Up close I see that the mask is 3D printed and very illegal, but very cool. I also see that the lower half of the man’s left shirtsleeve is ripped off, a section tied tight around his upper arm. “Are you wounded?!” I say, way too panicked. I clear my throat and try again. “Did you get hit?” I say, much more calm and cool.
I seem to have forgotten I’m holding a gun for the first time in my life, because the man answers by taking the thing from my hands so easily I’m embarrassed. Whoops.
I just might get shot in the face after all, Leeland, because that’s exactly where the man points the barrel. Payback.
We tear through the streets of Kismet’s faux megalopolis built solely to refine their autonomous cars. It’s so lifelike and crazy detailed it looks like there’s no way it’s just ghostly facades with no buildings behind them. The real Detroit looms ahead of us, big and booming. “You’re not going into the city, are you?” I blurt out. “Because that would be stupid.” Wolves in a slaughterhouse.
“Shut up,” the driver snaps at me. A woman, not a man.
There’s a fleet of Kismet Guard cars in close pursuit. The woman might be able to beat them in a car chase—I’ll give it to her, turns out she does know how to drive when she isn’t distracted tying bandages—but I seriously doubt she’ll make it past the security gates.
But I’m proven wrong. In a slick move, the woman slams our car left into an alleyway while the other cars skid off to the right, breaking up our pack. The chase cars swerve opposite, following the greater number, leaving our escape route down the replica of the famed Woodward Avenue clear and free. When we reach the eastern edge of the factory grounds, there’s a section of the gate open and waiting. “Is this an inside job?” I ask, unable to stop myself. It’s just all too unbelievable.
“Who are you?” the woman yells at me now that we’ve successfully escaped Kismet property.
“Owen Hart,” I yell back. “Ma’am . . . ,” I add for good measure.
“I don’t care what you’re called,” the woman screams. “I’m asking who you are!”
“Nobody!” I scream back. “I’m just a Programmer for Kismet!” She doesn’t seem to like my response and points the gun closer to my face. I’m answering to two hotheads: this crazy masked woman and the round barrel that responds in bullets.
“Why did you get in my car?” she shouts. “Why are you here?”
Huge mistake. Why the hell did I get in this car? “If you could just slow down, I can kind of roll out, and I’ll be out of your hair,” I offer.
Another wrong answer. The gun’s trigger clicks with a threat not to move. Her boot still on the accelerator, the woman rips her eyes off the road, seizes both my hands with her one free claw, and the next thing I know, I’m handcuffed to the car door with a nasty-flavored rag stuffed into my mouth. How the heck did that just happen?
The woman grunts like that impressive takedown just used up a huge chunk of her life force. She’s going to pass out, and we’re going to die. “Just shut up and sit still,” she orders. Two things I’m no good at, turns out. The rag smothers my curses, but I launch a whole vulgar list of them anyway. My best ones. And when I get to the end, I start again from the top. Saliva drips down my chin, and my throat stings with every curse I try to push out, but the masked bandit flat-out ignores me. She simply turns her creepy blank stare back to the road, rests the gun on her lap, and wraps her two fists around the steering wheel like she owns the damn thing. My curses reach a new level. When pushed, people can achieve greatness.
The car speeds up to what has to be eighty and turns a fast right. I chew and spit and cough and heave to eject the gag from my mouth, and pop, it shoots like a missile from my jaw, landing on the bamboo-wood floor. I’m about to tell her she needs to slow the hell down or she’ll burn the tires! but my mouth just hangs open.
Silver hair falls down the woman’s shoulders as she shoves the mask over her forehead and tosses it onto the dash. There’s scant light, and she only shows me her profile, but still, I know that face . . . It’s number two on the Wanted List. Behind only Ava and Mira Goodwin.
“Rayla,” I choke out. “You’re Rayla Cadwell.”
All Guards in the fifty-one states are looking for this rebel woman. Every camera in this country is waiting to catch her in its sights. But she’s in this car, with me, an arm’s length away. And somehow, I’m the one in cuffs.
I bury my face in my armpit, mentally drop-kicking myself. What’s she going to do with me now that she knows I recognize her? Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut?
I rally and break out in hearty chuckles. “Pshh, of course you’re not Rayla. You look nothing like Rayla. Rayla is off fighting and winning big in Canada or maybe Dallas. Why would Rayla be in Detroit stealing cars . . .”
“To build a Common Cavalry.” Rayla looks right at me, like you do a cockroach before you squash it. Yep, I’m a goner.
I decide to stop talking. Time would be better spent devising an escape plan.
We’ve been driving west down pitch-black back roads for half an hour. Half an hour feels like forever in abduction time. I can’t feel my hands anymore from the plastic cuffs, and I am so bored I almost miss talking with the Cogs. Rayla’s icy silence has turned glacial, if that’s even possible. Her quiet has gone quiet.
“I can be useful,” I say. She gives no indication she heard me, just sits there stone-faced, her eyes never leaving the road. Maybe she only responds to shouting. “I can be useful!” I repeat. “I know cars!”
“You know nothing about cars,” she mutters under her breath.
“Um, excuse me, did you forget where you got me? I work for Kismet,” I say, accidentally proud of this fact.
“You sit behind screens and codes. Have you ever been behind a wheel?” She laughs at my dumb silence. “I don’t need a trained government pet that can’t make his own decisions.”
“I’ll have you know I make decisions all the time. Plenty of them. I got into this car, didn’t I?”
“An idiotic decision.”
If I can just get out of these restraints—was it really necessary to make them so tight?—I can overpower her and take control of the car. She’s, what, eighty or ninety? And wounded—it’s unclear if it’s grave or just a nick, but either way, I can take her.
She’s a former Common leader, though. She won’t go down easy.
The media outlets from every side warn that this woman is armed and dangerous. Well, she is armed—with my gun, at least it was mine for the thirty seconds I had it—and there does seem to be a hell of a lot of danger in her. But dangerous to the public? The Common was firing off plastic bullets at the factory raid, and Rayla wasn’t using a weapon of any kind, from what I saw.
I reposition my sore neck and do a once-over at “Rayla the Slayer,” as every reporter and patriot has come to call her. Governor Roth of Texas tells us she’s nothing but a common assassin out to murder the innocent sons and daughters of our leaders. She’s the bloodline of Ava and Mira, the Traitorous Twins, and most think she’s the root and reason for all hell breaking loose.