Page 42 of The Silent War
We didn’t cope well in the dark. It was worse when we were blind and separated.
I went straight to the cars.
The first buzz hit in my pocket. Then another. I ignored it. Syndicate chatter never stopped. The city was dark, we were vulnerable.
The third buzz was different. Deep. Wrong. I pulled the phone.
VEHICLE IMPACT — SUBJECT: EMILIA V. ADAMS.
Hard stop. Airbag deploy. Driver heartline lost. GPS ping. Underpass. East pylon.
The alert wasn’t luck. Luca and I had buried a system intoevery Adams vehicle years ago. If her car so much as clipped a curb, we knew. Impact sensors, heartline monitors, GPS redundancies layered three deep.
Which meant. Emilia car had been in an accident.
My chest tightened. The cigarette slipped from my mouth.
I was already running. My thumb hit call. Luca picked up before the first ring died.
“You got it?” His voice was controlled, cold. He was close to spiralling. “Where are you?”
“Garage,” I said.
“Take the armored Maserati. Ferrari will aquaplane.”
“Medics?”
“Grid’s dead. General’s overrun. I’ll dump power from the vault floor. Ninety seconds.”
Line went dead. Luca didn’t waste words when he needed silence.
The Maserati’s door slammed shut behind me. One press lit the dash. I reserved too hard the tires caught for a second.
Villain without power looked haunted. Black towers, black river. The endless lightning across the skyline. Something straight out of a nightmare. Right now, it was the backdrop for our nightmare.
The wheel shook under my hands. Wipers were useless against the rain.
It might be false.
Pings failed sometimes. Sensors tripped. Heartline alerts misfired. Maybe it wasn’t her car. Maybe it was another Adams vehicle, that she wasn’t in.
She was fine. She had to be.
I forced the lie into my head over and over until it felt almost true.
I pictured her safe in bed, annoyed at the outage. I told myself she was rolling her eyes, not bleeding in a wreck.
My grip locked on the wheel. I pressed harder.
Nothing happened. Nothing touched her.
I said it again. Louder in my head.
I thought of Luca. Of how I’d face him if I arrived and it was nothing. He’d tell me it was good I came anyway. He’d remind me this was why we built systems.
But if I arrived and it was her—if it was really her—then the system hadn’t been enough.
The engine roared. The city kept pulling me closer to the river.
