“I don’t know! I’m just trying to think of something we can do.”
“There’s no central AI for the road system,” said Marisa, “it’s a swarm intelligence, like a flock of birds, with all the cars communicating with each other in real time. There’s nothing for me to hack!”
“Even just one car?” asked Sahara. “It’s better than nothing.”
Marisa growled in frustration. “Maybe if I had time to study the algorithm they use for collision avoidance I might find a way to . . . nudge it or something. Trying it now I’d be blind—as likely to kill her as anything else.”
A car missed Anja by inches, and Sahara cringed. “Well, we can’t just stand here doing nothing. Think the swarm can handle two extra bodies to avoid?”
“If we stick together, we’ll count as one,” said Marisa, and grabbed her hand. She swallowed her fear, and looked into Sahara’s wide, terrified eyes. “Cherry Dogs forever.”
They ran into the freeway.
The first lane of cars saw them coming, the swarm intelligence registering their presence and passing it along to the cars behind. Trajectories were calculated and courses were corrected, and the cars moved to avoid the girls before the passengers even knew anyone was there. Marisa ran along the edge of the freeway, trying to catch up to Anja’s position, gripping Sahara’s hand as the giant metal monsters rushed past, buffeting them with wind and noise. She saw each vehicle’s passengers in a strobe-like slide show, smiling and laughing, oblivious to anything out of the ordinary. Their headlights caught the desperate girls, lighting them up in an almost subliminal flicker of leg and face and glittering minidress, but by the time the speeding passengers’ eyes had relayed the information, and their brains had processed the sight and its deadly implications, the cars would already be half a mile down the freeway, restored to their place in the lane and the danger now safely behind them. For Marisa, stuck in the middle, the danger seemed to blot out the entire world, leaving her blind and disoriented.
“Follow Cameron!” Sahara shouted. “He’s right above her!”
Marisa blinked open Sahara’s feed. Camilla was inert, still back in the club, but Cameron was hovering unsteadily in the turbulent air above the freeway. Anja was visible only by the disruption she caused in the traffic, but the disruption was still moving, and Marisa took that as a sign that her friend was, for the moment, still alive. Anja had been running so erratically, weaving back and forth among the cars, that they’d almost managed to catch up to her, separated now by just three lanes of speeding traffic.
Three lanes of high-speed death.
Marisa took a breath and stepped out into the first lane.
The swarm algorithm had already started shifting the cars away from the edge of the road, and as Marisa and Sahara walked farther the lane emptied almost instantly, merging those cars with the ones next to them, funneling seven lanes of traffic into six. Marisa gasped, shocked by the sudden space, chilled to the bone by the violent air currents from the hurtling vehicles—the only way to fit the same number of cars through an abruptly smaller space was to increase their speed, and the added movement whipped her hair wildly across her face. The girls bent their knees, bracing themselves against the wind, and walked toward Anja: one step, five steps, pushing the traffic farther to the side, until suddenly the freeway network detected enough empty space behind them and rerouted cars to fill it, trapping them in a narrow tunnel of screaming metal.
Marisa checked Cameron’s feed, seeing Anja now just one lane away, still weaving chaotically. A massive shipping rig appeared on the feed, and Marisa looked up in terror to see it barreling toward them down the center of the freeway. Anja threw herself in front of it, the swarm network struggled to react in time, and the truck was shunted into the only free space available: Marisa and Sahara’s gap. They screamed and stepped back, turning their heads and trying to make themselves as flat as possible, and the truck roared past mere inches from Marisa’s face, so close it clipped her Jeon prosthetic—only barely, but with enough force that it seemed to rattle her entire skeleton. She froze in place, not daring to open her eyes, but Sahara pulled her forward with a hand on her shoulder. The truck was gone, and they were still alive.
Anja was one lane away.
They ran forward, Mari’s cybernetic arm dangling limply, their eyes catching strobed glimpses of Anja between the speeding vehicles. They kept moving forward, and the swarm recalculated again, rerouting another lane of cars; Marisa gasped as the screaming metal river seemed to melt away and reappear behind them. Anja was weaving erratically, apparently still in her trance but occasionally stopping to stare in awe at the sheer speed and power that surrounded her. She started to run again, but Sahara dove forward and grabbed her.