“I’m coming for you, sister,” he warned.
Behind his head, the grapple had pierced a battery’s case and—that was all. Nothing. The maroon brother holstered his gun and cracked his knuckles. He took a step. He could take care of me by hand now. But then the battery behind him bulged, like a steel balloon, emitting a high-pitched whine. The corners of it wrinkled. It hissed. He turned, his expression full of growing horror.
Blue-white jets of flame flared out. He staggered back, crossing his arms in front of his face just as the battery pack exploded.
Rog wailed from the platform above, like the coming inferno was inside him. A sudden, blinding white light filled the room as another pack burst. There was a brief scream, then another high-pitched whine, followed by yet another explosion and more white light.
I stood there too long, stunned and horrified by what I had just done. This isn’t going to stop. This is a chain reaction. I’d known what was coming, but watching it happen was something else entirely. Panic and amazement blossomed together in my gut.
Rog’s building, WiFi and all, could not withstand the white-hot intensity of a hundred thousand NanoLion? batteries exploding. I looked up and understood that we had to go—now.
Rog turned on Saretha, murder in his eyes, but she had slipped away from him. She was on the railing, two stories up, facing Rog. She looked back at the drop with her odd, Zockroft?-induced smile, and slipped from sight with a nauseating thud.
No! I screamed in my head. Not Saretha. Not her, too!
I pushed my way through the heat. The hum of the batteries warbled as the glow increased and spread. I had to shield my eyes to see as I worked my way through the room, telling myself the fall was not that far. Flames licked up all around me. The brothers were silent, obscured by the chaos—dead, or perhaps they’d bolted.
My heart pounding, I found Saretha splayed on the floor, her head turned away from the heat of a ruptured battery core. Another explosion sounded across the room. I raced to her, profoundly relieved to see her eyes flutter at the sound.
“We have to get out,” Kel yelled. The hum of the room turned into a moan.
I tried to help Saretha up, but she was barely conscious and could not stand. She had broken her legs in the fall, one of them badly enough that the angle of her shin made me queasy.
“Leave me,” she croaked, expecting shocks in her eyes, but they didn’t come. The tether was broken. She shouted, more resolved. “Leave me!”
“That would be dumb,” Margot said. “Henri, carry her.”
Henri obediently picked her up.
“Henri the hero,” Margot commented, pushing him along.
We fled up the stairs fast. We were good at this, traveling like a group with speed and efficiency. We burst out from the stairwell into the garage. Immediately, there was yelling from the opposite side.
“Get them!” Rog screeched.
Rog and his guards might have fled the inferno, but they weren’t going to give up on capturing me.
“There!” a voice yelled, clearly meaning us.
“Two o’clock,” Kel announced, looking at dozens of shapes gathering on our right under the flickering light.
Kel and Henri raced left, to a gleaming Nayarit Silver Ford Brute?. After a moment, Kel did something to the thumbprint reader. It clicked open.
The hard garage floor rumbled with a low, ominous hum, followed by a series of thuds. Dust shook from the ceiling. Doors opened at the far end of the garage, and security agents began to pour out. There was no Legal jargon this time: no warnings. There was no hesitation for fear of hitting a NanoLion? battery.
Gunshots rang out, and I knew they meant to kill us.
Kel rushed us into the vehicle. Bullets pinged off the glass and hood. It was bulletproof—of course; it was a Lawyer’s car.
In the confusion, I got in last and found myself in the driver’s seat.
“Go,” Kel barked. “Go!”
The seatbelts clicked in around us. There wasn’t time to argue with Kel. I knew the basics from driving class.
“Ford? is not responsible for injury, loss of life or other risks associated with automobile accidents. Please drive responsibly,” the car chimed as the engine roared to life.
We jerked forward, plunging into a crowd of security guards who dove away in the nick of time.
I was driving too fast, by any normal account. No time for caution. The car flew up the exit ramp and arced through the air onto the street. We came down hard with a screech of metal and a shower of sparks behind us.
News dropters wobbled and buzzed in from both sides of the street, encircling our car.
Rog and his men scrambled to follow us. A few seconds later, an Ebony Meiboch? Triumph appeared out of the darkness of the garage and bounced into the street behind us. In my rearview mirror, I watched it roar after us. The thin, flame-orange highlights told me exactly who was back there. Several other large, similar cars spread out behind.
The news dropters spread out, and more came in from up high. Then, suddenly, all of them faltered and dropped out of the sky. One banged off our hood and went spinning to the pavement. Another glanced off the roof.
“The WiFi is down,” Kel confirmed. “There is no tether.”
I couldn’t help but smile at this. Behind us, two of Rog’s cars skidded out, dropters caught under their wheels.
Excitement flooded through me. Rog would have no way to coordinate. He would have no way to track us. The only task left was to lose him and figure out where to go.
MEIBOCH?: $540,000
I jerked the wheel to turn, but did it harder than I should have. We skidded and swerved, bashing into an Ad station, but it didn’t slow me. I tried again, with a little more control on the next turn. We zoomed down a narrow side street. Mr. Skrip, my driving teacher, would have been proud.
Kel shook her head. “Focus.” She swiped at her Pad and looked uncertainly out the window. “The Twenty-Second Radian and Ring 12.”
“You look like that actress,” Henri said to Saretha.
My brain tried to understand that Kel, Margot and Henri had never met my sister. I glanced back at them in the rearview mirror.
“Henri, you idiot,” Margot said, forcing him to switch places and shuffling herself next to my sister. A fake smile masked, or failed to mask, Saretha’s agony. Margot kept her eyes on Saretha and held out her hand to Kel. “Nexbuprofen?.”
Kel passed back something that looked like a small red bean. Margot injected it into my sister’s arm.
Thank you, Saretha mouthed, her eyes going a little dim. Margot began to wrap her leg. I kept glancing back, despite myself.
“Focus on the road!” Kel warned, then, less harshly, “She will be okay. Jumping to get away from Rog was probably a smart move. Her legs will heal.”