Toys

of a tinny-looking warehouse. “Damage to vehicle will not impair operation.”

“No problem then,” I muttered.

I swung the pod around in a tight arc and zeroed in on the running human. With a touch, I sent off a heat- seeking tracer round from my front gun port.

The skunk vanished in an explosion of red vapor. Sayonara, you pitiful sack of crap.

I was going to have to show some restraint from here on though. Just like before, I needed to take at least one of these killers alive to be interrogated at headquarters. That was my only mission now-to find out why eleven Elites had been murdered and eviscerated.

As I closed in behind the next target, he banked suddenly into a sharp right turn. In fact, he leaned the bike almost horizontally, then brought it back out and whipped into a dark alley. This one was very good, a superior athlete and rider.

The gap was too narrow for my car, but I had another idea. He wouldn’t be breaking any motorbike speed limits on these narrow, twisty side streets, after all.

So I screeched to a halt.

“Take over,” I snapped to the pilot, popping open the hatch and vaulting out.

“Be careful, Hays,” Elle called after me.

How about that. She’d never used my first name before. Should that make me extra cautious? Was I in worse danger than I thought?

Chapter 17

I hit the ground running, and I mean running very fast. I estimated the fleeing rider’s distance at thirty-seven yards and his bike’s speed at forty-one miles per hour. I could more than match that on foot.

The alley was an unlit black hole of warm, heavy stench that fouled my nostrils, but my night vision picked out every detail, right down to the sweat beading on the skunk’s neck, just below his crimson and black helmet.

Within three seconds I’d reached my top foot speed of nearly fifty. By now I was using ten-yard strides. It was almost like flying-my feet barely touching down before I was gone again.

I realized now that I was fully in the human slum as I stretched to dodge a pile of sludgy food scraps covered in maggots, and a microsyringe and bloody bandages from a hyper-meth junkie. Then I whirled up in a horizontal twist, bounded off the side of a building, and barely cleared a row of overflowing Dumpsters. These humans were absolutely disgusting.

I almost screamed with the sheer, glorious power of the chase. My muscles tensed and sprang like flexing steel bands, the wind rushed past my ears and through my hair, and my teeth clenched in anticipation as I closed the gap on the fleeing killer, hopefully the gang’s leader.

A few more seconds and he’d be mine- my captive, mine to interrogate.

Then, just as I leaped at him, the sonofabitch yanked his front wheel completely off the ground and bounced up onto a stack of rotting containers. What in hell? He used the containers like a springboard to hop over the waist-high wall of an old-style parking garage.

I sailed on past, landed with both heels digging in, spun around, and dove back into the garage after him.

It was so low-ceilinged and full of pilasters and parked vehicles that my own agility was impaired-I couldn’t jump, only run in a crouch over the car tops.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…

He’d started pulling away from me again, racing furiously up the circling ramp. By the time I got to the ramp myself, he’d already reached the third level.

He would find himself trapped on the roof, ten stories up-but what if a getaway pod was waiting for him there?

This was some impressive skunk.

I flew past the ramp, back outside to a corner of the garage, and used every ounce of my strength to spring up twenty feet or so and grip a third-story ledge. Then I swung my feet up under me and leaped another two levels, bounding along the sheer concrete face like a jungle spider chasing an ant. No human could do that-and not many Elites, either. But I wanted this killer badly!

He kept on climbing, and he couldn’t see me-probably thought I’d given up. We got to the roof at nearly the same instant. Big surprise, my smelly friend. Just me and you and the twinkling stars up here!

This time there was no low ceiling to slow me down. The bike burst into sight up the ramp, moving so fast it actually left the floor in a long arcing jump.

I caught the bastard at its midpoint, slamming into the rider like a cannonball. We landed, twisting and skidding, with my forearm locked around his throat so tight it cracked apart the chin guard of his helmet.

But damn if this bastard didn’t manage to hang on to the throttle and keep going, racing straight for the outer ledge.

I clung to his back, choking him and wrestling to dump the bike and flip it over, to flip him.

My weight tipped us some and started us sliding broadside-but the wheels hit a parking curb and we flipped almost straight up into the air. We were still going so fast the momentum shot us right out over the ledge.

Then we were plunging downward-ten stories to the pavement below.

There, in all probability, we would both die.

Chapter 18

The next few seconds were the longest of my life. I was truly flying, twisting and turning in blissful weightlessness, helpless yet absolutely free.

But a harsh, hate-filled noise interrupted the thought, pushing it away and sucking me back to-

The motorcycle rider was trying to twist himself around so that he could land on top of me-maybe I’d absorb enough impact for him to survive the fall.

Not going to happen! I would have yelled, if there’d been enough time to form the words.

But I did hook my leg tightly behind his. Then I threw my shoulders back and away from him, causing our tangled bodies to shift in the ever-louder, whistling-now screaming- air.

For those few seconds, I had been watching the pavement below. Now I saw everything at once-bricks, glass, the side of a building blurring like the view out a train window as it plunges into a tunnel…

The stinging air was pulling, ripping at my hair, my clothes, my lips, my eyelids… and then-

The murderer skunk hit the ground first. I smashed into his body like a pile of lumber landing on a sack of rotten fruit.

And then-nothing at all.

Short circuit?

Death?

I had no idea.

Chapter 19