Timecaster

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.

His partner flopped off his scooter, and I ran for it, ready to speed off into the street, when three more cops entered the alley from the other side, heading right for me.

A bike chase was a no-win proposition for me. They could go wherever I went, and they were armed.

I glanced at the kermit. He’d managed to stop peeing, and steam was rising from his wet chest. Without thinking I knelt next to him, hitting the release button on his left knee, the clamps of the frog leg automatically opening up. Before I could second-guess myself, the spring stilts were on my own legs, automatically snugging themselves to a perfect fit.

Frog legs worked on two simple principles. Longer legs meant longer strides, and springs transferred energy. They were made of reinforced carbon slats, which curved backward in half-moon shapes. This allowed them to bend. Extra height plus extra bounce meant higher speed. I’d heard some folks could reach fifty miles per hour on them, which was faster than biofuel scooters.

But how in the heck did you get up once they were on?

The legs were lightweight but cumbersome. The added height made it impossible for me to stand because my knees were too high. I crawled to the alley wall and had to pull myself up on the ivy. Once erect, balancing was awkward, and I had no idea how anyone could walk in these things, let alone run.

The cops got within Taser range. I pushed myself off the wall, took three staggering steps, and then realized that the frog legs changed my center of gravity. Leaning forward corrected this issue. Head down, I sprinted at the scooters.

The rate of acceleration was surprising, blowing my hair back, the world blurring past me on either side. Each stride covered ten or twelve feet, and the bouncing-though it looked silly to an observer-actually felt steady and controlled. It was like regular running, only enhanced.

Time to try a jump.

The cops swerved out of my way, probably thinking I was just another kermit. Then one of them IDed me and raised his weapon, coming at me fast.

I bounced on my right leg and leapt up, clearing his bike easily. But my exhilaration was short-lived, because I actually kept going higher, as if gravity no longer had a hold on me, and when I looked down I was twenty feet in the air. If I landed wrong, it would break me, or possibly kill me.

After a momentary adrenaline surge of pure panic, I brought both legs together and leaned forward in a crouching position, clenching my teeth, ready to absorb the shock of impact.

I hit the ground hard, slamming into the greentop with incredible speed and force – and didn’t feel the impact at all.

The frog legs absorbed the kinetic energy, then released it, launching me into the air again. The relief that surged through me was fleeting; I was leaping into oncoming traffic.

I shifted my body in the air, trying to control my trajectory, even flapping my arms like a pigeon to prevent me from landing on top of a motorist. I managed to squeeze between two scooters, hopping on one leg, bending my knee so the next bounce wouldn’t be as high. My left stilt clipped a commuter’s helmet, throwing me off balance, and I did a bizarre pirouette, landed on both legs, and then did splits in the air like a freestyle skier, leapfrogging another two bikes and heading straight for a bus.

I had deja vu of the train incident earlier, except this time I didn’t have gecko tape, and the bus was coming at me rather than moving in the same direction. I bent into a pike, managing to get my legs out in front of me, my ass brushing against the vehicle’s green roof as I barely cleared the top. My stilts dug two trenches in the flowers, then caught on the internal irrigation system. My body continued its forward motion, my knees bent, and I bounced off the roof, just as a gigantic bolt of Tesla lightning split the night and struck the bus less than a foot behind me.

The TTS had locked on.