Cassia cursed under her breath after scraping her knee on the side of the tunnel for the hundredth time. It felt like they had been following Thorn for hours through the pitch black. Every once in a while his voice would float back to them, alerting them to a turn ahead or telling them to duck under a low spot. At one point, Thorn had pulled a communicator out of his pocket and studied it for a moment before silently continuing on.
“We’ve got to be out of the city by now, right?” she whispered ahead to Grit, mostly just to interact with anyone. The darkness was starting to get to her.
“No idea,” came the gruff reply. She waited for a moment, but apparently that was the end of his interaction. Figured. Finally, after another few minutes of walking, Cassia saw the light from Thorn’s communicator light up the tunnel in front of them. As they caught up to Thorn, she could see that they’d reached the end of the tunnel. There was a ladder that led up to a trapdoor, which Thorn was standing directly beneath.
“I’m fairly certain we weren’t followed,” he told them. “But I have no idea how much they know. This leads up to my garage, just outside city limits. If the IPF is here too, then, well…they’re much better than they used to be.”
With that, Thorn climbed the ladder and pushed the trapdoor open. Clambering out, he reached back in to help Grit and Cassia step out. For a second, standing on the concrete floor, Cassia thought she had simply traveled from one blackness to another. Shortly after they emerged from the floor, though, lights began to blink on, illuminating an enormous garage with multiple vehicles littered throughout. Grit whistled in surprise.
“Do all Thorn’s have secret garages full of cars?” Cassia asked, though this garage far outstripped the Elias Thorn they had met on Earth-29. This Thorn furrowed his brow at her question.
“What do you mean?” he asked. Cassia suddenly felt unsure of herself. Grit glanced at her, then filled the silence.
“We’ve met Elias Thorn’s on other Earths,” he said. “We’re pretty sure that they had some sort of network across universes. Are you not aware of this?”
Oddly enough, Thorn just stared at Grit, then Cassia, for a moment before shaking his head slightly.
“Perhaps,” he said, then turned to face the cars. “We should go. Even though I doubt the IPF can connect me to this garage, I also was certain they wouldn’t find me at the diner and they were able to do that.”
He led them past a large black van, then a shiny blue sports car, before opening the door to a small silver sedan. Grit and Cassia looked at each other for a moment, and then Grit opened the front door.
“Thank you,” Cassia said primly, glad she hadn’t had to force him to let her sit in the front. As they clambered into their seats, Thorn pushed a button on the dash and the car revved to life briefly, before dropping to a low purr.
“Nice,” Grit said from the back seat. Thorn, surprisingly, smiled at him in the rearview mirror.
“She doesn’t look it, but this baby has the most power in the garage,” he said proudly. “I built her myself.”
“Built her?” Cassia asked incredulously, and Thorn nodded.
“Sure did,” he answered. “I’m somewhat of a car nut.” He reached out and pushed another button on the dash, and a door began to slide up on the far side of the garage. Thorn clicked his seatbelt into place, then glanced over at Cassia.
“Buckle up,” he said, then he hit the gas and the car shot forward with tires squealing, slamming Cassia against the seat. She thought she heard Thorn chuckling as the car raced through the garage and exploded into the night.
“Shit!” Thorn shouted, as flashing lights immediately lit them up. “The IPF is getting better.” He yanked the steering wheel, causing the car to drift sharply to the left, narrowly avoiding an IPF ship. Thorn purposefully didn’t avoid the next vehicle in their way, ramming his front left bumper into the side of the IPF sedan and pushing it out of his way. For a moment, there was a clear runway, and Thorn slammed on the gas pedal again. The car responded immediately, leaving the IPF behind in seconds. Grit, surprisingly, let out a whoop from the back seat and Thorn grinned at him.
“I may have lost everything to IPF just now, but damn if that wasn’t a good time,” he said. Cassia shook her head. Were all old men like this?
“I wonder if Tek was behind this,” Thorn continued, though now musing to himself. “Seems unlikely, but she did know about my garage.”
“If you trusted her, there’s no way she turned on you,” Grit said forcefully. Thorn looked at him thoughtfully in the rearview mirror, then looked at Cassia with an eyebrow raised. She shrugged.
“They’re kind of a thing,” she said. “I think, anyway.” She looked back at Grit, who just rolled his eyes in his version of a huff. She turned back to Thorn.
“For what it’s worth, I agree with him. I doubt that Detective K’Nani would simply betray your trust without so much as warning you.” Thorn nodded slowly.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“True,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t compromised somehow. We’ve got to make a play now, before the IPF has time to do anything more to counter us.”
They had reached a mainway, and Thorn punched the accelerator up to what Cassia was sure had to be the highest speed the car could go. They were flying down the large road, dodging vehicles left and right. She looked away from the window, trying not to think about what would happen if they even slightly clipped any of the vehicles that Thorn was zipping past.
“Where are we going?” she asked. Thorn’s face was set firmly, his lips pressed in a thin line of concentration.
“IPF Deep Prison Six,” he said, focusing intently on the road.
“Is it nearby?” Grit asked from the backseat, and Thorn’s mouth twitched into a small smile, though he still watched the road intently.
“Not exactly,” he replied. “We’re going to make a jump.” Cassia frowned at this, then took a closer look at the myriad of buttons on the dashboard.
“This car makes jumps?” she asked, unable to make sense of any of them. “Why didn’t we just jump from the garage then?”
“Because we’re going to need a running start,” Thorn said, staring straight forward still. “And on that note…brace yourselves.” He spoke relatively softly, but seriously enough that Cassia couldn’t help but double check her seatbelt. They had reached a space on the mainway with relatively few cars in front of them. Thorn passed a couple more, and then reached out and punched multiple buttons on the dash and rolled a dial to the right.
“Multiversal jump pending,” said an electronic voice that made Cassia jump. “Earth-211 selected. Jumping in 5…4…3…”
“Earth-211!” Cassia shouted. “That’s too far! Anything could happen during the jump!” Thorn didn’t reply, and the electronic voice reached the end of the countdown. There was a popping noise, and then the setting shifted.
----------------------------------------
The new setting was extremely disorienting. The car went from flying down a mainway in the dark to offroading through a desert in broad daylight. Cassia blinked against the sun’s glare for a moment before the windows of the car slowly tinted. She looked around to assess the damage, but everything appeared to be normal.
“How did we do that?” she asked Thorn. “Jumping to the 100 level is getting dangerous, much less 200.” Thorn shrugged as he maneuvered the car around a giant rocky outcropping. Cassia realized that there was a road of sorts that he was following. She also noticed that they were rapidly approaching a gate that was guarded by multiple men with weapons.
Before she could even get words out, Thorn hit the gate at high speed, crashing straight through it with barely a pause in momentum. Out the window, she could see men shouting and scrambling for their vehicles. A couple of them started firing on the car as it rapidly distanced itself from them.
“Ah, I see,” said Grit from the backseat. “A running start.” Thorn smiled and nodded, then looked over at Cassia.
“This car is special,” he said. “Got a lot of protections in place for jumps like that. I think maybe you’ve driven something similar.”
Cassia frowned in confusion, then suddenly realized what he meant. She reached out and placed a hand on the dashboard, immediately feeling a familiar pulse of energy.
“A Pathfinder?” she asked, almost whispering. “Wait, you made one?” Thorn nodded, but then made a face.
“Kind of,” he admitted. “Pathfinders are tricky. They’re sentient, at least on some level, as I’m sure you discovered. And acquiring one is difficult. But if you know how to - hold on!” They were quickly approaching a convoy of vehicles blocking the road, with large weapons mounted on top of them.
“This is the end of the line, folks,” Thorn said, shockingly upbeat. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your ride.” He continued approaching the blockade at full speed, and for a second Cassia thought he might just slam into it.
“This is the IPF. Stop your vehicle and exit immediately.” Somehow the voice blasted through the radio, similar to the way Tek’s had done before. For some reason this only made Thorn smile as he determinedly sped towards the vehicles.
“We will open fire if you continue,” the voice warned, but of course Thorn paid it no heed. Seconds later, the machine guns mounted on top of the trucks began firing rapidly. Bullets started bouncing off the car’s exterior with loud pings. Multiples of them struck the windshield, though only one caused any sort of crack that Cassia could see. Thorn must of read the shocked look on her face, because he chuckled.
“Told you I made it myself,” he said. “I’m surprised they even managed to put a crack in it.”
“Thorn!” Grit suddenly shouted from the backseat, as the car continued to catapult towards the barrier. At the last possible second, Thorn yanked the wheel around, and the car lurched to the side, somehow managing to remain upright. He launched the vehicle forwards again, now going perpendicular from the road, then suddenly yanked the wheel back. The car flipped completely around, facing the way they’d just come. Cassia could see a huge cloud of dust completely obscuring the barrier they’d just dodgedd.
“Maybe next time we just knock on the door?” Grit suggested from the back, and Cassia ws inclined to agree. She’d had enough of racing full speed towards a stationary object for one day. Thorn just chuckled again.
“You do that and the IPF will put you in the prison just for being here,” he said, then gunned the accelerator and the car shot forwards again, launching directly into the dust cloud Thorn had created. Almost immediately, he was forced to dodge left and right around the IPF vehicles that had belatedly followed them off the road and into the desert. Cassia felt all of her muscles tensing in anticipation of a collision, but moments later Thorn had driven them straight through the oncoming vehicles and right back to the road. Turning sharply onto it, he again accelerated to full speed.
“Now comes the fun part,” he said. From the backseat, Grit groaned loudly. Up ahead, Cassia saw a foreboding sign.
“The Pit?” she asked Thorn, and he gave her a small nod, eyes on the road. “What’s The Pit?”
“I told you it was a deep prison,” he said, not explaining further. Cassia looked back out the windshield, and then gasped. In front of them, the road simply ended at a hole in the ground. She looked back at Thorn and, to her horror, he released the wheel and sat back in his seat with his arms folded across his chest.
“Let’s drop in on the Eldest, shall we?”