They heard the gunshots long before they reached the warehouse. The streets looked like the world had ended; cars were stopped, windows and doors were broken, and bodies lay strewn across the parking lots and sidewalks like broken dolls. Marisa wondered if they were dead, or beaten unconscious by the Bluescreen puppets.
The puppets were the most terrifying part of the scene—hundreds of them, some running toward the warehouse fence, some walking stiffly, some only crawling on limbs too damaged to walk. Marisa looked for Anja, but couldn’t see her in the crowd. Some of them chased the car, but only vaguely; most were marching toward the Bluescreen warehouse with a grim, mindless obsession.
“What are they doing?” asked Bao.
“This can’t be about protection,” said Fang. “The best protection Bluescreen had was secrecy, and they just blew that.”
“Lal claimed he didn’t know what was going on,” said Marisa. “Maybe this is a glitch? A malfunction in the virus.”
“Or another virus,” said Bao, “infecting the first.” The thought made Marisa shiver.
“Done,” said Sahara. She looked up from her coding and grimaced. “Just in time for the apocalypse, apparently.”
The Baron pulled to a smooth stop five blocks from the warehouse. More of the Bluescreen puppets took notice and started walking toward them.
“We didn’t count on this many of them,” said Bao. “Fang, are you going to be okay driving through this crowd? They might not jump out of the way like the others will.”
“Ten more seconds and it’s not going to matter,” said Fang. “Hold on.”
The car lurched forward and stopped abruptly. Sahara fell off the bench, and Marisa caught her, bracing herself in place with her feet.
“Sorry,” said Fang. “I’ve never been a car before.”
“Been one?” asked Marisa.
“That was the easiest way to fake the controls,” said Sahara. “She’s not using a control panel, she’s literally jacked in, like a VR game.”
A glassy-eyed teen beat his fist against the car window, a larger group right behind him, and the car lurched forward again, leaving them behind and weaving through the crowded street. “Just don’t forget that this isn’t a game,” said Bao, gripping a cup holder for stability. “We’re actually in this thing.”
“I’m fine,” said Fang, though her voice was strained. “Stop distracting me.”
Marisa held Sahara’s hand as tightly as she could, forcing herself to take slow, deep breaths as the car got faster and faster. “Jaya, you ready?”
“Ready enough.”
“Hit it.” Marisa couldn’t see it, but she knew that the digital onslaught Jaya unleashed on the Bluescreen servers was working its way through their system now. The car sped up, swerving more wildly.
“You weren’t kidding about these guys’ cyber security,” said Jaya. “This is crazy. I feel like I’m—holy crap—I feel like I’m being bombed.”
“You okay?” asked Marisa.
“I’m hanging on,” Jaya grunted. “You?”
“Stop talking!” said Fang. “This is harder than it looks—”
The gunfire grew louder, and the crowd thicker, and Fang accelerated suddenly, leaping the curb with a rattling bump, and roaring through the open gate. The space inside the fence was filled with gangsters, running and shooting and crouching for cover behind bullet-riddled cars, both sides retreating toward the building as the Bluescreen puppets advanced across the yard. Fang swung sharply to the left, hugging the outer edge of the compound as she angled a wide right turn toward the side of the building. Marisa hung on, pressing herself into the corner of the seat and praying the car wouldn’t roll over. A bullet slammed into the window and she almost screamed, and then a barrage of alarms leaped up in her djinni, scaring her even worse. But they were just service alerts from the window washers: the nulis had arrived. She craned her neck to look up and saw the sky over the warehouse fill up with quadcopter robots, racing toward the windows and doors, spraying them with foam and water, attacking them with articulated rubber wipers. Fang zoomed around the first corner of the building and slowed slightly; the side door was there, waiting on the back of the west wall. The side of the car slid open, the noise of the battle suddenly growing louder and more terrifying. Marisa watched the asphalt speed by in a blur, and pressed herself against the seat, practically climbing up on the bench to get as far from the open door as possible.
“Slow down,” said Sahara, “we can’t jump at this speed.”
Fang hit the brakes, a little too abruptly, and they tumbled to the floor of the car. “Hit the ground the same way,” said Bao. “Rolling absorbs the impact.”