Well, so much for being free and clear. Just when I’d actually dared to think that we had gotten away from that whole… situation with the Scions, everything immediately blew up again. We were being chased in the van and shot at. Cup was there, along with who knew how many others. Way was stuck driving, not daring to slow down at all, and Raindrop kept peeking out the back window, calling out warnings whenever it looked like they were about to fire. Her warnings made Way spin the wheel one way or the other, sending the van skidding across the road.
Sometimes, she couldn’t avoid the shots. Either there wasn’t room or time. But that was where Alloy came in. She had her marbles flying along behind the van, alternately transforming into various walls or shields to block the hits that Way couldn’t evade. Alloy couldn’t see enough to direct them for that, of course. But they were doing a pretty good job on their own just from the instructions to ‘protect the van.’ Which raised even more questions about how independent they were, not that I was going to get into that right now.
Either way, between Raindrop calling out when to evade, and Alloy’s marbles shielding the shots that she couldn’t get away from, we were avoiding the worst of what the Scions were throwing at us. But I had no idea how long that could continue. If we didn’t do something else fast, something was going to get through. Worse, if Way lost control of the van and we had to face the Scions in a straight fight… yeah, I didn’t see that ending well. Especially considering the fact that three of us were still mostly paralyzed.
Speaking of which, we were desperately trying to speed along our recovery so we could actually help. We could fairly regularly move our fingers, hands, and toes, but it was still not enough. Well, not unless the Scions wanted to settle this whole thing with a good old-fashioned thumb wrestling match. I was pretty sure I could win one of those. But then again, something told me Cup would find a way to cheat even at that, and I’d end up without a thumb at all.
Oh, and we couldn’t call for help either. Yeah, we’d tried that, and the calls weren’t going through anymore. Not since I’d hung up with Deicide. Clearly, Cup was using something to block it. Probably her own invention, since she was apparently a fucking Tech-touched!
“Hold on!” Way called back once more, just before the van jolted violently. It felt like we were running over the pockmarked dirt along the side of the road itself. The whole vehicle threatened to spin out of control, but she managed to keep it going mostly straight, cursing out loud. “Fucking– Box is back there, he keeps making rock walls appear in front of us!”
Box, right. He was the guy who made those glowing orbs and could throw them before they turned into variously shaped and sized portions of fire, wind, water, or, in this case, earth. So at least two of the Fell-Touched for the Scions were back in that car chasing us. And I didn’t think we were lucky enough for them to be the only ones. Especially not today. Nothing was lucky about today. Well, unless we actually managed to get out of here with that information about Cup and Pencil’s true identities, and her real power. That would be pretty lucky.
Even as I had that thought, my arm rose. Slowly and a bit jerkily, but it rose right up in front of my face. Move. I could move even more than before. The paralyzation was wearing off faster. “Come on, come on,” I murmured to myself, bending and unbending the arm. It felt like an extreme version of having a limb ‘fall asleep.’ The numbness was incredibly weird.
Come to think of it, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t completely helpless here, numbness be damned. Pushing my hand against the floor beneath me, I focused on spreading green paint through the vehicle. I couldn’t paint the whole thing, of course. I didn’t have enough paint or the right position. But I could help a bit. I could contribute, damn it.
“Tell me when you need a green speed boost!” I shouted toward the front while slowly shaking out my other arm. From this position, I couldn’t see where we were on the road, what was ahead of us, or anything else. I was going to have to rely on Way for all that.
Thankfully, she realized what I was talking about immediately. “Not yet!” the girl called. “Wait… wait…” She spun the wheel once more, the metal and wheels both squealing in protest. “Now!”
So, I triggered the boost right then. Immediately, the van lurched to about twice its usual speed. I could hear the squealing of the tires as we shot forward, pulling a decent bit ahead of the car behind us. It gave our group a little bit of very desperately needed breathing room.
Unfortunately, it was still just a van, and the Scion car was faster. Whether that was simply a normal fact, or one helped by Cup tinkering with their car, I had no idea. Either way, they were still hot on our heels. I boosted the van now and then, but there was only so much I could do. There was only so much any of us could do. We were still a long distance from the rest of the city and from any help. Unless Deicide happened to pass us on her way to the petting zoo, and again, we weren’t that lucky. No, we were on our own here. We just… had to survive.
“Way!” Raindrop called. “Go straight for three seconds when I say!” She was peering out the small window, one hand on the handle. After a moment, she called, “Left!” Way spun the wheel that direction, and I caught the barest glimpse of a glowing energy beam shoot past the window on the right side as Cup took another shot. It was so close, the van shook from whatever kinetic force the beam was carrying with it. Which was fucking weird to begin with.
The instant the shot went past, Raindrop shouted, “Hold steady!” She glared out that back window, focusing while pointing with her free hand. I heard the rush of water go flying that way, before the girl cursed. Which was still strange to hear coming from her. She quickly jerked back while blurting, “Right!” Which sent the van sliding across the road that direction just in time to miss another shot.
“Shield,” Raindrop informed us while still clutching the side of the van to keep herself upright. “They’ve got some kind of forcefield around the car, I can’t… I can’t get it wet! I can’t move it, I can’t do anything!” Her voice was frantic, clearly freaking out a bit. Not that I could blame her. We were all freaking out. There had to be a way out of here, had to be a way to escape from those psycho fucks. God damn it, why wouldn’t my arms move properly so I could do something?! Straining as hard as I could, I managed to make them bend a little faster. The paralyzation was wearing off, but not nearly quickly enough. The most I could do was keep randomly speeding the van up, which helped a bit, but wasn’t enough to keep us away from those assholes for long. It didn’t even help us pull far enough away to make a phone call, damn it!
With that rush of anger, I suddenly realized that I was sitting up. Alloy and Pack both managed to turn their heads my way, but I was the one in a seated position. Clearly Cup had overestimated how long her paralyzing ray would work. “I can move,” I murmured, before my eyes widened. “I can move.” Everything was still numb, of course. but I was mobile. Definitely not in the right shape to start a fight with the guys chasing us, and yet the thrill of adrenaline from realizing I could move had brought something else to mind. I knew where we were. I knew where we were. And that meant–
Twisting over onto my hands and knees, I crawled to the back, next to Raindrop. There, I crouched by the door and braced myself. “Way!” I called up, “get ready to shift to the passenger side!”
“What?!” she shouted back at me. “Why the hell would I–”
But I was already moving. Shoving the back door open, I saw the car racing up from behind us. Sure enough, Cup and Box were there, along with a handful of other Scion lackeys. My hand extended, shooting a burst of yellow paint at the road just as we passed, before activating it. The Scion car abruptly slowed to half its normal speed, and I immediately swung myself out, using red paint to yank myself up against the side of the van while calling for Raindrop to shut the door.
There I was, crouched sideways against the van, as we raced at like seventy miles an hour along the road. Another quick shot of red yanked me to the front, and I opened the driver’s side door while blurting, “Over, over!”
To her credit, That-A-Way did exactly that, throwing herself into the passenger seat while I landed where she had been, my foot finding its way to the accelerator before we slowed much. “What’re you doing?!” the other girl shouted while quickly belting herself in.
“Tell me the thirteen-year-old isn’t driving,” Pack snapped from the back. “I said, tell me the thirteen-year-old isn’t driving!”
“Okay,” I replied, glancing at the screen on the dash that showed a view behind us through a camera on the bumper, “the thirteen-year-old isn’t driving.
“He’s flying.”
With that, I abruptly spun the wheel hard to the right with one hand while touching the edge of the dash with my other. An orange arrow appeared there, extending out over the hood. I activated it just as the van hit a small incline on the side of the road and, with the engine roaring, went airborne a good six or seven feet, slamming into and through a tree that was in its way. Behind me and beside me, I could hear the others screaming.
The van was now running perpendicular to the street, racing across the wilderness. Scattered trees surrounded us, and I twisted the wheel sharply once to avoid a big one. It came close enough that the branches scraped loudly along the passenger side. Behind us, I could see the Scion car coming right back into view.
“Paintball, get back on the road!” Way shouted. “Get back on the road, get back on the road!”
“Road?” I quoted, “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
“We need roads!” That was Alloy, her voice a frantic scream. “We definitely need roads!”
But I wasn’t listening. Instead, I reached up, clipping the seatbelt into place. The van was cruising along the weed-filled ground, bouncing violently from each slight dip and bump. In the rear camera, the Scions were coming up fast. Once in awhile, they fired off a shot that was intercepted by one of the marbles keeping pace with us.
“Paintball,” Way managed with a tight, worried voice, “I don’t know where you think you’re goaaaaaaahhhhh!” The scream was because we had just hit a bush, passing straight through it before the van dropped like… three feet to crash hard on a dirt path that had been packed hard by thousands of tires running over it.
“Hah!” I crowed, twisting the wheel sharply to the left to send the van twisting ninety-degrees that way, narrowly avoiding a heavy boulder that had been directly ahead of us. “I knew this was the right area!”
Suddenly, the van was driving along a narrow ‘road’ (such as it was), with thick trees and rocks lining both sides. It was barely wide enough for the van, and full of dips and hills. We were on a dirt bike track that ran through the forest out here. I’d gone riding a bunch of times. Even broke my arm once.
Hopefully this time went better.
Of course, this wasn’t an ordinary, circular track. The whole thing ran for miles and miles throughout the wilderness, with multiple ways to go, several figure eights, intersections where you had to choose which direction to take, even a couple parts where the track was raised into a bridge that ran over one of the lower parts. It was basically the best dirt bike track in the entire state
On the other hand, it was built for dirt bikes, not for a van (or the car following us). The poor vehicle was taking a definite pounding as I floored the gas and sent the van flying along the track, gaining air repeatedly with each hill I launched it over, before coming down hard and violently shaking everyone around. The only reason it stayed together as much as it did was the orange marks I kept repeatedly painting along it whenever possible.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Way was saying something, the others were shouting from the back, and I ignored all of it. My focus was on pushing the van as hard and as fast as it would go. We were flying along the track, straight toward a T-intersection. Ahead, past the edge of that intersection, was an enormous tree that would have turned the van into a pile of scrap parts if we hit it. At the last second, with Way screaming in my ear, I snapped the wheel to the left while activating just a bit of yellow paint that I had sent through the vehicle. It slowed us enough to make that turn, skidding to the left. Instantly, I threw the wheel to the right, sending the van sliding along the sudden opposite turn that came within a few dozen feet of the intersection.
Behind us, the Scion car had to skid to a complete stop, backing up and then turning to get back on track. It was clearly faster and more maneuverable than we were. So, if we were going to lose them, I was just going to have to get creative.
Getting creative, in this case, meant flooring the accelerator and trusting the mix of my memory, reflexes, and that weird, unexplained extra sense I had to get us through the track without completely destroying the van and killing all of us in the process.
So, that’s what I did. I let myself go and just… trusted. The van’s engine screamed as I sent the vehicle rocketing down the track. There was a curve to the left coming up. I knew it. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it. At the exact right moment, I twisted the wheel. Left–now right, sharp right. Straight for four seconds, jerk the wheel right to avoid the deep pothole in the dirt, clip the trees there, it’s alright they don’t have any big branches. Left or straight here, but go straight because the left went to a dead end. Tree on the ground, veer left and boost to hit that little dirt ramp enough to clear it. Not fast enough. Green paint, boost now! Ignore the screams as the van went airborne. Orange paint for protection, then a hard right once the van hit the ground–no, count to two first, then turn. Slam! One… two–turn! Count to four then shift to the left enough to avoid the sharp boulder sticking out of the nearby overhang. Can’t turn sooner or you’ll hit the deep ditch on that side. One, two, three, four–twist left!
Drive straight three seconds, turn left again. Four more seconds, twist right. Accelerate as hard as possible and use the green boost for a dirt ramp up ahead, then twist left. Right, right, straight, left, straight, right, straight, left, straightrightrightstraightleftstraightrightstraight!
Though all that, the Scion car kept falling further and further behind. I was pretty sure I could hear Cup screaming in rage, as she fired off a few useless shots that came nowhere near us, but did manage to knock down some trees. We were pulling ahead. But that wouldn’t last. As soon as we were back in open ground, they would catch up. Their car was more sustainably faster. I could boost for short periods, but they had the speed to catch us. We couldn’t just drive in circles along this track forever. We had to do something else.
Luckily, I had a plan for that.
“Alloy!” I called toward the back even as I followed my power’s direction and snapped the wheel to the right to send the van in a long skid, applying the brakes at the exact right moment. “Can you combine your marbles into one big shield against the back of the van to take a handful of shots so we can go straight for a bit?!”
There was a brief pause before the other girl replied in a tight voice, “Yeah, but I don’t know how long they’ll last that way! Whatever she’s shooting at us, it’s got a lot of freaking power!”
“Doesn’t have to be long,” I insisted. “Just do it when I tell you. Rain, when she does that, soak our car.”
“Our car?” Raindrop echoed, clearly confused about what I was planning. Thankfully, she trusted me, belatedly calling out an agreement.
Hands gripping the wheel tightly, I focused on taking us through three more sharp, sudden turns. “Soak the whole van, all of it. And when I tell you… make us float for as long as you can. Just keep us from falling, okay? Keep the van in the air.” Even while saying that, I kept one hand on the dashboard and focused on spreading as much green paint as I could, mixed with just enough orange to hopefully hold the thing together when it had to. I was really draining the bottom of the barrel with this one. I was pretty sure I’d be tapped out after this. At least for a minute or two. And that was basically an eternity in a situation like this. But that was okay. We were going to need the speed, and it was now or never.
“Alloy, be ready to shield. Raindrop, soak and float on my mark!”
Then, with a sharp right turn, we hit the straightaway. “Shield, Alloy! Full shield!” I shouted as we bounced along. “Just hold them off for a few seconds! Raindrop, soak it, soak the whole thing and be ready!”
The other two followed my instructions. Summoned water soaked the whole vehicle thoroughly, like driving through a monsoon. Behind us, I could hear the shots from our insistent friends rebounding off the marble shields as they immediately took advantage of the straight line of sight they finally had.
“Can’t take very much more of that shit!” Alloy shouted a bit tensely after five or six of the blasts had struck her shield. “Whatever that bitch is shooting at us, it’s really fucking strong!”
“Just a little further!” I insisted, flooring the pedal as hard as I could. Still, I didn’t activate the green paint. Not yet. Even without the boost, we were careening down that incredibly narrow dirt track. Branches from trees on either side were scraping along the edge of the van, and smacking the windows as we shot down the path. Behind us, the Scions were clearly keeping pace, given the sound of gunfire and the repeated bangs from their car bouncing through the holes. At least they were having just as rough of a ride as we were. Not that that was too much of a consolation, given the whole situation, but still.
Just when I thought I might have underestimated how far we needed to go, I saw the target up ahead. In that instant, I triggered all the green paint I’d managed to put over the van, and we rocketed forward. The ride, of course, got even bumpier. We had been going a good sixty miles an hour down that track. Now we were going over a hundred. The van’s body, shocks, every part of it screamed in protest. I was pretty sure the rest of us were screaming too. The others and me. I gripped the wheel so tight I felt like it was going to snap off in my hands. Still, I kept it steady, fighting the van’s attempts to jerk from one side to the other. With shots from the Scions still rebounding off the shields or flying off to either side, we were fucking flying down that path. Metaphorically, of course.
And then it suddenly wasn’t as metaphorical. With one last scream toward the others to hang on, I sent the van right through the spot I had been pointing us toward. We hit a bit of dirt at the end there, and suddenly we were airborne. Like before with the ramps, but this was no ramp. No, I had just launched the van off the edge of a fucking cliff. The ground was a good hundred feet or so below us.
“Rain, float, float, keep us up!” I screamed as soon as we hit the apex of the jump.
I could hear the grunt of effort from the younger girl as she did just that, focusing on keeping the van in the air with the gravity part of her power while we continued to shoot forward. Glancing through the nearby window, I saw a ravine far, far below us with barely a trickle of water running through it. Beside me, Way made a weak little whimpering sound as she looked out her own side.
It only lasted for five or six seconds, but those felt like an eternity. Then I called back, “Lower us down, down!” At the same time, I activated the orange paint to keep the whole van from falling apart around us on impact.
The van dropped a bit, gradually of course. A moment later, there was a violent jolt as we hit the ground once more. Or rather, as we hit the road once more. An actual road, with pavement and everything. Yeah, almost directly opposite that corner of the dirt track, there was the highway we had been driving on before. It curved around a hill at this point, with that sharp dropoff to one side that was blocked by a heavy metal guard rail. Some sort-of friends and I used to bike up to that little spot and sit there watching cars around that slow curve. A couple guys had made morbid comments about what it would be like if a car missed that turn, slammed through the guard rail, and went off into the ravine below. Which was why it had stuck in my head.
As soon as the van hit the road, I twisted the wheel and pumped the brakes, making the tires squeal horribly as we left a bunch of rubber across the road. The vehicle spun out of control, going around once, twice, then a third time before finally skidding to a halt.
A few brief seconds of silence followed while all of us went through a mental checklist to make sure we were in one piece before Pack found her voice. “What… the fuck… was that?”
“That,” I informed them while using a violently shaking hand to shift the van back into drive and pull away once more, “was us getting the hell away from those guys. It’s like a fifteen minute drive the old fashioned way, just to get from the overlook to where we are now.”
While the others coped with that, I picked up speed. The van was shuddering a bit, clearly not in the best of shape. But it kept going.
“So, uhh, what do you guys say we wait til the coast is clear, then go back and do it again?” I offered, half-jokingly. Okay, maybe a quarter-jokingly. “You know, when we can enjoy it.”
A slight pain filled my shoulder as Way punched me there.
“Ow,” I muttered, “you could’ve just said no thanks, you know.” With that, I exhaled long and low. “Is everyone okay? We all in one piece?”
Over the next couple of minutes, everyone agreed that they were okay and were starting to be able to move. I held the steering wheel tight and let out another shaky breath. “Okay, okay. We’re okay.” Saying it out loud helped me convince myself that it was true. After the terror of the past few minutes, which itself had been preceded by a few minutes of calm that had followed another long stretch of terror when we had found out the truth about Amanda, part of me was expecting another rush of adrenaline-filled panic any moment now. What was next, Cup and her people showing up in a fucking homemade helicopter? Hell, it didn’t even have to be homemade. For all we knew, they could steal one.
But no, things stayed quiet. And within another couple minutes, we had driven far enough to see busier traffic on the freeway just ahead. The on-ramp was just waiting for us.
“Paintball,” Way spoke up from the passenger side, her eyes on me. “Can you use any more paint? We need a disguise, just in case.”
It took me a few seconds, but I managed to pull the van off to the side and stopped for a minute. Way hopped out and came around to the driver’s side to help me down on shaky, uncertain feet, and I got my first good look at the exterior of the van. It was pretty trashed. There were dents and scrapes in it from the rocks and trees, the paint job was basically destroyed, the wheels weren’t going to last much longer, it was… yeah.
Still, I managed to paint the whole thing red, sort of covering up the damage of it and making it a different color just in case Cup or any of the other Scions had sent word ahead to watch for us. It wasn’t much, but it would maybe help a little.
“Are we good?” That was Alloy, the girl standing behind us, hand pressed against the side of the van. “Please tell me we’re good. I don’t think I can… umm, I don’t want to do any of that again anytime soon.” She was trying to play it off lightly, but I could hear the trepidation in her voice. She was scared, obviously. And who could blame her?
“We’re good,” Way confirmed. “Come on, let’s get back on the freeway. I’ll call Flea and we can tell her what happened. Or, you know, our version of it. Oh, and I’ll drive this time.”
“Go for it,” I replied, my voice cracking just a little as I made my way toward the back once more. “I think I… I need to lay down for a minute.”
She moved back to the front to drive, even as Pack shakily stepped down and started up to the passenger seat. Meanwhile, I looked to Alloy, swallowing hard. There was a lot I wanted to say to her, a lot I just… didn’t know how to say or if I even should. In the end, all I managed was a somewhat weak, “Thanks for being here. You–if it wasn’t for your help, we… umm…”
Shaking her head before putting out a hand to grab my shoulder so I would stop talking, Alloy interrupted, “That was pretty fucking scary, Paintball. It wasn’t just me. It was–none of us would’ve made it without the others. If That-A-Way wasn’t there, or Pack, or Raindrop, any of them, if any of us weren’t there, the others wouldn’t’ve made it. We’d be… they’d be…” She swallowed hard, clearly thinking about being back with Cup, given the woman’s reputation.
Yeah, it was probably a bad idea to dwell on those thoughts. Quickly, I gave her a little push toward the back door of the van. “Come on, let’s get out of here and back to civilization.”
“Yeah!” shouted Pack from the front, “let’s go before we have to have another chase scene! Everyone knows having two of those right next to each other is super-redundant and boring.”
“Well,” I managed to retort in a flat voice, “the last thing we want to do is be boring. Heaven forbid. Guess we better get going.”
So, the two of us climbed up into the back once more to join the thoroughly exhausted Raindrop. We shut the door, and Way began to drive again. In a moment, we were in the midst of freeway traffic, while she made the call to Flea and, in as few words as possible, told her a bit of what was going on and that we needed to meet her along the way. Needless to say, she had a lot of questions. But she agreed to talk about it in person, which… yeah, that was gonna be fun.
Once we arranged a place to meet (at a nearby old motel along the freeway that was undergoing renovations), Way disconnected the call, before pulling off at the next exit. We weren’t quite to the motel itself yet, but close enough. She parked behind a fast food joint, near a large drainage ditch. There, the rest of us hopped out, leaving Pack in the van with her lizards.
“Right, wish I could say it’s been fun,” the girl informed us after shifting over into the driver’s seat, “but, you know.” She coughed pointedly. “I’m gonna tell Blackjack what happened. And the truth about those fucks.”
“Good,” I informed her, still a bit wobbly on my legs. But hey, at least I could actually (mostly) stand. “The more people who know, the better. Hunt those evil fucks down.”
She gave me a thumbs up, shuddered a little, then began to drive away. From the way the van was protesting, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t get much further. Hopefully at least enough to get the other girl somewhere safe.
Which left me standing in the parking lot with That-A-Way, Raindrop, and Alloy. “Right,” I announced, clapping my hands together once before nearly falling over. “Let’s go meet Flea then.
“I can’t wait to explain this whole thing.”