Here I go again.

  What the fuck am I doing? I have no business doing this kind of thing. Yeah, I have some training now, including driving and hand-to-hand combat, but only a few weeks’ worth. It’s only been that long since I healed enough so they’d let me. Hell, if I was still on my old world, I’d probably be down for months yet. Sponsored doctors are a thing here, and they really speed things up. When I broke my arm ten years ago, it took me around three months to heal. When dad busted his leg, he couldn’t even put any weight on it for a whole winter.

  Um, maybe I should concentrate on driving and worry about what I’m doing later. Jesus, Ben.

  Thank God the gunfire stopped.

  I check my rear-view mirror and see the men back there in their black fatigues scrambling for their vehicles. It makes me sigh.

  Me. My luck. A car chase through city streets?

  I hear a snort and look over to find the teen with the afro shaking his head like he’s disappointed.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Shoulda just sat there, man,” he says and raps a knuckle on the window by his cheekbone. “Bulletproof. Coulda just sat, locked the doors, and waited.”

  “What if somebody had a fob or something to unlock the doors? One of those slim jims?”

  The right side of his mouth twitches upward, but he’s got nothing to say to that. I take a left turn at high speed and everybody leans over like it’s an original episode of Star Trek. I don’t have time to count, but there might be upwards of fifteen people in this van. If anybody complains, I can’t hear them over the squeal of the tires.

  “Oh fuck!” says the man in the smiley face shirt. “You bleedin’.”

  My head does hurt. The pain is sharp, invasive somehow. I pat my scalp and find something hard lodged in my skin.

  Great. Crime took a bite out of me when I rammed my head into that guy and he left me an incisor as a gift or something. Figuring it might bleed more if I take it out, I leave it there.

  “It’s a tooth,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  The tall guy who pointed out that I was naked earlier says, “Somebody bit you?”

  The old lady laughs again. She’s all the way in the back, waving at our pursuers as they round the corner after us. I’m glad she’s having a good time. Her white hair poofs out wider than her shoulders, and she’s tiny. Probably not even five feet tall.

  “Headbutt gone wrong,” I say. The water, blood, and sweat in my hair drips down my face and I swipe it away. Getting that all over my hand makes the steering wheel more slippery, so now I have to look around for something to clean it off. There’s nothing. The seat’s no good. It’s made of fake leather and, if it hadn’t been for the seat belt, I’d have been flung through the passenger’s window on that first turn. Great. Now I got a slick wheel. Nothing to do but tighten my grip.

  “Fuckin’ headbutt?” Smiley laughs. “Goddamn!”

  The van’s going uphill. It’s so heavy it’s losing speed. I signal left, but take the first possible right, and everybody behind me sways and slides the other way. It’s like anything I can do to lose pursuit will get my passengers car sick as soon as possible.

  Wait. Am I becoming a pessimist?

  The old lady whoops and cranks her fist in the air.

  It’s time to think about where I’m going. I don’t know this Akron any better than the Akron from home. Having been to each only a few times, I know there are two major highways. Seventy-seven goes north and south, while seventy-six goes east and west, plus there’s a few other major routes that wind their way through. This van can’t be more maneuverable than those SUVs, and it sure isn’t faster. City streets or highway, they’ll catch me either way. At least here, there’s cover whenever I turn a corner. I need to stay out of the residential areas because of stray gunfire, errant SUVs crashing into bedrooms, teenagers sneaking back home, stray cats and dogs. That sort of thing. I have to stay downtown.

  Akron’s hardly a major metropolis, though, and before I’ve gone over four blocks, we’re out of skyscrapers, even the baby ones, and I have to turn again. This time I signal left, feint right, then spin the wheel left, gripping it until my fingers turn white as the van’s tires smoke and scream uphill again.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  One of the SUVs hesitates and hobbles up onto the curb, slowing it down and the old woman cheers and blows a raspberry, but the one behind that one manages the turn with aplomb. So does the one behind him.

  “Anybody know just how tough this thing we’re in actually is?” I shout.

  “Maybe could ask him.” The tall guy nods to a small, balding, bespectacled white fellow in the seat in front of him. Now that I’ve noticed him, he sits up and adjusts his tie. All the other passengers are in clean clothes straight off the racks from Goodwill. Everybody else is all runaways and homeless the Sidorovs probably cleaned and dressed for transport. This guy’s in a suit.

  The kid with the lumpy afro snorts. “Yeah. One of these things is not like the other.”

  “You don’t look old enough to make a Sesame Street reference,” I tell him.

  He shrugs.

  “Just a sec,” I say, and haul the wheel to the left. I glance back at the man in the suit. He looks pale in the rear-view. “Who are you? A Sidorov?”

  The man shakes his head and adjusts his glasses. “No no, I’m the business manager.”

  “You’re the what?”

  “I stay at the secondary location and—.”

  “Never mind,” I cut him off. “How tough is this van? Do you know?”

  “I wrote out the details for the customization myself,” he says. “It’s a modified passenger van with seating for fifteen. Bulletproofing, enhanced steering, armored tires, airtight windows and doors…. That might be it.”

  “Might be?”

  “I can’t remember if there was anything else. Don’t think there was.”

  I spare him another glance. He looks scared. Everybody does except for Madame Adrenaline in the back seat. His nervousness is of a slightly distinct flavor, and I can’t figure it.

  “You’re the business manager?”

  “Of one of the secondary sites, yes,” he says. “I can’t speak to the other locations. I was rarely allowed to leave.”

  I shrug and shake my head.

  He sighs. “The Sidorovs move around a lot as a tactic. When they move into a city, they set up a secure primary site that functions as the main barracks for their muscle and their victims. That site is the most exposed, with a number of people having to come and go, so they’re very careful setting it up and maintaining it.” In my rear-view, the manager takes off his glasses and polishes them on his tie. It looks like a lifelong nervous habit. “Coming and going is the major risk to all that, but some is necessary. They need to get groceries, for example. They also need someone to interact with local businesses to rent the spaces and whatever else they might need. I’m him.”

  “So, you’re an employee.”

  “I am not.”

  “Huh?”

  He gestures at the slender woman to his left whose head hangs like she might be asleep or reading, her lanky brown hair obscuring her face. “This is my wife, Brenda. She’s got my daughter, Cassie, on her lap, by the way, so we’ll appreciate you not crashing into anything too solid. She’s a month old. I’m Jim. We were kidnapped five years ago, right when I got out of business school. We’ve been their slaves ever since.”

  “My God.” I fucking hate Sidorovs.

  The SUVs are catching up, moving like sleek predators, their bodies almost invisible behind their headlights. I Push my luck, yell for everybody to hang on, and stand on the brakes.

  The first two pass by on either side of our van, tires squealing. The third, following behind them, veers into a street lamp, stopping that bastard cold.

  I sling the van into another left turn without slowing, and for a moment I worry I won’t be able to keep all four tires on the road. The folks in the back are screaming, except for the old lady who’s howling with laughter.

  Okay, I think I like her.

  Now we’re hurtling downhill, two bad guys behind us, while the third pulls itself off the lamp it hit hard enough to tilt it toward the street, and veers back onto our trail. Great. Those things are reinforced too.

  I need to find another way to turn. Some way to lose them, but there’s nothing. Just more and more Akron.

  Movement and a sporadic flashing light behind us draw my attention. It’s the street lamp. The kind designed like an upside down capital L with the light at the tip of the short end. It topples, the weight of it exacerbating the damage, causing it to sputter out. With a groan, the flickering lamp punches through the skylight of the SUV which offended it, causing it to swerve and slow before the vehicle pulls the entire fixture out of its cement to drag it along, sparks flying.

  Yep.

  “Any of you see a small Latina woman in sunglasses anywhere?” I figure why not ask.

  Nobody says anything.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Here’s an intersection. When I hit the brakes and make the turn, I have to keep both hands on the wheel. So far, I’ve been able to keep the blood, water, sweat, and soap in my hair. That was always a losing battle. It’s gotten into my eyes, which feel like they’ve been set ablaze. What was I thinking? I’ve got to get that baby stuff from now on.

  “Why the fuck are you slowing down, goddammit?” says Smiley.

  “Can’t see.” In fact, no amount of blinking and crying has cleared that shit from my eyes, forcing me to close them. It’s not like I can see, anyway.

  The aethings behind grow darker. The SUV engine roars closer and there’s the rattling metallic wail of the streetlight digging a furrow in the asphalt.

  “You can’t what?”

  Pushing a little harder, the possibilities grow lighter to my right. I’ve been keeping track of where we are, and that direction suits my overall plan, so I’m happy to turn the van that way.

  “Wait!”

  The van hits the curb hard enough that the top of my head slams against the ceiling. It’s only my death grip on the wheel that keeps my naked ass in the seat when I come back down. If those wheels weren’t reinforced, I’m sure that would’ve flattened them.

  I slow the van a bit, just enough for the lighter aethings to dim, then speed back up to where they’re brightest. Huh. I’ve got a way to judge how fast I should go.

  “Uh, are you sure this is a good idea?” This from Lumpy, the surly teenager.

  “No idea,” I tell him. “Can’t see a thing.”

  “Fuckin’ stairs!” howls Smiley, and sure enough, we collide with something. I hit the ceiling again, hard enough to hurt this time, and the van catches air.

  We come down hard and bouncing before we smash through something else.

  “Did he say ‘stairs’?” What have I done now?

  “Oh yes.” Jim sounds awestruck and terrified.

  “Where are we?”

  It’s Lumpy who answers. “When’s the last time you went to church?”

  The old lady cackles.