Timecaster: Supersymmetry (22 page)

“You know what this is?” he asks, waving the Nife in front of him.

I scan the floor around me for weapons, then realize it doesn’t matter. The Nife will make easy work of a thrown chair or a plastic table leg. If I had a chainsaw, it would make easy work of that as well.

I’m fuct.

“It’s a Nife,” Rocket says. “I’m going to use it to slice off your eyelids, so you can’t look away while I skin you alive.”

I think of something tough and flippant to say back, but I don’t trust my voice not to quiver.

Rocket strolls toward me, taking his time. He waves the Nife in front of him, knowing I can’t take my eyes off of it, knowing I’m imagining how it will feel when it cuts me. According to all accounts, being sliced with a Nife doesn’t hurt at first. Being only a few nanometers thin, it is so sharp a person doesn’t feel it going in. It’s only after the body part drops off that the pain begins.

Escape is impossible. Rocket stands between me and the exit. I move left. He mirrors it. I move right. He mirrors it. Even if I run for it and try to dive past him, all he has to do is extend his arm and the Nife blade will open me up like a zipper.

Rocket moves ?” Talon’s wife asked.at

All too soon my heels hit the wall. I can’t retreat any farther.

“Okay, you win,” I manage to say. “I surrender.”

Rocket barks a laugh. I watch his eyes. His eyes will telegraph his move a millisecond before the blade flashes.

I wait, zoning out a bit while also maintaining full concentration. It’s a bit like timecasting. Letting instinct guide me, telling me when he’s going to—

His pupils widen, his hand blurring. I dodge left, slapping my hand on top of his wrist as the Nife cuts empty air.

I try to execute an arm bar, getting my other hand under his armpit and pushing him forward, using his elbow as leverage against him. But in this case, it’s like putting a judo hold on an oak tree. He ignores the attempted joint lock, lifting up his arm and me along with it, shaking me off. I land on my back, my head bouncing off the floor.

I don’t know I’ve been nicked with the Nife until I see the blood seeping out of my knuckles. I make a fist, witness my white bones peek through the split in the skin.

Then the pain hits, accompanied by a slow, sickening roil in my stomach. The roil becomes a full-blown tsunami when Rocket straddles me, sitting on my legs.

“Which eye first?” Rocket says. “Left or right?”

I stare at him, unable to speak.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Rocket cackles, and the Nife flashes alongside my head. Rocket reaches down, then holds something next to his mouth.

Shit. He’s got my ear.

“Can you hear me now?” he says, into my severed ear.

I didn’t want my knuckles slashed, or my ear cut off again, especially since I’d just had it reattached.

I went back to the memory, but it didn’t help.

I hadn’t beaten Rocket. McGlade had saved my life by grabbing the Nife.

But Harry wasn’t here right now.

I tried rewinding the memory, looking for some weakness, some opening.

There was nothing. This guy was unbeatable.

“It’s a Nife,” Rocket said, waving the invisible blade in front of me. “I’m going to use it to slice off your eyelids, so you can’t look away while I skin you alive.”

I scanned the floor for weapons, know over, unconscious.

os staggerGing it didn’t matter even if I found something.

The banana began playing Chopin’s
Funeral March
.

Rocket advanced.

“Help!” I cried
, frantically trying to pull away from the zombie munching on my arm. “It’s biting me!”

With strength fueled by raw fear, I yanked my arm free, and Phin and I muscled the bookcase back up against the door.

Then I lifted my arm up and stared at the bite wound, watching it gush blood. Grandma came up behind me, gently touched my cheek.

“Grandma? What do we do?”

Her face pinched. “Only one thing we can do.”

Then she threw an arm over my shoulder and around my neck, getting me in a headlock and forcing me to bend over.

“Grandma…?”

“It’s extremely virulent, Talon. I’m sorry.”

She dropped to her knees, and I heard a
CRACK!
that I realized was my neck snapping.

I flopped onto the floor, unable to move, unable to breathe. Darkness came from all sides, and the last thing I saw before I died was Alter-Vicki, crouching next to me, tears streaming down her face.

Rocket took another step
toward me.

I was about to die, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I’d almost died so many times in the past few days that it was becoming a cliché.

But now I had a unique opportunity.

This time, rather than my life figuratively flashing before my eyes, the FMN pill gave me the chance to have it
literally
pass before my yes.

Phin said the Forget-Me-Not lasted thirty seconds. Even though I’d already relived several minutes of memory, I hadn’t used more than a second or two of the pill’s duration. Which meant, if I swallowed it, I wouldn’t have to imagine Vicki’s face before I was killed.

I could actually see it one last time.

This was an opportunity to go back to when I first met her. Experience the joy and excitement on our wedding night. Relive the last vacation we t the antidote for the nanopoisonamCan you to his d at the same time.

ook, the romance and the sex and the laughter and the love. In twenty-eight seconds of real time, I could have minutes, maybe even hours, of Vicki, re-experiencing my fondest memories as if they were happening all over again.

It was an intoxicating idea.

I shifted the pill from under my tongue to the back of my throat.

Rocket stared down at me. I stared up, my legs shaking.

“You scared, you little bitch?”

Fuck yeah, I was scared. I almost swallowed the pill right then.

But instead I had an idea. It was a long shot, and might screw up my chances at a happy death, but the slim hope at someday making new memories with Vicki outweighed reliving all of the good times we’d had in the past.

“What?” I said.

He bent down lower.

“I said, you scared, you little bitch?”

“I can’t hear you, shit head. Can you speak up?”

Rocket’s hand lashed out, grabbing me by my throat with one hand, easily lifting me up to his height. He brought his face so close to mine we could practically kiss.

“I said, are—”

With his mouth wide open, I spat the FMN pill back into his throat, hard as I could.

Rocket’s eyes bugged out, a retching/gagging sound escaping his throat and bathing me with hot, fetid breath. I reached both hands up, clamping them over his lips even as the vertebrae in my neck began to crack and pop under his squeezing. Then I began to kick wildly, hoping to connect with the knife handle still protruding from his side.

I got lucky. Real lucky.

My toe touched the handle just as he started to cough, and I cupped one hand and slapped it into his ear, popping the eardrum, just as I used the knife like a rock climbing pylon to push myself away from his body

The roider dropped me, and I fell onto my ass, the stars coming out. Rather than give in to the pain, I rolled to the side, Rocket’s giant foot slamming into the floor where I’d been.

I glanced up, seeing his face red with rage, the Nife thrusting toward me.

“Remember your Aunt Zelda!” I screamed.

A millisecond before the Nife touched my neck, Rocket froze, still as a digital photo.

I crab-walked backward, amazed I wasn’t dead.

Rocket remained paralyzed in that lunging position, eyes wide but focused on something that wasn’t me.

He was, quite technically, lost in thought.

I had no idea how long he’d stay like that, so I pressed my advantage. It took three big t flamethrowerEARetugs to get the buck knife out of his side. Then I hacked and pried at his fingers
, trying to free the Nife.

Rocket stayed perfectly still, not flinching, not breathing, even as I chopped off his pinky.

But like the rest of his body, his fingers were ridiculously corded with muscle. It was akin to sawing through steel cables, and I knew my time was running out.

Abandoning his fingers, I attacked his wrist. That way, even if I couldn’t cut off his hand, maybe I could damage him enough that he’d bleed to death.

The banana switched from Chopin to
Tom Traubert’s Blues
by Tom Waits, and did a pretty good imitation of the singer’s gravelly voice.

Rocket poured blood like he was a city park fountain, but even though I hacked through much of the skin on his wrist, his bone was too thick and my knife was too small for me to have a shot of severing his hand.

“Shit! Is that a singing banana?”

I recognized McGlade’s voice, but didn’t bother acknowledging him. At least twenty seconds had passed, and when Rocket snapped out of his trip down memory lane he was going to be seriously pissed off at what I’d been doing to him.

I raised the knife, figuring maybe I had a chance to plunge it into his neck.

I didn’t have the chance.

The FMN pill had fully dissolved, and Rocket returned to the land of awareness and motion. As expected, he wasn’t pleased when he noticed the job I’d done on his fingers and wrist.

“I just spent a whole summer with Aunt Zelda, and now—WTF?!?”

He switch the Nife to his other, non-mutilated hand.

I took three quick steps back, and caught the green blur coming right at us.

A unbelievably fast, unbelievably large neon green blur with matching hair.

Yummi!

She somehow launched herself into the air, all three hundred kilos of her heading straight for Rocket.

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? I witnessed it firsthand.

—there was a sound like thunder mixed with hyperspanking.

—Yummi seemed to momentarily spread out like a giant pancake, her fat covering Rocket’s back in a neon green latex blanket.

—Rocket pitched forward, his Nife pointing upward.

—I rolled to the side.

—the roider’s eyes rolled up as he fell onto his own blade, it sinking into his enormous neck without resistance.

—Yummi’s momentum and natural elasticity actually bounced her into the air again, over Rocket. the antidote for the nanopoisonemy some hyperlottery ticketsllveryone

—I ducked.

—she sailed above my head, arms flailing wildly, and crashed into the counter.

—several gawkers offered some lackluster applause.

—Rocket’s head separated gently from his body and rolled under a table.

—Harry screamed, “Yummi!” and ran to her.

I got to my feet, side-stepped most of the blood, and once again set to work on freeing the Nife from Rocket’s fist. Now that he was dead his muscles were lax, and his hand opened without too much difficulty.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Harry cooed.

“I think so.”

“You were amazing.”

“Thank you. I know fat-kwon-do.”

“Did you see that singing banana?”

“I did. He’s making me hungry.”

I walked over to them and carefully set the Nife on the counter. Harry was kneeling at Yummi’s side.

“You just saved my life,” I told her. “Thanks.”

“Anything for the man who introduced me to Harry-Berry.”

“So you two apparently hit it off,” I said to Harry-Berry.

He waggled his eyebrow. “Oh, we hit it all right. At least, I think we did. I’m not really sure. I was in some sort of crevice. Really warm and squishy. Could have been her cooter. Could have been butt action. Could have been her elbow. Or her cankle. Or back boob. This woman has more folds than an origami hippopotamus. Doesn’t really matter. It was the greatest thirty seconds of my life.”

“It was my armpit,” Yummi said, grinning and pointing at the body part in question.

Harry nodded. “Her armpit. Yeah. I thought I felt some stubble.”

Yummi somehow managed to stand up. Then she put her arm around his waist, tugging him close. “And he cried afterward. It was so sweet.”

Harry shrugged. “I may have shed a tear of appreciation.”

“He wept for five whole minutes.”

“It wasn’t five minutes.”

“He also sucked his thumb. It was adorable.”

“We’re getting married,” Harry said. “Talon, since you introduced us, we’d like you to be the best man.”

They kissed.

“Sure, whatever,” I was looking at the clock on my flamethrowerEARetDT. “We need to get out of here. We’re running out of time.”

“I’m serious, Talon. I’ve never known love like this before. The possibilities are endless. I could have sex every day for a year, and it would never be the same way twice.”

Yummi waddled off, seemingly distracted. I walked back over to Rocket and unstrapped the Nife sheath from his leg. It was wide enough to wrap around my waist. After returning to the counter I
very very carefully
put the Nife back in the sheath.

The piano music stopped, and I heard a high-pitched scream. I looked.

Yummi was eating the piano player.

“Sweetie, don’t eat the singing banana!” Harry said, hurrying over to her. “We can make a fortune off that guy!”

“But he’s so delicious,” she said, her lips around the blues singer. She hadn’t even bothered to peel him.