Timecaster (15 page)

“I’ll save you, Talon!”

McGlade came running up behind Rocket. He had my tiny folding knife raised up over his head.

“McGlade! Don’t!”

“Die, you enormous son of a bitch!”

McGlade stabbed Rocket in the left ass cheek. To my trained eye, it didn’t seem to be a killing blow.

Rocket snarled, then stared down at McGlade. McGlade grabbed the knife’s handle and yanked on it.

The knife wouldn’t budge. It was lodged to the hilt in the roider’s rock-hard gluteus maximus, and I doubted nothing less than a block and tackle would be able to remove it. McGlade grunted with effort for a few seconds, trying both overhand and underhand grips. He even tried bracing his foot against Rocket’s leg. Eventually, he gave up.

“You got a really strong ass, buddy,” McGlade said, out of breath. He wiped his brow with his sleeve, then gave the knife handle a baby pat. “You should keep it there. Makes you look tough.”

“You’re dead,” Rocket told him.

“Kinda figured.”

Then McGlade took stupid to the next level. He reared back and kicked the knife blade.

Rocket’s eyes practically shot out of his head. He howled, the roid rage once again taking control, and backhanded McGlade so hard it could be heard in neighboring states. Then he turned his fury on me. Shoving the pool table to the side as if it weighed nothing, he grabbed my shirt and lifted me up over his head.

I’d felt trapped before. Now I felt helpless, which was even worse.

He tossed me, visions of broken bones and organ failure swirling through my head as I spun through the air.

Incredibly, miraculously, I landed on something soft.

“You broke my fall,” I said, amazed.

“You broke my ribs,” McGlade groaned underneath me.

I disentangled myself from McGlade and picked up an overturned metal chair. Rocket rushed at me, fists clenched. I kept him at bay like a lion tamer, poking at him without letting him grab the chair and pull it away. He still had my knife in his buttocks, but I didn’t think asking for it back was a smart idea.

“You’re rich now,” I said, as we circled each other. “You don’t want to go to jail for murder.”

“I’ll hire a good lawyer.”

“Bust the chair over his Nazi head, Talon,” McGlade said from the floor. “This fucknut gets that kind of money, he’ll start the Fourth Reich.”

Rocket turned to McGlade, snarling. I busted the chair over his Nazi head. The roider stumbled, falling to his knees. I reared back to hit him again, and he kicked out one of his enormous legs, sweeping my feet out from under me. I dropped the chair and slammed onto my back.

McGlade screamed. I watched. Rocket had his arm. The giant snapped it in half, like it was a breadstick. I saw McGlade’s knuckles touch his elbow. He saw it, too, and lost consciousness in midscream. Then Rocket gave me his full attention.

“No fun when they pass out,” he said. “You gonna pass out on me?”

I felt like passing out right then.

I’ve had some experience with violence. While timecasting discouraged most inappropriate behavior, there were still instances of two people coming to blows because they were both convinced they were right.

Usually, violent acts were fast and ugly. Two or three quick hits, someone going down, and a hasty retreat. People didn’t like to linger. Dwelling on the violence you’ve committed, even if it was justified, was never a satisfying, wholesome experience.

Fights—outside of a televised hyperboxing match—rarely lasted more than thirty seconds. A fight that traversed the entire length and width of a dissy P&P bar, complete with smashed furniture, bent bats, tossed pool tables, broken bones, lost teeth, stab wounds, and several deaths . . . It was unheard of.

So when I forced myself to look at Rocket, it was eight kinds of surreal. This shouldn’t be happening. Not to me. Not at this moment. Not in this country.

I’d spent most of my adult life making sure things like this didn’t happen.

I felt overwhelmed. And tired. So tired.

There might not be dignity in surrender. But there is finality. The willingness to give up, just so it could be over, was a powerfully tantalizing feeling. With one direct punch, Rocket could end my life. My pain would end along with it. My worries would be gone. If victory was impossible, why keep fighting?

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and realized I already knew the answer.

This battle wasn’t with Rocket. There was no contest. I couldn’t beat him.

So it wasn’t about winning.

The battle was with myself. The measure of a man’s worth was all about what finally made him give up.

Rocket laughed. “You gonna pass—”

I clenched my hands and raised them.

“Just shut the fuck up and fight, bitch.”

For a fraction of a second, Rocket appeared uncertain. Then he came at me.

He swung. I ducked. He feinted. I dodged. I swung. I connected. No effect. I kicked. I connected. No effect. He kicked. I jumped away. He punched. I dodged. I punched. I connected. No effect. I punched. I connected. No effect. He punched—

—catapulting me off my feet, flipping me end over end until I came to rest on my belly, sucking air and exhaling pain, my cold hands and shaking legs the first symptoms of going into shock.

Rocket towered over me. He was going to reach down, grab my arm, and start twisting until things snapped. Bone, muscle, tendons, ligaments, veins, arteries, flesh, skin. To think that a human being would want to tear off another’s arm was disturbing. To think it was about to happen to me was unfathomable.

Rocket reached down. He took my wrist.

I scissor-kicked the bastard in the nose, hard as I could, elated when it burst like a Fourth of July firework, showering me with streams of blood.

Then I got to my feet, again, to face him, again. This was my fate. To trade blows with this monstrosity, this grotesque parody of a human being, until he beat me to death.

“Come on,” I said, raising my fists. “Let’s go.”

And then I saw something on Rocket’s face I never expected to see.

I saw fear.

But before I could be empowered by it, and take the initiative, and make him feel what he’d undoubtedly made many men feel before he killed them, Rocket reached behind him and grabbed something in his belt.

When he brought his hand forward, I questioned my own senses. He wasn’t holding anything. All I saw was his empty fist.

Then he shifted, and out of nowhere, it appeared.

He shifted again. It was gone.

Again. It was back.

I realized what was going on. I could see it sideways, but not straight on.

“Oh . . . no . . .”

Rocket had a Nife.

TWENTY-FIVE

Rocket with a Nife was so redundant I almost laughed at it. Sort of like giving a shark a machine gun. Nifes were for total psychos, so it wasn’t a stretch that he owned one. But the thought of facing an assailant with a Nife made me want to vomit.

To reinforce my feelings on the matter, Rocket swung the Nife at the overturned pool table. He sliced off the corner, the thin blade cutting through the slate like it was a watermelon.

I was dead. The thought was both depressing and liberating. The only thing left for me to decide was how I wanted to go out.

The decision didn’t take long.

I wanted to go out swinging.

Rocket sauntered over, taking his time. His face was a bloody mess, making his smile all the creepier.

“You know what this is?” he asked, waving the Nife in front of him.

I scanned the floor around me for weapons, then realized it didn’t matter. The Nife would make easy work of a thrown chair or a plastic table leg. If I had a chain saw, it would make easy work of that as well.

I considered my utility belt. The supplication collar needed a Tesla field to work. The wax bullets in my Glock would sting, but not much else. I had some flex-cuffs, but they weren’t big enough to get around Rocket’s wrists even if I could get close enough. My nanotube reel was empty. I didn’t see what good my flashlight or various tools would do, and my folding knife was still stuck in the roider’s ass.

I was fuct.

“It’s a Nife,” Rocket said. “I’m going to use it to slice off your eyelids, so you can’t look away while I skin you alive.”

I thought of something tough and flippant to say back, but I didn’t trust my voice not to quiver.

Rocket strolled toward me, taking his time. He waved the Nife in front of him, knowing I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, knowing I was imagining how it would feel when it cut me. According to all accounts, being sliced with a Nife didn’t hurt at first. Being only a few nanometers thin, it was so sharp a person didn’t feel it going in. It was only after the body part dropped off that the pain began.

Escape was impossible. Rocket was between me and the exit. I moved left. He mirrored it. I moved right. He mirrored it. Even if I ran for it and tried to dive past him, all he had to do was extend his arm and the Nife blade would open me up like a zipper.

“I need more fucking drugs!”

McGlade was awake again. With his good hand, he was shoving pills into his mouth like they were M&M’S. If the pills were morphine, it was enough to make an entire frat house OD.

Rocket moved in closer, wiggling the Nife at me. Like before, he was backing me into a corner. I held up my hands, pictured all of my fingers being lopped off, then kept them at my sides. The only chance I had, if it could even be called that, was grabbing his wrist when he lunged. I’d have to time it perfectly.

All too soon my heels hit the wall. I couldn’t retreat any farther.

“Okay, you win,” I managed to say. “I surrender.”

Rocket barked a laugh. I watched his eyes. His eyes would telegraph his move a millisecond before the blade flashed.

I waited, zoning out a bit while also maintaining full concentration. It was a bit like timecasting. Letting instinct guide me, tell me when he was going to—

His pupils widened, his hand blurring. I dodged left, slapping my hand on top of his wrist as the Nife cut empty air.

I tried to execute an arm bar, getting my other hand under his armpit and pushing him forward, using his elbow as leverage against him. But in this case, it was like putting a judo hold on an oak tree. He ignored the attempted joint lock, lifting up his arm and me along with it, shaking me off. I landed on my back, my head bouncing off the floor.

I didn’t know I’d been nicked with the Nife until I saw the blood seeping out of my knuckles. The same knuckles McGlade had just repaired with the living stitches. I made a fist, saw my white bones peek through the split in the skin.

Then the pain hit, accompanied by a slow, sickening roil in my stomach. The roil became a full-blown tsunami when Rocket straddled me and sat on my legs.

“Which eye first?” Rocket said. “Left or right?”

I stared at him, unable to speak.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Rocket cackled, and the Nife flashed alongside my head. Rocket reached down, then held something next to his mouth.

Shit. He’s got my ear.

“Can you hear me now?” he said, into my severed ear.

Ironically, now that my ear was detached from my head, it was actually harder to hear him. I did hear McGlade when he screamed, “The eyes! Do the eyes!”

Asshole. Why did I ever befriend that bastard?

“Shoot his fucking eyes out, Talon!”

I reached for my Glock, my brain making the connection before McGlade explained it. Wax bullets stung, but weren’t fatal, and without the Tesla lightning, I’d disregarded using them. But McGlade was right—a shot in the eyes would blind somebody. And with Rocket on top of me, I couldn’t miss.

I jammed my gun up to his face, pulling the trigger as fast as I could. Had Rocket been expecting it, he could have cut my gun in half before I fired the third round. But he did what anyone else would have done if someone fired a gun into his face, point-blank; Rocket flinched and tried to get away, raising his hands to protect himself.

I fired until I was empty, and managed to get up onto my butt. Rocket was on his knees, hands clutching his face. He’d dropped the Nife. He’d also dropped my ear. I searched the floor for both of them, and managed to find my ear. I holstered my gun and reached for it, surprised how small it looked.

“My eyes!” Rocket moaned. “My fucking eyes!”

I tenderly picked up my ear and tucked it into my shirt pocket. I was tempted to crawl around, try to find the Nife, but I was afraid I’d cut off my fingers or my knees if I accidentally brushed against it.

Turned out I didn’t have to find it. Someone else already had.

“McGlade! Put down the Nife!”

McGlade had it in his good hand. He was coming up behind Rocket. “I got this, Talon.”

“Murder is against the law, McGlade.”

“Chill out. I’m not killing him. I’m just making sure he’s disarmed.”

He swung the Nife twice. Both of Rocket’s severed arms fell to the ground. McGlade thought this was hilarious, and laughed like a hyena.

Rocket, eyes bleeding, said, “What happened? I can’t feel my arms!”

“They’re right in front of you,” McGlade said. “You just need to pick them up.”

The blood was impressive. Rocket bled out in about sixty seconds. Prior to his messy death, he did actually try to reach down and grab his severed arms with the small stumps still attached to his shoulders.

“You need a hand?” McGlade asked him before he flopped over, dead.

“Dammit, McGlade. I wanted to question him.”

“You still can.” McGlade held up the Nife. “You want me to get him to open up for you?”

“Give me that.”

I grabbed his wrist, then carefully took the Nife away. Rocket’s Nife sheath, also made of carbon nanotubes, was on the back of his pants. I took it, slipping the Nife inside and hooking it to my belt.

“This isn’t right.” Stoned out of his brainpan, McGlade was flapping his hand in front of his face, twirling the broken part like a propeller.

“McGlade, stop that. You need to throw up or you’re going to overdose on morphine.”

“I’m fine, Talon. I feel fine. Look.” McGlade help up his arm, and his fingers touched his elbow. “It’s just a minor fracture.”