The Sacrifice Game

(84)

And at that, I knew they were going to kill him.

Another thing I knew, though, was that Marena’s earlobe-mounted phone, and the whole house’s phone and Internet systems, weren’t running off the increasingly sketchy post-Disney World Horror local towers. Instead, there was a pair of direct-uplink dishes on the roof. And they ran on the house’s electricity.

I toe-mushed my latex sandals off my feet and padded out, into the kitchen, and through a little pantry. It was Florida around here, so there wasn’t any basement, and the house’s gut brains were all in a little room behind a commercial water cooler. I’d already identified both the regular main circuit breaker and the big isolator switch that cut the line to a natural gas-powered backup generator that lurked in a shed in the backyard. Just to make a cleaner break, I cut the generator first and then the house main. There was a second of real dark and then a few battery-powered night-lights came on. Well offstage, Marena’s voice shouted something.

That ought to give him a few extra minutes, I thought. I’ll try some of his cold e-mail accounts later. My cold e-mail accounts. Our. I opened the kitchen door, jogged across the backyard-which wasn’t the yard with the pool and the pepper hedges and everything, but just a swath of centipede grass surrounded by dready yew bushes-and vaulted-well, vaulted sounds a little too graceful-over a steel fence post into the neighbors’ yard. I lost footing and rolled over. If they catch me, they’re going to ice me pretty fast after this, I thought. A few days of interrogation, tops. Still, I was less terrified than I would have expected I’d be. Maybe Tony’s brain-the less conscious part of it that was still there the way he’d left it-was less cowardly than the Jed mind it had appropriated. Or maybe it felt like I didn’t need to worry because I wasn’t really me. I got up again and ran around the neighbors’ big faux-Spanish-Colonial pile toward Oshkechabi Street. I’m doing great, I thought. Got to ditch the phone, though. And check again for implanted chips-oh, hell. I only got the vaguest impression of something behind me before there was something around me, crushing my chest, and as I realized that one of the guards had tackled me the grass tilted up and mashed me in the face.

Too late.