Miguel sighed deeply. Another night fouled up. “Yes, sure. She’s my . . . little sister. I told her to stay home, but she likes the races. In the blood, I guess. Do me a favor and cut her loose.”
Head Honcho’s chest lights flashed faster, racing with his heartbeat.
“I don’t know, mate. Rules are rules.”
Miguel persisted. “Come on, hombre. I can’t go home without the niña.”
“Why not, mate? Teenagers are just a waste of space and air.”
“True, but this girl is one of the best drivers we have. Almost as good as me. Be a shame to waste all the driving hours we invested. In a couple of years she’ll be burning up the strip.”
A nasty smile spread across Honcho’s face. His steel mohawk vibrated as he laughed.
“Okay, mate. I got a deal for you. The girl drives the last race.”
“¡Qué no!” protested Miguel. “No way. That car is my baby.”
“It’s your call. She’s in the car, or she’s on it.”
Miguel pulled his bandanna off, wringing it between both hands. “Okay. She drives.” He pointed a rigid finger at Mona. “You mess this up, Mona, and there’ll be hell to pay.”
On the car or in it? Not that Mona actually had a choice. Dozens of strange hands fed her overhead to the Myishi Z-twelve. She felt herself being folded almost in half and stuffed in the car’s side window. Ditto was hustled into the passenger’s seat.
“You can take your mascot too,” said Honcho, strapping himself into the Bulldog’s contender. “You need all the luck you can get.”
“Mascot,” said Ditto, between gritted teeth. “That moronic sack of implants. I’d like to punch his lights out. Literally.” He checked his blond hair in the mirror. “You can drive this thing, right?”
Mona studied the confusing array of dials and meters. “Yeah. Maybe. In theory.”
“Do you think they’ll give us a practice run?”
Outside the car, groups of adrenalized gang members were bouncing with anticipation. A mob of souped-up, tattooed, testosterone-fueled young men with big money riding on this race. “No. No practice runs.”
Mona’s thing was engines, not driving. Mona could drive or fix just about anything with wheels, but this was a nitrous racer, not the Pigmobile. Generally drag racers fed a nitrous oxide mixture into the regular fuel for that extra burst of speed when it was needed. But this thing actually used heated nitrous oxide as the regular fuel. Because nitrous was used up so quickly, the entire car had been converted into a fuel tank. Every strut and panel was filled with the explosive mixture. Nobody really knew how to drive a car like this.
Miguel leaned in the window. “Tell Stefan he owes me a big favor.”
“Tell him yourself,” retorted Mona. “In ten seconds I’m gonna be a carbon stain on the asphalt.”
“Just hold her steady, let the nitrous do the work. Standard pedals, but brake early. This car is a terror to stop. You lose this one, Vasquez, and you’d better leave town in shame.”
Honcho sounded his horn impatiently.
“A couple of questions,” said Miguel. “Where’s Stefan, and why are you here?”
Mona placed a hand on his arm. “When it happens, you’ll know. Just keep your head down and get ready to run.”
Miguel settled his bandanna gangster style. “We’re Sweethearts, baby. We never run.” And with that tough-guy rejoinder, he was gone, down onto the factory floor with his boys.
Ditto’s phone vibrated. He slipped it out surreptitiously. On the screen was a single question mark. Ditto composed a return message. Stay put, read his response. Everything under control.
Mona craned her neck to read the text. “Under control? Let me know when we’re in trouble.”
The gates were lowered on Krom robot arms, powered by a portable generator. One sparking grille settled in front of each car. Honcho was howling now. The digi-cals on his fenders showed running, slobbering bulldogs. The other Bulldogs took up his canine call, until the entire factory echoed with the yelping of deranged gang members.
“I don’t know which is healthier,” said Ditto. “Winning or losing.”
Mona pressed the ignition button, revving the car in neutral. “I’m not waiting around to find out.”
Ditto gripped the dash nervously. “Don’t do anything foolish, Mona. I’m just a baby.”
“Just hold on. And buckle up.”
The gates rose slowly, cascading sparks on the audience below. Honcho was punching the roof of his car, denting the paneling. If he got any more excited, he might just short out his bulbs.
Mona shifted into first gear. The manual gearbox would have been added by the Sweethearts. There would hardly be time to shift all the way to sixth; she would have to skip a few gears. The Z-twelve lunged forward like an eager panther. She held it with the clutch.
There was a three-foot-wide gap between the gate and the surface now. A waterfall of dancing white sparks obscured Mona’s vision. Bulldogs fired rounds into the air. The Parasites were closing in, perhaps for her. Whatever was coming was on the way. Ridiculous as that sounded.
The gates jerked upward another notch.
“Go!” screamed the Sweethearts in one voice. “Go! Go!”
Mona revved, but did not go. “Not yet.”
Honcho had no such reservations. He floored the accelerator and shot out under the gate. It was too soon. His rear spoiler caught the gates. But there was no explosion, no conduction of thousands of volts through his chassis. Instead the spoiler melted into black slop, half coating the rear window. Honcho raced on.
“Rubber,” said Mona contemptuously. “That cheat.”
“Go!” howled the Sweethearts almost tearfully. Honcho was already a mile down the track and he hadn’t even fired his nitrous yet.
“Not just yet.”
Ditto pounded her shoulder with tiny hands. “What are you doing, Vasquez? Are you insane?”
“One more second.”
Honcho was two miles gone. Two and a half. Doing at least three hundred miles an hour, his tires billowing black smoke. The Sweethearts were converging on the car, drawing weapons from their pockets. Miguel’s lips were drawn back from his teeth.
“Time to go,” whispered Mona, dropping the accelerator and lifting the clutch. The Z-twelve shot forward like Thor’s hammer across the sky. The nitrous injection slammed Mona and Ditto back into their seats. If the headrests hadn’t been padded, their skulls would have cracked like eggshells. Vision was distorted, colors ran and blended. Nothing was clear, except the track.
Mona locked her wrists, keeping the wheel steady. Everything on either side dissolved into speed trails, but ahead the track was a solid black strip, with Honcho’s charger growing ever larger in the crystal windscreen. Compared to the Z-twelve, Honcho’s car may as well have been in reverse, though the Bulldog could not have known that. He was already firing victory flares out the window.
Check your mirror, lamebrain, thought Mona. See what’s coming up on you.
It seemed as though Honcho did just that, because his twin exhaust pipes flared blue as he injected the nitrous into his engine. The Bulldog charger lurched forward, another fifty mph added to its speed. It was too late; the Z-twelve was an automated bullet burning down the track like lightning from the belly of a storm cloud. “Amazing,” said Mona, the word jittering between gritted teeth. “This thing is an animal.”
Ditto grinned at Honcho as they cruised past. An irritating smug grin that would make anyone on the receiving end want to do him severe injury. Quite possibly Honcho couldn’t see the other car, never mind the Bartoli baby’s grinning head—but it made Ditto feel better.
They flashed across the finish line, activating victory fireworks. Five miles in under a minute. The factory wall loomed large before them,
“You forgot to brake!” shouted Ditto over the engine’s roar. “Your old boyfriend said to brake early!”
Mona floored the accelerator, heading for a sonic boo
m.
“He’s not my old boyfriend, and do you really want to stop for a chat with Honcho?”
“Ideally, no. But what choice do we have?”
“We can go through that gate.”
Ditto held his nose and blew until his ears popped, just in case the pressure was interfering with his hearing. “Go through the . . . Are you completely insane?”
“Think about it. We go off the end of the ramp at about three hundred. The gate is only polymer, the car is toughened alloy. We have a good chance of making it.”
“There must be another way.”
“I’m all ears, you have three seconds.”
“Mona, don’t make me hit you.”
“If you have a sledgehammer in your pocket, I’ll start worrying.”
Ditto adopted the crash position, head between legs.
“We’re dead,” he muttered.
The pig-iron wall loomed before them, seconds away. A speeding procession of gang autos raced up the factory floor. Overhead the Parasites scurried ever closer to ground level. And there was one more factor, something no one could have anticipated. Something rarely seen in Booshka: paralegals.
The Z-twelve cut out.
“What?” said Mona.
All four wheels locked simultaneously and two minibraking parachutes shot out of the rear spoiler. “Not good,” muttered Mona, fighting the frozen steering wheel.
The Z-twelve’s dash flipped to reveal a backlit readout. A message flashed up on the remote. REMOTE MYISHI Z-TWELVE LOCKOUT, the message read. STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE. The car spun to a halt, one wheel dangling over the track’s edge.
Ditto peeped up from his crash position. “Are we dead?”
“No, we’re locked out.”
Ditto sat up gingerly. “Thank God for that.”
Mona climbed from the car, shaking the speed buzz from her head. The situation was fast approaching critical and could only get worse. The gangs would be here any second, and Miguel could not save them again even if he wanted to. She turned to the heavens. Stefan was their only chance, up there watching over them like their own private guardian angel. He would come, she knew he would.
But there was something else. Above Cosmo and Stefan’s perch. Several somethings.
Ditto stumbled from the Z-twelve. “A thought, Vasquez. If we’re locked out, who locked us out?”
Mona pointed to several dozen shadowy figures free-falling toward the solar panel frames. “They did.”
Overhead in the Krom factory gantry, Cosmo and Stefan watched the race with a mixture of terror and fascination. At one point Stefan’s phone vibrated. He checked the screen.
“What does it say?” asked Cosmo.
Stefan deleted the text. “Everything’s fine. See you soon.”
“Okay, I get it. Don’t ask.”
Stefan watched the race’s conclusion through field glasses. “Strange.”
“Strange?” asked Cosmo. “What’s strange?”
Stefan passed across the binoculars. “They’ve stopped. An emergency stop, too. I was sure Mona would punch out through the gate. Why would she stop on the track like a sitting duck? Unless . . .”
Cosmo felt a chill across his brow as the blood drained from his face. Unless what? He waited for Stefan to complete the thought.
“Unless someone else stopped the car for her.”
Through the field glasses, Cosmo saw Mona point to the ceiling above them. He flipped onto his back, squinting through the huge panels into the night sky beyond. Dozens of shadowy figures were hurtling through midair toward the holes in the roof. “Are those things real? Or are they some other creatures that only we can see?”
Stefan grabbed the glasses, pointing them toward the ceiling. Several black-clad figures swam into focus. Combat chutes trailed behind them, and directional gas jets were attached to each heel. Cradled in the figures’ arms were chunky assault rifles. There was a company logo emblazoned across each helmet. The same logo that flashed from the Satellite.
“Myishi Corp,” said Stefan. “Paralegals. They’re here for the Z-twelve.”
“What? All this for a car?”
Stefan clambered to his knees on the grating, hoisting his greatcoat over his head. “That car cost billions of dinars to develop. Losing it was a real kick in the teeth for Myishi. This is probably the first time it’s been out from under a lead sheet long enough to trace.”
Stefan lifted the flap of his coat. “Quickly, under here, and pray we’re not spotted.”
Cosmo crawled under the leather, beneath Stefan’s armpit. The coat smelled of hard work and lightning-rod flash. Through a gap in the coat, he watched the paralegals swoop gracefully through the gaping slots in the roof. With guiding bursts of gas from their boot jets, they avoided being snared by jutting girders and descended toward the gangs assembled below.
One ripped a mini-woofer radio speaker from a Velcro patch on his arm and dropped it to the factory floor below. It bounced a full ten feet in its plastic casing before rolling along the track to settled at Honcho’s feet. He picked it up quizzically.
The paralegal’s voice blasted from the mesh. “The Z-twelve Nitro Charger is the property of the Myishi Corporation. Step away from the car or you will be sanctioned. This is your final warning. You have ten seconds to respond.”
The gang members did not need ten seconds. Most spun their cars through a one-eighty skid, heading back toward the doors. Halfway there they noticed the three-story assault tanks blocking the exits. Myishi was pulling out all the stops on this one. The gang members began firing whatever they had at the descending paralegals.
By then the ten seconds were up, and the Myishi lawyers were legally entitled to open fire. Which they did, with the most advanced weapons in the world. The first phase was to lay down a cellophane blanket. Fleeing gang members were wrapped as they attempted to escape. Every second shell was a Shocker, the charge of which ran across the surface of the cellophane, blasting everything beneath the sticky surface into oblivion, or beyond.
The Parasites pounced like iridescent wolves, sinking through the cellophane cocoons to settle on gang members’ chests. The charge from the Shockers was too dispersed to do them any real harm; in fact it seemed to add to their enthusiasm.
The paralegals fell like deadly missiles, spitting pain and death. They hooked onto stairwells and lower gantries, picking off their prey from above. The gang members never had a chance. Most were unconscious before they had time to draw a weapon. The rest were herded into corners by lumbering assault tanks and glued to the walls by cellophane slugs.
Stefan poked his head out from under the coat. “This is all my fault,” he moaned. “The Parasites are feasting, and it’s all my doing. I gave the Z-twelve to Miguel.”
Cosmo peered down at the chaos below. “You couldn’t have known. No one could.”
Stefan’s eyes flashed in the light of electric shells. “I should have known! For three years I’ve been running from Myishi police. I know how they operate.” He pointed his lightning rod at a group of Parasites. “Too far. We don’t have the range. We need to get down there.”
Cosmo searched the melee of fleeing bodies. “I see them. They’re going under the track. They’ll be trapped.”
“I need to get lower,” Stefan muttered. “I can’t help from here.”
Cosmo smacked the grille with his fist. “Why can’t it ever rain when you want it to?”
Stefan looked at him strangely. “Rain? Of course, we need water to drive away the Parasites. We can do that much at least.”
“Now you’re telling me you can make it rain?”
Stefan was on his feet, scrambling toward an access ladder. “I can’t, but they can.”
“They?” shouted Cosmo, racing after the Supernaturalist. “Who are they?”
“There. In the doorway. You get back to the Pigmobile, try to hook up with Mona and Ditto if they make it out.”
Cosmo still didn’t get it. The only thing in the door
way was a thirty-foot-high assault tank. Surely Stefan didn’t intend to take on one of those. Surely not. Cosmo followed Stefan down a ladder. He had no intention of going back to the Pigmobile. If Stefan was going after an assault tank, Cosmo was going with him. He was, after all, one of the team.
“Paralegals,” gasped Mona. “The baddest of the bad.”
Paralegals were a three-way cross between lawyers, paratroopers, and pit bulls. They were a corporation’s last resort, and were only unleashed when there was big money at stake.
Mona twigged immediately. “They’re after the car.” She grabbed Ditto by the collar, dragging him to the lip of the track.
“Myishi shut the car down. There must be some kind of tracker in the wiring. We need to take cover.”
“Cover?” croaked Ditto, half strangled by his partner’s grip. “They’re only after the car.”
“And anyone who’s seen it or worked on it. They can’t risk another corporation stealing Myishi ideas. Everyone here will be taken in for interrogation.”
“Interrogation? A few polite questions and a cup of simcoffee?”
Mona tutted. “Sure, amigo. A few Shockers and a cup of sodium Pentothal. We’ll be lucky if we can count to ten by the time they’ve finished.”
Ditto nodded. “Cover. Good idea.”
They jumped from the assembly line, worming their way between the girders that propped up the line. The asphalt was littered with juice pouches and gum. The stink of generations of assorted garbage was sharp in their nostrils.
Ditto slapped his sleeve as though that could dislodge the smell. “This jacket is ruined. I’ll never get the stink out.”
Mona crawled deeper into the shadows. “At least you’ll still have a nose to smell the stink.”
The shooting started. Huge blobs of liquid cellophane spattered the gang members and their cars. These were followed by searing jolts of electricity.
“They’re getting the tar-and-spark treatment,” said Ditto. “I almost feel sorry for them.”
Honcho pinwheeled past their hiding place, chest lights flashing furiously. A Shocker clipped his elbow, sending a charge jittering through his torso. The bulbs below his skin blew out like bullets. A Parasite was on him in under a second. Honcho fought on oblivious, screaming his rage at anyone in earshot. Eventually a paralegal casually plugged him with a cellophane slug. The Bulldog leader flapped weakly beneath a layer of rubbery liquid.