“I hear that. You gonna show me the back of the van? Standard procedure.”
“Back of the van? Sure thing,” JD said loudly, hoping Khoder was listening.
He got out but left the motor running; the curious dog had turned away and joined its partner, heading for the burnt-out apartment. The engine chugged loud and low through the muffler, blowing hot on JD’s shins as he opened the rear door. The guard took the torch from her belt and shone it into the van, a sliver of Khoder visible between two blue plastic barrels.
“Where are the—”
With a resounding thonk of steel on skull, the woman collapsed. Red appeared as if from nowhere—the skinny white specter emerging from the shadows, clutching a length of rebar, stained with rust and a small wet patch of the guard’s blood. The cut across the bridge of his nose from the crash flared red, but he had cleaned most of the blood from his face. Only the cracks in his lips were still stained with dark-red lines.
“What the shit?” JD said.
“Get in the fucking van,” Red spat. His chest rose and fell as he stood seething over the unconscious guard, ready to hit her again if she moved.
“Let’s move, hyung!” Soo-hyun yelled. JD glanced up, saw them waiting in the passenger’s seat, face in shadows beneath the brim of their hat.
Red knocked JD aside with his shoulder and walked around the van to join Soo-hyun. JD swung the first rear door shut, and carefully stepped over the guard to close the other.
Before he could reach the driver’s seat, JD heard the chank of robot paws on cement and glanced over his shoulder. The dog’s spotlight flicked on, the white glare blinding JD for a second before the light shifted to encircle the prone form of the guard.
“Fuck,” JD said. He took the driver’s seat, slammed the door behind him, and jammed his foot on the accelerator. The van jolted forward, hit the boom gate, and stopped, engine whining high but going nowhere.
“Fuck!” JD yelled. He put the van into reverse, remembered the unconscious guard on the ground behind the van and swore again. He put the van into park and got out.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Red demanded.
JD ignored him. He leaned into the security booth, and thumped the large rubber button that controlled the gate. It opened with the screech of metal on metal as it sheared a layer of paint off the van’s front bumper.
The noise of celebrating soccer fans came distorted and tinny through the tiny speakers of the guard’s tablet. The game was over, and South Korea had won, thousands of them in white, red, and blue standing and cheering in the stadium. If JD had turned the tablet off and taken a moment to listen, he would have heard the sound of the crowds coming from the stadium just a few blocks away. Instead he heard Red say: “I told you I should have brought my fuckin’ gun.”
The police dog was moving now, actuators whining as it ran along the enclave’s driveway, gaining speed with each bound. The head of security rushed out of the building, flanked by four guards.
“Stop!”
Back behind the wheel, JD hit the accelerator and let the momentum swing his door closed. There was a thud as the dog slammed into the back of the van, and a shriek as its metal claws pierced the rear door panels. Khoder shouted a stream of obscenities, drowned out when JD stomped the accelerator flat to the floor. JD yanked the wheel hard right—the dog’s claws tore a jagged hole in the doors as it shook loose and hit the asphalt with a clatter of resounding steel. JD checked the rearview mirror and saw the dog get unsteadily to its feet as the guards caught up to it. They shrank quickly, and disappeared from view when JD swung left off Haedoji-ro, rear wheels skidding in the wet.
Soo-hyun whooped and Red chuckled loudly. He grabbed JD’s rucksack and spilled its contents onto the floor as he searched for the datacube.
“Where are we going?” JD asked. He put the windscreen wipers on high and they thonked at each end of their arc.
Red found the datacube loaded with the heist plans, and held it up so it gleamed in the light of the streetlights they passed beneath. “All that excitement for this little thing, huh? Kali’s gonna be real happy to see it.” He pocketed the cube.
“Where are we going?” JD asked again, voice edged with anger born of fear.
“Head for the stadium,” Soo-hyun said, voice casual like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Without the city’s Augmented feed, the road seemed empty—street and traffic lights still glowed in the real world, but street signs, speed limit markers, billboards, and other road signs were all missing.
“Which way’s the—”
Lights flashed in JD’s mirrors—green and orange, red and blue, private security and police both hot on their tail.
“Shit.” JD leaned forward, hugging the wheel so he could look up through the windscreen, searching for the glow of stadium lights. There—one block to the left, and a few blocks ahead. They’d opened the stadium roof—light spilled out like a beacon, and red and blue spots shone into the sky like pillars of fire.
JD put his foot down further, watching the road in strobing flashes of clarity as the wipers cleared the rain. The roads were empty, but that would change just as soon as the football crowds filtered out of the stadium and into waiting auto-cars. A few vehicles passed through the intersection ahead as the van sped toward it—green traffic lights flared across the windscreen, while police lights gained in the side mirror.
“Straight ahead,” Red yelled. “Floor it.”
Flash of white glitched black: static obscuring JD’s vision. His right eye cleared and the traffic lights turned red, too late to stop. His left eye crackled
