Being Justin, he accompanied his gasping panic with a self-justifying narrative. “Not my problem . . . outta there! Screw all of them . . . not standing around trying to be Captain Courageous . . . every man for himself . . . situation like this . . . one of the most important young artists . . . any kind of artist, to hell with young . . . not cannon fodder, I’m Justin DeVeere!”

  Of course, he was Justin DeVeere with a control chip in the back of his neck, right where a tap on an app could send waves of pain through him. Yeah, that was an issue. If DiMarco survived—and somehow he expected that, like a cockroach, she would survive—she could still activate the chip any time she wanted.

  Well, depending on what kind of transmitter she had. Did it work from satellites? That would be bad.

  Suddenly he burst from the woods onto a nicely paved two-lane road.

  “No!” he cried. He had been running in what he hoped was a straight line, but it was apparently just an arc, because he was back at the main road, but still not at the front gate.

  His sense of direction was poor, but he was in luck, because coming from the Ranch was a flatbed truck, followed by an assortment of official vehicles and private cars.

Villain, Chapter 20