Circuit City

Chapter 8

I clutched tighter to the man in front of me as we sped past the city lights, through the third Level of the City, with my heart beating frantically as the vehicle picked up, even more, speed. I had thought that the Flyer's ride above the Clock was scary, but this was absolutely terrifying. 

The people and the flashing signs on the sidewalks became a hazy blur of colors as the mysterious cop in front of me navigated between the cars on the street and my legs pressed themselves further against his as if doing so would increase the probability of me surviving the ride. 

My skirt was thankfully not the flowy kind so I didn't have to worry about indecent exposure but the chilly air still entered through the thin fabric and flowed up my stomach, making me shiver quite a bit.

Behind us was the black car that we'd been trying to shake off and I was counting the time before I'd finally get used to the speed of the bike but it didn't seem likely now. However, in contrast to the Flyer before, I couldn't close my eyes but stared instead helplessly at the scenery before us. Suddenly the bike jerked to the side as the cop swerved to the right.

"Woah!" I clasped my hands tighter around his hunched over figure. "S-slow down!" I squeaked, but the cop only shook his head before accelerating the bike even more.

"Can't," he shot back and lifted his pointy finger from the handlebar. 

I peered over his shoulder to where he'd pointed at and my breath hitched as my eyes landed on the hood of a dark blue car that was parked right at the exit of a dark alley to our right. The only thing that indicated that the engine was running were the pulsating lights that were evenly spread across the oval-shaped windshield, which covered the entire top part of the parked car.

"Oh no," I mumbled to myself as I realized what was about to happen, "Oh no..."

"Just hold tight," the cop muttered, just as the car bolted out from its hiding place and drove towards us. 

A loud screech tore through the air as the blue vehicle accelerated and the cop swore loudly before swerving to the side again, narrowly avoiding the crash that otherwise would've occurred between us and the car. A stream of air escaped my lungs as I stared down at my leg, which had almost gotten squished between thousands of pounds of steel.

The relief was shortlived and my breath hitched for the second time when I looked up at the blue car that was once again steering towards us, clearly making another attempt to ram into us. 

Reflexively, my hands tightened around my driver, who had also gone tense as the car neared us, and I pressed my eyes shut. We were already at the edge of the street, there as no space left to make another turn. We were trapped and I braced myself for the inevitable crash.

It didn't happen. Instead, a loud rumble soared through the air as we broke the speed limit and when I opened my eyes again, I found myself staring down at a horde of cars that were driving by, a couple of feet beneath us.

The mapper had steered us onto one of the roads that went above one of Myria's main boulevards and we were dangerously close to the roadside.

If we'd been driving slower I could've perhaps caught a glimpse of our reflection in the buildings around us, but with the velocity that we were currently moving in, it proved impossible. One single wrong move or excessive shift in body weight could result in us being sliced in half by the bizarrely thin crash barrier- or worse, crashing right into the 10th floor of a skyscraper and orchestrating a massacre.

"Did we lose them?" I asked him hopefully as we descended down the road to normal ground level. The aggressive blaring of horns cut me off abruptly and I turned my head to the right, just in time to see the black car from before cut off the cars behind us by sliding in controlled circles, narrowly avoiding the vehicles around him.