Axel never got out of his truck, and after a few minutes of staring up at what had to be Lanie’s apartment, he began rolling back down the mostly empty street. I maintained a respectable distance from the back end of his Ramcharger, despite Boston driving norms. It was customary to crawl up the ass of the driver in front of you if they delayed too long at a traffic light or stop sign. They don’t call us MassHoles for nothing.

  Axel unceremoniously took a left turn onto West Broadway. I decided to follow. After all, it wouldn’t be suspicious to also turn onto what was normally the busiest road in Southie. After F Street, we approached the light at the Dorchester-Broadway intersection, where West Broadway turned into East Broadway, the informal line between the more business-focused part of Southie and the more residential.

  Just after the intersection, Axel’s car belched out a huge cloud of smoke. I knew it was ridiculous given my extracurricular profession, but my first thought was that something had gone horribly wrong with the Ramcharger, which was invisible behind a thick cloud of black smoke.

  My worry melted away when my tires blew. I immediately knew I’d run over a similar spike strip deployment system, like the one I had recently gained access to. Apparently, the jig was up. I had obviously been spotted, and now I would need to figure out how to deal with a damaged magical truck.

  Before I could consult the app, tires squealed, and the much larger Ramcharger emerged from the cloud of smoke, whipping into a tight turn and accelerating to plow full speed into the driver’s side door of my lame Mazda. I caught a glimpse of dark eyes glaring at me before I was airborne.

  There’s really nothing quite so loud as the inside of a vehicle during a collision. The crunch noise, along with the rending of metal, began the great cacophony. It was followed by a split second of silence as the Mazda flipped into the air before it crashed back down on its roof, sliding and rolling with a screech of metal. It rolled end over end, eventually coming to a rest, right side up, facing the opposite direction.

  Because I had not been wearing my seatbelt, I found myself somewhere in the middle of the front seat where the impact had thrown me. I sat up groggily, taking stock of my injuries and the state of the car. The driver’s side door was caved in. My left shoulder hung at an unnatural angle, and a piece of the humerus below my shoulder poked through my shirt in a bloody, jagged mess. A cut on my forehead was sending blood gushing into my eyes, making it hard to see the outline of the Ramcharger.

  I sluggishly lifted my right hand to wipe the blood from my eyes. What now? Would Axel move far enough away to gather speed for another strike, or would he use his upgrades to finish demolishing my Mazda? I knew I needed to move, or I was dead, but I couldn’t. I lay half upright in the front seat, my arm and head throbbing, waiting for the impact. None came.

  My head ached, and my ears rang. I knew I was concussed, but I had enough awareness of my surroundings to notice the mangled driver’s side door being ripped open. I blurrily watched as someone hopped into the mangled driver’s side of the Mazda, put the truck in gear, and began driving the nearly inoperable vehicle away from the crime scene, the flat tires squealing on the street.

  “Wake up,” a male voice said. I felt a rough slap on my face. “Listen, dickface. You need to wake up long enough to change the damn vehicle. I can’t do it for you.”

  I heard the words, but had a hard time comprehending what was happening. Given that the man had just ordered me to change the vehicle, he wasn’t some helpful civilian who happened upon my broken truck and rushed me to safety. No, this had to be the Ramcharger Killer sitting in my Mazda. It didn’t make any sense.

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  “Let’s go!” he shouted. “It doesn’t matter what you change it to. Just change it!”

  The blood from my head was now running into my mouth, which was a new kind of gross, but through my brain fog, I managed to pull up the interface and switch the Mazda back to the Ford Ranger. The truck lunged forward as Axel put distance between us and the crash intersection.

  “Good little Endr,” he said, patting my shoulder. I moaned as pain spiked through me. He laughed. “Now, while we have this moment alone, I want to make something perfectly clear. Don’t ever fucking follow me again. I’m a paranoid prick, and I don’t like it. We clear?”

  I didn’t answer. When he squeezed my shoulder, eliciting a sharp scream from me, I realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question. I nodded silently before leaning so far to the right that my body collapsed fully into the passenger side.

  “Now,” Axel continued, his voice gravelly and deep. “I’m going to drop you off on a back road, not far from where you learned your little lesson. You’ll live, but you’ll have one hell of a headache later today.”

  The truck slowed, and I could hear Axel put it into Park. “Not the best conversationalist, are you?” Axel said with a slight chuckle to himself. “Understandable. One more thing you need to know, and it’s the most important thing. In fact, if you remember only one fucking thing about tonight, it needs to be this…Stay the fuck away from Lanie. I don’t want to have to tell you again.”

  In a fog, I heard the door open and shut as Axel left, leaving the Ranger running. I was alone somewhere in Southie. From the sounds of it, the door had closed without difficulty, and the tires and engine sounded brand-new. Axel had left me in an undamaged, unrelated vehicle blocks from Broadway. He’d seemed fairly confident I would survive my wounds, but for the moment, I had to fight to stay conscious. My left side felt utterly broken, but I was fairly certain it was the pain in my arm that was keeping me from sliding off into oblivion. Still, I found I didn’t have the energy to even open my eyes.

  I felt a cold gust sweep over me as the driver’s side door opened and closed again, letting in the late November air. I heard a familiar voice and felt the truck start moving again.

  I could feel my body trying to heal my arm and head trauma. According to Richard Simmons, simply being in my vehicle would accelerate my healing. What kind of force had it taken to even break my bones as a Peak Human? I hadn’t bothered to read the fine print, but perhaps extra-strong bones weren’t even a thing at my level.

  Whatever the case, my bones were indeed breakable, and the healing process wasn’t happening fast enough. I hurt all over, and all I could think about was that motherfucker Axel. He obviously didn’t like me and could have easily killed me, so why hadn’t he? Was it as simple as not wanting to face any heat from fourth_wall? I had a feeling it was.

  “Stay the fuck away from Lanie,” he had said. Were they exes, or worse, currently together? It would make sense, considering his words and actions. I hated the thought of Lanie with anyone else, let alone that asshole.

  A thought occurred to me in my fuzzy, pain-filled rage. What if Axel was an even bigger prick than I had thought? What if he were the one behind the emergence of the shades? After all, I had seen him coming directly from where I had lost the last shade during my pursuit…the dots were starting to connect. So many things came together in my mind–Axel’s desire for notoriety when he ran people over, his ability to track me in the field, his sitting outside Lanie’s apartment, and his proximity to the shade destination.

  I would need to be wary of Axel going forward. I’d have to keep an eye on him, no matter what he said. But all of these things were for tomorrow, I realized, as I finally slipped under.

  - - -

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