You’re wasting time. Turn right at the next intersection. Head into the mall and go down to the basement floor. There’s a car waiting for you on the opposite street.
A car? Maybe I wasn’t just being paranoid, after all. He had been watching me, maybe had calculated what routes I’d take once I left the Riders.
I look around frantically. Maybe Zero’s lying to me, playing one of his games. I pull up my directory and start to place a call to Asher. If the others are still somewhere close by, they can come get me. They—
I never finish my thought. A shot rings out behind me, whizzing narrowly past my neck to chip the wall at an angle.
A bullet. A gunshot. A sudden wave of terror sweeps over me.
I throw myself to the ground. Down the street, a random passerby screams and runs, leaving me the only person that I can see. I glance over my shoulder—searching for my followers—and this time, I see a shadow moving against a building, rippling in the night. Another movement on the other side of the street catches my eye. I start scrambling to my feet.
A second gunshot rings out.
Panic hovers at the edges of my senses, threatening to crowd out everything. The sounds come to me like I’m underwater. As a bounty hunter, I’ve heard gunshots before, the ping of police bullets against walls and glass—but the sheer intensity of this moment is new. I was never the target.
Did Zero send them? But he’d warned me to run. He’d told me that I was in danger. Why would he do that, if he’s the one attacking me?
You have to think.
I flatten myself against the wall, throw my board to the ground, and jump on it. My heel slams down and the board surges forward with a high-pitched whoosh. Zero had said a car was waiting for me around the next turn. I crouch low on my board so that my hands can grip either side of it, then aim for the end of the street.
But another gunshot streaks past my leg—too close—and hits the board. Another knocks a wheel loose.
I jump off as the board veers sharply into the wall, roll, and push myself back to my feet—but my sneaker catches against a crack in the pavement. I stumble. Behind me come footsteps. My eyes squeeze shut, even as I struggle back up to my feet again. This is it; any second now, I will feel the searing pain of a bullet ripping through me.
“Around the corner. Go.”
I jerk my head to one side at the voice.
Crouched beside me in the darkness is a girl with a black cap pulled low on her head. Her lipstick is black, her eyes gray and hard as steel and fixated on the shadowed silhouettes on the street. A gun’s in her hand, and clipped around her wrist is a black cuff. I think the cuff is real for a moment before a virtual ripple of blue shines across it. She’s balanced so lightly on her feet that she looks ready to fly away, and her expression is completely still, without even the tiniest ripple of unease.
No one was beside me a second ago. It’s like she materialized out of thin air.
Her eyes flicker to me. “Move.” The word cracks like a whip.
This time, I don’t hesitate. I bolt down the street.
As I do, she rises from her crouch and moves toward one of my hooded assassins. The girl walks with a sense of calm that borders on eerie—even as the attacker shifts his arm to shoot at her, she is shifting, too. By the time the attacker fires at the girl, she has twisted her body to one side, dodging the bullet as she raises her gun. She shoots at the attacker in a blur of fluid motion. I reach the bend in the street and look back at the same time her bullet hits my assassin hard in the shoulder. It knocks him backward, clear off his feet.
Who the hell is this girl?
Zero hadn’t said anything about someone else working with him—maybe she’s not connected to him at all. She could even be one of my attackers and is trying to throw me off track by pretending to be my rescuer.
I’ve already reached the mall complex. I’m rushing past crowds of startled people as I make my way down the first flight of stairs. Basement level, the words repeat in my mind. In the distance, I hear police sirens wailing down the last street I was on. How’d they know to come here so quickly?
Then I remember the passerby who’d screamed and fled at the first gunshot. If she was using the new, algorithm-affected lenses, then her reaction could have triggered the NeuroLink to contact the police. Could that be possible? It seems like a feature Hideo would have added.
It isn’t until I reach the bottom of the stairs and burst through an emergency exit that I realize the gray-eyed girl is already here, somehow, rushing alongside me. She shakes her head when she sees me opening my mouth to ask her a question.
“No time. Hurry up,” she orders in a terse voice. I numbly do as she says.
As we go, I quietly analyze what information I can about her. There’s precious little. Like me, she seems to be operating behind a false identity, the various profile accounts hovering around her empty and misleading. She moves with single-minded focus, so intense and so sure in her gestures that I know she’s done things like this before.
Like what? Like helping a hunted target get to safety? Or tricking one into following her to their demise?
I wince at the thought. That’s not a gamble I can afford to lose. If she’s trying to isolate me from her other rival hunters or something, then I need to find a good chance to bolt away.
This basement floor of the shopping center is laid out like cosmetics counters in a New York mall, except all of the kiosks here display an array of decadently decorated desserts. Cakes, mousses, chocolates—all so delicately packaged that they look less like food and more like jewelry. The lights are dimmed, the floor long closed for the night.
I race along the darkened aisles behind the girl. She edges close to one of the cake displays and brings an elbow down hard on the glass. It shatters.
An alarm starts to wail overhead.
Satisfied, the girl reaches into the broken display counter to grab a miniature mochi cake adorned with gold flakes. She shakes off bits of glass before popping it in her mouth.
“What are you doing?” I shout at her above the noise.
“Clearing our path,” she replies through her mouthful of dessert. She waves her arm impatiently at the ceiling. “Alarm should scare some of them away.” She tightens her grip on her gun and raises her other hand to make a subtle series of gestures in midair. An invite pops up in my view.
Connect with [null]?
I waver for a heartbeat before accepting. Neon-gold lines appear in my view, directing us along a path that she has set for us. “Follow it if you lose me,” she says over her shoulder.
“What do I call you?” I ask.
“Is that really important right now?”
“If someone attacks me and we’re separated, I’ll know what name to scream for help.”
At that, she turns around to face me and gifts me with a smile. “Jax,” she replies.
A scarlet shape appears in our view, hiding behind a pillar at the other end of the floor.
Jax turns her head in its direction without slowing down. She lifts her gun. “Duck,” she warns. Then she fires.
I jerk down to the floor as Jax’s gun sparks. The other person returns fire immediately, the bullets lighting up against the pillars and shattering another glass counter. My ears ring. Jax continues moving with the same exacting motions as before, stepping out of the line of fire each time, cocking her gun, bracing her shoulder, and firing back. I race near her with my head hunched down.
As a bullet zings past her, forcing her to shift sideways, she tosses her gun effortlessly from one hand into the other. She fires back.
Her bullet makes contact this time. We hear a yelp of agony—when I glance up past the counters, I see the shape outlined in red collapse. The gold line dictating our path turns right, but before we take it, Jax strides over to the figure on the floor.
She points her gun straight down at the person and fires one efficient shot.