Clockwork Theocracy

Chapter 3: Lovely Dovely Town

She will first kill Driver Big Nose and then Blondie.

After remembering her name, at least.

She had one, right?

"Your name is Daughter."

What?

The name felt familiar. "Daughter... rolls of the tongue," it was hers. Likely. She knew she was famous, yet she had to know, from where?

"I know you from... let's leave those details when we reach the motel."

The car almost flipped when he turned the corner full speed, two wheels up and at the mercy of gravity. The nose was driving the car as if it were possessed.

"My name is Forty-one, please do not call me nose. If that is what you are calling me."

Can he read minds?

"No," Forty-one said.

Well, that was relieving.

"What in the mo-" Blondie was about to ask the question that mattered the most, but it is not everyday you see a sentinel car come inside from a house. "What the-"

"Sentinels, we need to last around... two minutes, I guess. Or two minutes and twenty-three seconds. I'm not sure, I did pour more sugar than the last time."

Her head was yet to recover from the fall, yet it didn't stop Forty-one from making a hard turn right toward people's gardens.

"What is happening?" Daughter shouted.

Blondie couldn't speak as he desperately grasped his seat, likely trying not to fly out of the car.

He tried to speak, but all he managed was to form a surprised and fearful shout. Not that Forty-one seemed to care about it.

The car broke its path through a set of white wooden fences, entering a playground. There stood a child, between the swing and sandbox. That little gremlin was busy poking a human corpse, with a stick no less.

This generation truly had no respect or dignity.

But Forty-one's reaction of driving towards the child seemed a tad bit much.

"A car chase," the little gremlin lived to cry another day, jumping in the sandbox to avoid Forty-one. "You two must be in shock."

"No shit," she said.

"No shit," Blondie said.

The "what is going on" faction between her and Blondie seemed to be growing stronger.

"And he is Forty-two. Not a chick."

"I wasn't thinking of Chick."

"Blondie?"

"... yes."

"Not sup-" something suddenly hit right behind the car, if it weren't for her gripping the side of the seats, she would've been smeared on the road by now. "Dammit, when will that thing caramelize?"

The sentinels were in hot pursuit of them. Compared to the junk they were on, which Daughter would call Betsy, they were driving something straight out of commercials: an electric engine, air coolant car with a glimmering jet black paint job. It was hard to make out where the car's outline began or ended.

Forty-one, in the meantime, was pushing their Betsy to her limit, going over one fence over the other, making a mess out of people's yards.

She grasped the seat she was sitting at, hugging even. A sharp right and there was a tree, a sharp left and there was a pole as if the entire maze were intended to kill them.