Taking the Highway

ANDRE MANEUVERED THE DODGE RAVEN to the on-ramp and dove down the slope onto 94. “Are you sure we’re going to the right place? The last crash was inside the city limits.”

“It’s the right place.” Elway sat beside him, fully geared—datashades over eyes, earbuds in ears, finger gauntlets to control his movements in the electronic universe. He wondered sometimes if Elway ate real food and slept in a real bed and had sex with real women, or if his off hours were all virtual all the time.

Overdrive sped up his car, but only slightly, as cars crowded around them, the thick traffic of Monday morning’s first rush.

“Where are we?” Elway asked.

“Take off your goggles and look.”

“Can’t. Collating.”

“Passing the Lodge in a quarter.”

“I thought we’d be closer by now.”

“Me too.” Andre shook tension out of his fingers and shifted his shoulders. What was with the traffic today? This kind of volume slowed everything down.

[ATTENTION. ATTENTION.]

Andre touched his implant. “Go ahead, Sergeant Gao.”

“Units in place at all on-ramps.”

“All of them?”

“Moross, Allard, Vernier. East and West Bound.”

“Who the hell—” He took a breath, started over. “Sofia, listen to me. You cannot have a visible presence here. You’ll scare them off.”

“Maybe it would be better to scare them off. Elway said in another month, the city could harden up the Overdrive nodes—”

“No, he said he thought they could harden them up. Then the bad guys find a new way in. We can’t chance it. We have to stop them and stopping them means getting them today.”

Silence on the line. Then, “My idea of a city-wide dragnet is looking better and better.”

“You saw those badges. These guys look like natural fourths. We’d have to sweep up hundreds of them to make sure we got the right ones. Not only do we tip off the saboteurs, but we cause the exact panic reaction we’re trying to avoid.”

Sofia’s sigh came through the line. “I hate that you’re right.”

“You have to move those units.”

Another pause, but he didn’t think for a moment that the call had dropped.

“Backup means back,” he said. “I don’t want anyone within five klicks of Vernier. Ten would be better. These guys even smell cops in the wind and they’ll go to ground. We’ll never find them.”

“Ten kilometers. You and Elway—”

“Will be fine.”

“Ten, then.”

“Ten.”

He glanced over at Elway, but the tech was still in deep. Andre allowed Overdrive to change lanes for him, moving into a faster one, and used his datapad to contact Sofia.

Her face bloomed to life on the little screen. “What, now ten isn’t enough?”

“What are you doing later?”

“Probably your paperwork. And I do mean paper.” She smiled. “I’m in charge of this task force, remember? I get the shit while you get the glory?”

“Do it tomorrow. I have champagne in the cooler at home.”

“You are going to collapse the minute you get in the door. You didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“So what’s a few more hours?”

“Madison’s in my head. I have to go. Don’t celebrate yet.” She blew him a kiss and disconnected.

“Yeah,” Elway piped up from the adjacent seat. “Some of us are still on the job.”

“Sorry. I thought you were virtual.”

Elway flipped up his shades. “Not for several minutes.”

Andre looked from Elway to the traffic and back again. He checked the time. They were going to make it. It would be close, but they’d make it. “You have plans today?” he asked Elway.

Elway shrugged.

“Let’s go to the Pen.”

“No, I couldn’t. You have a thing. You and Sergeant Gao.”

“We’ll bring her too. We’ll bring the whole task force. The first pitcher’s on me, and I tell the bar how you made the city safe for every driver on the road.”

“And they’ll say you’re full of it.”

“We do this, we wrap these guys into a neat bundle and deliver them, you won’t have to buy your own beer all year. Those a*sholes in the tech department will start bowing when they hear your name.”

“Yeah, and then they’ll elect me homecoming king.” Elway shifted in his seat. “Actually, they’ll . . .uh, oh.”

Andre sat straight and swiveled his head from side to side. “What-oh?”

Elway reached over and plucked something from the back of Andre’s collar. He held it between thumb and forefinger. “Well, that’s a new one.”

Andre snatched it out of Elway’s hand and held it in his palm. A goddamned smart tag. It was the size of a gnat, a neutral tan color, covered in burrs for traction. It would stick to nearly anything and broadcast location, speed, and velocity, not to mention everything the wearer said. “Who the hell put that there?”

“Hold on.” Elway fished in his pocket. “I think I have a box.” He produced a small, black box and put the smart tag into it, shutting down its broadcasts. “When’s the last time you swept?”

“I don’t know. A day ago, maybe?”

“Some detectives sweep every twelve hours.”

“I forgot, okay?” Andre shook his head. “I hate smart tags. What do you want to bet it belongs to a spinner?”

“I’ll find out.”

The Raven informed them of their upcoming exit and maneuvered itself into the right lane. Andre took control of the car and guided it to the Vernier exit. He glanced as casually as he could at the on-ramp across the way as he turned north. A pair of suited men stood at the roadside, too far away to make out facial features.

“Why are we going this way?”

“We’ll get a better angle on them from Harper.”

Elway swiveled to look over his shoulder. “An awkward angle.”

Andre stared straight ahead. “We’ll take a side street and double back. Park it and walk.”

Elway didn’t answer, but his leg bounced up and down as he continued to stare out the back window.

Andre reached over and gave Elway’s bony shoulder a swat. “Just do your job. I’ll take care of the bad guys.”

“Yeah.”

“The Pen, Elway. Beers. Hero.”

Elway swallowed. “Yeah.”

Andre found a parking place on a side street three blocks away and they moved at a walk that wasn’t quite a jog toward the service drive. “There it is,” Elway said, pointing. The Overdrive node was housed on the roof of a municipal building overlooking the highway, with only the service drive and a steep embankment between it and the river of cars it controlled.

Andre slowed his pace and scanned the street. A group of three men in suits stood near the highway entrance ramp. Two stood with bowed heads, deep in conversation, their backs to the street, while the third faced forward. To a casual eye, they were fourths—a pair of amateurs plus someone truly fronting up for a ride. They were anonymous, invisible. Drivers would glance once and then look away, forgetting facial features and distinguishing marks as soon as they were out of sight. But a hurricane roared in Andre’s stomach and his breathing quickened. He slowed further. These were his targets—two saboteurs and a lookout.

One of the conversationalists lifted his head for a moment and Andre caught his profile. The man was too far away for a positive identification, but there was something about his bright blond hair and jerky movements. What was Topher Price-Powell doing here? How was Andre supposed to tell Nikhil that he’d arrested his best friend? He focused on Topher’s companion and his heart flipped in his chest.

Andre stopped Elway with an arm and snatched the datashades off his face.

“Hey!”

“I just need—” A touch of the control surface and the distant scenery jumped into close view. He oriented on the building and then the sidewalk. Magnify and enhance. There was a little pixilation of the image at this distance, but he recognized the loose stance, the casual tilt of the head—an uncomfortable imitation of his own.

No. He couldn’t be here. Not Nikhil. He slid the specs off his face and looked again. Now that he knew what he was seeing, it was so clear. The hair, the face, he even recognized Nikhil’s suit.

Andre turned his back to the fourths, standing between them and Elway. “I need the names that go with those badges.”

“Are you crazy? Why do you think we’re here?”

“I know why we’re here. I need those names now, Elway.”

Elway grabbed the datashades and pushed them onto his nose. “You start breaking into secure databases, and you’ve got no case. The judge will throw out the evidence because you didn’t—Damn it! They’re already in.”

“What?” Andre almost stumbled as his feet tried to go in two directions at once, one foot racing forward to arrest his nephew, one foot stuck to the sidewalk.

“I didn’t think real world.” Elway’s gloved hands sketched invisible lines in the air. “The Overdrive AI uses triple redundant awareness so it can check and re-check any decision. Three versions in constant contact, except when one needs maintenance. One of this set is reading like it’s down for a diagnostic. They can feed it their signals all day. It’s going to crash as soon as it goes back online.”

“So stop it from going back online.”

“I can’t! At least not from here. Everything is short-range to prevent exactly this.” Elway’s fingers moved like a parody of sign language. “I don’t have boosters any more than they do.”

Andre glanced at the highway in the canyon below. There was no sound of engines, but the whistling whisper of hundreds of cars blazing by stirred the air in a vast slipstream. “Elway?”

“All I can do is jam it. If I feed it enough conflicting data, it will boot them right out and the other two AI’s will still function. I need to get closer to the processing sensor.” He raced toward the building. “Buy me some time.”

“Elway, wait!” Andre cut his eyes to the group of fourths, who hadn’t yet noticed them. “If you’re feeding false signals to the sensors, won’t you cause the crash they want?”

“The system will slow down, but it won’t stop. I’m going around back. Get ready to nail them.” Elway darted forward, then turned into the first alley.

Andre reached under his jacket to loosen the Guardian in its holster. The thought that he might point it at his own nephew was somehow surreal, barely imaginable. He straightened his tie and slicked his hair down in front. He hoped he would look like just another fourth joining the stop. Maybe Nikhil wouldn’t recognize him until he got close. Nikhil couldn’t know what his friends were doing. Somehow, some way, this had to be a mistake.

Andre’s walk had turned into a rigid march and he forced himself to slow, to aim for the careless grace of fourths. When he got to the alley, he looked for Elway, but the tech had disappeared behind the building. Andre inhaled deeply and let out a deliberate breath. There was still time. This hadn’t completely turned to shit yet. He could cull Nikhil from the herd, talk to him, warn him off. Elway would stop the crash. He could arrest Topher Price-Powell at his leisure, maybe even get one of the backup units to do it.

A warning click in his ear, then Sofia’s voice. “Sergeant LaCroix? Still holding position. Waiting for your go order.”

Andre ducked into the alley and spoke in a harsh whisper. “Hold. Hold your position until further notice. Copy?”

“Are you all right?”

“Hold your position, Sergeant Gao. Copy, please.”

“Holding,” Sofia said. “Do you want us to—”

“No. Don’t move.” He cut the call and moved out of the alley. Sofia was a good officer, well trained. She would wait for a go order, but she wouldn’t wait forever. And Elway could only do so much. If Andre was going to take any action at all, he had to take it now.

He poked his head out of the alley. The fourths stood with their backs to him. He had to move before they turned. He stepped onto the service drive.

And saw the car.

A late-model Octave crept along in the same direction he was, traveling perhaps only forty KPH in a sixty zone. Its signal was on for a left turn onto the highway and Andre did a double take because he didn’t see any passengers in the car. He squinted into the sun and saw the single driver in silhouette. No time to look harder, as the driver’s window slid down and the driver turned toward the fourths. A hand snaked out.

“Gun!” Andre shouted. He drew his own weapon and sprinted forward. “Stop! Police!”

The driver jerked the wheel, startled, and Andre caught a glimpse of a face—just enough to register it as male. Then a tongue of flame lashed out the window and he heard the pop of the bullet.

Andre fired blindly at the Octave, hitting nothing. The fire spat twice more as the Octave accelerated away. Andre took an extra second to aim carefully and was rewarded with a milky spider web appearing across the car’s back window. The car fishtailed around the corner and was gone.

Andre ran to where Nikhil crouched behind a trash barrel, apparently unhurt, but breathing too rapidly, his eyes wide. His friends had scattered.

Andre stood and turned in a circle, searching for Topher. Where could he have gone? There! Running down the cross street, away from the highway. Andre raised his weapon again and prepared to shout a warning when there was a sound from below him like the end of the world.

He looked down at the highway and stared as a gleaming river of automobiles crashed through guardrails with a shriek of tearing steel and the protesting grumble of buckling crumple zones. The din rose as the cascade of cars struck and pinwheeled in a grinding, splintering mass. Showers of sparks and brief flares the color of lightning illuminated the human ragdoll forms that spun free or were buried beneath the next cars running into them.

“Oh, shit.” Couldn’t Elway stop this? They were supposed to stop this. This was never supposed to happen. Andre triggered the panic switch on his implants and shouted for help on every channel.

“Uncle Andre?”

Andre hauled Nikhil to his feet, spun him around and shoved him in the direction of the crowd gathering on the service drive, scores of passersby who’d stepped spellbound from their cars. “Get out of here!” he roared at his nephew. He had re-holstered his gun without realizing and as Nikhil stumbled toward him in a daze, Andre seized him with both hands and practically threw him. “Don’t talk to me, don’t contact me. You are dead to me.”

Nikhil stepped forward. “But I never—”

Andre’s fist connected with Nikhil’s face. Not hard, but hard enough. He rubbed the top of his fingers as Nikhil whimpered and shied back. “I mean it, Nikhil. There isn’t even a name for the shitstorm we are in. Every second we’re seen together makes it worse. Go.”

Nikhil stumbled away, and Andre turned his back, looking over the embankment at the mess happening on the highway below. The flow of cars had ceased at last but the chain-reaction crashes continued.

He knew he’d be visiting this scene again in his dreams—the screaming shapes, the booming clatter of car on car and the stark scent of hot metal and fresh death.