Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis Read Online Free Page A

throwing her chest-first into drywall. She bounced away, and he grabbed her from behind.
    Without thinking, she smashed the top of her helmet into his face. His grip weakened; she dropped back to her feet and elbowed him in the gut before spinning into a kick. Her boot caught him across the face. He tottered back, but the hit made him smile.
    “Nice form, but you kick like a ten-year-old girl.”
    Kirsten growled, pulling the stunrod off her belt and lunging into a wild overhead swing. He caught her wrist and flipped her over. Pain, sharp and brief, foiled her grip on the weapon before she even felt it shooting up her arm as her back hit the ground.
    Windless, she fogged the visor of her helmet.
    “Dead once,” he taunted.
    She rolled upright and backed off, favoring the arm. The urge to knock a few of his teeth out grew strong, but they were so perfect. His face entranced her again.
    The cute ones are always so shallow. Plus, he
is
trying to kill me.
    Adrenaline welled up as he came in with a series of rapid jabs. She blocked each in turn, backpedaling to make him advance. The gleam of a knife at his belt took her eyes off his perfect teeth.
    The kick caught her blind, in the ribs. She staggered, spraying spittle onto her visor.
    “You get angry too easy. Don’t fixate on the weapon; watch my entire body. Watch my eyes. You can’t read where your opponent goes if you fixate. If you give in to rage, you lose your edge.”
    I am…
    He faked another stab; this time, she blocked the kick. The knife came around the other way, but she got a forearm across his wrist. Her body jerked from the impact of the block, but she kept her grip and torqued him around by it. Stumbling after his trapped limb, he lost the knife and fell to one knee.
    “Not bad, but a little more twist on the hand would have incapacitated me.”
    Letting his weight take him down, he pulled her into a stumble and kicked her legs out. They rolled away from each other and both stood at the same time. He shook his almost-sprained wrist out as she tried to cradle her left breast through the armor; remembering the wraith claws. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the stunrod a few feet away and went for it.
    He leapt at her, distracting her from the weapon. No longer enamored by his looks, she ducked and spun under his arm, wrapping herself around it and flipping him over with a hip thrust. When he hit the ground on his back, she curled her legs around the limb, heel over his throat. If she did it right, she could break his neck.
    She chickened out.
    The man howled through her attempt at a pain submission hold. She twisted a little harder and he stopped fighting.
    Stalemate.
    “You’re getting better,” he croaked. “About time to call it for today, I think.”
    Tingles spread through her body, riding the forefront of a wave of numbness. Paralysis settled in and she went limp on the concrete. Brightness intensified, washing out the details of the ceiling until all that remained of it was flat white light and grey blobs.
    “Simulation: End,” chimed a pleasant, omnidirectional female voice.
    The oppressive glow condensed into strong fluorescent bulbs; the concrete softened into a padded chair. Sweat trickled past her ears and cold metal spanned her forehead. Wires jerked her back into the seat by her head when she tried to sit up too fast. Wonderful cool air lifted the sweat out of her thin white bodysuit.
    “Ow.” She grasped the senshelmet and pulled it off. “Why am I so damn sore?”
    “It’s your brain. Takes it a few minutes to figure out it was all fake.”
    The same man, with much shorter hair, came around the side of a console full of blinking lights, gang clothing replaced with a plain, blue-grey Division 2 jumpsuit. Kirsten’s eyes went right to where the lowered zipper exposed some of his chest, just left of the name “Silva” on a tag. She whispered it in her mind, unable to suppress the wry grin at the realization he had