To never talk about his father with his best friend. What kind of a person acted like that?
The footsteps were getting closer. There was a lone soldier coming up fast, breathing hard. He rested a finger on the trigger.
Shitbird was gonna get sniped.
“You take the shot,” Daniel said, his rifle barrel resting atop the firewood pile. “I’ll back you up in case there’s more than one.”
William’s vision blurred. He tried to take Walt Jackson’s advice and be the best laser-tag shooter he could be while everything else washed over him. He blinked away tears, and the dark figure came into view.
“Rainmaker,” Daniel hissed.
The girl was barely visible, a dark wraith sprinting up Main Street.
William trained his rifle on her armor….
And then she was a silhouette blasted by a nuclear brightness that set the thoroughfare ablaze. He shut his eyes against the glare and slowly opened them. There was Otto bearing down on her, gaining mercilessly as she lost time looking over her shoulder at the headlights searing holes in the night.
“Text Otto: Stop!”
Melissa screamed into her watch. Christina cycled madly through menus and displays, searching for an override, an emergency stop, anything. It had gone terribly wrong as soon as they’d eased out of a side street to spy Rainmaker skirting the edge of the thoroughfare. Otto had interpreted Christina’s eagerness as something like bloodlust and accelerated straight at the girl. In distress, Rainmaker had booked it up Main Street.
Otto pursued like a dog off its leash.
Just like William in the Derby, this was all her fault. If only she’d been skilled enough to penetrate ARACHNE, perhaps she could wrest control from Otto, but this was all so far beyond what she’d signed up for….
“Just stop, Otto!” Melissa lowered her wrist and projected her voice into the interior. “Please!”
“Abort!” Christina screamed as her fingers jabbed the windshield. The real world shone through digital chaos in uncanny flashes. Rainmaker was an inhuman shape, a frantic blot of desperation getting bigger as Otto gained ground.
Otto wasn’t speeding. Not yet. The car was letting Rainmaker think she had a chance. Toying with her.
“Turn to the right!” Melissa said. “Swerve, you fuck!”
Christina slammed her palms against the windshield until they stung. Patricia Ming-Waller, she thought. Driverless. They must be able to override remotely. But she was moving too slow, while the situation spiraled out of control. Story of her life.
Rainmaker was going to die.
William saw himself spring from his hiding spot, rocketing from the carport in a fierce burn straight for Rainmaker, his feet leaving the ground, hurtling into her, the collision with Otto shattering his bones and shutting off his lights, but not before he could see that she was safe….
Except there was no time for that. She would be dead by the time he got halfway there. Otto was too fast.
Daniel was standing up, somewhere between paralysis and action. There were people screaming, strangers’ voices cast down from the windows, witnesses to the game’s murderous turn.
William’s gun clattered onto the firewood. His phone was in his hands.
99 88 77. It had to work. Coming from him, it had to work. The solution was so chillingly obvious: Otto did whatever he wanted, except when it came to William. They had a special bond. Otto had chosen him.
His vocabulary had been reduced to a single word, entered and sent.
STOP.
Stop stop stop stop stop…
Rainmaker stumbled. Time stretched her collapse into the flailing instant replay of a soccer player taking a dive. She hit the dirt in front of the carport and tumbled forward, limbs bending in ways they should not. Her rifle spun end over end, skidding outside the cone of light.
Otto’s brakes engaged with the dry scrape of dust on old cement. The car was still. Dirt swirled up in a gauzy cloud. William was reminded of Pompeii, that volcanic eruption he’d been fascinated with as a kid, tons of ash coming down, entombing people in their final poses. Rainmaker crumpled in the street while the dust settled, a motionless figure amid tossed-up earth, her feet an inch away from Otto’s front bumper.
“I’m sorry, but we have to tell Patricia Ming-Waller about this,” Melissa said. “Otto doesn’t listen to us. We’re in a death machine with selective hearing.”
Daniel’s head was on her shoulder. Sometimes his moods reminded Melissa of an air mattress, and right now she envied his deflation. She could not calm down. There was no escape: she’d been sitting in this car when it nearly killed that poor girl. She’d been sitting in this car when Eli had come sprinting up, screaming incoherently, banishing them from the game, What’s wrong with you people? And now she was sitting in the same car as it crossed the border into Kentucky, chugging along as if nothing had happened. The interior was slightly humid, set to Southern Garden Party. The rich scent of hyacinth and begonia enveloped her. Distant chatter, overly polite laughter, the clink of glasses…it was all so insane. They had been run out of town, and now she had nothing to post. She didn’t want to provoke responses from Eli and Rainmaker or their crew.
Her follower count was holding steady.
“He listens to me,” William said. “Remember how we’re supposed to be discovering things as we go along? I think what we just found out was that I’m basically the driver. Which makes total sense, because it’s my car.”
Melissa put up her hands. “All I can do is reiterate that was a seriously fucked-up situation back there. You weren’t in here, William. Sitting helpless in the car, being ignored. Try to imagine what that was like for us.”
She looked at Christina for support. The girl had been right beside her, screaming, desperate. And she’d been suspicious of the whole #AutonomousRoadTrip experience from the moment they left Fremont Hills, firing off those questions at Patricia Ming-Waller. But now she wasn’t even paying attention. She was hunched over her laptop, typing away.
“Hernandez?”
“Otto’s fine,”
