Division Zero (41 page)

Kirsten held the skull with both hands in front of her face. Her mind strained in an attempt to concentrate at it in the way Ritchie described. He kept talking as she focused; guiding her as best as he could explain the trick to a non-ghost.

After the better part of an hour of listening to him talk, her arms went slack and let the old bone fall in her lap. She turned to admit defeat, but then she saw it. Ethereal fog hung in the air, like the contrail of a tiny rocket that spun out of the eye socket and into Ritchie’s chest. Holding it aloft, she sidestepped and moved away from him. The wispy trail stretched out and followed; difficult to discern in this dark place, all but impossible in daylight.

She let the effect fade and tried to recall it. After several repetitions, she felt satisfied. Placing the skull with gentle care back into its bag, she reburied it as she had found it.

“Thank you.” She leapt to hug Ritchie.

She passed right through him, finding the armload of floor she hugged rather ambivalent to her outpouring of emotion. Pushing herself up, she rolled to sit and looked down at the dust coating her from head to toe. Ritchie’s rasping whistle of laughter echoed as if on a loudspeaker. Her embarrassment faded and she grinned despite herself.

After a moment of concentration, she embraced him and weathered the presence of his smell. The acridness brought her last meal up into her throat, but she tried her best to ignore it. After all this time, he still smelled like a vagrant. Ritchie inhaled her scent deeply, savoring it with a euphoric face. She no longer smelled like a child; it had been such a long time since he had known a woman. He turned away before he touched her breast, ashamed of himself.

“You saved lives, Ritchie.”

He steeled himself, using the memory of the kid she used to be to calm down. “It’s not that much, what I showed you.” He grinned at a memory hiding somewhere in the ceiling. “Not as much fun as starting a rumor can be.”

“What?” She looked up at him. “What rumor?”

He offered a cheesy smile, shambling off. “Oh, nothin’ ye need pay any mind ta. What’s done be done.”

“I’m sure you’ll find your way out of the dark someday. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, please ask.”

He glanced at her chest, his eyes asking a question his mouth could not. He turned away and closed them. “Nae that. If’n I need ye, I’ll come find ye.”

he comforgel pad trapped her in a warm grasp, draining all the energy from her body. She spent a late night lingering in The Beneath and alleviating Ritchie’s loneliness for a time. Not a lot to do for a soul, but old men liked to talk and four-hundred-year-old men
really
liked to talk. The exhaustion from two late nights in a row filled her limbs with heaviness that kept her pinned to the bed. Thick plastic adhered to her from the sticky substance all over her body. The uncomfortable sensation of sticking everywhere reminded her she had slept naked, lacking the energy to even shower when she got home.

Kirsten propped herself up on her elbows and glanced at the holographic clock. The comforgel pad peeled away from her, feeling like it took skin with it, drawing forth a soundless scream. She wanted to cry out, but did not want the Division 6 men out in the hallway to kick in the door. The thought of their eyes upon her did not bother her as much as she expected it would, but there was no need to suffer that without good reason.

Noting the time at almost nine-thirty, she hoped Captain Eze would not give her a hard time once she explained the reason for her lateness.

A call from her NetMini rang twice before she realized she had just picked it up and dialed with no clothes on. She dove into the sheets; falling with a gelatinous splat as she rolled into the covers, the bleary look in her eyes replaced with wide-eyed panic at a near miss.

Her expression caused immediate laughter. “Good morning.” Captain Eze’s voice carried a cheerful cadence. “I see we are awake.”

“Sorry, I was up till three last night, but I found a way to track the son of a bitch.”

He grinned. “Good. I trust the security team is not getting in your way?”

“Oh, no, they’re fine. I haven’t heard any explosions yet this morning… maybe Intera gave up.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Come in when you can, I am eager to hear about your progress.” His holographic head collapsed into a point and winked out.

Hoping she had not blushed too much, she peeled her body off the slab once more. One ill-placed step on her way back up from The Beneath had submerged her in a brackish puddle of awfulness with a smell somewhere between rotting corpse and fermented blackberries; a reek that still clung to her, and turned her hair into a solid mass. The uniform sat amid an indigo puddle by the door. Her feet stuck to the ground as she padded over and picked it up with two fingers, pulling the oozing cloth parts away from the accessories.

A droid tapped at the window two minutes after she fiddled with her NetMini, just as she finished pouring the goo out of the various cases on her belt into the toilet. Delivery laundry service could be a lifesaver sometimes, even if it did cost a lot. From the open window, a blast of frigid outdoor air paralyzed her for a second and made her teeth chatter. She stuffed the squishy, befouled uniform into a small compartment in the droid and closed the hatch. The bot shuddered all of a sudden; no doubt compensating for the wind, but it amused her to think of it being repulsed by whatever had soaked into the fabric. She could not close the window fast enough, and folded her arms over her chest in an attempt to reclaim some body heat. The coating of filth and sensation of her sticky arms chased away any want of breakfast while thoughts of what it might be made of almost brought back last night’s dinner. She wanted warmth and soap.

Time for a shower.

She took a step toward the bathroom and found herself nose to nose with an attractive woman in her later thirties in a coral colored skirt-suit stained red by a cluster of bullet holes at the center of her chest.

Kirsten clamped both hands over her mouth to muffle a shriek of surprise. Her face turned crimson. After the initial shock ebbed, she rationalized it could be worse. At least it was not a male ghost―at least it was not Theodore.

“Make yourself decent, girl. I’ll wait.” The woman turned away. Her voice had a tone of superiority, as if she had been rich in life.

“Mind if I…” Kirsten motioned for the bathroom.

“I’m not going anywhere, my dear. Do what you have to.”

Kirsten sprinted through the door and infused a psionic blockade into the walls before jumping in the tube. As much as she wanted to stand there and enjoy the beautiful warm water, she had a guest as well as her Captain waiting on her. When she reached for a clean pack of undies from the machine, she gasped, horrified. Yesterday’s stuck to the wall above the sink where she had thrown them, trails of black slime in a snail-race for the drain. She imagined the white box on the wall begging her to throw them out.

She emerged from the bathroom wearing a shiver of disgust, and clean undies. The ghost turned with a pleasant smile. Her face had a familiar look; she was all over the Newsnet.

“Mrs. Talbot?”

“Very good. I trust you can infer why I am here?”

Following an impatient glance at the window, Kirsten collected the dirty underwear using the plastic wrapping from the clean set as a glove. She stuffed them into the top of the white box, patting it and apologizing. The machine whirred to life and filled the room with a soft thrum and the scent of detergent.

“I guess you saw me at the tower the other night?”

“Indeed.” She walked closer. “I won’t mince words. I don’t want Marisa to grow up like him. It would just kill me if she turned into some heartless little debutante. I need you to make sure he gets found out as a murderer, and I want her placed with my sister, Evelyn.”

A tap at the window drew Kirsten’s attention, and she raced to take her now-clean uniform back from the droid. The ghostly Mrs. Talbot examined her nails while Kirsten dressed.

“I’m kind of late for work, and I don’t really deal with normal people crime, but…” A light telekinetic tug dragged her boots into arms reach. “I can take down all the information you give me and send it to a detective. If it’s enough, they should be able to connect the dots. I have no way to control what happens to your daughter afterward unless she turns out to be a psionic. If you have surviving family, they will more than likely get custody of her.”

Mrs. Talbot glared at nothing in particular. “There must be something you can do.”

Kirsten fastened her boots. “I wish there was. Really though, wouldn’t Marisa be happier with all that money? Not wanting for anything and being safe?”

The ghost growled as a skull flickered behind the skin. “Not with him. I don’t care how much money he has. He’s going to turn her into the same kind of bastard he is, and I don’t want him to destroy her soul. If he’s in jail she will still have the benefit of his money, won’t she?”

Kirsten held up her hands. “I have no idea. Come with me to the station and I’ll take your statement. Tell me anything you can think of that might help. Did you find the man who killed you?”

“Yes, I followed him to the little rat-hole he calls a home after his so-called robbery.”

Kirsten backed toward the door. “Good, that’s a start. I won’t lie to you… anything you tell me is pretty much useless. Information obtained via paranormal means cannot be used for an inquest. We might be able to scare a confession out of him. There’s also the chance you may be able to give us enough to track down physical evidence they
can
use.”

“I have to at least try, for my daughter’s sake.”

Two hulking Division 6 power-assist armors, one on either side of door, turned at the spritely face that popped out into the hallway between them wearing a big grin.

“You guys want some coffee or anything?” Kirsten’s voice came out chirpy, reminding her too much of Nicole.

Black visors rose up and away from their dark blue helmets with a whirr. The eager look on both men held no trace of trepidation. It filled her with a rush of delight not to be stared at like some kind of fiend. So much so, she ordered breakfast for all six of them.

Mrs. Talbot paced the back of the room, ignoring the cop banter and trying her best not to make impatient faces at the only person who could see her. Syneggs, vat bacon, sim-sausage, and OmniSoy pancakes arrived on the wings of delivery droids. Reserving herself to something a little healthier, she splurged on a hydroponic fruit salad, and stole a strip or two of the bacon.

The guys sounded fearless to the point of stupidity, telling stories so bad they scared her, even hearing second-hand. Four returned two months prior from military assignment on Mars and rotated to the police side for a so-called break. Division 6 acted as the ‘broadsword’ of the police department; the difference from combat infantry only the color of the uniform and their theatre of operation.

One of the troops, and Mrs. Talbot, accompanied her to the roof, where Dorian waited by the car. The look the ghostly woman gave Dorian caused a spark of jealousy in Kirsten.