James Patterson - Toys

“On the coming 7–4 Day, our human neighbors are going to get the biggest surprise the modern world has ever seen. My friends, in just eighty hours, the human race will be completely eliminated. The greatest threat the earth has ever known will be gone. Hear, hear!”

“It has been a long time coming,” Lizbeth added. “ Too long.”

Another excited murmur rose from the audience-the closest these reserved Elites ever came to cheering, or any such show of emotion.

“Let me add that we owe much of our upcoming success to the genius of this lady,” Moore went on, draping an arm around Lizbeth’s shoulders. “A toast to Lizbeth Baker-as brilliant as she is beautiful. No one has sacrificed more.”

Glasses clinked together like chimes, and there was a chorus of hearty congratulations.

Lizbeth raised her own glass in gracious acknowledgment and flashed another brilliant smile. But then she moved quietly out of the limelight, to have a moment alone. The thrill she should have felt was smothered by the distress that was tightening her stomach. She lived by her steely intellect, and she scorned people who were soft in any way. But now she’d fallen into that sort of mess herself, hadn’t she?

She wasn’t bothered in the least by wiping out the nauseating human race. They were no more than insects to her- or worse- and the sooner they were eliminated from earth, the better for everyone, perhaps even for the humans themselves.

But tonight underscored what was troubling her: Hays was the problem.

When she’d first learned that he was human, she was, of course, outraged. She’d vented by making him a pawn against his own kind-then blocking his memory of those events. One way or another, he’d be dead in a matter of hours-loving husband and father, genuine hero for the cause, a man who had enriched her life in countless ways. The sense of loss was already cutting deep, and there was nothing her intellect could do about it. Dammit, she still loved Hays, didn’t she?

Shake it off, Lizbeth! she told herself fiercely. Hays is pitiful-a human.

As she started to rejoin the crowd, a hand patted her from behind. She turned and looked into the face of the hulking McGill-Hays’s former partner and friend. He was smoking a cigar, just like his mentor, Jax Moore.

“So what’s it like jumping in the sack with a skunk?” McGill cracked, leering at her breasts as he always did. He’d obviously had far too much to drink already.

“We need to keep him happy as long as he’s useful. Until 7–4, certainly,” Lizbeth answered coolly. “I do what I have to-it’s called being professional. It’s my duty.”

“Let me know when you’re ready for the real thing-with another professional.”

I’d sooner sleep with a baboon was her first withering thought-a comparison that wasn’t far off. But then again, what better way to take final revenge against a husband who had weakened and confused her totally?

“Well, a widow may need consoling,” she said and, for the first time in days, smiled in a way that felt genuine. Her true self was taking charge again: logical, selfish, brutal when necessary.

“I’ll be there for you,” said McGill, and then he added, “It’s my duty too, and I’m very good at it. I’m all Elite, Lizbeth.”

She laughed at that one-and lit up her own cigar.

I left my apartment in a slight daze and walked the short distance to a favorite running path along the winding, and quite beautiful, Imperial Lake.

I busied myself stretching and limbering up along the way. Then I took off, going easy at first-testing myself to find out if I was more weakened than I thought.

But my body felt better than I had any right to expect, and I cranked up my speed until I was flying along in smooth, ten-yard strides.

There was hardly any traffic along the narrow lake road-one of the reasons I liked it here. A delivery vehicle with the logo of Ultima Medical Supplies zipped past me, and a few minutes later, I saw that it had pulled into a service area ahead.

When I got there, the driver was leaning into the rear door, struggling with what appeared to be a large machine for delivery.

I slowed to a trot. “Need help?” I called. This was the kind of thing that Lizbeth hated about me-what she called my “mindless do-gooder impulses.”

“Would you mind? Damn thing slipped off its tracks,” called the driver-a female worker, as it turned out.

Her voice set off a tiny tick in my mind-like maybe I’d heard it before. But the sound was muffled, and where could I have run into this particular delivery person? I dismissed the thought as another one of my recent quirks, exactly what Lizbeth had warned me about.

As I walked closer, she hopped inside the vehicle and began moving her fingers expertly across the machine’s controls. As I looked on, the machine came to life with little clicks and whirs, the monitor readouts flashing.

“That’s an impressive piece of equipment,” I said. “What’s it do?”

“Oh, it’s an ultrasound scanner-uses sonic waves to destroy foreign objects in the body, like kidney stones or blood clots,” she answered.

Then the delivery person swung around and looked straight at me.

“Or the tracking chip that effing Lizbeth planted in your brain,” she said. “Hello, Hays.”

In that instant, I recognized both the face and the voice. She was the terrorist who’d led the attack on Lizbeth and me after the president’s party.

I lunged toward her-but an electronic jolt slammed into my eyes and immediately pierced through to the back of my skull.

Then came a loud pop, and I felt as if I were getting smashed with a hammer on the inside of my head.

I spun away in agony, clutching my temple. Then I felt her hands catch my shoulders.

I managed clumsily to grab hold of her, determined to take her down too.

But the female terrorist didn’t fight or pull away-just held on to me, almost in an embrace.

“Calm down, Hays,” she soothed. “You’ll be all better in a few seconds. Trust me.”

When she spoke my name, a powerful whirlwind of images erupted in my memory-all the things that had really happened during the days when I thought I’d been lying unconscious in an Elite hospital. Stunned and confused as I was, I understood immediately.

“Lucy?” I said hoarsely.

“Of course it’s me. Are you strong enough to stand on your own?” she asked. I nodded, and we moved apart.

Like she’d promised, the viselike grip of pain in my skull was easing, and my thinking seemed clearer already. Suddenly, I remembered a whole lot of things that had happened after the motorcycle crash-Russia, England, France, Lucy, the murder of my parents by Jax Moore.

“Lizbeth planted a chip in my brain?” I groaned, lowering my face into my hands. “Is that true, Lucy? Careful now, I don’t think I can handle too many more lies.”

“Poor Hays. I started suspecting the worst when the Elites kept following us, and the MI7 confirmed it during that phony interrogation in London. That’s why Sir Nigel sent you to the meeting in France.”

“What?” I jerked my head up and stared at her. “He wanted to get the resistance leaders killed? That’s insane, Lucy. Even if there is a war going on.”

“Take it easy, Hays. He wanted the Elites to think they’re dead,” Lucy said. “So we set up a ruse, a very clever one. Those were just clones at the chateau. No one died. The real leaders are in hiding, and still hard at work. Desperate measures for desperate times. This is a war-to the death. Hopefully, not ours.”