Chapter 7: Highway to Hell
Jack hotwired the only functioning vehicle in the shop—a primer-black 1980s muscle car with a reinforced chassis. He threw Lily into the passenger seat, strapped her in, and kicked the garage doors open with the car's heavy steel bumper.
They fishtailed out into the muddy alleyway, the rear tires screaming for traction before biting into the asphalt. Jack slammed the shifter into third gear, tearing down the flooded industrial road.
He checked the rearview mirror. A pair of blinding xenon headlights pierced the rain behind them. It was Silas in the armored SUV, and he was closing fast.
"Hold on!" Jack yelled over the roar of the V8 engine.
He yanked the steering wheel, throwing the muscle car onto the slick, winding coastal highway. The Pacific Ocean raged violently to their right, crashing against the jagged cliffs. To their left, a sheer rock wall.
Silas rammed the back of their car. The impact sent Jack and Lily lurching forward, metal grinding against metal. Lily screamed.
"I've got you!" Jack yelled. He downshifted, intentionally slamming his brakes.
Silas hadn't expected the maneuver. The heavy SUV slammed into the back of the muscle car again, but this time Jack used the momentum, spinning his steering wheel hard to the left. The muscle car acted as a wedge. The SUV’s front tires lifted off the wet pavement.
With a sickening crunch, the armored SUV rode up onto the rock wall, overcorrected, and rolled violently. It flipped end over end, shedding armor plating and glass across the highway, before finally coming to a smoking halt on its roof, inches from the cliff edge.
Jack didn't stop. He pushed the muscle car to its absolute limit, fleeing into the stormy night.
Hours later, as the dawn threatened to break over the horizon, the car’s engine began to knock violently. The radiator had been punctured in the ramming. Steam poured from the hood. The car sputtered and died on a deserted logging road deep in the redwood forests, miles from civilization.
Jack gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. He looked over at Lily, who had fallen asleep from pure exhaustion.
They had survived the night. But as Jack pulled a folded, blood-stained map from his jacket—a map he had taken off one of the dead operatives—his blood ran cold. The map revealed the location of Evelyn’s primary extraction facility. It wasn't just a corporate lab; it was a heavily fortified mountain bunker.
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And if they wanted to stop the Impostor from accessing Arthur's global network and rewriting reality, they didn't have to run away from it. They had to break into it.
Jack stared into the dense, dark woods. The real war was just beginning.
