I couldn’t help but smile, and not just at the absurdity of it all. Mom was still alive after chasing down Athleisure. He must have given her the slip and followed her here. Only ... “How did she find us?” I muttered, the dumpster rumbling under my boots as I trailed the RV.

“I, uh, kinda texted her.” Matt's voice was soft even through my phone’s blaring speaker. “Sorry, not sorry.”

I shook my head, another swell of guilt cresting. Had I finally gone too far for even Matt? Maybe we really shouldn’t have left the apartment. But then we never would have had the chance to steal this portal.

My phone buzzed. Mom. I conferenced her into our call, my knuckles pale on the still-firing hand cannon. “If I pull over,” I said over the din of the dumpster and the passing cars, “the FBI will get the portal and send you back.”

“So let me help.” Coming through my phone, her voice was even. But her face in the LYPD sedan was lined with worry. “You don’t need to do this alone.” The glint on the windshield shifted and Officer Stanton scowled back from the driver’s seat, his buzz cut as stiff as his uniform.

The dumpster shuddered, jagged steel biting into my arm. “If you wanna help, get Beard Bot’s stolen van off our ass.” I ground my teeth—a bad idea with my toothache. “Increase burn rate to medium-fast.”

I was just making shit up now. The hand cannon chimed gleefully, hot in my palm. The kick was stronger than I expected and the dumpster took off with a jolt, its wheels howling with disapproval.

Mom was debating something with Stanton, her phone pressed to her chest.

“We’ve got a problem,” Matt said. “This road slopes down to the bridge.”

“We want to dump this thing in the bay, don’t we?”

“Yes, but ideally without you in it.”

My belly fluttered. He had a point. Matt would need to unhitch the dumpster and then … I guess we could give it a push? This was something we needed to work out rather quickly.

Garrett’s voice came through my phone. “Uh, Ko, I’m viewing public traffic cameras. The rear doors on Athleisure’s van are open. As is the giant crate inside.”

The crate with the robot dog? I shivered, a chill seeping through me.

“However, I don’t see—” Garrett bit off his sentence with a gasp.

A beat passed before I saw why—the enormous dog bounding out from behind the van. A short coat of brindle stripes, thickly muscled. It blew past the police cruiser and a landscaping truck, accelerating across the retreating blacktop with tongue flapping.

I sucked in a breath, my hands quivering on the Iriguchi. I'd shoot that thing from here if I had any ammo left. But given that I was fresh out ... Shit.

In the next heartbeat, the hound angled toward me—and leapt from the asphalt in a blur of fur and fangs, gleaming metal sharpened to vicious points.

I gave a ragged scream and pivoted the ticking hand cannon into RoboDog’s face.

The bot sailed right through the hole in the dumpster, nearly bowling me over with enormous paws outstretched.

My heart pummeled my chest. I shielded myself with my arms, scrambling backward—as the Iriguchi tumbled from my fingers into a mound of trash.

Fuck! The dumpster rattled ever-faster downhill, an orchestra of horns blaring all around. I’d fired right into its gaping maw. That had to do something.

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But the hound, head lowered, regarded me from across the dumpster with a cool intelligence. A chunk of fur was missing from its jaw where the Iriguchi had bit, the gleam of metal beneath.

“Ko!” Matt shouted from far away.

I was going to die. My remaining adrenaline flooded my veins as I plunged a quivering hand into the trash.

The hound lunged with a rumbling, metallic growl. Its teeth clamped onto my wrist like a sprung bear trap.

I shrieked, thrashing, the pain blistering as the dog wrenched my wrist. With my free hand, I flailed in the trash for the hand cannon.

“Ko!” Matt screamed.

The pain sharpened to where it was everything in the world—just as my fingers somehow closed around the Iriguchi.

Then, teeth clenched, I swept the railgun to RoboDog’s temple and squeezed the trigger like my life depended on it.

With a flurry of quiet ticking, the dog’s fake flesh was eaten back as if left out in a sandstorm. Finally the hound shuddered, its jaw falling limp from my wrist.

My arm registered pinpricks of pain like the bite of spattering oil in a too-hot pan. I released the trigger only when the bot stopped thrashing, its face unrecognizable as such, fur and electronics blanketing the dumpster like snow.

My poor wrist was a mangled wreck of blood and sinew, my hand not much better. But I was alive. My chest rose and fell. The dumpster still rattled behind the RV, sky and steel surging past.

“I’m okay,” I shouted, struggling to stand. “Mostly.” My wrist throbbed. I’d need to get to a hospital before I bled out.

But before anyone responded, Athleisure’s van gunned past the LYPD cruiser and rammed the corner of Matt’s RV.

Tires screeching, the RV and dumpster jackknifed across the street. There was a sharp crack, and the RV spun off into a hatchback in another lane—the dumpster no longer attached.

“Matt!” I shouted.

Athleisure slammed to a stop to avoid wrecking too, nearly plowing into a boarded-up bakery. His gaze locked onto me—a predator tracking its prey—as I rolled past in the untethered dumpster, barreling down the sloping street.

Jesus Christ, if anything happened to Matt—

“Ko,” Garrett said, his voice low, “you’ve almost reached the bridge. You would do well to turn away. Perhaps angle the P44 to one side?”

I pictured the dumpster shooting off the bridge deck, arcing into the bay. Shuddering, I stumbled back to the hole in the rear wall and pulsed the trigger on the sweltering gun.

The Iriguchi’s answer was only deafening silence—no uh oh and no ticking.

A cold void swirled in my gut, the wind whipping my hair as I blazed past cars and storefronts. “I think I’m out of battery.”

“It simply needs time for the reactor to recharge it,” Garrett said.

My mangled hand hung loose at my side, blood pattering the trash. “I don’t have time.” Through the hole in the dumpster, my gaze met Mom’s in the trailing police car. Emotions cascaded across her face—anger, concern, fear. A dark thought entered my mind. This could be the last time I’d see her. My chin quivered, the welling sting in my eyes threatening to obscure my vision.

“Ko,” Mom blared, “put down the hand cannon.” She was insistent, pleading. She didn’t know the battery was already shot.

For lack of anything better to do, I tucked the railgun into my cutoffs.

The road steepened, my stomach fleeing into my throat. I was racing toward the bay now, the inevitable tug of gravity taking over where the RV had left off.

Dread swelled inside me. I made myself turn to face the fast-approaching bridge. “Mom, I can’t—”

There was a thunderous snap—a wheel finally giving up—and the floor pitched down amid a spray of sparks. The dumpster ricocheted off a barrier on the bridge approach, smashing across a sedan and sending garbage tumbling. My feet spun out from under me as sky and bay and suspension cables whirled past.

I screamed.

Then, with a deafening crash that echoed in my bones, the dumpster slewed sideways and bit into a guard rail.

My shoulder smashed into steel, a starburst of pain watering my eyes. I squeezed them shut and waited for the inexorable plunge to a soggy grave.

A gust of wind carried the scent of salt and surf. I opened my eyes. Bay and shoreline peeked through the hole in the dumpster. Stationary bay and shoreline.

My heart leapt, and I allowed myself a thin smile. Chalk one up for civil engineering.

But my neck hair stood on end. Something was wrong. I wasn’t motionless. Because the bay was bobbing before me.

Up. Down. Up. Down.

Oh shit.

The guard rail had given out, and I was teetering over the side of the bridge—one false move from sliding into the bay.