Division Zero (19 page)

fter what happened at the starport, Kirsten took the car home. Most of her peers did, so they could respond to emergency calls, though as she brought it to a landing on the roof she could not shake the nauseous feeling of doing something wrong.

“This doesn’t look like a landing port.” Dorian lifted an eyebrow.

“It isn’t. People that live here can’t afford hovercars, and it’s too wide for the parking deck downstairs. Hopefully Div 1 won’t wake me up at three in the morning and tell me to move.”

He laughed. “It’s an official vehicle, they’ll leave it alone.”

She let him join her for a while that night; happy to have someone to talk to even if she often found herself mentioning things she would rather keep secret. Kirsten shirked her gear and set it on the table by the door, falling into a chair with her shirt hanging open and kicking her boots to the side. A minute passed in silence.

Both spoke at the same time. “How are you holding up?”

Rock paper scissors happened with a stare; Kirsten lost.

“Haven’t seen Dad in a few days. I was mad at him for so long. I was fifteen and living in the dorm when he died… I never even saw him alive again after I ran away.”

Dorian reclined. “You didn’t see silver light; he’s probably giving you the space you asked for.”

“How’s Corporal Assad doing?”

He shifted in the seat, away from her glance. “Nila is fine.”

“That’s good. Are you?” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You never want to talk about yourself.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he grumbled with a dismissive wave. “She got hurt, took some time to collect herself. Her daughter got scared, it’s fine.”

“She’s
still
out on leave; it’s been over three years. You don’t blame yourself for that, do you?”

Dorian fixed her with a hard look, but relaxed. “Maybe a little. I shouldn’t have just pulled right up to the door like I did.” He pounded the armrest. “Stupid, overconfident rookie move.”

“Don’t agonize over it. She survived without having to get cybernetics.”

“Her spirit broke.” He sat forward, head in hand. “She lost her nerve. Nila isn’t the same woman I used to ride with.”

She winked. “You liked her, didn’t you?”

His anger eased to a wistful smile. “Yeah… I suppose I did.”

Kirsten snapped awake out of an unintended nap to find him gone. Alone, she stood up to undress with a lump forming in her throat, but froze at her father’s familiar scent in the air. She called out, but silence answered. With blurry eyes, she slipped out of her uniform, crawled into bed, and hugged her pillow.

“I love you, Dad. I’m sorry.”

he repeating pattern in the drab, beige ceiling became an alien landscape, a three dimensional illusion of unfocused eyes and a semiconscious mind. Time lost meaning and Kirsten could not tell how long she had been lying awake. With the car on the roof, not beholden to the PubTran schedule, she could take her time getting ready. She paused by the door and inhaled, searching for any trace of her father. With a disappointed sigh, she trudged to the elevator.

On the way to the squad room, Dorian teased her about sleep talking. Apparently, she had named her pillow Templeton. Red-faced, she turned away and fell into her chair with a hot pack of self-warming oatmeal and a hydroponic banana. She pored over the case notes while eating, finding nothing insightful. How little she could do about this ghost until he attacked again gnawed on her. Up until now, the wraiths she confronted had always raged at a particular place, usually the scene of their death, but this one struck all over the city. The crime scenes had little emotional trace evidence, which pointed to sociopathic randomness as a motive; a worst-case scenario. She leaned forward, elbow on desk and chin in hand, tapping her head with her fingers. Division 2 had been unable to turn up any connection between the malfunctioning dolls, and Division 1 had cleared a laundry list of over thirteen hundred possible suspects. In every case so far, the malfunctioning doll had been one of Intera manufacture, a fact that added ten thousand disgruntled ex-employees to the suspect pool. Kirsten scowled at the massive waste of time.

“What’s wrong?” inquired Dorian.

“This huge list of bullshit.” She gestured at the holo pane. “Div 1 won’t take me seriously. Why is it everyone believes in psionics, but they all laugh at the idea of ghosts?”

“For one thing, they can see psionics.” His chair creaked back. “For another, the thought of ghosts reminds them of their own mortality. The mind seeks to distance itself from uncomfortable subjects. Did you find anything?”

“The only thing I can say with any confidence is the next doll to kill someone will be made by Intera.”

Millions of Intera dolls dwelled in the West City alone, never mind the ones on the other coast or on Mars. Kirsten closed her eyes, finding herself wanting to ask for help from the Aether. By the time she remembered her half-eaten oatmeal, it had already congealed back into a slimy mass of OmniSoy.

“How’d the date go last week?” Nicole drifted over and sat down on a chair that rolled in position apparently of its own accord.

Kirsten shoved the bowl of glop into the trash. “Didn’t we already have this conversation? It went fine until I told him I was psionic. I practically had to take a fire-extinguisher to the restaurant floor.” She folded her arms on the desk and let her forehead fall onto them. “He even left me with the check.”

Nicole laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Better to get it out of the way now before you got attached to him.”

That’s what I told you.

She found Nicole’s dearth of short-term memory astounding, but lacked the energy to get into it now. “Yeah, I guess… He was kind of annoying anyway. Kept calling me cute, adorable, and I dunno, he just felt so patronizing.”

Dorian looked up from his reading with a smile. “You
are
cute and adorable.”

Kirsten let her head fall again.

“It’s not that bad.” Nicole patted her on the back. “You know there’s a lot of truth to what they say about Zero keeping it in the family.”

“Oh, that sounds so wrong.” Kirsten lifted her head, giggling. “What’s that in your hair, strawberry?”

“B-Gel. I just got out of the tank. Idiot got a shot off before I got the gun out of his hand.” Nicole showed off a small hole in her sleeve. “But I got a great vid cap.” She held up her NetMini, projecting a hologram of a man cross-eyed and gaping. “Gonna add him to the Wall of Derp.”

“Oh, my…”

“God?” injected Dorian, earning a glare.

“Are you alright?” Kirsten fussed over her friend.

“Yeah, I’m fine. The medtechs stitched me up.” Nicole jumped as Captain Eze’s door opened. “Shit, time to look busy.” She scurried over to her own desk.

Eze beckoned Kirsten over with a wave. After swiping her finger through her terminal to lock it, she followed him.

“We just received a report of unexplained activity at a parts shop, Cyberwave, over in sector 214. It may or may not be related, but I would like you to check it. If your ghost is fond of dolls, maybe he’s shopping for pieces.”

“Or maybe he’s drawing power from them. Any specifics?”

He offered a plaintive shrug. “Not much. It sounds like some items were powering on without being connected to anything, stuff moving around, poltergeist kind of activity.”

“Are you sure it’s not some pissed off telekinetic tween? Remember what Nicole did to the dorm after her parents got divorced?”

Nicole held up a middle finger from the back of the room.

Eze laughed. “How could I forget?” He walked around his desk and patted Kirsten on the shoulder. “The owner is adamant there were no customers in the place at the time, and said his dog went crazy barking. I know it’s a long shot but I would prefer the chance of having more to go on than just waiting for the next body.”

She stared into the glare of the ceiling lights on a row of tiny carved ritual masks lining the outer edge of the captain’s desk. “No problem, not like I have any plans.”
It’ll be my fault if someone else dies.

Concern spread over his face. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah.” She glanced down. “It’s just the ghost from the starport. I don’t want to die like that.”

He smiled. “I’m sure the odds of a Mars shuttle landing on you are quite low.”

“I mean… I don’t want to die and have no one around to care.” She looked away from his desk, studying the intricate line art of an illustrated elephant on the wall until the picture changed to a serene painting of a savannah.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Kirsten, you do have people who care about you.”

Despite the cheese of it, she found it comforting to listen to his ‘Division 0 is family’ spiel again. Officially her captain, sometimes he felt more like a big brother. One of these days, he ran the risk of a hug, even if it would look inappropriate.

Kirsten crossed her arms. “Thanks.”