“Hands! Hands!”
I know they have weapons trained on me. Probably tasers, but they could be guns. I don’t really want to find out which.
“The parkour videos make this seem so easy,” I comment right before I launch myself into the arms of oblivion, but find myselfon the building opposite. Now that I am in motion, it’s easy to stay moving. Laws of physics are great that way. Inertia held me back from jumping, but now that I am in flight mode I think I could make a jump twice that distance if I had to.
“What the fuck is she doing?” I hear the question shouted behind me.
“She’s fucking running. Get after her.”
“I don’t get paid to jump fucking buildings! I’m not Superman!”
I’m out of earshot after that exchange, so I don’t know if they decide to give chase or not. It doesn’t really matter. This city is densely packed and almost designed for rooftop chases. I run four buildings over, until I am sure line of sight is blocked, and then I try the rooftop door. It’s open.
I let myself into that apartment building and rush downstairs, moving quickly, but not suspiciously quickly. City people often have a pretty fast stride anyway.
I go downstairs, around the back, across another block or two, then get on a bus.
I’ve escaped. Again.
It’s hard not to smile to myself as I realize that. This woman is throwing all her resources at me, and they’re doing nothing that a bunch of incompetent and immature frat boys aren’t capable of.
* * *
Simon
I am worried about Lydia, but where she is concerned, I have to assume that no news is good news. I am being held in one of the reinforced high security labs, designed for products that need extra security. The general idea was to provide safety, not become a prison, but I suppose it works both ways.
I am going to escape, obviously. I want to do as little damage as possible when I do, and I also want to ensure that I give as little of my work away as I can.
I have a theory that I have done advanced damage to my DNA. I suspect that when the next full moon comes, I might be able to shift into my wolf form due to instabilities in my phenotype. When I look at my cells, I see a war going on, one that is being won by my human side by only a thin margin.
Veronica does not know what she has caged, and I have no intention of making that clear to her. The full moon is less than a week away, and when it comes, all hell is going to break loose.
In the meantime, I putter about pretending to give her what she wants so she leaves me alone. Most of her energy is focused on catching Lydia, which is how I know Lydia is fine. The mutterings I hear make it apparent that things are not progressing easily on that front.
“Does she have background we’re not aware of?”
“Hm?” I have a pipette held carefully above a vial, which gives me every reason to respond in a distracted manner to this interrogation.
“Lydia. Does she have some sort of other background besides as a tech writer?”
“I don’t know. She might do Pilates from time to time?”
Veronica scoffs. “She’s evading the men.”
“She has good reason to. Necessity has always been the mother of invention. Did you think she was going to turn herself in? You’re not the police. For all she knows you want to hurt her, and you have no real authority.”
“I thought she’d sacrifice herself for you, the same way she did when she sat in that car for weeks, waiting for you like a lost puppy.”
“That was different. She was doing that of her own free will. What you’re suggesting is her sacrificing herself to be vulnerable to you, and gaining nothing for me. That’s never going to happen.”
Veronica is displeased.
“Hard, isn’t it,” I say.
“What’s hard?”
“Crossing all the lines, pushing all ethical concerns and boundaries out of the way in hopes of getting what you want, only to discover that there’s nothing really to be gained at all, that those boundaries and ethics were there because they’re effective as well as moral.”