The Shadow Fixer Read online

  Kirsten walloped him again.

  And again.

  A brilliant white flash exploded from the point where her energy whip hit the spirit. Screaming, he reached at her, his human form losing cohesion, collapsing into a melty blob of textures and color.

  Her third attack drained her to the point her legs gave up. She swooned to the floor, still struggling to raise her arm for another strike. A strong sense of ominous doom saturated the house. Kirsten stopped trying to force herself to move.

  “Thanks… he’s all yours,” she whispered.

  Vaporous blackness welled up from the walls, spilling into the living room. The inky fog rose into the shapes of nine Harbingers. The assassin struggled to roll over onto all fours, despite his substance having the integrity of molten cheese. Two Harbingers drifted close by Kirsten, the icy chill of their passing relieved her pain like ice on a burn.

  Damn… I didn’t even have to call them. This guy’s a real prize.

  The assassin roared in protest, scrabbling futilely at the rug as the Harbingers dragged him down under a mass of shadowy, clawed apparitions. His scream faded into the distance.

  “Rosana, are you still listening?”

  “I’m here, lieutenant,” said the girl’s voice over comm. “You dropped offline for a few seconds, but you’re back.”

  “Need a medical team on site. The woman took a nasty hit to the head. Site is secure.”

  “Copy. Medical team on the way.”

  Kirsten rolled gingerly onto her back as the roiling mound of shadows sank into the floor. She fished out a pair of stimpaks, flicked the yellow safety caps off the business ends, then grasped the handle of the big knife stuck in her thigh.

  Okay. Deep breaths. I can do this. Can’t possibly hurt worse than anything demons have done to me already.

  She clutched both stimpaks together in her left hand, stabbing them into her thigh while simultaneously yanking the knife out. Surprisingly, removing the blade didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as she expected it would, probably because it hadn’t wedged in bone. Bloody foam seeped up from the hole, but the area soon deadened to a cold numbness and the tingle of working nanobots.

  One by one, she removed the other knives, administering a stimpak shot by each one.

  “Ugh.” Dorian groaned in pain-slash-fatigue, stumbling over to her. “Sorry it took me a bit to recompose myself… are you okay?”

  “Been worse. Been better.” Kirsten stuck an empty stimpak into the holder. “Worried about you.”

  “I’ve never been knocked loopy before as a ghost. Son of a bitch was strong.”

  Kirsten took another stimpak out and administered it to Johanna’s arm.

  Six seconds after the soft hiss of the autoinjector, the woman’s eyes snapped open. The small cut above her left eye sealed. Johanna sat up fast, looked around, and shouted, “Tam!” before realizing Kirsten sat next to her. “Who are—?”

  “Mom!” screamed the girl from upstairs.

  “Tamsen’s fine. She’s still in the shower tube, but unhurt. Gonna get her out in a sec.” Kirsten peered up at Dorian. He looked reasonably intact, but still as though he’d been run over. No trace of the assassin or any Harbingers remained, so she made herself solid to spirits. “Can you help me up? My leg’s still on strike.”

  Dorian took her arm and pulled her upright.

  Johanna scrambled to her feet but swooned and had to grab the sofa to keep her balance. “What are the psionic cops doing here?”

  “I called for help,” said Suri from the NetMini on the floor. “It’s good to see you are okay.”

  Kirsten put a hand on the woman’s arm. “The spirit gave you a nasty hit to the head. Medics are on the way to check you out. Please have a seat for now. Let me go up and get your daughter out of the tube first, then I’ll answer all your questions.”

  Johanna kept a grip on the sectional as she maneuvered around to the other side and sat on it.

  “Dorian, need you upstairs.” Kirsten limped to the stairwell, cringing at the pins-and-needles effect of the nanobots repairing deep muscle damage. “Hate knives… hate knives.”

  He followed her up to the bathroom.

  Tamsen still stood on the handrail inside the autoshower tube. Her lips appeared blue and she shivered so hard she seemed likely to lose her balance and go under at any moment. At the sight of Kirsten walking in, she perked up a little. “W-w-what happened?”

  “The spirit didn’t want to leave. I had to kick his ass.”

  “Heh.” The child emitted a shivery chuckle. “Can you please get me out of here?”

  Kirsten nodded. “Dorian…”

  “Huh? My name’s Tamsen.”

  “Dorian is my partner. He’s a ghost, but a nice one.”

  The girl stared at her. “Umm, okay. Whatever. If it’ll get me out of here, I’ll believe you.”

  “This virus is getting out of hand,” said Dorian.

  “Tell me about it. Poor kid’s been stuck in there all day. Have you ever seen a tube flood before?”

  “No. They aren’t supposed to be able to.” Dorian crouched by the base platform and stuck his hand inside. “Interesting. There’s a force squeezing the drain hose shut, but the seal isn’t perfect.”

  “Whoa, seriously? I thought it had a failsafe to prevent flooding all the way.”

  Dorian shook his head. “Alas. No. The pressure from an eight-foot-high vertical column of water is more than the ghostly force on the hose can hold back. He tried to flood it all the way, but the plastic hose isn’t capable of making a seal against this much pressure.”

  Bastard… Kirsten shuddered at the thought of what almost happened here.

  “One… second…” Dorian grunted as if attempting to lift a heavy object. He appeared to be struggling to pull something out of the floor beneath the tube. After a few seconds, it gave way and sent him spilling over backward.

  The water level in the tube began to go down, about an inch every twenty seconds.

  Dorian got back up and thrust his hand into the tube base again. “Sec. Turning off the water.”

  “Run some warm… she’s freezing.”

  Tamsen shook her head. “I’ve had enough water.”

  A clonk came from beneath the floor. The water level dropped faster, about an inch every five seconds. As soon as it became low enough for the girl to stand on the floor and keep her head above water, she jumped down off the handrail. Kirsten plucked a towel from the wall. Once the water drained completely, Dorian fiddled with something in the base, turning on the hot air dry cycle. Tamsen’s hair blew straight up over her head. She clung to the handrail, seemingly adoring the cyclone of hot air. A few minutes later once she appeared dry, Dorian drew all the electrical power from the unit, shutting it down and freeing the safety lock from the hatch.

  Tamsen shoved the hatch open and rushed into Kirsten’s waiting towel. “Holy crap. I thought I was gonna be stuck in there forever.”

  “Stupid virus got me too the other day.” Kirsten wrapped the towel around her. “There are medics on the way. They’re going to check your mom out and should probably have a look at you just to make sure.”

  “What happened to my mom?”

  “The ghost hit her on the head. She’s a bit dizzy, but awake.”

  Tamsen ran out, clinging to the towel.

  “Poor kid’s going to be afraid of shower tubes for the rest of her life. Lucky they have a tub in here.” Dorian brushed at his sleeve, his uniform rearranging itself back to perfect order. The electricity he’d absorbed from the machinery did more for him than a stimpak to a living person.

  Kirsten suppressed a shiver. The idea of drowning in a locked tube had never occurred to her before. She considered requisitioning a Nano knife to hang in her autoshower at home, just in case, but those blades frightened her more than the one-in-a-trillion odds of some other spirit plugging the drain during a ransomware attack. Besides, if she cited fear of being trapped in the shower as her reason f
or wanting one, they’d probably double her sessions with Dr. Loring. “What idiot thought it a good idea to make the hatch lock?”

  “Safety feature, I suppose. The spray ring could cause serious injury if it comes down on an arm or leg sticking out the opening.” He shrugged. “You could probably trace back the origin of why a company does anything to a lawsuit.”

  Shaking her head, Kirsten headed out of the bathroom and went downstairs.

  Tamsen sat beside her mother on the sectional, clinging and shivering.

  The stimpaks had mostly done their work, reducing the pain of Kirsten’s injuries to annoying more than crippling. She limped off the stairs and approached the two. “Please don’t go into the back of the house for the time being.”

  “Why not?” asked Tamsen.

  Johanna’s expression said she knew the repairman lay dead in the other room. “It’s fine, hon. Just stay here with me for now.”

  Kenton’s ghost walked in. “Umm, hey cop lady. What in the absolute fuck was all the black stuff?”

  She glanced at him. “The universe has trash collectors. They came for the guy who killed you.”

  “Ack!” Kenton backed up a step.

  “Don’t freak out. You’re not even an hour old yet as a ghost and have no defense against them. If they wanted you, you’d already be elsewhere.” Kirsten returned her attention to Johanna. “Short explanation, you were attacked by a fairly powerful spirit.”

  The whirring buzz of a hover vehicle arose outside.

  “Ahh, medics are here,” said Dorian.

  “You look much better.” Kirsten smiled at him.

  At the whud of van doors and footsteps approaching the house, Tamsen gasped and blushed, clutching her towel as if she’d only now realized she had nothing on under it. The child made an ‘oh well, they’re doctors’ sort of face and decided not to move.

  Kirsten went to the room where Kenton lay dead while the medics checked Johanna and Tamsen over. “Rosana, please send a medical examiner team. One deceased.”

  “Copy, lieutenant. On the way.”

  “Impressive,” said Dorian. “She didn’t question why you weren’t requesting a crime scene unit and going straight for the ME.”

  Kirsten opened her armband terminal and added notes to the current Inquest file. “Kid knows her stuff. D2 CSI isn’t going to find ghost fingerprints. Kenton, still here?”

  “Yeah.” He appeared beside her.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’ve died.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, kinda figured that out, what with my dead body lying on the floor here.”

  “You have a couple options. For the first few hours, you’re likely to feel tethered to your body, unable to go too far away from it. Eventually, your remains will be cremated unless you happen to be rich.”

  “Nope. My butt’s headed for an urn.” He shrugged.

  “Once they’re done with your body, you might feel the urge to linger around here—the place where you died. You also might feel a pull back to where you lived, or the urge to go through a silver doorway.”

  “If you have no particular desire to stick around, I hear the doorway’s nice.” Dorian smiled.

  Kirsten crouched to scan the PID from the NetMini in the body’s pocket. “If you need me to pass any information or messages on to living relatives, I’d be happy to. There shouldn’t be any need for revenge or justice here as the entity responsible for your death is about as punished as it’s possible to be for a spirit.”

  “You sent him to live with my boss?” Kenton laughed.

  Kirsten chuckled. “Worse. Probably.”

  “Corporate managers might actually be more evil than Harbingers.” Dorian snickered.

  “Harbingers aren’t evil. They’re only doing a necessary job.”

  Dorian held his arms out to either side. “They’re made out of the very fabric of infinite suffering.”

  “You have met my boss.” Kenton laughed. “Err, former boss. He’s probably going to want a coroner’s note to prove I died or he’ll dock my pay for not showing up.”

  “This guy should do stand up.” Dorian pointed at him.

  “Nah, I can’t handle crowds. Wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance.”

  Kirsten groaned. “You seem to be taking your death in stride.”

  “Ain’t like my attitude will change what happened.” Kenton offered a ‘what can ya do’ shrug. “People are scared of death on account they think it’s the big end. Never expected I’d still exist somehow. It’s kinda cool.”

  “A future Kind.” Dorian chuckled.

  “Well, if you ever need me to pass on a message for you, let me know. Otherwise, I need to finish up here.”

  Kenton grinned. “Don’t suppose you’d tell Mr. Quaid to suck a fat dick for me?”

  She clenched her jaw.

  “Just kiddin’. You look way too sweet and innocent to say anything like that.” He winked.

  “You could always haunt him yourself.” Dorian raised both eyebrows.

  Kirsten elbowed him in the side. “Don’t corrupt the newly dead.”

  “Lieutenant?” asked a woman.

  She turned to find one of the medtechs standing in the archway, Patel, R according to her nameplate. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Beck and her daughter are fine. We treated the child for minor hypothermia and gave her mother something to help with the dizziness. She has a mild concussion, but should be okay if she avoids another bump to the head and tries to stay off her feet for a week or so.”

  “Great. Thank you.”

  The woman leaned closer. “Are you all right? Seems you suffered some injuries as well.”

  “Ghost threw a whole block of kitchen knives at me. A few stuck. Stimpaks seem to have done the trick.”

  “You’d best let us have a look since we’re here. Could be nerve damage.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  She followed the woman out to the MedVan parked beside her patrol craft. Johanna remained on the sectional, though Tamsen had vanished, likely having gone upstairs to change. Kirsten climbed into the back of the MedVan and took a seat while the woman checked her over with a scanning unit. The stimpaks hadn’t quite repaired all the damage, only constructing a basic tissue lattice to hold the wounds closed.

  A medical examiner van landed on the road behind the driveway. A short, black-haired woman in a blue jumpsuit emerged from it. She continued staring at her NetMini while walking around to the back of the MedVan, then looked up from the holo-panel at Kirsten. “Lieutenant Wren?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alana Chang with the ME’s office.”

  “Wow.”

  Alana tilted her head. “Wow?”

  Kirsten blushed. “Sorry. My boyfriend’s named Chang, too.”

  “Ahh.” Alana laughed. “There are quite a few of us. So, I hear you have someone needing a ride in our limo.”

  While the tech administered several nanobot injections to finish mending the knife wounds, Kirsten filled the ME agent in about the body in the back room.

  “You’re saying the killer is a ghost?” Alana blinked in disbelief.

  “Yes. You’ll most likely find some manner of inexplicable damage to his heart and he has no external wounds.”

  Alana shrugged. “Sounds like a heart attack, but you guys are up to your eyeballs in the weird stuff so I’m not going to question it. All right, as soon as you’re done with recording the scene, we’ll get him out of here.”

  “Great. Just be a moment in here.”

  “Going as fast as I can,” said the medtech.

  Kirsten tried to relax despite the sensation of stuff moving deep inside her muscles. “Take your time. Excuse for me to rest a bit.”

  About ten minutes later, Tech Patel finished.

  “Thanks. Not sore now.” Kirsten rubbed her thigh.

  “Stimpaks are basically a bandage good enough to let you survive the trip to a real medic.” Tech Patel smiled. “I also gave you an immune boos
ter in case the knives had any nasty stuff living on them.”

  “Again, thanks.” Kirsten stood, waved, and headed back into the house, Alana Chang following.

  Tamsen—now in a purple top and jeans—sat beside her mother. The Becks watched Kirsten and Anna head to the back room. Kirsten took a series of photos and some video documenting Kenton’s body, then made an ‘all yours’ gesture at Alana, who went outside to collect a gurney and her partner who’d been goofing off in the van, playing a video game on his NetMini.

  Kirsten approached the sofa. “Almost done here. Just a few questions for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Johanna.

  “There’s nothing you need to apologize for.” Kirsten blinked.

  Johanna opened her mouth to speak, paused, then exhaled. “Until today, I didn’t believe in anything supernatural and thought psionics were all dangerous. I’m apologizing for being an idiot.”

  “Thanks. Not easy to have your world turned upside down.”

  “Being picked up, thrown around, and choked by something I couldn’t see, then having an onyx egg fly off the table and hit me in the face all by itself sure did it. Thank you for stopping whatever it was from hurting my daughter.” Johanna looked down. “Tam said it tried to kill her, too. And I saw that poor man drop to the floor, clutching his chest.”

  Not wanting to talk down at them, Kirsten sat on the sectional as well. “The spirit who attacked you did attempt to harm your daughter.” She explained the blocked drain, trying to make it sound like it couldn’t possibly happen again, adding some self-deprecating humor about ending up locked inside a tube herself thanks to the same ransomware. “I normally ask people who’ve been attacked by spirits if they’ve been directly or indirectly responsible for any deaths, but this guy was a ghost long before you were born.”

  Alana and her partner went by, pulling a hover-gurney bearing Kenton’s remains. His ghost followed, waving at Kirsten.

  Johanna fidgeted. “I’m a graphical artist for Bloodbath Entertainment. I draw and animate a lot of dead bodies for video games, but I’ve never hurt anyone for real.”

  “The spirit had a rather distinctive look.” Kirsten made eye contact with Kenton, nodding farewell. “The sort of people shady corporations hire to hurt people. Any chance you or your spouse—if you’re married—might have gotten on the bad side of someone with the resources to want retaliation?”