Continuance (33 page)

They’d slowed a few
kph, and Jason saw the inhibitor’s glow brighten, the waveform cancellation taking
hold again as the currents moved out of phase. Knight fell back more quickly
now. Jason stayed with him, easing off bit-by-bit while taking care to stay
squarely in front. If he could push the Tesla back through several phases, he could
take the last few turns in an all-out run, maybe put a dozen car lengths between
them. Knight wouldn’t have time to make up the difference before they crossed
the finish.

“You did it,”
Costilla said. “He’s falling back.”

Lindsay spared
an impatient glance at the race feed. “I didn’t do anything yet.” He growled a
curse under his breath. “Day’s forcing him back. He must have figured out the
phasing problem. He’s using it to his advantage.”

“So that’s good
right?” Costilla seemed hopeful.

“They’re still
not separating. Day can win the race just like that, with Knight on his bumper
and nobody will call it perks. I’ve almost got this anyway.” Lindsay’s fingers
flew over the datapad.

“You better
hurry. Last turn’s coming up,” Costilla said.

With a final
tap, Lindsay studied the oscillating lines on the datapad. That was it. His
hasty adjustments would vary the inhibitor’s signature to compensate for the
dead spots. Knight would have a couple of seconds at full power while the
inhibitor rebooted with the new parameters, but after that, Day would have his
blowout win.

With the
resonance pattern laid out, Lindsay uploaded the script.

The M3 cruised
out of turn eight, slower than top speed, but still moving fast enough Jason
had to strain against the Gs to stay upright out of the curve. The corkscrew
lay just ahead, the last turn before the finish.

Right here,
Jason thought. Behind
him, the inhibitor glowed with a smoldering coppery color.
I’ll keep him
right here a few more seconds, then sprint to the finish.
He spared a last
glance at the rearview in his HUD, then downshifted, ready to floor the pedal.

But at that
moment, the bright glow of the inhibitor died, and the Tesla shot forward. Jason’s
head snapped against the seatback as Knight slammed into the M3 from behind.

What the hell?
Had the
inhibitor failed?

But he had no
time to wonder. Knight took advantage of the newfound power to slingshot around
on Jason’s high side, going into the corkscrew. Jason stomped his foot on the
accelerator, but Knight had slipped in front before he could get enough speed to
hold him off. Mimicking the move Knight had used earlier, Jason swerved to the
other side and floored the pedal. The M3 pulled alongside, but no further, and
the two cars flew out of the corkscrew in a dead heat.

This isn’t going
to work. I failed.

They headed into
the final straightaway to the finish. Not nearly enough time or track to open
up the lead he needed. He’d be lucky just to edge out a win. Would the DIA
press the issue and try to pin him with perks, even with a small margin of
victory? Better not to take that chance. He eased off the accelerator,
intending to let Knight finish first. The Tesla moved ahead.

Then everything
happened at once.

Time slowed as the
Tesla’s hood exploded in a bright orange flash. Forks of electric plasma the
size of lightning bolts radiated from the space beneath – into the air, along
the ground, caressing the track. One bolt exploded out of the front wheel well,
taking the wheel with it, and the Tesla lurched sideways in a shower of sparks
and debris, suddenly driving on three tires.

To Jason’s eyes,
everything stood still, plainly visible as a divergence of trajectory lines,
almost beautiful in their simple inevitabilities. Each piece of metal and
aeroglass floated along those lines, petals in a blooming flower of
destruction. Knight’s hood, still only a few feet in the air from the Tesla,
would fly past harmlessly. Much of the smaller debris would do the same. But
the lines emanating from the detached wheel – and car itself – all intersected
squarely with the path of his own car.
And
with the hundreds of others
his car
might
make, depending how he reacted. With a sense of rising panic,
he realized no matter how he steered, no matter how quickly he slowed, he
couldn’t escape those deadly lines.

Frantic, his
mind searched for other options – a reaction that would save his life. But everywhere
he looked inside that flower of destruction, he saw only death.

2033

Congestion choked
the side streets almost as bad as the manual lanes of the freeway. But after a
few blocks, the traffic thinned out, and Michelle dodged around cars and
through yellow lights to make up the time. Her tears over the broken charm gone
for now, the urge to reach Patrick returned, even stronger than before. She
dictated a quick message and sent it off with a voice command.

“
Almost there.
Wait for me.”

Almost there,
the words echoed
in her mind. She allowed herself to breathe a sigh, feeling herself relax. She
knew this was irrational. Robert wasn’t going to simply disappear, and she’d
have to deal with him eventually. Whatever course of action she chose, Mandy’s
best interests would come first, as they always had. Meeting with Patrick
wouldn’t magically undo what had led her to this place. But it was a start.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years
now, things had been out of place, out of balance – like a rubber band
stretched out of shape and never allowed to relax. And for fifteen years, she’d
been stretched out with it. She’d thought it was for the best.

But now…

Now that time
was over. Meeting Patrick would be the first step toward restoring the balance that
had been missing in her life for so long. Maybe the most important step. She slowed
as the car in front of her cruised along at fifty, the precise speed limit. Easing
the wheel over, she shifted into the left lane to pass.

Confusion
flashed through her when she straightened the car back out. Or tried to. The
steering wheel stopped with a click a few degrees left of center. The Nissan
continued to drift left, almost at the center median now. Alarm replaced
confusion, and she yanked the wheel harder, trying to straighten the car. Still,
the wheel refused to budge, wrenching to a stop in the same place.

In a panic she
looked down, scanning the wheel. And there it was. The gold tip of a butterfly
wing, lodged in the steering mechanism where it had broken in half.

No. No. No!
She reached to
pull it free.

With a jolt, the
car hit the median, jerking her hand away. An instant later, she was across,
oncoming headlights closing faster than she imagined possible. Her hands heaved
impotently at the wheel, trying to steer the other way, even as her mind told
her the effort was futile.

The first car
swerved, horn blaring, tires screeching, missing her by inches. The second,
following too close behind the first, had no time to react. It neither turned
nor slowed.

Michelle’s eyes
grew wide. Then blackness – instant and absolute – enveloped her.

2089

The fiery
blossom of the explosion fanned out before Jason’s eyes, those deadly lines
radiating out by the hundreds. By the thousands. His mind saw them all without
conscious effort, each describing an arc across his vision.

But taken
together, they created something he’d never sensed before – a kind of dense fabric,
a new awareness. It was more of a feeling than something he could see, and right
then, it felt like pushing against a wall, unyielding and impenetrable. Without
knowing how, he probed its surface, searching through thousands of potential outcomes,
seeking an opening, a crack. Anything.

No more than
half a second had passed since the explosion. And just as he knew where each
chunk of metal, every fragment of glass would fly, some part of his mind told
him what had set them in motion in the first place. The inhibitor’s
interference had somehow overloaded the Tesla’s motors. Was Neal so desperate
to bring down a retread he was willing to risk not only killing one, but bystanders
as well? The question skittered across his consciousness at the speed of light,
gone as quickly as it came.

There! What was
that?

For a fraction
of a nanosecond, he’d felt something changed about the wall, like brushing
across a gap too quickly to get a sense of how large it was, or where it had
been. Doubling back, he searched for it, trying to recall the probability range
where he’d felt it. Somewhere in the intersection equations – the smallest set
of potential outcomes. They showed the interplay between all three of the most
massive objects in play – the M3, the Tesla, and the detached wheel flying
toward him.

The flying hood
was passing by, seeming to hover above the track outside Jason’s window. The
Tesla had drifted in front, cutting off the path ahead, as well as any hope of
veering to the right. The wheel loomed ahead and to the left, on a collision
course for Jason’s windshield.

There!
The opening
again. But it was smaller now, closing fast as possible options dwindled with
every nanosecond.

Jason lunged
through.

Or rather, he
commanded his hands and feet to execute the movements that would cause an event
sequence that would take him through. Spinning the wheel hard left, he let the
car begin a slide, then applied the brake with precise force, just….so.

Time had seemed
almost frozen, but now – strangely – things seemed to accelerate. The world
tilted as the M3 rolled. The left side lifted into the air, backend first,
followed by the right. Completely airborne, the car rotated onto its side, and
though Jason could no longer see the detached wheel with his eyes, he was still
aware of it closing the distance, just a few feet away.

The Tesla,
directly in Jason’s flight path, continued its slide toward the infield in a
shower of sparks and residual electric discharge. Without enough height to
clear the other car, the right half of Jason’s M3 – now pointed at the ground –
would smash into Knight right above the door handles. The detached wheel
floated into view, as Jason had known it would. With a crunch, it hit the side
of his hood closest to the ground, sinking into the carbon fiber like sponge
cake before finally recoiling. The impact accelerated the M3’s mid-air roll, adding
spin down its long axis.

Jason felt
himself move into the same space as the Tesla. His body tensed for the deadly
impact. But the M3 continued its tumble through empty space untouched, passing
fractions of an inch above the Tesla, roof to roof.

Time sped up
further, nanoseconds flowing into milliseconds, milliseconds flowing into
tenths of seconds. His hands tightened on the wheel as he waited for the car to
land upright, four degrees off parallel with the track.

The world
exploded in sound and motion.

Jason’s head whipped
forward, his helmet striking the wheel on impact. The sickening sound of metal
on pavement ripped at his eardrums as the car bottomed out at over a hundred
and ten. When his helmet recoiled from the wheel, he saw only glossy black
through the windshield. A second later, the view beyond flashed on again like a
photoscreen as his crumpled hood flew from its hinges like tinfoil.

He was sliding. And
where he’d expected to see open track, only the red and white concrete of the retaining
wall loomed ahead. Somehow, he’d failed to control the car on impact. He
stomped the brakes so hard his ass lifted off the seat before the restraining
harness stopped him.

The sound of
screeching rubber filled the air. Jason tried to sense his own momentum, to
calculate the distance before he stopped, but the perks had left him, his mind
enervated with spent energy. For as much as it seemed to slow, the car could
have been on glass. Jason could only wait.

He hit the wall.

2033

“Mom?”

The voice was familiar,
and Michelle felt someone squeezing her hand. The chemical smell of antiseptic
hung heavy in the air. As the blackness faded, she squinted against the overpowering
brightness of the lights overhead.

She was lying in
a bed. Her body felt heavy, as if every inch of her was made of lead. The
sensation of wrongness she remembered from before remained, but muted and far
away now, a detached bit of knowledge that had little to do with her. She’d
expected to feel pain. Instead, she couldn’t remember having felt such a
relaxed stillness in her life.

“Mom?” the voice
repeated.

She turned her
head with an effort, seeing a young woman with long blond hair standing beside
the bed. Fear and worry marred her beautiful face, and the red puffiness around
her green eyes made it clear she’d been crying. Michelle realized the hand she
felt clasping her own belonged to her. Figures in blue scrubs moved
purposefully about the small room behind her.