“Hey! A button!”
Before I could yell, “Don’t press it, you fool-you’ll kill us all!” he pressed the button.
It didn’t kill us all.
In fact, it didn’t do anything. The cop stared at it, puzzled, and then looked at me. “You got any cereal?”
“Last cabinet on the left. Milk’s in the fridge.”
“Thanks. Trippy ball, man.”
He tossed it to me. I caught it. While the ball looked exactly the same, I noticed the prism effect had sped up. There was also a very faint buzzing noise coming from inside. But other than that, it didn’t seem to be doing anything.
I went to my TEV, and saw Vicki boffing somebody on the kitchen table. Where I ate my eggs every morning. I really needed to tell her to keep her clientele in her bedroom.
I got ready to fast-forward to see where Neil had gone, when I noticed Vicki had a black eye and was sobbing uncontrollably. The sex was violent, and hardly looked consensual.
I clenched my jaw, panning left to see the face of the son of a bitch doing this to her.
The son of a bitch turned out to be me.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Mastermind listens as Talon watches the timecast. The incompetent cops hadn’t found all of the bugs. He wishes he could see Talon’s face, wishes he’d used video cameras instead of listening devices.
Watching half a million people disappear with the press of a button was a heady experience. But they weren’t real to him. They were numbers. Statistics. The first hash mark of many.
But Talon…
The mouse is personal. Being able to see him suffer will be a treat for the Mastermind.
Not now. But soon.
The Mastermind is interrupted by a knock at his door. The cops? Did they know?
No. It’s reporters. They want him to comment. He declines with a smile.
Later, when they realize how close they were to the real Butcher of Boise, they’ll want to hang themselves.
If they aren’t already dead by then.
He resumes listening to Talon. It has taken the mouse longer than expected, but he’s followed the trail of crumbs.
Soon the trail will end. And the cat and mouse will meet.
Watching half a million vanish from a distance won’t be nearly as much fun as watching one man die up close.
THIRTY-FIVE
I stared in disbelief as Alter-Talon violated my wife. He had one hand on her throat, squeezing hard, a sick grin on his face as he pumped away. I’d been angry before, many times. But seeing this filled me with such absolute rage I would have killed the guy if he were in the room.
And he had been in the room. Almost two weeks ago, according to the TEV. But how? And why hadn’t Vicki told me?
I tried to remember two weeks back. Had she seemed upset? Had she covered up her black eye with makeup? Why hadn’t she said anything?
I paused the scene and rechecked the date. It couldn’t be right. Two weeks ago, I had the house to myself. Vicki was visiting her mother in New Los Angeles. She wasn’t home when this took place.
So how…?
My eyes drifted to the prism ball, the button still depressed. I thumbed it off.
The TEV monitor went fuzzy, and then showed an empty kitchen.
I pressed the on button.
The monitor showed Vicki being assaulted.
That was when I figured it out. This hadn’t happened to the Vicki I was married to. It had happened to an alter-Vicki, in a parallel universe. Somehow this prism ball made a TEV tune in to past events in an alternate universe.
I flipped the ball off. Had Neil created this thing? Had he been the mastermind all along?
No. This tech seemed way beyond Neil. And he’d passed the voice-stress detector. Neil was involved, but he wasn’t the mastermind. I thought about following him backward, letting him lead me to the person who gave him the prism ball, but the TEV was at its limit and couldn’t go back any further.
Then I realized the obvious. If this prism forced a timecast in a parallel world, then there had to be a prism at Aunt Zelda’s apartment that made me pick up the transmission of Alter-Talon killing her.
I put the prism ball in a pouch on my belt, then tapped my eyelid for infrared. The two cops on the first level were still in the den, lying next to each other on the floor. It looked like they were spooning. I checked the perimeter of the house, and the chatty duo walking the route was passing by the front door.
Time to go.
I snuck downstairs and outside, happy to take the hepafilter off my face and breathe some fresh air. I barely took two steps before I heard a whistle.
It was my dick neighbor, Chomsky, out for a stroll with his genipet-some sort of mini alpaca or llama. He had his fingers in his mouth, producing a loud, shrill tone that could be heard across Lake Michigan and all the way to New Detroit.
“It’s Talon Avalon! The fugitive!”
He whistled again, and his miniature critter seemed to be getting agitated by the sound. It bumped Chomsky with its head, then spit on him.
“Barack O’Llama!” Chomsky chastised, slapping his pet on the snout. “Behave!”
I saw the two cops hauling ass around the corner, Tasers drawn, so I didn’t have a chance to break Chomsky’s nose, like the dick deserved. I began to run.
Chomsky whistled again. “He’s going that way!”
Barack bit him in the nards. I always liked Barack.
I beat feet through the alley, hopping on Teague’s biofuel scooter. My biggest concern was a satellite spotting me. I wasn’t sure if the old Tesla Taser satellites were still in operation, since violent crime was pretty much eliminated in Chicago. They worked like giant, orbiting versions of my Glock Taser, sending lightning from the Tesla field and zapping targets on earth. But unlike a handheld version, TTSs were computer controlled and not subject to human error. If you were moving less than five miles per hour, and a TTS locked onto you, it rarely missed.
Zipping up the street, I heard Chomsky scream as his llama gnawed away. Then I was immediately intercepted by three peace officer scooters. Teague’s bike was also CPD issue, so I aimed the kill switch laser in their direction and gave them a rapid-fire burst. It cut their engines, but they still coasted toward me, shooting their Tasers. I swerved left, merging into traffic, and found six more cops on my tail. Like Teague, they were also equipped with kill switches. And if they killed my bike, I’d be easy pickings for the TTSs.
I weaved through the sea of motorists, listening to the sirens behind me, and then hit my siren and pulled into the frog lane. The kermits freaked out, jumping out of the way, some of them falling over and eating pavement. I tailgated one, very close to running him over, but he saw me in his headband rearview mirror and jumped backward, completely over me, clearing my bike by at least five feet. It would have been a lot cooler if he didn’t look so goofy doing it.
The CPD bikes followed me into the lane. I hadn’t been on scooter patrol in more than a decade, but I remembered kill switches had a range of about twenty meters, so as long as I had a sixty-foot lead, they wouldn’t be able to My engine died. Apparently the range had gotten better in the last decade.
I coasted, turning into an alley, smacking right into a powerbocker who was taking a leak in a biorecycle toilet, the opening thirty inches higher than the pedestrian version to accommodate the frog leggers. He toppled, and I jumped off the scooter, mostly to dodge the urine stream. I skidded onto the greentop, coming to rest on my stomach.
“WTF!?” The kermit was on his back. He’d been unable to stop his flow, and an arc of pee splashed onto his chest and drenched his Green Bay Packers shirt, which was not what the Packers deserved.
I got to my knees, trying to decide which way to bolt, when two CPD scooters pulled in, Tasers blazing.
I ducked behind my fallen bike, wax bullets exploding around me, Tesla bolts raining down everywhere. Piss Boy got hit twice, his fountain of urine sparking up and zinging his ding-a-ling in a way that could only be described as extremely uncomfortable. I scrambled to my feet and launched myself at the nearest cop, shots whizzing past my head, hitting him with a body tackle and taking him off the bike and into a lovely hydrangea bush. I landed on him, my knee in his solar plexus, then grabbed his gun hand and pressed his finger on the trigger, firing at his partner, making him dance to the million-volt boogie.