Turncoat by Megan Derr (the false prince series txt) 📕

Dixie pulled off his ski-cap and reached into one of the pockets of his pants, pulled out a small bag which housed his nanomask. Carefully pulling it on, he connected it to his system and silently ordered it to mirror his face, then alter it in subtle ways that were more than enough to make him look like someone else.

Byron nodded. "Copy that. Dare I ask what kind of distraction you're going to cause?"

"There's enough cops around here, I think I can borrow something useful from one of them." Dixie winked.

"Have fun," Byron replied with a chuckle. Then they were at the entry gate. Byron pulled a card from what Dixie often called his 'wallet of wonders' because it seemed to have damn near every access card they could ever hope to need.

The police let him pass, barely paying any attention to Dixie in the back seat once they'd given him a onceover.

"And they wonder why they're always struggling to catch us," Dixie drawled softly as Byron drove off, wending through the postcard perfect streets of the expensive-looking complex. The car slowed as they drove past the cluster of cops and G.O.D.

Dixie looked over the crowd, discarding most of them, but picking out one or two at the fringes that looked promising. "Drop me here," he said when they'd turned the corner.

"I'm headed for that blue house one down from the corner on the left," Byron said as he stopped the car. "I'll ping you when I'm ready for that distraction."

"Copy that." Dixie nodded at him, then darted across the lawn of the house, grateful for the dark.

He made his way quickly back to the hub of cops and G.O.D., checked them over carefully, left eye humming ever so faintly as it worked. Ah, that one would do. A young, whey-faced cop hanging out nervously by the edge of the house trying to look busy but mostly looking lost.

About twenty minutes later, Dixie's left eye lit up as he received a text. Ready.

Quietly stepping out of the towering shrubs he'd been hiding behind, Dixie strode up soundlessly behind the nervous cop, grabbed him around the throat with one arm and clapped his other hand over the man's mouth. Dragging him back to the shrubs, Dixie knocked him out.

He pulled a special injector from one pocket of his pants and put the man to sleep. Next he pushed the man's sleeve up, saw the telltale scar, and quickly slit his wrist open. Reaching into one of his pockets, he pulled out tweezers and scissors and gingerly fished out the special chip surgically implanted in the man's wrist.

Dousing it in a cleaning solution pulled from another pocket, he pulled back the flap of artificial skin on the back of his neck and inserted the chip. Lantern City Police Department. Unknown User. Access Denied.

Dixie snorted and silently ordered his programs to get to work. The chip wasn't mean to do more than give the cop quick and easy access to the files he'd need to write tickets and the like. Saved him the time of logging in, retinal scans, and so forth. They were still being tested, so only about a third of cops in the city currently had them. Stupid of them to give one to a newbie, but their stupidity was Dixie's advantage.

It took him twenty-seven seconds to use the chip to gain all the access he wanted to the LCPD.

Two minutes later, all hell broke loose as emergency alerts came from the far side of the city.

Followed a second later by even more from a different part of the city. And still another a few beats after that.

Once they were all focused on that mess, he switched to using police overrides to kill all the streetlights. Go he messaged Byron. You have about three minutes.

No reply came, but he didn't expect one right then.

Slipping away, he took a winding, back and forth route to the wall surrounding the community, east of the entrance and hopefully well away from where all eyes would be pointed.

He hunched down by the wall, tucked behind more shrubs that framed a fancy little goldfish pond. A few minutes later, he got a text from Byron that they were safe. Reaching up to the back of his neck, he extracted the LCPD chip, snapped it in half, and threw the pieces into the fish pond. Turning, he quickly scaled the wall, dropped to the other side, and ran for the park beyond.

Half an hour of slowly working through the dark park, he finally reached city streets. Hanging back in the dark, he deactivated his mask and stowed it, then pulled the ski-cap back on. Reaching into one of his pockets, he pulled out a pair of chunky glasses and shoved them on his face. "Scan for law enforcement, media personnel, blacklist."

The outer corner of his left eye flashed blue as it set to scanning. Going to another pocket, Dixie pulled out a packet and selected an ID at random. "Activate Alias – Chris VanDyke." His body thrummed as the identity was unpacked and released, syncing it with city systems to establish a false history and everything else he would need to pass muster should he be stopped.

A hell of a lot of the money Byron gained robbing banks was spent on the numerous forged identities he built for all of them. Without Byron and his ridiculous connections and resources, staying one step ahead of the G.O.D. would be a lot more difficult, if not flat out impossible, no matter how much fancy tech was shoved into Dixie's body.

He walked a couple of blocks to a major intersection and hailed a cab across town to the pub where he and Byron often met up after one bit of drama or another.

Byron's Mercedes-Benz was parked at the curb. Dixie yanked open the passenger door and slid inside. "How'd it go?"

"He's hurt pretty goddamn bad," Byron said as he pulled sharply into traffic and drove off, keeping to the