The world snaps shut.
4
CASSIAN
The rain has turned into a deluge. It hammers against the roof of the armored SUV.
I keep the speedometer locked at eighty. The roads are slick, the oil and water mixing into a black mirror that reflects the passing streetlights. I don’t feel the speed. In this vehicle, eighty feels like standing still. The reinforced chassis absorbs the imperfections of the road, isolating me from the world outside. The windows are tinted to illegal opacity, turning the city into a smear of charcoal and neon.
I glance in the rearview mirror.
The girl is slumped against the leather of the back seat. Her head lolls to the side, her breathing shallow. She’s been out for twenty minutes—the blood choke was clean, efficient.
Then, she shifts.
It starts with a gasp, sharp and ragged. Her eyes fly open, wide and unseeing for a second as her brain reboots. She tries to sit up, but the seatbelt locks across her chest. She tries to move her hands, but the plastic zip-ties bite into her wrists in front of her.
I watch the panic register in her eyes through the rearview mirror. She thrashes against the restraints, her movements clumsy.
“Where...” The word is a croak, her throat raw. She coughs, struggling for air. “Where am I?”
I don’t answer. I turn the wheel, guiding the massive car onto the highway on-ramp.
She looks at the back of my head, then at the locked doors. She realizes she is trapped.
“Please,” she whispers. The fight drains out of her, replaced by the desperate bargaining of a civilian staring at their own mortality. “My father... he’s a Judge. He’s important. If you want money...”
I don’t flinch. I don’t react.
I have a Judge of my own.
I treat her words like background noise. Everyone has a rich father when they are staring at a gun.
“He will pay you,” she stammers. “Whatever you want. Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone.”
I reach into the passenger seat and pick up her phone. I found it in her pocket earlier.
I hold it up. The screen lights up with a notification. I don’t read it. I don’t care who is calling. To me, it isn’t a communication device; it is a tracking beacon.
“No,” she gasps. “Wait?—”
I lower the driver’s side window an inch. The wind is a high-pitched shriek.
“Don’t!” she screams, struggling against the seatbelt. “My father will?—”
I squeeze my hand.
The device groans, the glass screen spiderwebbing under the pressure of my grip.
With a sharp crack, the chassis snaps in half, severing the battery connection.
I slide the broken pieces through the gap in the window.
They disappear into the night, scattering against the asphalt at eighty miles an hour.
I seal the window, cutting off the world outside.
“You don’t exist anymore,” I say.
