Published at 12th of August 2022 9:16 pm

Book 2: Chapter 131: Road Rage

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Dan had a series of very important decisions to make, and very little time to make them. Instead of wringing his hands and acting hastily, he did what he often did when faced with a difficult decision, and dropped into t-space. The cold calm of the Gap settled into his bones, and calmed his mind. He thought through the situation, and his options.

He obviously couldn’t just allow whatever was in the duffel bag to go off. Maybe he was wrong; maybe it wasn’t a bomb. But Dan couldn’t take that risk. Now that the thought had crossed his mind, it was stuck there. He had to assume the worst, and deal with the damn thing. His training kicked in, and he automatically evaluated the possibilities.

The rent-a-locker had cameras, so it had to be something big enough to take them out, or small enough to not be noticed. Maybe some kind of small, smokeless incendiary to destroy whatever evidence Dunkirk had stashed in the bag. He was positive the feds in this dimension had some sort of device that could accomplish that. The bag would be rendered useless, and nobody would notice until Dunkirk’s rental time ran out. Dan knew with absolute certainty that Dunkirk had paid for the locker through some sort of untraceable account.

This was the best-case scenario.

The worst case was a lot more grim, and also the scenario Dan was leaning towards. He didn’t see much reason for Dunkirk to destroy his own clothes, and his veil wasn’t picking up much more than that in the bag. There were a few electronics that Dan couldn’t identify, but most of those were hooked into a plastic casing filled with a suspicious liquid and powder mix. Dan suspected this was a bomb of the building-destroying variety, big enough to cause even more chaos and smooth out Dunkirk’s getaway.

Dan had a very low opinion of the fed.

So, Dan was left with a decision. Did he just hurl the duffel into his hammerspace? It wouldn’t stop a hypothetical explosive from going off. Dan’s hammerspace wasn’t time-locked. It ran at the same speed as Dan’s perception, and now wasn’t the time to experiment with changing that. He had no idea what would happen if a bomb went off inside his little pocket dimension, and he didn’t really want to find out. Left with few other ideas, Dan chose to cut the knot.

He reappeared on the roof of the rent-a-locker, sent his veil back down towards Dunkirk’s duffel bag, and found the object he thought was a bomb. His veil traced the wiring along the casing, and followed the distinctive hum of electricity. Dan ripped it all into t-space, and sent spiraling through the abyss. The liquid and powder within the case he left alone. It would act as evidence, and without an ignition source, it should be safe. It was obviously stable. Dunkirk wouldn’t have carried it around if that weren’t the case. He was no suicide bomber, just an amoral bureaucrat.

He’d ask Cornelius to send the bomb squad, just in case. Maybe evacuate the building. But first—

Where’d Dunkirk go?

The fed had left the building. Dan had kept an eye on the man through his little spy-rock, but the majority of his focus had been with his veil. That distraction was now costing him, as Dunkirk’s long strides had taken him out the door and around the corner. Dan quickly created a new door to peer through, stuck to the wall of the building like an insect. He frantically searched the street, finding nothing.

He heard, more than witnessed, a car peeling out of the parking lot, its engine revving loudly. Dan acted on instinct, relocating his portal to peek at the departing vehicle. He caught a flash of pale skin through tinted windows, but saw little else. He tried again, making the portal further in front of the car, stuck on the underside of a street light. He couldn’t risk getting any closer. Small as his doors were, it would still be pretty damn obvious if a floating eyeball appeared in the middle of the street. Once again, the car passed. The front windows were blacked out. There was a single male in the driver’s seat, but that was all he could make out.

Dan cursed, and stood. He sprinted to the edge of the roof, keeping his spy-rock stuck to his face like an eyepatch. He tracked the car’s progress with one eye, while his other scanned the street. He mentally categorized every passerby, searching for Dunkirk’s general size and shape.

Nothing.

This was stupid. Multi-tasking wasn’t really a thing the human mind could do. It was possible for the brain to automate certain ingrained, or well-practiced actions, but focus could only really reside in one direction. It was only a matter of time before the car made a turn that his mind didn’t register, or a shape on the street entered a building that he didn’t catch. The street or the car. Dunkirk could be in either place. Dan needed to pick an option, or lose both.

The car blew through a red light with the same reckless haste Dan had seen once before. He made his decision, and focused on the vehicle. It was absolutely blitzing through the city streets, taking full advantage of the APD’s distraction. Dunkirk was flooring it towards the highway, weaving dangerously through traffic while heading south. But this was Austin, and nobody got anywhere fast. Dan knew it was only a matter of time.

The car finally was forced to stop at a jammed intersection, and Dan made his move. He willed a new door to open, this time inside the car. It appeared above the driver’s feet, and beneath the steering column, the portal facing downwards. It was flush against the plastic knee panel. All Dan could see were the occupant’s feet, but that was enough.

Dan knew those sneakers.

He grinned savagely, and closed the portal. He created a new one, higher up, and used it to scout locations. Dan willed himself into an office building overlooking the traffic jam. He scared the absolute shit out of a janitor, and Dan quickly jumped a floor. He sprinted to a window and looked down on the street. The intersection was still blocked by honking cars, and Dunkirk’s little sedan was surrounded on all sides. The man wasn’t going anywhere for a few seconds, at least.

Dan created a door to his garage in the building’s floor. He reached down, opened his toolbox, and pulled out a hammer and several nails. He closed the portal, then created another, this time no larger than an apple. He oriented it directly beneath the rear tire of Dunkirk’s car. It was flush with the concrete in that impossible way that only Dan’s Navigator could manage. Bits of rubber tread poked through the portal, which Dan had created in the wall of a nearby cubicle.

It was a mind-bending perspective, but Dan tried not to think about it. He had a very specific goal in mind. He took a nail, lined it up with the tire, and gently tapped it into the rubber. It slid in easily, and air immediately began to leak out. Dan gave the nail a good wiggle, just to widen the leak, then shut the portal before the tire could do something dangerous like explode in his face.

He pulled out his phone, ready to call Cornelius, but traffic cleared and Dunkirk was moving again. Dan trailed the car for several blocks, and it became obvious the direction he was going. South and east, towards the airfields. Dan had been that way before, with Abby, on the single occasion that he’d flown in her family’s private jet. Maybe Dunkirk had chartered a private plane? It could be a coincidence, of course. South was also the direction directly opposite where Galeforce was causing a commotion. Dan couldn’t even hear the sirens anymore. Dunkirk could just be leaving the city in a direction where he was unlikely to encounter police.

There was a flaw in the fed’s escape plan, though, whatever it might be. The direction he was fleeing was away from the fighting; the same direction pretty much everyone else wanted to go. Dunkirk hit traffic, and he hit it hard. The man found himself on the freeway facing a wall of traffic. Credit to the man, he was undeterred. He had to have noticed the flat by now. His back wheel was nothing more than a thin layer of rubber, but Dunkirk kept trucking forward at a pace any NASCAR driver would be proud of.

Dan watched through his spyglass rock as Dunkirk swerved from lane to lane, desperately attempting to make ground. Eventually he realized there was no more progress to be made, and he started cutting towards the edge of the freeway, honking and fighting with everyone around him. Finally, he made it to the shoulder, and rode it forward, bumping and bouncing and grinding on his flat tire, zipping past the stopped traffic.

Dan was beginning to worry that Dunkirk might actually make it out of the city before Cornelius’ team could arrive, when some guy in an enormous truck pulled onto the shoulder, directly in front of Dunkirk’s path. Dunkirk slammed on his brakes, his back end swinging wildly as the flat tire failed to grip. The rubber gave up the goose, exploding off his hubcap in a spray of black tar and sending him into a sideways slide. His car ended up practically kissing the vehicle in front of him, and turned almost perpendicular to the lane. Dunkirk laid on the horn, one long, loud, angry honk. The man in the truck didn’t move. Didn’t react in any way. He just sat there, blocking the shoulder. A pair of rubber bull testicles dangled from the truck’s trailer hitch.

Dan laughed out loud. People were assholes, and he loved it. He watched, enraptured, as Dunkirk executed an Austin Powers turn, inching forward and backwards in an attempt to straighten out his car. The people on the highway gave him no room at all, going so far as to drift partway onto the shoulder, just to obstruct his movement. Dunkirk eventually gave up, getting out of his car, gesturing wildly with his arms and screaming at the passerby.

Dan called Cornelius. It was the perfect time to take Dunkirk in.

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