She’s clearly primed for a verbal altercation, though. “You’re a thief. Thief! I’ll call the police!”
“Lady, look. I need this bicycle. I’ll return it.”
“Don’t you ‘lady’ me! Thief! Call the police!”
She’s backing up for the house now, and although there still isn’t a significant gap in traffic ahead of me, I see something better: a bus, way off at the edge of visibility. I don’t know where the next bus stop is, but on a busy street like this it can’t be far. Giving up on the road, I turn the bike toward the sidewalk and start pedaling.
“Come back here! Thief! I’m calling the police!” I hear her yelling.
I call back over my shoulder, “I’ll leave it at the bus stop! Just come get it!”
I don’t know if she hears me or not, but I don’t have time to wait and see. I’ve got a bus to catch.
The bike slews from side to side as I pedal frantically, trying to coax the one-speed bicycle to racing speeds. Fortunately, the light drizzle of rain has ensured that the sidewalk is sparsely populated, and the few people who are there are courteous enough—or wise enough—to move aside and give me room to get by. As I blast through an intersection, I glance over at the main road to see if there’s room to rejoin the traffic there, but the cars are still whizzing by compared to my speed. I don’t know how anyone’s supposed to ride a bike on the roads without dedicated lanes.
My reign of terror on the sidewalk comes quickly to an end as I see my goal: a NO PARKING - BUS STOP sign. I skid the bike to a halt and leap off, drawing odd looks from the man and woman already waiting for the bus. Before they can ask me why I’ve been riding a kid’s bike like I’ve got a monster chasing me, though, the bus arrives.
I let the couple board the bus before me, then lean my stolen bike up against the bus stop signpost and step onto the bus. As I’m putting my handful of change into the ticket machine, the bus driver says to me, “You can’t chain your bike up there.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s not chained.”
This is a fairly stupid response, but it seems to work, or at least steer him onto a tangential subject. His brow furrows and he asks, “Aren’t you afraid it’ll get stolen?”
“No, my friend is coming to pick it up right now,” I say. He shrugs and closes the door, and I take a seat and let my heart rate slow down.
I’m honestly amazed that I’ve made it this far. I thought I was totally done for when Vince caught me at home, and even after I made it out the front door I was certain I was only delaying the inevitable. I must’ve really gotten him with that chemical cloud. I thought it would just buy a few seconds, but for me to have gotten away entirely, he and his clones must not have been able to give chase. I figured that at least one of them would have chased me in the car, but maybe they needed it to get him to the hospital or something.
The hospital! I can’t go there, for fear of riling up Brian, but I can call Doc Simmons and see if she’s got any helpful ideas. She got me the lawyer this morning, after all. It’s grasping at straws, I admit, but when there’s nothing else in reach, straws look like a pretty good option.
The rain has picked up a bit by the time I hop off the bus near a gas station, so I hustle to the safety of its overhang. I’m hoping that they still have a payphone, which it turns out they do. Unfortunately, when I pick up the receiver, there’s no dial tone. Also, I get something gross on my hand. I don’t even want to consider what it might be, so I just wipe my hand on my pants and go inside.
The attendant doesn’t even look up when the bell dings, so I go up to the counter and ask, “Excuse me, do you have a phone?”
“Outside,” he grunts, flapping his hand in the vague direction of the payphone.
“It’s not working. Do you have one here I can use?”
He sighs and shoves a cordless phone across the counter. I pick it up, hesitate and say, “Sorry, can you tell me the number for Carnation Hospital?”
He glares at me and I add, “I mean, I could call 411, but I think that might charge you.”
He sighs again, louder, and pulls out a cell phone. He types on it for a minute, then holds up the screen for me to read. It’s a search page with Carnation’s number displayed.
“Thank you,” I say, punching it into the cordless phone. He grunts, returns his phone to his pocket and clearly dismisses me.
The receptionist connects me to Doc Simmons’s line, and after a couple of rings she picks up.
“Hello?” she says, not sounding any less irritated than this morning.
“Hi, Doc,” I say. “So, uh. How’s things?”
“I hear you’ve been having an interesting day, Dan,” says the doc. “Brayden called. He’s not thrilled with you.”
“Yeah, uh. I bet not. I hope he’s not in too much trouble.”
“He’ll be fine. Where are you?”
“Um. Who have you talked to today?”
“No one with suggestion nanos, since I assume that’s what you’re asking. In fact, no one at all in person. I’ve been working with Brian, testing out his active nanos to see if I can find anything about what makes them work or what links them to you. I’ve barely scratched the surface, but it’s truly amazing work.”
I cut the doc off before she can wax too enthusiastic about Ichabot’s brilliance. It’s sort of a sore subject for me. “No one in person? So people have called?”
“Yes, although the only one I think you’ll be interested to hear about is Officer Peterson. He seemed quite interested in talking to you.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he did.”
“I think you should call him back, Dan.”
“What? Why?”
“Why? Because he’s on your side, even if he doesn’t know it right now. If you can talk him back around, you’ll have an ally in the police department again. Which I think you could really use at this moment.”
She’s got a point. “Okay. Thanks, Doc. Hey, can I get his number from you?”
She tells me the number, then adds, “And Dan? I’d like you to come by the hospital.”
“What? Why?” I ask again, this time with suspicion instead of surprise. She explicitly told me not to come there earlier. What’s changed? Did Ichabot get to her?
“I want to check out the interactions between your nanobots and Brian’s. I have some theories, but the only samples I have from you are old and inactive, and I need fresh ones to experiment with.”
No, no one’s gotten to her. That’s the doc through and through; science above all else.
“Okay, if I can I will.”
“Please make it a priority.”
That startles a laugh from me. “Yeah, Doc, can do. Got nothing else going on at the moment.”
“This is important, Dan!”
“Yeah, got it. I didn’t really have anywhere else to be, anyway. You sure Brian’s gonna be okay with this?”
“I’ve got it handled.”
“All right, I’ll make my way there. Sorry for whatever trouble I drag with me.”
“You always are, Dan.”
With that, Doc Simmons hangs up. I glance over at the attendant. He’s still paying me absolutely no attention, and doesn’t seem to notice that my call has ended. Rather than asking if I can make another call and risking him taking the phone back, I just dial Peterson’s number. As expected, the attendant doesn’t seem to notice.
After a couple of rings, the phone’s picked up. “Peterson.”
“Officer Peterson, hi. This is, um. This is Dan Everton.”
“Mr. Everton.” His voice is completely flat. I’ve never heard anyone manage to say anything so completely devoid of emotion. I’m guessing that that means he’s pretty ticked off, and is suppressing it while waiting to hear what I have to say.
“Look, I can explain everything. I just need you to listen.”
“When you say ‘everything,’ what does that include?”
“Everything! Why you’re mad at me, how you ended up arr
esting me, why a lot of things don’t seem to make sense and fit together.”
“So you can explain all of my behaviors. How about yours? Can you explain why you fled custody?”
“Well, yeah. I was being set up, and—”
“By your lawyer?”
“What? No. No, he wasn’t intentionally involved. This was—okay, this is going to sound weird, but I promise you it makes sense. You remember Vince Amano?”
“Let me guess,” Peterson says, sarcasm lacing his voice. “Vince broke out of prison, leaving behind a clone of himself to disguise his escape. He then stole a car and made his way to your house, which for some reason you had decided was the most inconspicuous place to go to ground. He cornered you there, probably with other clones, and attempted to trap you in a house fire. You escaped, stealing a bicycle to get away from him, and are now hiding out at a gas station calling me.”
I’m momentarily stunned into speechlessness. That’s not entirely accurate, but it’s pretty darn close. “I...yeah, but...wait, are you saying that you don’t believe that? Because, um—”
I’m cut off as Peterson starts to laugh, a deep and slightly menacing sound that only stops when it turns into a small coughing fit. I wait for him to pull himself together. I don’t really know what I’d say here, anyway.
“You’re an idiot, Mr. Everton,” says Peterson once the coughing subsides. I tell myself that there’s fondness in his tone. Certainly I don’t hear any malice, at least. “Yes, unfortunately I believe this. Various police reports support aspects of the story, which is why I know about them in the first place. I even believe what you were doubtless planning on telling me to begin with, that my thoughts were influenced by nanobots controlled and spread to me by Dr. Argute.”
I’m both relieved and impressed. Peterson has managed to assemble all this and figure out what happened while under the influence of foreign thoughts prejudicing his mind against me. He really is impressively dogged in his pursuit of the truth. I sum all of these feelings up with a simple, “That’s great!”
“And I deeply resent,” Peterson continues, and now his voice is definitely angry, “that I have somehow ended up forced to believe in science-fiction idiocy like this. I blame you entirely for this, Everton.” He practically spits my name, and I notice that he’s dropped even the honorific.
“Look, I’m sorry for—”
“Shut up. I am a police officer, and that means I am responsible for seeing justice done.” Peterson coughs again, a wet hacking sound, and continues. “I will figure out a way to safely arrest Dr. Argute. I will see you back in here, where I expect that after minimal paperwork and a few phone calls from connected people, you will be released. And then I expect to never see you again, Mr. Everton. No more monsters, no more nemeses, no more manifestations of powers. If you find yourself involved in these things again, you will go do it in some other precinct. Do I make myself clear?”
“I think y—”
“I want to hear a yes or a no from you, and only that. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Stay out of my way and let me solve this.”
That sounds like a conversation-ender, but I have one more question for him. “Wait! Before you hang up, can you put Regina on?”
There’s a pause, and then Peterson says, “Interesting. She left earlier. I’d assumed she was looking for you. If she—” Peterson stops abruptly, then laughs again, a short bark this time. “Of course. Mind the weather, Everton.”
I look outside, where it’s raining in earnest, and for just a moment I still don’t get it. Then in a moment of perfect choreography, lightning flashes outside and I suddenly understand. With Vince, Tanger and Brian all active, why wouldn’t Regina have had her nanos turned back on as well?
The thunder rolls. I didn’t count the seconds to check how close the storm is, but I know basically what the answer is: close, and getting closer all the time.
I start to ask Peterson another question, but he’s hung up already. There’s nothing he could have said that would have changed the situation in any case. Assuming Regina can track me the same way that Vince can, I need to get on the move, and fast. At least Vince has to be in sight before he’s a danger. I have no idea what kind of range Regina has with lightning, but I know she’s called a bolt down on me once before when I didn’t even know she was there. She might have been halfway across town, for all I know.
Rubber. I need rubber. Pushing the phone back across the counter to the attendant, I ask, “Do you sell rubber boots here?”
He lifts his head to look at me before rolling his eyes and sneering as if to say, are you an idiot? “No,” he says slowly, enunciating carefully as if I might not speak English. “This is a gas station. No shoes here.”
“Fine, whatever,” I say, rolling my eyes in return as I turn away to look through the shelves.
Unsurprisingly, I do not find any shoes. The attendant may have been rude, but his basic point was valid. What I do find, though, are thick rubber floor mats designed for trucks. They’re thick but fairly flexible, enough so to wrap around my feet, at least. I test this out by standing on them and pulling them up into a rough taco shape. Obviously, they don’t stay like that, but it’s a start.
After a few minutes of searching for some kind of clip, I settle on wrapping a couple of bungee cords around each mat to secure them in place on my feet. It all makes for some fairly awkward footwear, but the mats stay in place and I’m able to walk around without tripping. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it does put some insulating material between me and the ground. I can work with the awkwardness.
I stomp my way to the front and put the tags from the mats and bungee cords on the counter.
“I need to pay for these,” I say to the attendant.
He looks up from his phone at me, then down at the counter, then back up at me. “Where are they?”
“I’m wearing them,” I say, trying to pretend that this is normal.
He leans over the counter to look at my feet, then looks back at my face, and makes the facial equivalent of a shrug. He turns to the cash register to ring me up, and I start fishing change out of my pocket.
“Whoa, what? No. No way,” he says, as I start dumping change on the counter.
“Yes way,” I say. “It’s valid American currency, and I’m spending it.”
“Fine,” he says. “Then I’m refusing you service. Take off your stupid cosplay or whatever you’re doing and get out of here.”
I keep emptying my pockets onto the counter. “No, just take the money. I’ll count it for you if you want.”
“I can count fine!” he retorts. “I’m just not dealing with this junkie nonsense. I’m refusing you service. Get out.”
I pick up a few quarters, acting as if I’m giving up. Then I abruptly shout “Take the money!” and shove the rest of the accumulated change at him. He flinches back and coins rain to the floor on his side of the counter, clattering off of his chair and spinning on the floor. I turn and run for the door, my bizarre new footwear making even this simple motion into a small challenge.
“Man, I let you use the phone!” the attendant calls out in an aggrieved voice as the door closes behind me. He doesn’t bother to give chase, though. Just another day of dealing with the public. I’m probably not even the weirdest guy he’s had in there this week.
The rain’s coming down at a steady pace now, and my shirt’s soaked through in under a minute. I clomp down the street in a graceless canter, the bungee cords rolling uncertainly under my feet at each step. The rain’s probably a good thing, honestly. It means that no one else is out here to see me and raise questions.
I pass the bus stop I arrived at and keep going. I’m pretty sure I’m headed in the direction of the hospital, and I’d like to find a stop that’s actually got a bus shelter so I can get out of the cold rain. Besides, being more than a block from the scene of my sort-of crime doesn’t seem like the worst idea
.
In short order, I come to a bus shelter, and shiver there for fifteen or twenty minutes until the bus I need comes by. I board it, feed my last quarters into the ticket machine, and slump dripping into a seat. Next stop: the hospital. I hope the doc’s got some good thoughts on what to do next, because I’m pretty low on ideas.
- Chapter Seven -
The bus drops me off outside of the hospital, and although I’d swear I hadn’t warmed up any on the bus ride, the rain chills me all over again as I step off. I run for the front doors even though I’m already soaked, and actually manage to make my situation worse as I trip over my clumsy improvised shoes and sprawl shoulder-first into a puddle in the parking lot. The impact jolts the entire side of my body and brings a flare of pain from my cheek, accompanied by lesser complaints from my dozen or so more minor torso injuries. Brian really did a number on me in that mall yesterday, and now I’m risking stirring him back up by coming to the building where he’s being kept? This seems like one of the worst ideas I’ve had, and that’s saying something.
A rumble of thunder reminds me that the whole point of my cumbersome footwear was to keep me insulated from the ground, and that I am currently defeating that purpose by lying on the ground. I hurriedly scramble to my feet, futilely attempting to brush some of the water from my shirt, and hustle into the hospital’s lobby.
There’s something in the design of hospital hallways that makes them extra echoey. I don’t know if it’s intentional, like maybe it helps alarms and shouted instructions carry better, or if it’s just a weird side effect. All I know is that even normal shoes sound twice as loud as normal when walking down a hospital corridor, and the effect is magnified with my improvised boots. Every step flops like a fish being slapped onto a counter as I put my foot down, and then squeaks like a rubber chew toy as I put my weight on the mat. I try to slow down my steps and place my feet carefully, but all that does is draw out the noise, squeeeeeak...whap instead of squeak, flomp. The duty nurse at the front desk is watching me with interest, the patients in the lobby are staring, and down the hallway, a curious nurse peeks out of a room to see what the commotion is about. I hold my head high and try to pretend that this is normal as I squeak-flomp my way to the stairs and disappear behind the safety and soundproofing of a thick metal door.
Day of Reckoning Page 5
