Toys

Chapter 63

I could see why the humans would want to be careful with me, but still…

“You expect us to believe that for all those years you could carry on as Mr. Super Elite Agent-without anyone there having an idea there was somethin’ off about you?” the interrogator said with professional menace in his voice.

He’d asked me that same question, one way or another, at least a dozen times in the past hour-which was about how long I’d been hanging from the ceiling of a room in a military jet somewhere over southern England.

To be more precise, I was inside a mesh net, which they’d hoisted up so my feet didn’t quite touch the floor. A thin metal bar had been inserted under my crotch, and I was forced to straddle it with my full weight.

Damned uncomfortable, and not very hospitable of the Brits.

“It’s like being a bit thick,” I said. “You don’t know it until somebody tells you.”

I could see the interrogator bristle at the insult, but he kept concentrating on the monitor of the brain analyzer they had me hooked to-a sophisticated lie-detection device that I knew was close to infallible.

Once again, he shook his head unhappily at what he saw. He turned to a Brit major who was standing by and observing me like I was a ticking bomb, which wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Never come across a reading like this before, sir,” he said. “Not a termite-but not exactly human either.”

Termites, I’d gathered by now, was what European humans called Elites-probably a slam at their unimaginative, orderly minds.

“Could I offer a helpful word, gentlemen?” I said. “I’m very familiar with this kind of equipment-I suspect the problem’s in the machine.”

I wouldn’t have believed it possible for a man’s jaw to get any tighter than the interrogator’s already was, but it did.

“This machine is excellent,” he said. “Top of the line. Nothing but the best for testing the likes of you.”

“Have you ever used it in this aircraft? Or any aircraft at all?”

He hesitated-then, under the major’s steady gaze, said, “And your point would be?”

“The alpha-wave regulators are extremely sensitive to destabilizations of ionic-bombardment levels,” I said. “Even a slight change of environment can knock the whole operation out of sync. Taking it to this altitude and speed is like throwing it into a subatomic waterfall.”

“Well, Sandor? What do you say to that?” the major asked. “The man has a point. Destabilization of ionic-bombardment levels, hmmm?”

“I can prove it,” I said. “Hook yourself up to it. Check your own brain patterns as a reference. They might not be exactly normal, but I assume you know what they look like.”

“Do as he says,” the major commanded. “Do it at once. I want to see this.”

Grimly, the interrogator affixed a wireless headset to his own temples, connecting himself to the apparatus.

And also to me.

I stayed still for thirty seconds, concentrating all mental energy in the atrium of my brain’s implanted computer chip-the mechanism that allowed control over my body’s involuntary functions.

Then I blasted a pulse outward-an electromagnetic shock wave moving literally at the speed of thought.

The monitor’s screen shattered with a crack, and the interrogator’s feet left the floor by a good six inches. His bulging eyeballs looked like they were blistering on the inside. The headset smoked against his temples.

In the stunned silence that followed, the room’s door opened and Lucy stepped in, along with a well-dressed older man.

He glanced appraisingly at the half-melted equipment and the lurching, drooling interrogator.

“Point taken, Agent Baker,” he said. “Major, set this man free. He’s an ally. And a friend of Megwin’s.”