“Launch in three seconds, two, one . . .”
Dekka fought gravity and exhaustion and hauled herself into the sole seat in the cockpit just in time to be slammed down by a sudden acceleration. The vehicle shot straight up, straight toward the ceiling, straight toward what must at the very least be several feet of rock, but at the last second the rock ceiling shimmered and disappeared.
A hologram!
The escape pod flew up, up though the hologram, up through a short tunnel, burst through a glass dome like Willy Wonka’s elevator, and flew on another hundred feet straight up, up into blue sky, up toward towering cumulus clouds, and then came the roar and shudder of rocket engines catching fire. The pod leveled with stomach-twisting speed and soared on stubby wings, zooming over the facility, arcing toward a wide, flat space of cleared ground at the edge of the fence.
At the edge of, but still inside, the fence. Looking down, Dekka saw SUVs racing to the preprogrammed landing spot, and ahead armed men spilled from a small guardhouse, automatic weapons at the ready.
She was sure the skin of the escape pod was not bulletproof and they would blow her to straight to hell before the slowing escape pod could land at its preprogrammed target.
Time to change.
Dekka shredded the windshield of the pod, cleared it away, and then tore up the ground between her and the guards, showering them with a hailstorm of dirt and debris.
The escape pod landed gently, its only gentle move so far, and Dekka was out, leaping with the sure-footed agility of a cat. The fence was ahead and beyond it the woods, but she was not fast enough or strong enough to run for long, certainly not fast enough to outrun the fit guards, let alone the SUVs racing to cut her off.
And then she saw it at the edge of the parking lot: the dirty vinyl cover. She ran toward it like a burning woman running for water. She snatched off the cover and in a single fluid bound was astride her motorcycle.
“Chase this, assholes,” Dekka said.
She kicked the engine to life, popped the gear, and rocketed ahead, swerving dangerously—this body balanced differently from her own—and went straight for the nearest section of fence. Gunfire erupted behind her, and she crouched low, flat across her gas tank, twisting the throttle all the way open.
She raised a hand and howled, and the double row of barbed-wire-topped chain-link became a shower of penny nails.
Into the woods, between tall pine trees, tires bouncing over roots and ruts, fishtailing as she turned. She hit a glancing blow at a tree but kept her balance, and there was tarmac ahead: the road!
Up onto the road she motored, loving the welcome smoothness, and the motorcycle passed seventy, eighty, ninety miles an hour, trees whipping past on both sides.
The SUVs wouldn’t catch her. The SUV had not been built that could keep pace with her Kawasaki. But in her rearview mirror she spotted two drones closing the distance.
B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
Bullets pinged off the tarmac and ricocheted into the trees.
Faster!
At a hundred miles an hour the drones were no longer gaining. At 110 they fell back, machine guns sputtering futilely as she outdistanced them. Dekka racked her memory: How long was this road, where did it come out? If she reached populated areas, would Peaks still attack?
A hundred and twenty and Dekka was pressed low and flat on her gas tank, morphed paws gripping the handlebars, wanting to revert to her more easily balanced body but knowing that if she skidded out at this speed it would certainly kill her human form.
A new sound, like the bike, but in a different pitch. She risked a glance. Nothing. Risked a second glance, and spotted a helicopter gunship, dark, dangerously sleek, and bristling with missile pods.
There would be people in that helicopter, a pilot at least, maybe more, just government employees, not people deserving to die, but was there an alternative? Her bike was fast, but the gunship would have at least fifty miles an hour on her.
Then, appearing ahead, the gate and the guardhouse!
The helicopter fired; Dekka heard it, heard the explosive thrust of a rocket motor, hit the brakes while downshifting, and fought to control the bike as the missile overshot and exploded the ground before her. The bike rolled through a storm of smoke and debris, and Dekka was skidding on her side, the bike sliding away from her, skidding and then tumbling, and finally coming to a stop in a cloud of dust and pine needles.
She rose, her body screaming with pain, raised her hands, no time for regrets, no time for second thoughts, saw the helicopter coming in slow to blow the smoke away with its rotor wash and get a clear shot.
She had a glimpse of the pilot, a woman from what Dekka could see of the face below the helmet.
And then as Dekka wearily readied to destroy the helicopter, something white and shockingly quick tore from the woods. It leaped fifty feet, used a tall sapling as a sort of parkour launchpad, and flew through the air, claws—for it had claws—outstretched. The creature smashed into the side of the helicopter and seemed to lose its mind, ripping, tearing, bashing, as the helicopter went into a spin and the pilot leaped to what would surely be her death.
And then the helicopter, the creature, and anyone else aboard the doomed aircraft crashed to earth like a duck in hunting season.
Dekka hobbled to her bike, lifted it far more easily than she could ever have managed with her own body, prayed, kicked the starter, finished the prayer with a heartfelt Amen to the engineers at Kawasaki, and zoomed toward the gate, which she shredded and blasted through, off the facility grounds and through the trees, and then kept going at speed until she reached a town.