“This isn’t about Vicki,” he said, towering over me.
“This is about you betraying me. You knew I loved her, and you went behind my back.”
“So you’re going to kill me because I chose a woman over our friendship?”
“I’m not going to kill you, bro. I’m going to bring you in, and let the system take care of you.”
I held up my palms. “I didn’t murder that old woman, Teague. And I didn’t destroy Boise.”
“Then you have nothing to fear. I’m sure the truth will prevail in court.”
He threw a roundhouse that would have knocked my head off if I hadn’t ducked. I tucked and rolled to the left. On my feet again, I took a running jump at Teague. He covered up, but rather than attack I snagged the corn net over my head. When the kick didn’t come, Teague dropped his hands. That was when I kicked him, hard as I could, in the side of the head. He spun a hundred and eighty degrees, and I dropped onto his back. I locked my fingers around his chin, dug my knee into his spine, and yanked with everything I had.
I heard the crack of his neck snapping, and we both fell to the ground, Teague onto his face, me onto my ass. I flipped Teague onto his back and checked his pulse. Weak, but there. Then I found some ammonium salts on my utility belt and held them under his nose.
“WTF? Bro? I can’t move. I can’t fucking move!”
“I broke your neck,” I said, sitting next to him and digging out my DT. “Don’t try to call anyone, or I’ll put your supplication collar on you and leave you here.”
“Asshole.”
“You know what this is, Teague?” I unsheathed my Nife and held it in front of his eyes.
He squinted at me. “I knew you were a psycho, Talon. Only psychos carry Nifes.”
“I agree. But my current situation has forced me to compromise some of my beliefs. Now I need to ask you some questions. If you refuse to answer, I’m going to cut off your fingers and take them with me.”
I let him process this. No one wanted donor fingers. As miraculous as modern medicine was, replacing a limb from a cadaver wasn’t even close to being perfect. Muscle and nerve problems left it less than fully functional, and the immunosuppressant drugs had some pretty nasty side effects, and were required to be taken for life. If they even worked in the first place.
Plus, biting someone else’s fingernails was just plain gross.
“What questions, psycho?”
I turned on the voice-stress analyzer and said, “First me. Right now I’m recording a baseline.”
I showed Teague the screen and said, “I did not kill Aunt Zelda.” Then I double-checked to make sure it said Truth. I turned to toward him again and said, “I did not destroy Boise, Idaho.”
“You could have tampered with the program,” Teague said.
“You know I didn’t. Just like you know I didn’t kill anybody. I’ve never killed anybody, Teague. Now state your name.”
Teague didn’t say anything. I picked up his hand and showed it to him. Then I set down the DT and used the Nife to shave off the very tip of his index finger.
“Fine! Fuck, bro!”
I picked up the DT. “Go ahead.”
He sighed. “Joshua Teague VanCamp.”
“Did you set me up?”
“No.”
Truth.
“Do you know who murdered Aunt Zelda?”
“Yes.”
Truth.
“Who did it, Teague?”
“You did, bro.”
Truth. Son of a bitch. He still believed it was me.
“Do you know anything about timecasting parallel worlds?”
“What? Fuck, no.”
Truth.
“Did you set up a fake timecast at Aunt Zelda’s place?”
“I don’t even know who Aunt Zelda is.”
Truth.
“Are you working with Neil Winston?”
“Neil who?”
Truth. Teague had nothing to do with this frame. He was just being his normal, asshole self.
“Do you still love Vicki?”
“No.”
Untruth.
I showed him the screen, then tucked the DT away. “You need to get over her, old buddy. It’s not healthy.”
His eyes went hard. “You’re giving me advice? You’re in the center of a shit storm, bro. You’ll be dead by the end of the day.”
I stared at him, feeling very sad all of a sudden. “What happened to us, Teague? We were like brothers.”
“You chose a woman over your brother. There’s no bigger sin than that.”
I didn’t want to argue with him, and truth be told, I don’t know that I disagreed.
“I need to borrow your TEV. And your shoes. You won’t be walking out of here anyway.”
I pulled the boots off his feet. Teague was a half size bigger than me, but it was better than stomping around with aluminum soles.
“You’re going down, Talon. Going down hard.”
“Don’t come after me, or I’ll break your neck again. And next time I’ll twist it off, so the ER can’t fix it. Just like Zelda.”
“Fuck you.”
I bent down and pinched his ear.
Teague said, “Call 911. Officer down.”
I sheathed my Nife and left Teague to his headphone call. Then I grabbed his TEV and got out of there.
My next destination would be heavily guarded. I had no idea how I was going to pull it off.
But I didn’t have a choice. Teague was right. Unless I proved my innocence, and fast, I’d be dead by the end of the day.
And the day didn’t have that many hours left in it.
THIRTY-TWO
I couldn’t start Teague’s biofuel scooter without a chip, so I cut away the override switch with my Nife and did an old-fashioned hot-wire. I was really getting to like the Nife, though I was sure my opinion would change when I got careless and accidentally sliced off my pelvis.
Once on the bike, I followed the railroad tracks to the nearest street, and then headed south, toward home. Using Teague’s TEV, I wanted to timecast my house to see who’d planted the listening devices. I had a hunch the perp picked Boise based on my morning conversation with Vicki. If I could catch his trail, I’d know who my adversary was. I was both disappointed and relieved Teague hadn’t played a part in this, but with him no longer a suspect I had no clue who could have set me up.
I pressed my earlobe and said, “Block all calls.” I hated to miss it if Vicki or Sata tried to contact me, but if they were being monitored, it was too easy for the authorities to triangulate my position once a call connected. Headphone silence was safest.
Once I left the corn farm and entered an industrial stretch of Illinois, lighting became poorer. I knew the cops would be covering the main highways, so I’d have to deal with lesstraveled routes, and remain as inconspicuous as possible.
I pulled over and took out my all-vision contact lens from the case on my belt. Though my Tesla account had been closed, the AVCL had a full battery charge that would last for hours. I put the lens in my eye, then closed my lid and tapped it three times to activate the night vision. Closing my left eye, the world was bathed in a soft, green glow. I killed my headlight and motored through backyards, alleys, and side streets. It took me two hours to travel the forty miles to home, and I doubled back a few times to confuse Teague, who I’m sure would be on my trail again once they reattached his nerve endings.
I parked in an alley a block from my house, then did a quick reconnaissance. Two cops were circling the perimeter. I tapped my eyelid once, going to infrared, and saw four more cops inside. Two on the first floor, two on the second. Then I checked my neighbor’s house. The only one home was that dick Chomsky. Sitting in front of his projector, probably watching animal pr0n.
I hefted the TEV to my back using the shoulder strap. Then I put some fresh gecko tape on my hands and knees, snuck around the opposite side of Chomsky’s house, and scaled the wall.
It was difficult, especially since my right arm had been growing considerably weaker since leaving the cornfield. When I reached his green roof I took some amphetamines and some aspirin to improve the blood flow, and spent a minute trying to catch my breath. Then I looked around for Chomsky’s atomizer.