Division Zero by Matthew S. Cox Read Free Book Online Page A

dead ahead.
    I wonder where they’re going in such a hurry?
    She trudged on through a cloud of fist-sized orb droids dancing through the air, not looking up until the pure white of the Division 0 wing came into view.
    This walk started every workday for the past year, ever since she opted to move out of the psionic kids’ dorm and get a place of her own. She wanted to avoid the stigma attached to being over eighteen and still living there. She did not want anyone to mistake the luxury of convenience for her needing to be coddled.
    Most of her peers wore their uniforms and drove their patrol cars home, but Agent Kirsten Wren was not like her peers. Most civilians misunderstood Division 0. They thought her just a police officer and came to her with things she had no idea how to handle. The ones who recognized the significance of her uniform, recognized her as psionic, reacted quite often like a tamer version of her mother.
    Robin, the first point of contact everyone saw here, looked up from the reception desk and waved.
    “Morning Kirsten. Ack, are you okay?”
    Kirsten forced a plastic smile. “Yeah, I just had a long night after that damn doctor.”
    The red-haired woman could have been Nicole’s mother. “I saw the comm channel when that went down. I don’t know how you handle that stuff. My empathy must be on the fritz, I was about to ask who died.”
    Kirsten leaned on the desk with a sigh, drawn into a conversation about her dad. It made her feel better to a degree, like having a kind aunt.
    When an incoming vid distracted Robin back to her job, Kirsten waved and went through the offices to the squad area. Like a zombie, she plodded to her locker and dropped her bag on the bench with a clank. The small white cat face sticker smiling from the plain steel door shooed away her doldrums just about every morning and made her grin. She held her hand over the scan panel and the storage compartment popped open. The room grew colder as she peeled off the jogging suit and changed into her uniform and everything else that went with it. She closed the door, revealing the well-tanned face of Dorian Marsh lurking behind it. He leaned on the row of lockers; his smile said the sight of her made his day better.
    The harsh fluorescent light put a playful glint in his eyes, teasing her with what he might be thinking. His uniform appeared perfect in every detail, matching his hair both in color and in the meticulous care with which he kept them. Even though he was closing in on forty, the athletic lines of his body showed through the snug cloth and sapped her concentration. The scent of some exotic Mediterranean spice clung to him; his presence overwhelmed every one of her senses.
    He had been riding with her for a few months since she had been assigned her own patrol craft. Something about him caused her to open up about things she had shared with no one since the shrink who worked with her ten years ago.
    She had lived at the dorm since twelve, and had dealt with co-ed showers since sixteen. Still, mixed company in the locker area bothered her a little even if these people felt more like siblings than coworkers―especially given the way she
wanted
Dorian to be looking at her. She put one leg up on the bench and pulled the six side straps of her boot tight one by one. Her face warmed with a blush. “Good morning to you, too.”
    “After last night I was sure you’d have been late.”
    “You know I don’t drink like that often.” She swapped legs, tightening the other boot.
    “Exactly why I expected you to call out sick.” He laughed. “You look like hell.”
    “Gee, thanks.” She lowered her foot and looked up at him. “It’s not the vodka, it’s my dad.”
    The story of her earlier meeting followed them down the hall, past a small break area, and into her squad room. The words ‘Investigative Operations’ hung in large black letters along the main wall, surrounded with placards of achievement and merit for some