“You know it. Short pulse only,” he replies. “Anything bigger blacks out half the block and puts our location on every dashboard.”
“On my mark.”
I cut left under a narrow trestle, metal girders strobing shadow over the windshield. The whir deepens, searching. Talia’s gaze presses against my profile—steadying me and unsteadying me at the same time.
“Now,” I say.
Vargas pops the rear doors an inch. A low thump. White fizz cracks across the night like lightning bottled wrong. The whir hiccups, stutters, dies. The drone pinwheels into a trash-strewn gutter behind us, a small, expensive idea coming apart.
“Nice,” Talia murmurs, breathless.
“Don’t celebrate,” Vargas says. “Overwatch still has eyes.”
I cut another block, then two. Sirens converge somewhere to the east. Phoenix is herding us—gentle pressure, invisible hands. We need to slip the pattern.
“We’re just delivery people,” I say. “We’re nobody.” As if my thoughts could convince an autonomous AI.
Talia watches the side mirror like it’s a threat. The exact moment her pulse begins to steady registers in the reset of her shoulders, the lift of her chin. That iron in her spine makes me want to pull her closer and never let her out of arm’s reach.
“Left up here,” Vargas calls, checking a cracked phone running an offline map. “Cut through the industrial. Fewer cameras.”
I take it. The street opens into a strip of shuttered warehouses and chain-link fences topped with lazy coils of razor wire. Sodium lights buzz. A stray dog trots across our path, unconcerned. The van’s engine hums low, the night breathing around us.
“We need to change vehicles,” I say. “Soon.”
“Two blocks ahead,” Vargas says. “Auto salvage yard. Owner leaves keys in the night-shift runners. He’s old school and careless.”
“Perfect,” I murmur.
We roll past a blown-out billboard, then another. The yard looms—wide, fenced, slit of chain at the gate. I ease the van inside, and coast to a stop between two stacks of crushed sedans. The air smells like rust and oil and old heat.
We listen.
Distant sirens. No immediate footfall.
“Out,” I say quietly. “Fast, clean.”
Talia moves first, sliding down from the van, landing softly. I’m right behind, hand at the small of her back, guiding her shadow-tight along the aisle of stacked cars. Vargas ghosts after us, his limp barely a drag when fear is doing the lifting.
Keys glint in the ignition of a dented sedan. I test the handle; it opens with a tired sigh. The engine turns on the second try. The dashboard glows a sickly green.
“Switch,” I say.
We trade vehicles in under ten seconds. The van sits cooling, door cracked, a decoy in the making. I pull the sedan out slowly, nose first, then angle us toward the rear gate.
“Hold.” Vargas watches the sky through the rear window, listening with his whole body. “They’re sweeping west now. Wait for the handoff.”
I do. Talia’s thigh presses against mine, unintentional, heat radiating through denim. I don’t move. Can’t. The closeness steadies me and threatens to undo me in the same breath.
“Now,” he says.
FIFTEEN
Jackson
RECALIBRATING
I roll out.The sedan blends better—no shine, no story. We take a back street, then another. City blocks slide past in muted colors. The noose loosens. That’s the trick with nets—you don’t fight them head-on; you let them move, and you slip between the knots.
