“I’m saying this as your personal physician! You’re completely at your limit—”
But he was interrupted by a crash. Like one of the rear passenger doors had been kicked in, hard. One of the side mirrors flew off the car, heading for the shoulder but then smashing into fragments along the highway.
“The windows and tires are a hundred-percent bulletproof. They’re not about to be troubled by any old gun. We’ll be able to hold it for a while.”
The very next instant a soul-chilling shock ran through the car and the rear window went white.
The problem was that Boiled’s gun was not any old gun. It was practically a portable artillery cannon. It fired shot after shot at the back of the car, crushing the trunk, sending sparks flying off the rear wheels, causing the whole car to swerve. The gunfire stopped for a moment.
Balot continued to spread her senses, to grasp what was happening. The two cars were fewer than five meters apart. Boiled was the only one inside the car behind them. Suddenly, Boiled’s car veered to the right and sped up.
He had finished reloading. Balot sensed Boiled’s car lining up next to theirs, Boiled taking aim with his right arm, judging the distance. The next instant, a roar.
Right at that moment the convertible swerved sharply to the left.
Boiled’s bullet grazed the taillight, then disappeared into the night.
“Balot!” It was the Doctor shouting. He was the one in the driver’s seat, but he understood immediately what had happened. Balot was driving.
–Just duck down. We’ll be okay. Just keep your body low.
Balot snarced the car stereo to communicate, and it obeyed her will, as did the rest of the car.
The steering wheel was spinning every which way right in front of the Doctor’s eyes. Only for a moment, though; it soon sank into the front panel, becoming one with the chassis. The Autodrive function engaged.
While the Doctor sat there in shock, Balot maneuvered the car to avoid the bullets. Three she dodged completely, one grazed the edge of the car roof, and one smashed into the taillight.
Balot had positioned the car deliberately to take this hit. The fragments of the lamp flew into Boiled’s windshield. Balot used this to measure the distance between the two cars, like a boxer’s jabs to probe how far there was between himself and his opponent.
Boiled went to reload his gun, and as he did so Balot unleashed the true potential of the convertible’s engine.
The tires, gears, and shaft were now all set to one single-minded purpose: speed.
The speed of the red convertible leapt up another notch. They were now roaring down the highway toward the outskirts of the city at a speed of over two hundred kilometers an hour. Balot felt her consciousness expanding and becoming ever more sensitive to her surroundings. The car groaned as it pushed on past its limit, and Balot seemed to moan along in sympathy.
Another shock. Not a bullet, this time, but rather the impact of Boiled’s car smashing into the side of theirs.
The red convertible shuddered. Its suspension screamed. The pressure was incredible. And Boiled’s aim was to take advantage of the moment when the pressure became too much—once Balot lost concentration, that was it, and the red convertible would be no more than a sitting duck.
The Doctor realized this. As did Oeufcoque, who said, “Balot, use me!”
Balot felt a faint glow of warmth in her right hand.
Balot hesitated. This was her hand—the hand that had once abused Oeufcoque so. Was she now supposed to forget about that and use him again? She felt the pressure more acutely than ever.
Balot’s eyes met with the deep red in Oeufcoque’s.
Balot closed her eyes. She felt Oeufcoque’s warm body heat and prayed for something to protect her. Just like when she first took Oeufcoque in her hands, all that while ago. Oeufcoque turned with a squelch. She felt a reassuring weight in her hands and a trigger against her finger.
“Don’t, Balot! You’re too—” The Doctor’s words were dissipated by a sharp gust of wind. The car roof was opening up, and the Doctor could only gape at it. The rain came down, assaulting them like razor blades.
Balot felt an extraordinary sense of precision amid the lashing rain and the car that was now pushing three hundred kilometers an hour. She was in control. She grasped the two cars. Their strengths and their Achilles’ heels. She sensed the currents of the violent winds and the raindrops that spiraled all around. The direction the two cars were heading in. Her movements. Boiled’s movements. She sensed everything as one, with perfect timing. Her whole world turned bright white.
Balot’s eyes became bloodshot, and she noticed her skin pressing in tightly on her internal organs. She heard a ringing noise around her forehead, and then could hear no more. The only body part left to rely on was her heart, which kept on beating away, telling her what she needed to do.
It all happened in an instant. The two cars were side by side. Balot leapt up, opened her eyes wide, and wrapped her finger around the trigger. Amid the torrential downpour she thought she heard herself screaming, yelling with all her might with a throat that had long since lost all powers of speech.
She fired. The bullets flowed out of the gun in quick succession, meeting Boiled’s salvo in midair.
Balot’s first shot smashed into the bullet Boiled had fired and was obliterated. So was the second, but the third was enough to deflect the path of the oncoming bullet. The fourth went straight for Boiled’s face, but was rendered harmless by Boiled’s PGF wall, as was the fifth.
The sixth and final bullet found its target—Boiled’s car.
Something ruptured right in front of Boiled’s eyes. Balot’s aim had been true, and she had hit the steering wheel just where she had wanted—on the spot to release the airbag. In an instant, Boiled’s face and arms and body were pinned back, the air pressure from the expanding airbag pressing him into his seat.
With a yell, Boiled focused his PGF, forcing the airbag back far enough for him to extricate his shooting arm. He pushed his gun into the gap so that the muzzle pointed into the airbag, and fired. It exploded. The airbag shattered into a million pieces, as did the glass in the windshield.
Wind and rain and shards of glass came flying into the car, and all were reflected harmlessly off the wall of artificial gravity that Boiled generated.
On the other side of the newly created space was Balot.
The convertible was now back in front of Boiled’s car, roaring away.
Boiled screamed a wordless scream and fired again.
Balot had fired first. Boiled’s PGF was activated in self-defense, warping the flight paths of all bullets in his vicinity—including his own.
It flew up into the air, way over Balot’s head.
Like the red convertible, Boiled’s car was also supposed to have been utterly bulletproof. But Balot could accurately target the exact same location over and over as easily as she could walk a straight line. She fired repeatedly at the hood, hitting the same spot again and again, and this eventually opened up a bullet-sized hole in the not-so-impenetrable armor. Then Balot’s final bullet flew straight through the hole and ripped the cam belt to shreds.
In an instant, Boiled’s car lost the ability to convert its energy into forward momentum.
A gap opened up between the cars. Balot and Boiled both looked for an opportunity to fire, but too much space now divided them. Balot’s car was still devouring the terrain voraciously, and Boiled’s car could no longer keep up.