Right before Sullivan’s military-grade SUPacheco slammed into the puny and rusted driver-side door of Dat Vinh’s Mesozoic Saturn, a thought went through Dat Vinh’s head: I’m going to get away with this.

Of course, had he seen Sullivan barreling towards him in the rear-view mirror, he might have thought otherwise; instead, he was explaining the plan for the days to come to Sam and Hillary, blissfully unaware of the certain doom that lurked only a few paces behind. This plan of his was convoluted and involved to a degree that he was too preoccupied to notice much of anything. The plan was also entirely fictional.

Fictional as in made-up.

Imaginary.

Groundless.

Like the Easter Bunny or an ad for the lottery.

. Dat Vinh had been given one clear instruction once he’d finally secured Hillary’s muted thumbs-up. He was to deliver them to a safe house outside Medicine Bow National Forest. Presumably, there was a plan for what would happen next; what it was, though, he wasn’t privy to. To fill the silence on their long drive, and to ease his own nervous tensions, he breathlessly spun a tale about how the Milieu would keep them secure, how they might help defeat ASP, and maybe even how they might enact a flat tax.

He was talking even faster than he was driving and, on that stretch of quiet road cut through hardscrabble scrub brush and dry as hardtack soil, he was going plenty fast. No wonder he didn’t see Sullivan coming.

Luck had bred hubris in him. Luck had been on his side. He must have taken for granted that it would be going that way.

The moment back in the antique store he was set to tell Hillary everything about Milieu, warts and all, she instead told him to shut up, that it didn’t matter, that he was right. He was right. But he hadn’t expected Hillary to think so. More than a little flabbergasted, he had to pivot quickly as he spun on his heels and retreated back to the Saturn.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

She was scared. The two owners of the place had spooked her. It only came out in bits and pieces how they had managed to knock her off-kilter, but in that slow drip of details, Dat Vinh found he no longer had a reason to explain the true nature of the group he had pledged their futures to.

Now, they, all three of them, were in the car, heading to a Milieu safehouse. Hillary had acquiesced; at that moment, it seemed like she might agree to anything. Beyond the moral obligation and the occasional nagging reminder from Sam, Dat Vinh saw no reason to upset the order of things by being transparent about the Milieu.

That feeling of being lucky, and invincibility, gave birth to lots of funny thoughts.

So what if their fates were now in the hands of his wildly disparate, ethically ambiguous compatriots?

So what if he didn’t know how Sam and Hillary figured into their plans for total global collapse?

As long as he just kept driving straight and not, say, careened into a ditch, everything would be fine.

It goes without saying, but none of this would have happened if not for Sullivan’s own luck. Or, at the very least, it wouldn’t have been half as effective. After all, the diminutive rental Sullivan had been driving would have made for a much less potent wrecking machine. Dat Vinh’s Saturn could likely have stood its own against that car: it was powered by little more than a lawnmower engine and a twelve-volt battery.

But, just as things were finally turning in Dat Vinh’s favor, Sullivan was on a streak of his own. His request for a bigger, beefier ride had been accepted, no questions asked, though he would, of course, still have to file the necessary expense reports. He was beaming when it was delivered to the hotel door. This was a car of action. This was a car that demanded respect. Yes, Pacheco had said something off-handed about Sullivan’s need to compensate by way of the size of the car’s rims, but her words did little to deflate his uplifted spirits.

At the time, he didn’t know how exactly he would use the hulking, menacing amalgamation of titanium and bulletproof glass. But that’s always how love at first sight works. At first blush, it’s an all-enveloping emotion. Heedless passion. Senseless devotion. Only later do you figure out how the thing works. And this monster, it left a lot to figure out. The thing had been designed for war zones, not the desolate roads of the forgotten part of America. He, most likely, had no use for its electromagnetic pulse detection system, its nitrous-powered accelerator, or its thermal night vision. And he certainly hoped he wouldn't need to use the included gas masks.

It was enough to have all that power in your hands, he thought. It was the power of limitless, cautionless, ruleless possibility. He knew that, when the time came, he would know how to put all that latent power to use.