“Fuck,” Enda screamed. She glared into the rearview mirror, daring Dax to say “I told you so.” He didn’t. He wasn’t even looking at her; he and Troy stared out the side window.
“Dogs,” Dax said.
Enda saw a small pack of four-legged drones walking through gaps in the traffic.
“They’ve been hacked,” Dax said.
“How do you know?”
“Just trust me.”
Enda gritted her teeth and keyed the ignition. It whined, and the engine started with a rumble like a dinner bell to the dogs. They began to run, powerful legs throwing plumes of water with each bounding step.
Enda jammed her foot down and veered left into the empty oncoming lane. Revs spiked, quick step over the clutch and gas, climbing through the gears. Passengers stuck in law-abiding auto-cars watched them shoot past with a mix of irritation and jealousy.
“Stop!” Dax yelled again.
Enda hit the brake—the car shuddered, slowed, and a police dog bounded out of an alleyway with legs extended. The gold NSPD badge on its side had been scoured away—visible only as a darker shade of blue on the dog’s torso plate. It hit the ground and skidded, then turned to face them, headlights reflected in its wide black visual sensor.
It leaped onto the car with a clunk. The dog’s heavy steel paws dented the bonnet and the car rocked forward on its suspension with the weight of the machine.
“Fuck,” Enda yelled.
She stomped the accelerator, leaning left to see past the dog. The robot raised one paw and a small steel stud clicked out from between its claws. Its arm snapped forward and the windscreen cracked, but didn’t shatter.
“Fuck.” Enda fumbled the car into second. The dog pulled its arm back for another strike. Enda slammed the brake and the dog was catapulted off the bonnet by inertia.
It stood shakily, metal hip mangled in its collision with the road. Enda hit the accelerator again, winced at the crunch of her grill slamming into the dog, and grimaced as first the front wheels, then the rear rolled over the drone.
She checked her rearview mirror, saw the damaged mass of metal and silicon pick itself up from the asphalt, and cursed the machine for the guilt she felt at hitting it.
Soo-hyun’s palms itched, and a manic grin stretched across their mouth. Rain fell across the monitor like static, the dog’s-eye view distorted by the film of water over the lens.
They pushed the throttle forward and the dog began to run, the camera jolting with every stride of its mechanical legs. As it rushed past cars stopped and stalled in the rising floodwaters, tags appeared in the air, digital tails connected to the vehicles, dialogue boxes listing registration information for each vehicle and outstanding warrants for delinquent drivers.
On the other battle chair’s screen the pale yellow WRX rushed forward, water spraying from its wheels in wide arcs. It collided with the dog drone, and the screen froze, edges dancing with glitched squares of green and pink.
“Oh!” the crowd uttered in sympathy for the dead dog.
Then Red’s voice rose above the din: “It’s my turn.”
He took the other pilot by the shoulder, grabbed a handful of T-shirt, and pulled them from the seat. He sat down and stretched his back left then right, hands on the VR controls, fingers tapping buttons impatiently as the system connected to another dog in the nearby semiautonomous pack.
His screen came to life with a flash of static. The view through the dog’s camera was blurry in the wet, but Red drove the machine forward, chasing down the WRX with a wolfish grin and a gleam in his eye.
The workshop was thick with the smell of bodies, air damp with the torrential rain. Behind Soo-hyun voices chattered, people shifting and shuffling closer for a clear look at the screens.
The rain was a constant background hiss, coming both from the headphones that plugged Soo-hyun’s ears, and from outside. The water had swept across from the canal, washing away chairs, cooking pots, and other detritus, and shorting out solar batteries that sat on the ground beside light poles. Most of the commune’s residents had relocated to the school’s main structure, built on a slight elevation, but Kali’s inner circle and Red’s little army were packed tight into the workshop, risking the flood for a chance to play with the dogs.
The water continued to rise, creeping up the sides of the commune’s lower buildings, and climbing the steps to the workshop. They had half a step to go until the water flooded in beneath the door. Soo-hyun tried to put the power cables that crisscrossed the workshop out of their mind, and instead focus on the chase.
The WRX slid through the streets, the vehicle trapped within the square brackets of the dog’s targeting reticle but growing smaller.
Soo-hyun cursed under their breath and brought up the GPS-tagged map of the area. They selected two dogs three blocks ahead, and after a blur of pixels and the sharp spike of glitching audio, the battle chair made connection, the two machines slaved to one set of controls.
Their screen split down the middle, Soo-hyun charged the dogs forward at full throttle, glancing aside for the map of the streets, the WRX still tagged thanks to Red’s losing chase.
The two dogs were on opposite sides of the street, running in parallel on the empty sidewalks, racing past cars parked or abandoned.
The dogs’ views rocked wildly as they sprinted ahead, internals functioning at the edge of potential, their two points on the map rushing for an intercept. They burst out of the side street. The left-most drone missed the car, rushed through its wake. The other dog slammed into the front quarter panel at full speed. The crunch of impact cracked through the headphones, and the connection cut as the robot died. Behind Soo-hyun the crowd cheered.
Soo-hyun wheeled the other dog around, watched the car slide sideways and slam into traffic, two wheels lifting out of the water before the vehicle crashed
