PAST JESSICA : N/A

HOUR -4 : 12:30, MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2122

RICHMOND 4 : CAR 2 : OPERATION PERV ESCAPE

Commanding all the stealth I could manage while freaking the fuck out, my hand opposite Agent Mikey slowly removed the phone from my pocket. Maybe just a little over-cautious about the sneaking given my timeframe to pull this off, I finally muscle-memoried my way through unlocking my phone just as the car approached a McDonalds.

Mick… Fucking Donalds… Not wars, nor famine, nor environmental collapse, and certainly not the combined will of anyone who actually liked good food, had ever managed to stop this place from being fucking everywhere. But more importantly than the poor food choice, I was already out of time! It sounded like this would be the only stop before their ‘office’. And if I walked in there, then it’d be ‘Mission Failed’.

The man I needed to run from asked me a question about the weather.

I pretended to care that it was cold this week.

Still making eye-contact with Mikey as we exchanged inane babble, the hand controlling my phone froze up. What was the code? Ten digits… ‘69’, ‘420’, and ‘boobs’. But what order were they in? Six possibilities… Two wrong ones and the whole system would lock up. Worse than a coin flip… Could I make this work without the spider-bot? No… No I could not.

The code was in my texts. But I couldn’t see… And if I had to look at my phone right next to this guy who my unstoppable brother was clearly afraid of, there was no way he wouldn’t catch on.

I should’ve planned for this. I HAD planned for EXACTLY this. That was the whole point of using those numbers. But then I went and forgot the order they were in? What was even the point of practicing this kind of escape, without a way to get the fucking key? I felt like my heart was about to burst out of my chest as we entered the drive thru.

I was already out of time. But I couldn’t even focus on that with all the mental energy I was spending on this conversation where the guy my brother warned me about pretended to be into video games, and I pretended to believe him. At least James had trained me for this.

One step at a time… Don’t think beyond that. Just don’t freak out. I wasn’t as good as James. I couldn’t think on my feet like him. But I was all I had.

Apparently having heard enough about the weather, Mikey asked me a question about school.

I rambled on about the first classroom drama I could remember. As I got back into the flow of the conversation, I elaborated as much as possible on every little point. I even made up new bullshit, dragging it out as we inched forward in the line stretching half the parking lot. And while I did that…

Unlike the specific screen positions of my own passcode, I wasn’t familiar enough with my phone’s layout to find the messages blind. But of course, James trained me how to do it anyway. I was supposed to use this to text him ‘help’. But I lost a lot of sleep last week training myself on another application.

Pressing the phone’s only face button, I swiped left five times and right once to guarantee landing on the Home Screen. Next, I used the lower volume button to mute the phone before triple-tapping power to silently activate Voice-Over Mode. Two right-swipes, then a double-tap got me into the Messenger facebook. Three more right-swipes and another double-tap selected the third message. Two left-swipes, and another double-tap highlighted the ‘Content’ field. Holding my finger down until the phone vibrated, I felt it copy to the clipboard.

I triple-tapped the power button again to disable Voice-Over Mode, swiped Up once, and then left repeatedly to center the screen on the first facebook in the phone’s CPU. This, I actually had planned for. Muscle memory from testing this exact thing on the simplistic toy facebook let me log in with the only account I’d ever had for this.

And there was the vibration.

Another button press. And again. Moment of truth… I pasted in the code I just copied.

While I did that with my left hand and told Mikey some bullshit about that bitch Ashley, my right hand gradually inched closer to the plastic ball hanging from my rightmost belt loop.

“Burger-flipping spinnaker ruined my fries!” Some asshole was ranting at the drive-thru window, wearing half of a pair of pants. Not shorts. One singular leg of an otherwise normal pair of pants. I would’ve called it a ‘pant’, but that sounded intellectually dishonest description for what is, in fact, just a useless-on-its-own half of a singular thing.

But more importantly, I’d just found my distraction. I needed one of those, and I was more than happy to settle for a random idiot yelling exactly the kind of shit that only a random idiot would yell.

I pressed the fated button on the toy’s facebook the instant Mikey seemed distracted by the jackass outside.

As the red-and-white plastic toy snapped open, I caught the metal ball as it fell out of the open capsule. Rotating it in my hand, I pressed a lower button on the same facebook screen.

Nothing happened. Fuck, was it jammed?

I pressed it again, breaking into a momentary sweat just before I distinctly felt the metal ball eject a much smaller ball of a slightly different metal.

By now, Mikey was flashing his badge at the loud idiot. “Sir..? I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.”

It was hard to tell where his eyes were from this angle, but Peters’ head was turned in the same direction. This was my chance!

Dropping the larger metal ball out of the window, it made a loud, unnoticed thud as it impacted the rubbery neo-cement. As soon as I heard it and registered the lack of response from either of my captors, I relaxed back into the seat and tried not to drift off from the escaping adrenaline as I took a momentary break. Next, I needed one of them to get a little more distracted by something else. Until then, I could relax.

Having clearly given up on the whole drive-through idea after the encounter with the idiot, Mr. Peters eventually backed into a nearby open parking spot. Now that we weren’t moving, I once more noticed how much we stood out in this thing.

After The Collapse, one car company managed to outlast all its pre-Collapse competitors. I don’t remember what it used to be called, but now it was called ‘Mazda’. With a lack of competition, innovation ground to a halt and basically every other vehicle besides this monstrosity was a slight variation on the same pod-like design. I could practically feel everyone else in the parking lot judging me just for sitting here the same way I’d judged Peters the first time I saw this thing.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

As we edged into the slightly-too-narrow parking spot, Agent Mikey looked pissed as he visibly came to terms with the change of plans. “Peters, please get me the usual.” Then he looked me straight in the eye.

I flinched as I met his gaze.

Those were not the eyes of the Cartoon-Dad character I’d been talking to this whole time.

I’d known on some level that it was a facade. But seeing it was different. I needed to leave. Now.

“Woah, Jessica. Are you okay? How’s a Big Mac meal sound?” He said it as though with reverence.

What, did he think I still got the shit with the cheap toys? Or that I would ever eat here at all? This was the most insulted I’d felt all day. But I was far too distracted to do anything about that. Instead, I tried to relate to him. “Thank you SO much! I’m so hungry I could ride a horse!”

Peters looked back at me in confusion.

So did Mikey.

“Sorry… It’s a reference.”

They just stared at me.

“From… Family Guy?”

They kept staring.

“What? It’s funny…”

The two agents looked from me, to each other. After a moment, they both shrugged with a level of synchronicity that was impressive as it was insulting.

Transitioning the awkward moment into a slow nod, Agent Peters exited the driver-side door and went in. Well then… That was him taken care of.

I was alone with Mikey now. That wasn’t good for a few reasons. The least of which being that I’d very much prefer to be buried alive, so long as he wasn’t there. But… Sometimes we didn’t necessarily need everything that we wanted. And vice-versa. The good news was that now came the most dangerous part of the whole fucking plan. So, if I was lucky, I might just get what I wanted after all. Just as soon as I failed to get what I needed.

And the worst part was, I needed to be awkward for it to even work. So… I loosened my seatbelt a bit, and braced my other hand on Mikey’s leg. But then I slipped. Recovering my position, I used it as support to get just enough of a height boost to see over his shoulder.

He could read into it what he wanted. In fact, I hoped he would.

I was well past the point of no return on this thing anyway. And a perceived come-on would make it less conspicuous that I just stuck him with the other, tiny metal ball under my thumb as I clumsily recovered from that ‘slip’. At the same time, I pressed the third button down on my phone screen, releasing the ball’s oxygen-activated adhesive gel the instant I lifted my hand off the loose fold of his pant leg.

That done, I tried not to sweat the close call. The timing on that was a bitch. If I’d moved too fast, it would’ve fallen on the car floor. Too slow, and my hand would’ve been stuck to his pants… Which was literally the worst-case scenario out of all the possibilities from everything I’d already done today. That included blowing up the classroom with me and all my classmates in it.

But, as luck would have it, the adhesive and the small metal ball were now stuck to his leg, both showing up as just barely darker than his black pants. But more importantly, my hand wasn’t. If I was lucky, he wouldn’t inspect his pant leg anytime soon.

“Mikeee-el!” FUCK… That was way too close. I thought I felt my eyes bug out just then. If I accidentally called him ‘Mikey’ now… Not wanting either of us to dwell on the slip-up, I took the hand touching his leg and pointed it past him, to something outside the car. “What’s that?” I managed to lightly smack his face with the motion.

Oops. He looked pissed.

“Oh my god, I’m SO sorry.” Fighting back equally tempting urges to laugh, and hyperventilate, I gave myself a not-worth-it-but-still-appreciatory mental high-five.

Seeming more confused than anything, he trepidatiously craned his neck in the direction I’d just pointed.

The instant his eyes moved away from me, I frantically picked up my phone. Actually looking for once, my heart raced as I used the video feed from my remote-control spider’s low-res camera to maneuver it around the corner, circling the ‘restaurant’ and coming to a stop just outside my car door. Everything in place, I pressed the final button on the screen I’d hooked up to the beeper I’d loaded with plastic explosive.

“Okay, little missy, what’s got-”

From around the corner of the McDonald’s, there was a sound and flash that made it look and sound like someone fired a cannon.

“What the hell?” Fake FBI Man readied his… Desert Eagle? No way in hell was that standard-issue. He looked at me severely. “DON’T MOVE.”

I stared at his gun in more than half-real shock, trying to look like I could never imagine budging an inch. I didn’t have to try very hard.

Between the gun and his tone, that was intimidating as all hell. Mikey opened the door, stood up, and threw it shut again. He didn’t bother locking it. It would’ve been pointless anyway. I could just as easily unlock my door from the inside of this ‘FBI car’. Weren’t cop cars supposed to not have that capability? A suspect could… Do exactly what I was doing.

No time to second-guess it. I was about to miss my window to make a run for-

In a flash of realization, I noticed the vibration I’d grown used to over the past half hour.

Wait, did Peters seriously leave the engine running? They let this world-flooding scrap heap stay on when they weren’t even driving it? Of all the irresponsible… Help for them to give me…

While I took it, I reveled in how much better Misty’s little distraction worked than I’d thought it would. I’d have to see if I could cram more in there next time… Or maybe I should just stick with what worked. To a point… Not much time before Mikey realized the sound came from a tiny metal ball that obliterated itself, along with probably a good chunk of the shrubbery I’d dropped it in next to the drive thru menu. Actually, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d blown up the menu itself. But of all the things I didn’t have time for, chief among them was investigating my own distraction.

Sliding under my own loosened seat belt, I exited the car, scooped up Misty with my left hand, opened the driver’s side door with my right, and swiftly re-entered the car.

Okay. Gotta do this right on the first try. I carefully positioned my feet and lined up the steering wheel. The seat was way too far back. But I didn’t know what to do about that. Adrenaline coursing through my system once again, I perched on the very edge of the seat as I watched some old lady nearly ruin my escape by moving like a snail across the parking lot. She was wearing a shirt that said ‘BFS Did Nothing Wrong’. I kind of wanted to run her over out of principle. But I held myself back until, at long last, she made it across.

But now some other lady was about to head the opposite way. Nope, no time.

Letting out an involuntary adrenaline-fueled scream, I floored it. Which pretty much negated that whole ‘distraction’ thing I’d been trying for.

I even heard Mikey let out a similar scream only moments after mine.

The car didn’t actually go all that fast as it peeled out of the parking spot. Slowly turning at a constant rate, I narrowly avoided the building, other cars, and a very angry lady now covered in her own soda, who was then tripped over by Peters running out of the ‘restaurant’ to intercept me before I got away.

But for something like that to work, the driver typically needed to be willing to brake. The joke was on them though. I couldn’t even reach the brake.

Shortly before hitting the street, I used all my strength to pull the steering wheel in the opposite direction.

The car went into a sideways spin, entering the road at a 120° angle.

One quick-but-loud course-correction later, and I was heading down the street to literally anywhere else. Despite practically being in a diagonal stance on top of the main pedal, I still wasn’t going all that fast. I certainly wasn’t any faster than the other cars on the road. A good bit slower, actually. At some point during this, I stopped screaming.

Okay, three blocks should be good.

Operation Perv Escape… COMPLETE.

There were like half a dozen warning lights flashing across the dashboard. And the car was making noises it definitely hadn’t when Peters was behind the wheel. How did Rod-Shifts work again?