The Sacrifice Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

something. Polonium-210, probably. Whatever. I slipped on the jacket. Ahh. Now I’m an adult. Actually, since the unpleasantness at Disney World, I’d kept the garment all stocked up with my wallet, backup wallet, glasses, Purell wipes, SightSavers wipes, Q-tips, Twist-Em ties, Theraputty, Krazy Glue, grandessa, mandatory medication, optional medication, Adderall, OxyContin, Klonapin, clotting spray, wound dressing pads, blue Pilot Rolling Ball, Post-its, ToothTowels, Go-Between Plaque Stix, red astronomy flashlight, two competing telephones, the Gerber Suspension Butterfly Multi-Tool (which I much recommend), my real passport, my Warren-provided fake passport, nine blank checks from three different banks, about fifteen thousand U.S. dollars in premagnetic twenties, and a little nylon coin folder with twenty-five Krugerrands, which at the moment represented another seventy-five thousand, one hundred and two dollars. And a few other things, because, you know, one never knows. I checked the three working tanks again—I’d had Lenny replace everything after the Disney Die-off—and the apps on my phone that link to the tanks and the tank cameras, and then used the other new app to set the alarms and house cameras. I got my feet into a fully charged pair of Sleekers—just to show my support for the Firm, I rationalized— and selected an indoors-almost-appropriate hat. Wallet, keys, backup wallet, backup keys. Check, che—
    Damn. I was feeling a subsonic throb version of the first two bars of “Transfusion.” The alarm on my 1 phone. Time for another shot. Right.
    I rolled up my female—I mean, left—pant leg and found a new virgin target on my inner thigh. Dr. Lisuarte, from Warren, had set me up with a PowderJect system that looked, irresistibly, like a better-tooled version of the 1946 Daisy Buck Rogers U-238 Atomic Disintegrator Pistol, and I gave myself a Ject of recombinant coagulation factor IX.
Fweeeeeeeeyup!
Ow. Fuck this, I thought. Well, it’s not for much longer. Anyway, these days my clotting was nearly always up to at least seventy percent of normal, so if I wiped out on the Sleekers I’d still live to see the big quarter-second. In fact I barely worried about it consciously anymore, except still, if you’ve ever had any kind of hemophilia the whole world always feels a little different. Like for instance you’re always a little on the lookout for sharp objects. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re sitting shirtless on that butcher’s paper in a doctor’s examination room and you look at the waste container that says SHARPS. If you’re a bleeder, that feeling’s permanent.
    I went out, let the door suck itself closed, and listened to the motion alarms beep on. The overcast and 102 degrees and 79 percent relative humidity and no wind made you feel like you were stuffed in a box with a half ton of styro-peanuts and left on somebody’s porch and not getting picked up. There was a top note of burning something in the air, over the bases of mold and fried crabgrass. Devil’s Night, I thought. Starting a little early. Amazingly, I remembered to let the jacket slide off before I eased into the 120-degree interior of the Barracuda Thermador. It was a metalflake-mango-orange hardtop 1970 Plymouth that I’d gotten ten months ago, with the original body, engine, and drive train, and I called it that because the inside had been scooped out and replaced with all-up-to-code everything.
    “Please tell me your destination,” the car purred. Its voice was like the Stepmother’s from the Disney
Cinderella.
    “How can I turn you off?” I asked. It didn’t answer. Hell and corruption. It wasn’t even the right voice. If this car could really talk, it would sound like Amy Winehouse. Should hire her to do it. Just a few phrases and synth the rest. Where was I going? the car asked again. This time I told it, out of sheer weakness. It suggested I head west on Magnolia Street. I obeyed. Indiantown looked