“Oh, so instead I should just bounce my face off of the headrest?” I say, getting into the car. Brayden leans across me to fasten the seat belt.
“How about I just don’t get into an accident?” he suggests.
“Isn’t the nature of accidents that they’re, you know, accidental?”
“Ah,” he says, straightening up, “they may be accidents, but you can avoid them on purpose.”
He closes the door and walks around to the driver’s side. As he’s getting seated, I say, “That sounds like a fortune cookie.”
“Close,” he says. “Driving school.”
“Hey, speaking of, you’re driving me all the way out there yourself? I’m surprised you didn’t pass the job off to someone more junior.”
Brayden laughs. “You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more junior than me at my firm.”
Sounds like Simmons couldn’t get the big guns out for me, then. I can’t think of a tactful way to say anything about that, though, so after a short pause, I change the subject.
“You seem awfully calm for someone who’s got a potentially crazed terrorist in his backseat,” I say.
“Allegedly crazed, alleged terrorist,” he says, and I can see him smiling in the rearview mirror.
“So you don’t believe I’m guilty? Or crazy?”
“It’s my job to believe you, and to get other people to do the same.”
“But what do you personally think?”
“I don’t think about it personally at all. My opinions don’t come to work with me. Work is just for facts, and what they can do for us.”
“Have you ever had a guilty client?” I press.
He shrugs. “I’ve had some who’ve been found guilty, or who plea-bargained. I don’t pass judgment. They’ve got judges for that.”
I can’t really think of anything to say in response to that, and apparently neither can Brayden, as the conversation lapses again.
“Radio?” he says after a moment.
“Sure, whatever you like to listen to is good for me,” I say.
He turns it on and flips to a local mix station. “No satellite radio?” I ask.
“Like I said, junior lawyer. I’ll spend money on satellite radio once I’ve paid off my law school bills.”
For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, we let the radio do the talking for us. After a few songs, the DJs take over to do the lunchtime news announcements. I’m only half-paying attention until a name I recognize catches my ear.
“In weird news, serial arsonist Vince Amano attempted to escape from prison this morning.”
Vince is one of my previous nemeses, the guy who could grow clones of himself out of non-living matter. It’s kind of funny that they put him away for serial arson, since although he was involved in a lot of fires, I was the one starting them. In my defense, it was to contain him. I suppose it’s a lot easier to put someone in jail for burning down the police station than it is to convict them for illegal self-cloning.
“According to reports, Amano dug entirely through the wall of his cell to escape. The security cameras at the prison show him running naked across the yard, only to be stopped by the fences. Maybe the hole wasn’t big enough to get his clothes through, too!”
Brayden laughs, but I feel a chill in my stomach. Vince’s clones always showed up naked; he couldn’t clone clothing or any sort of accessories, only himself. So if there’s a hole in his cell wall, a naked version of him outside, and no outcry about how they seem to have two of him in custody now, then there’s a very good chance that the real Vince actually did make his escape this morning.
Last time I saw him, he tried to beat me to death, while I asphyxiated him. You could say that we didn’t part on very good terms. So if he’s suddenly gotten his powers back and escaped at the same time as I’m heading to be locked up, that seems like a bad thing for me. And when you consider that Ichabot is probably the one behind getting me sent to the asylum and therefore knows exactly where I am, it looks a lot like I’ve just had a guided missile pointed in my direction.
Ichabot stripped me of my powers, but they never quite go away entirely. And in this case, a tiny bit of disintegration is all I need. Touching as many fingers as I can to the chain of the handcuffs, I focus on loathing them as deeply as I can. The lack of freedom, the physical discomfort, the entire situation that they represent—I pour it all out until, with a whispered clink, I hear the chain fall free of one wrist.
McMannis is approaching a stoplight, which is perfect. I have an urge to apologize for what I’m about to do, but I really don’t want him to have any warning. So I sit quietly, still pretending to be cuffed, right up until the light turns green again. As he’s putting his foot on the gas, I throw the door open, yell “Sorry!” over my shoulder and jump out into the road.
- Chapter Four -
Car horns blare and I hear McMannis yelling, “Dan! DAN!” behind me, but I’m sprinting for cover and not looking back.
My bid for freedom is almost cut short in its first few seconds. I weave between the cars and reach what should be the safety of the sidewalk, only to find myself squarely in the path of an onrushing cyclist.
His eyes widen as he attempts to swerve, but with a building on one side and parked cars on the other, there’s not much of anywhere to go. To his credit, he almost makes it, but the trailing edge of his handlebars catch me in the gut, spinning me painfully around to carom off of the brick edge of the building. This also has the effect of wrenching his bike toward me, spilling him in a rolling crash to the ground at my feet. I manage to avoid accidentally kicking him in the head, but that’s about as much as I contribute to the situation.
I’d like to stop and help him up, but for all I know McMannis has ditched the car and is sprinting after me right now. With a grunted, inarticulate apology, I leap over the fallen cyclist and resume my flight for safety. He had a helmet on, so he’s probably fine. A little scraped up, I’m sure, but I can feel fresh blood oozing from where my collision with bike and wall reopened wounds from capturing Brian yesterday. So maybe he deserves a scrape or two as well, really.
In either case, I don’t have the time to think about him. I need to formulate a plan other than “run,” and I need to do it while on the run. Cudgeling my brain for a few seconds, I come up with something that is perhaps less of a plan and more of word association: “hide.”
Still, light on details though it is, it’s basically the right concept. I sprint for several more blocks, taking corners at random, then slow to a brisk walk so that I look less like I’m fleeing from something. I’m hoping that this will reduce Brayden’s ability to find out where I went by asking passersby if they saw anyone fleeing. Of course, slowing down raises his chances of simply seeing me if he cruises by, so the next step is getting out of sight.
Up ahead, a narrow walkway leads between two office buildings to a sunny courtyard, mostly out of view of the street. I turn smartly down it, enter the courtyard and plant myself on a bench that’s getting meager shade from a small tree. Time to catch my breath, both literally and metaphorically.
Time is my biggest enemy here. And Ichabot, obviously. Plus through him Vince, and anyone else he’s mobilized with the nanos. So actually, I’ve got a lot of enemies, but the point I’m making is that time is on their side, not mine. If I sit around doing nothing, my position gets weaker while theirs gets stronger.
I reach for my cell phone to check the time, and remember that I don’t have it. It’s in a plastic baggie in Brayden’s car, along with my wallet and keys. Basically everything I need to get around in daily life, in short. So add that to the list of problems arrayed against me.
Also, now that I’m calming down a bit, my ribs are really starting to throb on one side. I think the cyclist might have hit me harder than I realized. I probe gently at the area with my fingers and wince at even the light touch. If nothing else, I’ve got a tremendous bruise forming, and I hope that’s all it is.
Speaking of
which, I’ve still got a basic recognizability problem. Generally, I’m a fairly nondescript white guy. A little taller than average, but not so much as to stand out. No tattoos, no unusual hair style or color, neither notably attractive or eye-catchingly ugly. Usually, anyway.
Today, I’m covered in bandages from corralling Brian, and that includes two wrapping my hands and one covering the entirety of my cheek. I could probably take the ones off of my hands by now, but when I poke the inside of my cheek with my tongue, I can still taste the gauze pad that I applied to the outside of my face. So if I take that bandage off, I suspect the attention will simply morph from “why does that guy have a bandage?” to “look, look, I can see his teeth!” And that’s not really much of an improvement.
Also, in assessing my physical attributes here, I’ve noticed that I’m still wearing handcuffs that just don’t happen to be connected anymore. That’s the sort of thing that stands out in people’s minds as well. Fortunately, I’ve finally found an aspect of my situation that I can do something about.
Wrapping my fingers tightly around each cuff, I scowl and let the nanos do their work. Seconds later, the cuffs are fading away, a light rain of dust falling from my wrists. It’s uncomfortably easy to summon up loathing right now. That’s currently quite convenient, but it’s a weird blessing to be counting.
Okay, so arrayed against me we have: hunted by the police, no cash or phone, supervillains trying to kill me, currently no major power of my own, easily identifiable. And in the positive column there’s...I can dissolve small holes in things. Good. This seems fair.
I need a place to hide out, to recharge, to get centered. And the only place I can think to do that is home.
On the face of it, it seems like a patently stupid idea. Obviously the police are going to look for me at my house. I mean, where else am I going to go? But on the other hand, everyone would assume that the police would check the home address first, and therefore no one would go there, since clearly the police would be waiting for them. And if that’s the case, then the police wouldn’t waste their time checking the house.
Even though I realize that if I continue iterating that thought, it leads back to the police definitely going to the house, I haven’t got a better idea. If I go home, I can get money, computer access to find out what’s going on, maybe contact some people who haven’t been turned against me yet. Without home, I’ve got none of those things. So I might as well stop on the part of the thought process that gives me some hope.
I don’t know exactly where I am, but I know I’m miles from my house. What I’m bound to be close to, though, is a bus stop. In this part of the city, they’re rarely more than a dozen blocks apart, so all I need to do is figure out which bus to catch and I can make my way back home.
I reach for my cell phone again to check the bus schedules, before remembering that I don’t have it. This also reminds me that I don’t have my bus card, or any money to buy a ticket with. Problematic.
I look surreptitiously around the courtyard, scanning for anyone with lightly attended purses or easily accessible wallets that I could snatch and run with. It’s not my proudest moment, but I’m more than a bit desperate and the police are already looking for me, so it’s not like I’d be making things any worse for myself.
The only other person in the courtyard is a guy on a tablet computer, though, with no visible wallet. I consider grabbing his tablet and making a break for it, but then I’d have to find a pawn shop and also I’m not at all certain that it’s as easy to pass off stolen goods at those places as the movies make it look. I’m still thinking about it, though, when I spot something better through the glass doors of one of the office buildings: a vending machine.
The plan comes to me fully-formed: pop into the lobby, boost my magnetism to scramble the machine’s workings, catch the coins that come pouring out like a slot machine jackpot. Easy as pie, and much less morally repugnant than purse-snatching. Maybe not legally much different, but it feels better, anyway.
I saunter over to the door to the lobby and encounter my first problem when I attempt to open it: it’s locked. There’s a card-reading machine to the side of the door, presumably for employees to swipe their badges, and obviously I don’t have one of those. I’m already angering up to futz with the vending machine, though, so I focus that building magnetic charge and wrap my hand around the card reader. It lets out a stuttered beep and goes silent. I hear a soft click from the door and pull on the handle again, and this time it opens. Success!
Feeling good about my progress thus far, I approach the vending machine and quickly glance around the lobby. No one’s paying attention to me, so I put my hand over the coin slot and try to look like I’m just considering my options while I magnetize things.
At first, nothing happens. After a few seconds, though, the lights in the machine shut off, after which nothing continues to happen. I move my hand down to the coin return, in case there’s something more sensitive there, but the now-silent machine refuses to dispense so much as a single quarter.
I attempt to channel my frustration into anger to boost the magnetism, moving my hand randomly around the face of the machine, but it stolidly resists my every effort. After almost a minute of this, something snaps. Not in the machine, but in me.
“Fine,” I growl, changing tacks. I press my fingers together and lean hard against the machine, letting my loathing flow through them and dispensing my destroying nanos. The plastic of the machine peels away, revealing a brief glimpse of cylinders of change beneath before those in turn flay open and the coins begin to pour out in a tumult.
Surprised by the speed and intensity of the flow, I cup my hands and try to catch the sudden bounty, but the coins rapidly overfill my hands and pour onto the floor, ringing musically against the tile. Every other head in the lobby snaps around to see me kneeling there, a look of guilty shock on my face as I blatantly rob a vending machine.
Luckily, though, I recover from the surprise faster than anyone else. There’s no one between me and the front door, so I close my cupped hands into two fists and sprint for freedom, coins still falling in my wake. I knock the door open with my shoulder and hip, springing down the front steps and hitting the sidewalk at a run.
A block later, I slow down to a brisk walk and shove my hands in my pockets, storing my spoils. I take a few more random turns in case anyone’s pursuing, and through a stroke of luck I happen to wander right toward what I’ve been looking for: a bus station, complete with a map and list of bus routes. I’m going home.
I’ve already resolved to get on the first bus that comes by, reasoning that anything that takes me out of the area is an improvement. After reading the schedule, I find that luck is with me for once: I can get home with only one bus change, and the first bus I need comes by here pretty regularly. If I’m very lucky, it might even be the next bus to arrive.
I don’t know exactly what time it is. McMannis had a clock on his dashboard display, but I wasn’t paying attention that closely to it, and also I don’t know exactly how long ago I made my escape. It feels like it happened just seconds ago, but looking at events logically it could have been anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour. That kind of range makes it hard to say whether the bus is about to arrive or whether I’ve just missed it.
I see a man with a watch walking by, and attempt to attract his attention.
“Excuse me,” I say, but he doesn’t hear me, so I say it again. “Excuse me!”
He keeps walking, eyes straight ahead as if I don’t exist, and I realize that he thinks I’m going to ask him for money.
“I’m not homeless!” I shout after him. “I just want to know the time!”
He keeps walking, never looking back. I think about telling him that I already have money, but I suppose pocketsful of change is not terribly compelling evidence against being homeless. I sulk back to the bus shelter to wait.
“Anyway, so what if I were homeless?” I mutter to myself. “Dude could still gi
ve me the time of day. Literally, in this case. I’m still a human being.”
Then I think about all of the times I’ve ignored similar attempts to start a conversation from people on the street, and I feel deeply guilty. It sucks when the shoe’s on the other foot.
I study the bus route map some more, both to give myself something else to think about and to partially hide my face from passing traffic. This successfully passes the time until the bus arrives and I board.
The driver sighs heavily when I start feeding the ticket machine a fistful of change. It looks like I’ve ended up with mainly dimes, so the process takes a while. I’m only about halfway done when he closes the doors and pulls the bus away from the curb, leaving me swaying precariously while trying to add more coins. I try to lean against a pole to steady myself, and receive a sharply painful reminder that I may have a broken rib.
Despite everything, I do finally pay for my ticket and make my way carefully to a seat. There are a handful of other passengers, none of whom seem to be paying any attention to me at all. I take a window seat on the left side of the bus, which shows my cheek bandage clearly to anyone inside but hides it from the street, and close my eyes, enjoying the momentary respite. It’s been a very long day, and it’s probably not even one o’clock yet.
The journey home is blissfully free of interruptions and complications. I change buses without incident, unless you count another sigh and eye roll from the driver of the second bus when I pay in dimes again. They’re valid currency! And I let the other people getting on go ahead of me, so it’s not like I was creating a line. These guys just need to chill out a little.
Walking up to my house, I reach into my pocket for my keys, which obviously I don’t have. Once again, they’re in that stupid Ziploc baggie in my lawyer’s car. I really should have taken the time to grab that before making my escape from the car. It seemed impractical at the time, but I’m starting to think that it might have been worth the extra trouble.
Day of Reckoning Page 3