James Patterson - Toys

I could definitely see the humans motoring at full speed up ahead. As if on cue, the cluster of bikes suddenly split apart, peeling off in different directions like campfire sparks scattered by high winds.

They dove down back alleys and even onto narrow walkways, where the maneuverable bikes could evade the roadblocks and stay sheltered from police aircraft. Smart bastards.

“Your muscle tension is extremely high, sir,” observed Elle. “Would you like me to engage ultrasonic massage?”

“Not now, Elle-I’m skunkhunting.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied, and her status light turned from bright yellow to dim green. “Good luck with that.”

I was getting close to the outskirts of the city and the chaotic human settlements where my targets would have a decent chance at disappearing among their kind of filth and vermin. What a terrible outcome that would be for the Agency-and for my own record.

I rammed the joystick forward and the pod went airborne, streaking up at a thirty-degree trajectory to an altitude of approximately one hundred feet. Then it leveled out.

Within seconds I was closing in on the nearest rider. I was doing more than twice his speed, actually. God, I wanted at him.

The punk killer was still on a fairly wide street, but he never had a chance to swerve away. I didn’t give him one. I swooped down between the buildings and came in over him like an eagle snaring a gopher.

The car’s belly grazed his back-just hard enough to flip him.

As I shot on by, the dashboard screen showed him skidding along the pavement, then bouncing wildly off several building fronts. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

At close to two hundred miles per hour, there probably wouldn’t be much left of that one.

The next closest rider was.74 miles away. The on-screen grid showed a path where I could stay hidden between buildings until I intercepted him.

I dropped the sports-pod back down onto the street and peeled out on a stretch of smooth concrete pavement.

Seconds later, I whipped around a tight corner in front of him-then skidded broadside to cut him off.

But he was good with a bike. I’ll give him that much credit. He braked and laid the motorcycle down on its side, crouching on top and riding it like a sled.

At the last second, the rider leaped clear and tumbled away with the skill of a gymnast. The bike was still hurtling toward me, bouncing and throwing off sparks.

It slammed into my car hard enough to completely demolish the passenger side and send me violently off course.

Bright red warning lights flashed on the dashboard, and the shrill beep of an alarm sounded.

“We’re under attack, sir!” the interactive pilot announced.

Sometimes artificial intelligence doesn’t quite live up to its name.

“No immediate danger to personnel on board,” chirped the pilot computer as the pod righted itself and avoided what would have been a most unpleasant, and possibly deadly, impact with the front 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?

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.