Free Brain by Candace Blevins

out what you want to do with your life. Are you really prepared to walk away from your former identity?”
    Assuming the slight chance they were werewolves was correct, Duke would know if I didn’t tell the truth, so I needed to figure out how to answer the question without telling an actual lie. “I’ll need to take it on long enough to gather the funds I’ve accumulated. If I live frugally, I can probably be okay never working again, but if I want to rejoin the rest of the planet as a consumer, it’ll only last fifteen or twenty years. Either way, I’ll have to launder it into my new identity, so I’ll have to do some kind of work, or the IRS will start asking questions.”
    He smiled. “You didn’t answer my question.”
    Yeah, smart. I told him the unvarnished truth, taking Brain’s advice not to lie even if it was something I really didn’t want to tell him. “If I have to take it on, I’ll travel somewhere incognito, using cash only, going in disguise partway there, and won’t do anything to point back to myself. At this time I have no specific plans to keep up the life, but I won’t make promises I can’t keep. I can only promise I won’t do anything to jeopardize my new identity.”
    “What research have you done on the club?”
    “Once I realized it must be the MC after me, I read a good bit of what I hacked off your servers.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Yes.”
    “What?”
    “I looked through the Atlanta PD’s gang task force’s files on the Atlanta RTMC chapter.”
    His look was appraising, and he asked, “Why Atlanta and not Chattanooga?”
    “I hacked into the Atlanta PD years ago, and wrote myself a back door so I could get back in. They’ve compartmentalized some things since then, and I couldn’t get to some of the more official records without spending some time, but the gang unit has what amounts to an online whiteboard, so they can share information and collaborate without having physical meetings. It’s surprisingly organized.”
    “What did you learn about us?”
    “I’ll tell Brain how to get in later,” I hedged, “so you can read it for yourself.”
    “I appreciate that, but I’m asking what stuck out in your mind, what you learned that made your highly illegal jaunt worthwhile.”
    Was he fishing about the werewolf thing? Surely not. I took a breath and dove into something that didn’t seem incendiary. “There’s a good deal of discord about how to deal with you amongst the ranks of the task force. Some want to spend a lot of time investigating you, others feel their time is better spent elsewhere. The upper brass seems to have told everyone to back off, and I got the idea that…” I paused and tried to explain in as few words as possible, because Duke seemed like the kind of guy who got impatient with long-winded explanations. “Teachers nowadays have to teach to the standardized tests, because they get graded by how well their students do on them. In much the same way, police departments are graded on their crime numbers, so anything that brings the numbers down is seen as good to the people in charge. Apparently, the bad guys are afraid to do bad shit in your territory, so the numbers look good without having to use police manpower. So, the upper brass seems to have a hands-off approach to the Atlanta Chapter, as long as they aren’t doing anything to increase those numbers.”
    Duke sat back a little more, crossed his ankles and his arms, and said, “Anything else? Something you maybe want to ask us?”
    “Nothing that’s any of my business,” I hedged.
    “Ask anyway.”
    No way in hell was I asking if they were werewolves. I needed some misdirection. I threw my arms up and exclaimed, “Ya’ll do bad shit. You’re pimps, or they are, anyway, and you used to be part of them. I saw pictures of people after ya’ll beat them up. You’re bad, and yet… most of what you’ve been arrested for, I approve of. The men who gang-raped the teacher? I loved