The Maserati didn't flip the way cars did in movies.
It went up, the blown rear tire sending the rear end loose, the car rotating around its own center of mass with a kind of terrible inevitability and then came back down sideways onto the grass median with a sound that traveled through the ground as much as the air.
Before it landed, both doors had opened.
Fox and Wesley were already moving, momentum carrying them clear of the rolling chassis as it came to rest with a creak of settling metal.
Locke drifted the R8 around the detached tire still bouncing across the asphalt, but the Raptor behind him wasn't as quick, the tire hit Cross's windshield dead center, the glass shattering, and the truck lurched sideways before Cross got it back under control.
In the half-second that created, Cross opened his door and fired.
Three shots, close range, through Locke's windshield.
Locke was already moving, out of the seat, door open, clear of the car before the third round hit the headrest. The Raptor's bumper caught the R8 and shoved it off the road in a shriek of metal, and the sedan followed the Maserati onto the grass and caught fire with the particular inevitability of a car that had already had a difficult week.
Cross didn't stop.
He grabbed Wesley, already on his feet, bewildered, pulled him into the Raptor, and was accelerating again before the door had closed. Wesley, over Cross's shoulder, had the expression of someone who had been grabbed by a stranger and not yet processed that the stranger was his father.
Cross took a round through the arm from Locke's gun as he pulled away.
He didn't stop.
Locke watched the Raptor's tail lights recede and made the calculation in under a second: Cross wasn't a target, Cross was a complication, and Cross had just taken Wesley with him, which meant the Uninvited Guest mission structure still had an open item.
He looked at Fox.
Fox was already up, gun in hand, firing.
He met the first shot with one of his own, the two rounds colliding fifteen feet between them and then they were in it properly: a close-quarters gunfight on the grass median of a Manhattan street, police sirens building from three directions, news helicopters overhead, both of them working through the same problem set from opposite sides.
Six rounds each. All of them curved. All of them met.
The sound of it, the rapid-fire collisions, each one throwing brief sparks, was the kind of thing that the news helicopter footage was going to be played on repeat for the next week.
Fox was good. She was better than the Butcher had been in pure shooting terms, and she had the patience to work the angles rather than force them.
But she had a limited magazine and Locke had planned for this.
After twelve rounds, Fox pulled the trigger on an empty chamber.
He put a shot through the gun in her hand, the impact spinning it away and followed it immediately with a round to her knee as she shifted her weight to close to close combat range.
Fox went down.
She hit the ground and held herself still, breathing through it, the way someone does when they're in pain and have made a decision not to show it. Her eyes were clear. She looked at him without expression, waiting for what came next.
Locke looked back at her.
He understood what she was. He understood why she'd come after him, not malice, not greed, the Loom had named him and she'd followed the code she'd built her life around. In another circumstance he'd have called that a respectable quality.
This was not another circumstance.
He was on her kill list, she was a professional who would survive this and come back, and the mission structure the System had built around the Textile Factory wasn't going to close with Fox still operational.
"Don't," she said.
"I know," he said.
He shot her.
He was still standing over the scene when he heard the car.
One vehicle, moving fast but controlled. The engine note of a standard-issue NYPD sedan. No sirens now, just the lights.
George stepped out.
He had his weapon up before he'd fully cleared the door, stance set, voice level: "Drop the weapon. Right now."
Locke turned around slowly.
He was wearing sunglasses. The jacket was dark. The R8 was on fire in the grass thirty meters away, which made for a dramatic backdrop that he hadn't arranged but wasn't going to complain about.
George looked at him across the sightline of a drawn weapon and said, with the economy of someone who had been doing this a long time: "Sin Hunter. You are under arrest."
Locke let a moment pass. "Captain Stacy."
George's expression didn't move. The fact that the suspect knew his name and rank was noted and filed.
"The main force is about two minutes out," Locke said. "Give or take."
"Then you've got two minutes to put the gun down."
"Or what?"
George didn't answer that. He didn't have to. His weapon was up and he was steady and the answer was implicit.
Locke looked at him, really looked at him, the way you look at something you've thought about from a distance and are now seeing close and thought about Gwen. About the dinner table. About the way George had assessed him over a meal and decided he wasn't sure yet. About the fact that George would figure it out eventually, and what that would mean.
He could not shoot George Stacy.
Not because the System would stop him, it wouldn't, George wasn't Locke's target but because of the simple arithmetic of what it would cost. There was a version of this world where he kept moving through it and the people in it remained intact. He preferred that version.
"Your main force is going to find a crime scene," Locke said. "I'd suggest you let them handle the paperwork."
"I'm not moving."
"I know." He took a slow step sideways, not toward George, just lateral. "Neither am I, for another ninety seconds."
He looked up at the news helicopter, it had closed to about three hundred feet, which was closer than it should have been and raised the gun toward it in a line that was clearly not aimed at the helicopter but clearly could be.
The helicopter climbed immediately.
"You're not going to get out of this," George said.
"Captain." Locke lowered the gun. "You've been working all day. You've got a daughter with an interview tomorrow and a wife who made pastries for a student she's met once." He paused. "Go home."
George's jaw tightened.
He knew.
Not what Locke was, not the full picture, not yet. But something in the way Locke said daughter and interview and pastries registered as information that shouldn't be accessible to a suspect in a gunfight.
The sirens were very close now.
Locke turned and walked.
George fired once, at the ground, three feet ahead of Locke's path. Warning shot. Standard procedure when a suspect is fleeing.
Locke stopped. Looked back.
"I don't want to kill any of your colleagues," he said. "That's not a threat. It's just what's true."
He waited one beat to let that land.
Then he turned into the dark between two buildings and was gone before the first additional unit came around the corner.
[Destiny Is Mine - Hostile Faction Elimination: Fox]
[Achievement Points ×200 / Potential Points ×200]
[Mission: My Fate Is Mine to Command - Status: Wesley Gibson not yet resolved. Mission remains open.]
He walked quickly, mapping his route out of the area. Cross had taken Wesley. The mission wasn't closed. The factory was still for Monday.
The night wasn't over yet.
Soon, he thought. But not tonight.
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.