I walked down a dark road into the city. My opponent, Dr. Chase Arronnette, is a serial killer and a verser which means that ultimate punishment for his crimes evades us.

Worse, he’s managed to pin his crimes on me, and I am now a wanted man.

Hearing a car coming along the country road, I leapt the ditch and hid behind a tree as it searchlightlike headlights trailed along my side of the road, and rapidly went on leaving me alone.

I started jogging in to town at a pace that I could maintain for at least ten miles without a break.

Arronnette told me he intended to kill his doppleganger in the hospital, and take his place, and good reputation. My opponent was not much inclined to bluff, I knew from previous worlds, but he was an excellent chess player.

Again he forced me to take a dangerous move. I would have to break into a heavily guarded hospital to rescue the good man, I had put there. See, I had thought the doppleganger to be the serial killer, and so I shot him.

The run refreshed me, and I circled the hospital looking for a way in. The back door was open for smokers, and a quick sprint on light feet while a guard went for a bathroom break let me in.

I forcibly controlled my breathing as I passed a cluster of nurses with unlit cigarrettes clutched in the finely manicured hands.

Then a quick leap to poke a ceiling tile, and another leap to pull myself into the hidden space between the dropped and the true ceiling, and we were good to go.

A bit of crawling, and I came to the concrete wall of the elevator shaft. A smooth scraping, only when the elevator was in use, with my titanium nails took me half an hour to prep the circular hatch I was making.

I waited until the elevator went high, and palm-struck the disc. It popped loose, and fell with a loud ka-chunk into the bottom of the elevator.

Hopefully, people were used to loud noises from the elevator. A few more minutes, and I climbed out onto the elevator roof and started shimmying up the cable.

Instead I quickly changed my plan. I rode to a nearly top floor, and then went up as fast as I could to the top, and quickly unscrewed some bolts to let myself out of the top of the shaft.

Here I started to slowly and so carefully move. Speed was no longer of the essence. Stealth was king.

I crawled fifty feet in two hours in the ceiling tiles to make it to the doppleganger’s bed.

And yet, I was not quick enough. Arronnette, the Merry Mauler, walked in with an attending nurse. He posed as a specialist brought in from far away to look into this sad case.

And he looked up and smiled at my little peephole.

A quick nerve pressure on the nurse’s neck, and she stood immobile and unaware. I did not know the technique, but I could recognize it.

“Dr. Arronnette, I presume. Lets have a look at you.” The Merry Mauler said to the local.

And the local woke from fevered dreams to stare with horror into the face of his evil alternate.

“You are the face of all the dark deeds I imagined in my worst hours. More disgusting than I can express. Get away from me.”

“So, Taddy’s been talking. He’s watching you now, and trying to figure out how to rescue you without getting caught by the police across the room. And I don’t think you can yell loud enough with those injuries to attract attention. And if Tad stops me now, who’s going to stop me from killing some nurses later, eh?”

The Merry Mauler almost wrenched his arm out of his socket as he congratulated himself on his cleverness.

“I asked a student to bring a few things over. Keep my mind busy, I said.” And then the local raised a right hand to show two vials in his palm. Exoporine, and Kintrailyzine are interesting chemicals. You know about them? No, I thought not. Too busy killing people to actually learn some real science. Let’s just say, that unless you turn around and walk out right now, you’d never reach the door alive. And if you talk to anyone, I’ll do it anyways so you can’t use me.”

The Merry Mauler trembled in his foiled fury with his fists clenching and unclenching.

“Face it, you’re just a poor copy of me. Dumb and brutal as a club. You probably can’t even handle my teleporter, let alone the other stuff I ‘ve been dreaming up, you Stone Age brute.”

The local rubbed in the defeat with evident enjoyment. The Merry Mauler turned to take his nurse, but the local shook his head in negation. My enemy stalked out of the room quivering with fury.

Then the local started talking to me. He explained things, and I found myself nodding. It was a plan.

Dropping through the ceiling, and pausing way too long earned me a bullet in my left shoulder after the cop got his act together. Then I bowled him over, and ran out the door, and straight for the elevator which was not on that floor.

Ignoring my pain, I wrenched the doors open, and slid down on my right arm to the bottom floor. A quick step into the elevator, and an apology to some nice folks who had a kid with a broken arm, and I burst out the lobby screaming.

“I’ll be right back.”

Meanwhile Arronnette upstairs claimed to see me circling the hospital to get back inside. And I sprinted across town to the college where the guards were pulled off that to head to the hospital.

Inside the lit-up science building, I strode fully in the groove. Every footfall fell perfectly, and my eyes searched without thought, and my claws were out.

A few people saw me, and instantly dove back into their classrooms, and slammed doors. My unhindered passage down the halls took seeming moments, and then I came to the door to the Teleporter Lab.

It was running. I stepped across the hall from it, and flipped on the light, and turned on a microwave.

And the power for the building went out. One advantage locals have over versers is knowing the home ground, intimately.

Arronnette came rushing out of the lab looking to reset the power no doubt. I clotheslined him, and punched him in the kidney on the way down to the floor for him.

He landed on his side, and although it pained me, I skipped kicking him in the neck since I did not want to kill him. But I never let him have a chance.

I kicked, stomped, and otherwise mangled him as he tried to defend himself. But while he knew a good bit about combat, he knew little about fighting from on the floor. I guess he never thought himself likely to be in an inferior position.

It took nearly fifteen well-placed kicks before he stopped fighting. I hit him five more times just to be on the safe side.

I dragged his lumpy body into the science lab, and tied him down with rope to a very sturdy metal chair.

Uncertain of how much more damage he could take before dying and escaping me, and unwilling for him to fake me out, I broke his thumbs so he could not untie himself.

Then I walked next door, turned off the light. A phone call down to the basement got a circuit breaker flipped, and we were back in business.

I came back, and saw Arronnette chewing through his ropes with his teeth. So I broke his jaw.

Carefully, I brought the Teleporter online, and I saw the young guy who had volunteered to be his world’s first teleport subject appear in the extradimensional field. Funnily enough, he seemed familiar, like I already associated him with teleporting, but I put that aside since I had bigger fish to fry.

He walked out of the ghostly image of swirling lights, and took solid form in this world. And I cold-cocked him. Too bad, really, but he was loyal to the local Arronnette, and he would not believe me if I said this was an evil clone.

Then I picked up Arronnette and his chair, and toted it up the ramp toward the swirling vortex. He was heavy, and he kept throwing his weight about making it more difficult.

But I got to the top, and I was about to toss Arronnette in to the stable vortex. See the Teleport Machine lacked the power to send you anywhere. It merely transferred you to an alternate pocket dimension.

Later designs would push you further, my advisor in the hospital bed had explained.

And there as I stood at the top, I was repayed for my unkindness. The guy I cold-cocked hit me across the back of the head with something, I think a microscope. And me and Arronnette fell into the vortex.

It snapped off at the excessive mass of two large men with inbuilt cybernetics, and we were in our own private sub-dimension that measured twenty feet by fifteen feet by ten feet. And it was a very special prison, suited for versers for you could not die in this space.

But I didn’t know that or anything at the moment since I was unconscious while a serial killer strove to be free of his bonds.

Tadeusz

Tadeusz