The Maserati came down hard on the far side of the bridge.
The landing wasn't clean, the car had lost its aerodynamic composure somewhere mid-arc and touched down nose-first before the rear settled. Parts rattled. The chassis complained. Fox had it moving again in under two seconds, which said something about her, but the car wasn't happy about it.
Wesley was not saying anything. His face had the expression of someone who had decided that verbal communication was no longer the priority.
Fox checked her mirror.
The silver R8 was airborne behind them, it had caught the rising bridge deck at speed and launched clean, and it came down on the far side like it had been aimed there, Advanced Driving making something that should have been spectacular look almost routine.
She had a half-second of clean angle.
She drew and fired a burst.
Every round met one of his rounds in the air. The collisions scattered sparks across the asphalt — two sets of Gun-Flicking technique, both Intermediate, canceling each other in the space between the cars.
Fox lowered her gun.
She accelerated.
"How does he know the Gun-Flicking technique?" She said it mostly to herself, in the tone of someone who had just encountered a data point that didn't fit the model. The technique was the Fraternity's. If you knew it and you weren't Fraternity, there was one explanation that covered most of the cases, and it wasn't a comfortable one.
The R8 was already behind her again.
Two news helicopters had found them, the live feed was already running, which meant the NYPD Command Center was watching the same footage as everyone else. The police commissioner was at a charity gala he'd spent six weeks trying to get out of and had just reached the point where he genuinely couldn't leave, and now his deputy was on the phone telling him that three vehicles were in a running gunfight on the streets of lower Manhattan and the media was broadcasting it.
He ended that call with several words that wouldn't be repeatable in his official capacity.
SWAT was being notified. The Manhattan Bridge was already down. The Holland Tunnel was the next choke point, if the cars got through into New Jersey, this became a multi-jurisdictional catastrophe, and the NYPD would spend the next month explaining to people why they'd let armed suspects run through a tunnel at high speed during prime time.
"Suspect heading toward Holland Tunnel. Request all available units."
"Copy. Blockading now."
On the road, the configuration was Fox's red Maserati leading, Locke's R8 trailing close, and then, something new.
Locke clocked it in the rearview mirror first: a blue Ford Raptor, big and fast and running like it had somewhere to be, coming up hard behind him. Not police. Wrong profile for Fraternity — they didn't drive trucks. He held a neutral line and let the Raptor close the gap.
When it was near enough to read the driver's face, Locke's brow went up.
Cross.
Rogue Fraternity operative. The man the factory had actually been trying to deal with when all of this started. He'd seen the news, the live footage of the bridge jump would have been impossible to miss and he'd apparently decided that whatever his son was doing on that bridge required his personal involvement.
The Raptor hit Locke's rear bumper.
Not a crash - a shove. Deliberate, measured, the kind of contact that communicated move without being a full impact.
Locke's jaw tightened slightly.
You're afraid to go at the factory directly, but you'll bump me on a public street?
He took the irritation and set it aside. Cross wasn't the mission. Cross was a variable, and variables got managed.
His left hand came off the wheel. He extended it back toward the Raptor and fired three times, not at Cross, because Cross was a complication, not a target, and shooting at an unconfirmed civilian in a moving vehicle on a public street was the kind of thing that created problems, but he put all three rounds into Fox's right rear tire, using the R8's position between the two vehicles to set the angle.
Curved shots. Three in sequence, same wheel, same quarter of the tire.
The Maserati's rear right corner dropped.
Fox felt it immediately, a sudden veer to the right, the wheel gone, the car dragging — and her hands were already compensating before the conscious thought arrived. She brought it under control in about forty meters, which was impressive, but she was running on three tires now and the Raptor was closing fast from behind.
She was boxed.
Locke sat behind the wheel and watched the geometry resolve itself. Fox ahead on a blown tire, Cross behind in a truck big enough to push a car off the road, George's siren audible from the north and getting louder, two news helicopters overhead capturing every second.
The System updated.
[Destiny Is Mine — Progress: 1/∞]
[Reward: Achievement Points ×200 / Potential Points ×200]
One, Locke thought. Not quite the full house I planned.
But the night wasn't over.
He watched Fox negotiate the damaged Maserati around a corner and followed, keeping her in sight. The tire would hold for another few blocks at speed, after that she'd either have to stop or risk losing the rim entirely.
Cross stayed on his tail.
Locke kept his speed steady and thought about how many variables he were currently managing.
Fox: blown tire, three to four blocks of useful mobility left, then a stop or a wreck. Wesley in the car, already past his operational limit. The Maserati had been running damaged since the bridge landing and the tire shot was the last thing it needed, Fox was good enough to manage it, but good enough had a physical ceiling.
Cross: protective father in a stolen truck, following instinct rather than plan. Not a threat yet. Potentially useful, potentially a problem, entirely dependent on how the next few minutes resolved.
George: siren from the north, closing. He'd already been near the bridge area when the call came in, typical George, moving toward the problem before the dispatcher finished the sentence. He'd have the R8's plate. He'd have the Maserati's plate. He might even have the Raptor by now.
News helicopters: overhead, live, feeding footage to every screen in the city. Nothing he could do about those. His face was behind sunglasses and the R8 was technically stolen — his pre-filed report was doing its work.
None of those were unmanageable.
The System updated again, a second 200/200 increment, Fox's blown tire apparently counting as a qualifying hostile-faction impact under the Destiny Is Mine mission structure.
Fair enough.
He followed Fox around the corner and kept his distance steady, close enough to stay relevant, far enough that she couldn't get a clean angle on him through the damaged rear of the car.
All right, he thought. Let's see how this plays out.
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.