Read Online A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe by Jon Chaisson - Free Book Online Page A

around the
kid, as she could not read any emotion from him, not even
indifference. He rarely showed any when he was on Vigil time, and
when he did it was usually a slow-burning impatience.
    “Must say I thought you'd come earlier,” he
said, looking up. His voice was naturally hoarse, and it echoed
against the empty walls around them. It sounded like he hadn't
slept over the past few days. He certainly looked it. Loose clothes
smelling of sweat hung off his shoulders and hips in typical jacker
anti-fashion, dirty brown hair unkempt and capped by a dark blue
bandanna. His face, however, betrayed his image; a youthful and
freshly-shaven face with soft blue eyes behind thin-framed
glasses.
    Poe cleared his throat, holding back his own
moodiness. “Yeah, well...we got caught up.”
    Matthew smirked. “Of course.” Not a big
flash of emotion, just tired amusement. He stepped back into the
apartment and swung the door wide, casually waving them in.
    Vigil’s center of operations was
disturbingly mundane. It looked no different than any other college
student’s apartment in Branden Hill, with the mismatched secondhand
furniture and the excessive wall coverings of vidmats and posters.
Entering further into this apartment, though, one started noticing
hints of something more high-tech. Cables and wires filled the
nooks of nearly every doorframe and baseboard. There were at least
two computers of varying sizes in every room, all of them running
one thing or another. In the dining room on the left, a small
laptop had been setup at an unfurnished plywood desk near the
windows, and it looked to be playing its own game of solitaire. In
the kitchen, a table model was folded away and leaning against an
antique breadbox. The screen was black, but its cooling fan whizzed
quietly. A third lay on the futon in a side bedroom, softly playing
ambient dance music. Smaller, compact vidmats, phones and players
lay everywhere. Caren took it all in, impressed by their ability to
make the overabundance of techware seem normal. It was hard to
imagine such a calm place housing the most feared jackers in
Bridgetown. Completely wired and utterly domestic.
    A number of wires ran down the length of the
high ceiling in the main hallway and met up in a large rear study
which housed the main console — a massive workstation of five
computers, twice as many screens, several dangling neural hookups,
and countless other accessories and pieces of hardware. Most of the
equipment had been secured to a steel frame arcing around its user
like a cage, similar to an infotech engineer’s workstation. Four
monitors were constantly scrolling data that could be anything from
DuaLife's latest genetics research to the financial earnings of
NullCom, to the communications of the Bridgetown Police, Fire, and
ARU departments. Three processors in the corner of the room
encrypted all the information and fed it to the servers out at
Vigil’s other base on Sachers Island, south of the city proper.
    Matthew silently led them into the room and
sat himself down within the cage. He glanced at a few of the
monitors, tapped something on a few keyboards, and then turned to
another. At this second computer he hammered away at the keyboard
for a full three minutes, without word. Caren opened her mouth to
say something, but thought better of it. Muscles aching, she found
an empty chair and sat down to wait. She thought of Denni; by now
she was heading off to school.
    Stay safe, Denni, she thought. I
know you're smart. Just stay safe.
    “So...” Matthew said, still tapping away.
“An awakening ritual. What do you have?”
    “Not much, I’m afraid,” Poe said. “Nothing
you don’t already have, I’m sure. Short version…shockwave hits the
city, bleedover appears above the Mirades Tower, and some witnesses
feel the energy reading they recognize. That’s pretty much it. We
have a few people doing field work right now.”
    Matthew nodded silently, and finished off
what he was