CHAPTER 43: MAGNETIC
16 years old
There’s a throbbing behind Summer’s eyes that pulses as if it’s filling her brain with too much blood. It quickly goes away when all the events of fleeing the Outlander camp come back to her like a gigantic wave crashing over her head. Her sapphire eyes pop open to reveal Gage; her head’s in his lap, and he’s absentmindedly stroking her hair. “It’s been ten minutes,” he’s saying to someone, “and we need to find a place to stop for the night. The Leaguers aren’t far behind, and we need to hide.” Summer stretches, and Gage’s emerald eyes snap down to her, wild with distress.
“Is she awake?” asks Landon softly.
Gage nods. “Flower?” he whispers and lightly brushes hair from her face. “Are you okay? What hurts?” His palm’s already there and waiting.
“I’m fine,” she writes slowly. “What happened?”
“The headband—it’s magnetic and destroys the neural implant’s ability to transmit your location. Zoe didn’t know it’d have that kind of reaction. No one’s ever had that kind of reaction, actually.” Gage sighs. “I was afraid to remove it, though, in case it affected your implant only temporarily. First, I checked you over to see if the Leaguers had injected you with anything while they were shooting at Landon. But when I didn’t find anything, and you didn’t wake up, I had to remove the headband.”
Summer automatically reaches up to touch her ear where the implant is, and Gage places his hand over hers. “Cameron, where are we?” he asks quickly, worried now, as Summer sits up and sees the world fly by the front window in a crimson and orange blur with streaks of silver from other cars and buildings.
“Not far enough. The news is blaring about the blonde Outlander that’s broken free with a band of friends,” she informs. “No mention of help from any Leaguers—which means Ethan was able to turn the cameras off for us.”
“That’s good news,” says Gage, relieved. “Are they all still meeting us in the Midwest Providence tomorrow?”
“Yes, Hunter’s father owns a house in the middle of nowhere in Illinois that’s a few hundred years old. He promises no cameras and says he’ll take a hovercraft there tonight to check the place over first.”
“What about your neural implants?” Jaden asks warily. “Don’t you think it’s silly for the ones who broke us free not to have that taken care of?”
“Doctor Rose manually removed our GPS tracking devices two days ago,” says Cameron with a smile as she leans over the front seat. “She took a liking to Summer when she was in the hospital.”
Avery suddenly starts to shout wildly with his hands waving around frantically, diving in and out of his red hair. Soon Lucy’s joining him, stabbing her finger at the window. Funnily enough, Summer looks for a spider. “Turn around!” Avery finally yells to Cameron. “You’re going to wreck us!”
“What?” Cameron swivels around and checks all the gauges that glow neon blue and green on the glass. “What are you seeing that I’m not?” Her voice grows panicky, her hands flailing.
Gage bursts into laughter as Summer looks between everyone in confusion. “Nothing’s wrong, Cameron! They just aren’t used to seeing a car on autopilot, that’s all.”
“Autopilot?” Lucy’s voice squeaks.
“That’s not what I mean!” Avery practically screams. And then they all see what he’s freaking out over. Black cars with flashing lights are stopped up ahead, and more fly past in droves.
“Blimey,” says Rob dryly. “I knew it was too easy.”
“Seatbelts,” commands Gage. Straps automatically wrap around everyone in the back of the car, and for a moment, Summer freaks out over being tied down. “This car has Hover Mode, Cameron,” he continues as calmly as any veteran Leaguer going into battle. “Use it.”
“We aren’t in a fly zone!” she argues.
Everyone in the back’s eerily silent.
“Okay. Then I guess we’ll have to stop, and let them check the vehicle,” says Gage evenly.
“Hold on!” instructs Cameron as her fingers quickly move across the glass before them.
Traffic’s bottlenecking as they move closer and closer to the roadblock. Horns blare indignantly as they speed up toward the mass of cars. Summer’s heart races at their impending collision, but then their car rises into the air and scrapes the top of the first car with a jerk and grating noise, barely missing the second.
“Hell yes!” whoops Cameron.
Summer’s practically crushed Gage’s poor hand and quickly releases pressure when she realizes this. Everyone else is speechless for several seconds as they move higher into the air, though the cars are still only thirty to forty feet below them. Sirens ring out deafeningly as they pass over the roadblock.
“Bloody brilliant!” cheers Rob with a crooked grin at Jaden.
Several police cars rise into the air and take chase—the problem is that Summer can’t see out of the vehicle except from the front. This only makes her heart jump wildly and sweat bead up on her forehead. Gage can see the alarm in her wide eyes and squeezes her hand reassuringly.
“Things are about to get really interesting,” says Cameron as if this is something she’s done a million times. Perhaps they train for things like this—or have done it before.
The car hovers over the speeding traffic on the freeway, the sirens loud next to, and behind, them. Cameron’s fingers speedily move across the glass while she mumbles commands that Summer can’t make out. The car drops down in the middle of the moving cars, sparks fly at the contact, and Summer’s stomach jumps into her throat as the back end slams to the ground with a bounce. She feels like she’s been put in a blender. The car begins to speed up, weaving in and out of traffic with grace and surprising ease, moving only to within inches of other vehicles. There are two police cars ahead of them, but Cameron keeps away from them effortlessly. It’s as if she’s done this a million times before and can predict their every reaction.
They suddenly slide sideways into another car as a police cruiser slams into their side. Summer wants to close her eyes, but she can’t manage it—they seem to be stitched open. The seatbelt bites into her shoulder, and her head jerks from side-to-side. They flip over another car, and instead of landing on its roof and crushing everyone, Cameron has their car hovering in the air upside down. Summer’s black hair hangs in loose, damp tangles above—or is it below?—her head, just like Lucy’s and Jaden’s. Everyone looks as if they’ve been electrocuted, and if it weren’t for their situation, Summer would probably laugh. Lucy and Summer share an “I’m scared to death I might pass out at any second” look, while Jaden and Rob grin like idiots, enjoying this more than they should be. Landon’s eyes are huge, brown orbs—he’s thunderstruck.
The car spins around until they’re flipped back over, and Summer secretly hopes she didn’t just soil her panties. Cameron shouts, “HALT!” And the car’s back end pivots around so violently they’re suddenly facing the opposite direction. Several cop cars fly by, and the ones physically on the road screech to a halt as they cause several cars to maneuver around them, many of them wrecking. Then Cameron yells, “FLEE ALL COPS!”
“She can do that?” asks Rob, chuckling.
“I’ve trained my car well,” admits Gage with a grin.
“Brilliant!”
Lucy and Summer are still stuck in their “Oh My God” stare.
The car flies the opposite direction of the traffic on the ground and then drops onto the asphalt again. The lights of cars are all coming at them so quickly that Summer’s in a constant state of flinching, just waiting for the collision that’s surely to come. Horns blare left and right as Cameron commands the car into weaving in and out of traffic, several times taking the wheel and turning the car sideways in a skid before she speeds forward again. The car jumps up into the air, and they spin a one-eighty before they begin to go the direction they had originally been going moments before. The cops are thoroughly confused as they slide sideways in the air and on the road to t
ry and catch them again. But then Cameron cuts the wheel and leaves the freeway completely, running into downtown Phantomship that was once Los Angeles. Huge buildings tower over them from every side, and Summer’s awestruck by the city, regardless of the high-speed chase.
“Up ahead!” shouts Gage.
Cameron gives a tight nod and suddenly they turn right, still hovering in the air, and when they reach a T in the road the car doesn’t slow or turn. Summer’s chest heaves when the building up ahead only grows larger as they race toward it. A blood-curdling scream erupts from Lucy’s mouth as Cameron crashes the car into the building. Glass rains down on the car like tinkling rain against the car.
“Holy shite!” exclaims Rob. He’s still grinning like an idiot.
It’s an office building, and people dive out of the way as the car barely fits between the floor and ceiling. They crash through several walls while desks and ceiling tiles smash into the car before they drive through more glass, exiting the building in the same style they entered, and spin wildly in circles in what appears to be a parking structure.
“Launch now!” shouts Gage.
They land on the ground and slowly drive through the parking structure—parts of the vehicle drag on the ground—until they’re in the basement portion of it. They pull into a parking space, and the car shuts off, the seatbelts releasing them. Summer’s tense muscles relax as she leans against Landon in relief, though she doesn’t know for how long this sensation will last.