The Shadow Fixer Read online

  The Shadow Fixer

  Division Zero Book 6

  Matthew S Cox

  The Shadow Fixer

  Division Zero Book 6

  © 2020 Matthew S. Cox

  All Rights Reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons, places, corporations, non-corporeal spectral entities, or enigmatic manifestations from the inner workings of the universe is entirely coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author except for quotes/excerpts used in reviews or blogs.

  Cover art by: Alexandria Thompson

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-950738-24-3

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-950738-25-0

  Contents

  1. The Maddening

  2. Future Stuff

  3. Going on a Rip

  4. Suspicious Thermal Anomaly

  5. Worked Out

  6. The Big One-Oh

  7. Ransomware

  8. Free Fall

  9. Imminent

  10. Spree

  11. The Warlord

  12. Intentional Malfunction

  13. Code 21-49

  14. Phantom Motives

  15. The Cat House

  16. Too Many Unknowns

  17. The Worst Possible Timing

  18. No True Quiet

  19. Plasmahawk

  20. Spirit in Black

  21. Empathic Harmonics

  22. Moments of Happiness

  23. Damage

  24. Corporate Leverage

  25. Urban Assault Training

  26. Risk Management

  27. Culpable

  28. Once More Below

  29. Errand Girl

  30. A Couple of Friends

  31. As Usual, A Complete Mess

  32. Sandcastles

  33. New Record

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  1

  The Maddening

  Hopeful someone at dispatch confused the report, Kirsten clutched the patrol car’s control sticks tight—she had no idea if she could handle a psionic child murdering people.

  It had to be an error. Command wouldn’t have sent her to contain a psionic freaking out. Division 0 had plenty of Tactical personnel for situations involving living problems. Unless the kid going crazy had a serious rating in Mind Blast, there’d be no reason to send her. A handful of others had higher ratings, like Commander Ashford. The man didn’t routinely pull field duty, but for something like a powerful mind blaster on a rampage, he definitely would.

  She’d already dismissed the idea anyway, as Mind Blast couldn’t technically kill anyone, and the dispatch made it clear people had been killed.

  They might send her out to deal with a Suggestive. She had a middling rating, no slouch but hardly Division 0’s best at it. They might send her to deal with someone using Suggestion to kill, but not as a primary. This came through under a 21-49 code, a paranormal manifestation resulting in death—but the accompanying information from multiple witnesses described a little girl murdering people.

  Someone messed up. She closed her eyes and tried making a wish. Please don’t force me to shoot a kid.

  “Spend enough time working as a cop in West City, the day’s going to come when you have a little kid pointing a gun at you.” Dorian spoke in a tone of voice like he hated the words coming out of his mouth.

  “I know…” She sighed, not wanting to say it already happened to her.

  Dorian flicked a bit of lint from his uniform sleeve, the same bit of lint he always plucked.

  Such a situation happened to him once, long ago when he’d been alive. He had shot a young boy, but in the leg. He got lucky. When forced to choose between a child’s life or his, he gambled on a non-lethal shot and survived. Kirsten bit her lip, thinking about Shani. Bad enough having a seven-year-old point a gun at her, but the daughter of Dorian’s former partner? Kirsten, too, got lucky. Shani’s a good kid who fell victim to a psionic suggestion—not a street punk who gave up and didn’t care if she lived or died.

  At least I’m not Div 1.

  The average Division 1 patrol officer had guns pointed at them 47.8 times a week—often by teens—and took between six and fourteen bullets each week. Even if most firearms couldn’t penetrate their armor, a bullet still left a mark, possibly a broken rib.

  No Division 1 officer runs into abyssals…

  Compared to the awful things abyssals or true demons could do to a person, being shot while in police armor ranked as pleasurable. She didn’t want to jinx herself by thinking about them. Several months of sanity would end sooner or later. Her life had gone back to the boredom of sitting at her desk in the Police Administrative Center most days. She hadn’t made the same mistake again. Kirsten stopped complaining about boredom.

  But the Universe heard her thinking it.

  She banked the patrol craft around a silvery high-rise office building in Sector 1157, within 380 meters of the pin on the NavMap. A small army of Division 1 patrol craft, both on the ground as well as the roof parking area, made the computer navigation assistant pointless. Someone in orbit could probably see it from all the flashing lights.

  “Damn. This is going to be nuts,” whispered Kirsten. “Seventeen patrol units? What are we walking into?”

  “A mess.” Dorian smiled at her. “Probably a big one since most of them haven’t gone into the building.”

  “Sounds like our kind of mess.” She breathed a mirthless chuckle, then slowed the car to a hover. “Dispatch, this is 1815-0I4. In position at destination. Should I take the front door or the roof?”

  A holographic face appeared above the middle of the console, a boy no older than fourteen in Division 0 blacks. “Lieutenant, there isn’t much information coming in from the patrol units on site. The initial distress call came from apartment seventeen on the sixty-fourth floor.”

  “Roof it is,” muttered Kirsten.

  She pulled the patrol craft up into a climb, weaving through a layer of advert bots 300 feet off the ground. A few broke from the pack to chase her as she skimmed the windows in a vertical climb to the parking deck at the top of the building. As soon as the car passed the edge, she leveled off. The entire roof, except for one cube-shaped structure at the center, consisted of landing spaces for hovercars. A silver set of double doors on the south face of the cube belonged to an elevator for residents to enter the building. The west face had a small stairway door.

  A formation of Division 1 officers stood behind their cars, pointing weapons at the elevator as if expecting the entire Diablos gang to come charging out at any moment.

  A dull, droning whirr vibrated in the cabin as the ground wheels extended. Kirsten aimed for an open spot behind the patrol officers, setting her patrol craft down at almost the exact second the wheels locked into place. She pushed the door upward, got out, and found herself standing amid a group of advert bots displaying ads for legal representation, specifically those with experience defending against traffic citations. It took them a few seconds to realize the car they followed up the side of a building belonged to the National Police Force.

  Somewhat sheepishly, the bots collapsed their holographic displays and glided away, dropping off the edge of the roof.

  Kirsten sighed, shook her head at them, and hurried over to the blue-armored cops prepared to annihilate anything inside the elevator if the doors opened.

  Dorian materialized beside her. “If someone farts too loud, they’re going to shred that poor elevator. I’d suggest you tell them to calm down, but when in human history has telling someone to calm down ever worked?”

  “When a telempath says it,” muttered Kirsten.

&nb
sp; “Ahh. True. Good point.”

  She hurried over to the middle of the police line, approaching an armored man with sergeant stripes. “How bad is it?”

  He jumped at the sound of her voice, almost firing into the elevator, but managed to catch himself—likely due to having heard a patrol craft land behind them. “It’s real freaky in there.”

  “Have you sent anyone inside?” asked Kirsten.

  “Two.” The sergeant lowered his weapon, faced her, and froze in shock.

  Given the urgency of the situation, she peeked at his surface thoughts to skip past the twenty questions routine. His brain ground to a halt at the sight of what he thought to be a fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl wearing Division 0 lieutenant insignia. Psionics scared him, but the fear conflicted with his solidary toward a fellow cop and his need to protect a ‘young kid.’

  “We don’t have time for sniffing each other’s butts, sergeant,” said Kirsten. “I can handle the weird stuff. Just tell me what the situation is.”

  He cleared his throat. “We received multiple reports of assaults inside the building, so half a dozen units responded. Howe and Greene were the first officers inside. They made contact with… something. Howe threw himself off the roof in a panic. We found Greene in the lobby, catatonic. Looked like she had a heart attack, but the stimsuit shocked her back.”

  Dorian whistled.

  Telempaths aren’t usually strong enough to cause people to die from fear. Sending someone running off a building is easily possible, but a heart attack? “Did their cams catch sight of any suspects?”

  Sergeant Peters shook his head. “Nope. Just some weird distortions. A few of the calls described a small girl attacking people, between ten and twelve.”

  He held up his left forearm guard. A holographic terminal appeared floating above the armor, showing video from a helmet cam. Text at the bottom indicated it came from Officer Greene. She walked behind another officer, likely Howe, down a hallway past two dead—or unconscious—people. Blood trails sprayed on the walls appeared to be the result of arterial spurting. Kirsten cringed. Officer Greene followed her partner around a corner in the apartment building hall, stopping short at the sight of a bright glow most of the way down the next hallway, near an open door. Even in video, the brightness somewhat hurt Kirsten’s eyes.

  “Shit,” whispered Howe. “It’s a little girl.”

  The form didn’t resemble anything even close to a person shape, being a smear of light hovering at doorknob level.

  “Hey, sweetie,” said Greene. “Put the knife down, okay? Let’s talk.”

  A flicker came from the light mass. Howe shrieked in terror, whirled, and shoved his partner to the floor to get past her. Greene dragged herself back as the light raced toward her. It hovered up in front of her… and the video died.

  “You can see why we haven’t gone inside.” Sergeant Peters lowered his arm. “Greene hasn’t been able to speak yet. Howe…”

  Kirsten bowed her head. “No need to say it.”

  “Any idea what this is?” asked Peters.

  “Looks like a ghost. They don’t usually appear that bright on camera, though.”

  “This one’s probably quite old.” Dorian eyed the elevator. “Going to be… interesting.”

  Sergeant Peters swiped at his holo-panel, opening a different screen. “Div 2 tapped into the hall cameras. There are at least six bodies on the sixty-fourth floor. Two on the sixty-fifth. Whatever’s in there isn’t straying too far up or down.”

  “All right. Try not to riddle me with bullets when I come back out.” Kirsten slipped between two Division 1 patrol craft and hurried toward the elevator, her heart already in her throat at the idea of a murderous child ghost.

  Howe and Greene saw a child, not a light blob. Everything about the situation worried her, but at least she didn’t have to deal with a living psionic child going on a rampage. Normal people seeing a ghost clearly enough to believe it a physical person didn’t happen often, hinting at a powerful entity. A spirit powerful enough to appear brighter on camera than any she’d ever seen before would be a pain in the ass. Worse for being a kid. She’d have to fight guilt as well as the ghost.

  A beep came from the call panel in response to her police override code. A moment later, the sliding doors opened. Kirsten stepped in and turned to face out. Someone’s perfume hung in the air. The carpet appeared cleaner than most places she’d been to. Small handprints smeared on the silvery wall, too little to be the child going crazy. Dorian stepped in to stand beside her and stuck his finger into the console. The sixty-fourth floor appeared as the selection for no apparent reason.

  She bowed her head as the doors closed, thinking about the first time she saw Evan. The boy had been astrally projecting out of his body, so she’d initially mistaken him for a child ghost. Another case of her sensitive side getting the better of her thinking side. She should’ve recognized an astral form apart from a ghost due to the amber coloration of the energy body, lack of clothing, and also the lack of detailed anatomy. Astral forms had an almost cartoonish quality to their nudity, as if the person projecting wore a sheer bodysuit. The faint silver cord coming out of his forehead should also have been a clear giveaway.

  But she’d become so caught up in the tragedy of a dead child, she stopped thinking.

  In ninety-nine percent of cases, ghosts linger in the mortal world for a specific reason like revenge, a need to finish something, or—like Theodore and The Kind—shits and giggles. Kirsten considered it exceptionally good luck that throughout her entire life she’d only run into one legitimate ghost child, a boy who dwelled with his ghostly parents down in the Beneath. Peyton and his parents died during the Corporate War, hundreds of years ago before West City existed. He’d been thrilled to have Kirsten for a friend when she’d lived down there, hiding from Mother.

  As far as she knew, the three spirits didn’t have any unfinished business or need for revenge; they’d simply not realized they’d died. Peyton’s dad was the first person to ever tell her about the ‘demonic’ presence out in the Badlands, a monster calling out to everyone who lost their lives during the war. They refused to become part of the creature.

  Except for Peyton, Kirsten had the fortune not to run into any other actual ghostly children. She clung to the hope kid spirits didn’t linger around and almost always transcended right away. What little data Division 0 had on ghosts suggested most apparent child apparitions came from malevolent spirits adopting the guise of innocence to trick the living into being sympathetic. At the time she met Peyton, she’d been a child herself, so never considered things like demons or evil ghosts might impersonate kids.

  People like me are the reason they pretend to be children. Such a sucker.

  Bands of light scrolled up the walls of the elevator, indicating the passage of floors.

  “You okay?” Dorian nudged her, his touch a mere brush of cold on her arm.

  “Yeah. The usual.”

  He plucked the same piece of lint from his uniform. “Precisely why I’m asking if you’re okay.”

  “Can’t be a real kid.” She shook her head. “Children aren’t evil.”

  The doors opened on the sixty-fourth, allowing in the odor of ballistic propellant and a hint of fragrant feces. Unnatural dread hung in the air, making her feel like a little kid afraid of the dark, wanting to run away from here. She knew this sort of paranormal radiance well; most hauntings of angry spirits had a similar quality to the environment. However, she’d rarely encountered it this potent, strong enough it took effort to resist. Kirsten winced, stepping out into a small lobby.

  A late-thirties woman in a dark skirt suit huddled behind a huge fake plant. She bled from multiple slashes over her arms, chest, and face, though the wounds appeared shallow. Two passages led away from the elevator room, one left, one right. On the left, a man’s legs protruded into view from behind one corner of a T-junction at the far end of the short hall. Considering the amount of blood on the floor ar
ound him and the feel of the body, she assumed him dead.

  “There have been some truly evil children in history.” Dorian walked out of the elevator.

  “How?” Kirsten approached the woman. “Ma’am?”

  The woman looked up, making the same surprised face most spirits did upon realizing she could see them, despite not giving off energy like a ghost. To confirm if she’d discovered a live person or spirit, Kirsten grasped the woman’s shoulder—solid.

  “You’re okay. The elevator is safe. C’mon, I’ll help you.”

  Mute, the woman kept staring at her.

  Kirsten took a stimpak from her belt case and pressed it into the woman’s left arm near the biggest cut. As soon as the hiss from the autoinjector stopped, she looked at the woman’s recent memory. Scattered images danced around her brain, showing a nightmarish version of the building’s hallways. Insectoid limbs extended from stretched, twisted walls covered in black gunk. The pale figure of a young girl in a white nightie stalked after her, brandishing a large kitchen knife.

  The woman struggled to run past dozens of inhuman arms jutting up from the floor, grasping at her legs, tripping her. A man came out of nowhere and grabbed the evil child, trying to protect this woman. She didn’t look to see what happened to him, rushing into the lobby and hiding behind the plant, too terrified to understand the concept of elevators.

  Kirsten broke the mental link, her hands shaking. The woman obviously hallucinated the hallways being so alien, but the fear fed back across the telepathic connection. Worse, the sinister little dark-haired girl seemed so gleefully evil. The child couldn’t have been older than nine.