The gate squeaks as Ama shoulders it. She saunters onto the open compound, a bag of water sachets drooping from each hand.

Music thumps from inside the house ahead, shadows in the windows twisting and swaying to the beat. And on the porch, a handful of Ama’s classmates drink and talk in pairs or small groups. Some of them still have their graduation gowns on.

Ama shed hers hours ago for the red dress underneath, right after the ceremony was over. Gone are the heels as well. The left one snapped off during her errand, and in her frustration, she had kicked them off to proceed barefoot. Whatever, they were cheap things anyway. Her friends had been begging her to let them replace them for years.

As Ama arrives at the porch, a classmate offers to help her with the bags.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she says, climbing up the front steps. Another classmate helps by opening the door.

Ama winces as the lights and sound hit her. It was dark outside, and she is not delighted by the sudden invasion of flashing colors. She can feel the bass of blaring Afrobeats music in her bones. Weaving between writhing guests and gyrating couples, she makes her way to the kitchen, where Joey is waiting for her.

Joey sighs with relief when he sees the bags. “You’re everything, you know that? Whoa, be careful!”

Ama is lifting the bags onto the counter, and one of them bursts when it lands too heavily on the linoleum. Water sachets tumble out and slide all over the counter top. Thankfully, none of them break.

“Sorry,” Ama says.

“You and your gorilla strength.”

“I thought we agreed to call it Herculean. Gorilla? Don’t make me smack you.”

“With those hands? I fear for my life. Seriously though,” he says with a grin, “thank you. I really need to keep these idiots hydrated. There’s beer everywhere, and I don’t even know where it’s coming from. Last thing I need is an army of blind-drunk graduates tearing my house apart.”

“Don’t mention it,” says Ama. “Thanks again for being so cool about Chi. There really is no one to watch her at home. I’d have had to skip this if you hadn’t let me bring her with me.”

He grins, running a hand through his kinky twists. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Chichi is my little sister too as far as I’m concerned. This party is just as much hers as it is ours.”

“Someone should tell that to them,” Ama says, nodding at the couple just outside the kitchen door. She and Joey watch for an awkward moment as their distinguished colleague twerks with spirited vigor all over her dance partner’s groin.

“Yeah,” Ama says, “bringing Chi was not a great idea, was it?”

Joey laughs. “On second thought.”

“Where is Chi anyway?”

There is a flash of mild panic in Joey’s eyes. “Um, Edem was watching her. Wait, here she is.”

It isn’t Chichi, but Edem who is walking through the door, emptying a beer bottle.

“Where’s Ama’s sister?” he asks before Ama can.

Edem burps. “Upstairs. She was getting sleepy so I put her in your bedroom.”

Ama frowns. “It is getting pretty late. I should find her before some horny couple tries to use the room for you know…hanky-panky. She’s already living through one trauma, she doesn’t need another.”

“Hanky-panky?” Joey looks like he might die of amusement. “What’re you, eighty?”

“You know what I mean, shut up.”

“Wait, I’ll come with you.”

Joey follows Ama back into the crowd. As they climb the stairs, he says, “You know I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.” The music is so loud here, he’s practically barking straight down her ear.

“Oh? What?”

They reach the upper floor, where the volume is a few notches below auditory torture, before he continues, “So we’ve been friends since primary school, right?”

“Class Four,” Ama says.

He nods. “Right. And we know each other pretty well. I mean, I like you, you like me.”

“Wow, you’ve really nailed the fundamentals of friendship, eh? You should start a podcast,” she teases.

He ignores the jab, suddenly looking nervous. “I’m saying we really like each other, and I’ve always admired you. I mean, to me you’ve always been all kinds of amazing, you know?”

Ama stops walking, as it dawns on her where this is going. She feels immediately self-conscious. “Joey—” she mumbles.

“No, please let me finish.” His laugh is awkward, as though he can already sense the situation going down in flames. “If I’m going to embarrass myself, I might as well do it right. I-I really like you Ama. Like, like you like you.”

Ama can’t look him in the eye as she lets him finish.

“I was wondering if sometime later this week, we could catch a movie. But not as just friends,” he says. “As…more.”

Ama struggles to lift her eyes off the floor, and by the time she does, he can’t look at her either. The sliver of hope with which he started this conversation has already faded. She killed it with unspoken words alone, and now, she attempts a few spoken ones. “Joey, I’m sorry—”

“No, I’m sorry. This was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“No, no, it’s not you. It’s just, I’m sort of seeing someone right now.”

This takes Joey by surprise. “What? Someone else? Who? Wait, how? How long?”

“You don’t know him. It’s been a little over a year.”

Joey is incredulous. “How could I possibly not know him? Ama, we go to the same school, and I spend almost every waking hour with you. Where did you meet him?”

Ama sighs. “I can’t really say. It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet it is.”

“Hey!”

“If you’re going to reject me, the least you can do is be honest with me, leave me with some dignity. But lying about some mystery guy? That’s insulting.”

“I’m not lying,” Ama snaps, annoyed now. “But you obviously have. How long have you felt this way? All this time I thought things were fine between us—”

“They were, they are!”

“But you’ve been harboring all these mushy feelings for me, and now I’m supposed to—”

“Mushy feelings? Oh, that’s really mature,” Joey says as Ama talks over him.

“—stop my world for you because now you have feelings?” Ama finishes, tears welling up in her eyes. “That’s not fair!”

Her last words are loud, and a girl walking by keeps her head down and tries to get away from them as quickly as she can. Joey looks away, and so does Ama.

“I…” Joey finally utters. “I should go down and check the water situation.” His anger has already melted away, as it is inclined to do, leaving behind a quiet sort of sadness that breaks Ama’s heart, in spite of her own ire.

Still, her tone is edged in ice when she answers, “You do that.”

She doesn’t look in his direction till a few seconds later, and by then she is standing alone. Their angry words bounce around in her head, only hurting so much more because she told him the truth.

Joey is more than just her best friend. He is the One, in a sense. The one with whom she shares her favorite jokes. The one she talks to when she’s had a hard day. The one around whom she plans most of her weekends. To top it off, Joey is one of the kindest people in her life. She knows in her heart that, were it not for Selasi—and the indisputable fact that she is in love with him—she might have considered Joey’s confession. That Joey thinks she would lie to him just to get out of giving ‘them’ a chance?

Ama stews in her wretched feelings for a moment longer, before storming down the corridor to Joey’s bedroom.

“Chi? You asleep?” she calls as she steps in. She freezes in the doorway.

There was movement in the darkness when she opened the door: a flitting of something small and slight, from the bed where Chichi is sleeping to the pocket of darkness in the farthest left corner of the room, just beyond the window. It looked like a cat. But that was no cat; the sunsum is all wrong.

Ama steps into the room, and gently closes the door behind her.

“I would step out if I were you,” Ama says, in the severest tone she can muster. “It may be the difference between whether or not you leave this place with your limbs attached.”

A moment passes. And then, the figure steps into the light from the window. She is a silhouette against the meager light, but Ama recognizes the lissome frame in its high-waisted, flower patterned kaba, and the dark hair tightly bound into twin buns, small and round like bofrot.

“Hemmaa?” Ama says.

Hemmaa is a member of Mama Wu’s inner circle of beyifo; the five exceptional warrior witches who accompany her on dangerous assignments like hired bodyguards. After Selasi, she seems to be Mama Wu’s favorite; or she gets the most attention anyway. Ama met her a handful of times during her training.

“Hello Ama,” Hemmaa says.

“Hi,” says Amma. “Long time.”

“Yes, it has.”

Ama waits.

“Oh yes,” Hemmaa says, as if only just remembering why she is here. “I was sent to ask you about something.”

“Oh? Mama Wu sent you?”

Hemmaa’s head bobs yes.

“I’ve been hoping to see her in person,” Ama says. “She still owes me, you know?”

“Owes you?”

“A cure?” Ama says.

Hemmaa is silent.

“For Chichi’s illness?” Ama pushes.

“Ah yes,” Hemmaa says, snapping her fingers. “That’s actually what I’m here to talk to you about.”

“Is that right?” Ama says.

“Yes, yes. I was sent to tell you the cure is on its way. She’s almost done. She eh, she can’t wait.”

“Wow. Thank you for telling me that. I appreciate it.”

Ama can’t see Hemmaa’s smile, but she can hear it forced in her next words: “Of course.”

Ama nods. “Good.”

Hemmaa nods back. “Awesome.”

Silence.

“So,” Hemmaa says, throwing a cavalier glance in Chichi’s direction. “I guess I’ll just head out then.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Alright. Thanks for stopping by.”

Hemmaa turns to slip back into the shadows. As she takes her first step, Ama says, “Hey, one quick question before you go.”

Hemmaa stops mid-step. “Yes?”

“If you’re only here to deliver a message,” Ama says, “then why is your aura cloaked?”

Time stops in the small pocket of semi-darkness.

Hemmaa flashes towards Chichi, and in the half-second it takes her to reach the bed, Ama flies across the room and crashes into her.

They smash through the window, surrounded by a splash of twinkling shards, flailing through free fall, the night sky swiveling around them, the concrete below swinging up towards them…

They hit the ground.

Ama breaks her neck.

OOO

Ama wakes up to the sound of her own neck snapping back into place. She lets out a sharp, guttural cry, as the broken femur in her left leg mends with a crackle, and then a pained gasp when the ball in her right shoulder thuds back into its socket. She scrambles to sit up, trying to shake the haze out of her head. Her sight is blurry, but slowly clearing up. Her hearing is muffled for the first five seconds, and then everything comes rushing in.

Her classmates are pouring out of the house, and there’s screaming. Some stare aghast from the porch, more spill onto the compound. A few are coming over to help her.

“No, stay back!” Ama screams, as she staggers to her feet. She is barefoot, and broken glass crunches underneath her feet. She can feel the flesh in her soles healing around the jagged pieces. They will be a chore to remove later.

Hemmaa is already back on her feet. Unlike Ama, she has no cuts and bruises to heal. Mama Wu’s beyifo are well-adept at self-fortifications and impact absorption patterns. She is built of tougher stuff, literally.

“What the hell?” Ama spits. “You came here to kill her?”

“Sorry, Ama,” Hemmaa says, as champagne wisps of light engulf her. There are gasps and screams from their audience, as the light twists and bends her bones, warps and reshapes her flesh, coating her in tan-brown fur. In two blinks, she is a hulking lioness the size of an SUV. “This isn’t about you,” Hemmaa snarls through the creature’s maw. “But if you make it, I’m happy to oblige.”

“This has to be some mistake,” Ama says. “I want to speak with Mama Wu. Let me speak with her first. Please!”

“Get out of my way, Ama.”

“Are you listening to me?” Ama’s frustration is boiling into anger. “You are not touching my sister!”

There is a flash of red light, and another round of gasps and screams from Ama’s classmates. Ama looks down to see her fingers firmly wrapped around the handle of her double-ended staff. She summoned her own witch-arm without even realizing it.

“Ama?” Chichi calls above her.

Ama looks up to see her sister leaning carefully through the broken window with frightened eyes.

“Baby, stay there!” Ama calls back.

When Ama looks back at Hemmaa, the lioness is springing towards her. Ama jumps back, narrowly avoiding two wild swipes at her face, the curved claws carving the air with glints of light.

Ama’s head is giddy with adrenalin, her muscles tensed into stone, as she and Hemmaa circle each other. Hemmaa snarls, her tail flicking left, right, and about. Ama rotates her wrists, spreads her feet apart, and settles into a fighting stance, ready for Hemmaa to pounce.

But the lioness suddenly buckles, her back lifting, her spinal column jutting up and out against her furry skin. Her throat begins to constrict and ripple, as her eyes bulge and her ears flatten back against her head. She hacks and shivers, as though on the verge of throwing up.

Ama looks disgusted. “What the fu…”

A spasmodic heave, a shudder that lifts its fur in a wave from muzzle to rump, a blaze of her eyes; Hemmaa belches out a shockwave. The stream of sound blows out Ama’s eardrums and catches her in the chest at the same time, pitching her across the compound and into the border wall. Juddering, vicious pain wracks Ama’s body as she spits up blood.

This time, their onlookers erupt into all-out pandemonium and scatter like terrified ants. Not that Ama can hear any of it.

Before Ama can react, Hemmaa retches and spews another sonic boom. Ama is already in so much pain, she barely feels this one; it is a dull, flashing sensation that spreads through her chest, sloshing darkness across her vision like flung water. The wall crumbles around Ama, as the thunderous force of Hemmaa’s beyie sends her tumbling into the middle of the road outside.

As Ama’s eardrums pop back into mint condition, she is assaulted by the sound of her own bones fixing themselves, healing. The cracking has always made her nauseous. Ama tries to sit up, shaking from the shock, gasping for air.

Hemmaa bounds through the jagged hole in the wall, and as she saunters towards Ama, tail whishing behind her, she growls, “How are you still alive?”

Ama grits her bloody teeth. “I can regenerate, genius.”

“None of us heal that fast,” Hemmaa snaps, and launches herself at Ama.

Ama rolls backwards and out of the beast’s reach. Using the momentum, she pushes off the ground and onto her feet, and wills her witch-arm to return. From somewhere on the street, it flings itself to her. Ama catches its movement out of the corner of her eye, and snatches it out of the air just in time to deflect another of Hemmaa’s vicious swipes in a burst of sparks.

Ama twists about to deliver a kick to Hemmaa’s flank so powerful, the air snaps with the sound of caving ribs. Hemmaa snarls in pain and loses her footing against the gravel for a frantic second, before throwing herself at Ama again. Razor-sharp claws whistle uselessly over Ama’s head, as she rolls over, and jabs her witch-arm hard into the lioness’s side.

Hemmaa roars furiously. Ama sinks the weapon deeper into fur and flesh. But with Ama’s iron grip, all it takes Hemmaa is a wild tumble onto her back, a lithe twist, a violent turn, and Ama loses her balance. This time when Hemmaa lunges, her powerful jaws find Ama’s shoulder.

Ama screams and swears. Wrenching the witch-arm free, she kicks at the lioness to let go. The force is enough to separate them, but not before Hemmaa has already ripped out a generous chunk of her. Blood sprays the air.

Hemmaa throws her head back, and with an eager decisive snap, swallows her bite of Ama whole.

Ama is revolted. “Girl, just…why?” she says, even as her shoulder mends itself.

“I warned you, brat.” Hemaa is speaking in a tone, a manner, that Ama has never heard her use till now. She sounds old. Almost elderly. “I will remove you. Piece by piece, if I have to.”

Shaken, Ama reassumes her stance. She is poised to strike when a stream of wind, focused into a savage cyclone, blasts all five hundred pounds of Hemmaa off her feet and sends her hurtling down the street like a crash dummy.

Ama spins in the direction of the attack. A few yards away is a girl, about sixteen, with shoulder length twists, a wax print jacket over a tank top, and blue jeans. The fact that she is wrapped in bright blazing blue sunsum doesn’t stop Ama from immediately recognizing her cousin.

“Mansa?” she says in disbelief.

Mansa’s hands are outstretched, and she looks a little startled by what she has just done. “Hi Ama,” she says meekly.

Ama is bewildered, but also too desperate to overthink this moment. Pointing in the general direction of Hemmaa’s fall, she asks, “Can you keep her occupied?”

Mansa nods. “Go get Chichi.”

Her head swimming with questions, Ama rips her skirt up to her knees. She tosses the bothersome fabric away, and dashes back into Joey’s compound, bounding through the break in the wall. The power is out, and the place is deserted. No one stuck around for the rest of the show.

Ama finds Joey on the front porch and stops. He is just standing there in the darkness, staring petrified into the distance, until he notices Ama in front of him. Then he’s like a computer booting up. “Ama!”

“What are you still doing here? Are you crazy? Chi!” Ama cries, walking past him into the house and heading for the stairs. “Come out, Chi! We’re getting out of here!”

“Ama, wait!” Joey follows after her, yelling, “What’s going on? Who’s that other woman? How did you survive getting thrown through a friggin’ wall? What the hell is going on?”

He grabs her at the top of the stairs and forces her around. There is weak light here from the emergency solar lights in the ceiling, and he notices the witch-arm in Ama’s hand for the first time. “What the—” He backs away, releasing a string of stuttered swearing.

“Are you,” he stammers, eying the weapon. “Are you…?” He whispers the last word. “An alien?”

“Joey, listen to me carefully,” Ama says. “You have to get out of here. It’s not safe. Do you understand me?”

He just stares back, confused. So Ama walks away, and to her frustration, he follows her to his bedroom.

“Chi!” Ama calls.

“I’m in here!” Chi’s small voice comes from the closet in the wall.

Ama throws the doors to the closet open to find her little sister curled up in the corner, partly obstructed by a row of hanging jackets. “Come to me, baby,” she says, even as Chichi leaps into her arms.

Their embrace lasts two seconds. Then, Ama is pulling her along, out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

“If we’re running, we should take one of the cars,” Joey says, behind Ama every step.

Ama whirls around. “Can we really?” she asks, wide eyed with desperate gratitude.

“Of course,” he says, running past her to the bottom. He goes into the living room. “The keys to the minivan should be around here somewhere.” He is like a flustered animal, scurrying from the center table, to the sofas, to the cabinets.

As he searches, Ama moves to a window to peep through the curtains. She can feel Hemmaa’s aura coming from somewhere over the wall, intensifying steadily for a few seconds, before stabilizing into a steady fire.

The aura is heading towards the house.

“Dammit Mansa,” Ama whispers, too afraid to imagine what happened to her. She spins back around. “We have to go now!”

Chichi is right behind her, and the sight of her terrified face lodges a lump in Ama’s throat.

“We’ll be fine,” Ama whispers.

“I found them! Let’s go!” Joey says, striding towards the girls with the car keys dangling from his fingers.

Ama takes them from him.

“I thought I was going to drive,” he says.

“You want to leave that to me, trust me,” Ama says, as they run to the door.

Ama opens the door to see Hemmaa, back in her human form, walking through the broken wall, swathed in roaring lemon-yellow sunsum.

Ama slams the door shut. “Please tell me there’s a way to the garage from inside the house.”

“You know there isn’t.”

“Hide! Just hide!” Ama says, pointing to the kitchen.

As Joey runs into the kitchen, Ama pulls Chichi with her to the farthest corner of the living room, where heavy curtains cover a row of windows. They slip behind the drapery, and closing her eyes, Ama concentrates as hard as she can to hide her aura.

She slows her breathing, and then her heart till it is almost still. Within herself, within her soul, she finds the core sun that radiates her sunsum and she douses its flames. Her body temperature plummets in response. She might as well be a corpse.

The light of Hemmaa’s sunsum is visible through the curtain, but it isn’t long after it enters the house that it fades. And then Hemmaa’s aura wanes and disappears with it.

They are both hidden now. A game of hide and seek.

Ama listens to Hemmaa moving around the room. Her attempt at stealth is thwarted by her unfamiliarity with her surroundings. Every now and again, Ama will hear the cloth of her kaba brushing against furniture, inaudible to an ordinary ear but harmattan wind and static to Ama’s.

She knows Hemmaa can hear Joey and Chichi too; their heavy breathing, their thrashing heartbeats. Despite the fact that the two are in separate rooms, Hemmaa seems to be moving ever so carefully towards her and Chichi’s location. Why Hemmaa has chosen to track Chichi’s sounds over Joey’s, Ama isn’t sure. Can she tell the difference between their heartbeats, or did she make a lucky guess?

Ama’s grip on her witch-arm is so tight, her fingers are numb. Now she can hear Hemmaa’s feet on the carpet. She is treading with all the delicacy of a feather, but the crunch of synthetic fiber is subtle.

Ama considers rushing Hemmaa now in the hopes that she catches her unaware. But there is a risk of putting Chichi in the path of a counterattack. Hemmaa’s steps sound more certain now, and if Hemmaa was initially worried that this was a trap, she clearly isn’t anymore. Ama wishes this were a trap. That would have been smarter.

Hemmaa is only three paces away.

Ama decides to make the only choice available. She readies to attack.

It is his heartbeat that she hears first. Ama’s ears were so trained on Hemmaa that she drowned out every other sound. But his rhythmic thumping cuts through the silence. Ama knows the sound of her best friend’s heart.

And she realizes what he is trying to do.

“Joey, no—!”

The explosion of sound is deafening, the sonic boom ripping through the air. The thunder swallows Ama’s anguished cry, and quakes the entire house, shattering every inch of glass in the room—the television, the center table, the cabinets, the windows. The sound of broken shards, like raining pocket change.

Ama tumbles out of the curtains, screaming Joey’s name in wild anguish. Hemmaa’s back is turned, and as she spins around in surprise, Ama runs the piercing end of her staff into her, lifting her inches off the floor with the force of the attack. They stagger backwards until Ama has her pinned against a wall. Hemmaa’s face ripples, her arms expanding and then retracting, her transformation failing in the wake of the pain. Instead, she scratches at the shaft of the staff, helpless, panicked, trembling. Their eyes lock as Ama leans in with the full weight of her body, pushing her witch-arm all the way through Hemmaa’s body and into the wall behind her.

Then Ama leaves her there to find Joey. Her vision is blurry with panicked tears, and her ears ring with a high-pitched whine. As she stumbles through the living room, her hearing begins to clear, and she spots a body on the floor.

“Joey,” Ama whispers, dropping next to him. “Can you hear me?”

Silence. Then a strained groan. “Ama?”

Ama almost cries with relief. She can see better now, and her breath catches in her throat when she makes out the twisted mess that is his chest. She isn’t sure if she can touch him, how she could touch him. She settles for placing a tentative hand on his cheek. The muscles in his face tremble and twitch. Ama’s do the same, but for different reasons, and with the added stinging of freshly forming tears.

“Hey,” Joey breaths. His eyes are half open. “What’s wrong?”

Ama’s tears drip onto his forehead. “You’re going to be alright,” she croaks. “I promise.”

“I-It doesn’t even hurt.”

Ama fights back a sob, and drops her head to plant her lips on his forehead, keeping them there for a lingering moment.

“But,” Joey murmurs. “I’m a little cold. D-do you mind?”

Ama sniffs, nods, and gathers him into her arms.

He sighs and stirs. “That feels better,” he whispers.

Ama nods, releasing measured, shuddering breaths. There is a gurgle coming from somewhere inside him that Ama really, really wishes she couldn’t hear. In that moment, she hates her abilities. She hates her life. She asks herself if she is just radioactive. A decaying isotope of suffering and death, afflicting everyone around her. And then, she hates herself more for revolving this moment around her own pain.

She finds his hand with hers, and trails her fingers up and down his open palm. The fear of breaking down into hysterical sobs is stark.

Joey’s eyes roll around weakly and then settle on Ama again. “Hey,” he breathes. “You…you should go.”

Ama shakes her head, even though she knows he’s right. She can’t stay here. She has to get Chichi as far away from here as she can. But what kind of monster leaves their best friend behind to die?

“I…called an ambulance…already.”

Ama wonders when, and then figures it must have been after she fell out of the window.

“I’ll be alright,” Joey says. “Go.”

Tears pour down Ama’s face as she kisses his sweaty brow again. “Don’t die,” she mumbles against his lukewarm flesh. “Do you hear me? You die, and I will hunt you down in the afterlife and kick you right in the balls.”

Joey’s lips twitch in an attempt at a smile. “D-don’t,” he whispers, “let the aliens win.”

Ama wipes her eyes and nods. “Chichi, come out! We’re leaving.” She stands as her sister runs out from behind the curtains. She throws one last glance at Joey. “See you soon.”

As Ama leads Chichi out of the house, she covers her little sister’s eyes to keep her from seeing Hemmaa’s skewered body.

Hemmaa lets out a gurgling chuckle as the sisters pass her by, blood dripping down to her chin. “This isn’t over,” she rasps. “She will pay for Saanga.”

Ama doesn’t know who or what ‘Saanga’ is, but there isn’t enough time to care. With a wave of her hand, Ama summons her witch-arm back. The staff dislodges itself from Hemmaa’s body, whipping across the room to fit itself into her hand while Hemmaa slumps to the floor.

The car keys Joey gave Ama are to a purple minivan, parked beside a luxury sedan in the garage. Chichi gets into the passenger seat as Ama starts the engine; then she lurches them backwards into the compound, swings them through a tight one-eighty degrees, and drives through the gap in the wall.

“Come on Mansa, where are you?” Ama mutters, scanning the street. “Oh thank god.”

Mansa is lying unconscious on the shoulder of the road a few yards away. Ama pulls up next to her and yanks on the handbrake. “Open the door to the backseat,” she says to Chichi over her shoulder, hopping out of the minivan.

As Chichi complies, Ama throws Mansa over her shoulder.

When Mansa is lying in the backseat, Ama floors the pedal.

They pass three speeding police cars and an ambulance on their way out of the neighborhood.