Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis by Matthew S. Cox

Author:Matthew S. Cox [Cox, Matthew S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781620076026
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Published: 2014-09-07T07:00:00+00:00

irsten draped herself over the counter of a small coffee shop, her eyebrows scrunched together and flat. She stared at the machine processing her order, spewing brown liquid and beige foam together with a squirt of chocolate syrup at the end. She wanted it so much the cup tilted a hair towards her. The synthetic stuff would have taken half the time and cost a quarter of what this one would. Still, forty credits for her once (now twice) a month splurge seemed a small price to pay for the little escape.

“Easy.” Dorian patted through her back. “Don’t yank it off the machine or you’ll spill it.”

“My TK is too weak to lift a cup of coffee.”

Dorian grinned. “You shouldn’t have ordered one big enough to swim in.”

She let her head fall on her arms, the tip of her nose touched false jade. “Vikram is going to drive me nuts. He was up all damn night bitching and moaning about me doing nothing. He doesn’t have to sleep anymore, so he doesn’t think I do, either.” She stopped, staring bleary-eyed at the wall. “Bathe in… bathtub full of coffee… mmm.” Head down.

Dorian peered out the window at Vikram, still in the back seat of the car, glaring into the coffee shop as if he was late for work.

Kirsten straightened out, rubbing her back. “It’s not like we can do much else but wait for Seneschal to try again. If they have some way to sniff him out, the best chance we have to find them is to use him as bait.”

“Sore?”

“Evan crawled into bed with me last night; something spooked him. For a little kid, he takes up a lot of space.” Stretch over, she crumpled over the counter again.

“I had a dog like that once,” said Dorian, chuckling.

The hollow plastic sound of a cup skiffing into the acrylic made her head snap up. The wonderful fragrance of coffee and chocolate met her senses as she gathered it and supped of the nectar of the gods.

“Any man would kill to be that cup,” quipped Dorian. “Except maybe Armando.”

She snarfed foam, giggling. The clerk gave her an odd look; the sort of odd look one reserves for odd people who burst out laughing for no apparent reason in quiet places. He kept giving her the same incredulous squint as she grinned, waved, and went outside to the car.

Ten minutes later, the coffee was three quarters gone, and they sat seventy stories up by the side of an office building. Kirsten glanced at the mirrored glass; the reflection showed the car as everyone else saw it―her alone.

Riotous sounds came around the corner, projected from a billboard-sized advert droid bearing a Newsnet feed. On its screen, a small cadre of people waved metal poles projecting holographic signs with fear-mongering slogans regarding psionics. A frazzled middle-aged man with wild white hair and a tan coat rasped an interview with reporter Kimberly Brightman.

“So, Reverend Harris, why is your congregation here today?”

“The Lord says suffer not the presence of Satan in your midst.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.