* * *
The hours that followed passed in a blur. She kept the gas pedal low to the floor. A storm had raged across the eastern coast of Teijouan, sweeping smaller debris off the highways and leaving them clearer than usual. The terrain on the East Coast was less mountainous, and hence much easier to negotiate.
A Venomosaurus chased her for a while a hundred kilometres from the finishing line, and she lost a fender before she found a place to hide out deep in a maze of alleys. That lost her most of an hour, but she could feel in her bones that she remained in the lead.
Then, at long last, she saw the steel fence of the Security Zone up ahead, sunlight glinting from the lenses of news cameras peeking over the top. Deep gouges in the soil suggested some shelling had been necessary in order to dissuade an inquisitive Kaiju from coming any closer. The gate rolled up at her approach, and she crossed into the Security Zone, trailed by a fanfare of recorded trumpets and cheers.
She got out, tired and bloody and dusty, and raised both arms in triumph before turning to pat the Coupé’s hood, like an old and faithful dog. Technicians came running up, yanking open the boot and lifting out the canisters of film stored there. They also pulled the film from the Coupé’s rear and front-mounted cameras, hurrying down to the shore to where idling motorboats waited.
I’m not quite finished with you,she thought, her fingers stroking the Coupé’s steel flanks.
‘And it’s a fantastic end to this year’s Devil Run!’ Wayne Wilson bellowed into his microphone. ‘Coming first for the first time in her life, days after being released from prison, it’s Dutch McGuire in a sensational, record-breaking win! After she disappeared past Shinchiku, we all figured Dutch had gone to the great racecourse in the sky, right up until her miraculous reappearance several hundred kilometres further along the race route. I don’t know if anyone’s ever going to be able to beat a time like that!’
Dutch blinked as a galaxy of lights snapped and popped all around. Wilson appeared before her, his bleached hair arranged in a coif that balanced atop his head as if in defiance of gravity, a microphone gripped in one fist.
‘Dutch,’ he said, grabbing her hand and pumping it up and down, ‘congratulations! You’ve broken every record going, and you’re at least thirteen hours ahead of the other surviving competitors—the fastest time ever recorded in the Devil’s Run and one most people might even call impossible. You disappeared from the race for the longest time—what happened?’
He pushed the microphone toward her. She blinked at it, feeling dazed. ‘I found a shortcut.’
‘A—’ For a moment, Wilson appeared almost lost for words. ‘A shortcut? Am I hearing you right, Dutch—that there’s a way across the island, despite the Rift and the d-field?’
‘Yeah.’ She found it hard to think, with all the reporters shouting questions at her.
Then she remembered something.
‘One second,’ she said, leaning back into the car and snatching up the map. Then she opened the boot and lifted out the sack of grey superconductor rods, hoisting it over her shoulder. Finally she looked around until she could see Adam Figueroa and his fellow protestors and made her way over to them.
Wilson followed in her wake, trailed by cameramen. ‘How did you find this shortcut, Dutch?’ Wilson yelled into his microphone. ‘Isn’t this incredible, ladies and gentlemen? I never in a million years thought I’d see a day like this. Did you see the Rift? How did you survive the d-field? What did it—hey, Dutch!’
Figueroa stood behind a wooden barrier manned by several soldiers keeping him and the protestors at bay. He watched in amazement as Dutch skirted around the barrier before dropping the sack at his feet.
Figueroa stared at the sack, then at Dutch, a megaphone clutched in his hand. ‘What is this?’
‘Something that Strugatsky and Wu want very much,’ she said. ‘I’d look after it if I were you. I figure it’s worth a couple of billion dollars.’
Figueroa leaned down and opened the sack looking inside. ‘I don’t understand. What is this?’
‘All I know is Wu and Strugatsky think it’s worth killing for. Here.’ She pushed the map into his hands. ‘This tells you where to find more. It’s a safe route across the island.’
Figueroa’s expression shifted from confusion to something more subtle and cunning. ‘Why are you doing this, Miss McGuire?’
‘Someone’s got to look out for Teijouan, right?’
Then she turned on her heel without another word and walked back the way she’d come.
The reporters were still shouting questions at her, and cameras still snapped and clicked, but they were getting less vocal as they realised they weren’t going to get anything out of her. Wilson watched, perplexed, as she slid behind the wheel of the Coupé.
‘Where are you going, Dutch?’ Wilson demanded, pushing his microphone in the open window of her car. ‘The race is over!’
She reached out and snatched the microphone from his hand. ‘Listen up, assholes,’ she shouted, her own voice reverberating back at her, ‘some things are too important to leave in the hands of people whose sole defining quality is the size of their bank account. Like, I don’t know, the fate of the world, maybe, or something that could revolutionise science or, or…whatever. Anyway, I figure that kind of shit belongs to all of us.’
She dropped the microphone into the dirt at Wilson’s feet and it sent up a yowl of feedback. She reached out and adjusted her mirror until she could see Figueroa and his fellow protestors running down the beach to a waiting Zodiac, hauling the sack between them.
The engine caught on the first try, and she reached for the clutch. ‘Hey!’ yelled Wilson, snatching the microphone back up. ‘Where the hell are you going, Dutch?’
She flashed him a brilliant smile. ‘Home,’ she said, then took off back the way she’d
