Fighting for bits of colored ribbon

  He had the operations radio in one ear and police ser iher. Even together, their was a big fug puzzle piece missing. He was restricted from the Assault team s, whatever they were, so he had to find the pce where the cops and dispatch were ily pointing to.

  “Stay clear of the rave factory.”

  “Say again? firm? We’re scraping downtown.”

  It was the other crash team, audibly angry that dispatch was telling them to stay away from the rave factory, whatever the fuck that was.

  “The loud south of the belt.”

  “Rod dammit.”

  The belt was code for I-30, which was to the south of dohich meant the rave factory wasn’t. He checked google maps, and his memory, for something that looked like the cheesy fucks at dispatch might call it the rave factory.

  He found it. North side of the river, across from downtown, the old abandorit. Red brid busted out windows. He could hear the 90s teo just looking at it.

  He took an i route but couldn’t stop himself from speeding. He made rough pns on the way and chose the simplest of them. He stopped at the emptiest drive thru in a cluster of fast food restaurants, ordered a number ohout looking at anything, ditched his Ace Tactical issued phone irash and dropped his Team-Lead-only radio in a faraday bag.

  Ten bubbling, melting mier, he arked o rown bushes c the curb alongside a crete building the color of soiled sand, a sor warehouse. A vent stig out of the side reminded him of the entrao Dr.X’s shop. Across the street was a line of red brid plywood windowed buildings he would have thought abandoned if not for all the cars parked around.

  Dowreet, past a half-built parking garage and its surrounding sandlot with link fences and dumpsters and work trucks, the old electric building glowered, looking like a dead animal that had got caught in a terrarium formed by a revitalization initiative. He sat and took sips of the drink, ign the burger, and waited for something to happen.

  After a while, he was sure he’d fucked up. He shrugged, sighed, set down his drink and got out his drop out bag.

  Then something happened. A subtle movement, up on top of the electric building. Someone crawling, then ing down the side on a repel line. An instant ter, an engine revved behind him. The noise bounced off the brick walls and sliced through the fenced in lots and sheet metal sheds. A V8 SUV. In his rear view it turned onto the street and sped away from him, then took the first turn. He didn’t move, didn’t breath, until it was out of sight, then threw the drink on the passenger seat and flipped the fastest bitch of his life.

  He followed the SUV without any pn, beyond not to be seen. It winded down streets, and for a moment he was sure he had lost it, until anine roared from up on the raised bridge that brought the wide avenue from downtown onto the peninsu. Another car, speeding away from something. The SUV revved again, just oher side of a building, aurned into an alley.

  Guided by the engines, he found himself ing out from behind a white brick warehouse onto the widest expanse of bare t this side of the AT&T stadium. Two massive dead empty parkinglots where some a dance halls or something had been demolished four decades ago, and only scattered shrubtrees stood to break up the roar of motors that shot over the ndscape, like the chase was a show put on just for him.

  The SUV cut across one of the parking lots and bounced over the curb onto the empty nes of 287. Luke followed oreets, then pulled behind them. It was 2 pm on a Wednesday, and there wasn’t a single car in the half-mile between him and the shrinking SUV.

  He let go of any thoughts of not being seen, and floored it. He took his radio out of the bag and switched it on.

  “- route. Verify path.”

  “Elis. Repeat, Ellis.”

  “firm Ellis.”

  “Ping defence.”

  “Mercedes, sedan, Grey, 100 meters ahead. firmed lead. Jeep, forest green, alongside, suspect. Camry, white, alongside, suspect. Four Runner SUV, bck, fifty meters behind team, suspect tail."

  It took Luke a sed to realize the st vehicle was his own, which meant they thought he might be part of the defeeam. Didn’t they reize their own vehicles? Wasn’t there a GPS tracker in the car itself? It dawned on him that throwing the pho but driving around in his Ace issued vehicle would have been a stupid move, if they had been more thh.

  He thought about telling dispatch who he was, but decided against it. Fuck em. He was gonna see how the hit went down, and that was worth taking a bullet, fuck a reprimand.

  And the way it went down, was fucked. Ohe target hit Northside, the main assault team went all out, but even going over 100 mph, they didn’t catch them until the bridge. Luke watched from a quarter-mile away, downtown rising in fshing e over the river on the horizon like a reing priestly king a sacrificial dance, waiting for the obsidian and the beati.

  Guns fshed and gss and crumpled car bodies caught the sunlight and the adrenaline spiking sounds skipping down the bridge and boung up from the river, ged on their way to his ears, like a story of murder given magical elements ielling.

  The vehicle’s speeds dropped by half after the first impact, and Luke gained on them until he was close enough to see the SUV darting, expertly, between the cars and trucks that fell at it like meteors magized to its frame, bristling with guns firing as fast as they fug could. A stray bullet skipped off and struck Luke’s windshield. Others cracked o him. Something thumped on the seat behind him, and the wind was suddenly i his side, but he hardly noticed.

  They made it, somehow, half a mile past the bridge, where the evening light cast long shadows on an interse between bridustrial buildings, before the SUV made tact at st with the target sedan. Luke breathed a sigh of relief like he was right there in the seats with them. A heartbeat ter the defense vehicles joined in the clusterfuck, and a mae gun opened up from the back of a box truck that had swerved into a lot ahead of them. Luke had no idea if they were with the defense or Ace Tactical, but they seemed to raih indiscriminately.

  He pulled over o a telephone pole to watd the gunfire reached a peak, like it was all just one big fireworks show, the silent. two other cars had swooped in without Luke notig and gunned down the SUV crew and tossed a few grenades uhe box truck, which had been with Ace after all.

  After a moment of silend a reshuffling of the gunmen into the two fresh cars, the target sedan took off, its armored windows white as snow, with a car full of killers oher side.

  Luke put it in drive and rolled bato the street like he had pulled over to have a smoke. He was watg the three-car caravan merge onto 35 just ahead of him when a voice came over his radio.

  “Shows over crash cuck. Fuck off.”

  Luke tossed the radio bato the faraday bag and turned uhe bridge toward the highway.

  The car radio clicked on and the voice came out of the speakers.

  “Listen here you fug Ass Tactical crash cart retard, back the fuck off or your boss is gonna have you sug ass at the hiring kiosk seven days a week.”

  Luke had thought, briefly, that this was some kind of ploy by the defeeam to get him to back off, but then rationality caught up with him. Why would they do that instead of just shoot him? Why would they have access to his supposedly encrypted radio el and his cars system? Why would they threaten him with his boss—

  Two cars appeared seemingly from nowhere and shot by him up the ramp. A sedan and a small rounded SUV. The vehicles screamed housewife grocery trip, but the driving said seasoreet racers.

  “Goodbye,” the voice said. While Luke was gawking at the other cars, a third came along side his rear bumper and executed the est pit maneuver he had ever seen.

  His 4 Runner rolled sideways, tumbled through the air, and the burning gold skyline whipped over itself in the windshield like some hidden god was throwing ph in a perfect spiral pass toward some unimaginable end zoh whatever team Luke had found himself opposite’s name embzoned oroturf.

  As he floated in the air, Luke sensed something amiss, and it wasn’t just the shift in gravity.

  The SUV came to a g stop half hanging over the barrier. Luke shook off the airbag fach, undid the seatbelt, and crawled around in the gss drenched sideways cab until he found the drop out kit. Somewhere along the way, his hand radio slipped out of the faraday bag and started screaming at him.

  “Get the fuck out now! Report immediately to your super—”

  I’m on it bro, he thought.

  He fell away into the bck as the sounds of rushing cars blended into that distinctive Dreamworld hum, and a few mier Drudge was scowling at him.

  After the yelling, and the slow, measured expnation of his write up, with Car-Crash standing by, shaking his head, and holding his elbow with one hand in a way that Luke had e to know meant he was holding back a ugh, Luke asked to purchase the mem of the job, which started the yelling up again with gusto.

  But, in the end, probably due to some Union or corporate or unwritten rule or some shit, he was able to purchase the mem, though they promised it would be heavily edited.

  But it wasn’t. At least not any more edited than any of his other Hardworld mem. And Luke had gotten the hang of spotting the Ace Tactical director’s cuts and repg them with his owhe mome back to his realm, since his return trips through the Dreamworlds had preserved his Hardworld mem in a slightly more stable form, at least long enough for him to patch the holes.

  It was during this process of reviewing the mem that he realized the ramifications of what had happened on the inside.

  There had been two attack teams on the job. Ace tactical, and whoever had tried to roll him off the overpass. It would have been no big deal, sometimes teams went halfsies on a job, especially franchisees of steltion, but their aggressive rea to his preseenpound’s excessively violent grilling, even for him, and the way Drudge had paused his scrape to make a call the moment he realized what Luke had been up to after his team had dropped out, told him there was something else going on.

  The sed pythrough of the mem got him the rest of the way, and a quick chat with Car-Crash firmed it.

  “Yep. You cracked the code. Ace Tactical is a certified dyed in the wool runner up. A crash team on steroids. But to be fair, that’s by design.”

  They were in Car-Crash’s realm, or at least a wing of it, like a giant had gotten a handful of Indonesia jungle and spped it on the side of a gothic revival mansion. It was the first time Luke had ever been in someone else’s Realm, and he could feel that someone near him, looking out from every object, talking in every sound, and he realized that someone was the real Car-Crash.

  It should have been fttering, but all he could think about was that not once had Rory ever eveioned her realm. He tried to distract himself.

  “But why?”

  “Fodder makes a job easier, if you afford it. And the other teams are usually steltion’s rising stars, so everyone walks away happy.”

  “Besides the w stiffs at A.T..”

  “Oh, they make out ok. Usually rejects who couldn’t get a job with an actual team.”

  Car-Crash wi Luke and passed him a drink.

  Luke looked out at the jungle mist dissolving into the bck, and his mind wandered back to Rory.

  “So, then, how does a blooded?”

  “What?”

  “If they never hit targets,--”

  “Oh shit,” Car-Crash ughed and shook his head, swirling dy fvored Hookah smoke everywhere.

  “You don’t have to kill the target to get a hey just kill someone who’s blooded. Usually by ramming a car into them.” He chuckled.

  So, all the named guys Luke had rode with, all the ones he had looked up to and e the start, had probably never killed an actual target. Which meant,

  “So is everyone pissed at me for killing a live mark?”

  “You could say that.”

  “But they gave me a fug promotion the first time!”

  “Yeah, because that was ued, and they figured that was the best way to lock you down. Figured you were just an addict gunning for a bigger payout. But if you make a habit of it, you’ll get a target on your back.”

  “I guess I should stop then huh?”

  They looked at each other for a full sed before both broke out into ughter.

  Have you ever seen a great tradition twisted and moized? ime, a rebellion begins. episode, The Boards.