< Part XXV
The air is quiet, but the dark of the hour makes Eli’s hair stand up as if a chill was in the air. Her scruffy face is tired, in need of upkeep, but she hasn’t thought about appearances for weeks now. The only thing that matters is watching that horizon. A few shapes far out seem to move, but with nothing but sand and dirt and dry grass out there, it might be the heat. Eli’s chest aches. She wants answers.
“Boss,” whispers a voice, someone far off that had gotten on Eli’s nerves too many times, “I see movement coming this way. Looks like one person.”
Eli scrambles to her feet, demanding more details. What do they look like? Any other shapes further out? Maybe there’s more spaced out around them? At the same time, she rushes for the stairs and nearly falls as she jumps down flight after flight. It’s at least five minutes before they get to the speaker’s position. Eli meets them on the corner of the desert and New Mercy between an old liquor store and something that has a boarded up window on one side. Eli’s shoulders rise and fall as she looks out with her own binoculars to see a single shape coming in. It’s figure is familiar, reminding her of the woman she’d seen with Isabela. Eli looks at her crew, a hard look on her face. Her adrenaline is pumping and she barks out orders.
As people at the edge of New Mercy scatter, the figure comes closer in the distance.
Medees’ fingernail had been much longer twenty minutes ago when Aris had first started her ingress. She was going to give her another five minutes, then bolt after her. It would be too close to the City for them to try and stop her. She’d get Aris in and out. There was a some fuss on the radio, but she didn’t listen.
“What? How the hell didn’t you notice her?”
A staticy reply from Granger, who seemed to have found a stowaway in the car. Some banging in the trunk had alerted them a while back, so they were now racing to catch up with the others. They were only ten minutes behind. Aris had still a few miles to go.
“Keep that little girl out of the way. We don’t want her getting hurt.”
The radio went quiet and Medees began counting the seconds. It was only a few minutes before the was too close to the City for them to follow. Another 2 minutes. 1 minute. 30 seconds.
“Fuck! We’ve got sight of something moving out of the City.”
Medees jerked up, looking over her shoulder. Doc’s eyes met hers for a single moment and Medees turned ahead. The engine roared to life and they sped towards Aris, headlights off. If they were already caught, it didn’t matter, but if they weren’t, there was still a chance they might go unnoticed. However, the conversation that continued behind her made it clear the former was the case.
“They’re in a single car and a big group behind it. We need to get out of here,” Justice’s voice said.
Doc responded, “We need your help to get Aris. Granger Danger, you turn and high-tail it out of here with that little girl.”
“No,” Granger’s voice came through, “we can keep her out of the way.”
“We don’t have time to argue, we need a second car,” Medees barked as her mind tried to focus on the best way to come up around Aris without being too far away to make a good escape. The other car was at least smart enough to keep it’s lights off too, but it had a loud motor, a loud growl that made Medees nervous. She panted, wishing she could hear Aris’ voice come over the radio. She was too far away for it to work. Her body was burning, each of her bones scorched from the robotification, but if she couldn’t die now, then there was no stopping her.
The car reached Aris first, sweeping around and someone leapt out of the back seat. The van skidded around to come at them from behind, Medees slowing down almost completely to knock into the stopped car just hard enough to knock it out of the way, make the person trying to grab Aris jump out of the way. They were dark with vibrant purple hair and ink buried into their skin. Medees listened to the side and back doors of the van being thrown open, but the smell of laser fire didn’t suddenly heat up the air.
“Don’t shoot!” roared the woman who jumped to her feet, one hand still reaching for Aris and the other in the air. However, before she could finish, a orange blast skimmed across her cheek and made her jump back. Medees snarled.
“Get the fuck away from her!”
The City-dweller opened her mouth, but the sudden flush of bright lights startled them all. Coming around from the other side of the City, three sets of headlights grew closer by the second.
“Fuck! TRaPS!” The woman barked, turning to her car. “Get your fucking guns out and go back into Mercy!”
“Bo-”
“Go!” She whirled around to Aris and Crash leapt out of the van to reach her first. He pulled Aris toward the van, his gun trained on the other woman.
“Fuck off!” he barked, but the woman came closer, both hands in the air. She began to say she wasn’t here to fight them, but a hail of laser fire came out of the blinding lights that sped toward them and Crash yelled out. Aris bolted toward the car, her hand still clamped around his, but his body fell limp and out of Aris’ grip as she took her first steps.
“Crash!”
Medees roared the van to life, putting it between Aris and the on coming white-masks. The roar of their own other cars approaching filled the air as Justice’s cars responded. Granger’s voice barked over the radio.
“One of them is breaking off to come around to our asses,” static took her voice for a moment before it returned, “-ight have “K” holed up inside it!”
Medees leapt out of the car along with the pair of Murids from the Bunker that were in the back. The other two picked up Crash and Medees took hold of Aris, coming around to her side to put her body between Aris’ and the lasers. Medees couldn’t feel anything more than the same burning in her very marrow.
A screeching sound of metal on metal rang out as one of the Bunker vans was hit head on from the side by a motorcycle that was driving without its lights on. They had more than just the three cars, but the bikers were hidden behind the blinding lights.
“Fuck!” The radio exploded with static before the feed cut out for a moment. The van swerved hard into a ridge and was tempted to tip over. There wasn’t time to keep watching. Medees turned and slammed the side door behind her. Laser fire filled the air as the red car slid into sight, Granger’s head out of the window as her brother steered and she fired on the TRaPS cars. The pursuit began to slow and the driving turned to blocking, sharp turns to surround and swerve Granger’s driving. Medees jumped into the van’s driver’s seat, shutting the door hard and roaring the van to life. She wheeled it around, snarling over her shoulder as the woman from the City caught hold of the back door and pulled herself into the van too. Her car had returned into the City’s shadow, but some of the crowd were still in pursuit. The woman held hard to the door, looking out of it as she helped pull it shut.
“I said get back into the city!” Her figners were to some piece of tech in her ear. Even the gun tucked into the back of her pants was nicer than the hand-painted ones around her. Doc frowned, but they didn’t have time to try and kick her out.
Medees pressed her foot into the gas pedal, dust roaring up behind them, but she snarled over her shoulder. “The other car is over here and I can’t see a fucking thing. They’re gonna ram us.”
Her hard turn protected the windshield from a barrage of laser fire from the flanking car. They opened up the windows and fired on them in return as Medees tried to out run the car to get around them. The old, rickety van couldn’t outrun the City car and it whipped around, kept pursuit, drove them back toward the City.
They could see Granger’s car finally dart from between the other two, one of the doors wrenched open and unable to be closed. Laser fire came out of the broken back window from three guns, including the little girl. Her face was alight in the pursuing car’s headlights. It was a more sleek, beautiful car than the large, well-maintained sedans. As they drove to the side, Medees and the rest of the van could make out more of the motorcycles hidden amongst the sand and cars.
“Take out the bikers!” Medees barked. Granger’s car jerked to the side and Medees turned her car toward theirs, nearly hitting their pursuer and making them swerve. In the red car, Granger ground her teeth together, hitting the gas hard. She looked at the little girl in the back seat, her knees up in the middle as Farley put his arm around her and covered her as another barrage of lasers came out of the two vehicles on their tail. Some of the bikers that had come up to their left side had disappeared, hit by the Murids in the van no doubt. Granger ducked as one came up on the right and fired on the passenger side door.
Granger fired out the window back at them, making them fall back slightly. The lights from behind were getting too harsh and Granger squinted as she tried not to look in the rearview, but there was a sudden hard sound and a jerk sent them swerving forward. The TRaPS car rear-ended them again, knocking them to one side and, as the red car fishtailed for traction in the sandy dirt, the other car pulled up to one side of it.
Granger yelled out as she had to hit the brakes to keep them from spinning further. Sand enveloped them, filling up the air as they came to a harsh halt and everyone coughed and gasped. Granger looked over her shoulder with watering eyes, reaching back to feel for arms or hands.
“Fuck! Is everyone okay?” There were groans and affirmations of answers, but the sound of a door outside of their car slamming shut made Granger look up. The car that pulled up beside them had stopped and “K” now approached the car.
Part XXVII >
Speculative Operations 