Timecaster (33 page)

I froze. I would recognize that voice anywhere.

It was mine.

“No one,”
Vicki said.

“Is that him on the headphone? ”
Alter-Talon asked.

“Who?”

I heard a slap. My heart shrunk.

“Stop being coy, bitch. Is that you, Talon?”

I closed my eyes, picturing him with his ear pressed to Vicki’s.

“It’s me,” I said.

“I haven’t heard anything about Chicago disappearing. Sata underestimated you. Is he dead?”

Talking to myself ranked as one of the strangest experiences of my life.

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter. He served his purpose.”

“Which was?”

“To bring you to me. I’ve got your wife, and the antidote. How far are you from Milwaukee?”

“An hour. Maybe less.”

“Meet us at the abandoned brewery on the outskirts of dissytown. You have forty-five minutes. Come alone, no weapons. Any funny stuff—”

I heard another slap, and Vicki cried out.

“You understand?”

I did my best to keep my voice steady. “Why are you doing this?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Talon, I love—”

Vicki’s words were cut off. I imagined the bastard pinching her ear to hang up.

I stood there for a moment, impotent, wondering how this was all going to end. Sata seemed to be motivated by nothing other than insanity, and I’d assumed Alter-Talon was similarly bent. But he didn’t sound like he was having fun. He seemed controlled. Calculated.

This guy wanted something from me. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what it was.

A squadron of heliplanes passed overhead, in a classic military wedge formation. I had no doubt they had something to do with me, and could only hope Mayor Dailey could convince the cops in Wisconsin to leave me alone.

Zipping open a side flap on my suit, I tugged the DT from my utility belt and found my current location. Eleven point four miles to the brewery. I also did a quick GPS search for me and Vicki, coming up empty. Alter-Talon must have worn an obfuscation disk over his chip, just like I did, and he had probably put one on my wife as well.

I broke into a jog, running up the beach, climbing some concrete steps to street level, then borrowing a biofuel scooter from a very rude woman who knew so many dirty synonyms for
rectum
she would have made Harry McGlade blush.

It took half an hour of maddening stop-and-go traffic before I made it to Milwaukee’s dissytown. During the trip my imagination conjured horrible scenarios of Alter-Talon hurting Vicki. I’d dealt with a lot of abuse over the last twenty-four hours, but there was nothing that could be done to me worse than hurting my wife.

By the time I motored into the ranks of the disenfranchised, I was ready to strangle anyone who looked at me cross-eyed. Like Rockford’s dissytown, this one was filled with a lot of dirty folks looking confused, shell-shocked, and deviant. More crumbling buildings. More crushed dreams. And no BHVs to speak of, at least not any as attractive as Yummi and her cohorts.

I kept one eye on my DT, steering around piles of garbage and making my way to the brewery. I stopped in front of an alley, trying to determine my best route, when a gang approached.

Six of them, dressed like a homeless hyperhockey team, complete with filthy pads and sticks stained with dried blood.

“Nice bike,” their leader said. “Why don’t you give it to me, then get the fuck out of our neighborhood.”

I checked my DT. Four minutes to get to the brewery. I didn’t have time to uncork a bottle of smack-down on these punks, much as they probably deserved it.

“Where’s the brewery?” I asked.

“You say something, butthead?”

They couldn’t hear me with the helmet on. I yanked it off.

All six stepped back, and the leader raised his hands in supplication.

“Talon! Shit, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know it was you.”

“The brewery,” I repeated.

“You know it’s right down the street here.”

“Where?”

He pointed. “End of the block. On the left. Look, you’re not pissed or nothing, are you? How can we make it up to you, buddy?”

I considered sending him and his droogs to the dinosaur planet, but I had a feeling I wasn’t the Talon they were afraid of. Alter-Talon had been here, and apparently left a serious impression.

“Beat each other up,” I ordered.

By the time I put my helmet back on, they were kicking the shit out of one another. I motored past. With one minute remaining I ditched the bike and walked through the front door of the Milwaukee Brewing Company.

The interior was quiet, dark, warehouse-sized. I flipped open my visor and tapped my eyelid, bringing on infrared. Nothing stood out. I switched to night vision, creeping silently past rusty old lauter tuns that stretched to the ceiling, the foul smell of mildew assaulting my nostrils.

My headphone rang, and I answered.

“Keep going, straight ahead. At the end of the walkway, there’s a door.”

“Where’s Vicki?”

I heard a slap, and my wife whimpered. I was going to rip out this guy’s spine and stab him through the heart with it.

He hung up. I moved a bit quicker, but stayed cautious. When I got to the aforementioned door, I tapped my AVCL back to infrared, and spotted the heat signatures of three people behind the door, all standing in the center of the room.

Flipping down my helmet visor, I turned the knob and entered.

Unlike the dank, decay, and filth I’d just walked through, this room was brightly lit and clean. It resembled the infirmary at Yummi’s parking farm, down to the two metal patient tables. There was also a tray topped with wicked-looking knives, clamps, and tools. Several expensive-looking pieces of medical equipment stood between the tables, beeping and making machine sounds.

Alter-Talon wore what he had in the timecast transmissions: black jumpsuit, black gloves. To his left was a tall, thin man in a white lab coat. He was bald, and had thick glasses that magnified his blue eyes to three times their normal size. To Alter-Talon’s right . . .

“Vicki.”

“Talon.”

She was handcuffed to a metal pipe. I hurried to her, yanking off my helmet and letting it fall, hugging her tight, never wanting to let go. We both said, “I love you,” and, “I’m sorry,” several times. When I pulled back to kiss her, I noticed her black eye.

I turned on Alter-Talon, feeling myself grow very cold.

“Well, hello there, handsome,” Alter-Talon said.

When I took a step toward him he held up a small black device.

“Hold it! Any closer and Vicki’s dead.”

I halted, fighting the urge to rip his face off. “What have you done?”

“My associate, Dr. Coursey, has implanted a small bomb in Vicki’s molar. I press this button, it blows her head off.”

“You’re bluffing.” I turned to my wife. “Vicki?”

She nodded slowly. “He attached something to my tooth.”

“It won’t actually blow her head off,” Dr. Coursey said. He had a German accent. “Just blow a big hole in her neck, tearing through the carotid artery. I’ve done trial runs on several dissys. Death occurs within twenty seconds.”

My desire to tear both of them limb from limb wrestled with the need to control my rage. Through clenched teeth I managed to say, “What do you want?”

Alter-Talon smiled, and it was an ugly thing to behold. He tossed the black detonator to Dr. Coursey, then raised one of his gloved hands. Using the other, he peeled the glove off.

The odor hit me before he even finished. Rotting meat, even worse than I’d smelled in the biorecycle chute. When he tossed the glove away, I saw his fingers and couldn’t help but flinch at the sight. The flesh was infected, sloughing off in strips. In the case of his thumb, the bone protruded from his skin.

“To start with,” Alter-Talon said, “I want your hands.”

FIFTY-FOUR

I stared, trying to make sense of what he’d just said.

“My hands?”

Talon wiggled his ruined fingers, one of the nails falling off. “My other hand is even worse. This is my sixth set of transplants. It always ends in the same way. My body rejects the cadaver donors, and they begin to rot while still attached. Can you guess where I lost them?”

I thought back, years ago, to the bomb I defused under the snack table at the retirement home. I nodded.

“You pulled the red wire,” Alter-Talon said. “I pulled the blue. Shredded my hands all the way up to my elbows.”

I followed his line of thinking. “And the donors don’t work, so you looked for a perfect genetic match.”

“I searched the multiverse for one, and found you.”

This went beyond my mentor just being crazy from steroid abuse. “Sata didn’t find you randomly,” I stated.

“No. I found him. I killed Aunt Zelda for him, and destroyed Boise because he asked me to.”

“Boise wasn’t destroyed. It was sucked into a wormhole and sent to a planet filled with dinosaurs.”

“On your earth, it was. In my parallel universe, I sent it to an earth without any atmosphere. They’re all dead.”

“You lousy SMF,” I said, clenching my fists.

“So the people of our Boise are still alive?” Vicki asked. Alter-Talon shrugged. “I guess. Those who haven’t been eaten yet.”

I shook my head, amazed. “And you did all of this, just for my hands?”

“It’s actually more than that. After all these years of taking higher and higher doses of experimental immunosuppressant drugs, my body has begun to reject more than just the transplants. Both of my feet are now rotting. And so is a part very near and dear to me.”

He patted his groin.

“So you want my hands, my feet . . . and my junk?” Dr. Coursey patted the metal table. “We’ll make you as comfortable as possible during the procedure. If you cooperate, we’re even willing to let you live. Both you, and your wife.”

“Maybe you’ll have better luck with cadaver parts than I’ve had,” Alter-Talon said.

I stared at Vicki. She seemed scared, and sad, but also determined.

“Don’t do it,” she said. “He’s a lunatic who killed half a million people.”

“I can’t let you die, Vicki.”

“A half million, Talon. I’m not worth it. Neither of us are.”

“You’re worth more to me than everyone else on the planet put together, Vicki.”

“We’re both going to die anyway, Talon. I couldn’t bear knowing this psycho was running around free, committing genocide.”

“I promise, no more genocide,” Alter-Talon said. “Cross my heart.” He dragged a bloody fingertip over his chest. “Besides, you really don’t have a choice. The nanopoison in your system will kill you unless I give you the antidote. I’m going to get your parts, alive or dead. I hold all the cards here.”

This was going to end badly, no matter how it ended. But if there was even the slightest chance I could save Vicki’s life, I’d do it. Even if it meant living without hands, feet, and Talon Jr.

“I love you,” I said to her.

“How much?”

“More than anything else.”

“Promise me something, then,” she implored.

“Anything.”

“Promise me if, given the choice, you’d save Boise over me.”

“Vicki . . .”

“Half a million are already dead. Don’t let it be a million. Please. Not because of me.”

Her eyes got teary. Mine probably did, too.

“I promise,” I said.

Vicki lifted up her chin, tilting her head to the right. Her gaze was rock-steady. I understood what she wanted. Though it made me sick, I gave her a nod.

“You know what you have to do,” my wife said. “Make it count.”

Without dwelling on it, I threw a haymaker, cracking her in the jaw with everything I had. Then I spun around and kicked Alter-Talon in the face, knocking him backward.

He staggered, then caught his footing.

“Kill the bitch!” he screamed.

I turned. Dr. Coursey lifted up the detonator, his thumb pressing the button just as a small white projectile—trailing a thin line of blood—hit him in the face.

The bomb Vicki spit at him exploded with the sound of a firecracker, but packed considerably more power. Dr. Coursey fell, but both hands weren’t enough to stop the geyser erupting from the hole in his neck.

I faced Alter-Talon again, but he was already running toward Vicki, the TEV off his chest and clenched in his hand.

“This isn’t over,” he said. He held the device at arm’s length, pointing it toward himself and my wife.

Vicki and I locked eyes.

Just as I cried out, “No!” he and Vicki imploded, vanishing into a wormhole.

Alter-Talon’s TEV dropped to the floor.

I stared at the space where they’d disappeared, wondering what to do next. My knuckles still hurt from punching the woman I loved. Dr. Coursey coughed, gagged, and bled out on the floor of the brewery.

I picked up Alter-Talon’s TEV. Like Sata’s, it reflected light in a prism, and lacked dials and controls. But I’d learned how to use it while free-falling. I could follow Vicki and Alter-Talon into his world, and get her back.

Just as I was getting ready to mentally tune in to the octeract point, I caught myself and touched the TEV on my chest. This one was programmed to transport matter to the dinosaur planet. I’d promised Vicki, only a few seconds ago, that, if given the chance, I’d save Boise over her.

I wasn’t one to break my promises. And if I went after her, without trying to return Boise to this universe, she’d never forgive me.

WTF was I supposed to do? Save the woman I loved, or sacrifice her life, and mine (since the poison was slowly killing me), in order to save five hundred thousand innocent people?

What would you do?

I made my decision. Then I closed my eyes, pet the bunny, and stepped through the wormhole into a parallel universe.

GLOSSARY

In the future, tech and acronyms rule the day . . .

AFAIK—As far as I know/knew.

AVCL—All-vision contact lens. Allows user to see in a variety of conditions.