Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (21 page)

Tickling built up into a sensation similar to a dozen mice nibbling on her arm. She looked. Her body instinctively curled at the sight of a gory hole through her left upper arm. Bits of her flesh floated like chum around the wound as fragments of skin drifted under control of invisible tugboat nanobots.

A voice filled the gel. “Agent Wren, please don’t move around. It will take longer.”

Yeah, yeah. You said that last time, too.

When the initial shock of seeing a hole clean through her arm faded, she watched with the awe of a curious child. Slivers of bone swam out of the wound as if on their own, melting away to nothing as the microscopic machines scavenged them for material. Snaps came from within, a high-pitched cracking as if someone popped their knuckles underwater. She cringed at the sound, expecting pain, but none came. Her entire arm felt
wrong
, as if everything below the gunshot wasn’t part of her anymore. The diameter of the channel shrank until it closed; tissue fragments came together like video in reverse. She looked away as nips of discomfort from her ribs, legs, and cheek told her where other repairs occurred. A cluster of automotive glass glimmered above and to her right. Nanobots, unable to dissolve glass, carried it to a disposal port in the center of the floor. She watched it fall, slow-motion snow, past her toes. A wisp of blood trailing out of her calf stole her attention away from the tiny fleet.

Damn, I didn’t even feel the one in the leg.

The outer door hissed open, startling the two doctors. Two men in long, sand-brown coats, black everything below them, dark sunglasses, and with the same perfect hair walked in. Both had the telltale lines of neuralware on their left cheek; a thin strip of somewhat darker skin that trailed down from an indentation where the implant clung to the outside of the skull.

The man on the right looked every bit the image of the traditional government black-coat; only it was brown. Nondescript, corpse-white, short hair, maybe late thirties; there was little about him that would linger in the memory for more than a few minutes after he left. His partner had darker skin and black hair, seemed more muscular under the coat, and had a Latin touch to his features that tweaked her embarrassment to a brief tawdry thrill.

Division 9.

Gel flew through her nostrils; her attempt to squeal in embarrassment produced no sound. She scrambled to cover herself as the doctors protested the intrusion. For an instant, Kirsten felt a surge of gratitude at them for trying to defend her modesty. It fell flat when they acquiesced at the presentation of ID badges. Both doctors backed away from the badges, hands up, as if they were toxic. The pair approached the tank, emotionless faces appraising her like something on display at a medical museum.

She wanted to cry; her body twisted away, a combination of leg and hands guarding her intimates. The one on the right looked her up and down with a detachment that made her feel less than human.

“How much longer?”

The gel blurred his voice, mixing it with the subtle thrum of the pumps filtering the fluid. The doctor’s response came from too far away to pierce the Lexan shell around her. Both Division 9 agents offered a single curt nod and glanced at her again. They stood with the stillness of statues, cardboard cutouts of the stereotypical government spook. If either of them had any emotions, any excitement at all at seeing her naked, they kept it buried deep. Paddling with one hand, she managed to turn her back on them, and tried to sniffle at the wall.

She found it quite challenging to sniffle through a gel-flooded nose.

Why are they here? Did I do something wrong? Couldn’t they wait till I was dressed?

“We would like to talk to you about the incident at the Kajuraho restaurant, as soon as possible.”

The voice crackled through the B-gel, silky and cold; the voice of a man who could kill without remorse, who could torture a trapped woman with an unblinking stare. She shivered at the sound.

Kirsten hung in silence for another twenty some minutes, although it felt more like two hours. Head against the rear wall of the tank, she wanted Captain Eze to come through the door and read them the riot act for violating her privacy. She tried to focus on the thought they were military men, used to showers of a hundred Marines at a time, men and women. She tried not to feel stared at.

“Agent Wren, please put your feet down. We’re going to drain the gel now,” said one of the doctors. His voice resounded through the liquid as if from on high.

She straightened out, both hands over her crotch, back still to the room. The mechanical noise permeating the gel intensified, sound waves carried through the fluid right to her eardrums. The touch of the tepid plastisteel base on her toes brought a silent gasp. Her weight settled onto her feet, the surface of the gel descended past her head, over her shoulders. The air was freezing; the gel was so much nicer.

She sank with it, wanting to delay the embrace of arctic winds as much as possible. Soon, she sprawled on the ground, arms curled around her legs. With her back to the room, she fought the urge to blush. Kirsten expected the rush of fear to come in on the wings of her mother’s public punishment―but it did not hit her that hard. Straightening, she turned to peer over her shoulder.

The agents looked down at her. The doctor stood a few feet behind them holding a white robe made of towel material. Although mortified, it did not come with the same feeling of helplessness that it had so often done in the past. Kirsten curled there, cheek to knees. Her eyes tracked a wisp of blood in the peach-colored fluid as it circled the vent ports before getting sucked in. Her mother’s cruelty had gone down the drain of newfound resolve; this humiliation was normal―not crippling.

Now she just had four men staring at her tits.

She tried to speak, but gel burbled out of her mouth. Panic at having lungs full of liquid hit her, and she forgot all about being naked. Coughing, sputtering, flailing, she scrambled around on the slick surface. Tractionless gel sent her sliding onto the icy floor; attempts to scream only worsened her choking.

Having had enough of watching her struggle, the doctors grew enough backbone to shove the Division 9 agents out of the way. “Give us a moment, please.”

She clamped onto one of the white coats, adoring the warm cloth against her skin. For a few minutes, he would do as a father substitute. Hands patted her on the back, pushing her down into a posture conducive to expelling the substance. Soon, they helped her up and over to the comforgel pad, wrapped in a robe made of towel cloth.

Blessed warmth.

The two government men shadowed the doctors, buzzards waiting for a carcass. They stayed quiet while handheld scanners ran over her, checking to make sure the nanobot repairs had completed without any problems. Kirsten accepted the offer of hot tea with lemon, shivering until she clung to the steaming plastic cup. Satisfied she was back to rights, the two doctors left with the usual notice about the call button.

She sipped the tea, looking over the rim at the two emotionless men. Their sunglasses made it impossible to tell where their eyes pointed; both had the appearance of plastic figurines for some kind of government conspiracy game. Hot liquid slid down her sore throat, triggering a minor cough.

“Agent Wren, I’m Operative Hawthorne. This is Operative Castillo.”

D9 Operatives… They’re lieutenants, shit.

She released the mug into her left hand and saluted them.

“We have reviewed surveillance imagery of the event at the Kajuraho restaurant.”

Air entered her lungs without a sound.
What did I do wrong?
A tiny trickle of gel ran down the inside of her throat, triggering another cough.

“This event is a matter of concern for us.”

Why?
She trembled, trying not to look terrified. “How can I help?”

Operative Castillo plucked a tissue from a wall box and offered it. “The event appeared to be a targeted attempt to assassinate you. Division 9 responds to cases of attacks on police personnel.”

“We take a dim view of such things.” Operative Hawthorne could have been the narrator for an hour-long Nat Geo special on the formation of dust.

Holy shit, they’re not investigating
me
.

Her relief exhaled into a slouch. She sucked down more tea. It hurt inside, but it hurt good.

“We’d like to hear any thoughts you have on who might have wanted to kill you. The aggressors in this fire event appear to have belonged to the Sons of Charon,” said Hawthorne. He may as well have been describing the mating habits of an African sand spider. No, sand mite; spiders were at least a little interesting.

“I’ve never heard of them.” She cradled the beautiful heat to her chest.

“They operate out of Sector 304, one of the older disavowed areas. They follow a sort of quasi-mythological mindset based on death.”

She wished Hawthorne would move a little when he talked, maybe pace, maybe blink. The statue routine felt so eerie. “Yeah, Charon the Boatman, he was sending me a message. Wait, disavowed areas? You mean black zones?”

Operative Castillo cracked the faintest of grins. “We prefer the term disavowed. They were quite far away from home. If they had been out cruising for a random victim, they would not have gone as far out of their comfort zone, especially into the city proper.”

“They were coming for me. The man I killed told me who sent them.”

The operatives exchanged a glance. Castillo’s android mask cracked enough to let sympathy leak through for an instant.

She frowned at him. “I’m not nuts. I’m an astral sensate; surely you guys have files on us. I see ghosts. I have since I was a little kid.”

Another glance traded.

“Let us assume ghosts exist―”

“You know psionics are real. Why is it so hard to accept we don’t understand the world nearly as much as we like to think we do?”

Hawthorne cleared his throat. “Let us assume ghosts exist. Operating on such an assumption, what would he have said?”

“A few years ago, a Division 0 tactical unit tried to apprehend a psionic suggestive. He had about a half-dozen mercenaries under his control, armed with energy weapons. The tactical team had no idea what they were going into. One man died; his partner was wounded and further exploited by the individual.”

Neither man moved; she assumed they were taking notes via cyberware. She remained silent until Hawthorne offered a slight nod.

“Rene Bollard is the suggestive responsible. He escaped, overpowered the surviving officer, and forced her to drive him somewhere. I’m not enough of a telepath to dig the memory out of her, but I was able to undo a hypnotic suggestion he’d left behind to cover his trail.”

“Who was this officer?”

Kirsten smiled at Operative Castillo; he seemed more human than his partner. “Tactical Officer Nila Assad. He’d conditioned her to be terrified of returning to work, setting up the belief that if she did so, she would die the same day.”

They offered grim nods.

“Dorian Marsh, her partner who was killed, he’s umm…” Kirsten drank half the mug as it was losing its heat. “He’s lingering behind, a little peeved with Rene for killing him.”

Hawthorne responded with no facial inflection at all. “We are aware of Sergeant Marsh’s murder, Agent Wren. It is an open case. We are currently tracking the credit trail of the M-99 Barrager assault laser rifles back to a black marketer on Mars. Trust me, Agent Wren, anyone remotely connected to this will be held accountable.”

Notice how the female mite takes great care with her eggs, burying them in the sand to keep them out of reach of predators.
“Open case? He’s
dead!
He’s still here, still hurting, because no one gives enough of a shit to hunt the bastard down.”

Neither man much reacted to her outburst.

“I’m sorry, I…” She looked at the squares of ceiling light reflected upon the tea. “He’s kind of my partner now, as a ghost.”

“I… see.” Hawthorne’s words had the dry crisp of ancient wax paper.

“I’d show you what I see, but I hear you guys have stuff in your head that’ll hurt a psionic trying to go in.”

“We can neither confirm nor deny―”

“Right, whatever,” she grumbled. “Do you have any idea where Rene is hiding? Is he still even in the city?”

“It is our belief he is still inside the city.” Hawthorne glanced at the door, as Nicole’s red hair tinted the tiny window. “We have not located him at this time.”

“Do you have any evidence beyond the word of a”―Operative Castillo raised one eyebrow―“ghost, that Rene Bollard ordered the hit on you?”

“Not yet, but I haven’t pissed anyone else off recently. Maybe Intera still has a bit of a grudge.”

“We checked the Intera angle already, Agent. We found no evidence to indicate their continued aggression or involvement with you. However, we did turn up a vid trace originating from Officer Assad’s home to an unassigned NetMini two days ago.”

“A PID-less mini?”

“It has a PID.” Castillo glanced at Nicole’s furtive tapping. “Your friends are anxious.” He almost smiled. “It’s a throw-away phone, a bogus PID not owned by anyone, hacked into the system. We could not triangulate the position of the receiving device because it bounced the communication to an audio-only stream and funneled it via the GlobeNet to a backbone host in Mexico City. There was no live recipient. The call was left as a message, and we could not move fast enough to penetrate an ACC system to trace it before it was retrieved and deleted.”

Kirsten set the empty cup down and smiled through her blush at Operative Castillo. She shrugged out of the robe as she stood up and walked to the autoshower. As soon as her back was turned, her face lost the confident smile and went shocked.
What the hell are you doing?
Pant.
Too late now, just go with it. He’s cute, even with the sunglasses, and he’s not scared of me at all.

Hawthorne glanced at Castillo. A tiny smile lifted the corner of his mouth as the autoshower started up. They took a few steps closer to the tube; she hoped to make it easier to continue talking.