The Black Garden: Chapter 18

I gunned the throttle, blasting between frightened pedestrians at a crossing, running a red light. I swung the bike around at a corner and shot off at a ninety-degree turn faster than the lumbering Cadillac-sized car could ever hope to follow. Tires screeched and people screamed as it did its best anyway, fishtailing through the intersection to roar up the road behind me.

“Got ‘em tagged.” Digger shunted an AR-GPS display into my vision so that I didn’t have to, marking the pursing cars. The gray car and the truck were both after me, the truck running two blocks to the west to try and cut me off at the freeway. “Where are you leading them to?”

“Isolated rainforest. Find me a good place to launch or drop the bike and lead them in,” I said grimly.

“Got it. I’m routing you toward the Taga Avaya forest position if you can reach it. I’ll notify them and DWO-6 that you’re in trouble and see if they can provide support.”

“I’m not the one who’s in trouble.” I threw the bike into the entry lane for the highway leading north, into the mountains. It was a deep curve up and around a bridge, signed for twenty-five: I leaned my weight over like a race driver and took it at sixty, tearing past a blaring semi-truck and swerving in front of it to get onto the road.

The grey car had fallen behind, snarled by the early evening after-work traffic, but the truck was big enough and tall enough to bully its way up the ramp and across four lanes toward me. It forced other cars to brake or veer, horns honking. It had power and bulk, but was no match for my maneuverability as I lane-split my way toward the mountains at full throttle. As I glanced at my right-side mirror, my HUD overlay tagged the grey car as it lurched onto the same straight freeway nearly a mile behind.

"You're headed for some twisties," Digger said. "Rain is abating but there’s a whole lot of fog up there, so be careful."

"Got it. And the Taga?"

"Uploading their location now."

A green target appeared on the horizon, hanging over a point in the thick of the unmapped jungle. I grunted in satisfaction.

Sirens wailed in the distance now: cops, drawn to the chase like buzzards. I wasn't sure if they were after me or the truck, but none of them could match the speed of the bike. The misty rain blew off me in a cloud as I gunned for the exit to the winding mountain roads outside of town. The off-ramp was a long climb upward and around, jolting me as I left the smooth grippy chargeglass and hit old-fashioned asphalt. In the left mirror, I saw the truck divert and surge up the same exit, tires leaving the road for a moment as the driver boosted it.

We were the only traffic on this narrower highway, a road winding like a serpent into the deep black garden of the world. Without the cover of traffic, I was a lot more vulnerable. The truck, a full rack of lights blazing, veered into position behind me. Two men leaned out the windows to either side, muzzles invisible behind the wall of light. But Tsariel could see them. "Tsariel, Lady of all things Divided, Dancer-on-the-Pin..."

“No need for formality. You are being shot at.”

As I concentrated on the road, twin fans of overlapping, scythe-like blades of metal spread behind me, a dynamic shield flickering so precisely and so quickly I doubted the driver knew what he was looking at. The manifolds dissected the rounds that spat toward us, scattering sparks and pieces of hot tungsten in all directions. A normal grunt with a gun was simply no match for an angel-pacted Hunter. But whatever was in the grey car worried me. It was now on the same road, trailing miles back but steadily gaining. If we were going to deal with it, we had to get rid of the truck.

As Tsariel dissected another battery of live fire, I called up a model of the roads ahead of me. One forked into the darkened hills, going up. One flowed down and north toward the checkpoint that separated New Warder's territory from that of its closest neighbor, Horizon Collective, while the other wound its way up the mountains and ended in a lookout over the city. The Taga Avaya unit was about twenty miles in from there, apparently at a site of interest.

"Alright, fuckers. Time to eat my shit." I turned my headlights off and threw my night vision on as we hit gravel.

Now me and the truck were evenly matched: its heavy tires could chew up the wet dirt faster than my streetbike could handle it, not without going out from under me and sliding. It was gaining on me second by second, but I kept my eyes straight ahead, face level, deeply tuned into the machine as we flew up the side of the mountain.

"Gwan-ja-jae bo-sal haeng-sin ban-ya ba-ra mi-ta..." I chanted softly under my breath as I leaned the bike into a curve as far as I dared, spraying muddy stones up under the tires. The rhythm of the Heart Sutra kept me in the flow, syncing in time with my heart. I came around a blind corner - and then I spotted it. A sharp bend ahead with a cliff to my right and a steep drop off to the outside. The guardrail bent around the road, one of the waist-high metal kinds. It could probably catch the bike. But if the truck hit it…

"Saek-jik-si gong-" I hit the rear brake as I threw my weight toward the back wheel. The motorbike squealed as it nearly went out from under me, a feigned slide that made it look like I had tried to cut the turn too close and had lost control. Smelling victory, the truck barreled after me, drenching me in blinding light as it made to bulldoze me off the road.

“-gong-jik-si saek.” At the last second, I yanked the bike upright and veered sharply into the outside lane, scraping the barrier before correcting. But the truck had no such ability. It screeched as the driver tried to spin it around, fishtailing wildly into the weak guardrail. Metal screeched as the truck tore the barrier from the ground and went toppling into the ravine, flipping crazily as it crashed into the trees below.

“Om mani padme hum, motherfuckers." I was a terrible Buddhist, but the Heart Sutra had yet to fail me.

Mert's car was a distant whine from below: half a mile, maybe less. I snarled with satisfaction as I cranked the throttle and shot up along the road in a spray of mud, racing up the mountain until I found a point of interest: a well-concealed driveway that vanished into the dense wilderness as twin tracks of well-maintained, hard-packed dirt.

"There's traps on that road and an armed checkpoint five miles in," Digger's staccato voice beat in my ears. "Taga-1 reports an encampment ten miles NWW of your current position. They've been staking it for three days. Camp is protected by drones, at least thirty bodies, significant voidsign that is curiously absent right now. 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 and 6-5 are already with them and are enroute. You need to get off-road: try and lead your admirers away from the site and lose them, then circle back in on foot to the Taga position. Their ETA is thirty minutes by Khem Express.”

"Roger that. One guess where the voidsign went." I spotted a dirt trail branching off into the forest. Without hesitation, I turned onto it, the bike's tires slipping on a patch of mud before finding purchase. “I don’t think it’s Mert Wigge in that car.”

The forest closed in, swallowing the sounds of any traffic behind me. I hit the lights, weaving through dense vegetation with the LEDs until I hit the edge of a river bank. A dirtbike could have made it, but the street bike had reached its limit. Shuddering, heart racing, I left the engine running and the lights on and swung a leg over, getting to my feet. It wasn’t raining, but Digger hadn’t lied about the fog. Condensation dripped from the dark canopy that soared over my head, soaking the clothing I wore over my z-suit. I stripped it all off and threw it across the saddle of the bike as a lure.

I checked over the positions of each of my grenades, then reached out my hand for the Long Hunt. The sword was there, as always. "Okay. Going dark. See you on the other side of whatever the hell this is."