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I smile, wave, almost lose control of the vehicle, and then send it careening back toward what I figure must be civilization, given the road being much better in that direction.
They’re running now, heading toward the other two vehicles. I don’t know what the relative speed of these things is, but this is not my first high speed chase. Or low speed chase, for that matter. It’s the second one today, though I expect this will be a little more exciting.
Behind me, they’re leaping into the remaining vehicles and already moving. The road ahead is getting smoother and wider with every second. I have to put a significant amount of my weight on the accelerator to get it to move. It is calibrated to be driven by something a hell of a lot stronger than I am, not to mention much taller. Driving this thing is work, as is keeping it on the road.
The bike had more responsive steering, I quickly find. Driving this is like trying to race a tank while other, more maneuverable tanks give active chase. I let out a hysterical laugh as I almost run off the road entirely. Shit. I have to be more careful.
Thorn
She’s going to get herself killed. I can tell that right away. She has no control of the forty-tonne vehicle, and it has more power going to the wheels than a primal does in its hind legs. She’s gotten away from me for a second time, and I don’t know how the hell it happened. That woman has more tricks up her sleeve than I can keep up with.
I’m going to catch her, and when I catch her, I am not ever going to let her out of my sight. She’s a danger to herself and everybody else, especially now as she overcorrects the steering and swerves from the right side of the road all the way over the the left. She needs to be stopped, and quickly.
“Hold on!” I shout to my crew as I push the truck to its limits.
The problem with trying to stop a moving vehicle is that it’s a moving vehicle. It has momentum. And an insane driver behind the wheel. My hope is to pit her into heavy bushes, make her slow gradually, and hopefully bring her to a halt before the whole thing explodes in a ball of flame.
She swerves off the main road, which is a good thing. Getting her out of the path of oncoming vehicles is a priority. Now there’s just convincing her to slow down. She’ll run out of power eventually. That would be the best case scenario.
“Boss.”
Trick is trying to get my attention, but I can’t concentrate on anything besides staying on her tail. I can’t lose her again, but she doesn’t seem to care what she is doing. We could outpace her now with the erratic driving, but there’s no way we can get around her with this dense bush without risking a serious crash or turnover.
“BOSS.”
Trick reaches over and taps my shoulder with an urgency.
“This is the gorge road.”
“Yeah?”
“It was washed out in the last rains.”
I have the sickening realization that he is absolutely right. There used to be a bridge over the gorge, which is really a crevasse. That bridge is now gone. Where the end once stood proud between two wood pillars, there is now nothing besides a crumbling rocky surface.
Suli sees it, but far too late. She is going way too fast. She’d need dozens of feet to stop that truck and she barely has ten before she sails off the edge of the cliff and into eternity.
She hits the brakes, but it’s too late. She skids off the edge of the cliff, the momentum of her vehicle taking her over the edge as we scream to a halt just behind her, only barely avoiding the same fate ourselves.
A shadow of wings opens above me as Avel hurls himself into the abyss, his entire body pointed like an arrow as he folds his wings back and falls aggressively.
Peering over the edge, desperate to do something while being able to do absolutely nothing, I see Suli jump from the truck, her fragile human form cartwheeling through the air below us. That was the smartest thing she could have done, because it turns her from being an unstoppable object destined to be crushed on the river rock below into a ragdoll that can be caught.
Avel’s arms extend a moment before his wings do. He snatches her from certain death, wrapping his limbs around her snugly and beating his wings hard enough to overcome the extra drag created by her falling weight.
A cheer goes up from the men and me as he soars easily back up to us, his hair flowing in the breeze made by his flight. Suli looks minorly inconvenienced by being wrapped up by him, almost as if she’d been curious what she might find at the bottom of the crevasse.
“Yours,” he says, tossing her into my arms like a particularly offensive burden he is glad to be rid of.
“Hi,” she says, looking up at me with an absolutely irrepressible grin. Far from being terrified that she almost died, she looks completely pleased with herself.
“You’re in trouble,” I inform her.
“Boss, Iamtrouble,” she says before passing out in my arms.
5CAUGHT AND AFRAID
Sullivan
