Division Zero (21 page)

“Police, open the door!”

I probably should have called for backup. Dammit, Dorian, the stupid car will be fine.

The yelling fell to silence. She closed her eyes, hoping she would not take a bullet through the wall. Stepping to the right out of the probable line of fire, she waited. The door creaked open in front of a man in his later thirties with an annoyed glare. He might have been naked, but she could not say given all the hair, and did not want to study the scenery.

“The fuck
you
want?” His words slurred upon breath that could bleach her eyebrows blonder.

She kept her gaze above his beltline. “Is there a boy living here named Evan?”

He laughed, mood changing on a dime. “What’d the little fucker do now?”

With a wag of her pistol, she advanced. “Back up. I’m not here because of what
he
did; I’m here because of what
you
are doing.”

The man spun and shouted into the apartment. “You fuckin’ bitch. The fuck did you call the goddamn pigs for you dumb cunt, puttin’ the little fucker in the back room was your damn idea.”

A semiconscious woman sprawled naked on the couch, painted with bruises and fumbling with an unlabeled air hypo. She had one foot on the floor and the other leg draped over the armrest, oblivious to the presence of a police officer. Bleary eyes told the world she flew quite high. Her left side shone lime and pink in light cast off from a holo bar tuned to some silly broadcast with dogs dancing on their hind legs.

“Hey!” Kirsten shouted as he stomped toward the woman.

At least he’s wearing briefs.

The man ignored Kirsten, raising a hand to add a few touch ups to his artwork.

“Hey, shithead. I said stop.”

She fired past his head into the wall. The woman had no reaction to either of them, engrossed in trying to get the safety cap off her injector.

Hopefully this won’t go through too many rooms.

A wisp of smoke rose from the drywall; the man froze. A few hairs above his right ear curled back from the brief blast of heat. He glanced at the smoldering hole in the wall before a slow, menacing turn brought his hateful gaze upon her. Several voices shouted curses as well as cries of ‘whoa’ and ‘what the hell was that’ from distant apartments. Kirsten cringed.

Oops. Sorry.

“Give a little girl a gun and she’s all kinds of tough.” He advanced as if it was now her turn to meet Mr. Fist.

“Don’t give me an excuse, you piece of shit. Sit down and shut up.” She waved at a chair with the pistol.

“Why don’t you put that thing away and make me.”

“
Sit down.
” Her eyes glowed for an instant and her voice echoed as if amplified.

His body convulsed and flopped into the chair as if shoved by a giant. His eyes bulged as he broke out in a cold sweat.

“Good boy, now don’t you dare move. If you force me to kill you, I get to do it twice.”

Pop
.

The safety cap fell away from the autoinjector and rolled down the woman’s stomach, vanishing into the couch between her legs. She kept fussing with it, not realizing. Kirsten shook her head with disgust and went into the rear of the apartment. At the end of the hall, she found a battered wooden chair propped under the knob of a small door. The thought of Evan locked in his room sent frigid dread through her muscles, remembering the closet. She sprinted, as desperate to get him out as she had been to escape. She booted the chair aside and pushed her way into a space littered with broken toys, trash, and random bits of debris. Tattered curtains drifted in the wind whistling in from a broken window, and small roaches darted about the threadbare rug. The mousy-haired boy’s gaunt body lay out on a bare mattress; his blue lips and unnaturally slow breathing made him look dead, more of his body covered by bruises than by torn, dingy cartoon briefs.

Kirsten seethed. “Evan? Are you…” She trailed off as she traced the thread coming out of the body to the floor a few feet away.

The glowing boy rose into view, looking away and down. Rifling through a small white dresser laying on its back, she found a few more pairs of briefs, one sock, and a scattering of roaches.

“She sold my stuff to buy more Stardust.”

He reached up and grabbed the silver thread. The instant he touched it, his apparition blurred into a streak of white that raced into his body. He drew a gasping breath and arched his back as every rib stretched visible through his skin. He curled onto his side, shuddering, re-acclimating himself to pain. Two wheezes later, he looked up with pleading wet, green eyes. The effort it took him not to cry made Kirsten tremble with pity and rage.

She crouched near him, easing a stimpak out of her belt case. When she flicked the safety cap off, Evan recoiled and scooted to the corner of the room in a ball. She held it out so he could see the medical cross.

“It’s a stimpak, not drugs. This will make the pain stop.”

“That’s what mom says.”

“Evan, I will never hurt you.”

Peering through his knees, he cowered until her soft coaxing won him over, and crept closer.

Trembling, he braced for it. “Will it hurt?”

“No, it feels cool and then a little tingly. I use them all the time.”

He gulped. She eased his shoulder forward and pressed the device into his back, as close to the freshest bruise as she could get without being on it. The discoloration lessened and he clung to her with a grateful smile. Not wanting to leave the empty where his mother could find it, she put it back in the case.

She scooped him into her lap, finally able to give him the hug she wanted to. It did not matter how bad he smelled or how sticky his hair was―he needed it. He shivered from the cold and from his fear of punishment.

She held him for a little while, glancing through the door at the sound of his stepfather growling in the other room in his effort to fight the compulsion to remain seated. She set Evan back on the mattress and stood up. He moved up on his knees, clamping bony arms around her thigh, not ready to be alone just yet. She patted him on the head, letting him cling for another minute before peeling his grip away and ruffling his hair.

We need to get out of here before that idiot forces me to do something I’ll regret.

“Evan, I need you to stay here. I’m going to find something to cover you and then we are leaving. I’m not sure how long that man is going to stay quiet, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He nodded through chattering teeth, wrapping his arms around his legs in a search for warmth. Kirsten scowled around at the room, not one useful scrap of cloth or anything resembling a blanket was here. Her glare hardened as she stood up. When she turned her back, the sniffling started. In the hope that his mother owned at least one useful garment, she walked into a room every bit the shambles she expected it to be. Pale shapes littered the wall, the ghosts of all the things sold to feed the habit. Kirsten disregarded the bedding, not wanting to touch any of the mysterious stains. Old autoinjectors covered the nightstand, recycled out of the trash and refilled with who-knows-what. As she stooped to pick up the cleanest-looking shirt she could find, a loud roar from behind caught her off guard.

The hairy man ran at her from the hallway and had her in a bear hug before she could get her E90 off her belt. He carried her across the bedroom, still screaming, intent on smashing her head into the wall. Raising her legs, she caught the impact with both feet in a crumble of drywall. Pushed into a squat, she avoided injury. She strained, but lacked the strength to shove him back or wriggle out of his grip. Her pinned arm could not reach the stun rod on her belt.

Stupid… Reckless… This is why we call for backup; this is why we restrain people.

He squeezed the air out of her lungs. A serene calm washed over her as she reached for the ‘big stick’ she hated to use. If ever anyone warranted it, this waste of humanity offered a prime candidate. She reached out with her mind, looking for his. A mass of chattering rage floated in the space behind her. Directing her power at it, she screamed with anger. Images of the boy’s battered body appeared in her head.

A tiny hand, burned and bleeding against a field of black, flashed in her mind; the last thing she saw before the room bleached itself of color. Her sapphire eyes faded to flat white as her scream amplified many times louder inside his head.

“You piece of shit!”

He staggered backwards as if smashed in the skull by a sledgehammer. He went limp on his feet and she slipped loose, falling straight down on her back. She rolled to her feet, eyes still white, and kept her stare aimed at him. This made only the second time in her life she’d mind blasted a living person, but she no longer regarded this man as human.

The little bleeding hand turned. Flaking pink nail polish glimmered as it moved up to shield her face from a fist.

“Bastard,” she hissed. Rage flooded over her and came out through her eyes as the light within pulsed. A little boy covered in bruises, all she saw. Her mother’s fist, all she felt.

The word ‘bastard’ repeated in his head, picking up in speed and intensity until the sound became a single painful tone rather than a word. He doubled over, blood gushing from his nose. The entire front of his face blackened from subdermal hemorrhage. The man collapsed to the ground and a dark stain seeped into the carpet from under his head. Kirsten stared down at him as the color returned to her eyes and her breathing slowed to normal. She trembled with rage, fear, and the dread of what she almost just did.

Oh shit, that was far too much. Please still be alive.

She checked his pulse and breathed a sigh of relief. A part of her hoped he would spend the rest of his life eating his meals through a straw. Even a person like Evan’s worthless mother did not deserve to suffer this man’s abuse. As a precaution, she pressed a stimpak into the back of his neck. The puddle ceased growing. She saw no point in cuffing him now; he would be out for hours.

Evan appeared, clinging to the doorjamb. His briefs threatened to slip off his malnourished body and his eyes locked upon the unconscious man.

He looked back and forth between them. “Holy shit, you whipped him!”

She felt even worse seeing a nine-year-old happy his stepfather had almost died, and scooped him into a hug as he ran over.

“Here.” She pulled the shirt from the floor over his head. “We’ll get you some proper clothes, some real food, and a shower once we get you to your new home.”

Evan followed her back to the living room where the woman remained on the couch in the same pose. The used autoinjector sat upon her stomach, rising and falling with her breaths. Now on Stardust in addition to whatever she had been on before, she had an animated conversation with a handful of paint chips. Evan refused to look, blushing at his disgrace of a mother. Kirsten held his hand in her left, and brought up the mother’s file via an address search. The holographic panel spread out in midair over her forearm guard, turning him blue on one side. Harsh artificial light made his ribs seem more sunken and his face more desperate. Kirsten squeezed his hand, poking one-fingered through the police database.

“Mrs. Dawson. By the authority vested in me by the United Coalition Front Police, Division 0, I hereby take your son, Evan Dawson, into protective custody and terminate your parental rights pursuant to pending inquest 24180414A3.”

Evan gulped at the official sounding speech. Kirsten patted him on the back. The woman acted oblivious to the statement, laughing at a joke told by one of the flakes. Kirsten recorded a holovid of the apartment, Evan’s bruises, and the remnants of his mother. She repeated the declaration into the vid, before taking him out into the hallway as she called a squad car and a MedVan to the apartment. Kirsten keyed in the report: attempted murder on an officer of the law, assault of the mother, assault of Evan, and as many endangerment charges as they could heap on.

He’ll step on something sharp
.

“C’mere, kiddo. This hallway’s too dirty for bare feet.” She picked him up, cradling him the way a mother should.

He held on, peering around her shoulder. “What’s gonna happen to Mick?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t use that power on people very often. He’ll probably just have a nasty headache, but he might…”

“Be a drooling vegetable?”

Kirsten made a strained grimace at his eager tone. “Uhh, yeah… I suppose that’s possible. But he’s a big man; I doubt it hit him too hard.” She tried to smile.

He deserved it for what he did to you.
She could already imagine Dorian telling her how dangerous a road vengeance could be to travel.
He’s right.

“What’s gonna happen to me?”

“Well.” Kirsten thought back to the night the police found her hiding in an alley. “First the medics will check you out. You’ll get some real food and right to bed after a shower. Tomorrow morning you’ll meet with some people who will see what your talents are as well as a psychiatrist.”

“I’m not nuts.” He deflated with a sigh.

“I know.” She tickled him. “They just want to be there for you to help you get used to things.”

“Okay.”

She carried him downstairs and back to the patrol craft. Evan waved at Dorian, leaning on the passenger door as they approached. Kirsten wrapped him in a blanket from the trunk and set him in the back seat, thrilled to see his shivering stopped.

“Sit tight. We’ll be there real soon.”

By the time she had walked around and gotten into the car, he had flown out of the blanket and gazed at the console with eyes and mouth open wide. He gawked at the biggest and coolest toy he had ever seen. His finger darted back and forth as he struggled to decide which gizmo to ask Dorian about or play with first.

The twenty minutes it took them to drive back to the dorm was the first time, in a long time, she devoted not a single bit of thought to her mother.