Marcus knew how they worked. The tube was filled with tiny pellets filled with short-life nanobots. Draw in a breath on the end of the tube and it split a pellet and allowed you to suck the nanobots into your lungs. When you breathed out, the remnants of the nanobots were expelled in a sort of vapor, also meant to simulate smoking. “I heard there are different kinds.”
He’d heard there were simulators for everything from marijuana to cocaine and more, even ones for sexual arousal, though considering the prevalence of virtual mates why anyone would need the latter was beyond him.
The driver looked disgusted. “Maybe in the West with all your fancy habits. In Russia we smoke cigarettes.” He spat onto the pavement.
Marcus thought it was interesting how fast the man had dropped the polite formality of his chauffeur act. Perhaps it was being trapped down on ground level with a dead air car, babysitting a spoiled foreigner.
Fluffy white things floated on the breeze, piling in small drifts on the concrete. “What is this stuff?”
The driver rolled his eyes and spoke a small word that Marcus’s card translated as ‘poplar seeds’.
“This happen a lot here?”
“Every summer.”
He was about to speak to his father when there was a shout from his right. Zoya burst from the doorway of the apartment building, eyes wild, gun in her hand.
“Get in the car!” she cried. “Why are you still here?” She skidded to a halt by the rear of the vehicle and said, “Door open.”
“It doesn’t work,” Marcus said. “Are you being chased?”
Zoya glared at the door that refused to slide up, then looked at Marcus and the driver. “What do you mean it doesn’t work? How can it not work?”
“Zoya, are they here?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I…I’ll tell you later. We need to get out of here now.”
The driver said, “A car should be here any minute.”
A look of panic flashed across Zoya’s face. “No! I can’t stay here. And I need to check on Uncle Vasya.”
Marcus looked around. Other than apartment buildings he saw only a tiny deserted bread shop across the street and what looked like a coffee and pastry shop a little farther down. “Well, we can go, but wouldn’t we be better off when the new car arrives?”
Zoya practically hopped in place, but she seemed to be considering what to do. She pointed down the street. “It’s only about three blocks to the metro. We could be safe there until the car comes to get us.”
«Marcus!» It was his father. «Get in the car. It will work now.»
«What? Papa, you did this?»
«Of course I did. I still needed her at that point. Now I have the information I need, so let’s get you out of here and fast; that gang is on its way here right now.»
Marcus turned to look at the air car. “Doors open.” The doors slid upward. The driver was so astonished he dropped his sim-cig on the ground and had to kneel to pick it up.
“It works again,” Zoya said, and leaped into the back seat. “Come on!”
«How can you know they are coming?»
«I tracked them down through their colleague back at her place. I know where some of them are, and they’ll be here any minute. Go!»
He and the driver piled into the car. “To the embassy,” the driver said. The air car hummed off the ground and began picking up speed.
Something didn’t feel right to Marcus about his father’s actions, but he was too stressed and exhausted to think about it for the moment.
“Not to the embassy,” Zoya said. “Go to Proletarskiy Prospekt. That’s where my uncle is.”
“Sorry, lady, but my job is to get him to safety. I’ll drop you off at a police station when I get the chance,” said the driver.
«These guys were just at her uncle’s place, Marcus. She can’t help him.»
“Jesus, Papa!” Marcus said, then clapped a hand to his face when he realized he’d said it aloud. He turned to look at Zoya. “You can’t help your uncle now. I’m sorry, but they got to him already.”
“How do you…” Zoya’s face reddened. “…how do you know that?”
The air car had climbed enough and now sped forward toward the thicket of skyscrapers at the city center.
“My father told me,” Marcus said. “Trust me, he knows.”
Zoya stuck a finger in his face. “You’re gonna have to—”
“Shit!” screamed the driver, and the air car lurched down hard before smoothing out again.
“What?” Zoya shouted.
The driver pointed out the front view screen. “Look.”
A figure on a sky cycle had zipped in front of their car and was maneuvering to force their car to slow.
“And there’s a car behind us, too,” the driver said. “What kind of trouble have you gotten us into? I’m calling Security.”
Marcus and Zoya both looked out the rear screen and saw a long green air car settle into place on their rear bumper.
“That’s Tavik’s car,” Zoya said, her face pale.
“How can they do that?” Marcus asked. “Aren’t these things programmed to avoid collisions?”
“I told you,” Zoya said, “these guys own the police. They can do what they want.”
The sky cycle slowed further and the limousine’s programming had no choice but slow along with it to avoid hitting the cycle.
Zoya leaned over the front seat. “Tell it to climb or drop or something. Don’t just sit there.”
The driver scowled at her. “I’m talking with our security agents. They’ll send some help—”
The car rocked as the vehicle behind rammed them.
«Papa, can’t you shut their cars down like you did this one?»
«Not fast enough, I’m afraid. The firewalls on these things don’t use my code; it took me ten minutes to break through this one. I’m working on theirs.»
As he often did, Tavik used the manual controls of his Cadillac. Grinning, he forced the nose of his car up over the trunk of the black limo he was chasing. A glance in the rearview showed him that Bunny sat placidly in the back seat, a vacant look on his slack face.
Tavik gunned the motor and dropped the nose of the car to crunch it into the rear of the limo. The needle-like skyscrapers of the city center were looming now, and he wanted Zoya’s car halted before entering that twisting jungle of buildings. “Set her down, you bastard!” he cried.
«I warned you about hurting my son.»
The return of that spooky voice chilled Tavik to his marrow. «Not you again. Leave me alone. I’m not gonna hurt him. I’m just gonna make them—»
«Back your car off now, or I’ll fry your Goddamned brain!»
Could he do that? Tavik thought. Probably not. He lifted the nose of his car again and sped forward. «You broke our deal. You said their car was disabled. If we hadn’t happened to be there when they took off from that lot, I’d have lost them for good.»
The next moment pain blazed through his head. He felt like it was going to explode. “Fuck you!” He jammed his hands down on the controls and the car slammed hard into the top of the limo.
«No!» shouted the voice and then just as suddenly vanished along with the pain.
The black limo had spun out and was plunging straight toward a silvery skyscraper.
“Zoya! Oh God, no,” Tavik yelled.
Still at least thirty floors above the ground, the limo hit the building sidelong and shattered the glass siding as it smashed through.
“Slow down,” he cried at his car, whipping his head around to see what had happened to the only girl he’d ever felt anything more than lust for. A gaping hole marred the glittering perfection of the building. Oily smoke roiled out of the wound.