Division Zero: Thrall (32 page)

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.”