I wanted to know, and that didn’t have as much to do with being an Arbiter as with simple curiosity. Never mind the old saying about that.
Something hit the car with a jarring impact, shocking me out of my wandering thoughts. The hit was a hard one; I could feel it in the base of my spine. I was stunned at first. Car accidents are rare. Daphne’s death in one was a freak event. I had never even met anyone else who had lost someone in a car accident. What was going on? My car’s A.I. should have seen any trouble, made the necessary corrections, and avoided the impact.
The car sped up, and I was thrown violently against the door and then just as violently the other way. With a mounting sense of dread, I realized that the car’s A.I. was taking evasive actions. Someone was chasing us.
My voice was shaky as I spoke to the onboard computer. “Street view and sitrep.”
The screen lit up, and I saw the street outside. We weren’t alone on the road. There were people on the sidewalks and other cars racing by, all of which were trying to get as far away from us as possible.
The A.I. spoke, a soothing female voice with a British accent. “Sitrep as follows: we are pursued by an armored vehicle, and it is attempting to force us off the road. If we continue at this speed, we will impact an approaching monorail. To prevent this outcome, we may be forced to accept impact with the armored vehicle. Survivability is dependent on the angle of impact but is no greater than 25%.”
My car was weaving back and forth, speeding up on every straight and slowing down on every curve. Beside the road, I saw the winding, snakelike shape of a nearby waterway. Up ahead, I saw a bridge across the river and a maglev monorail track with the lights of an approaching train.
That was when I panicked. It couldn’t possibly be real, but there I was in a grotesquely familiar scene. It felt like some kind of cheesy ghost story, where you suffer in the most ironic way possible to punish you for your past sins. My peripheral vision disappeared, washed away by a red darkness. The sound of my ragged breathing filled the car.
The maglev crossed in front of me, a rattling wall of metal and plastic. My car’s A.I., programmed to kill its own driver if necessary to save as many lives as possible, gave up on escaping our pursuers and braked with a jolt, throwing me forward against my seat belt. It must have decided in that moment that the survivability was optimal for everyone concerned, which did not imply we would all survive. Whoever was chasing me hit hard, an impact that slammed my teeth together and cut my tongue. My mouth flooded with thick, hot blood.
I felt something like freefall and realized in a vague but terrifying way that the car was flipping end over end. We hit a person on the street, and I saw their head explode in a burst of blood and brains against the car before the screen went dark. We hit something else, something big enough to jostle my whole body. It held us in place for just a moment, then fell away, like someone had opened a trapdoor beneath my feet.
I had lost any sense of up or down, but I felt a sickening lurch in the pit of my stomach as the car cleared the edge of the embankment, then a sudden jolt as it plunged into the cold, muddy water below.
6
I wasn’t knocked unconscious, but I did lose where I was and what was going on for several seconds. I heard a pleasant sound of gurgling water and felt like I was floating free. Perhaps in outer space? No. There isn’t any water in outer space, and I wondered why I had thought such a silly thing. Was I at a campground, waking up in my tent by a stream? I could get up and go fishing, or take a boat out on the lake nearby…
I opened my eyes and saw the water slowly filling the car. The roof of my vehicle was now below my head, and I was hanging suspended by my own seatbelt. The disorientation cleared and I realized I must be underwater.
The fear took over then. I needed to do something, but all I could think about was Daphne. Her last few minutes must have been like this, watching the water rise inexorably as it seeped in through the ventilation and the gaps between the body and the crushed passenger door.
I’ve been in a lot of desperate situations, like being trapped by heavy battle androids in an apartment building or hunted by Nightwatch officers in impenetrable nanosuits. As bad as those situations were, neither of them felt as hopeless and desperate as those first few seconds in my car.
I felt completely powerless, like I’d been caught in some kind of karmic beartrap and had no choice but to die. The water kept rising, slow and steady but clearly unstoppable. I was in terrible danger, but I knew exactly what I needed to do; I had been trained in how to deal with exactly this situation.
There were a series of steps. The first was to wait, because I needed the pressure inside the vehicle to equalize with the outside. The next step was to get a door open. The third step was to swim away from the entry into the water. The fourth step was to reach the surface, and the fifth step was to reach the shore.
My breathing calmed as I remembered, and I consciously shut off my own emotions. It took an effort of will, but I felt the coldness come down over my thoughts. Daphne died like this, yes—but I didn’t have to, not as long as I stayed calm.
I checked my mental state by listening to my breathing. It sounded calm and regular, if a little deeper and faster than normal. So far, so good. I had no choice but to wait, so I used the time to improve my situation. I unclicked my seatbelt but found the mechanism was damaged. When it wouldn’t open, my breathing sped up a little. I heard a sound from outside the car, a distant popping I couldn’t identify. Not knowing what it was, my mind was distracted for just a moment. I gained control of my breath, realized I could cut myself loose, and retrieved my knife from my belt.
The exact same knife I had killed several Nightwatch officers in hand to hand combat with on Venus would save my life again, as long as I could stay calm and focused on the task at hand. Once I made the cut, I dropped halfway toward the water with a sudden lurch, and the knife slipped out of my hand and disappeared.
So much for that. I had cut the strap, but I was still hung up on something. There’s a time to be calm, and there’s a time for desperate effort. I yanked and kicked, letting myself give in to panic. I felt something give way, and my body dropped down into the rising water.
The cold made me gasp, and I fought to a sitting position. These cars are well-armored, and the water was leaking in so slowly that I still had time to think. I found myself wondering about the continued popping sounds.
What was going on outside the car?
“Street view and sitrep.” No response. The A.I. was dead, probably killed at the moment of impact. I wouldn’t know till I got out there, so my best bet at understanding my situation was an educated guess.
The level of force needed to send a vehicle flipping end over end would also be enough to destroy whatever did the damage unless it was up-armored like a troop transport. Whoever was chasing me had access to military or paramilitary resources. So, not a random attack, but an intentional assassination by professional killers.
They would want to make sure they had fulfilled their contract, so they would probably be waiting for me when I reached the surface unless StateSec had already arrived. I needed to make sure I had a weapon, but I wasn’t armed and geared like I would usually be on a mission. This was a day off after all, and a visit to Sophie’s was not a situation where I’d expected to end up in a firefight.
Fortunately for me, I’m as paranoid as any other Arbiter. In the seat above my head, I had a submachine gun with a full magazine of ammo. All I had to do was fish it out, and I would at least stand a fighting chance. I reached up toward the seat but the frame was badly bent. I couldn’t get my fingers between the seat and the floor.
I would just have to take my chances… no. I still had that knife, assuming I could find it in the water at my feet. I reached down carefully and felt around for my missing blade. My fingers closed on it, but the cold of the water made them numb and clumsy. When I pulled the knife out, blood was streaming from my fingers. I couldn’t afford to care
; I had to concentrate on getting that gun.
I spit out a long strand of blood and phlegm, got a grip on the slippery knife, and started sawing away at the upholstery above my head. The water reached my knees, and I noticed it was starting to flow in faster. I didn’t have much time before I had to open the door and either make my bid for escape or drown because I had waited too long. The temptation was just to go, but if they gunned me down when I reached the surface then all this effort would have been for nothing.
If I had seen what I’d be doing now the day I bought that car, I would never have paid extra for the genuine leather. Be that as it may, I yanked and cut until the seat was in shreds, then wrestled the case out through the ruin of upholstery.
The water was rising, but I took the time to return my knife to its scabbard while hugging the case to my body. When I opened it at last, clicked the magazine into place, and put the strap around my shoulder, I gave a shout of triumph.
My sense of victory didn’t last for long. I was still in the car, settling down into the bottom of the river. The water was rising, and there was a good chance I had a gunfight ahead of me as soon as I poked my head out of the water. My car’s 25% chance of survival had only been talking about the crash, so my overall chances of lasting through the next half-hour were probably more like 2.5%.
That thought should have demoralized me, but for some reason it had the opposite effect. As soon as I realized that my triumph was temporary, and that I was probably about to die no matter what I did, I felt a surge of euphoria. If I was going to die, then it didn’t really matter what I did next, right?
There was nothing to worry about if it was all going to end the same way, which meant it was all just a game. The goal wasn’t to go on living, but just to live for as long as possible. Two minutes instead of one, or five instead of two. Bonus points for kills, taking as many of them to the grave as I could drag down with me.
The water was now at my chest, and it was almost time to make a break for it. I turned around, positioning myself to get out the passenger side door. Once the water stopped flowing into the car and the pressure equalized, I’d open the door. After that, let the games begin!
My heart was pounding wildly as I prepared to start playing. I could hear it in my ears above the rush of water, above my hoarse breathing, above whatever that popping sound was.
And then I got it. That sound was gunfire, which meant the killers were definitely still up there. Were they just firing into the water, hoping to hit me by blind chance? Somebody up there really wanted me dead and was prepared to go to great lengths to make it happen. Why wasn’t StateSec on the scene yet? Or maybe they were, and the hitmen were actually so determined to kill me that they were even willing to engage local law enforcement to do it.
So much the better. I grinned like a death’s head as the water reached my chin, then I took several deep breaths and held the last one. It was time to go. I popped the door seal and pushed it open through the dark green water. I saw a fish flit past through the reeds and mud, braced myself with both feet and grabbed the sides of the door with both hands, then pushed off into the river.
I didn’t go straight up. The air escaping the car would have bubbled up to the surface and flagged where I’d landed. Instead I swam away from the car, not completely sure what direction I was going but confident that anywhere was better. When I had gone as far as I thought I could manage, I drifted slowly upward, careful to make no sound at all as my head broke the surface.
My body was desperate for air by the time I got there, and it was all I could do not to gasp so loudly they could have heard me from the riverbank. That would have cut the game short, so I fought my burning chest and breathed in slowly and evenly.
I looked around, moving smooth and deliberate. There was something burning up on the road, most likely a vehicle. I was drifting toward it, carried along by the river current. There was the bridge up ahead of me, and shapes moving on top of it. I couldn’t see them clearly at first, but they seemed to be pointing down toward the water.
There was a sandbar in the river just below the bridge, and a huge, tangled pile of trees and other random flotsam. If I could float up there, I could conceal myself among the intertwined branches while I called in reinforcements.
I drifted closer and was finally able to identify the figures on the bridge. Four armored men were aiming down into the water and taking shots occasionally. I couldn’t make out any details from this distance, but they gave a paramilitary impression. At first I couldn’t understand why they were shooting randomly like that, but then I realized they wouldn't be able to use thermal imaging or backscatter scans to find me. Water is effective enough as a radiation shield to disrupt any scanning capabilities the men might have. They had misjudged how long it would take me to float down to the bridge, but in general they had the right idea.
I wished I had something other than a submachine gun. Since the killers were armored, I wouldn’t be able to just unleash on them and kill them all. I needed to take precision shots, targeting the weak points in their armored suits, and that’s something a submachine gun just can’t do. The only way I’d be able to kill them was from almost point-blank range or by aiming directly at the face.
I thought of Raven Sommers, the Section 9 sniper I had briefly met on Tower 7. She had a way of showing up, taking out your enemies from some hidden location, then disappearing again like a vengeful ghost. I could sure have used her help right then.
I didn’t even have to try to reach the tangle of trees; the current pulled me to the same spot. This had an added benefit, because I was able to use the debris to screen my approach. I bumped up against a sodden branch and held on tight, watching the enemy to make sure they hadn’t spotted me.
They took no notice, but one of them unclipped a grenade from his belt, primed it, and tossed it into the river. It exploded with a gush of water that jumped up three or four meters, and then they all started shooting again.
I just stayed there behind the trees, as the bullets whizzed past, making the water splash and ripple like an artificial rain shower. Blood was trickling down my face, leaking out from the cut on my fingers and pooling in my mouth. Everything hurt and everything was wet, but I waited there patiently. Every second I lived was a win in the game, and there was no reason to rush the situation. A branch snapped in half about three feet away from me, but none of the bullets got any closer than that. Time to call in the reinforcements—
No, not yet. One of the four men stepped forward, picked his spot in the river carefully, then dropped from the bridge.
It was a strange sight to see, because it didn’t really look like a jumping human. There was no fluidity, no bracing for impact. He just plummeted straight down, like a falling boulder or a huge chunk of metal.
My skin crawled at the sight, and I couldn’t pinpoint why at first. What I did know was that if he was in the water and almost totally armored, my odds of killing him from my current position depended entirely on ambush. I would have to stay still, wait till he showed himself, then shoot him in the head from as close as possible.
But what if he spotted my legs kicking slowly? I glanced down into the water below me but couldn’t see him. I didn’t like my chances, especially not if he decided to head straight for the little island or, worse yet, throw a grenade in my direction just to make sure.
I ducked my head back underwater and pushed away from the sand bar, kicking as quietly as I could manage. I had to fight the current, but if I could make it to the far bank…
They started shooting again from up on the bridge, though I had no way of knowing whether they’d seen me or not. The bullets sliced through the water to my right and left. Where the hell was StateSec? There had been a serious car crash, vehicles were on fire, and men were shooting guns and dropping grenades in the river. How could that possibly have failed to attract attention?
There was no time to worry about it. I had to reach the bank, find a hiding place, and call this
in. Whoever these guys were, I wanted StateSec on their trail. Even if I didn’t succeed in killing any of them before they got me, that would at least be worth something.
I went under the bridge, surfaced again on the other side, and took another breath. Where was the man who had dropped into the water? I hadn’t seen a glimpse of him, but I could hardly believe he had held his breath for that long. He was probably diving for the wreck of my car, hoping to get visual confirmation that I was dead inside. I had to make for the bank, where I could at least buy myself a little bit of time.
I started swimming, trusting in the sound of the rushing water to disguise the noise I made. When I reached the shallows at last, my limbs felt like they were made of cast iron. I fought the pain and the exhaustion, dragging myself over the rocks in a low crawl. The men on the bridge had stopped shooting, but I could hear them calling to each other.
“Do you see him yet?”
“I saw something move over there!”
“Bullshit, he’s drowned.”
I came out on the bank, surrounded by clumps of grass and algae-covered rocks. I was right under the burning car, and smelled something like melting plastic and roast pork combined. I checked for my weapon and found it still secured around my neck. So far, so good. Now to get up that bank, hide behind the burning car, and call this in.
I dragged myself up the embankment, slipping and skinning my knees. When I neared the top, I found a body sprawled out on the road in front of the burning vehicle. It was a middle-aged woman, who had apparently crawled from her car on broken legs and arms. As horrifying as it was to see her twisted limbs and know she’d crawled on them, that wasn’t what killed her. There was a little hole in the center of her forehead, and from the lack of an exit wound she’d been staring right up at the killers when they did it.
I looked up through the open door of the burning car and saw a body engulfed in flames, so twisted and blackened I couldn’t even say whether it was a man or a woman. Across the road on the other side there was another car sitting with its door open. An older man was inside, still strapped into his seat. His head lolled back, and blood trickled down from a wound in his head.
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 29