams, and several constructed ponds dotted the landscape.

“This is so beautiful. The only times I’ve seen real ground, it’s been desert or covered by city.”

“Nature has created many things of wondrous beauty, Kirsten. Far from the least of which I find on my arm at this moment.”

A rush of warmth ran to her face and she found her legs unsteady. Konstantin drank in her adoring stare for a moment before ushering her through the door. Inside, the warm air of a cavernous foyer banished the cold northern wind. A man in a dark suit approached without speaking, taking both their coats.

Led by the hand, Kirsten followed him up a long, curved staircase to a second-floor hall. The extravagance lifted her out of the real world. She slid into the fantasy of a princess in her castle, her doe-eyed gaze unable to believe the paintings, statues, polished rosewood floors, and carpets that passed her on both sides. He stopped at an archway. A fireplace waited at the far end of a room full of medieval weapons; several sets of armor arranged on pedestals.

“Would you care for some hot cider by the fire, perhaps cognac?”

Kirsten leaned into him, palms flat on his chest. Hand over his heart, she listened for several beats while staring into the distant hearth. She caressed him, once again startled by the firm, statuesque muscles beneath his shirt. Feelings of safety enveloped her with his arms. After a moment of quiet, she leaned up and kissed him.

“I want you to be my first,” she whispered, shrinking down off her toes to cling to him again.

He swept her into his arms and carried her. She folded her hands to her heart; paintings, candles, and little statues drifted by. Another stairway took them up to the third floor; she floated in a haze of contentment. He shifted sideways to swing her through a set of double oak doors engraved with squares reminiscent of the main gate of a castle. The room was larger than her entire apartment. Konstantin set her on the edge of a great canopy bed with a carved cherry wood headboard in the image of a pair of entwined Chinese dragons.

She pushed her hands into the burgundy silk, astounded. “A cloth mattress?”

The smile he gave her said ‘of course.’ An expression she once thought contemptible and arrogant. Her heels slipped out of her shoes before she stood and shrugged a shoulder out of the gown. Shimmering azure cloth fell away in a second, gathering around her bare feet. Not a synapse was wasted toward embarrassment at a man seeing her in only black silk panties and a gold bracelet. She wanted him like she wanted nothing ever in her life.

Konstantin stepped to her, hand behind her head as he tilted her into a long kiss. She swayed, arms lax, surrendering her body to wherever he moved it. The smooth silk of his shirt brushed her nipples and stomach. She inhaled his scent; their kiss paused long enough for him to gaze into her eyes. He tilted her to the other side, leaning until she slid onto the bed. He sat up, coarse worker’s hands touching her pale, silken skin, sliding around her breasts and pausing just above her hips. He twirled a finger through the band of her panties, lifting an eyebrow in question.

Kirsten could not believe she was with this man. With the pick of any woman in the world―he wanted her. She reached her arms over her head, managing a quick nod before closing her eyes. A weak gasp escaped her lips as the elastic slipped over her hips and cool air brushed her intimates. Silk glided down her thighs. Kirsten pulled one leg free, shuddering as he used both hands to guide the material all the way down her left leg. He released her foot, and she slid farther into the plush bedclothes, waiting for his touch.

A minute of nothing but the caress of cool fabric on her nakedness.

Impatient, she peeked. Unbuttoning his shirt was a methodical task that ended with a neat folded garment set on a nearby ottoman. The sight of his bare chest took the strength from her limbs. Such a body belonged to professional athletes, not billionaire playboys. Regardless of how much surgery this being sculpted from tanned flesh-colored marble may have endured, he stole the breath from her lungs.

Konstantin strode to the foot of the bed and was soon atop her, kissing his way from thigh to the base of her neck. His lips descended, attendant to her right breast. She grasped handfuls of bedding, clenching and releasing from the sensation. The scratch of unshaven man on her flesh, the warmth of him all over her, the scent of his breath―she drowned in Konstantin. He leaned upward, again kissing her lips while he caressed her other breast. Rolling to the side, he slid his hand down her back, over her ass, and back up the inside of her thigh.

All the way up.

The beeping NetMini fifteen feet away did not exist.

She squealed at his touch. Arching her back, she squirmed and begged him not to stop as pleasure burst through her. When sensation faded enough for her to notice his hands no longer made contact, her eyes fluttered open. He looked back, draping his black dress pants over the back of a chair. Violet boxers hugged the kind of contours Nicole so often gawked at online. Kirsten bit her knuckle at the sight of how ready he seemed to be.

A demure shiver ran through her as she looked away. “Oh, my… Konstantin.”

He shed the last of his garments, sliding onto the bed at her side. He brushed across her thigh as he hovered over her, leaning down to kiss her on the neck.

“I can’t believe this.” She closed her eyes. “Why me? You are so perfect…”

Konstantin guided her hand down, grunting as she gripped a little too firmly. “This is your first time. Are you sure you want to continue?”

She caressed his length, gasping. Last time, she had cringed and waited for it to be over as fast as possible, now she wanted to enjoy every second.

He let her examine it, mouth curled back and eyebrow raised as if showing off a priceless artifact unmatched by anything in another’s collection.

“If you promise you won’t hurt me,” she whispered, biting him on the ear. “My body or my heart.” Her eyes leaked open with a sliver of guilt. He’s going to know he’s not the first. He’s going to throw me out.
I’m such a whore. Kirsten burst into tears. “I’m not good enough for you.”

A kiss took the tear from her cheek and put it on her lips. “Shh. I know.” He ran a hand over her head. “You were an orphan doing whatever you needed to do in order to survive.” The next kiss brushed her neck. “To me, you are still unsullied.”

On a surge of adoration, she sat up and cuddled to his chest, letting him hold her for a moment before she reclined and offered herself to him. “I want you to make love to me for the first time.”

Konstantin shimmered with an angelic aura; his face, beaming with passion, seemed even younger. In this light, he looked no older than twenty-five. He prowled over her, a stalking panther. Kirsten shivered as he dragged over her thigh and across her belly, tensing, waiting for the feeling of him inside her.

The room flooded with classical Russian music. Konstantin froze, not moving a muscle for twenty-six seconds until it ceased. Anger swam over his face and it took him a moment to relax, helped along by her hands on his chest. Just as he eased her onto her back again, the music returned.

“Someone wants me to cut their balls off,” he growled. “I am sorry, Lyubimaya, I must take this call. It is a special line.” He slid from the bed, lifting her hand and kissing it before setting it between her legs. “Keep yourself warm, I will be just a moment.”

Kirsten barely noticed him grab a silk robe and storm out. She rolled on her side, snuggled in the thick comforter. Hazy eyes settled on her purse, wondering what the strange object was.

Beep. “Incoming Vidcall from… Evan.” The digital voice gave way to a little boy’s gleeful chirp of his own name.

Evan. Kirsten grinned, licking the taste of Konstantin from her finger. I know someone named Evan. She laughed.

Beep. “Incoming Vidcall from… Evan.”

She scrunched up her face at the bag. I’m busy, kiddo. Kirsten shot upright. Kiddo. Boy. Evan! Holy shit! What the fuck is wrong with me! Kirsten leapt from the bed, tearing at her purse to grab the device. She got it out just as the ringer ended.

Redial.

“I’m sorry, I’m inside school now and not ‘llowed to have calls. If this is a ‘mergency, call my mommy.” A link popped up on the screen to contact her.

Kirsten’s head swam in a nauseating spiral that left her on her knees. She sat back, covering herself with her arms. Her clothes were gone: heels, panties, dress, all of it. Moving to the bed, she gathered the comforter around herself for a moment. It would be too heavy to carry. Some force pulled her to her feet; she found another red silk jacket in the cabinet. The sheer fabric slid cool over her skin as she bundled it closed and tied a quick knot in the belt before dropping her NetMini in the pocket.

E-90 in hand, she peered out into the hallway. Nausea pummeled her in the gut, the walls shifted back and forth. The paintings seemed to animate and mock her; little voices from figures within them called her disloyal to Konstantin. They ordered her back to the bedroom.

She clung to the doorjamb to keep from falling down again; swaying back and forth, she searched for somewhere to go. To the right, past a long red carpet, a fancy set of red-stained, wooden double doors glimmered with solid gold doorknobs in the shape of Chinese dragons. Something about them drew her, and she staggered closer. Halfway there, her balance returned. With one hand on her head, she approached. Intricate workmanship on the handles rendered every scale in precise detail; the eyes, rubies worth thousands of credits each, gleamed.

Each dragon had a movable pointed tongue that curved out of the gaping maw; depressing one opened the latch, and she passed through into a small chamber containing only a spiral staircase and drab walls. I know I’m at least on the third floor. I gotta get out of this house. I’m suffocating. Did he slip me something? The metal stairs were cold to the point of numbing her feet. Holding onto the railing, she navigated the featureless grey passage until the spinning stopped at a plain door. She wobbled upright, abandoning her friend the railing, and pushed through the door into a small room with a table, couch and holo-bar creating a hundred-inch screen full of a live Gee-ball game.

Basement? Man cave? She ignored a small leather-covered door behind the couch, heading for a larger one opposite the way she entered. It opened into darkness. Behind her, a toilet flushed. She ducked through into the black and edged the door closed behind her, heart racing.

It was cold in this room, the floor felt like bare concrete with grit on it. The scent of wood, straw, and strange spices hung in the air. She fumbled, searching the wall near the door for the expected panel. Something made a tiny chirp, sensing her touch, and the lights came on.

Piles of wooden boxes, many with Arabic writing on them, were stacked all over. Thirty feet to the right, past a large conference table, several steel cabinets stood against the wall. The sound of breathing attracted her forward and left, around a pile of coffin-sized crates. Most had customs imprints from the Middle East. When she peered around the edge of the boxes, her heart almost stopped.

Between the two large cabinets, a squat table held a carved box she had initially mistook for an Oriental shrine. On the wall above it hung a solid black mask with gold filigree around the eyes, and two thin lines falling like tears to the jawline. Sickness hit her in the gut with the force of a cyborg’s punch. Her mind dove into the scene from Brooke’s memory―the man with the knife. The same knife she somehow knew was in the fancy carved box at the center of the table. Brooke’s vision zoomed in, as if a camera rushed at the man in the mask. She peered close, through the holes.

Konstantin’s red-brown eyes, lit wild with bloodlust.

“No!” She covered her mouth to mute the wail. “No,” she cried, in a breathy rasp.

When she rounded the corner, four hundred credits-worth of half-digested fish came through her fingers. A short distance ahead of her, behind a barred door lifted from a medieval prison, a naked woman lay on the ground bound hand and foot with metal restraints. Just like Alaina Munoz had been.

She appeared to be sleeping or drugged. Shoulder-length black hair had lightened with a coating of the ubiquitous dust, which also highlighted her musculature where her brown skin touched the floor.

Gagging on the urge to continue vomiting, Kirsten half-crawled, half-walked to the cell door. Aside from the woman, it contained a large pan of cat litter. She aimed the E-90 at the shiny bars, hesitating at the fear the laser would reflect away without harming it. Despite being modern plastisteel, the polished cell door used a mechanical key and had no electronics programmed to accept police override codes.

Kirsten reached through and got a hand on the woman’s foot. Slapping her several times, she whisper-yelled. “Hey, are you alive? Hey? I’m gonna get you out of here.”

Huddled against the wall outside the bars, Kirsten pulled her NetMini from the robe pocket. A red icon at the bottom caught her eye that she had not noticed before. Email. Based on the timestamp, it arrived while she had been at the restaurant. She did not recall hearing the chime. Three flicks of her thumb opened a message from Samuel Chang.

“Kirsten, I went looking for Nafiz online. I managed to trace the call that warned him. It looks like it came from a manor house way out in the north. It’s owned by Enigma Capital, of which eighty-two percent controlling interest is owned by Davosk Shipping. Davosk shipping is… you guessed it… owned by Kukla. It contained the following:”

Her heart pounded in her head as she scrolled down past the words: “She is coming here, go, now. Do it.”

Beyond the ominous words, three still images were embedded in the message. In the first, she led Evan to the patrol craft outside Nina’s apartment. In the second, she opened the patrol craft’s door for him. In the last photo, Evan sat in the driver’s seat, saluting her while she laughed.

The nagging sense of a paranormal presence that had dogged her for days reverberated in the back of her mind, pulsing in time with the nausea which kept her legs from supporting her. Driven by fear for Evan, her mind lashed out, grasping at thin air. A sense of tangibility led her to the gold serpent bracelet around her right wrist.

I couldn’t get it off that night. She grabbed it, twisting and squeezing. Her skin reddened as she tried to pull it over her hand. One of the horns nipped her finger as she squeezed at it, trying to find whatever mechanism released the metal teeth from the tail. What the hell is this thing? Is he… what is he doing to me? Her mind flashed to the restaurant. Her hand had been on the E-90, about to challenge him, but on came blind adoration. He’s making me love him. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she twisted her arm through the cursed jewelry. Get off. She shook her hand. Get off me! He can watch everything I do. Oh, shit!

She held her fingers over it and focused. The bracelet levitated around her wrist, spinning and wobbling. Paranormal energy imbued within it reacted to her ability to manipulate astral forces. She grunted, trying to will it open. A sense of panic came from it as it whirred about as if under the force of an invisible magnet. When the direct psionic assault failed to do anything more than spin the bracelet, she fell into a primitive physical tug of war with it. She screamed in her mind, as if chained by the wrist to Konstantin. Somehow, this bracelet affected her. Fishy bile coughed through her teeth as she thought about what almost happened upstairs. Far more than what she did ten years ago, that would have felt like rape, had he gone all the way.

Anger swam to the surface, her brain switched gears, and she held her right arm out at length. The glimmering lash formed around her left hand, and a quick swipe through her other arm hit something solid. A wave of energy rocked through her with the sense of a soul meeting obliteration. The crippling pain in her stomach faded to the sort of dull ache that follows a bout of vomiting. Her shaking hand squeezed the horns of the now-hot bracelet, and the tail of the ouroboros slipped loose from its mouth. She flung her arm to distance such an unclean thing from her body.

Her thoughts jumped to Evan. Oh, no. Nafiz. Calm down, K. Evan’s with Nila. She’s a pyro. She’ll end anyone that tries to hurt my son.

Kirsten stood, glaring at the ‘no signal’ error on the NetMini. She backed to the end of the corridor away from the cell, getting a connection as soon as she was once more in the wide open basement.

“Hello, Lyubimaya.”

The voice came in time with an assassin’s embrace from behind. Rather than a knife at the throat, the tiny nip of an autoinjector found her neck. He released her and she slumped to the ground, rolling onto her back. A mild burn spread through her body, stealing her ability to move or even speak. Melting walls drooped around her, swirling into a spiral surrounding the wrinkled face of a man in his early seventies. Darkened teeth appeared within a dour smile. His robe was open, proving his face was not the only thing idealized by enchantment.

“I am sorry it came to this, my love. I was so enjoying your company. I am impressed, Kirsten. I thought you had pinned everything on that smiling drunken playboy, Suvorin. Fortunately”―his voice echoed as her ability to see faded away― “your little friend is the last piece I need.”

“Charazu?” she wheezed.

Konstantin’s blurred face smiled. “Ahh, yes. That was an early effort that proved too difficult to control adequately. I should thank you for helping me clean up my oversight. The ancients are so much more difficult to control than a returned mortal.”

Kirsten couldn’t move. All her attempts to scream happened in her mind. Vision faded to darkness, and sound swirled as if she went underwater.

Konstantin crouched and patted her cheek. “I promise you, he won’t feel a thing.”

van crossed his arms over his face and screamed as the enormous fanged, pink rabbit engulfed him. He pulled the gaming goggles off his head and pouted at the giggling girl on the other side of the sectional. The cartoon bunny on her nightgown mocked him more than her pointing finger. He sulked. The hand-to-hand fighting game was too simple. Evan had spent an hour searching for effective combos of moves, but his efforts at strategy continued to succumb to Shani’s random button-mashing.

“You’re not even playing. You’re just squishing buttons as fast as you can.”

She pulled her goggles off and set them on the couch next to her. “That’s playing. If I wasn’t playing, I wouldn’t push any buttons.”

“That’s not how you play! You’re s’posed ta use moves an’ combos and tactics. Countermoves and attacks.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m winning, aren’t I?”

Evan frowned. “Wanna play Colony Commando 9? We can be on the same team there.”

Shani scrunched her face. “Are there bunnies?”

“No.”

“Cats?” She tilted her head left.

“No.”

“Puppies?” She tilted her head right.

“No, it doesn’t have cute stuff. It’s about soldiers and aliens.”

A series of contortions worked their way through her lips as she ground the gears of her little seven-year-old mind. “Do the soldiers shoot bunnies?”

“No!” Evan threw his hands up in the air.

“Okay. As long as they don’t kill bunnies.”

He glared. “‘Kay, lemme put in my EGM username. We can play co-op on this one.”

“You’re just tired of losing to me.”

Evan’s eyebrows formed a flat line across his brow. “Yeah, I’m just tired of losing a fuzzy bunny fighting game to a button masher.”

She gave him a raspberry.

He punched in his PID, logged into Electronic Game Megaverse, and connected Shani’s Neurocaster IV to his account. Nila’s apartment filled with the sound of a dropship overflight, knocking small objects off shelves in the rumble of starship-sized ion thrusters. A chill washed over him, a sensation which manifested as sharp nausea spreading to a rapid full-body numbness and a cold sweat. He crossed his hands over his belly, shivering.

“Turn that down! What the hell are you doing?” yelled Nila from the back.

“Volume twenty percent,” chirped Shani.

A green line appeared on the holographic display, which then shrank to the left.

“Okay, Mom.” Shani shoved her feet into the couch hard enough to lean her up and over the back to yell. When she flopped back down, she stared at Evan. “What’s wrong?”

Evan looked at her, searching for words he could not find. His hands shook, sweat ran down the back of his neck.

Fear.

Just as soon as it had come on, it faded. He looked around, fixating on the cartoonish huge-chinned soldier grimacing at him from the screen. Giant machine guns sprouted from both hands and little mini-turrets dotted his powered armor in ridiculous amounts. Letters resembling cut steel spelled out Colony Commando: The Last Hope on the right half of the screen. Nine large bullet holes underlined it―the ninth in the series.

She made a face at the image in the goggles. “The first one and the ninth one are the same game with little bit better graphics. His armor is silly. If he fired all those guns at once, he’d fall over, and where does he keep all the bullets? This is the ninth one? Why do they keep making these games?”

New maps, new weapons, new aliens. Evan answered in his own head; the impulse to speak got lost trying to wander from brain to tongue. “S-something’s wrong.”

“This was your idea, Evvie.” Shani grabbed her goggles and popped them on. “You’re not afraid of some slimy aliens are you?”

The doorbell chimed, a series of bell noises. Nila had said the music was from some big guy named Ben, in England. Evan whipped around to stare at the door. The pealing vibrated through his bones. Shani tossed the goggles, leaping to her feet and cheering “I got it! I got it!”

“Shani, no! Don’t open the door!” Evan screamed and started to climb over the couch to get away, stopping when he saw Shani’s hand on the knob. “Nila!”

old grit ground into Kirsten’s skin with every breath. Her head felt as though someone inflated it to many times its size. Numbness manifested in patches over a body she could not move. The taste of dust made her sputter, and she gathered every ounce of conscious willpower into the task of getting her lips away from the floor. Air washed over her belly as her weight shifted. Freezing metal spots found the small of her back―rigid bands locked about her wrists. Her eyes snapped open.

She was in the cell.

Short-chain binders pinned her ankles together and kept her hands behind her back. Some manner of rubbery cord linked the two restraints, allowing her little range of motion. Devoid of reason, Kirsten thrashed in an effort to break free. Her struggle ground more painful sand into her hips. She knew she was not strong enough to crack plastisteel, but some primal instinct urged her to try. Lying still would be to accept her captivity.

“You fucking bastard!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare touch him!”

Her voice echoed back from the basement until the only sound was her own breathing. Muscles exhausted, the elastic strap drew her hands and feet close once more. The memory of Konstantin’s touch between her legs brought hot anger to her face; her attempt to cover herself came to a halt with a metallic click. Kirsten wobbled into a kneeling position, wringing her arms in an ineffectual attempt to slip loose.

“Lay off the yelling or they’ll gag you,” a voice whispered. Now awake, the woman who had been in the cell before was sitting up, leaning against the far wall.

Kirsten’s face burned red. She twisted around to examine the cuffs locked on her legs. Like the door, they were mechanical, and almost a half-inch thick. The logo of an online kink store was etched along the hasp. Whoever put them on her tightened them too much, enough to break bones if she twisted wrong. At least the only person who can see me is another woman. Her head sagged forward. She remembered her mother dragging her into the kitchen by her hair. She felt helpless then. She thought about waking up in her own cuffs when Templeton found her. That had been scary, but it had not topped Mother. Hiding under an SUV in a parking garage to elude a man with vibro claws―that made her feel more vulnerable than Mother ever had. When there was nothing between her and an assassin but a fast-disintegrating concrete support pylon, that surpassed the SUV.

Kirsten stared at herself. Naked, hogtied, and trapped in the basement dungeon of a manor house where no one knew she had gone. I’ve gotta stop trying to one up myself. She squirmed, brushing hard grainy bits from her back as best she could. Crushed soy hull. A glance at the cat box sent her into another fit of struggling. The bodies had soy hull and cat litter in their skin. She dry heaved twice before working up a sweat from trying to pull her hands through the cuffs.

“You’re wasting your strength,” said the other woman. “The guy they had here before you was huge, and he couldn’t break them.”

That must’ve been Arris.

“I gotta get out of here. That piece of shit is going after my son.” Kirsten stared at the ceiling, thinking about what the Seraphim told her, something about being out there to protect her. She curled into a ball, shivering from shame as well as the cold. Where were they now? Her mind began down the path of ‘where are they when I need their help,’ but she put the brakes on. They’re not here. They gave me a boost off the parking deck. I must not need their help now. “There’s a way out.”

“Good fucking luck finding it.” The woman puffed at a stray bit of hair over her eyes.

Kirsten wobbled onto the balls of her feet and hopped twice toward the door before the elastic pulled her off balance. She fell forward, whimpering from the strike of her knees on concrete.

The other woman shook her head. “What ‘chu gonna do? Bite the bars out? You can’t even stand up to see the lock.”

“I’m not helpless.”

“Yeah, you sure as hell don’t look it. Skinny ass bitch done up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

“They didn’t blindfold me. I’ll kill the first son of a bitch I see.” Kirsten snarled, falling over backwards in a failed attempt to get back on her feet.

“You go, girl. Kick some ass. We halfway out now.” She laughed at Kirsten’s ungainly roll. “So what are you doing here? They grab you just like the others?”

“I’m with Division Zero.” Kirsten grunted, taking another futile stab at breaking the restraints, or at least snapping the elastic. She got one hand around the rubber cord; it was at least an inch thick.

“That sounds kinda military.”

“Police, actually.” Back on her belly, she rested her head sideways on the cold floor, panting.

“You’re a skinny little thing for a cop. Thought all cop chicks were like dudes with boobs.”

“Maybe in Five or Six. I’m more of a detective.” You’re keeping secrets, K? Neither one of us has much to hide at this point. She blushed again.

“Oh, so you gonna detect our asses out of here? I’ve been stuck in this cage for two weeks. Least they haven’t taken me out. Guess they’re strugglin’ to find a buyer. My brown ass ain’t so exotic, but a pale thing like you oughta be outta here real fast.”

Kirsten rocked until she wound up seated again. She glared at the wall just past the woman’s head, jealous for a moment her cellmate was not hogtied. “They’re not going to sell us. We’re going to be used as human sacrifices to summon demons.”

“Yeah, right.” The other woman stared down. Ten seconds later, her gaze leapt to the door, and then she fell over sideways in a furious effort to break her cuffs. “Shit! You’re right, these weird motherfuckers are gonna kill us.” She stopped fighting when she ran out of breath. “Why the hell did they take our clothes if all they wanna do is kill us? You got a point though, the one dude was a little harsh to look at.”

Kirsten did not want to admit to being about to get it on with a seventy-year-old man. The mere combination of her last glimpse of Konstantin’s face coupled with remembering his ‘worker’s’ hand touching her brought back the dry heaves. She leaned forward, face on knees, breathing. When the wave of nausea subsided, she spent another minute searching for a voice. “It’s probably to reduce forensic evidence or some weird ritual thing I don’t understand. All the victims found so far were nude. I dunno, maybe the bastard likes the view or maybe you get bigger demons for sacrificing naked virgins. Name’s Kirsten, by the way.”

“Miranda. Heh, guess that’s why I’m still here.” Much of the cockiness had vanished from her voice. “I haven’t been one of those in a long time. Shit, are you really a cop? That means you got backup comin’ right? You’re gonna get us outta here? I don’t wana fuckin’ die.”

“I… I didn’t tell them I was coming here. It was sort of on a, umm… date.” She shivered, as cold as she was ashamed.

“Date?” Miranda wriggled herself seated again. “You were dating an old geezer?”

Kirsten went pale. “Don’t remind me. He had some kind of spirit embedded in this bracelet he gave me. I think it made me see him as if he was perfect.” As if being chained up in here isn’t embarrassing enough. They were all right. Everyone was trying to warn me. Evan called him old… To a nine year old anyone over 18 is old. He was t oo good to be true. Tears fell from her eyes and slid down her shins.

“So, cop chick, how are you figurin’ our asses are getting out of here? I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty damn screwed. Your ass is thin, but you ain’t making it through the bars.”

Nothing to lose now. “I’m psionic. Division Zero is a special branch of the police commissioned to deal with psionic criminals. I happen to be the one that gets stuck with all the other stuff, like ghosts.”

“You’re psi… psionic?” Miranda squirmed against the wall until she stood on tiptoe in the corner, chains rattling. “Please don’t kill me. Papa warned me about psionics. Said you come from the Devil.”

“I’m so tired of that bullshit!” Kirsten shrieked. “Fucking made up Satan has nothing to do with it.”

This time her growling struggle to free herself made Miranda whimper as if trapped in jail with a hungry lion held back by a leash that could break at any second. Finding the effort futile, Kirsten glared, lost somewhere between crying at old wounds and getting so furious her heart felt like it would explode. She closed her eyes, seething. Chaos swam through her mind until all she thought about was finding a way to get to Evan.

Kirsten narrowed her gaze at her whimpering cellmate. “Not every psionic can kill people with their mind. Some can just play with emotions, see ghosts, or hear what you’re thinking. No, I’m not reading your mind right now. I try not to just invade people’s privacy. My mother was like you, thought psionics were the Devil’s work. Bitch almost killed me when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry.” Miranda closed her eyes, crying, whispering to God for help. After a moment of nothing happening, she sniffled and glanced down at the floor. “Can you kill people?”

Kirsten took a deep breath, bristling with anger at the fear in the sound of Miranda’s clattering handcuffs, and let it out in a long, drawn-out groan. “Yeah. I got lucky enough to be one of the few who can. However, I don’t like doing it. It hurts me too… and it just feels, I dunno, wrong.”

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t hurt me. Now I know why I’m stuck in here. God wanted me to stop being afraid of psionics.”

Kirsten shifted, unable to get comfortable. “Ugh. Look, I don’t have time to fucking debate theology with you. We’re both stuck in this place, and I know for a fact we can get out of here.”

“How could you know that?”

I bet I could tell this one an angel told me and she’d believe it. “I’m psychic.”

Miranda giggled, nervously, still trying to squeeze herself into the wall.

Kirsten shivered with rage. Evan was in danger and she could not do a damn thing about it. Like Princess Alsbeth in the Monwyn vid, she sat locked in a long-forgotten dungeon. At least Alsbeth had a beautiful white robe. Unfortunately, there was no great and powerful wizard coming to save her. No, Princess Wren gets stuck saving herself. You fell for the Prince Charming routine and he turned out to be a geriatric maleficar . For a moment, she pondered trying to use Beacon to call Theodore or Dorian, but decided against it. Konstantin might have things in this house capable of destroying Dorian, and she did not want Theodore to find her like this . She studied the lone LED bulb, the walls, the floor, and the bars. So damn cold.

“Hey, these cuffs came from a sex shop right? Maybe they have a safety release?”

“You into that weird shit?” Miranda blinked.

Kirsten was past blushing anymore. “No, I just hear stories from the Div One guys who find people in compromising situations. This one guy was hanging from his ceiling for twenty-seven hours before he realized the cuffs had a thumb switch.” She scooted over and studied the restraints on Miranda’s legs. “Shit, just keys. Dammit.”

“Can you, like, maybe scoot back to your side?”

“What, you don’t want me to get any psionic on you?” Kirsten squinted. “We’re trapped in here like this and all you can think about is not wanting to touch a psionic? Really? Are you that damn shallow?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Too damn late. So, how’d you wind up here? All of the other victims had no family or anyone to notice them missing. You got people looking for you?”

“I can’t tell you. Please don’t read my mind, it’s not admissible.”

“Did you kill anyone? You gonna kill anyone?”

Miranda shook her head. “No, uhh, I did fantasize about shooting the bastard who put me in this cage.”

“Then I couldn’t care less right now. I just need to get out of here and get to my son before that motherfucking, lying, cheating, son of a bitch, bastard…” Kirsten strained against the cuffs with each curse word, until she broke down and sobbed. The remembered touch of a calloused hand sliding up inside her thigh flashed from handsome highwayman to horror-vid walking corpse. She gagged.

“I snuck in to rob the place. This guy has a lot of expensive shit. Some of it supposed to be priceless. I dunno what happened to me. I’m creepin’ around this museum-like room, right?” She made hand gestures behind her back while speaking. “Then there was this, like, cold on the back of my neck. Like some kinda hand was made outta ice grabbed me, and everything went dark. I woke up like this.” Miranda fidgeted, her fear ebbed enough to let her heels touch the floor again. “Hey, how good are you with your tongue?”

Kirsten’s bawling shut off as if a switch was thrown. “What did you just say? How can you think about that at a time like this? I don’t even like women. Hey, wait a sec. You’re all into the God thing, but you were gonna rob the place? What happened to thou shalt not steal?”

“It took a back seat to ‘thou shalt not starve.’ Anyway, that’s not what I mean. If you promise, and I mean swear-promise not to arrest me, I might be able to help us get out.”

“If you could just get out, why are you still here?”

“’Cause, you stupid bitch, I can’t reach.” She bounced like an anxious kid begging for a treat. “You swear-promise?”

“What are you, twelve? This isn’t a goddamned sleep over.” She exhaled hard enough to blow cat litter across the floor. “Fine.”

Miranda swung her head to the side, tossing hair away from a small half-inch black square behind her right ear. It had a light grey stick-figure head with snake-hair stenciled in the middle of it. “

“A medusa.” Kirsten blinked. “You have a Loki Blade don’t you?”

Miranda looked down. “They’re not illegal. Just, well… frowned on.”

“Yeah, I know. Div One loves to do awful things to people who have them. Come on, get down and scoot over―if you can stand to let a psionic touch you.”

“Soz.” Miranda slid down the wall until she sat on the floor, and shifted onto her stomach before crawling closer. She halted, staring up and trembling.

Kirsten fought her way back to a kneeling posture and tried to get her hands on the Medusa plugged into the woman’s head, but between the elastic strap and her feet getting in the way, she gave up. In a fit of desperation, she tried once more to break her restraints.

“Those things hold one-ton cargo boxes down, you ain’t snapping it. Use your teeth,” said Miranda.

Kirsten slipped, falling face-first into the ground. With thoughts of Evan at the tip of her brain, she ignored the pain. Dazed, she repositioned herself and eventually got close enough to nuzzle up to Miranda’s neck.

If Theo sees this, I will obliterate him. I’m not dealing with that taunting for the rest of my life.

“Ok, don’t move,” whispered Kirsten. “This thing is gonna shock the shit out of both of us if I touch your skin with my nose while I’m pushing the buttons. Security feature to prevent self-removal.”

Kirsten waited.

“That means stop shivering.”

“I’m cold and terrified and there’s a nugget of cat litter digging into my ass.”

“Miranda?”

The woman looked at her. “Yeah?”

“ Stop shivering.” Kirsten’s eyes gleamed with paranormal light.

Miranda went still.

“Was that psionic stuff?”

“Yep.”

Kirsten tilted her head, keeping her nose away from Miranda’s neck. The tip of her tongue found the Medusa box and she bit down on it, squeezing the release buttons on the upper and lower edges. For several seconds, she stopped breathing and tugged. A half-inch metal prong, asterisk-shaped like an M3 jack, gleamed on the reverse side. Just as the tip cleared the socket behind the woman’s ear, a spark leapt from her to the prong, hitting Kirsten in the nose with the force of a light punch. The flavor of tin filled her mouth and her eyes watered out of control. She rolled off Miranda and spat the device into the litter box. After a few breaths, she curled into a ball and used her thigh to cradle her face.

“Shit. Ouch.”

Miranda lapsed into mild convulsions, face-down and flopping. When the fit subsided, she laid still and breathed hard.

Kirsten blinked off the pain, unable to hold her face in her hands or stop her eyes from watering. She flopped onto her back and stared through her legs at Miranda. “Well, what are you waiting for? I swear I won’t arrest you.” The sight of metal on her ankles lit the fires of rage. I’m gonna kill him.

“It hurts so much.”

Another attempt to break the cuffs with brute force failed. “Dammit, bitch, come on. Does it hurt more than a dagger in the heart? They’re going after my son! I swear I won’t arrest you for breaking in here, having a Loki, or whatever. Dammit, woman, I’ll help you rob the place myself if it saves Evan’s life!”

Miranda battled her way into a sitting position, legs straight forward, and closed her eyes as if meditating. Seconds later, she whimpered and gasped. A line of blood ran into her right hand as small Nano blades pressed their way a half-inch out of the skin on both sides of her wrist. The implanted mechanism pushed the transparent edges apart until they severed the metal restraint. She whined as she moved her arms around front, stretching.

“Come on, come on.” Kirsten rolled on her side and rattled her cuffs.

“I’m so sore; I’ve been chained for weeks. They never took them off.”

“Hurt later, free now.”

Using the tiny Loki Blade like a saw, Miranda hacked at the shackles on her ankles, whimpering. It did not take a lot of force to push the Nano edge through the metal, but she mewled and cried with every ounce of pressure. After cutting the binders from one ankle at a time, she held the blade over the cuff on her other wrist. A series of pitiful whimpers and gasps came out of her as she scraped her arm back and forth. Once she was free of all metal, Miranda kicked the chains to the corner and curled up in a shivering ball. Trickles of blood ran down her legs, dripping from her wrist.

“Ow. It’s s’posed to push against each side of the cuff. Not just cut things like a knife. Shit, that hurt. It’s like I stabbed myself through the arm and wobbled the knife back and forth.”

Kirsten rolled onto her belly and tugged at the elastic cord. “Please…”

It took Miranda a moment to gather the nerve to move. Eventually, she crawled over next to Kirsten. Droplets of warm blood patted on her back as Miranda knelt beside her. The elastic cord gave way with ease, and Kirsten stretched flat with a sigh of relief.

“Okay, now it’s your turn to stay still. This thing’ll go through your arm before I realize it.”

“Yeah, I know how Nano works.” Kirsten didn’t move as Miranda cut the cuffs off her arms. She rolled over and sat up, rubbing her wrists while Miranda worked the small blade through the binders on her legs. Streaks and smears of blood were all over both of them by the time she was free. Miranda held her right arm out and made a fist before the blades sank back inside, the faintest trace of a whirring motor audible. She slunk away and curled up in the corner, cradling her bleeding arm. Some seconds later, the blood stopped seeping.

“You okay?” Kirsten crawled over, examining the cuts.

“Yeah. It’s got nanobots to repair the skin. It didn’t do it all the way on account of me using it to cut so much. I tore the skin more than it would have just going on and off. Nano don’t usually make much of a hole, ya know?”

Kirsten held Miranda’s right hand in both of hers. “Thank you. I’m sorry you had to hurt yourself, but we are going to get out of here.”

Miranda stared in mute silence.

“Perfect. One step closer to out.” Kirsten went to the door. After a moment of stretching away the pain of spending hours stuck in a tight hogtie, the sense of being locked in a cage overwhelmed her. She tried to tear the bars down with her bare hands, thrashing and rattling the heavy barrier until she had to rest. Exhausted, she slumped against the cold metal, panting. “Well, now that I got that out of the way… we just gotta get this door open. Can you cut out a bar or two?”

Miranda whined. “No, they’re like an inch thick. The blade’s too short, and it will hurt like fuck.”

Kirsten paced. The need to get to Evan and the frustration at being trapped became painful. “You’re a thief, huh? Can you pick this lock?”

“Can you psionic me up something to pick it with? Oh, there’s some robes in the cabinet by where the mask was. They put one on the dude they had in here when they took him out.”

Where the mask was. The spot of wall lay bare. She forced the image of a mask-wearing Konstantin hovering over Evan’s helpless body out of her mind. Kirsten was not sure if she wanted to waste the ten seconds it would take to put anything on. She had to get to him. She would streak the city if it would save Evan. Streak the city… She sat still and closed her eyes. I’ll project and go to him. Wait, no.
I’ll just see them, I won’t be able to save him as a projection; all I’ll do is waste time. Calm down, K. Stay professional. Remember Shani. Get emotional and someone’s gonna die. If they grab him, he will project and come home. He can lead me right to the bastards.

Her sudden spin toward Miranda made the other woman jump. “You said something about a gag before?”

“Uhh… yeah. I thought you weren’t into―”

“I’m not!” yelled Kirsten. “What did you mean?”

“The creep they have watching us wants us to stay quiet. First day I was here, he said he’d gag or drug me if I didn’t stop screaming.”

“So if we make too much noise someone will come in here?”

“Yeah.” Miranda wore a face like a child about to be scolded. “But you don’t want ‘em to.”

“ Perfect.” Kirsten grabbed the cell door, and shouted at the top of her lungs.

ands clasped on the bars, Kirsten rattled the barrier. Ten minutes of shouting had thus far produced no effect other than echoes, and Miranda giggling at insults that ranged from juvenile to crass as desperation increased. Frustrated, she let go and paced for several seconds before flinging herself at the door for another try at tearing it down. Their prison was not getting any warmer, but at least fruitless exertion took the sting out of the chill.

Miranda put a trembling arm around her from behind, attempting a hug. “Hey, calm down.”

Kirsten tensed at the touch. Oh, please don’t let Theodore find me now.

“Sorry. I’m just freezing.”

They huddled together against the wall, shivering.

“So, who are you to him?”

“What?” Kirsten glanced at her for an instant before attempting to stand for another round with the bars.

Miranda clung. “The old man. Konstantin, I heard him tell the guards you were not to be killed under any circumstances. He said something about keeping ‘it’ where he wanted it, and if you died, he’d have to go out and find the next one.”

How could he know that? Kirsten blinked. He doesn’t even know I’m a suggestive, or he would have blindfolded me. “It’s a long, complicated story. Some entities from the next world want me to help them.”

“Oh.” Miranda shot her a look as if she was nuts.

“You don’t have to believe me.” Shit, I can’t just sit here and wait.

Frustration at being separated from Evan manifested as tears. She had to do something other than nothing. Trusting him not to do something stupid, Kirsten concentrated on Dorian. The sense of power emanating from her mind unwound like a thread from deep within her skull. She beaconed, calling to the astral realm for him. After she was sure the message went out, she relaxed her power, but grew worried. Please let him be careful.

“Umm, what the hell was that? Your hair just moved like there was a breeze and your damn eyes just glowed behind your eyelids.” Miranda disengaged from their share of body heat.

“I have a ghost friend. I just tried calling him.”

“What’s he gonna do? Scare the bars open?”

“No, but he can take a message to my captain.” Kirsten tolerated idleness for less than twenty seconds before leaping to her feet. “Oh, goddammit! I can’t take this. Wait, I got an idea.”

“What?”

“Something an old spirit once annoyed the shit out of me with. When I was little, I tried to ignore them so I didn’t get punished.” She grabbed a fragment of the handcuffs and raked it back and forth across the bars while shout-singing Henry the Eighth.

“Stop it, that’s annoying.” Miranda covered her ears.

After two verses, a distant slam echoed from the basement. Kirsten got louder. Stomping approached, and Randall Morris rounded the corner of the boxes and stared down the short hallway to the cell. His missing arm had been replaced with a common civilian prosthetic. Flesh-toned plastic approximated the shape and contours of an arm, separated into visible panels by gaps that left the black metal interior visible. He froze.

“Hey, what the hell are you two doin’ loose?” He pulled a pistol off his belt and aimed at them. “Put those damn cuffs back on.”

Kirsten dangled the broken thing. “Sorry, we broke your toys. Now be a good little boy and Unlock the door.”

Randall recoiled as if punched in the head. The gun clattered to the ground as his arms went limp. He tottered around the stacked crates out of sight. Miranda ran up behind Kirsten, clinging to her from behind. Kirsten sucked air through her teeth, tensing at the awkwardness of a naked hug.

“Was that some kinda psionic shit?”

Kirsten’s knuckles went white on the bars. “Yeah.”

Miranda clamped tighter, resting her chin on Kirsten’s shoulder. “I swear if that psionic stuff gets us out of here, I’ll stop hating ‘em.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Where’s he going?”

Kirsten shifted left to try and get a better look at the shadow creeping across the ceiling. “To get the key, I imagine.”

“Oh.”

Miranda’s grip forced much of the air out of Kirsten’s lungs when Randall appeared at the corner, zombie-walking to the cell with his right arm held forward. He stopped, six feet away when he stepped on his pistol. He looked down at it and broke out in a cold sweat. Veins rose out of his forehead as his face turned purple. He bellowed and threw the key behind him. Kirsten stared at the gleaming metal, tracking its bounce into a patch of shadow by a wooden crate painted with Cyrillic letters.

“Bitch!” Randall fell on his knees, seizing the pistol in both hands.

Kirsten planted her feet in a wide stance, still holding the bars. Her overwhelming need to protect Evan coalesced into the energy of a mind blast. Disgust at Konstantin and humiliation at her current incarceration added to it. She may have tried to say something coherent, but the noise that came out of her was more akin to a roar.

Randall Morris twitched, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell over backward like a plank. A rancid smell wafted by a few seconds later. Kirsten set her forehead to the cold metal bars, trying to ease the throbbing migraine forming in the wake of so much power. Her legs went slack; Miranda’s arms around her middle held her up for a moment before letting her slump to kneeling.

“You’re bleeding!” cried Miranda, wiping her hands at Kirsten’s face.

“I never had so much power go through one blast before. I feel like I got hit in the face by a PubTran bus.”

“Pretty sure he got the worse end of the deal.” Miranda went up on tiptoe to peek for a second, then sat on the floor next to her. “I think you killed him.” She shivered. “I smell shit. Umm, remember when I made fun of you when you said you weren’t helpless. You know, when you were rolling around. I take it back.”

“Thanks,” said Kirsten, not bothering to conceal the sarcasm.

“So, yeah. Asshole is dead and we’re still a pair of locked-up bitches. That worked.”

“You know, for a psionic-hating religious idiot, you sure don’t have much faith.”

Miranda pouted.

Kirsten rubbed her eyes, shook off the headache, and crawled back to the bars. When her vision adjusted to the light, she stared at the key and focused on the want of it to come toward her. I can pull grenade pins, so I can drag a damn key across a concrete floor. She slid a hand through the bars, reaching for it.

“What”―Miranda’s words stalled as the key twitched and pivoted to point at the cell. She leapt on Kirsten’s back, head right next to Kirsten’s to watch. “Are you doing that?”

“Thanks for drilling my skull into the bars. Yes, I’m doing that. Don’t shake me, I suck at telekinesis, but I should be able to move a key.”

“What’s uhh, telekinesis?”

Kirsten, holding onto cell door, glanced at her. “You are terrified of psionics to the point you hate them, but you don’t even bother to learn what they are?” She scowled. “Typical.”

“I’m sorry.”

Kirsten focused on the key again, willing it toward her.

Miranda squeezed Kirsten in bursts of fleeting joy as the key moved closer in a series of sporadic jerks and skids. When Kirsten thought about Evan screaming for her, it sailed into the air and went over their heads. Miranda let go and scrambled after it, not caring it landed in the tray of kitty litter. She ran back to the door, reached through the bars, and after a moment of fiddling, unlocked it.

Kirsten shoved the door open and vaulted Randall’s body. Miranda stopped to grab the pistol and tugged at the dead man’s coat, too weak to move the cybered-up corpse to get it off him.

“Hey, wait. Help me get his coat.”

“I gotta find my son.” Kirsten kept running.

“Wait! We can’t run outside naked. There’s robes.” Miranda scurried to one of the metal cabinets.

“I’ve already lost too much time.” Kirsten ran for the exit.

“Hey, there’s a picture of you over here.”

Kirsten stopped with a hand on the doorknob. Curiosity, or perhaps a need to understand what happened to her, muted her haste. She jogged over to Miranda. On the altar, beneath where the mask had been, a sheet of plasfilm bearing a photo of her lay beneath an ancient wooden bowl that contained several strands of blonde hair as well as ashes of something burnt. To the right, an old book was open to a drawing of an ouroboros, surrounded by writing she could not decipher. The fancy box was empty; Konstantin had his knife as well.

Son of a bitch. She swiped the hairs out of the bowl. Her hair.

Miranda pulled the cabinet open, revealing several black silk robes on hangers. The door behind them slammed into the wall. Kirsten whirled as a man in a black suit and blood-red shirt ran through it, heading right for them. He raised a stunrod, but never made it close enough to use it.

Kirsten’s eyes glowed pure white. A stream of erratic images and thoughts crashed into the charging giant’s brain and shut it down. He went from full run to sliding on his chin in the span of an eye blink. One hand slid to the side of his head, lacking even the coordination necessary to put his hand on his face. Kirsten ran to the stunrod, stooping to pick it up and thrusting it into his neck in one fluid motion.

The large man convulsed, and went still.

Miranda’s face emerged from black silk as she let the one-piece robe fall around her. She grabbed another one. “Kirsten, here.”

Before she could turn to catch it, the large man’s body swelled. His suit split open down the back seconds before a gory explosion of blood splattered into the ceiling and all over Kirsten. Miranda screamed, dropped the extra robe, and jumped into the cabinet. Dark vapors coalesced upward from the cavernous hollow in the corpse, forming into a chitinous humanoid figure that resembled a skeleton with a crown of short horns.

Glowing red vapor welled out of its eye sockets; dry crunching ran down its spine as limbs solidified and it set its shoulders. Kirsten squinted up at the eight-foot demon and folded her arms.

“I don’t suppose you’d give me a minute to put something on before we start this?”

The polyphonic voice reverberated through the basement. “I shall rend the flesh from your bones and drink the essence of your suffer―”

“Didn’t think so.” A flick of her arm sent the lash outward, cutting the demonic ramble short.

The tip scored a light grey burn across the black, leathery ribcage. It stumbled away, unable to hide the surprise at feeling so much pain. The demon snarled, yellow-green fumes leaking through its teeth.

“Not the easy meal you were expecting?” Kirsten circled to the right, keeping the lash moving. No wonder it’s scared, I must look like a Seraphim to it right now. All I’m missing are the wing ribbon things.

It reached to the side and swiped hard to the left. A crate flew into the air, crashing into Kirsten’s crossed arms and knocking her onto the table. Her sweaty skin slid right over it, and she fell off the far side. Stunned from pain, she curled up on the cold floor and plucked a few large splinters out of her forearm. The demon laughed and loosed a low, throaty growl at Miranda, who had just brought the pistol to bear.

She screamed again and yanked the wardrobe doors shut. Kirsten grabbed the top of the table and pulled herself standing, leaning on it for a few seconds until her legs decided to work again. The creature spun on her, palm extended. Another coffin-sized crate leapt into the air. This one was empty and it flew much faster and higher than the creature expected, exploding against the ceiling. Kirsten ducked the shower of soybean shells and wood fragments, and charged. She made a shoving gesture with her left hand, attacking the abyssal’s paranormal essence.

A contest of strength, tipped in her favor by a memory of Evan’s face, flung the dark spirit into the wall with enough force to crack cinderblocks. It bounced to the floor, rolling onto its chest with the scrape of shell on stone. Kirsten stood over it; the coiling lash grew to a length of almost fifteen feet. The shimmering blue-white light added to her illusion of feeling like a Seraphim.

One black-clawed hand sprang forth and grabbed her leg. With a contemptuous sneer, she pulled the lash around and through the rising demon. The tendril coiled around its chest, wrapping it and lifting it off the ground. She raised her arm and snapped it, flinging the enormous skeleton first into the ceiling, then the ground. The entire damn house is going to hear this. She took a step back, grabbed the lash with both hands, and spun in a motion that hurled the demon across the room and smashed a new hole in the cinderblocks. It floundered, arms scratching at the ground to pull itself upright as the slap of bare feet running on concrete drowned beneath her angry roar. A surge of psionic power brought her weapon to a blinding glow. The creature’s eyes widened as she jumped into a final strike that reduced the abyssal into a cloud of smoke. Kirsten backed up, covered in sweat, blood, and dust, gasping for breath as the inky smear drew into itself with a great rush of inhaling wind.

Miranda peered through the doors, her face lit by a narrow strip of light. “A-are you an angel?”

Kirsten let the lash dissipate into streams of fading light and walked over. “No, I’m just borrowing the uniform.” She picked up the robe and stuck her head through, letting the cloth fall around her body. “I think I saw one once.” She hiked it up and ran to the door. “Come on, I’m leaving.”

Miranda recovered the pistol and followed. “Sorry I didn’t help you with that… thing. You want the gun? You’re the cop.”

“Don’t be. The gun wouldn’t have done a damn thing but piss it off. You better keep it so you’re not helpless; I have a weapon.”

She stomped across the basement, as much as one can stomp with no boots, and slapped the door control by where she had entered. Two security guards in the man-cave went for weapons at the sight of her. Kirsten held her arms out and knocked the one on the right to the ground with a mind blast. Miranda shot the other one. Kirsten caught herself subconsciously gesturing like the sorceress from the Monwyn world with each blast and blushed. Must be the robe. The noise of Miranda firing at another man dispelled her fleeting amusement. He dove left, triggering twice as he fell. Miranda hit the ground screaming. Kirsten thrust her arm at him, rising onto her toes as she channeled another mind blast; the attack left him limp and drooling. That time, she almost chanted Invocatus Penumbratus.

“You hit?”

“No, but I just about pissed myself,” said Miranda. “I think a bullet nipped my hair. I just steal stuff; I don’t shoot people.”

Kirsten ran up the spiral stairway, paralyzed by the sight at the top―gold dragon doorknobs. Evan saw gold dragons devouring me… She glanced down into the basement, the dragon’s “belly.” She shivered, her eyes started to water, but she got angry. Kirsten shoved the elaborate doors open and strode into the corridor. Security guard after security guard emerged from side rooms, falling one after the next to a series of mind blasts. A few bullets whizzed overhead.

Barefoot, in a black robe, waving her arms around and ‘slaying’ foes with magic. The scene felt like some twisted cosplay LARP based on Xiana, the Black Sorceress―only Kirsten’s “magic” wouldn’t make them get back up as skeletons. Some of Xiana’s lines from the vid echoed in her head, but she choked on them―too worried about Evan to speak. The more she thought about that fantasy world, the more she needed to have him next to her on the couch, watching one.

Miranda followed close, aiming her gun at each man, but not firing as they went down. “Are they dead?”

“No, but when they wake up, they’ll probably spend a few hours wishing they were.” Just like I will in the morning. The women fought their way through the mansion to Konstantin’s bedroom. Kirsten slumped into the wall with a hand on the side of her head. Oh, yeah. It hurts.

Finding the doors locked, Kirsten leaned back and kicked. They rattled. “Ugh, this is so much easier with heavy boots.” She threw herself into it and bounced away. Another kick stunned her foot and left her hopping. “Give me a hand?”

Miranda nodded and backed up.

Both women rushed it, breaking through and stumbling to a halt a short distance later. The stink of burned hair hung in the room. Her purse, and the E-90, sat at the center of his desk as if dropped in a hurry. She reclaimed her weapon, refusing to look at the bed, and kissed the NetMini when she found it in her purse, turned off.

“What stinks?”

Kirsten tapped the NetMini, willing it to boot up faster. “Some idiot tried to fire my service weapon.”

Miranda’s face gave away she knew all about police trigger interlocks. “Ouch.”

“It’s no worse than a stunrod to a grown man.”

Chimes came from the NetMini.

“Siri, send a call for backup right away. Try to call Nila or Evan too.”

“Why did you turn me off, Kirsten? You know I don’t like it when you turn me off.”

She pointed the E-90 at her NetMini. “I wasn’t the one who turned you off.”

“Calling now.”

“Girl,” said Miranda. “Time for a new phone. That one’s got attitude.”

Kirsten rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me started.”

“So, umm. Thanks for getting me outta there. I’m gonna get lost before the place is swarming with blue and whites.”

“You’ve got probably eighteen shots left in that thing. We don’t know how many men he’s got on his security team. Are you wanted right now?”

“I don’t think so.” Miranda gnawed on her knuckle. “I didn’t want to risk it… What’s the point of getting away from one cage just to wind up in another?”

“The police won’t sacrifice you to demons.”

“Good point.” Miranda plopped down on the end of the bed.

hattering teeth seemed as loud as thunder as Kirsten paced in a circle. Men shouted downstairs, barking orders to search the grounds and ensure no one got out. From the sound of it, Kirsten felt better about just staying in the bedroom. They think we went outside already. She shivered each time her foot hit the rug, each time the sheer silk robe brushed over her body. Each time she glanced toward Miranda seated on the foot of the bed, she cringed. Kirsten tried biting her nails, but the sight of the redness around her wrists just made her angrier.

Rage and shame got into a fencing match over what Konstantin did to her. The worst part of it was he made her want him to. Mercifully, much of what happened came back muted by the effect of his mental influence. Blurry bits and pieces of the previous few weeks fast disintegrated into a haze of amnesia. With each passing minute, it seemed less and less real. I should be happy he charmed me. Maybe when it wears off I won’t even remember how rough his hands are. She gurgled.

Sirens emerged from the distance, drawing Kirsten to the outer window. Most of the horizon glittered violet with the mixture of red and blue lights. Kirsten spun away from the view and grabbed the NetMini. She swiped at the screen, placing a vid call to Operations. The holographic face of a dispatcher appeared.

“This is an official―”

“Agent Kirsten Wren, Division Zero. ID W396-I0039. I just called in for a backup request at this location. Patch me through to the senior. I have visual on what looks like twenty units approaching.”

“One moment. Verifying your ID.” The color of the hologram head changed, as her file photo lit up in front of him. “Sorry, Agent. What the heck are you wearing?”

Her face flushed red. “It’s a long damn story.”

“Fair enough.” The hologram changed to a black woman with crimson hair, a small scar from left eye to chin. “Agent? Good to see you alive. What happened to you?”

“Sergeant Reed?” Kirsten squinted at the barely-visible nameplate.

“Yes. What’s your situation? Your Siri said you were abducted?”

“Yeah, this asshole has a private dungeon, but I got out. I’m on the third floor now with one victim. We are both armed, so please don’t shoot any females in black robes.”

“Ma’am, please remain at your current location until we secure the area.”

“Hurry up! He’s going after my son.”

“Understood.”

She stuffed the NetMini back in her purse and threw the strap over her head. Pacing again, she squeezed the rubberized handle of her weapon as though it were a stress ball. Thudding footsteps in the hallway grew louder. She raised the E-90, aiming it with both hands at the door. When they opened, a man in a dark suit carrying a rifle froze in his tracks, staring at her.

Kirsten squinted. Her eyes flickered. “ Drop it.”

The rifle clattered to the ground.

She pointed. “Go surrender to the police.”

He slumped and trudged out with the stagger of a zombie.

“Damn, that’s fucking handy.” Miranda stood and got clingy again. “Shit, I could make so much money with a trick like that.”

Kirsten was grateful for the robes. “Psionics who do that run into us.” She winked, then sighed. “It’s also why no one trusts suggestives. We tend to get shot in the head from long range when the government declares us dangerous.”

“Like animals.” Miranda sent a guilty look at her toes. “I’m sorry.”

“Human nature makes people fear what they can’t explain or think they can’t defend against.” Police loudspeakers shouted outside, demanding surrender. “You may have been raised to fear us, but at least you have the choice to learn.” A few gunshots popped in the distance; Kirsten glanced at the window. “Wow, idiots. Look, I won’t BS you. Some psionics are every bit as dangerous as people fear. That’s what my unit is for. It just pisses me off when the bible-beaters get all high and mighty. One kook kills people in the name of God, and the religious wingnuts say not to judge them all by the actions of one person. When a psionic does something wrong, those same people are crying for public burnings of all of us.”

“It’s just the one guy. Reverend Harris or whatever. People know he’s crazy. I used to be terrified of psionics, but I never met one before. I mean, we met under some pretty crazy, fucked up circumstances, but you’re nothing at all like I expected. You’re nice.”

“Thanks.” At the sound of the downstairs doors being kicked in, Kirsten squirmed out of the hug and ran into the hallway. “Come on.”

She went right, toward the sound of fighting. Around a corner, two men with rifles fired down over a railing into the open center of the house. Kirsten sighted and shot before they could turn on her. The first laser seared a fatal path through the chest of the near man and burned a hole in the other one’s thigh. He crawled away, raising his hands. Kirsten padded toward him, but after taking three steps on frigid hardwood, she stopped.

Her eyes flared white; the man grabbed his head, howled, and passed out.

“What the fuck?” Miranda gawked. “He was surr―”

“He was trying to lure me close enough for vibro claws.” Kirsten moved against the wall, aiming over the railing at the ground floor. Several of Konstantin’s security men traded bullets through the front window with the police. “He’s not dead. Stay back, get down.”

“How did you know… did you read his mind? What about privacy?”

Kirsten put a laser through a man downstairs. “I tend to bend rules a little when people try to kill me.” She fired again, wounding another. “And threaten my son.”

A man leapt over his cover, trying to put a broken column between himself and Kirsten. She shot through it, a chance hit disabling his arm.

“You have two seconds to surrender.” An amplified man’s voice shook the windows from outside.

Two men downstairs fired up through the floor. Kirsten, shrieking, dove away from a geyser of plaster and wood fragments. She rolled into the corridor, dragging Miranda behind.

Shimmering green light flooded the area, followed by howls. As men shouted their surrender, Kirsten crawled to the railing. The clatter of dropped rifles filtered through the smoke that filled the main foyer. A sixteen-foot-long burn mark in the front wall corresponded to a matching ember trail on the floor. Outside, a Division One patrol craft hovered, the anti-vehicle Starburst laser extended from its pod and glowing.

Miranda squeezed Kirsten from behind. “They… shot that at people?”

“Cops get a little testy when you fire on them. They don’t really like it much.” Kirsten shoved off the floor and stood, running for the stairs. “Technically, they fired it at the floor. The first one’s a warning.”

Sergeant Reed was out front, rifle aimed over the hood of her patrol craft. The police line advanced on the handful of remaining private security men, taking them into custody. Kirsten sprinted through them, skidding to a halt on the wet grass outside. She had forgotten how far north they were, and her toes were already numb. She resisted the instinct to scream at the sudden shock, but could not stop her teeth from chattering.

“Reed, thanks for the save. This is Miranda; Konstantin kidnapped her as well. I saw nothing to indicate she was abused while in captivity, but I am confident he meant to murder her at some later date.”

“Serial?” asked Reed.

“No, maleficar. He was sacrificing them to summon demons.”

“Agent, we have a MedVan on the way. You’ve obviously been through a traumatic experience.”

“I’m not crazy. Dammit, the man is after my son. I need your car.”

“ I can’t let you run off half-naked and obviously in a state of mental distress.”

“ Car, now.” Kirsten’s eyes glowed.

Reed blinked and moved away from the driver’s seat. Kirsten pushed Miranda into her. “Let the medics check her out, she could be traumatized.”

Kirsten jumped in, pulled the door closed, and chucked the E-90 into the passenger seat. With Sergeant Reed staring dumbfounded, Kirsten hauled the patrol craft into the sky and swerved south. The pedals felt odd without shoes; a long time in service left the carved diamond-pattern on the control sticks worn smooth. The Starburst laser and its assorted components added weight, which made the handling more sluggish than her Division Zero car.

After keying in a nav pin for Nila’s apartment, she climbed past the altitude of the highest building and rammed the throttle all the way forward. Numbers fluttered by on the windscreen, rapid cycling slowed as they edged into the mid three hundreds. Hot air from the heating system brought feeling back to her toes. Alone at last, with nothing to do but wait for her travel to end, she cried from worry and kneaded the joysticks. Her NetMini AI had failed to reach either Nila or Evan; attempts to call both of them rang to vidmail every time.

Captain Eze’s head shimmered in over the console. “Wren, what the hell happened to you? They’re telling me you just stole a Div One pat-vee?”

“Commandeering, sir. You were right about Konstantin. You were all right.” She gathered herself, barely holding back the urge to break down. “He was manipulating me somehow.” She showed off her bare right wrist. “That bracelet he gave me… I don’t know what it was, I wanna call it magic, but that’s fucking crazy. There was an entity in it, making me do things.”

“Are you hurt? Why didn’t you stay on the scene?”

“He’s going after Evan, Captain. He said my ‘little friend’ was the last thing he needed for his plan. He’s gonna kill my little boy and…” The car took over driving while she covered her face with both hands. Safety systems slowed her down to 180 mph.

“Wren, focus. Stay with me. Where are you?”

Kirsten sucked in a breath and wiped her eyes. She grabbed the sticks and went back to almost four hundred miles per hour. The acceleration pinned her in the rigid rubber cushions. Seats made for armored bodies were not too kind to an ass protected only by a layer of thin silk. “Nila’s. Evan would be there; she takes him home if I’m working late.”

“We got no alarm calls. I’ll meet you there.”

“Sam Chang in Div Two has all the file details. Konstantin’s the one that’s been summoning this shit all along. I’m so fucking stupid.” Kirsten punched the dashboard, then cradled her throbbing fist to her gut. “I should have listened to someone.”

“It was the charm.” He stared at her. “Evan needs you calm right now. I’ll see you there.”

Alarms went off from the navigation system. She yanked back on the left hand stick. Automatic passive restraints wrapped her torso as small airbrake flaps opened all around the exterior of the hovercar as the forward drive cut out. As her speed dipped below two hundred, negative thrusters fired, dragging the car to a near standstill from 390 miles per hour to nothing in a little over five seconds. Kirsten wheezed, gasping for breath. Downdraft from a reckless landing on the pool platform blew six people into the water and sent a dozen more falling over each other to get away.

She grabbed the E-90, flung the door open, and sprinted for the entrance. The sight of a crazed woman in a black robe leaping out of a police vehicle spurned one man into attempting to block what appeared to be a thief. He tried to grab her, getting a knee in the balls and a pistol whip to the side of the head for his effort. The man hit the ground, clamping one hand on her ankle as she attempted to run. She caught her fall on her hands and spun over, aiming the E-90 at him.

“ Back off.” The flash in her eyes brought a gasp from a couple climbing out of the water.

The man let go, crawled away, and cradled his crotch. Kirsten scrambled upright, tripping on the robe, and darted to the elevator. No amount of screamed threats made it move any faster to the thirty-ninth floor. She ran through the doors before they finished opening, shoving them aside. A hallway and a half later, she came to a halt. The sight of the door to 3918 hanging open hit her like an icicle through the heart.

Kirsten trudged up to the apartment, shoving the limp flap of Epoxil out of her way with the tip of the E-90. The apartment was trashed, as if a gang war broke out inside. Scorch marks on the wall brought Nila’s pyrokinesis to mind. Evan was gone.

His shoes were still tucked against the wall by the door where Nila asked visitors to leave them. She fell to her knees, dropping the E-90 in her lap. It slid over the smooth silk, clattering to the ground as she picked up the small, blue sneakers and cradled them to her chest.

“No…” she sobbed. “Please, no…”

van huddled in a dark corner, peering through a tangle of pipes at a sliver of light. Chemical vapors brought reflex tears to his eyes, and he tried not to pay attention to the slimy stickiness he walked on. Shani pressed herself against him, whimpering through the hand he kept over her mouth. Both children looked as though they had gone for a roll in a tray of coal dust.

Shani squirmed to look at him. I’m sorry.

Stop whining, they’ll hear us. He narrowed his eyes at her.

She nodded. The girl was quieter, but shook harder.

Evan let go, leaving a grimy, hand-shaped smudge around her mouth. She gathered her hair off her face and tucked it behind her ears. The sound of boots scuffing the hard floor drew near, and with it, the scent of burned meat.

The girl scooted behind him. I’ll get the gun. You shoot him, you’re a better shot.

He gave her a pathetic stare. This isn’t a video game. I don’t want to kill people for real.

Shani glared. They’re trying to kill us! You won’t get in trouble.

Both kids froze as a charred man rounded the corner of an enormous air-handling unit. The September chill had it running; the mechanical thrumming drowned the noise of their breathing. His handgun glinted in the dim basement light as he searched. A patch of skin showed through a burned swath of shirt. Most of his hair was gone. One fuchsia spike was all that remained of a once- grand mohawk. Smoke still peeled from his leather vest and pants; a portion of his right boot had melted to his leg. Anger and frustration conspired to keep his face in a perpetual state of twitching.

He strained to see in the dark, facing right at them. Aiming left and right, he advanced while peering every few steps under a pipe or duct to either side. Shani’s fingers dug into Evan’s side. He held on to her just as tight, staring agape at the approaching thug. The sight of Nila throwing a fireball almost got him caught when he stood there gawking. She had told them to run: probably meant outside and keep going, not go to the basement.

He can’t see us, don’t make a sound and he’ll go right by.

Shani, hearing his telepathic voice, looked at him. Okay.

Evan stopped breathing as the thug came within four feet of them, still peering into the dark. Shani stared at him, head on Evan’s shoulder. The man leaned forward, swaying his head from side to side.

“There you is. I see pink.”

Shani trembled.

He’s lying. Evan’s firm grip told her not to move. He’s trying to scare us.

Lips twisted to an anticipatory grin, twitched, then flattened into a sneering frown. “Little bastard,” he grumbled. “Yo, Roy, you got anything by the stairs?”

“Ain’t seen shit,” shouted a deep voice from far away.

“I know yer down here, ya little shits.”

“Yo, Parrot, hurry the fuck up before that freaky fire bitch gets here.”

The man less than three feet from Evan gestured to his side at the darkness with his gun arm. “Aww, man, don’t worry about her. The crew’s gonna treat her real nice.”

Shani squeezed Evan’s side, almost hard enough to make him yell. He turned his head toward her, eyes still on the ganger for all but the two seconds it took to send a telepathic message.

Your mom’s badass. These morons won’t hurt her.

Evan jumped as the thug took a step, boots peeling away from the sticky floor. When he had gotten too far to the right to see, the boy stood up and hauled Shani after him. He held a finger to his lips in the universal gesture for “don’t make a damn sound”, and crept out from under the pipe nest.

Evan gripped her hand as he led her along the outer wall through the shadow of the HVAC unit. He shuddered from the sensation of sticky chemical slime squeezing between his toes as each step peeled away from the floor. He looked down, cringing at the dark gunk on his feet. Shani, her face twisted with an expression of disgust, bit her lip.

Sorry for opening the door. Are you mad at me?

No, they would have kicked it down. He looked right, left, and up. We could climb up on top. They’ll never find us before your mom realizes where we are.

I don’t like it down here, it’s scary and eww. She unstuck one foot from the floor. We’re gonna get sick.

Evan leaned around the edge of the machine, trying to get a look at the stairs almost sixty meters away. He settled back on his heels in the dark and looked at his friend. There’s a man with a rifle at the stairs.

If we sneak up on him, I can get the gun and pull down his pants. Shani grinned.

He smirked. Why do you think they’re trying to kill us already?

Police don’t stop being police because the bad guys get mad at them. She stomped her foot and her expression said she immediately regretted the feeling of it.

We’re not cops. We’re kids. If we get shot, my mom is gonna kill me.

A dull metallic clank made them jump. The thug had doubled back, perhaps hearing the faint pop of Shani’s gesture of annoyance. Evan clenched his hand around hers and sprinted through a patch of light where a passageway led between rows of steel behemoths. Noises from behind made him think the ganger gave chase, and he ran harder.

As he reached the far corner of the second machine, the substance on the floor went from sticky to slick. They lost traction and slid into a roll, tumbling into an array of spare pipes leaned up against the wall. Shani screamed at the shock of the sudden clamor of falling metal. Evan leapt on top of her to protect her, and took a falling pipe to the back of the head.

Pinned under a stunned boy and several dozen metal tubes, Shani could not resist the primal urge to scream “Mommy!” as loud as she could as the thug rounded into view and pointed his gun at them.

“Got you now, you little fu―” his words trailed off to a squeal as one of the pipes leapt up and smashed him between the legs with enough force to bend. The hit lifted him up on tiptoe.

The pipe clanked to the ground in the shape of a hockey stick. The ganger, gaping mouth drooling, landed on his knees. Shani looked at Evan, patting him on the cheek.

“Ev… Ev… wake up.”

“Ow,” he moaned.

She reached an arm toward the murderous thug, removing the gun from his weakened grip with ease. It spun through the air into her hand, and she stuffed it into Evan’s gut. He gathered it in a double-handed grip almost as a reflex, and pointed it at the man’s head.

“Leave us alone.”

The trembling ganger lurched forward, clapping his hand on the pipe that had felled him, glaring at Shani. “I’m… I’m gonna”―he gasped and panted― “take this fuckin’ pipe and I’m gonna jam it―”

Blam.

A spout of blood sprayed from both sides of his right thigh.

“You got em, Parrot?” shouted the deep voice.

Parrot fell on his chin over the pipe, roaring and growling in a voice teetering on falsetto. “Oh, you little fucker… oh, I’m gonna… oh, yeah. So much pain. Magnitudes of pain. Infinite universes of suffering.”

Just for spite, Shani caused the pipe to whirl around and bean him. Parrot went to sleep.

Evan aimed high, and shot out a light.

“What are you doing?” whined Shani, sounding panicky.

“Hiding us.”

“I’m scared of the dark,” she whimpered.

He concentrated, trying to remember what Kirsten showed him. Within a few seconds, the world around him shimmered into a wavy sepia-toned nightmare version of reality.

Shani gasped. “Your eyes are glowing.”

“Shh!” Evan put his hand over her mouth again, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Don’t yell. Yes, they are. I can see in the dark. They’re right by the stairs.”

She grabbed his arm with both hands and pulled it down. “Won’t they see your eyes?”

This patch of floor was too slippery to stand on, covered in viscous fluid leaking from one of the machines. He crawled out of the mess of pipes, not bothering to attempt to get up until his hands found dry grit. After helping Shani to her feet, he shot out another light to darken the center of the basement. She jumped at the sudden bang.

“Parrot, what the fuck is going on?” The man with the deep voice moved away from the stairs, but only got two steps before someone came down behind him.

“The little bastard still down here?”

“Yeah, man,” said a deep voice.

“Where’s Parrot?”

“Yo, Zee. He’s searchin.’ He been shootin’ tho. Maybe he got em, maybe he just tryin’ to scare ‘em. Yo, I don’t like this, man. It ain’t right to do kids. What the hell did the little bastard do that you wanna pop him?”

Shani squirmed, trying to get her arm away from Evan’s crushing grip as he stared at the two men.

“Little fucker got me arrested. Do you have any fucking idea what that did to my rep, getting taken down by a fuckin’ little kid? I can’t show my face anywhere without getting god damned laughed at.”

“Yo, I’m just sayin’. You wind up in the tank again as a kid killer, you done. You only makin’ your rep worse.”

“You going chickenshit soft on me now, CB? Too many burgers?” Zee patted the man on the potbelly with three loud claps. “I’m gonna saw that little son of a bitch’s head off and mail it to his cop mommy with a camera drilled into his forehead so I get to see her face.”

“Man, you fucked up,” said CB.

Evan whirled and ran back into the basement, pulling Shani along.

“I hear you runnin’, brat.” The sound of Zee stomping forward echoed over a momentary pause in the air handlers. “Wanna make a deal? How bout I let your little girlfriend live if you come over here right now.”

Evan slowed to a jog, glancing back.

“You’re a liar!” shouted Shani, pouncing on Evan’s back.

The boy ran through a maze of passages, stepping over and around debris he had no trouble seeing. Zee chased; the strange echoes of him tripping and colliding with things giving little clue as to how close danger was.

A thick jumble of pipes connected a large cylindrical tank to the wall in a corner; creating a safe-looking refuge only a small child could fit in. Evan tugged on Shani’s arm, guiding her among the pipes before scooting in after her. She clung to his left hand as he kept the borrowed handgun raised and closed his eyes to hide the glow.

He cried. Fear mixed with the imagined reaction of his new mother finding him dead―if she was still even alive. Before the drug dealer and his men showed up at Nila’s apartment, he had been sick to the point of vomiting about Kirsten. Such an awful feeling of worry had taken him he could barely contain it. The image of the darkness devouring her wouldn’t go away.

Boots crunched in the dark. Shani’s face pressed into the back of his neck; she tried to use his shirt to muffle her breathing. Evan wanted his mother. A point of energy throbbed at the tip of his brain. He ignored the confusion and pushed at the thought.

Mommy! Help!

The clatter of a rifle striking the ground made him jump. He opened his eyes as a reflex, startling Zee who was only ten feet or so in front of him.

“What the fuck is that?” He squinted, aiming. “Oh, you little sneaky fucker. You’re one of them psionics, aren’t you?”

Zee, terrified, raised the gun at the kids. The look in his eyes said he did not want to give them any chance to do something to his brain. Shani snarled, causing Zee to lurch forward with a tug at his weapon.

“Ain’t fallin’ for that shit twice. I know your damn tricks now.” Zee showed off a metal forearm brace to which he had bolted the weapon, and then plucked at suspenders made from chains. “Time to die.”

Growling, Shani clawed her little fingers through the air. Zee’s arm wobbled as she pushed his aim off to the side. He shot the ductwork. His face swelled red with blood and inflated veins. A series of exertive grunts slipped through his teeth, mixed with a liberal amount of curses. Zee grabbed his forearm with his left hand and strained to bring the weapon to bear. He overcorrected, putting a bullet into a fan motor on the other wall.

Evan took aim. For a half-second, he pondered giving Zee the opportunity to surrender. The murderous rage in the man’s eyes directed at Shani scrubbed the thought from his mind. He squeezed the trigger. Three shots slapped into Zee’s chest, staggering him. The hard metal clack of bullets hitting the concrete followed a trickle of blood from the corner of the thug’s mouth. The force pushing his arm away added to the shock of his armored vest taking three rounds. Zee whirled in a full three-sixty, almost aiming at the children again before Shani pushed his arm straight up.

She sniveled from the exertion as well as terror.

Evan shot him again.

Clack. The ricochet hit distant pipes, clattering and clanging.

He aimed up, trying for a head shot, but missed due to trembling hands.

Shani panted, shaking. Zee growled, bringing his arm down, overpowering her. As the drug dealer’s aim leveled off, Evan slid in front of Shani.

“Don’t look, Shan…”

A streak of green light burst through Zee’s chest, igniting the armor as it split open. Another pierced his head, leaving two smoking points. Shani’s now-unopposed effort flung Zee onto his back. Nila moved out of cover and jogged over, lowering her E-86. She shot Zee once more through the chest. Smoke poured from his dead mouth.

Nila aimed at the corpse. “Drop it, asshole.”

ren?” Captain Eze’s voice was just loud enough to encroach upon her sobbing.

Kirsten pushed herself off the floor, sniffling. She stared up at him with such a pathetic expression he ran over and took a knee.

“Are you alright? What happened?”

“It was Konstantin.” She wiped her face, unable to stop crying. “He’s got Evan.”

Eze gathered her in his arms and carried her to the sofa. “Collect yourself, Kirsten. We’ll find the son of a bitch. Don’t mourn someone who isn’t dead.”

She sat up straight, fists on knees, inhaling deep breaths.

Captain Jonathan Eze walked to the wall panel and put a hand on it. His comforting brown eyes faded to flat white. The sound of additional police units shuffling down the hallway got Kirsten to her feet. She looked down at herself, embarrassed by the revealing way the silk draped on her body. She kept her arms clamped tight over her chest and paced a figure eight.

Two Division 1 officers entered, giving her a head-tilt.

Eze snapped out of his trance and moved to Kirsten’s side in two strides, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“Kirsten, it’s not what you think.” He smiled. “Building security system recorded gang thugs attacking them. Nila held them off, the kids ran.”

“Gang punks? Why the hell would gang punks come after Nila at home?”

Eze waved at the Div 1 cops. “There’s a body in that hall, secure the area and don’t let anyone out of the building.”

“Sir.” The closer one nodded and moved into the apartment while talking over his comm.

“I don’t know…” Eze looked at the wall.

“What is it? Why are you hesitating?”

“I got the feeling they were after the kids more than her.”

A sudden wave of inexplicable panic washed over Kirsten, sapping the energy from her legs and sending her onto the couch. Her head snapped up, tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes.

“Evan needs me. He’s terrified. He…” She stared into space. “He’s in the basement.”

“How―”

“He’s calling me.” She leapt up and sprinted, pulling the robe to her thighs so she could move.

With a fistful of silk, she darted through the corridor toward the elevators. She did not care who saw what as she zoomed past a dozen officers from Divisions 1 and 0 in a mass of fluttering black fabric. She shoved a middle-aged man into the wall to beat him to the elevator, smashing the B on the console with the grip of her E-90.

“I’m really sorry, police emergency.”

The doors hissed closed. Kirsten jumped up and down, trying to kick the elevator into a faster descent. Both hands clung to her weapon, aimed at the frigid floor between her feet. She shook, though she could not tell if it was due to cold, fear, worry, shame, or anger. So much had happened to her over the past few hours, her mind spun in place.

When the door opened, she jumped through and ran toward a body. A young man in a tattered vest, dark pants, and mismatched boots lay dead on his face against the wall. The smell in the air said ‘death by laser.’ Nila came this way. Oh, please let her have found him. She ran past the corpse, headed for two pairs of doors at the end of the corridor. The one on the left was open already, and she went that way. The urge to yell for Nila or Evan came on strong, but she checked her emotion―she might need the element of surprise.

A short stairway led into the dark; a heavyset man lay on the ground near the bottom on his chest. Despite having his arms trapped behind him in police binders, he seemed calm. At the sight of Kirsten, he did a double take. She ignored the confusion on his face and stepped over him. A few paces later, she grimaced at the stickiness of the floor, and threw desperate glances at four possible ways to go. Left, right, or two forward passages between rows of enormous machines.

Gunshots.

The muzzle flare was strongest to her right, but sounded distant. She went for the straight-ahead aisle on that side. Green light flashed; the hum of a laser firing overwhelmed the machinery for an instant. Kirsten sprinted hard down the narrow passageway and almost wiped out as she rounded the corner. She stopped short at the sight of Nila squatting on the far side of a dead man, with two relieved children clinging to her.

“Evan…” Kirsten wanted to shout, but only made a whimper.

“Mommy!” he cheered, and ran to her.

Kirsten fell to her knees, wrapping her arms around the shivering boy. For a moment, Evan held her upright as she let her weight lean on him. All his terror and tears evaporated in an instant. He bounced, squeezed, and cuddled.

Nila picked her daughter up and carried her over, glancing at the sound of more police flooding the basement. “The heavy guy at the steps surrendered.”

“He didn’t wanna shoot us,” said Shani.

Evan peeled away from Kirsten’s chest to make eye contact. “Yeah, he tried to change Zee’s mind.” He furrowed his brow. “Why are you dressed up like Xiana?”

She went crimson. “Uhh, someone stole my clothes. This was all I could find.”

Nila gave her an inquisitive glance. What the fuck happened?

Kirsten found the floor rather interesting. Oh, not much. I almost had sex with a seventy-year-old man, wound up naked in a dungeon… you know, the usual bad shit that happens every time I wear high heels.

With a grimace, Nila shivered. I’m sorry I asked.

I feel like such an idiot, Nila. Kirsten sniffled; her impending sadness came to a screeching halt as her brain at last processed Evan knowing the dead man’s name.

“Zee?” Kirsten blinked and twisted around to look at the corpse. “You know this son of a bitch?”

She went the other way at the sound of clicking. Zee’s spirit stood a few feet away attempting to fire a spectral gun at Evan.

“The drug guy from Sector D, you remember? The one Shani pantsed. In the cartoon underwear?”

The ghost snarled.

“Oh,” said Kirsten, eyes narrowing. “Him. Didn’t he go to jail?”

“It was just drug charges and assault on a chem-user. He probably did a week and got out. Overcrowding.” Nila grumbled.

Kirsten stood, keeping a hand on Evan’s shoulder. Shani shivered at a sudden chill in the air while Nila raised an eyebrow.

“Is he still here?” asked Evan.

Kirsten beckoned for them. “Not for much longer.”

Clouds of mist washed over the hood of the black patrol craft as it came in for a landing in front of the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary. A handful of people in line for free food waved at Kirsten as she got out and adjusted her utility belt. Never before had a hot shower felt so good, even a rushed one after a medical evaluation. Not content to wait for her to open the back door, Evan climbed into the front seat and joined her outside the car.

Nila, now in her tactical armor, stretched and let Shani out of the rear passenger door on that side. Despite the current situation, Kirsten could not hold back the giggle at the kitten mewls coming from the girl’s sneakers as she ran to her mother. The dire look Nila gave Kirsten only made her laugh louder.

“Thanks for that, by the way. She saw your Nomz and had to have them. I hear little electronic cats in my sleep now.”

Shani, with a big grin, shifted her weight from leg to leg to keep them meowing.

“I dunno. It is kind of cute that the kid-sized ones sound like kittens.”

I’m going to find the most obnoxious toy I can find and give it to Evan for his birthday.

Kirsten laughed again and led the way into the building. “I hope this will only be for a few hours, maybe a day or so. Father Villera has agreed to let you stay.”

“I never thought you’d drag people to church,” said Nila, with an eye roll. “You don’t seriously buy this crap do you?”

“I don’t know anymore.” Kirsten smiled at a man who moved to create a gap in the line for them to get in. “I do know there is at least enough to it that abyssals won’t walk in here.”

“I guess… if you think so.” Nila held tight to Shani’s hand. The girl seemed uncomfortable around so many vagrants.

“The bad ghosts don’t like it here,” said Evan. “I pushed one in with the car and she ‘sploded.”

Father Villera came around from behind the food-serving table and walked them into the back, indicating a room with two cots and a desk. Shani was all too happy to get out of public view and dove on the left-side bed. Nila folded her arms, remaining in the doorway where Evan clung to Kirsten.

“I don’t know how I got to you before his men showed up.” She ran her hand over his hair. “Maybe those gang idiots scared them off. Stay here with Nila until its safe.”

Evan looked up at her, eyes wide. “The bad ghosts can’t get in here, but what if he just sends people?”

Kirsten patted Nila on the arm. “That’s why Nila’s here…” She thought for a moment and raised her forearm guard. Within a few seconds, Captain Eze’s hologram appeared. “Captain, can you request a Div Six security detail? I’ve found a place where they are safe from demons, but Konstantin might still send ordinary thugs. Most of the security men at his estate were normal.”

Eze glanced left for a second. “You’re at the church on 500th street?”

“Yes, sir, abyssals can’t get in here. They’re safe if he sends one of his pets, but he’s also got a lot of money and resources. He could send ordinary mercenaries, maybe even a borg.”

“Alright, consider it done. The raid found no trace of Konstantin at the manor. Nine is getting ready to go after him at a property belonging to Koloss Venture Capital. They’ve got activity inside on the sensors and the senior-in-command has requested you on-site to handle anything… weird.”

Kirsten crushed a gasp out of Evan. “Understood, sir. Do I have time to wait for Six to get here? I don’t…”

“It’s okay, Mom. I don’t feel scared. Don’t let him get away.” He squirmed up and kissed her on the cheek.

She held back the urge to cry. “Tell them I’m on the way.”

Nila put a hand on Kirsten’s shoulder as the light from Eze’s hologram flickered out. “Go get that bastard.”

Evan folded his arms and nodded. “I’ll keep them safe.”

van’s last comment kept Kirsten on the verge of tears for the entire ride to the nav pin. She wrung her hands on the control sticks, alternating between shivering worry and seething anger. The image of Evan’s confident smile and bright hazel eyes would not leave her mind. All she wanted to do was go home, plant him in her lap and watch Monwyn vids until he was grown up.

Kirsten glanced at the empty passenger seat, then at the center console.

“Agent Wren?” an anonymous black helmet appeared floating in hologram.

“Yes, who are―”

“My designation for this operation is Whisper 3. I’m in position over the target location. Please follow this waypoint.”

Damn Div 9s, think they’re better than everyone. “Understood.”

She clung to her anger at Konstantin as she guided the car along the neon yellow stripe that arced through the air to a point on the roof of a corporate tower. She throttled back, lifting the nose as the patrol craft settled in for a clean landing near four other black hovercars. The only visible difference was their lack of a light-bar. She glanced at the altimeter. Why do we call them all century towers? Some are taller than a hundred stories.

Kirsten cut her emergency flashers and got out, approaching a black-haired woman in a light, sand-brown coat. The heavy side-buckled boots she wore looked quite similar to Kirsten’s. The woman turned at her approach. A spark of familiarity glinted in dark blue eyes set in the face of a black-haired porcelain doll about four inches taller than her. Don’t offer a handshake first. It’ll make you look like an eager rookie. Nina’s a lieutenant.

Kirsten saluted.

“Thanks for coming, agent.” Nina returned the salute. “Are you okay? Heard you had a rough night.”

“I’m fine, Lieutenant. I just kinda feel a bit out of my league. Oh, did that info I sent you a week or so ago help? That body looked like the work of the sick freak you’ve been looking for.”

“Lieutenant Duchenne, we’re in position,” shouted a man by the roof access.

Nina showed no outward emotion. “The scene was cold. Too much time passed. Bertrand is a slippery bastard. I think he’s hiding in The Beneath. Look, if you run into another one of his victims, can you ask them to stick around and help us find him?”

Kirsten blinked. Someone in Division 9 believes in ghosts? “Uhh, sure… but I can’t force them to.”

“All I ask is that you ask. I still owe him.” Nina glanced at the door, waving her arm around in a circle. “Okay, people, in we go. We have a Zero along for the ride in case we run into something we can’t explain.” She lowered her voice. “Just stick to me, we’ll do the heavy lifting.”

“Seriously? You expecting a psionic?”

Nina leaned on the wall by the stair access. The security code flashed from red to green without her touching it. “If we run into anything fucked up, Agent Wren gets to give orders until the scene is unfucked. Everyone understand?”

A series of affirmatives filtered over the comm. channel.

With that, Nina went through the door and descended four floors. At the bottom, another access panel opened on its own. Kirsten eyed a cam bubble in the ceiling, wondering if someone back at Div 9 Net Ops was with them virtually.

“We’re in position.”

Kirsten suppressed the urge to shiver at hearing Nina’s voice without seeing her lips move. Knowing it was the result of metal inside her brain unnerved her the way most people felt about telepathic messages.

“Copy that, Lieutenant,” said a man. “We’re going in three… two…”

At the one count, Nina shoved the door open and shot three men before any of them even reacted. To Kirsten’s perspective, the woman had waved her arm from left to right and fired a three round burst. Somehow, each man had a bullet hole center mass.

“No warning?” Kirsten blinked, offering an apologetic look at three confused ghosts.

Nina moved up to a corner, firing two shots into an armored man thirty meters further ahead. As his body slumped against the wall, she glanced at Kirsten. “They abducted a law officer with intent to kill. They are, according to your statements, responsible for manipulating government and corporate officials via paranormal means, and he is a foreign national.” Another man rushed the corner, blades sprouting out of his forearms. Nina swung her arm into a clothesline move, crushing his body from shoulder to rib. The corpse convulsed on the ground, most of the bones in his chest shattered. “So, no. No warning.”

“How can you assume their entire security team is culpable?” Kirsten grimaced at the sight of the most recent ghost; the upper half of his body flopped forward as if on a hinge. He gave her the most confused look. “You just tried to attack a Division Nine doll with claws, jackass. What did you expect would happen?”

Nina squinted. “That thermal anomaly behind you… is that―”

“Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am, you don’t have a line of them following you. Most don’t linger around much past an hour or so.”

A section of wall exploded just past Nina’s face. She bent away as more gunfire came down the hall. After a pointed stare at solid drywall, she mumbled.

“Wait here. I’m gonna scrub the hallway.”

Kirsten crouched against the frosted glass wall of an executive office as Nina edged to the corner. After the bullets stopped hitting the floor, Nina leapt into a blur of tan coat and black bodysuit. In the span of three seconds, she came to a halt at the far end of the hallway. Six men with rifles fell to the ground. The closest (and first to die) had not yet hit the floor by the time her fist launched the sixth corpse into a vendomat.

Nina waved at her to come over, but the screech of vibroclaws sent shivers down Kirsten’s spine. A man came through a doorway, his hands surrounded in heat blur. Kirsten shuddered, thinking of the Intera assassin who chased her through a parking garage. She clung to the wall, trembling.

Arms to the side, he sprang at Nina. The doll body moved as though she did not exist in the same flow of time, blinking out of existence for nanoseconds and appearing feet away from where she had been. Claws raked through empty air.

He lunged with a wild, frustrated roar, reaching for Nina’s face with a handful of white-hot blades. To Kirsten, the fight from that point forward existed as a series of still images flashed in sequence. Nina leaning left. Her hand on his wrist, his broken arm twisted at an impossible angle. Nina’s left forearm slamming down onto his back. The body, now missing its right arm, embedded hip-deep through the wall.

The doll’s movement smoothed out, returning to real time. She dropped the ripped-off limb with a squishy plop and made a ‘come here’ gesture with her unbloodied hand. Kirsten blinked. Lucian had no damn idea. She could not help but stare at Nina as if getting too close to her would be fatal. They thought I was Division Nine? Nina would have destroyed those idiots. She imagined the attack at Henry Motte’s house happening with Nina in her place, and laughed.

Nina lifted an eyebrow. “Are you okay, Agent Wren?”

“Yeah… just a funny thought.” Kirsten grimaced, losing her smile as she stepped over a severed leg. “Ma’am.”

After a glance around at the carnage, Nina moved at a brisk stride. “Zeroes find strange things funny. Did one of the ghosts say something?”

“No, they’re either confused or giving you the finger.” Kirsten jogged to keep up. “Intera tried to kill me awhile back.”

Nina fired through the wall twice. A man wheezed and hit the ground on the other side. “That’s still not very humorous.”

“I was just… they thought I was Division Nine because our uniform is black. One of their assassins taunted me for fighting like a little kid. I was laughing at what would have happened if those idiots attacked you.”

Red laser beams streaked through the smoke and plaster dust behind them as a tracked security robot the size of a one-seat car rolled around the corner. At the same time, three men in front of them fired through shattering glass. Nina spun, gathering Kirsten into her chest as she leapt backwards through a solid wall. The sudden motion jerked her breath away. Stunned from the near-instant transition from standing to lying on top of Nina, Kirsten made a noise like a honking goose as they landed, clutching at the arm across her body. Her brain did not have a chance to consider said arm could crush her before Nina pushed her aside. Smoke trails whizzed by the hole as bot and men fired; too slow to realize their target had moved.

“Think you can take out that rover?”

Kirsten gawked. After going through the wall, she barely knew her own name.

“Hey.” Nina patted her on the cheek. “You still there?”

E-90 out, on. “Yeah. Sorry, disoriented from the… How did we get in here?”

“S tart firing at the bot in two seconds. I’ll deal with the three on the right.”

After crawling behind a desk, Kirsten draped herself over the top and fired through frosted glass walls. Shimmering streaks of azure light sent flaring plumes of smoke and molten glass airborne. Nina dove through the drywall again, making a new hole. Kirsten ignored the sound of men screaming, continuing to fire pulse after pulse into the wall at the massive tracked security bot. A piece of assault rifle bounced past the hole in the wall, hand still attached to it. A wet, splintering crunch cut off a man’s scream. Something clicked off the front of the desk Kirsten hid behind; a bloody tooth rolled to a halt on the carpet.

Holy shit.

She ducked a hail of plaster dust and flying glass shards as the rotating security rover machine-gunned its way through the wall. Small patches of fire and sparks flared out of laser holes, though no serious damage was apparent. Scurrying to the left, she spun around the side of the desk. Without a wall blocking her view, she had a clear shot at the thing. As fast as the E-90’s core could cycle, she put six beams into it. Four in the central body and two through a boxy part in the back she hoped contained the ammunition for its guns.

It sputtered, twisting side to side in erratic jerking motions, and the rear end exploded in a ball of green flames. Nina, bloody up to both elbows, came out of nowhere and landed on top of it with a heavy, crashing whump. A pair of Nano claws emerged from between the knuckles of her right hand, which she drove into the forward end of the main body. One twist rendered the bot silent and dark. It collapsed amid splayed legs.

“Control box on these Sentinel-4’s is right here.” Nina pulled her claws out with an ear-bleeding squeal of synthetic diamond on plastisteel. The blades slid without a sound back into her forearm as she leapt to the ground. “Decent job of keeping it occupied though.”

Kirsten got up, pushing herself to her feet with two handfuls of desk. “Are those things legal?”

“The weapon systems are civilian grade, but it was hacked to disregard police transponder signals. That makes it illegal.”

A man’s roar drew both women’s gaze as an enormous metal-armed aug rushed into the hall, hefting a six-foot-long Nano sword. Nina blurred into a spiral smear of color as she hauled the husk of the Sentinel-4 security bot into the air and threw it. With a great crash, the robot crushed the man into the wall, trapping him under its weight. He lived a few seconds longer, gaping at her with blood flowing from his mouth and nose.

Kirsten stared at the gleaming sword, the dead man, the sword again, and Nina.

Voices on the comm. from the rest of the team called in. Eighteen unarmed civilians taken into custody, eleven armed individuals terminated―no sign of Konstantin downstairs. Further down the hallway, screaming arose. A handful of orb bots and another large tracked unit chased two security men through an intersecting corridor.

Nina laughed. “We won’t have to worry about the automated security anymore, looks like DeWinter’s got it under control. You see anything…”

“Demons?” Kirsten looked around. “No, just a handful of new ghosts… and one suspiciously absent old one.” She gawked at Nina while listening to comm. chatter about zone clearing. “The Archives. I have to go to the archives!”

reyish smog peppered with staccato bursts of blue light rolled past the patrol craft’s windscreen, causing the yellow wire-frame model of the city to shimmer. Kirsten pushed the vehicle too fast for current visibility; the flight computer could not render small objects (like advert bots) in wireframe fast enough to avoid the occasional minor collision. Fortunately, the bots too small to register in time were also no threat to the armor plating.

“Dorian? Come on, where are you? Wake up.” Kirsten pounded her hand at the center console. “Did you try to come after me when I was stuck in his basement? Where the hell are you?”

A dotted line led in an arc off the hood, plunging to the ground some miles ahead amid the city of pixilated gold. From this altitude, the West City Archives complex resembled a pile of hatboxes mashed together and linked by archways and elevated, enclosed bridges. She nudged forward on the right stick, diving into a thinner portion of the smog layer. The glow of silvery glass in the afternoon sun filled in between the amber lines. The lower she got, the less mist there was and the less like a video game the world outside the car appeared.

Well below the smog at forty feet, the digital assistance was unnoticeable as she brought the car to rest in the central courtyard of the complex. Kirsten leapt out of the car, worry and fury in her eyes daring anyone to give her crap for landing there. Two steps later, she faced the car and closed her eyes. Beaconing for Dorian, she spent a minute projecting the want for him to come to her into the astral realm, with no luck.

William Arris was a security guard here. One of the dead men. Konstantin used him in some ritual. There has got to be a connection. She stormed through the nearest door, past a handful of security guards that backed off with raised hands. Holographic signs led her through an atrium, two hallways, and up a flight of stairs to the office of the curator.

Kirsten shoved her way through the door, ignoring the security station in the antechamber. A slender middle-aged man with touches of grey hair half-stood up, tilted his head and was about to say something when she unfurled the astral lash with a twitch of her arm. The scintillating cord of light sent harsh shadows skittering over the wall as she waved her forearm guard at the interior lock panel. The guard pursed his lips, shook his head, and sat back down as if she had not been there.

“I’m sorry, the Curator has asked that―” A thirty-something man of Indian descent stood up from behind the executive assistant’s desk in the next room, his protest cut off by a lash through the chest.

Her strike found no resistance; all it destroyed was the man’s ability to speak. She paid him no further attention and stepped up to a run. Growling, she smashed through a set of carved wooden double doors. As the shocked curator began to scream, she thrust her arm forward and whipped the ethereal tendril through him.

The tall, thin man sailed to the right from the force of the hit as if weightless, landing in a heap. A baritone wail of pain startled her for only an instant as he fought to crawl forward. She tapped into the shame and anger from what Konstantin did to her, and brought the spectral whip down on top of him a second time.

His assistant, and two security guards, ran in just as a blast of jet ichor flew from his mouth, nose, and ears. Some of the liquid coalesced into a legless humanoid shape that flopped its arms at the floor in a series of splats. Kirsten coiled the whip and attacked again, blasting the apparition into a cloud of fine mist that settled over the new arrivals, staining them.

Kirsten shot a glance at the desk, specifically the nameplate, and crouched over the shuddering man. “Mr. Annan, are you okay?”

He convulsed once, vomiting more inky water. After a few heavy breaths, he wiped a line of drool from his lower lip and sat up on his heels. “Please explain what in God’s name just happened to me.”

She tried not to look at the dark stains on his pants. “You may want to change. There was a paranormal entity inside you. I have reason to believe it may have been used to influence your decisions.” Kirsten helped him up. “Sorry to barge in on you. The last one of these I tried to destroy ran off when I gave it the time to do so.”

“A paranormal…” He stared at the ceiling.

Kirsten looked up at him, trying not to let the height disparity intimidate her. “Paranormal entity. Ghost. Maybe even a demon. Doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s gone now. Mr. Annan, can you please look back over the past few weeks. Any decision you made in that time is suspect.”

He wiped his face with a burgundy silk handkerchief. The tool proved inadequate for the amount of sweat and post-possession slime. “Please, call me Kwadwó, Miss…”

“Wren. Agent Kirsten Wren, Division Zero.”

Kwadwó Annan excused himself to a small, attached bathroom. Kirsten paced in an anxious circle. The security officers wandered over, more casual now after realizing she had come to help the curator. Her brain flew on autopilot, navigating the small talk the men made while she waited for Kwadwó to emerge. Some minutes later he did, now wearing different pants and a sleeveless undershirt. After draping his suit jacket over the back of his chair, he took a seat at the desk and opened his terminal. Kirsten went to his side, gazing at the dozen grey holographic panels that unfolded in midair. A few holo bars projected still images of a younger Kwadwó: sitting among pyramids, a camp in a jungle, a red stone cave somewhere on Mars, a barely-recognizable man encased in a heavy coat at a place covered in snow. He looked like a globetrotting archaeologist.

“I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here, Agent.” Kwadwó scratched at a salt and pepper goatee. Most of the past two weeks feels like a disembodied dream.” He looked over at her; even seated, he was close to eye level. “As though I watched myself from the outside.”

Kirsten put a hand on his dark shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up sooner. It’s important. I need to know what Konstantin did here.”

“Konstantin…” Kwadwó grabbed at icons and swiped them through the light panels. When the face of a hard-eyed man in his later seventies appeared, Kirsten looked away and blushed. “Let me see… the only thing. That son of a bitch.” He slapped his desk. “I remember telling him we did not have the resources to give him an entire wing for his exhibit, yet here is my signed approval for it.”

She could not look at the terminal, not with Konstantin there. Her hand wanted to go south, to wipe the memory of his touch from her body, but she instead covered her mouth. Two hours in an autoshower would do the job, but she could not think about that now. Kirsten closed her eyes and thanked the Seraphim for sending him a vid call before he had gone all the way. His hand there was bad enough. Even if they had nothing to do with it, she was grateful anyway.

Kirsten shook off the memory. “What did he put in the wing?”

“There’s no inventory in the catalog. It should be empty.” Kwadwó stood, throwing his blazer on. “Let us go.”

It took about six minutes to walk from the curator’s office to the private wing. A holographic panel, six feet tall and two wide, advertised a one-of-a-kind display of ancient Sumerian artifacts and old, forgotten cults. The color of the walls changed as it cycled from blue to desert brown to red with different versions of the same advertisement.

Kwadwó swiped his ID at the door, and it buzzed. “Damn. My pass should open everything here.”

Kirsten’s police ID got the same buzz. She squinted, drawing the E-90. “Take a step back, Mr. Annan.”

“But…” He sighed, seeing no room for negotiation in her face.

On the lowest setting, a pip from the weapon burned through the locking bar and lit the marble floor behind it aglow. Kirsten stomped the ornate doors open, sending a slam echoing through an open chamber beyond. Dozens of crates littered the room, copious amounts of pulverized soy shell and dust smeared in whorls on the ground.

In the center of it all, surrounded by velvet ropes, a clear cube contained a black pillow with a fist-sized dent. Whatever had been on display was gone. She stepped over the barrier and put her hands on the bullet-resistant plastic box. A strong wave of paranormal energy leapt forth and filled her mind with a dozen screaming voices. Terrified women, frightened men, and one angry roar. The angry one sounded familiar. She had heard that exact sound before.

Dorian.

“Your little friend is the last piece I need.” Konstantin’s voice, now withered and old, rasped at the back of her consciousness with the sense of skeletal fingers raking down her spine.

Kwadwó’s hand on her shoulder made her realize she had slumped to her knees. “Are you alright, Kirsten?”

She let him help her up, wanting to back away from the touch of a man in his later fifties. Dark brown eyes beheld her with a look of a concerned father, calming her. “What… what was in there?”

“Terminal,” said Kwadwó, reaching up to enter his password on a transparent white slab of hologram that appeared next to him. A few finger swipes later, he pointed. “That. Looks like some manner of gemstone.”

While the curator opened a second panel and sifted through reams of text, Kirsten moved up to the first screen. Security camera images of the case from two days ago showed a violet jewel set in the hollow spot on the pillow. A decorative cut shaped like a frozen fireball, it pulsed with amethyst light in a way that conjured the sense of a heartbeat.

“The Heart of Eannatum,” said Kwadwó. “It was recovered from a dig site in Iraq years ago, but stolen before it made it out of the country. There are all manner of rumors about what happened: cultists objecting to it being unearthed, mercenaries, even the local government was purported to be involved.”

Kirsten poked a finger at the screen. “I think cultists came closest, though I doubt they were motivated by protecting cultural heritage.” She took a step toward the door, remembering Brooke’s vision: the glowing crystal in Konstantin’s hand, the wisps of energy drawn into it.

It’s some kind of soul trap. She bit her knuckles, fighting the urge to cry. It can’t devour them, it’s gotta be a trap. Her eyes widened. “He didn’t need to kill people, he needed spirits! I destroyed his harvester, so he had to start making new ghosts, weak enough for him to catch himself. Shit!” She spun, holding the curator’s hand. “Thank you, Kwadwó. Sorry for the mess. I need to go.”

He’s not after Evan at all. I’m coming, Dorian.

lectronic thrumming flooded the cabin. The noise verged out of the realm of pure sound into something tangible―a vibration teasing at Kirsten’s presence. Silence from the passenger seat seemed more vacuous now that she knew Dorian was gone. Stay professional. The words rang through her mind in his voice. She picked at the control sticks with her thumbnails. Captain Eze had not received any updates about where Konstantin ran off to, and Division 9 had all the starports and shuttle terminals under tight surveillance.

On an upwelling of sudden confidence, she jabbed her finger at the console. A few seconds later, Division 0 Chief Jane Carter appeared. Confusion settled into a face that conveyed amusement.

“Agent Wren. I trust you know it is quite irregular to call me directly.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. This can’t wait.” She glanced at her forearm. “Uplink, official log.” The armband system beeped and twittered. “Thirteen hundred hours, fourteen minutes to fourteen hundred hours, nine minutes. Transmit.”

The right side of Carter’s face changed color as the video of Kirsten’s time at the archives played.

“I destroyed an entity influencing the curator. I know the same damn thing is in Vernon, ma’am. I’ve got no idea where Konstantin is and only hours before Nine puts a bullet in that woman’s head. I’m going there now, ma’am. If it has any warning, it’ll hide again.”

Fingers tapped on something out of sight. “I get the feeling a direct order to stay away will only generate some paperwork later while we have a hearing about why you disobeyed it.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know how to get a demon on camera to admit it’s influencing a government official. All of Konstantin’s notes look like stick men doing aerobics. I… I can’t let him play with our government and I can’t let our government kill an innocent woman. So, yes, ma’am. I’m going there anyway. I had hoped to get your approval first.”

Carter leaned back in her seat, trying not to smile. “Please send me the same visual records when you are done there. I’ll need it to deal with General McDonnell. I assume you’re not going to be gentle with the security detachment.”

The elevator doors parted to reveal the expected horseshoe of Marines in assault armor. Sergeant Gerard moved in her path as soon as she emerged. Kirsten surveyed the men; her gaze lingered on the one that seemed most eager to shoot her.

“Hold it right there, girlie. We didn’t get any auth―”

“Sergeant Gerard, I’m shocked you’re still able to work with Corporal Fuentes after what he did to your little sister.” Kirsten’s eyes glimmered.

Gerard froze, jaw twitching. His face warped as his mind conjured up some horrible event. Four seconds later, Sergeant Gerard pulled a vibro-knife from his belt and pounced on Fuentes. The two troopers on either side of Fuentes tried to hold him back, while the three on the other arm of the horseshoe raised their weapons.

“ Freeze!” She yelled, taking a step at them.

All three had clean eye contact, though her suggestion lacked the strength to affect more than one person at a time. Spreading it over three brains diluted it into a momentary confusion instead of a minute-long compulsion not to move. Kirsten avoided the brawling soldiers to her left and sprinted to the door at the far end of the lobby.

A chubby woman with dark hair and a plum dress dove for cover behind the reception desk as the lash trailed out of Kirsten’s hand and fluttered behind her. Shoulder first, Kirsten dove through the door into Commissioner Claire Vernon’s office. Three strides and she leapt into the air, bringing the lash about in a long overhead swing as her boots alighted upon the desk.

Thunder erupted behind her. Kirsten’s arm snagged as the glimmering thread found solidity within the commissioner. Fire lanced through her left thigh. A burst of Epoxil fragments flew. Another stab of heat caught her in the right shoulder. Kirsten pulled at the lash as she spun through the air. Green camouflage armor at the door glistened from strong overhead lights. The man on the far left shouted at the other two, shoving their rifles to the side. His voice blurred as time seemed to slow down.

“You’ll hit Vernon…”

Kirsten landed atop the desk and slid off it; the impact flooded her mouth with blood. Snarling, she pulled at the lash, dragging Vernon to the ground with her behind it. Black fluid burst out of the commissioner from both ends, spraying from her nostrils as well. Another distant pop came before a dull clank ricocheted somewhere above her.

The women landed almost nose to nose, neither with the energy to move. Dark liquid bubbled from Vernon’s mouth, blood from Kirsten’s. Their eyes met―brown to blue.

Demon… forcing you to approve trade deal. Division Nine… will to kill you to stop it.

Claire Vernon tried to gasp, making a bubbling throat noise instead.

They won’t kill you now.

Vernon slid a hand over the carpet, on top of Kirsten’s. Sapphire eyes flicked over to look at it. Kirsten felt nothing. She coughed up more blood.

Please tell Evan I’m sorry.

Commissioner Vernon slid out of her vision as the room shifted from a boot pressing on her shoulder. The ceiling rolled into view beyond the tip of a rifle in her face. The helmeted man above it was too blurry to recognize.

Too late, asshole. I got the demon. Vernon’s safe and Carter’s got the video. You’ve just murdered a police officer―enjoy the asteroid mine.

onsciousness returned with a great breath. Kirsten’s lungs filled with syrupy, warm, breathable gel. The unexpected sensation triggered a fit of the closest a person could get to coughing with lungs full of fluid. A white blur neared, flooding the tube with reflected light.

“Agent Wren, please calm down.”

Kirsten attempted to grab her neck with both hands, but only the left arm moved. She rubbed her throat. I’m okay, wasn’t expecting gel. I’m just coughing.

The telepathic transmission caused a headache of near-migraine proportion. When she went fetal, the woman’s voice again reverberated through the fluid. Extensive mind blasting had left her brain raw and tender. Even sending a few words hurt.

“Please, Agent Wren. I need you to relax.”

Kirsten uncurled from the fetal pose. Before her eyes, her right arm floated, separate from the rest of her body through the bicep. Only a few strands of tissue connected it to the stump. The sight was the last straw her beleaguered mind could handle, and she fainted.

When she regained consciousness, she grabbed at her arm. It was whole again, tender but otherwise normal, and she could move and feel. Even her brain hurt a little less.

Palms on the glass, she cringed. What happened? Sore, but tolerable.

An Asian woman in a white doctor’s coat almost fell out of her chair at the sudden voice in her head. She looked around the room for a moment before realizing it came from Kirsten. This was not the same doctor who asked her to keep still. She waited for the woman to get closer, shivering at the effect of the loudspeaker through the gel.

“You were shot. Your right humerus bone was completely shattered. We had to detach it the rest of the way to allow the nanobots to clean bone fragments out of the muscle and reconnect the nerves and blood vessels. I would not advise you put a lot of stress on it for a few hours, but you should retain normal function.”

Kirsten sagged with relief. This is still my arm. No cyberware.

“You’re almost done in there, Agent Wren. Should be another ten minutes or so. Would you like me to put on some music?”

Kirsten shook her head. How long was I in here? I have to find my partner!

The doctor looked at the terminal before glancing at her. “You should be thrilled we saved the arm. If you didn’t get here so fast… You’ve been in there about two hours. Nanobots are currently regenerating your blood supply and performing some final repairs at the cellular level to grow you some new bone marrow. You may notice mild discomfort in your arm and left femur.”

Kirsten fidgeted, biting her lip while she hung weightless in fluid. “Mild discomfort” translated to the sensation of a series of needles jammed through the bones of her arm and leg, twisted back and forth, and lit on fire. The twinges were too brief to make her want to scream, not that she could with liquid-filled lungs. In a few minutes, the torture subsided to a dull overall sense of warmth.

She pressed herself against the tube as the doctor picked up a robe, a puppy eager to be let out of her crate. The doctor fiddled with the controls, and a patch of cyan light flashed on her face. Her voice saturated the gel yet again.

“Agent, there’s someone here asking to see you. Do you mind if they come in?”

Kirsten sighed. Fuck it. Maybe he’ll be cute. She gave the doc a thumbs up, thought for a second, and sent a message: A s long as it’s not a reporter.

Laughing, the doc nodded at a terminal out of sight. Nina walked in as pumps kicked on and drew the gel through vents in the ground. As usual, Kirsten remained limp and let gravity take her down until she sat on the floor. I’m winding up inside the tank way too often lately. The wonderful warm robe draped over her as she assumed the pose and choked out the gel.

“Well,” she rasped, coughing again. “I guess I know how I got here so fast.”

“Carter was on the line with my boss while you landed, trying to call us off. I had a feeling things wouldn’t go smoothly with Gerard.”

Kirsten’s laugh devolved into more coughing. The doctor handed her honeyed tea, earning an adoring smile. “That’s a bad sign. They know me here well enough to have the tea waiting. Guess I should be happy they’re bad shots.”

“Thank Vernon. If she wasn’t in the line of fire, they wouldn’t have tried to leg you. Why didn’t you wait for approval?”

Hot tea ran down her throat; relaxation radiated from the node of heat forming in her stomach, spreading throughout her body. After a second healthy sip, Kirsten hocked up a wad of phlegm and B-gel and spat it into a waiting teal tray. “Whatever was inside Vernon had a way to hide from me once. I wanted to catch it off guard. I couldn’t take the chance one of her security people would tell her I was coming.” After another long, closed-eye sip of tea, she looked up. “How is Vernon?”

Nina dropped a bag on the comforgel pad next to her. “Your gear. Vernon’s as good as can be expected after projectile vomiting a few gallons of black gunk. She wanted to thank you for saving her life.”

“There’s at least two more. Someone at RedEx and Graeme McCullough at EnMesh Biomed are compromised. Probably whoever made the decision to accept the buyouts.”

“We’re in the process of freezing those transactions now. I do have some good news for you. We found Konstantin.”

Kirsten’s head snapped up. She set the tea down and jumped up, shedding the robe on the way to the autoshower. “Where is the bastard?”

“Paramount City. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

She punched the fast-wash option. “Thanks for not making me beg to be there.”

Nina laughed. “I half-expected I’d have to drag you onto the shuttle.”

Sitting in the passenger seat was strange. Kirsten glanced over at Nina. Not seeing Nicole driving was even more so. She balanced her NetMini in both hands, waiting for the spinning dots to align.

“Damn, how fast are we going? It’s having a problem connecting.”

“Only 418.”

“Wow, it doesn’t feel like it. Where’s all the fancy super-secret government stuff? This looks like a civvie car with a police nav console added on.”

Nina smiled and tapped the wire coming out of the back of her neck. “Need one of these to even know it’s here.”

Kirsten shivered.

Evan’s face blurred in, red-eyed and sniffling. “Mom!”

Nila Assad squeezed into frame. “Dammit, Kirsten, what the hell did you do? The boy’s been going completely batshit for hours.”

Guilt hit her heavy. “Took a couple of bullets, saved someone, killed some demons. You know, my usual Tuesday night.”

“Mommy…” Evan sniffled, unable to say more.

“Is it over? Did you get the bastard?” Nila tried to comfort him.

“The good news is he is not going after Evan, or you, or Shani. You can go home.”

Nila breathed a gasp of relief. Shani’s hand invaded the image from below, waving. She tried to jump up into frame.

“The bad news is he’s got Dorian, and he’s on the damn Moon. I’m going there now.”

Evan glared at her for an instant, but his face softened. Kirsten felt the pang of need even over a VidPhone link.

“I’m sorry, Ev. There’s no time. I gotta stop him before he hurts Dorian.” Dorian could already be gone. Could already just be energy. “I…” She swallowed the lump. “Have to…”

He wiped his face. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m scared, but I trust you.” His attempt at confidence still leaked tears.

Kirsten glanced sideways at the creak of the control sticks in Nina’s hands. The woman had not looked in her direction since the boy appeared. “I’ll get back as fast as I can. Be good to Nila.”

“I will.”

The call ended. Nina’s silence hung heavy in the driver’s seat.

Kirsten sat for a moment before she spoke at her lap. “I adopted him… or… about to adopt him. You could―”

“We’re almost at the starport. You ever fly on a DS4?”

“Sorry. No. Just a DS2.”

“The fours give a better ride. They’re about quadruple the size and can jump. Largest deep-space vessel that can breach atmosphere.”

“Seems like overkill for a Moon hop.” Kirsten stuffed her NetMini back in a pocket.

“Fastest way up there.”

They drifted forward in their seats as the hovercar bled off speed. Kirsten grabbed the ‘oh-shit’ handle and held on for dear life as Nina whipped through a series of turns no human had the reaction time to cope with. Kirsten did not open her eyes until she heard the whine of ground wheels deploying.

The car landed on the pad, twenty yards away from a vessel the size of a three-story building. About fifty yards nose to tail, it had a shape akin to a fighter jet that went on a sumo diet. The front end extended out over a belly-door with a ramp leading into a space capable of holding two DS2s or about a dozen armored vehicles.

Kirsten followed Nina up the ramp, boots clanking, to a narrow metal ladder on the side of the otherwise empty vehicle bay. A short climb through a narrow vertical shaft led to a hallway on the top floor. Staterooms and bunks were to the right, a small ready room to the left, beyond which the cockpit was visible.

Nina moved to the lounge, past a few personal weapon lockers, and flopped in a seat between two Marines. Kirsten shivered at the sight of them, though these men and women seemed many degrees more welcoming than Gerard’s team. Kirsten forced a pleasant smile as she found a place to sit. Noticing a food reassembler on a small counter, she pointed as the room vibrated.

“Does that thing make coffee?”

aramount City struck Kirsten as underwhelming. Unadorned plastisteel structures clustered together under a massive dome, hiding from the blackness of space. Some appeared like buildings, while most had a look halfway between crashed spaceship and ancient drop pod. She sat next to Nina in the rear row of a six-wheeled open-top transport. A dozen Marines filled the rest of the spaces. She looked around at the squalor. Rag-clad people near the starport, ranging in age from six to sixty, begged tourists for help, food, and money.

A distant gleaming sliver of jade divided the city in half, as tall as the center of the dome. The Senate Chambers, and approximately six square miles of ‘upper class’ living around it, stood in harsh contrast to the outer rim. It seemed the farther away from the center you lived, the poorer you were.

She looked up, past the heavy laser cannon barrel hovering over the passengers. The Earth hung amid the darkness, a striated blue-white marble far larger than anything Kirsten had ever seen in the ‘sky.’ Bleakness spread out before her; the city housing the UCF Senate had the mood of a grey zone, without all the broken buildings.

“Why are there little kids begging at the starport?”

“Their parents refuse to sign on for habitat reassignment,” said one of the Marines.

“You want to force them to move to colonies? Why doesn’t the government at least take care of the kids like on Earth?”

“No one sees them up here,” said Nina, her tone flat. “They look and act in worse shape than they are. The whole thing is a propaganda campaign put on by the MLF.”

Kirsten squinted. “Why would the Martian Liberation Front act on the Moon?”

The Marines shifted, keen on what Nina would say next.

“Their goal is to divest Mars from Earth government. The UCF is part of Earth government. They would like to foment discontent within the UCF to weaken our resolve on Mars.”

With a belabored electronic moan, the rover slowed and pulled into a parking space. The building seemed unremarkable, five stories of tiny, narrow windows that could have been either an apartment or an office.

“I need a few minutes to coordinate with the local infrastructure,” said Nina, as she vaulted out of the rover. “Wait here.”

Kirsten climbed down over a tire that came up to her chin. Just as she let go of the boarding ladder, a fourteen-inch silver orb bot floated up to her. The iris within a glass dome whirred open, letting more green light out. The words “NewsNet: Lunar Edition” circled along the metal around the clear lens.

She held a hand up to shield her eyes from the light, and the orb backed up. The silhouette of a short-haired woman darted around the end of the military rover as the NewsNet’s Lunar correspondent ran up on her, as if trying to figure out where the bot had gone off to. A narrow audio pick up emerged from the top of the orb and angled to point at her.

“Amy Gordon, NewsNet. Can you tell me anything about why a member of the shadowy psionic police corps is on the Moon?”

“Shadowy?” Kirsten blinked, still squinting. “Where do you get that from? I’m assisting in the apprehension of a fugitive, just like any other cop.”

The Marines jumped down, moving to grab the reporter. Her hazel eyes narrowed, daring them to try it.

“Before the government censors the media, what do you have to say about reports psionics are taking over the government?”

Kirsten raised a hand at the Marines, who―much to her surprise―paused. “Look, first of all, psionics are not some kind of evil Devil-sent cult. We are people just like anyone else, with a few extra bells and whistles. Secondly, my organization is not ‘shadowy.’ There are too many closed-minded idiots out there looking for any excuse to lump everyone with mental abilities in the same bucket and label us all dangerous.”

Amy’s face shone with anticipation. Her lack of shrinking away from a psionic’s advance created a twinge of unease in Kirsten and took the defensive tone out of her voice. The vid-bot drifted in a slow panning circle. Its lights were harsh enough to make her squint.

“Are there bad psionics? Of course, they are human. There are bad humans, right? My department is here to deal with them. Ordinary criminals have guns, so society has other people with guns to stand between the nuts and the citizens. We’re no different. Being psionic does not make a person bad, no more than having a weapon immediately turns a person into a crazed murderer.”

The orb drifted closer, close to jabbing Kirsten in the head with the microphone. Ms. Gordon swatted at the orb, causing it to back off. “Paul, back off.”

Kirsten blinked. “You… named your camera bot, ‘Paul?’”

Amy shrugged. “It’s kind of got a personality… seemed like a good name for a little hyperactive bot that keeps generating more work for me. I had no idea you were here until he zoomed off.”

The bot waved at Amy with the mic boom. A little midair wobble came as close as it could get to radiating happiness.

“So are you, right now, doing something to my brain to make me like and trust psionics?”

Kirsten pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, I’m psionic, not religious. I don’t think less of people who disagree with me.”

“Is it true psionics have influenced the Senate?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

The reporter raised an eyebrow. “Division Zero does not have a large presence on the Moon, how can you be so certain?”

“Due to Senatorial security protocols, Lunar citizens are required to undergo psionic testing. Anyone with even mild scores is denied access to the government building.”

Amy tilted her head. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“Name a single minority group in human history that was ever happy about being the victim of stereotypes.”

“That’s not quite a fair comparison, Agent Wren. Historic minorities could not, by virtue of what they were, infiltrate the minds of others or force them to do things.”

“Miss Gordon,” said Nina, swooping around the back end of the rover amid a fluttering coat. “I’m afraid I must end this interview now.”

“The government can’t keep the citizens in the dark forever… whoever you are.”

Nina folded her arms. “Four.”

Amy leaned toward her. “What’s going on? Why was a psionic brought to the Moon?”

“Three.”

Paul the orb shuddered, gliding backwards.

The Marines moved around Kirsten, converging on the reporter. They seemed calm, almost apologetic.

“Fine, fine.” Amy backed off. A few yards away, she faced the bot. “I’m here at an undisclosed location in Paramount City, where government agents have just ordered me away from where they have brought a psionic to the seat of the United Coalition Front Senate. Are they up to something? Will someone’s brain get scrambled? We’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll be here when the grey matter flies. Coming up later: Meet Lieutenant Alton Lamar. Fifty-seven years ago, the jump drive on his exploration vessel malfunctioned. I’ll be there tonight for the emotional moment when the still-twenty-five year old naval officer is reunited with his eighty-one year old wife and an adult daughter who looks old enough to be his mother. But now, back to Kimberly on Earth with a great, inexpensive way to add some zing to an OmniSoy omelet.”

Kirsten jostled about as the rover got underway. She stared at the reporter, now teasing a future story about the latest way to die in your own kitchen. The green bobbing helmet just past the black headrest in front of her became mesmerizing. Within a minute, the overall melancholy within the rover came to a burdensome, claustrophobic head.

“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” said Nina.

The sound was so sudden Kirsten jumped. “W-what?”

Nina continued to stare forward. “I saw the look on your face. The reporter. I wouldn’t have hurt her. It’s not some big secret, Agent Wren. We just don’t have time to waste.”

“Oh.” Kirsten stared at pale hands upon black uniform-covered knees. Something about the lighting made her feel even whiter. “She was hoping you would. Wanted to get it on vid.”

“We’d cut the feed first.”

Kirsten shivered at the coldness from the woman to her left.

Nina smiled. “Just speaking theoretically. We only kill reporters when they point guns at us.”

Shimmering jade drifted through the near sky on the left; the senatorial tower looked like the only item of color in an otherwise black and white world.

Oh, yay. “Right. So, umm. Where are we going?”

“We have tracked Konstantin Dobrynin through the underground of Paramount. He has infiltrated an abandoned level of a disused defense department installation. Despite there being thirty meters of solid Moon rock between him and the Senate chamber, command is concerned about him being below it.”

“Below it?” Kirsten blinked. “What genius decided to put a military base right under the Senate building?”

“When the UCF was first getting set up on the Moon, it got as bad as Mars is now. ACC everywhere, open war. Paramount was the first settlement, and that base was the first installation. They built it underground because atmo fields were only theoretical back then, and the situation demanded an operational presence faster than it would take to construct a dome. We dug in, and they kept throwing all they could at us. Fortunately, a number of clandestine operations back on Earth caused enough damage to their launch facilities that it slowed them down. We were able to get the advantage on the Moon and they ultimately gave up. That’s probably why they’re fighting so hard on Mars.”

A twinge of unease made Kirsten grab her stomach. “I remember being in school and learning the ACC honored the old flag that went up hundreds of years ago.”

Nina glanced over, no readable emotion on her face. “What else did they teach you?”

Kirsten looked away, gazing out over the stark buildings and narrow streets. The dome above had darkened to compensate for sunlight, leaving the stars at the edge of visibility.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” said Nina, as she checked an immense handgun. “These are dangerous times, and there are far, far worse places to live than the UCF.”

The lesser of two evils is still evil. Kirsten took out her NetMini and stared into the black glass. What’s the alternative though? Living like tribals out in the Badlands? Out in the lawless colonies? “Yeah.” Her finger trailed over the surface, causing the holographic panel to appear. She had left it on the email, with images of Evan. Confident Konstantin posed no threat to him, she allowed herself to smile at his excitement playing with the patrol craft.

“Guess you like your car.”

She glanced at Nina with a lifted eyebrow. “These are of Evan.”

“Oh,” said Nina, leaning toward her. “I thought the car was the focus of the image, the boy is off to the side.”

Kirsten flipped through them, first to last and back again. Dammit! She’s right. They were scoping Dorian, not Evan. He knows about the car. Relief at Evan’s safety clashed with worry about Dorian, leaving her hands shaking.

Nina’s voice rambled over the comm., giving orders and arranging forces around the destination. At the same time, she spoke in the real world. “Fear or anger?”

The oddity of hearing her carry on two conversations at once caused a face that made Nina laugh.

“Uhh, yes. Both,” said Kirsten.

“We’re almost there. Here, you should see this.”

Nina took a wire out of a pocket, plugging one end into the back of her neck and the other into Kirsten’s NetMini. The Vidmail client vanished in a smear of pixels as a full-panel feed took over. The room in the image had the look of an empty garage, with enough space for numerous armored vehicles among reinforced pillars. Silver markings, a familiar circle, surrounded a dark metal disc at the center, which was likely an old lift platform. Within the ring, a pentagram filled with ancient writing, unreadable from the ceiling-mounted camera, shimmered in the light of five candles. Around the center, five dingy jumpsuit-clad people hung from handcuffs on the columns. Two women and three men writhed as though energy flowed through them. None appeared cognizant of their surroundings, as if sharing a mutual pleasant dream.

Konstantin paced at the edge of the circle, adding a symbol here or a pinch of silver powder there. Bile rose in the back of her throat at the sight of the elderly man. She squirmed, attempting to force away the memory of that rough hand sliding up inside her legs.

“I agree. Looks like a clusterfuck in there.”

Heat fell over Kirsten’s face like a curtain. “Uhh, yeah.”

“You alright?”

Kirsten looked away, blushing harder. “Fine.”

“Well, I ain’t psych, but I can tell something’s not right. Are you going to have any hesitation in there?”

Shame morphed to anger. Kirsten glared forward. “No. I don’t think so. In fact, I can’t wait.”

“Good. He’s got some security people on the outside. They are unaware of our operatives already in position. As soon as we’re ready, we’ll neutralize them. How do you want to play the inside?”

Kirsten thought back to the Pentecostal church. “I’d prefer to go in alone. I’m not really too fond of the idea of having to deal with a Division Nine doll that’s been possessed by a demon.” She forced a weak smile. “No offense.”

Nina nodded. “I can’t say I believe you, but I’ll trust you for now.”

“What do you mean by neutralize?”

The Lieutenant glanced up and left, as if examining a screen only she could see. “There are eighteen sentries posted around an upper level maintenance corridor and five outside. We have shooters in position for a simultaneous kill.”

“Nina―sorry―Lieutenant, I don’t know if that would be a good idea. Whatever Kon―the bastard is doing, it feeds on ghosts. Killing them all might make my job harder.”

“It’s okay, Kirsten. Nina is fine. I owe you at least that for trying to help out with Vincent. Do you have anything concrete to base your opinion on?”

She’s smiling. Now I’m scared. A blur of motion went past Konstantin on the floating panel. “Nafiz. Two men inside, I should be able to handle them.” Kirsten rubbed her right wrist. Now that I’m off his damn leash. “Umm, no. They’ll be pretty weak ghosts at first. I guess I just don’t like killing.”

“Neither do I.” Nina stared up at the stars. “I hope I never do.”

Kirsten opened her mouth to speak, but lurched up in her seat as the vehicle pitched down at a forty-five degree angle on a long, curving ramp. Gleaming green went by in a flash on her right―the Senate Tower. It was visible for a mere second before a tunnel swallowed them. Whirring motors faded to silence as the driver let off speed, allowing gravity to take them forward. Four of the Marines stood in their seats, compact rifles at the ready. Seconds stretched to minutes in Kirsten’s mind. Anxiety over Dorian, fanned by the fires of feeling like a fifth wheel, set her leg bouncing.

“We are go on my mark,” said Nina over the comm. “Three, two, one… mark.”

The instant Nina said ‘mark’ lined up with the rover gliding in silence around the curve, coming into view of a door guarded by several men. A faint electronic noise, a rippling thrumming, came from in front as the Marines opened fire. Numerous separate voices said ‘target clear’ in rapid succession. Distant sizzles and a brief yelp echoed as the men standing by a pair of great armored doors twitched and hit the ground. Kirsten sent an apologetic frown at six ghosts stumbling around over smoking bodies. Their plain suits, much like the security team at Konstantin’s mansion, broke out in small fires.

“I hate these IR lasers,” said a gravelly voice over comm.

A woman replied. “Why’s that?”

“Winston likes the blood spatter from slugs,” said a different man.

“Yeah, but we need quiet,” said a female voice with an Asian accent.

“I got a knife for that.” Sinister, throaty chuckling made Kirsten’s spine twitch.

“You sure you still want to go in alone?”

Kirsten jumped at Nina’s voice. “Uhh, yeah. You’re watching right? Just come in if I need help.”

“Opening these doors will make a lot of noise and give away any surprise we have. However, there is a way you can get in.” Nina handed her a sleek military knife in a black nylon sheath. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

“As long as it’s not a closet, I should be okay.” She took the huge blade in both hands, grasping the rubberized grip. “A combat knife?” A whistle slid through her teeth when she pulled it an inch out of the sheath and noted the blade had the appearance of bluish glass. “Nano?”

“Call it a key.” Nina walked to the wall and peeled a section of metal paneling open with her bare fingers, exposing a large pipe. Nano claws sprang from her right hand. “Like this.”

Kirsten gulped at the sight of plastisteel bending like foil.

The doll punched the claws through the metal tube as though it were foam. A deft motion excised a plug just big enough for a body to slip through. Kirsten crept over, leaning into the hole and looking left and right. It was empty save for a thin strip of grime down the center. The reek of ancient air brought a dry tickle to her throat.

“Crawl until I tell you to stop. You’ll be right under them. Best get moving, I have a feeling those hostages aren’t intended to be used for negotiations.”

Kirsten clipped the knife to her belt and braced her hands on the sides of the hole. A quick jump and knee tuck brought her boots over the rim and she set her feet in the hollow pipe. After a brief glance at Nina, she shook her head and slid flat into the tube. “No, they’re sacrifices.”

Nina held out a set of goggles. “Need NV?”

Plain white light glowed from Kirsten’s eyes following a few seconds of concentration. The Marines leaned back as one unit.

Nina laughed. “I guess not.”

Lit by Darksight, the endless tube shimmered in wavering sepia. Despite it being quite stationary, the visual effect made her feel as though she crawled through a moving hose. Kirsten hardened her stare, pulling herself arm over arm forward. “Damn glad I don’t get motion sickness.” The pipe was so narrow she doubted she could have fit through it in tactical armor. For once, she appreciated how thin the I-Ops blacks were.

“I’m coming, Dorian. Hang on.”

The climb grew more difficult for a short distance, telling her she moved along an incline. It leveled off a few meters later when an end drifted within sight. Only the sound of her faint grunts and scuffing body accompanied her over the last thirty meters. What she thought was an end turned out to be an elbow which made a ninety-degree turn upward. She rolled on her back and dragged herself into a seated position, rocking back and forth to get her boots under her. Standing, she shifted around to face her original direction of travel and reached up to grab the bottom edge of the next section.

A dam of crystallized muck crunched at her touch, resulting in cold, greasy slime dribbling onto her face. Her squeak, what bit of a scream escaped before she clamped her mouth closed, reverberated in two directions. She huddled to the forward wall, shivering as the substance slid over her hair and down her back. The scent of metal filled the air.

At least it doesn’t stink like the sludge from the Beneath. She swallowed the urge to vomit from the sensation of touching it and pulled herself up. Once her hips cleared the edge, she leaned flat on her chest in the higher section. A boot to the wall propelled her forward, and she continued to crawl.

“Twenty more meters.”

Nina’s voice vibrating in her earbud made her jump. “Okay,” she whispered, voice quivering.

“What’s wrong?”

“I guess I don’t like being trapped in tight spaces.”

Nina grinned. “Who does?”

Movement was more difficult in this portion of pipe. Whatever substance dribbled all over her lubricated it to the point where her hands slid more than pulled her along. After a laborious several minutes, the nauseating sound of Konstantin’s voice murmured through the metal above her.

“Stop. No, back up six feet… There.”

Kirsten shimmied around to lie on her back, biting her lip. “There’s nothing here, just pipe.” She could not sit up, turn around, or run away from danger.

“Use the key I gave you.”

“Duh.” Kirsten wiped the sweat from her face with her right sleeve.

A hand on the Nano knife made her shiver. Sure, she had used a Nano-edged uti blade before, but the edge was tiny―barely two inches long―and encased in a protective shroud. It was meant to cut seat belts and rope. The sliver of transparent doom she stared through now was a good eleven inches of synthetic diamond. A military weapon of last resort―something the police weren’t even permitted to carry on Earth. I wonder if it’s really true the edge is only a single atom wide. Sounds like marketing bullshit. She stuck the tip in the pipe over her head and braced her left hand under the handle. Grunting, she shoved the blade up to the hilt through the half-inch thick metal.

Holy shit.

With extreme care, she pushed the knife forward. Stabbing proved far easier than cutting―at least, to someone of her strength. However, cut she did. She rocked the handle back and forth, inch by tedious inch. A surrealist’s impression of an oval fell onto her when she connected the line, pinning her under twenty pounds of plastisteel. Fortunately, her body muffled the sound of its descent. She propped up the slab with one hand while her other trembling arm put the combat knife back in the scabbard. As soon as a reassuring click said she was no longer in danger of sneezing and lopping off her own arm, she resumed breathing.

Kirsten worked the cutout past her head, easing it down and pushing it out of her way. Squares of light gleamed above, some manner of grating. It blinded her until she released the astral sight. The urge to rub her eyes was strong, but the ooze all over her hands made her hesitate. Pale fingers threaded over the edges of the pipe above, and she pulled herself up through the hole. Sliding her boots underneath her, she squatted in a space just tall enough. Feet in the pipe, her hair teased at the underside of a metal grating. Now she understood why Nina had been so precise with her position.

She was under a four-wheeled moon rover left over from when the installation was operational. Its shadow kept her out of sight in a drainage trench meant to catch spills or runoff fluids from vehicle maintenance. Judging by the discolored wall in front of her, she would have been neck-deep in lubricant years ago.

Lifting a section of grate, she eased it to the side and slipped into the room with a belly crawl that took her out from under the rover and behind a mass of boxes covered in grey tarpaulin. Konstantin paced at the edge of the pentagram, orbiting a metal podium that held two datapads and some old papers. Gleaming light caught her eye amid the strange writing. The fist-sized violet gem lay at the center of the glyph, still pulsing.

The gem didn’t show up on vid.
That’s really weird.

Energy surrounded it―the presence of souls. She could not help but stare, hearing whispery voices begging to be set free. Amid the wailing and crying, one stood out as different―cursing.

Dorian.

Kirsten almost leapt over the boxes, but hesitated as Nafiz approached bearing the black mask. She tugged her E-90 out of the holster and aimed. Shooting at Konstantin would go right through him and hit a dazed, black-haired woman dangling from a column. All of the hostages’ clothing had markings of Lunazoom, a trans-city tram system.

Her hand shook, putting that wrinkled, awful face right in the ring-dot sight. Shit. Konstantin, you bastard, I’m gonna make you pay for what you did to me.

“Mom, you should break Konstantin’s heart.”

She scowled as Evan’s words echoed through her memory. Breaking his heart is the least of his worries now, kiddo. Come on, you piece of shit, one step to the left.

Konstantin took the mask from Nafiz and held it aloft in both hands, chanting in some unknown language. The sight of his wrinkled skin burned red into Kirsten’s face, and she crept to the right in search of an angle. It did not chirp when the tip of her finger touched the trigger. She leaned to the right, finding the blue light no longer sliding up and down the barrel.

I didn’t forget to charge the E-mag. God dammit. She squeezed the release and caught the dead Meissner-cell, trading it for one from her belt. Still dead.
Oh, shit, whatever he’s doing is sucking power like Dorian can… just from everything. Fuck. It’s gotta be that gem. What did Kwadwó call it… the heart of Eannatum?

Feelings of blind idiocy slapped her into an open-mouthed gawk. Break Konstantin’s heart… He didn’t mean love… Oh, no. He really is a precog. I can’t tell anyone. Elation and worry sparred. Wait, no, this involves me. It could still just be strong emotional clairvoyance. She clung to the edge of the pile, leaning around the side and staring at the glimmering jewel. Lightheadedness came on as her feeble telekinesis gathered itself around the sense of the stone’s weight. When Konstantin looked away to bow at Nafiz, Kirsten let a surge of psionic energy go. The gem swiveled in place, wobbled up on end, and fell toward her. She strained, and the huge rock came bouncing, rolling, and skittering across the floor into her hand.

No sooner had she touched it than her head flooded with voices: two men wailing, two women screaming, and one man, Dorian, cursing. The emotions almost overwhelmed her, but she forced herself through it. Spectral winds whipped around her as if the Heart of Eannatum sensed her intent. Kirsten set the gem on the floor, bracing it with her left hand. The E-90’s handle bounced off it. The sound of the strike echoed. Konstantin looked over. Nafiz snarled; fortunately, the electronic firing circuit in his pistol was as dead as her weapon.

“Shit,” she rasped, dropping the laser and going for the Nano knife.

Holding the blade in both hands, she raised it over her head. The unnatural wind whipped her hair into her eyes.

“Nyet!” shouted Konstantin.

She did not even look at him as she drove the tip into the wobbling violet rock. The blade glanced off, digging into the steel ground and sending the gem sliding away. Dammit, how do I break this―

“You are too late,” howled Nafiz.

Kirsten looked up in time to catch a fist in the nose. The hit knocked her flat to the side; warm blood dribbled over her lip. He yanked a short vibro knife from his belt and tossed it to his left hand. She rolled on her back, crab-walking toward the gem. Her eyes flashed bright white; Nafiz reeled as though shot in the head. Coppery blood dripped onto her tongue as numbness throbbed through her cheek.

Nafiz wilted to his knees, staring into space. The mind blast left him swaying on his feet.

“Do not kill her, Nafiz!” shouted Konstantin, before throwing a pair of metal restraints into the side of the man’s head. When it knocked him cold, he roared. “Clumsy fool!”

Kirsten touched her face, staring at the blood on her fingers. The light came on in her head. Trembling with fear, she smeared it with extreme care over the side of the Nano knife. She concentrated; the red liquid flared to brilliant light and wisped off. With Nafiz out of it and Konstantin stomping toward her, she scrambled on all fours to the gem and drove the blade downward.

A sharp crack preceded a roaring explosion. She left the knife stuck in the floor and crossed both arms over her face to shield herself from a gale of spirit energy that flung stinging gemstone shards at her.

Dorian slid to a halt at her side as the naked ghosts of the four prior victims squeaked over the smooth metal. He sat up and gasped at her, surprise and relief in his eyes. For the tiniest instant, he seemed ready to yell at her for being blind, slow, or cutting it too close.

“Sorry I’m late; I was a little tied up on Earth.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but pointed past her. She whirled. Konstantin roared at her and the freed spirits, eyes bulging behind the mask, clenched fists shaking. With a primal howl, he yanked the ceremonial dagger from his belt and turned toward the nearest hostage. Nafiz moaned, clambering back to his feet and flinging his arms to the side. Three narrow, ten-inch blades slid through the knuckles of both hands and locked. Trickles of blood ran down each one.

Out of reflex, Kirsten aimed and squeezed a useless trigger. The woman at whom Konstantin charged remained delirious and unaware of death coming for her.

Kirsten screamed. “No!”

orian thrust his hand into the E-90, focusing. The blue lights flickered on into their endless march along the sides. The weapon spat a thin streak of laser. Kirsten’s frantic trigger clicking put a shot into Konstantin’s cheek. Sparks and smoke sizzled from the curved mask; the laser staggered him to a confused halt. The deranged maleficar’s glare shifted toward her, through smoke that poured from the eye holes.

Despite failing to pierce, the interaction of laser and paranormal artifact had left him stunned. For a few seconds, a thumbprint-sized patch glowed red-hot, searing his cheek. Kirsten recovered from the shock of her weapon coming back online, albeit with a meager eight percent charge.

Konstantin spun on the hostage, knife raised. Kirsten fired again without a word as Nafiz dove at her.

This time, the shot caught Konstantin in the left side. An azure line connected the E-90 to the far wall, through his chest, for just shy of a full second. Smoke and flames licked at the edges of a finger-wide tunnel through his body. Konstantin froze, the blade slipped from his grasp, and he sagged limp. A second later, he collapsed as blood squirted several feet in two directions. The mask bounced loose, clinging to his cheek by a strand of molten skin.

Nafiz tackled her, but a well-placed knee sent him sliding away before his claws tasted blood. Kirsten sat up as the near-skeletal man flipped over and sprang through the air, blades first. She lit off a blast from the E-90 in time to scorch his leg. He fell just short of her, claws sparking over the ground. She scooted backwards as he crawled, kicking at his arms to deflect blades. Armor panels in her boots stalled the tips; Kirsten snarled and twisted as she scampered. She thought of Brooke as she stomped him in the face, knocking him on his ass. Claws retracted as he cradled his bleeding nose. Kirsten pointed the E-90 at him one-handed, using the other to steady herself as she got back up.

“It’s over, Nafiz. Don’t make me shoot you.”

With the Russian dead, the five hostages came out of their hypnotic state. One by one, the realization they hung by their wrists in the middle of a garage hit them, and they shouted and struggled. The woman that Konstantin had meant to kill gaped at the dead man on the ground, screaming.

Nafiz peeled his red-stained hands away from his face and held them in a gesture of surrender. She met his wild stare; wet-looking black hair shimmered in the light. Deceit flashed in his thoughts. The words in Arabic she could not make sense of, the imagined feeling of a mechanism in his teeth came with the taste of something noxious. She cringed away a second before he leaned up, spraying clear liquid out of holes in his canine teeth. The attack missed hitting her in the face, instead saturating the upper chest of her uniform. Biting fumes robbed her of the ability to see anything but blobs of color.

Shink. Claws popped out.

Her mind had one proverbial foot in the door of his from eavesdropping on his surface thoughts. She did not need sight to aim a mind blast. White energy glowed from her bleary eyes as her psionic assault slapped all reason from Nafiz’s consciousness. Kirsten held her head. It ached from the re-use of her power so soon after overdoing it at the manor. The pain mixed with burning in her eyes, leaving her praying for death to escape the feeling of it all. She slumped to her knees and covered her face with both hands. Somewhere to her left, a body hit the ground, claws clattering.

“ Hey, get us out of these cuffs!” William Arris, or at least his ghost, shouted.

Kirsten pawed at her eyes, blinking through tears while trying to clear her skin of the toxic agent. I don’t even want to know what this would have done if it hit me in the face, the fumes are bad enough.

“Can she see us?” Alaina Munoz asked, hopping closer.

Kirsten’s sight returned a moment later, as if she looked through a blurry curtain. Dorian had helped the ghosts stand. All had died traumatic deaths while bound. Ugh, I think I’d rather face obliteration than eternity in handcuffs. She pondered an old East City spirit she once met and shivered.

The woman was trapped in crude wooden stocks from many centuries ago. The persistent binding was a product of the psyche, burned in due to a cruel execution for being a witch. Perhaps in the case of recent haunts, she might be able to help them change. Kirsten shook her head, blinking, wiping the last bits of chemical burn away.

“If any of you hear voices of your family calling you, go to them. If not, hop outside and I’ll help as much as I can once this scene is cleared. Yes, I can see you. Yes, I can hear you. No, I don’t have time right this second. I can’t remove the binders; they’re in your mind. You are uhh… ‘dressed’ like that because it is how you were at the moment of death. Stop thinking of yourself in that way and they will disappear. I’ll be outside in a few minutes.” She pointed at the door and retrieved the Nano knife from among violet crystal shards.

Nafiz moaned and sat up, snarling an Arabic word at her.

“Oh, fuck you too.” Kirsten frowned over the E-90 at him. “What did he call me?”

Dorian, still cringing, shook his head. “You really don’t want to know.”

Konstantin’s voice echoed, as if over loudspeakers, into a room-shaking roar. Lights faltered and distant electronic components exploded in a series of bangs. The venom fled Nafiz’s eyes, and he backed away from the pentagram. The Russian’s ghost formed from smoke leaking out of his remains, attempting to stand but stuck in a stoop―tethered to the mask by the same thread of skin holding it to the corpse. He pointed at Kirsten, loosing a furious barrage of Russian invectives. Nafiz gestured at Konstantin’s ghost, babbling. When the specter glared at him, he sprinted away, shrieking like a schoolboy.

Kirsten faced him. “You’re in my world now, Konnie.” She squinted. “Now it’s my turn to touch you in a bad place.”

She summoned the lash, letting it coil around her legs like a hungry pet snake.

Konstantin got angrier, but only for a few seconds. He looked up and down, and then howled―this time with pain. His legs skidded together, pants bunched around his shins as if a giant invisible fist seized him. After a look mixed of pleading and hatred, the ghost of Konstantin Dobrynin vanished through the floor. She ceased concentrating on the lash; the thread of energy dissipated from the tip, as if retracting into her arm.

“That’s not going to end well,” said Dorian.

“No…” Kirsten glanced around. “No, I don’t think it will.”

Dorian moved to her side. “The ritual demanded a sacrifice… I think we just fed it Konstantin.”

Every light in the ceiling exploded at once. Brilliant spark-showers rained throughout the massive garage, sending her shrieking for cover with arms over her head. The air at the center of the ritual circle shimmered as a nimbus of faint energy expanded. Dorian ignored the raining embers, shouting at the other ghosts to hop out of here as fast as they could. He yelled until the wave of paranormal energy smacked him to the ground.

Konstantin’s corpse shifted, sliding around in a wide circle and rising two feet off the ground. It skimmed the pentagram, head in line with the outer edge. After making a full circle, it rose and floated above the middle, upright. Flames from the candles shot upward into three-foot hissing jets. The Lunazoom workers all screamed. Dark smoke billowed up from the center of the glyph, forming into the silhouette of a massive humanoid cloud.

Kirsten’s fingers crept over the pile of metal boxes, soon followed by her face. The apparition reached to the sides, thrusting its chest forward. The floating corpse glided backwards into the smoke, wrapped by seeking tendrils of shadow until it was out of sight. At that instant, the mass of vapor solidified into jet-black flesh, glistening and scaled.

To Kirsten’s horror, its face took on a nauseating familiarity as it absorbed Konstantin’s essence. He had completed the ritual, though not the way he had hoped. Rather than having control over a powerful spirit of the Abyss, it had consumed him and stepped into the world with free rein.

“Oh, he’s going to be a ball of happiness,” said Dorian. “Any ideas, or are we screwed?”

Faint trails of grey energy, like a fluttering cigarette ember, trailed from each captive into the huge demon.

Kirsten shivered. “I think it is gonna siphon their spirits. Did you have to use that particular expression?”

His face fell into a mask of apology. “I had no idea… I’m sor―”

“It was just his hand…” Her face reddened. “What he did to my head is worse.” She held up the knife, letting the light play off the edge for a second before she offered it to Dorian. “Here. Get the people out. I’m the one that should be sorry”―she glanced at him―“for not believing you.”

Dorian clasped the bound knife, squeezing her hand into the soft grip. “You couldn’t believe me. He had you enthralled. I knew it wasn’t you talking.”

Kirsten vaulted the boxes as Dorian ran through them, holding the knife over his head to clear the top. The demon drew back a handful of claws, ready to slay one of the men who had fainted at the sight of it. She projected the lash a second after landing, attracting a hateful glare from the creature. Dorian snuck around to the left, making odd faces because he had to use physical cover to stay hidden. The creature backed away from the helpless man, facing her with one room-shaking step.

She held her head high, staring it down. “You know what this is, don’t you, bastard? You can feel it.” Holy shit, this thing is huge. I wonder if this monster is strong enough to attract direct intervention. A shiver ran through her. Maybe if I fail. She thought of Evan. I can’t.

It leaned back, rattling the room with a laugh.

The sound of mirth melted into a roar when she caught it in the chest. The lash scored a pale burn mark over its chest. Her arm throbbed from the connection to such power. It staggered, almost to a knee, while Kirsten clamped her hand to her right bicep in an effort to dull the ache.

“Hurt, didn’t it?” She scooted back. “You shouldn’t have made yourself look like him.”

It charged. She swerved under a clawed arm. Talons peeled several plates out of the floor as easily as fingernails on foil. It swung again and she somersaulted into a sprint.

Dorian darted out from cover, headed for the trapped civilians. A screaming woman in dingy worker coveralls went silent at the sight of a floating knife. When it continued to weave closer to her, she sobbed and begged for her life.

Annoyed, Dorian forced his voice into the mortal world. “What do you think I’m trying to do? Calm down.”

A quick swipe of the synthetic diamond blade cut the chain. She dropped to the ground on all fours. He gestured with the knife in the direction of the exit, stabbing twice in a pointing motion.

Kirsten spun, running backwards just long enough to swing her energy whip before whirling to face forward again. This time, the abyssal leaned away from the attack and lunged. The impact of its fist, missing by inches, crumpled the ground and launched her a few feet into the air. She flailed, pitching over forward and coming down on her hands. Once more, she tumbled and slid under the buggy that hid her initial entry. Before she could take even one relieved breath, the demon clawed the front bumper and flung the rover aside. The almost six-thousand-pound vehicle spun into the air like a plastic toy. It smashed through a column, bending it, twenty yards away.

Crouched, she came up to the creature’s knee. It roared with both hands over its head. Claws came down. She leapt at it, diving through its legs as it shredded the floor. A section of pipe stuck to its claws, tearing loose as it righted itself.

The next nearest captive had already screamed his voice hoarse at the sight of the demon, and soiled himself when the floating knife approached. He ran whimpering after the first woman once Dorian cut him loose.

“Come on, come on,” shouted the other woman, two columns over. She rattled her binders, staring at the floating knife with desperation. “I don’t know what the fuck you are, but hurry the hell up.”

Dorian shot her a look and moved to the next-nearest person, one column away from her.

Kirsten spun, lashing across the back of the demon’s legs. It howled and fell to its knees. She leapt up, poised to whip it in the back, but did not see the tail swing around. A bony sphere, the color and gloss of onyx, caught her in the side of the head and sent her skidding and tumbling over the smooth metal. She rolled to a halt some distance away, too dizzy to figure out which way gravity pulled.

Pain shot in threads over the left side of her skull, warm blood tickled at her ear through the numbness. Rapid images flashed through her mind: Mother smashing her headfirst into the kitchen floor, a fistful of hair pounding her head against the fridge, the tub, the wall. Thanks, Mom. She shook off the disorientation and got to her knees. The grey streak across the creature’s chest was gone; it looked unhurt. Her second wind faltered.

In the distance, the third potential sacrifice tumbled away from the column and ran for the doors. I have to keep this thing’s attention away from them. Kirsten’s battle cry came out as more of a war-squeak as she charged. It swung its right arm in a wide arc; she weaved under it and dragged the energy tendril over its abdomen. If she dove through its legs again, it would turn and see the civilians getting away; the realization made her hesitate.

The left arm came around; she had no time to move. She focused on its supernatural presence, attempting to catch its attack with psionic ability. Its strength was overwhelming. While her effort kept its claws away, the impact of its presence on her mental power swatted her to the side. Kirsten’s body careened through the air, landing in an uncoordinated roll that left her spread-eagled on her chest some distance away.

Ow.

Her mind hurt, her body ached, and her nose would not stop bleeding. Her eyelids warred with her mind. There was no point; this thing was a true demon like Charazu, all the lash did was cause pain―not damage. It would be so easy to lie there on the nice, cold metal. Standing up again would only bring more agony.

Evan must be losing his mind right now. She sucked in a breath, and pushed herself up.

The second trapped woman held her hands apart, waiting for the knife. She strained with such force that when Dorian did free her, she smacked herself into the floor. With one hand on her face, she wobbled toward the exit. The last captive, a hulk of a man, had fainted. All three hundred and change pounds of him hung like a deer ready for cleaning.

The knife went through the plastisteel chain with a faint click and little discernible resistance. Once the man hit the ground, Dorian looked from the abyssal to the blade and grinned.

Kirsten eyed the fourth captive, tracking the woman until she ran out of sight down the access ramp. The energy thread connecting her to the demon faded away. Wondering if it had been leeching from them all along, she threw herself into another attack with renewed hope. She forced the memory of Konstantin’s hand to the forefront, sprinkled with anger at him manipulating her for so long.

The astral lash glimmered with emotion, growing brighter as she rounded it overhead and snapped the tip into the demon’s chest. Thunderous, a great booming crash resounded through the air as the strike launched the creature off its feet. It slid, squealing over the metal floor, until it came to a halt against a column and bent it. Kirsten took two steps, whirling at a sudden shriek as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over a man. Disregarding the odd noise, she advanced on the prone creature.

“Wren, what’s going on in there? Cams are out.” Nina’s voice crackled in her earbud. “We got one trying to get out of a service tunnel. What kind of idiot runs at a full squad with only claws?”

Bye, Nafiz. “He saw something he couldn’t handle. Hostages are clear, they’re inside the door. Open it, let them out, but stay back.”

“Sounds like a full-on war in there, are you sure?”

Kirsten whirled the lash into the air. “Yes, I’m sure. Your people really don’t want to see this.”

She slapped it across the face, bringing forth another deafening cry. The hit knocked the abyssal to the side; however, as it rolled, its tail caught her in the boots and pulled her feet out from under her. Kirsten went down flat on her back, unable to breathe. The demon sprang forward, driving its fist into the plastisteel just as she rolled up on one side. She bounced into the air from the impact, landing on her chest a few feet away.

It punched again, but she scrambled out of the way and got to her feet, ducking another wide-sweeping claw rake and jumping the low-swinging tail. She whipped the lash to the ready, but was unprepared for the sudden reversal of its attack. A back-of-the-knuckles slap, from a hand as tall as her torso, sent her flying onto a cart used to load missiles the size of caskets onto combat aircraft. Kirsten landed draped through two C-shaped rings. One hit her in the back, breaking a rib, and the other caught her legs; she dangled with her ass suspended above the body of the automated ordinance mover.

The ungainly pose left her helpless long enough for the demon to close the distance in a quick stride. Once again, the pale burns the lash caused had vanished. The distorted face of Konstantin laughed at her. Stuck in an awkward position, she could do little more than glare as it reached for her.

It stopped, claws only inches from her cheek. The demon gazed wide-eyed into space.

Dorian hung on its back, all his weight on the bound Nano knife. The weapon sliced through abyssal’s bone and muscle with little effort; however, the wound closed as fast as it opened. He traced a ten-inch deep cut through the creature’s body until his boots hit the ground.

“Damn, it’s restoring itself,” he said.

“It’s…” Kirsten rasped, and coughed. “Like Charazu. You think Konstantin will help translate the circle this time?” She tried to smile, blood leaked through her teeth.

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Dorian backed away as the demon turned on him. “I’m not sure if this knife hurt him enough to worry about, or if I just look tasty…”

Kirsten groaned. The pain of a broken rib flared as she strained to get the uncomfortable ring out of her armpits. The attempt to move hurt so much she let herself sag there, cradled in two unforgiving metal half-loops. A cough covered her mouth and neck with blood. No help lurked in the darkness of shattered lights overhead.

Where are they? Come on, this isn’t fair. This thing is too powerful for me. I need help. She wriggled again, aborting the motion with a whimper. The Seraph poked through because
Charazu did. This thing feels even stronger. Where are they? Kirsten wobbled, arms trapped by the strut as if it held her in some kind of full nelson. Only fatigue and pain kept her there, but at the moment, it was enough.

I don’t know this thing’s true name. I can’t read stick figures. It’s gonna kill me, eat Dorian, and destroy the Moon. She started to cry, but crying hurt too much as well. Nothing. No ‘guardian angel’ this time, no silver light.

Something warm and spongy poked her on the cheek. Time seemed to slow; the sounds of war faded to a meaningless, indistinct auditory blur.

Kirsten let gravity pull her head to the side. Evan, at least Astral-Evan, floated there. The silver cord ran from between his eyes into the floor. She stared at the glowing amber figure of a nude boy hovering at her side. His transparent energy-body shimmered with urgency.

“E-Evan? Is t-that really you, or am I slipping away?”

He grabbed her hand. “Mom, you’re scaring me. Stop it.”

“How did you get to the Moon?”

“I flew. Why are you napping?”

“How did you find the moon?”

“I wanted to go to you.”

Sound, pain, and the sense of how cold the air was all rushed into her mind at once. Time restarted. Kirsten flailed. “Evan, what are you doing here? There is a big demon, get out of here. It can hurt you.”

“I’m not leaving till you get up.”

“It’s gonna…” No Seraphim, I must be able to do something.

Kirsten reached up and grabbed the top of the C strut, lifting her weight off her back while screaming. Without the band snagged on her arms, she slipped forward until her butt found metal. Ow. Ow. Ow. Eyes closed, she lay as flat as possible and fumbled at her belt for a stimpak. Demonic roars and objects crashing about gave her an amusing mental play-by-play of a solid demon chasing her intangible partner. Heavy support equipment went skidding out of the way as it swatted obstacles he simply ran through.

Tingly warmth touched her left cheek as Evan kissed her. “Come home soon.”

Her fingers found the case release and slipped in around the beautiful red cylinders. She reached across her chest and stabbed herself under the right arm―a little too close to the break. Wailing, she clawed at the vehicle under her while the coldness of stim fluid spread through her side. It engulfed the pain; the synthetic adrenaline made her eyes wiggle in their sockets as nanobots swarmed to the site of trauma and knit her ribs. A faint crunch paralyzed her for a few seconds as a million tiny machines dragged rib bone back into place.

Dorian ran past, within five or six feet. “Incoming. Might want to consider moving.”

“Fuck.” She swung her left arm over, using the momentum to spill herself to the ground.

Astral-Evan spun, silently mouthing ‘oh shit’ as he got a good look at the creature. Sensing the soul of an innocent, it stopped in its tracks and drooled at him. Before it could move, he grabbed the silver thread and blurred out of sight.

Enraged at missing such a treat, the demon swatted the missile cart into the air as though it weighed nothing. It sailed through Dorian’s back, dragging him forward by virtue of the knife in his hand being solid. Momentum carried him into the floor when it landed, into a tumbling roll. Only four fingers hooked over the weapon’s grip remained in the room. The demon stomped over to it, but jumped back as Dorian sprang out of the ground. He slashed and stabbed, shortening two of the demon’s claws before it caught him with a downward left-handed rake.

His ghostly body smeared out to five or six times his usual height, turned into a puddle of ethereal vapor for a second, and came together with him face-down about ten yards from where he started.

Kirsten stood, favoring her right side, and forced the lash into existence as she stared at the demon. “I don’t think we can beat this thing without knowing its name.”

“Thanks for the reassuring words,” said Dorian, staggering upright.

“I think you’re right. Konnie won’t translate it for us.” She advanced.

The shifting energy of the lash attracted the creature’s attention. It towered over her, making little effort to hide its lack of concern for her weapon.

Kirsten drew her arm back, coiling the tendril. “I know who you are.”

With a sharp intake of breath, Kirsten tapped into her fear and rage. Every ounce of anger she felt at falling victim to Konstantin’s charms flowed into a blinding thread of blue-white light.

“Back to the abyss, Avarazel!”

The spoken name struck the abyssal with the force of a blow. It landed on one knee even before the two-handed lash opened it in a crossing slash from shoulder to hip. Kirsten spun, slashing the whip across its chest in a second swing.

“Begone from this world, Avarazel!” she screamed.

Anger at herself for almost giving up drove enough force through the lash to split the creature in half. Roaring disintegrated to gurgling. A detonation of hot, black ichor knocked her over. She slid and spun in the torrent, coming to a halt in a steaming pool of awfulness that soaked through her uniform.

It might have smelled of rotten eggs, were the stench not so overpowering her nose gave up trying to interpret it. She lay motionless, staring at the ten-foot-tall charred skeleton surrounded by hovering chunks of flesh that had blown away from it. Magmatic orange crept along the bones as the great demon flaked away into ash particles.

Dorian, acting like a ghost, floated over the tar pool to her side. She shifted to look at him, not even nauseated by the sensation of her hair sticking to the floor.

“How the hell did you figure out the damn thing’s name?”

“Heh.” Between the stickiness, her fatigue, and the lack of urgency, she could not sit up. She did manage to get a fingertip to her earbud. “Nina, you can come in now.” She let her head sag to face Dorian.

“How…” He blinked.

She closed her eyes. “Apparently, true demons have surface thoughts.”

van sat at the table, swinging his feet while shoveling cereal into his mouth. He did not care about neatness. Covered only by last night’s underwear, which would soon be in the wall-machine, he wore about as much OmniSoy milk as he drank. Kirsten smirked at him. He squinted in a ‘so what’ grin. Early morning orange sunlight shimmered through his spherical mop of shaggy, light brown hair. The soap-scented humidity of a recent shower clung to Kirsten; a little dampness lingered in her hair, out of reach of the tube’s dry cycle.

“Try to eat like a civilized human at least.”

He bubbled milk at her through his lips, breaking up into giggles only two seconds into the gesture. Kirsten laughed. The boy still vibrated with joy at her safe return from the Moon two days prior. He did not sleep at all the first night, likely due to a thirteen-hour nap caused by the tranquilizer Nila gave him while Kirsten was gone. She kept smiling, despite the serpent of guilt tangling her guts at the thought of what he went through. The timing of him needing to be knocked out coincided with his astral visit.

Cereal finished, he wiped his chest off and trudged to the bathroom. Briefs hit the rug on his way into the tube. After reaching up to poke the control screen, he closed his eyes and gripped the head-level railing. Warm jets of water sprayed him down, followed by the soapy mix, and then more water. Evan cheered as a rush of warm air came close to lifting him off his feet. When the turbines settled down and the safety lock disengaged from the door, he jumped from the tube to the small throw rug in an effort to avoid stepping on cold tiles.

Scooting the rug underfoot, he shimmied across the room, pausing to grab his dirty briefs, and climbed up on the sink to reach the white box. Dirty went in a hatch at the top, and clean, wrapped in plastic, came out the bottom. He pulled them on, wadded up the wrapper, and pushed open the bathroom door.

He stopped, dead in his tracks, gawking at Kirsten.

She smiled at him as he emerged; having donned a loose-fitting black dress uniform while he showered. The E-90 sat in its holster, affixed to a dark faux-leather belt rather than the usual silver. Her skirt ended just above the knee, plain and black just like the top. Gold rank insignia glimmered on both shoulders, matched by a pin on a folding cap. Rather than boots, she had shiny black kitten heels.

“You’re pretty,” he blurted.

Kirsten laughed. “Why, thank you.” She lifted a box from the bed, handing it to him. Before he could get too excited, she winked. “Don’t go through the roof, it’s just clothes. Get dressed.”

He smirked at the offering, but took it. “You said you were off work for a while.”

“I am. A whole month unless something crazy happens.”

Evan gave the uniform a suspicious squint as he went to the foot of the bed. He unpacked a long-sleeve charcoal-grey shirt with a high collar. Fabric loops clung to buttons from the shoulder to the hip to keep it closed. Still underweight for his age, he swam into it without undoing any of the fasteners except for the top two to get his head through.

A plain pair of black pants followed. Kirsten intervened, pulling the flaps of the shirt out and letting them hang. Evan emitted an odd squeak as the belt adjusted itself to his waist. The face he made set Kirsten laughing again.

“These are the same way,” she said, handing him a pair of dark, laceless shoes halfway between sneaker and dress shoe, and a pair of socks as well.

He dropped them, put on the socks, and looked back and forth between her and his new footwear.

“They won’t hurt, come on… we’re late.”

One foot tested one shoe. “Where are we going?” He held in the urge to squeal when it adjusted to fit. Since it did not hurt, he stepped into the other.

“Oh, just some official thing.” She took his hand and walked to the door.

He grinned. “They givin’ you an award for beating a demon?”

“Something like that.”

“Sounds boring.”

Kirsten’s lip quivered. “I’m sure it won’t be.”

Evan was quiet, but grinned the entire ride to the Police Administration Complex. After a bit of concentration, Dorian had managed to shift his appearance to his best memory of a dress uniform. He grinned as broadly as Evan as they walked through the parking deck to the elevator.

When they went right past the hallway that led to the school, Evan twisted to look at it, letting his weight dangle on Kirsten’s handhold. She tugged him upright, smiling.

“You don’t have to go to school today, Ev.”

His walking became bouncing, which faded to a cautious stride when they also went straight past the Division 0 wing without entering. Kirsten looked down at him when he squeezed her hand. The happy look on her face calmed him.

Several hallways later, Kirsten’s shoes clicked down a dark, marble-tiled corridor full of important-looking people. Evan leaned close to her, seemingly frightened by the expansive place full of people with grim expressions. She stopped by a door and took a seat on a bench against the wall. Evan hopped next to her, the light thuds of his heels on the seat drew some smiles and some annoyed looks.

Dorian sat to her left. Evan leaned forward, looking past her at the holographic panel floating by the door.

“Hearing Room 8?” He blinked. “Is the room listening to us?”

“Probably is,” said Dorian. “They have microphones everywhere.”

Kirsten’s laugh had more nervousness this time than mirth. “No, hon. People inside it are.”

A few minutes later, Danita Reed emerged from the crowd at the far end of the corridor, entering from the other direction, the West City Municipal Center. Her grey business suit was, as usual, clean and neat, and she kept a small case tucked under her left arm as she walked over.

“Oh, I thought you’d like to know. That girl you referred my way, Brooke? I managed to find a paternal aunt. Her father had a younger sister who is married with two of her own. The girl’s got some work ahead of her from a counseling standpoint, but she’s got a home. She wanted me to pass along her thanks for what you did for her.”

“She helped more than she knows. I don’t even want to consider what could have happened without her witnessing that…”

A familiar scent wafted past, a second before Kirsten’s father exuded through the wall. She choked up at the sight of him, smiling her thanks as she could not talk.

“They should be ready for us in a few minutes,” said Danita. “You look adorable, Evan.”

He blushed, fidgeting with his fancy shirt, sticking his finger through the small gap in the front of the collar to pull it off his neck.

The door to Hearing Room 8 opened. A white-haired older man in uniform, white shirt and black pants, nodded at Kirsten. She stood, holding Evan’s hand as she walked into a small courtroom and approached the single long table in front of the bench. A middle-aged Asian woman in a black robe offered a pleasant nod of greeting from behind her elevated desk. “Hon. Maria Yuen” glowed in gold letters along the top edge.

Once everyone settled in, she spoke. “Good morning, everyone.”

Captain Eze ducked through the door, offering a wincing smile. “Apologies, Your Honor, I was delayed by a meeting.” He moved at a brisk walk to the table.

“Are we expecting anyone else?” asked the judge.

“No, Your Honor,” said Danita. “Myself and Captain Eze are acting as witnesses.”

Evan twisted to stare up at her, Kirsten, Eze, Dorian, and back to Kirsten. He looked terrified.

Kirsten squeezed his hand and winked. The gesture would have calmed him if she wasn’t trembling.

“Very well.” A change on a concealed display bathed the judge’s face in lime green light. “I have reviewed the findings from the caseworker… That would be you, Ms. Reed”―the judge gestured at her― “as well as the findings of Dr. Loring, and the exhaustive communications of support from Captain Eze and even Chief Carter.” Judge Yuen raised an eyebrow. “I see no reason to delay this process any further.” She looked at Kirsten, as if looking over glasses that did not exist. “You have made the necessary arrangements as stipulated by Ms. Reed?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she rasped. Eze handed her a cup of water from the table. She took a sip, cleared her throat, and spoke again in a clear voice. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Good. In that case, my ruling is that Miss Kirsten Wren, holding the rank of Agent (W4) in the Division Zero Bureau of the National Police Force, is hereby awarded custody of the minor born Evan Dawson.”

“Yay!” he cheered, bursting into joyous tears as he clamped his arms around his new mother.

That was too much for her. She sobbed as well.

Judge Yuen spotted something on her terminal and looked up. “There is one small issue.”

Kirsten’s heart almost stopped.

“The records are incomplete. The boy’s medical file does not contain an official date of birth.”

Danita leaned forward. “Your Honor, the child’s birth mother was off the grid. They were squatters living in an stolen apartment, no employment history. She did not deliver him in an approved medical facility. No records were made at the time.”

“Well, what’s your best guess?” asked the judge. “I have to put something in here. The boy needs a birthdate.”

Evan wriggled free from Kirsten’s arms enough to speak. “Judge lady, can it be the day she found me?” He looked between her and the judge. “I want my birthday to be the day she found me.”

Kirsten shuddered, clasping a hand over her face. Speechless, all she could do was squeeze him and sniffle, crying harder. Her father’s ghost put a hand on her shoulder. Dorian smiled, wider than she had ever seen him smile.

“I have no problem with that…” Judge Yuen gave the table an expectant look.

Danita flipped her case open and swiped her hand over a datapad. She went too far, having to back up two pages. “The inquest Agent Wren filed to terminate parental rights of the birth parent is 24180414A3. That puts it on April 14th, about six months ago. The boy is nine, so…”

“ April 14, 2409,” muttered the judge, while typing on noiseless holographic keys. “Done.” She tapped the desk with a gavel. “Congratulations, Agent Wren. This is a big responsibility, I hope you are prepared for it.”

She swallowed her emotion. “I am, Your Honor. I am.”

Evan draped himself through the gap between the front seats, grinning at everything. With the tension of the verdict gone, Kirsten’s mind-blast-tenderized brain throbbed. Despite the pain, she was still too elated to speak. It had taken her almost fifteen minutes to compose herself enough to drive after hearing Evan’s request for a birthdate.

He squinted at the NavMap. “Are we visiting Nila?”

Kirsten smiled at him.

“‘Kay. Shani was worried about you.” He slid into the back seat, making sputtering noises with his lips. “Prob’ly ‘cause I was acting like a spaz.”

“You were scared.” She nudged the patrol craft into a graceful descent, sliding in over the parking deck in search of a spot.

“Not gonna park on the pool this time?”

“Hush, you.”

He leapt through the gap into the front seat. “I wanna hit the button for the wheels!”

His finger found it before she could tell him it was okay. She set down in an open space, finding it a bit boring not to have to nudge the car between ventilation pumps or ducts. Landing on a flat, clear surface intended for hovercars felt… strange.

Evan followed her out through her door, holding hands as they walked past rows of civilian vehicles toward the building. He checked out a handful of expensive, sporty models and glanced back at the armored black behemoth with clear bar lights.

“Your car’s the coolest in the lot. Bet none of the other ones ran over a ghost-ninja.”

Kirsten giggled all the way to the elevator. Evan hit the button for the thirty-ninth floor. Kirsten squinted, pushing the one for the forty-first with telekinesis. He didn’t notice until the elevator stopped descending.

“Hey, why did we stop on this floor? Nila’s place is two more down.”

His expression went from quizzical to confused as Kirsten tugged his arm and led him out.

“Do we know someone else that lives here?”

“Yeah.”

“Do I know them?” He seemed gripped by a sudden bout of shyness.

“Yep.”

“Oh.” He discarded the bashful affect, following her in silence until they stopped at a door marked 4140. “Who lives here?”

Kirsten swiped at the hand-sized silver panel on the wall. The door opened. “We do.”

His jaw dropped.

She took a step through, leaning on the wall and grinning as a nine-year-old missile zoomed from room to room.

“It’s got two bathrooms,” he yelled during the brief instant he appeared in the hallway. “Do I get my own room?”

“Yes, sweetie.” She shoved away from the wall, walking through the living room area, past the kitchen, and down the hallway to the bedrooms.

“Whoa!” he gasped.

She found him leaning on the far wall of the master bedroom, a wall made three-fourths of window. The amber-hued glass created a balcony effect as the upper part angled into the wall, providing a four-foot deep space with only sky overhead. The bedroom had a stunning view of the city, streams of passing hovercar traffic, as well as a glittering train of advert bots.

He spun into a hug. “This is ours?”

“Yes,” she said as she picked him up, “but this is my room.”

She carried him into the hallway, stopping at the first door on the left and setting him on his feet just outside. Evan smiled and put his hand on the panel. The door slid open, and his jaw dropped for the second time.

The furniture, despite the requisite modern amenities such as a holo-terminal, appeared as if lifted from a Monwyn video. Two medieval tapestries hung on the far wall opposite a reality-enhanced window that replaced the outside with a rolling forest, complete with wizard’s tower and the occasional passing dragon. A novelty holo-projector created false cobwebs, castle-stone texture on the walls, and random creepy-crawlies scuttling in the shadows. He ran in, circled the room once―touching everything―before grabbing a quarterstaff from the wall by the bed and sitting with it across his lap.

“This is awesome!” he cheered, holding his arms over his head.

She pulled her hand out from behind her back. He gawked at the holodisk case bearing Monwyn’s face.

“Is… that… Lure of Shadows?” He almost dropped the staff. “That… just came out.”

“Wanna watch it?”

He raced past her. “I’ll make the popcorn”

irsten studied the images of food gliding along above a silver rail, as if they were train cars on a track. Burgers of several shapes and sizes led the way, followed by a few things claiming to be chicken. Something unidentifiable, labeled fish, brought up the end of the chain after some hand-snacks like nuggets or fried pickle chips. Every time she ducked into a CyberBurger, she never failed to wonder at how OmniSoy could taste like so many different things.

Sam Chang rubbed his chin, oblivious to the impatient stare from a Class 1 doll on the far side of the register. The ersatz teen could not help but smile at him, a corporate-polished face that had no range of emotion other than cloying pleasantry. A potbellied man behind them, white button-down shirt marked with years-old coffee stains, stood up on tiptoe to wave over Sam at the doll. Kirsten glanced at the thick, twitching moustache on his face as he searched for the courage to speak. Her eyes fell to a gold nameplate hanging from his coffee-stained pocket with the logo of the Imperial Hotel on it: Milton Swanson – Senior Network Administrator.

“Umm, excuse me…” he whispered, waving the tips of his fingers at Sam’s back. When no one noticed him, he looked at the floor and muttered under his breath. “I’m on lunch break. I only get forty-five minutes for lunch break. I’m going to be late because this man cannot place his order. Why do they only give us forty-five minutes for lunch? I’m the head of the network operations team. I should get more than forty-five minutes for lunch. I’m going to talk to Courtney in HR. This is not acceptable. I should get more than that since I’ve been there for six years now. It’s shameful how they treat their employees. Shameful.”

Kirsten leaned on Sam’s shoulder. “Just pick something, it’s all the same stuff.”

Sam bit his lip. “I can’t decide what flavor milkshake to get.”

She stared into the kitchen, mind lost for a moment, until she remembered something Evan said over a week ago. She winked at him, grinning. “Get strawberry.”

Orders in hand, they each went around Milton on a different side, leaving the mad mumbler free to approach the counter. Sam took a seat, stiff and uncomfortable, at one of the small red plastic tables by the front window. As Kirsten settled down across from him, still smiling, she got into a staring contest with an old man leaning on a broom.

Like an Old West showdown, he dared her to drop one thing on the floor. Bushy eyebrows quivered over narrowing eyes. Just one French fry, I dare you.

“What the hell is his problem?” She looked away, blinking.

Sam barely noticed him. “Sorry, I know this isn’t the kind of place you’re used to going.”

Kirsten suppressed the urge to feel sick at the thought of the ice swan and the man that took her there. She did not feel out of her element in this place. Here, she was just an ordinary young woman out on her first date with an ordinary young man. The elite could go to hell.

She reached across the table to hold his hand. “No, Sam, it’s fine. It’s more than fine. I’m sorry it took me so long to see it.”

He blushed, unable to keep eye contact. “You shouldn’t be sorry; I still can’t believe a girl like you even looked at me twice.”

“You’d be surprised how difficult it’s been finding someone who isn’t a shallow, judgmental prick. You’re a sweet guy, Sam, but I have to do this to you.”

Samuel Chang seemed about to cry.

“I’m psionic.”

He furrowed his brow, eyes shifting left to right. “Umm… yeah. You’re in Division Zero right? Isn’t that like, required?”

Kirsten leaned over the table, pushed his milkshake to the side, and kissed him.

She loved the taste of strawberry.

Many thanks to:

You, for reading Division Zero: Thrall. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

The Curiosity Quills staff for making this book possible.

Erika Galpin, for a wonderful job editing.

Mollie for great proofreading feedback.

Andrew from CQ for putting up with my endless revising.

Alexandria Thompson, for the superb covers.

Born in a little town known as South Amboy NJ in 1973, Matthew has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Somewhere between fifteen to eighteen of them spent developing the world in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, and The Awakened Series take place. He has several other projects in the works as well as a collaborative science fiction endeavor with author Tony Healey.

Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, Gamemaster for two custom systems (Chronicles of Eldrinaath [Fantasy] and Divergent Fates [Sci Fi], and a fan of anime, British humour (<- deliberate), and intellectual science fiction that questions the nature of reality, life, and what happens after it.

He is also fond of cats.

Now that you have completed this book, we hope you will leave a review so that other readers may benefit from your perspective. Authors like Matthew Cox live and die by your reviews, after all!

Please visit http://curiosityquills.com/reader-survey/ to share your reading experience with the author of this book!

Prophet of the Badlands, by Matthew Cox
(http://bit.ly/1J6UmFa)

For most twelve year olds, being kidnapped is terrifying. For Althea, it’s just Tuesday. Her power to heal the wounded and cleanse the sick makes her a hunted commodity in the Badlands, a place devoid of technology where the strong write laws in blood. For as long as she can remember, they always come, they always take her, and she lets them.

Wandering after an escape, she is found by a loving family who helps her find the courage to defend herself. Her newfound resolve is tested by an ancient evil, and a dangerous man bent on exploiting her abilities.

Virtual Immortality, by Matthew Cox
(http://bit.ly/1hSXIMP)

Nina Duchenne walked away from a perfect life to pursue a noble idea, but one tragic night shatters her dreams.

Joey Dillon lives on a perpetual adrenaline rush. A self-styled cyber cowboy chasing thrills wherever he can find them, he is unconcerned with what will happen twenty minutes into the future.

Voices from beyond the grave distract Nina from her pursuit of two international terrorists, and send Joey on a mission to find out who is playing games. Joey falls square in her sights with the fate of the entire West City, as well as Nina’s humanity, at risk.

Operation Chimera, by Tony Healey & Matthew Cox
(http://bit.ly/1jEYQ4F)

Generations of war with the savage Draxx have left humanity desperate for a way to gain the upper hand. A chance to turn the tide in their favor is all legendary Captain Nicholas Driscoll needs to hear to lead an expedition behind enemy lines to the Chimera Nebula - a region of space so unstable it remains largely uncharted.

Lieutenant Michael Summers sees an opportunity to matter, a chance to let future generations exist in a universe without constant war. He and other brave young cadets join the Manhattan for its first dangerous mission - to penetrate the Chimera Nebula and discover what it is the Draxx are doing in there. But first the ship and her crew will be tested by enemies both outside and within …

Shadow of a Dead Star, by Michael Shean
(http://j.mp/17VBzuW)

As an agent of the Industrial Security Bureau, it is Thomas Walken’s duty to keep the city of Seattle free of black-market technology. But when a trio of living sex-dolls he has recently intercepted are stolen from custody, Walken finds himself seeking a great deal more than just contraband.

He will be forced to use his skills and preternatural instincts to try and keep his career, his freedom, and his life.

The Actuator 1: Fractured Earth, by James Wymore & Aiden James
(http://j.mp/1eyuK4P)

On a secret military base tucked in a remote desert mountain, a dangerous machine lies hidden from the American public. Known as“The Actuator”, this machine is capable of transforming entire communities into alternate realities.

Meanwhile, an unknown saboteur dismantles the dampeners. The affect is catastrophic. The entire world is plunged into chaos, and familiar landscapes become a deadly patchwork of genre horrors. It’s up to Red McLaren and his band to set things right again. They must survive their journey through the various realms that separate them from the Actuator, where ever-present orcs, aliens, pirates, and vampires seek to destroy them.

The Department of Magic, by Rod Kierkegaard, Jr.
(http://bit.ly/1sW4AA6)

Magic is nothing like it seems in children’s books. It’s dark and bloody and sexual—and requires its own semi-mythical branch of the US Federal Government to safeguard citizens against ever present supernatural threats.

Join Jasmine Farah and Rocco di Angelo—a pair of wet-behind-the-ears recruits of The Department of Magic—on a nightmare gallop through a world of ghosts, spooks, vampires, and demons, and the minions of South American and Voodoo god shell-bent on destroying all humanity in the year 2012.

Appetizer:

- Book Cover

- Title Page

Main Course:

- Chapter One: Stalked

- Chapter Two: Portend

- Chapter Three: Monwyn the Small

- Chapter Four: Vanished

- Chapter Five: Withered

- Chapter Six: Duty

- Chapter Seven: Out of the Closet

- Chapter Eight: Among the Devouring

- Chapter Nine: Easy Pray

- Chapter Ten: Killer Offer

- Chapter Eleven: Decadenz

- Chapter Twelve: Laser Tag

- Chapter Thirteen: Going Tactical

- Chapter Fourteen: Material Possessions

- Chapter Fifteen: Mandatory Coping

- Chapter Sixteen: A Suggestion of Impropriety

- Chapter Seventeen: Week Argument

- Chapter Eighteen: Jurisdiction

- Chapter Nineteen: Green-Eyed Monster

- Chapter Twenty: Checking Out

- Chapter Twenty-One: Bad Memories

- Chapter Twenty-Two: Cold Truth

- Chapter Twenty-Three: Confession

- Chapter Twenty-Four: Connections

- Chapter Twenty-Five: Invasion

- Chapter Twenty-Six: Mental Notes

- Chapter Twenty-Seven: Helping Hand

- Chapter Twenty-Eight: Misplaced

- Chapter Twenty-Nine: Grey Area

- Chapter Thirty: Dragons

- Chapter Thirty-One: Want

- Chapter Thirty-Two: Said the Spider

- Chapter Thirty-Three: Premonition

- Chapter Thirty-Four: Princess Alsbeth

- Chapter Thirty-Five: Sorceress

- Chapter Thirty-Six: Worst Fears

- Chapter Thirty-Seven: Cat and Mouse

- Chapter Thirty-Eight: Sanctuary

- Chapter Thirty-Nine: Charter to Miami

- Chapter Forty: Historical Influence

- Chapter Forty-One: Decommissioned

- Chapter Forty-Two: Paramount

- Chapter Forty-Three: The Ritual

- Chapter Forty-Four: Ancient Evil

- Chapter Forty-Five: Family

- Chapter Forty-Six: High Society

Dessert:

- Acknowledgements

- Closing

- About the Author

- Copyright & Publisher

- More from Curiosity Quills Press

Table of Contents

Copyright & Publisher

Title Page

Chapter One: Stalked

Chapter Two: Portend

Chapter Three: Monwyn the Small

Chapter Four: Vanished

Chapter Five: Withered

Chapter Six: Duty

Chapter Seven: Out of the Closet

Chapter Eight: Among the Devouring

Chapter Nine: Easy Pray

Chapter Ten: Killer Offer

Chapter Eleven: Decadenz

Chapter Twelve: Laser Tag

Chapter Thirteen: Going Tactical

Chapter Fourteen: Material Possessions

Chapter Fifteen: Mandatory Coping

Chapter Sixteen: A Suggestion of Impropriety

Chapter Seventeen: Week Argument

Chapter Eighteen: Jurisdiction

Chapter Nineteen: Green-Eyed Monster

Chapter Twenty: Checking Out

Chapter Twenty-One: Bad Memories

Chapter Twenty-Two: Cold Truth

Chapter Twenty-Three: Confession

Chapter Twenty-Four: Connections

Chapter Twenty-Five: Invasion

Chapter Twenty-Six: Mental Notes

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Helping Hand

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Misplaced

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Grey Area

Chapter Thirty: Dragons

Chapter Thirty-One: Want

Chapter Thirty-Two: Said the Spider

Chapter Thirty-Three: Premonition

Chapter Thirty-Four: Princess Alsbeth

Chapter Thirty-Five: Sorceress

Chapter Thirty-Six: Worst Fears

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Cat and Mouse

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Sanctuary

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Charter to Miami

Chapter Forty: Historical Influence

Chapter Forty-One: Decommissioned

Chapter Forty-Two: Paramount

Chapter Forty-Three: The Ritual

Chapter Forty-Four: Ancient Evil

Chapter Forty-Five: Family

Chapter Forty-Six: High Society

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Thank You for Reading

More from Curiosity Quills Press

Table of Contents