“Pull over to the curb immediately!” A policeman’s voice was amplified through the public address speaker on top of the cruiser.
“Maybe we should stop now!” Brendan said hopefully.
“Do you always do whatever you’re told?” Kim laughed.
“When it’s the police telling me, yes!”
Brendan felt sure that Kim would slow now. Up ahead, the light at Queen Street turned red. Cars streamed across their path in a thick flow. They would certainly be killed if they tried to cut across. The scooter did slow slightly as Kim scanned for a way through.
In front of them, a fist of lightning slammed into a Mercedes convertible that was just few metres ahead. The car sizzled as the rainwater turned to steam and its paint crackled. The stricken vehicle swerved, smashing sideways into a van. The crunch of metal and the smell of scorched rubber stung Brendan’s nostrils.
“She’s here!” Kim shouted. “Time for an alternative route.”
She angled the scooter to the right, aiming it at the sidewalk. They bumped over the curb, Brendan almost being jarred loose, and fishtailed through a group of pedestrians, narrowly avoiding a collision with a sausage vendor’s cart. People shouted in anger and shook their fists.
“Sorry!” Brendan called.
The police cruiser screeched to a halt at the curb. A female officer leapt out and began to run after them while the other went to investigate the accident caused by the lightning strike.
“Halt!” the female cop shouted.
Kim ignored the command. Swerving across the sidewalk, she jumped the curb again, shooting across the intersection diagonally.
“Oh sweet Christmas!” Brendan shrieked.
“Yee-haw!” Kim crowed.
They had almost made it to the other side of the intersection when a transport truck turned in front of them. The broad side of the van loomed, a mass of wheels with a flatbed laden with coiled wire for some construction site.
“Hang on!” Kim cried as if there was an alternative.
The scooter tilted. She turned side on to the truck, and they slid along the pavement, the dark, greasy underside of the truck bed passing above them. At that instant, lightning struck the coiled wire on the bed of the truck. The impact was followed by a shower of sparks that curtained over them as they slid out the other side of the truck. The shock wave that followed deafened Brendan for a moment, but amazingly the two of them were still on the scooter.
Kim thrust her leg against the pavement and threw them upright again. She gunned the motor, and the scooter zoomed along the curb down Queen Street. They had left behind them a wake of swerving cars. The traffic was snarled in the intersection.
“We’ve gotta get out of the open,” Kim shouted. “We’re too exposed.”
Brendan was completely incapable of speaking. His throat was frozen and his eyes wide with shock. He’d always thought that chases in the movies were so cool and that he’d like to be in one. Now he was in one, and he wanted it to stop. To add to his horror, Kim pulled an object from her blazer pocket and stabbed at it with her thumb.
“You’re going to make a phone call?” Brendan squealed. “Now?”
“Keep your panties on,” Kim said.
“May I point out we’re involved in a police chase on an unstable, two-wheeled vehicle…” He trailed off when he caught sight of the cellphone.
Instead of being made of plastic like the cells he was familiar with, it was a small featureless palm-sized block of wood. When Kim pressed the centre of the wood with her thumb, the wood began to glow with patterns of light that settled into the shape of a keyboard. A crack appeared along the edge of the block, and it flipped open to reveal a tiny glowing screen.
“A wooden cellphone?”
“Cool, huh,” Kim said. “It’s a Faerie thing. We like organic stuff. Metal and plastic don’t mix well with us. The Artificers finally figured out how to copy the Human technology.”
“Artificers?” Brendan asked.
“Shhh!” She pressed the phone against her ear and guided the scooter up onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians dove for their lives.
“Yeah.” Kim was speaking into the phone. “We’re on our way. We’ve got some cops on our tail. I think we’ve lost them but we’ll need some damage control. 56 I’m going underground so I’ll be out of touch…”
She tapped the block of wood with her thumb and it returned to its original state: a wooden block. She tucked it into her pocket and leaned over the handlebars of the scooter. Rain continued to fall in hard, cold droplets, stinging Brendan’s exposed face and numbing his hands.
“Hold on,” Kim shouted. She twisted the throttle grip with her right hand and they sped up. In the distance, sirens wailed. The cops at University Avenue had obviously called in about their little jaunt.
A scream of terror rose behind them and then another. Brendan craned his neck to look back and saw that something was cutting a swath through the crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk. A canine howl rose from many throats, chilling his blood. It seemed very close.
“What is that?”
“Orcadia’s hired some help!”
Kim cut right and zoomed through an open door into the perfume section of a department store. A security guard shouted something incoherent. Kim shot along an aisle lined with glittering bottles, scattering white-coated sales clerks in a flurry of paper scent samples.
Brendan looked back and saw two canine shapes burst in the door after them. He didn’t get a good look at them because Kim chose that moment to reach out an arm and sweep hundreds of bottles of perfume off a shelf. The bottles fell and shattered on the floor. Brendan was about to protest the wanton destruction of property when the scooter skidded in a sharp right turn and shot down the escalator to the lower level.
“Did you have to smash that stuff?” Brendan shouted, his teeth chattering with the impact of each step.
“Throws the hounds off the scent,” Kim explained. “Buys us some time.”
“Where are you taking us?”
“Underground,” Kim said.
That much seemed obvious to Brendan as they hit the bottom of the escalator and swerved through kitchenware.
They sped down the wide aisle and past a coffee shop. The subway entrance loomed, but heavy glass doors barred their way. A homeless man, begging with a cup as he opened the door for shoppers, saw them coming and grinned.
“Ride it, Ki-Mata!” he shouted as he swung the door open.
“Thanks, Tik!” Kim guided the scooter through.
“You know that guy?” Brendan asked.
“One of us,” Kim explained. “We’re everywhere!”
“How many of you… us are there?”
Kim was about to answer but a security guard reached out to grab them as they sailed past.
“Halt!” he shouted.
“I guess he’s not one of us,” Brendan said sarcastically.
Kim ignored Brendan. She also ignored the security guard. She gunned the scooter and guided it straight for the entrance to the Queen Street subway station, a set of tiled stairs heading farther underground.
“Oh, no!” Brendan cried.
“What’s the matter? The subway is an excellent alternative mode of transport. Very green!” Kim seemed very merry, given the circumstances.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Brendan screamed.
“Hahahahahahahahaa!” Kim laughed like a maniac.
They shot off the top step and plunged down the stairs. Both of them ducked instinctively, fortunately, or the lower ceiling of the entrance would have decapitated them. They landed hard on each tread. Kim struggled to keep
