The Rule of Thoughts (18 page)

“That’s enough,” Agent Weber said. Not loudly, but with authority. “I don’t need to hear any more, thank you.”

Michael was at a complete loss for words. On the screen, he saw Weber reach over and push something; then she told Patrick to come back to the room. The man was at the door a second later.

“Please escort our guests out of the building,” Agent Weber said to him. “I’ve never seen these people before in my life.”

The WallScreen went dark.

“You’re
sure
that’s her?” Sarah asked Michael after the cabbie had driven off from the VNS building. They were packed in the backseat like kindergartners on a bus, Bryson in the middle.

“Yes,” Michael answered. He tried to tamp down his anger—it wasn’t Sarah’s fault. “Her Aura in
Lifeblood Deep
looks almost exactly the same. It’s definitely her. Same name, same appearance. Plus, I saw her at Jackson Porter’s apartment. I know it’s her, and it’s a joke that she’s pretending we’ve never met.”

“Maybe she’s trying to cover her butt,” Bryson offered. “If she’s been in charge of finding Kaine and stopping the Mortality Doctrine, she’s done the crap job of the century. She may act like God’s gift to mankind, but you know she has bosses, and those bosses might kick her to the curb if she acts like old friends with her biggest failure. You.” He pointed at Michael. “No offense, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Michael responded with an eye roll. “None taken.”

Sarah wasn’t convinced. “It’s gotta be more than that. There’s no way she could just pretend she doesn’t know us and get away with it. Something weird’s going on.”

Michael agreed one hundred percent.

The cabbie suddenly swore and slowed down, pulling over to the side of the road. Then he slapped his steering wheel with both hands.

“What’s going on?” Bryson asked.

The cabbie turned to face them. “Damn hovercop.” He pointed upward as if they could see through his roof. “Flagged me down. It’s probably some bored doughnut chomper tryin’ to hit his quota.”

A bad seed sprouted in Michael’s stomach. What if the cop asked about the passengers, wanted to see their IDs?
Calm down
, he told himself. They’d checked and rechecked their fake accounts. They could fool some cop just trying to get through his day.

“Your face,” Sarah whispered to him. It seemed an odd thing to say.

“Huh?”

“It’s been plastered all over the NewsBops. What if the cop recognizes you?”

Before he could answer, the police hovercar descended in front of them and turned, the heat from its boosters shimmering in the air. The silvery machine landed on the asphalt with a soft thump and shut down with a fading whine of engines. Then it just sat there for several long, long moments.

“I swear they do this on purpose,” the cabbie grumbled
from the front seat. “Those ratfaces just like to make you sweat. He’s probably in there sippin’ his coffee and talkin’ to a buddy on the Net. Sorry son of a …”

Michael tuned the guy out. That seed in his gut had blossomed into full-fledged panic, slicking the palms of his hands with sweat and making his throat feel stuffed with cotton. The waiting was going to drive him crazy.

Finally, the door of the cop car popped open and swiveled upward on its hinges. An armored man stepped out of the vehicle, his suit the standard bulky black of the police, the visor on his helmet pulled down to cover his face. Michael understood why cops in this part of the city wanted to protect themselves, but it still made him nervous. He had visions of this guy pulling him out of the car and beating him with those black gloves until he bled head to toe—the man looked more like a robotic monster than a human.

The cop walked around to the driver’s side of the cab and rapped on the window. The cabbie waited a beat before he rolled it down—probably just to prove that he could.

“What’s the problem, Officer?” he asked, his tone neutral, like he’d done this a thousand times. “There’s no way I was speeding, and I’ve got all my permits.”

The visor muffled the cop’s voice a bit, but it still had a menacing ring. “I need you to sit there and keep your mouth shut, sir. Think you can do that? Do you think you can do that for me? Sir?”

Michael could only see the back of the cabbie’s head, but the muscles along his neck tensed and he didn’t respond. At least, not vocally. Just a short, stiff nod.

“That’s better,” the cop replied. “Now I’m going to need your nice law-abiding passengers to step out of the car. And make it snappy.”

He had them line up against the cold brick wall of an old building. Michael felt the rough edges of the poorly done mortar job poking through his shirt. The cop refused to lift his visor, making him seem even more like a robot to Michael. He remembered the robot in the Sleep, the one who’d programmed out his Core—ripped it out even though as a Tangent he hadn’t really needed one—which made him think of Kaine. What if
he
was somehow behind this supposed traffic stop?

Please, no
, Michael begged the universe. How could Kaine be
that
powerful? He refused to allow himself to believe it. But even so, he looked at the cop and wondered if he was a Tangent come to life.

“What are your names?” the man asked, just as a section of his visor lit up. Michael could see symbols and pictures running across the inside. “And before you answer, I’m only going to say this once: Do. Not. Lie. Do not. You have one chance to tell me the truth. Now, what are your names?”

Sarah went first, then Bryson, then Michael. They’d all been busted more times than Michael could count within the VirtNet. And they’d always gotten away, just a few lines of code combined with the calm and cool … 
massaging
of
the truth. It was a little different in the real world, but the principles were the same. One by one, they gave their fake names as smoothly as if they’d used them their whole lives.

The cop grunted some odd sound that perhaps meant he was listening and recording. But it came across more like he was a monkey with stomach issues.

“We had some reports of a sighting,” the cop said, walking slowly down the line of his captors. He stopped directly in front of Michael and stared at him—it seemed so, anyway—through his dark visor. “Of one Jackson Porter, missing for close to two weeks. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you? What was your name again? Ah, yes.
Michael
. What do you have to say, boy? Seen anybody that looks like a cyber-terrorist?”

Every part of Michael wanted to close his eyes and access the code. Hack himself out of the situation. He suddenly wished for his old life as a Tangent, oblivious and happy. Lying to this cop seemed like a terrible idea, especially since the man had probably recognized his face, but he just didn’t know what else to do.

“No, sir,” he said. “I’ve seen the NewsBops, heard about this Jackson guy. But I haven’t seen him. Have you guys seen him?” He looked at his friends for their response, knowing he’d already made a mistake, that he’d come across as a smart aleck to the policeman. Bryson and Sarah shyly shook their heads, but he could see in their eyes that they knew Michael had screwed up. Maybe they should’ve just told the truth and relied on the authorities to keep them safe.

The cop finally lifted his visor, revealing the face of a guy
who was born to be a man of the law. Stone-hard angles, eyes that were pools of unreadable darkness. He didn’t seem too happy.

“Get in the hovercar,” he said tightly. “All three of you. One wrong move and I’ll LaserCuff you. I’m not in the greatest of moods today.”

The cabbie yelled over at them from his car. “Hey! Officer! Can I leave? Please?”

“Get lost!” the cop yelled back at him.

Obviously happy to oblige, the cabbie squealed away down the street. Michael watched the cab disappear, along with all his hopes.

Sarah and Bryson got in first. The cop was holding Michael by the arm far more tightly than he needed to. Michael was feeling desperate, and not just for the obvious reasons. Surely the entire police force didn’t work for Kaine already—although he guessed there was a possibility that the one who’d caught them
could
be a Tangent. There was also the weirdness with Agent Weber, though this could be totally unrelated. Jackson Porter
was
missing, wanted for serious crimes, and the boy’s face had been plastered all over the NewsBops. It wasn’t strange at all that Michael had been reported.

Either way, too much was at risk if they brought Michael in. What if no one else realized what Kaine was up to and he
couldn’t convince them? He wanted to scream at Agent Weber. They needed the VNS.

“Your turn,” the cop said when Sarah slid over to sit in the middle.

Michael’s desperation burst to the surface in that moment. “Listen, sir … can I talk to you? In private?”

The man’s visor was still raised, and his expression did not change in the slightest—if Michael’s request surprised him, he didn’t show it. “You want to talk to me. In private.” He stated it more than asked.

Michael nodded. “Please.”

The cop gripped him by the arm even harder and escorted him several feet away from the hovercar. “Go ahead, boy. Talk.”

“We both know who I am,” Michael said.

“Thank you for acknowledging that I’m not the stupidest cop to ever live. That’s why I’m taking you in.”

Michael pointed at the car. “Those two people had nothing to do with me running. They’re just friends I picked up along the way. And … there’s a reason I
did
run. You think it’s because I’m a criminal, but this goes up the ladder big-time, way higher than whoever you work for.”

“Son, what in
the
hell are you talking about?”

“You can’t arrest me. You can’t. We have information on a
real
cyber-terrorist and … we need … to find out more.”

The cop was shaking his head long before Michael finished the sentence. “I don’t like my time to be wasted, boy.

Stop talking in riddles. You want me to know something, then spit it out.”

Michael’s blood hissed through his veins. He’d painted himself into a corner. “It’s … complicated. Listen, what can I do to make you let us go? Money? I can get you a lot of money. My … parents are rich. I didn’t run away empty-handed.”