Toys - James Patterson [19]
“Hello, Hays,” Metallico said. “I’m afraid I can’t invite you in. Sorry about that.”
His tone was flat and neutral, and he seemed downright stiff—like an ordinary android instead of his usual sassy self.
“This is my house. You work here. What do you mean you can’t invite me in?”
“The apartment is being decontaminated.”
“Where are they?” I demanded. “Lizbeth? The girls? I need to know. Right now, Metallico! I’m not in the mood for games.”
“I’m not at liberty to say. That’s final.”
I groaned. This was going nowhere fast, and I was pretty sure this unfaithful robot had already sounded the emergency alarm. Indeed, my hearing picked up the sound of fast-approaching airborne cars—and a couple more vehicles stopping on the streets below. I suppose I should have expected as much.
I rammed the heel of my hand into the robot’s silicone chest, sending him spinning across the room. Metallico crashed into a wall with a bright flash as his circuits collapsed and shorted him out.
“Take that, you treacherous vacuum cleaner!” I said, standing over his crumpled body.
Next, I peeled the silicone skin off the back of his bulb-shaped head. I quickly removed his short-term-memory chip, grabbed my backup PDA from the drawer in the desk in the hall, and dumped the chip’s data into it.
“Grandmère,” I said, sighing. Of course. Lizbeth had taken the kids to her mother’s house in the suburbs. Where else?
Grandmère was an aging, but still beautiful, lady with an icy charm and a keen sense of social class. Only the best of the Elites were good enough for her.
Once upon a time, that had meant me, but no more. And, probably, never again.
Dammit though, I missed my family. Didn’t that alone prove I was Elite?
Chapter 26
NO TIME FOR such sentimentality. The Agency commandos would be up here in seconds, heavily armed, ready to kill me if they had to. I was fairly certain the luxury building was already surrounded. So I ran to the back of the apartment and threw open the balcony door. Sure enough, police vehicles were already circling in the air and barricading escape routes on the ground. They wanted me—badly.
Spotlights flared suddenly. A voice boomed, “Stop where you are, Hays Baker! Down on your belly and spread your arms and legs!”
I’d spent time on the other side of those spotlights, and I knew the weapons that went with them—stun guns that would paralyze me if they were determined to keep me alive. Or lasers that would turn me into a six-foot-two cinder.
Question was—did they want to keep up this charade of pretending I was a skunk who needed to be brought in and interrogated?
I dove sideways to the neighboring balcony, twenty yards away, caught its lower rim, and swung myself down to the floor below.
The searchlights followed, and then bursts of laser fire hissed around me.
Well, that question was answered anyway. I was obviously wanted—dead or alive.
I went from balcony to balcony, flipping and twisting like a monkey dodging poison darts. Only the poison darts were traveling at the speed of light and punching three-inch-wide gashes in the concrete walls. Also, if I’d actually been a monkey, I’d have already lost my tail—one of the blasts came so close that it set the trailing edge of my hospital gown on fire.
I didn’t bother swatting it out. No time for that. Instead, I plunged headfirst toward the dark, roiling surface of the lake below. A blitz of searchlights and laser flashes followed me, but I somehow sliced into the cold water.
One good thing to be said for a 110-foot dive from a high-rise into a North American lake in the early summer: the freezing cold water quickly takes your attention away from the sting of slamming into the lake’s surface.
It was hard to hold my breath and think straight when all I wanted to do was scream. But I stayed underwater, knowing that cover meant survival.
My brain was racing faster than my body now. What next? Normally, I could hold my