She landed near the Stronghold, turning her Warthog back and hopping out while leaving the engine running. Kurt saw the semi-truck sitting at the back of the massive cargo plane, with Jimmy directing a group of NPCs as they worked at it with oversized power saws and blow torches. Jimmy no longer wore his heavy armor. It would be a hindrance now that it's armor value was spent. Kurt joined them in the middle of a conversation as he approached.

  “It just won’t go up the loading ramp like this. They should be done soon.” Jimmy turned and saw his friend approaching, his face lighting up. “Hey! You lived. That’s great, buddy.”

  “Right,” Gadot said, “I’ll be back with a ride for us. We’ll have to draw the heat off the Stronghold if there’s any chance of keeping this take.” She climbed back into her Warthog and started taxiing it towards a hangar across the tarmac.

  “We’re clear for a few seconds anyway, she took out the heat. What do I do now?” Kurt stopped and caught his breath, looking out over the city. It looked like the entire world was on fire, thick black clouds of smoke pouring into the sky and blocking the view.

  “Safe to say we lost the Ursa and the Goons, so all we have to worry about is this ten bar.” Jimmy stood next to Kurt, hands on his hips as he looked with confusion at the Stronghold. “So I get that the guns are my addition.” He pointed at the smattering of barrels poking from beneath the wings. “What the hell are those, though?” His hand shifted, pointing to a series of boxy protrusions just behind the wings.

  Kurt cocked his head and stared at the bank of angled boxes with cylindrical openings facing the rear. “Huh. Dunno. How’s that whole thing work, anyway?”

  “The game pays attention to your play style and class, adds stuff to the Stronghold for each player that’s a major part of the Crew. We never get to pick, but it’s also free . . . guess we can’t really complain.”

  Gadot’s voice came in over their open com channel. “Actually those are my addition. They’re called JATO rockets. Good stuff, just watch and see what they’re for, you’ll love it.”

  Jimmy turned back at the sound of encroaching helicopters. “Heads up, man, we have trouble.” He turned to shout at the NPCs for a moment. “Get it done!”

  The Lace crew had managed to cut and saw the giant cone off the front of the semi-truck and were loading it into the massive cargo bay of the Stronghold. Jimmy pointed to the city’s skyline where another three Black Hawk helicopters had just broken out of the smoke and were heading straight towards them. The cargo ramp began to laboriously raise, and all The Lace NPCs climbed inside as the plane began to taxi away from them, its propellers laboring up to speed. Kurt felt a small swell of panic in his throat as he turned back to see a dozen heavy troop transports heading towards them, flanked by two Abrams tanks and a handful of high-speed interceptors.

  Turning back, he quickly gauged the distance and saw that the massive cargo plane would not escape the tarmac before the heat arrived. “They won’t make it.”

  Jimmy took a shooter’s stance and started firing on the Black Hawks swooping in. As he downed one, it crashed onto the tarmac and exploded, causing Gadot to swerve her new car as she approached and curse in their ears. “Ha! Oops — sorry,” Jimmy laughed. Gadot drove up beside them and slid to a stop, reaching over and shoving open the passenger door as the heat bore down on them from behind.

  Both men climbed in, Kurt protesting at being shoved un-gently into the backseat as Jimmy took the front. “I’m going, stop shoving!” He huffed in annoyance as he clicked his seatbelt in place before looking nervously around them at the swarming heat vehicles. “Jeeze . . . sure hope you can get us out of this, Gadot.”

  She glared at him in the rear-view mirror for an annoyed instant before shifting to a falsely cheery response. “Me too!” A light press on the accelerator had the rear tires of the Mustang boiling as she slid them around in a half circle.

  Jimmy lifted his mask and shifted forward in his seat, turning to face Kurt as he rested the barrel of his rifle on the shoulder of his seat. “Hate to break this to you, bud, but you don’t really escape a ten bar. You kinda just hold it off for a while, delaying the inevitable smoosh it hands out.” He hesitated, finger hovering beside the trigger as he looked at Gadot. “May I?”

  “Well, since you asked so nicely.” She smirked at him as she dodged a series of troop transports spread out across the road in front of them.

  Jimmy smiled, made a kiss motion at her, and blew out the back windshield. He pressed his back against the dashboard and shifted in his seat, shoulder tucked firmly into the butt of his rifle as he fired selectively. “Um, are they going to leave anytime soon?”

  The oversized cargo plane made a lumbering turn and began taxiing down the runway towards them, giving them an excellent view of all the police and army vehicles working to surround and obstruct it. The huge aircraft jerked forward, a dozen streams of red erupting from the boxes around its fuselage in lances of fire and force. It was propelled forcefully into the air, narrowly avoiding a blockade of troop transport trucks as it banked towards the smoldering city.

  “Wow. Didn’t think that thing could move that fast.” Kurt pressed up against his window, watching as the plane climbed, assisted by its JATO rockets. They sputtered out as it reached the wall of smoke over downtown.

  “You think that’s impressive? Wait until you see what my addition does for us.” Jimmy smiled as they wove through various police and military vehicles, exiting the airport by shoving the burnt husk of Kurt’s ramp car out of the way.

  A blinking com indicator flashed on the map that Gadot had on the windshield, and when she swiped it to a green talk button, Crane’s voice filled the car. “We need five minutes in the air before we can activate our jammer. Can you give us that?”

  “Ah! Stealth. That’s mine.” Kurt said, pleased with himself.

  Gadot yanked on the handbrake and spun the wheel aggressively to avoid an incoming high speed pursuit vehicle, sliding the Mustang’s back end around before the car shot off towards the city onramp. “We can sure try.” She glanced at the rearview mirror, took a long slow breath, and nodded. “Keep ‘em off me as best you can, boys.”

  When Kurt glanced back, he cringed at the sight of a dozen high-speed interceptors moving to catch them. Gripping both his Glock and Maxim 9, Kurt popped up in the back seat and started firing indiscriminately. He was dismayed to see most of his rounds sparking harmlessly off windshields and wheel wells before the encroaching enemies vanished behind a wall of oily smoke. He turned to face forward, reloading as the car slowed considerably.

  They had entered the firestorm that used to be the Downtown Cluster. While they were safe from the flames on their raised, two lane freeway, visibility was severely impaired by the smoke boiling over the sides and raising all around them. Gadot was forced to slow to a crawl, dodging burnt out wrecks and oncoming heat forces as they went.

  With the massive amount of smoke in the air, Kurt found it difficult to breathe. He heard some uncomfortable coughing from the others as well and checked his wrist to see a slow health drain, similar to the tear gas mechanic. Within seconds, the shapes of high-speed interceptors and troop transports began to take form behind them, with muzzle flashes lighting up the smoke.

  “Aim for the radiator Kurt!” Jimmy shouted over the whine of incoming fire as Gadot did her best to dodge a troop transport that hurtled towards them out of the smoke ahead. Kurt gamely peeked over the backseat, emptying and reloading his Glock, trying to shoot at the same vehicles as Jimmy. As the troop transport slid past them, he adjusted his aim and allowed his stream of full auto fire to sweep its tire line. The tires burst, and the truck slid across the road, slamming to a stop with its nose shoved up against the concrete barrier, its body forming a perfect roadblock.

  “The interceptors have bullet proof tires, the transports don’t!” Kurt happily shouted, fumbling to reload as Gadot swerved to avoid another truck trying to ram them head-on. It hurtled past them as the Mustang skidded against the concrete barrier, leaving paint and sparks in its wake as it bucked up briefly onto two wheels. The truck slammed into the roadblock behind them and knocked it aside, before the entire scene vanished into the smoke.

  “Thanks.” Jimmy resumed his firing position, ensuring none of the interceptors snapping at their heels could get close enough to run them off the road. His gun ran dry at an inopportune moment, allowing one of the heavily armored Corvettes to come up on the driver’s side. It shoved at the side of the Mustang, causing Gadot to scream a curse as she struggled to keep them from spinning out. She swerved into the concrete barrier and held the car there, keeping them from a lethal spin, but losing momentum as they spread paint all over the freeway.

  Kurt shot the Mustang’s other rear window out before hauling the Messenger out of its holster. He aimed carefully before firing the gun once, smashing the interceptor’s window and turning its driver into black smoke. As Gadot used the Mustang’s powerful engine to shove the Corvette off them, she swerved back out into the middle of the lane as they finally emerged out the other side of the firestorm.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The freeway angled around to the north and led up the coast. As the smoke finally cleared, they could see the full force of a ten bar heat coming against them. The coastal freeway was clear of all civilian traffic, leaving nothing but the tanks, transport trucks, and high-speed interceptors for Gadot to contend with.

  Jimmy glanced over his shoulder at the front windshield, let out a slow chuckle, and began reloading his weapons. His mask dropped to the floor as he cranked his window open and shoved his way out, sitting on the lip and trying to steady his aim.

  “I’ll try and warn you guys about stops and swerves but looking at that road . . . you might be on your own for most of it.” Gadot chewed at her lip, taking a few seconds to plan her route before she nodded and pressed on the gas. The Mustang rocketed down the road with a chirp of tires as they passed the ruins of a flower shop on the side of the freeway.

  “How long?” Kurt slid a fresh tower magazine into his Glock and started trying to crack the bulletproof windshield of a nearby interceptor. It swung up alongside them, bullets sparking from its front end before it tapped the Mustang’s rear wheel well.

  “Three minutes!” Gadot managed to keep them on the road, swerving back and forth. Once steady, she flipped up a plastic cover on her shifter and pressed a vibrant red button. The wheels boiled as flames erupted from the exhaust pipe and the Mustang shot down the road.

  Jimmy swayed on his perch, grabbing at the door frame as he struggled to breathe in the high wind. Once he scrambled back inside, he gave Gadot a significant look. “Thanks for the warning,” Jimmy quipped. When Gadot smiled wryly at him, he chuckled and reloaded his Beowulf rifle. “That’s a hell of a sweet upgrade though. How long until it recharges?”

  “Uhhhh, two minutes.” She shrugged. “Not great, but I’ll take it. Better than any NOS upgrades available normally, anyway.”

  The windshield on the offending high-speed pursuit vehicle shattered after Kurt put another magazine into it, cursing exultantly under his breath. As that interceptor fell away, three others dodged around it to pursue. “Jimmy? Help!” Kurt fumbled for a new magazine and came away empty handed, checking his wrist to see his fragmentation rounds on cooldown.

  Jimmy’s rifle cracked several times in quick succession and one of the interceptors fell away with flames peeking out from its hood, but both of the others swept in on top of them. They moved in and squeezed together on either side of the Mustang, applying brakes and forcing the lighter car to slow. Gadot slammed the car into a lower gear and applied pressure to the accelerator, trying to struggle free by wrenching the steering wheel back and forth.

  “Get ‘em off me!” Gadot yelled. She sounded desperate, and when Kurt glanced at the countdown on their windshield he understood why. They still had to keep the heat focused for sixty seconds.

  He fell over backwards, gripping the Messenger again and aiming between his legs at the window. A single gunshot shattered the passenger window of the interceptor, and the breach clicked open. He grunted and dropped the Messenger, reaching for his ankle and producing two smoke sticks. He lurched forward and tore the caps off as the passenger in the interceptor opened fire with a handgun at point blank range, striking both him and Gadot. All the air was driven from his lungs as the gunshot registered, and he gaped in sudden, excruciating pain. It was far worse than any gunfire he had sustained so far. With his last strength as he collapsed in the backseat, he tossed the smoke sticks into the interceptor. It swerved away, thick white smoke billowing from its windows as it struggled to keep a straight course. It strayed into the center divider and flipped into the air, trailing smoke and fragments of metal in a graceless leap.

  Gadot screamed in agony from the driver’s seat and partially collapsed over the steering wheel, clutching at her neck.

  Jimmy turned and pressed the barrel of his automatic shotgun to the driver’s window of the remaining interceptor, before holding down the trigger and blasting the car’s interior to pieces. He grabbed the steering wheel and held them steady on the road.

  “I’m sorry . . . sorry,” Jimmy muttered while pressing Gadot’s knee and keeping their speed up. Within a few seconds, she got her breath back and nodded at him, blinking back involuntary tears of pain. He nodded back and let her take over again, going back to providing cover fire.

  Looking down as he reloaded, Jimmy smiled. “Rubber bullets,” he said. “Hurts a bit, huh?”

  “Fu— yes!” Kurt sputtered while checking his wrist. His health hadn’t taken any damage, to his surprise. “What the hell? No damage?”

  One eye squinted closed as he tucked his cheek into the rifle butt, Jimmy smirked. “Yeah, it’s a really messed up mechanic. The rubber bullets cause no damage, even to critical hit areas, but they hurt like they would in real life for a few seconds. Armor helps . . . a bit.” He fired the rifle, baring his teeth at a miss. “Ten bar heat, man.”

  Kurt shook off the last of the feeling, reaching down and holstering the Messenger again. He grabbed a recently recharged fragmentation round magazine and slid it into the Glock, clicking the slide closed with a flick of his thumb and an angry glare out the back window.

  “Dozers!” Gadot shouted over the rushing wind and gunfire, smacking Jimmy’s shoulder to get his attention.

  Looking forward, Kurt saw a roadblock ahead consisting of a single large, yellow bulldozer settled into the middle of the lane, with almost no room on either side of it. “Oh shit!”

  Jimmy started playing with his wrist as Gadot pressed hard on the gas pedal and the car shot towards the obstacle. He glanced back at Kurt as he gripped the loose seatbelt in both hands and tucked into the seat harder. “Better hold onto something,” Jimmy said.

  Kurt wondered how he kept so calm as he gripped both handles on either side of the car’s interior roof.

  Gadot lightly drifted the car towards the center divider, squinting in concentration as she rolled on the gas and increased their speed. An instant before the bulldozer, she twitched the wheel and drove them partially up the side of the divider. The Mustang screamed sideways past the bulldozer in a haze of tearing metal and burning rubber. As they flopped back down on the other side, Kurt noticed the handle he gripped was no longer attached to anything. A corner of the roof on the passenger side had been torn free, and he went pale as he stared at the severed handle.

  The windshield had spider-webbed from the impact. Gadot reached out and flicked the map lower, getting it out of the worst of the mess.

  Jimmy went back to playing with his phone, swiping at the air above his wrist before nodding and speaking, seemingly to no one. “I need some strikes. Yes.” He shook his head and sighed. “Fine. Just clear our path.” He swiped his phone away and turned to look at Gadot and then Kurt. “We get three strikes to clear the road, then the Stronghold is away. Smells like a balance mechanic to me. I’m positive they could hold more ammo than that.”

  Kurt’s eyes narrowed, but he was quickly distracted, looking out the driver’s side window. The Stronghold descended from cloud cover over the ocean, moving to fly ahead. Bright streaks of light lanced from its side into the road ahead of them, sending up eruptions of flame and annihilating the next handful of awaiting roadblocks. Asphalt and flaming bits of vehicle were thrown into the air, crashing to the ground around them as they approached.

  Gadot maneuvered the car to weave between the wreckage and rubble at speed, carefully aiming to squeeze between the blasted hulks of bulldozers and transport trucks. “Twenty seconds!”

  Kurt glanced at the cracked windshield, confirming they were nearing their goal. “How does this end for us?” He had to shout to be heard over Jimmy’s rifle, leaning away from the barrel as it spat fire and lead next to his head. “Could you not for a sec?” Kurt complained.

  Jimmy grinned at him, swapped magazines, and resumed fire.

  “Don’t think about it! Easier that way!” Gadot shouted over her shoulder as her hair whipped around in the wind.

  Kurt swallowed hard. The Stronghold off to his left banked hard, climbing aggressively towards cloud cover as it fired a series of flares from its tail. A fighter jet swept by overhead, firing missiles and banking out over the ocean. The missiles intercepted a couple of flares and erupted safely behind the Stronghold as it rose into the clouds, and Kurt watched its progress on the map instead. As the timer counted down, the stronghold’s dot pulsed regularly, followed by the fighter jet. Once the counter reached zero, the larger dot vanished.

  “Clear!” Jimmy smacked the roof of the car in excitement. “We just stole three billion dollars!”

  Gadot grinned, glancing over for a second. “We’re famous now, boys.” She scowled. “Actually, I was already kinda famous. And now that I think about it, Kurt’s famous for the Fox thing, so . . .”

  “I’m famous.” Jimmy adopted a smug expression and sat back in his seat, crossing his arms behind his head.

  “Yes you are, congrats. Also, we’re rich now, I think. Like, real life rich, maybe,” Gadot said. She swerved suddenly to avoid an interceptor, ducking in her seat as Kurt opened fire on it. The jet banked towards them, sending a pair of missiles streaking their way. “Okay, I’d like to stop doing this now. You guys have access to my safehouse, let’s all just respawn there.” She popped open the nitrous boost button and pressed it again, sending the car rocketing down the freeway.

  “Wait, what?” Kurt turned to the front just in time to see a massive bulldozer blade fill the cracked windshield. He heard the initial crack of glass and a quick scream of metal, but everything went black before he could even register the impact.

  The black nothing of his respawn waiting period was interrupted by floating text. “Your respawn location is temporarily unavailable. Please choose a spawn point.” He reached an ephemeral hand out and spun through the list of locations available to him, most of them generic spawn points. Once he found Gadot’s, he sighed at the name and chose it.

  His hearing loaded in first, softening the mental anguish of being momentarily without senses. The sound of wind rustling through trees calmed him almost as effectively as the rattling of his train car. When his sight loaded in, he pulled up his phone and casually swiped through the skill notifications. “Damn right, Pain Suppression,” he muttered to himself before swiping off the notifications for later. The warm glow of having gotten away with the buyout settled in, and he started thinking about what he could spend his cut on once it was transferred into real world money. Stepping out of the guest bedroom, he joined Jimmy in the hallway and they headed downstairs. They found Gadot in the viewing room, staring out the window intently.

  “Really? ‘Gadot’s Chateau’?” Kurt raised an eyebrow at her from across the room.

  She shrugged. “Just because you can’t think of any clever names . . . This structure is a chateau, it seemed to fall into place.”

  Jimmy walked across the room and embraced her, turning to look out the window. “You . . . are kinda terrible at naming things.” Kurt could almost hear the wry smile in his voice.

  All conversation was forgotten as he stepped further into the room and got a good look through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The Downtown Cluster burned, a wall of black smoke barely obscuring the bright reddish orange glow. As they watched, one of the skyscrapers succumbed to the flames, leaning into a crumbling fall and trailing sparks and ash until it coalesced on the road in a blazing fireball.

  Gadot sighed in contentment and mumbled, “I love this city.”

  The End