They dove down back alleys and even onto narrow walkways, where the maneuverable bikes could evade the roadblocks and stay sheltered from police aircraft. Smart bastards.
“Your muscle tension is extremely high, sir,” observed Elle. “Would you like me to engage ultrasonic massage?”
“Not now, Elle—I’m skunkhunting.”
“Of course, sir,” she replied, and her status light turned from bright yellow to dim green. “Good luck with that.”
I was getting close to the outskirts of the city and the chaotic human settlements where my targets would have a decent chance at disappearing among their kind of filth and vermin. What a terrible outcome that would be for the Agency—and for my own record.
I rammed the joystick forward and the pod went airborne, streaking up at a thirty-degree trajectory to an altitude of approximately one hundred feet. Then it leveled out.
Within seconds I was closing in on the nearest rider. I was doing more than twice his speed, actually. God, I wanted at him.
The punk killer was still on a fairly wide street, but he never had a chance to swerve away. I didn’t give him one. I swooped down between the buildings and came in over him like an eagle snaring a gopher.
The car’s belly grazed his back—just hard enough to flip him.
As I shot on by, the dashboard screen showed him skidding along the pavement, then bouncing wildly off several building fronts. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
At close to two hundred miles per hour, there probably wouldn’t be much left of that one.
The next closest rider was .74 miles away. The on-screen grid showed a path where I could stay hidden between buildings until I intercepted him.
I dropped the sports-pod back down onto the street and peeled out on a stretch of smooth concrete pavement.
Seconds later, I whipped around a tight corner in front of him—then skidded broadside to cut him off.
But he was good with a bike. I’ll give him that much credit. He braked and laid the motorcycle down on its side, crouching on top and riding it like a sled.
At the last second, the rider leaped clear and tumbled away with the skill of a gymnast. The bike was still hurtling toward me, bouncing and throwing off sparks.
It slammed into my car hard enough to completely demolish the passenger side and send me violently off course.
Bright red warning lights flashed on the dashboard, and the shrill beep of an alarm sounded.
“We’re under attack, sir!” the interactive pilot announced.
Sometimes artificial intelligence doesn’t quite live up to its name.
Chapter 16
“NO IMMEDIATE DANGER to personnel on board,” chirped the pilot computer as the pod righted itself and avoided what would have been a most unpleasant, and possibly deadly, impact with the front of a tinny-looking warehouse. “Damage to vehicle will not impair operation.”
“No problem then,” I muttered.
I swung the pod around in a tight arc and zeroed in on the running human. With a touch, I sent off a heat-seeking tracer round from my front gun port.
The skunk vanished in an explosion of red vapor. Sayonara, you pitiful sack of crap.
I was going to have to show some restraint from here on though. Just like before, I needed to take at least one of these killers alive to be interrogated at headquarters. That was my only mission now—to find out why eleven Elites had been murdered and eviscerated.
As I closed in behind the next target, he banked suddenly into a sharp right turn. In fact, he leaned the bike almost horizontally, then brought it back out and whipped into a dark alley. This one was very good, a superior athlete and rider.
The gap was too narrow for my car, but I had another idea. He wouldn’t be breaking any motorbike speed limits on these narrow, twisty side streets, after all.
So I screeched to a halt.
“Take over,” I snapped to the pilot, popping open the hatch and vaulting out.
“Be careful, Hays,” Elle called after me.
How about that. She’d never used my first name before. Should that make me extra cautious? Was I in worse danger than I thought?
Chapter 17
I HIT THE ground running, and I mean running very fast. I estimated the fleeing rider’s distance at thirty-seven yards and his bike’s speed at forty-one miles per hour. I could more than match that on foot.
The alley was an unlit black hole of warm, heavy stench that fouled my nostrils, but my night vision picked out every detail, right down to the sweat beading on the skunk’s neck, just below his crimson and black helmet.
Within three seconds I’d reached my top foot speed of nearly fifty. By now I was using ten-yard strides. It was almost like flying—my feet barely touching down before I was gone again.
I realized now that I was fully in the human slum as I stretched to dodge a pile of sludgy food scraps covered in maggots, and a microsyringe and bloody bandages from a hyper-meth junkie. Then I whirled up in a horizontal twist, bounded off the side of a building, and barely cleared a row of overflowing Dumpsters. These humans were absolutely disgusting.
I almost screamed with the sheer, glorious power of the chase. My muscles tensed and sprang like flexing steel bands, the wind rushed past my ears and through my hair, and my teeth clenched in anticipation as I closed the gap on the fleeing killer, hopefully the gang’s leader.
A few more seconds and he’d be mine— my captive, mine to interrogate.
Then, just as I leaped at him, the sonofabitch yanked his front wheel completely off the ground and bounced up onto a stack of rotting containers. What in hell? He used the containers like a springboard to hop over the waist-high wall of an old-style parking garage.
I sailed on past, landed with both heels digging in, spun around, and dove back into the garage after him.
It was so low-ceilinged and full of pilasters and parked vehicles that my own agility was impaired—I couldn’t jump, only run in a crouch over the car tops.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…
He’d started pulling away from me again, racing furiously up the circling ramp. By the time I got to the ramp myself, he’d already reached the third level.
He would find himself trapped on the roof, ten stories up—but what if a getaway pod was waiting for him there?
This was some impressive skunk.
I flew past the ramp, back outside to a corner of the garage, and used every ounce of my strength to spring up twenty feet or so and grip a third-story ledge. Then I swung my feet up under me and leaped another two levels, bounding along the sheer concrete face like a jungle spider chasing an ant. No human could do that—and not many Elites, either. But I wanted this killer badly!
He kept on climbing, and he couldn’t see me—probably thought I’d given up. We got to the roof at nearly the same instant. Big surprise, my smelly friend. Just me and you and the twinkling stars up here!
This time there was no low ceiling to slow me down. The bike burst into sight up the ramp, moving so fast it actually left the floor in a long arcing jump.
I caught the bastard at its midpoint, slamming into the rider like a cannonball. We landed, twisting and skidding, with my forearm locked around his throat so tight it cracked apart the chin guard of his helmet.
But damn if this bastard didn’t manage to hang on to the throttle and keep going, racing straight for the outer ledge.
I clung to his back, choking him and wrestling to dump the bike and flip it over, to flip him.
My weight tipped us some and started us sliding broadside—but the wheels hit a parking curb and we flipped almost straight up into the air. We were still going so fast the momentum shot us right out over the ledge.
Then we were plunging downward—ten stories to the pavement below.
There, in all probability, we would both die.
Chapter 18
THE NEXT FEW seconds were the longest of my life. I was truly flying, twisting and turning in blissful weigh
tlessness, helpless yet absolutely free.
But a harsh, hate-filled noise interrupted the thought, pushing it away and sucking me back to—
The motorcycle rider was trying to twist himself around so that he could land on top of me—maybe I’d absorb enough impact for him to survive the fall.
Not going to happen! I would have yelled, if there’d been enough time to form the words.
But I did hook my leg tightly behind his. Then I threw my shoulders back and away from him, causing our tangled bodies to shift in the ever-louder, whistling—now screaming— air.
For those few seconds, I had been watching the pavement below. Now I saw everything at once—bricks, glass, the side of a building blurring like the view out a train window as it plunges into a tunnel…
The stinging air was pulling, ripping at my hair, my clothes, my lips, my eyelids… and then—
The murderer skunk hit the ground first. I smashed into his body like a pile of lumber landing on a sack of rotten fruit.
And then—nothing at all.
Short circuit?
Death?
I had no idea.
Chapter 19
IN MY FIRST blurred instants of consciousness, before I could even open my eyes, I was somewhat aware of movement—and also that I was floating along flat on my back.
Next came a sharp, clean smell. Antiseptic.
I was in a hospital!
The murmur of voices chattering all around me began to come clear.
One was a woman’s, soft, concerned, and very familiar—Lizbeth.
Another—a man’s, deep voiced and commanding. That would be Jax Moore, the Agency chief, my boss. Lizbeth’s boss as well.
There were others, but I didn’t recognize any of them at this point.
I realized I must be in New Lake City Hospital, the finest Elite medical facility in the world. I opened my eyes and saw that the other voices belonged to the personnel who were hurrying me on a gurney down a shockingly bright hallway. And to several other people accompanying us—all high-level Elites—some of whom I’d seen earlier at the president’s inauguration party.
It appeared that I was enjoying a taste of fame and celebrity. Lucky thing I was still wearing my tux—or, at least, what was left of it.
“Hays,” Lizbeth gasped as my eyes fluttered, her lovely face leaning close. “How do you feel, my darling?”
“Never better,” I mumbled.
The truth was, I hurt horribly all over, and the constant, astounding pain was getting worse fast. I’d been badly injured before, a number of times, but never in a way I couldn’t handle—nothing like this present, unbearable agony.
Of course, I’d never fallen ten stories before. Two or three, sure. Even four once… but ten was clearly more than the doctor, or doctors, ordered.
“What happened to the motorcycle rider?” I said through clenched teeth. “That killer scum? The skunk?”
“They’re scooping him up with shovels,” Moore growled at my side.
“Damn! I was trying to keep him alive.”
“We know—you gave it a hell of a shot. Now shut up and take it easy, we’re almost at the OR. You need some parts replaced, buddy.”
Chapter 20
I RELAXED AND managed to give Lizbeth maybe a quarter of a smile. I knew I was in the best possible hands and that Elite medicine had reached a point where I could be good as new—hopefully within a week or two.
But the damn pain was getting worse, and I was weakening in a way I’d never felt before—like the very life was ebbing out of me.
Was that possible—could I be dying? And no one would tell me? Not even Lizbeth? I didn’t want to die, especially not so suddenly.
I managed to whisper, “Love you, Jinx. Love the kids.”
And she, “Love you, Hays. More than anything in this world. Hang on, sweetheart.”
Then the operating room doors swung open and I saw lots of lights. Hospital attendants pushed me inside, then lifted me from the gurney to the table. There, masked, gowned surgeons were already waiting with ultraprecise, computer-moderated surgical tools.
“No time to lose with him,” one of them said grimly. “He’s on his way out.”
Dammit, I didn’t need to hear that.
With swift precision, the medical experts adjusted the overhead lights, hooked me up to the banks of monitors and machines, and deftly slid a catheter into my arm. The blessed sedative relief started flowing through my veins, soothing the fiery ache of shrieking nerves.
As I began to slip over the edge of oblivion, I felt the pressure, although no pain, of a laser scalpel opening up my torso.
Then I must have gone into another dream.
Faint and far away, I heard these incredible words:
“My God, look at that! You see that line? That’s scar tissue. He’s had some sort of surgery here. I think the skin’s been grafted. You see how the follicles are different over here from over here?…
“Look here, underneath… It looks like… Holy shit! You see that?… You see what that is? That’s the remains of a navel cavity! This guy used to have a belly button! Hays Baker is no Elite.
“He’s human. This man is a skunk.”
Book Two
THE SECRET LIFE OF SKUNKS
Chapter 21
I WAS BEING chased by commandos and trained wildcats. If the cats got to me first, I’d be torn to pieces.
On and on I ran through a murky landscape, the color of dark blood, with the ground endlessly collapsing beneath me and my leaden legs scrambling desperately to stay ahead of God only knows what kind of danger.
The strength I had always depended on was gone—I was weak, helpless, someone who didn’t matter anymore, someone who couldn’t fight back.
Shadowy terrors clutched at me, and everywhere I turned, hateful faces loomed close, screeching those awful words I imagined I’d heard:
He’s human.
The worst thing by far was the terrible shame of the words.
This man is a skunk.
I could feel the wildcats now—so close—and hear the sound they made, like a high-pitched drill.
Chapter 22
I HAD NO idea how long my horrible fugue state lasted, but I finally woke soaked in my own sweat. I must have been thrashing terribly because the bedding was twisted around me like restraints.
Then I realized it wasn’t bedding at all; it was restraints. I was being held captive for some insane reason that I couldn’t comprehend.
Did someone think I might harm myself? Why would I do that?
Faces above me blurred in and out—from dream to reality—until they solidified, glaring down. Not wildcats. One was my partner, Owen McGill, and the other my boss, Jax Moore—except there was no mistaking them for old friends now.
For the first time, I noticed how cold-eyed and thin-lipped Jax Moore’s handsome face was, and how McGill’s macho, chiseled jaw could have a brutal, almost mechanical look to it. Elites could certainly appear that way, more machine than man.
“Well, well, our traitorous skunk’s awake,” Moore said, wrinkling his nose as if I were offal he’d accidentally stepped in. “How are you feeling, Hays? We haven’t given you anything for the pain. Why should we?”
McGill glowered with outright hatred. “When I think about how I fucking trusted you all these years. The deceit you showed is astonishing.”
He leaned close—and then Owen McGill spat in my face. That ended any remaining hope that I might still be dreaming. The sentiment hurt and the spit shamed, but it also pissed me off, big-time.
“What the hell are you saying?” I yelled, struggling to break free. “Have you both gone crazy?”
“There’s nobody crazy here,” Moore said grimly. “Just two honest cops—and a dirty traitor who will soon be facing the slow death.”
“I’ll say it again: Are you crazy? I’m the best agent you’ve ever had! How could I be human? How could that possibly make sense to either of you? Somebody’s t
ricked us! This is a setup!”
“I don’t know who you’re working with, skunk, but we’re going to find out in a hurry. You sick bastard.”
“Lizbeth!” I raised my voice suddenly. Where was she? Were they holding her too? “What have you done with my wife? And my girls?”
Moore very coolly replied, “Lizbeth and the poor girls are in a safe place. She fainted in my arms when she found out the truth. Then she went home and tried to scrub her skin off—because she had touched you.
“And your daughters… they’ll have to go to a new school to try and escape the stigma and shame. Didn’t you ever think about what this would do to them? What kind of monster are you?”
Moore stared coldly at me while his words sank in. My wife, my beloved partner in life, she was going along with this? And what would happen to April and Chloe? I didn’t want them hurt by vicious accusations against me, no matter how ridiculous and untrue.
“I don’t know how you managed to pull this extensive masquerade off, Baker, but we’re going to find out.” Moore continued his rant. “The doctors want to watch you one more night to make sure you’re strong enough for a full interrogation. Then you’re coming with us, and believe me, you’re going to tell us everything you ever did, from the minute you were born.”
Having said that, Moore lit up one of his famous cigars, his victory cigars.
“And if you make it through the interrogation, you can guess what’s coming next,” McGill sneered. “A very slow death. It could take… years.”
That’s when McGill reared back and punched me hard in the face. The sudden pain made me feel like my skull had been split.
“That’ll have to do for now,” he growled. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Trust me on it. I can’t wait to break every bone in your body, skunk.”
They turned and stalked out of the room, leaving me rigid with horror, my face aching. I’d seen humans interrogated by Elite experts—reduced to lumps of screaming, gibbering flesh. But that was nothing compared to what McGill promised would come next: slow death, a fatal interrogation technique first used by humans during their brutal Terrorist Wars and later perfected by Elites.