Division Zero: Thrall (35 page)

Brooke gave up trying to get her arm away from Kirsten’s death grip and slouched. “Yeah, girls go quick. They want baby factories up there. I’ll get married off at fifteen and spend the next twenty years pregnant. Yeah, that sounds
so
much better.”

Dorian offered a wistful smile. “I think we found someone more jaded than you are. I’ll admit it’s a bit of a chance, but at least eight out of ten colony settlements are much healthier than living on Earth these days. Some even have trees. You might be happy with an adoptive family.”

Brooke grumbled. “Why do you care?”

Kirsten drew a breath to answer, but all that came out was a squeak as a distant man’s voice shouted the F word six times before yelling, “Come on, kid!”

“Brooke, you’re a child. You don’t get to make decisions like this yet.” Kirsten stood, dragging the girl to her feet. “I’m taking over as your temporary guardian for the next few hours. You are going back where you belong.”

“No!” shrieked Brooke, thrashing.

“Brooke.” Kirsten grabbed the girl’s head and forced an eye-to-eye stare. “Listen to me. This is not negotiable. You’re letting what happened to you ruin your life. Your life hasn’t even fu―fudging started yet.”

Brooke’s eyebrows drew together. “Fudging? Really? I’m not four.”

Kirsten attracted odd looks from the hospital staff as she struggled to drag an invisible, flailing child down the hall. Every so often, a flicker of silver thread appeared at the girl’s forehead; as if reality could not decide if she were a mere projection or a true ghost. Brooke’s panic intensified as she found herself lacking the abnormal physical strength she had become accustomed to having. As a ghost, she was trapped in Kirsten’s psionic hold.

All the while, Brooke wailed. “No, get off me! Let me go! I don’t want to wake up.”

A man, wearing a light SecurMesh vest and armed with a ballistic pistol blocked the door to the procedure room. “I’m sorry, officer. There’s a critical patient in there. I can’t let you in.”

“No shit. I’ve got her damn ghost in my arms right now. If you don’t let me in, she’s going to die.”

“I want to die! Get her off me!” wailed Brooke.

Alas, the guard could not hear her.

The man smirked. “You’re either shit nuts or one of those damn psionics. I don’t care which it is, I can’t let―”

“
Go away.
” Kirsten growled, eyes aglow, bracing a squirming Brooke against her chest.

The security guard wandered off with a dumbfounded gawk, and Kirsten booted the door panel. With a soft hiss, the plastisteel barrier parted down the center and each half slid into the wall. Inside, Brooke’s lifeless body hung in a tube filled with peach colored gel; long hair fanned out around her starved-thin frame. A cloud of blood wisped around teeth; her mouth agape, no breath pushing it out. Two doctors, three medtechs, and a nurse all whirled at the sudden entrance. The techs and nurse moved to intercept.

“Out of my way if you don’t want to lose her!”

Perhaps it was the commanding tone in her voice, or her strange undulating gait, or perhaps it was sheer desperation; the doctor closest to the tube held his hand up at them. Kirsten dragged the protesting spirit to the edge of the tube. Dorian waited at the door, arms folded.

“You are not giving up. I won’t let you. I won’t let you die on the street. You have too much life left ahead of you, and I’m not gonna let you throw it away!”

Brooke’s ghost stared at Kirsten, stunned by the emotional outburst from a complete stranger. “Why the hell do you care?”

Kirsten grabbed the ethereal child by one shoulder and a fistful of hospital tunic and hurled her through the glass tube. Proximity to the body drew the wispy form in, distorting her into a blur of light. The floating girl convulsed, and an explosion of crimson burst from her mouth and nose, rolling into a diaphanous cloud. Bruises and scratches covered the small, malnourished body floating in front of her. Kirsten shivered at the memory of the same marks all over her own arms and legs.

Face pressed against the glass, Kirsten closed her eyes. “Please, God, if there is one…” she whispered. “Don’t take her yet.”

Dorian decided not to comment.

Seconds of silence passed, and the angry cacophony of the equipment changed to pleasant beeping timed to the rhythm of a heartbeat. Kirsten shifted; on the left side of the room, a large holo-panel showed a magnified view of thousands of crablike nanobots reconstructing muscle, cell by cell. It looked like an army of alien walkers invading a red landscape.

“We got her,” said the female doctor.

Kirsten looked up; Brooke’s chest moved with the rhythm of breathing, the red by her mouth swirled back and forth through her teeth with moving fluid.

“Get those nanobots on the cardiac tissue right away.” The male doctor wagged his finger at the three medtechs, gave Kirsten a confused stare, and jumped onto a different control console.

Stay with us Brooke. I’ll be here when you wake up. Please don’t give up.

The child’s eyelids twitched as Kirsten’s voice entered her thoughts. A hand clasped around Kirsten’s right arm. The nurse. He indicated the door with a faint head motion, as if asking her if
she
thought she should leave. The implication was, of course, that she should. Kirsten glanced once more at Brooke, a desperate smile forming at the sight of the girl’s eyes moving beneath the lids. Still solid to spirits, she leaned on Dorian and made her way to a closer bench out in the hallway.

That was teal too.

“I wonder where that security guard wound up?”

“Don’t care,” muttered Kirsten. “A few more seconds waiting might have…”

He squeezed her shoulder.

“I know. I can’t keep them all.” Kirsten made a voiceless chuckle. “She’s not psionic anyway, she’ll be happier with a real family. I don’t want to
keep
her; I just want to keep her alive.”

“You’re giving Evan a real family.” Dorian patted the back of her hand.

“Agent Wren?”

She glanced left and up at a pair of Division 1 officers. Like most in the city, they were of indeterminate ethnicity with brown skin. Kirsten felt like a phantom by comparison.

“Yes,” she said, standing and returning their salute. “What can I do for you?”

“We got a report from the hospital about a minor with a Lace issue.”

“Oh, you’re looking for who to go kill?”

The patrol officers exchanged a glance before the man offered a resigned shrug. “Yeah, basically.”

Kirsten covered her face with both hands, hating herself for not objecting to the idea. “Not sure yet. We’ll have to ask her when she wakes up.”

irsten leaned on the edge of the hospital-sized comforgel slab, holding Brooke’s hand. The head of the bed angled up, and a teal blanket covered the girl to the armpits. People came and went past the door. For almost an hour, she sat in silence and watched blurs of color go by while listening to the distant din of the hospital. Voices, both real and AI, occasionally came over a PA system to summon a doctor or medical technician to one crisis or another.

Brooke twitched in her sleep once or twice over the hour, raising false hope. Kirsten slumped back in the chair, attempting to manage her feelings of guilt for leaving Evan at Nila’s overnight yet again. She toyed with the idea of taking a day off and spending it with him, but with a one-week deadline to prevent an assassination, she could not. Kirsten did not want to burden him with the weight of what hung over her head; the simple explanation of trying to prevent someone from dying was enough. Evan did not need to know the police would cause the death.

Brooke moaned in her sleep and opened her eyes. She convulsed, and sat upright with a feral gleam in her eye. Kirsten leaned over and put her right hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“Hey, calm down. I’m here, you’re safe.”

The girl lunged for the side of the bed; Kirsten held her down. Weak from the surgery and with no Lace in her system, the task was a simple one.

After a futile effort to get away, Brooke flopped limp. Kirsten gathered her hand once more, earning an accusatory frown. The girl stared at the ceiling for a moment, and raised her left hand. It fell on her chest, then slid up into her chin, popped up straight, and finally came down on her face where she wiped her eyes.

“What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Apparently, Lace withdrawal can cause violent flashbacks for the first few hours. You can break your arm or leg from flailing around. They gave you something to protect you against that. Even if you have a seizure, your muscles shouldn’t have the strength to do damage.”

“Let me go. I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, first of all, you’re in no condition to even get out of this bed. Right now, you’ll need help getting to the bathroom.”

Brooke blushed.

“Secondly, you were on Lace. Right there, that warrants mandatory detox. There’s a couple officers outside who want to have a nice short chat with whoever gave it to you.”

Brooke folded her arms, frown deepening. “No one
gave
it to me. You can tell them to go away.”

Kirsten lifted the girl’s arm, tracing a thumb over the back of her hand as she examined a delicate wrist. “You’ve probably got Greybones. Same thing I had at your age from being out there alone. All the chemicals you’ve been walking around barefoot on, breathing, basking in… they leach at your body.”

“My bones are grey?”

“No, just brittle. It’s just called that because most sufferers live in grey zones, or worse places.”

The girl tugged her arm away, staring at her fingers as she fussed with the blanket. “Maybe I missed a few vitamins.”

Silence lingered for a moment. Brooke glanced at her, holding her arm up.

“You had this too? How’d you go from street kid to cop?”

“Well, maybe not quite as advanced. I’m sure the Lace didn’t help. Come on, look at me.” Kirsten held her arms out. “I’m barely a hundred pounds.”

“Try a hundred and ten.” Dorian winked. “You’re perfectly healthy, K.”

“How did I become a cop? Well, mostly because I’m psionic, but aside from that, I decided to trust someone. Father Villera called me, Brooke. He said you came to him because you saw something.”

The tremble made Kirsten grab her hand again; this time Brooke didn’t object. “I don’t wanna think about it.”

“Whatever you saw, those people can’t hurt you here. Do you remember the man who attacked you at the church?”

“Sorta. He wanted to kill me, right?” She coughed.

Dorian paced around the foot of the bed. “Lace users often experience memory gaps. They can go a week or two at a time in a primal state where they operate only on animal instinct. Higher brain functions tend to shut off.”

“Yeah.” Kirsten reached with a tissue to wipe bloody sputum from the girl’s chin. “I got him.”

“You killed him?” Her hand clenched.

Kirsten looked down. “I’m not proud of it, but the idiot did point a gun at me.”

“What a moron.” Brooke scowled. “You only point a gun at a pig if you wanna get killed.”

“Oink.” Kirsten smirked.

“Uhh, sorry.”

“Why were you out on the streets? Who gave you the Lace?”

“No one, geez.” Brooke huffed. “I stole it from some South Fork weenies.”