Thomas didn’t wait for the predators on the other side of jungle of jagged steel to come for him but stepped on the gas and accelerated away. The rest of the squad followed to the best of their ability. The autonomous vehicles were not dazed by their momentary dormancy either and came for them without a delay. Trying to buy time for the others, he lured some of the attackers aside, but the onslaught was still too much for two of the other drivers, whose vehicles were bashed and mauled mercilessly, leaving Thomas with just one other carful of support. They made for an opening and broke out of the mayhem of onrushing vehicles, finding more room to maneuver. They rushed down the street, the engine of their car roaring. From around a bend in the road came on obstacle, like a wall rising from the ground to barricade them in with the horde. It was a group of autonomous trucks, driving side-by-side towards them like a great moving cordon.

Thomas cursed and turned the wheel sharply, his actions based more on instinct born of experience than any conscious deliberation, more like an artist so overwhelmed with inspiration he feels that a greater power is at work through him while he is only the entranced conduit of creation. And that instinct was his only chance, as one could not arrive at a calculated decision faster than the electronic hivemind of his pursuers.

“Stop! Stop! STOP” yelled the young man next to him, each repetition louder than the one before. But stopping was not an option as the vehicles pursuing them would pour in, and there would not be enough room to avoid them. So he charged the iron curtain closing in, staying close to the frontages of the building lining the avenue. When the hard steel and glass of the of truck’s noses filled his vision, he swerved right, crashing through a show window into a clothing store, turning the car around so they slid sideways in a storm of hats, coats and mannequin pieces. The trucks streaked past, braking heavily but as they were not nimble enough to change their course on such short notice, they passed the store. The Charger hit the inside wall of the store, right side first, but even that was not enough to slow him down and he shot out of the boutique, emerging behind the line of trucks that now dammed the metal deluge of Ampere’s vehicles behind. He did not see the car with Crawford’s men inside and knew he never would again.

The trucks backed up, but by the time the way was clear he was long gone. He punched the steering wheel in anger. “We had it. For a moment, I thought…. Maybe Crawford has the equipment for us to pull it off again and this time we’ll shoot down them before they shoot us.”

“Maybe,” was all his companion said.

Their path was unobstructed, so it didn't take long for them to get back to the docks. The sun was setting, his brain conjuring an ambushing predator out of every shadow. Streetlamps were turning on, the ones that worked, not that the energy-efficient eco-friendly bulbs offered much more than faint sparkle in terms of illumination. Because of the half-light of the city general, they could see the lightshow in the docks from a mile away. A heavy sense of foreboding settled in his stomach, and he raced ahead.

The warehouse was surrounded by innumerable vehicles, like ants swarming anything that falls into their nest. Heavier vehicles took turns ramming the entrance, faster than the crane operator could ever crush them. Further away, the Chosen were taking up vantage points, firing at heads peeking from the windows of the structure. What had seemed an impregnable fortress was now but a desperate folly, a drowning man grasping at a straw.

He was so focused on the besieged warehouse he noticed the hulking shadow only when it was almost on top of the docks. An ocean liner, automated like most modes of transportation were, coming straight towards the warehouse without slowing down, dwarfing everything around it with its incomprehensible proportions. It crashed with the docks, cleaving through the concrete, unconcerned with the wide gashes that were opening in its hull. The impact shook the ground, so his car rocked from side to side and the sound of rending metal was like a million voices screaming in unison. It obliterated the wall of the warehouse, knocking down the heavy ramparts of containers before finally coming to a stop. The vehicles poured in through the breach in the wall in overwhelming numbers.

Something else seemed to crumble in his chest along with the wall. His heart would have had him slam the accelerator and charge into the fray, to find Naomi and Jason or die trying. But his head held the wheel, telling him there would be nothing to gain and nothing to save. But was there anything to keep going for? It certainly didn’t feel that way and it would have been easier to just charge down the hill, feel that rush once more before going out in a blaze of glory and being freed from all that pain and misery. But he did what he had always done: kept moving, not out of any deliberate consideration but out of instinct. He turned the car around and drove away as the great crane came tumbling down.

He drove to the predetermined emergency meeting point Crawford had established a few blocks away from the docks, under the shadows of a raised highway. He drove his car behind a dumpster, camouflaging it with bags of trash before continuing on foot. A few survivors had made it there, mostly people who had been guarding spots further away from the base or that had been out on one mission or another. No one he knew.

“They came in force,” one of the lookouts explained when he questioned him. “One moment; nothing, next; they filled the yard. They had megaphones and told us we had one chance to surrender. Most wanted to give in, but Crawford gave the order to open fire, and when those loyal to him did so, the rest had no chance but to fight alongside them. Not that it did them any good.”

“The domed car?” another said when questioned. “You mean the one that looks like a spaceship? Sorry to tell you but that thing is toast. Saw the whole thing with my own eyes, with the aid of my rifle’s scope, of course. Torn apart when the tanker crashed in. There wasn’t much left afterwards.”

“Yeah, I remember the blonde,” a man with a gravelly voice and a bitter face told him. “Watching after that boy, right? They were in there when it began, and no one got out. You do the math.”

“What are we going to next?”

The question came from a young woman who looked at Thomas expectantly.

“Why are you asking me?”

She shrugged. “You did lead that attack, didn’t you? If Crawford was the leader our group, and he chose you to lead a squad, doesn’t that make you, like, a captain or something? No, a first mate? I don’t know, but the next-in-command anyways.”

He stared at her for a moment before looking over the assembled people, counting half a dozen. Some were wandering around aimless, while other stared at nothing. One had walked away briskly a few times, looking like he had made up his mind, only to soon turn around and return to resume his uneasy fidgeting.

“Also,” she continued, “you don’t look as lost as the others here.”

Rumble sounded from the overpass above as a squad of vehicles passed, their lights casting long shadows. He crouched while others threw themselves down, covering their heads. Beams of light flashed from different directions, too far to form any immediate danger.

The girl got up into a kneeling position, stretching her neck like a mongoose to case the surroundings. “They’re canvassing the area,” she whispered, putting into words what he had already deduced. “We need to go.”

“No,” he said. “With all the cameras watching the streets we’ll be made the moment we move out. That’s how they must have known to look for us in the area. If the troop they had assaulting the warehouse has moved here, which we must assume they have, they have the numbers to block every street.”

“Then what do we do?” asked one of the men. Turning in his direction, Thomas noticed everyone was looking at him, some with desperation, others with unreadable blank expressions. They weren’t exactly putting all their trust and hope on him, but at least he had their attention.

“I’d rather die fighting than just lie down and get squashed into paste,” the man continued.

“We can’t take the streets, so we’ll go under them,” he declared, putting on the clear, assured voice he had developed to swoon ambivalent car-shoppers.

The people grimaced and scoffed. It was going to be a hard sell.

“We can avoid the surveillance cameras,” he bartered. “Those tunnels span the entire city, and they’re going to be next to impossible for the vehicles to travel within.”

He turned to Lucas. “Can you find a map of the sewer network?”

The man flinched at the sudden attention. “Yes, it should be no problem,” he answered.

“Find us an entry point, there should be one nearby since we’re close to the harbor, where many of the sewer lines end.”

It took him no time at all to point them in the right direction. Put the people stayed moored to the spot.

“What are we going to eat? Rats?”

“We are not going to stay there, are we? Where do we go next?”

“I think we should try smashing through their lines! Some of us are bound to survive.” They were caught in uncertainty, indecision and consternation as surely as in a tar pit.

Thomas didn't have the answers to their questions, but none of their worries mattered if they were caught here. They had to get a move on. So that’s what he did. He turned without a word, walking resolutely in the direction of where the nearest sewer entrance was. Lucas scampered after him, the girl following close behind. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the rest followed in suit, some dragging their feet longer than others to prove some point.

The entrance was secured with rusted iron bars, but the door had been broken down long ago, and nobody cared for repairing much anything, so all they had to do was walk in. The tunnel had channel shouldered by narrow raised walkways, all made of concrete. A small rivulet trickled down the gutter, meandering past trash that had collected over the years. Faded yellow letters spray-painted to the wall informed them it was one of the outflow channels of the city’s storm water lines. Further than the first few yards were left up to their imagination, which conjured up all manner of things both dangerous and disgusting, since darkness engulfed the unlit tunnel.

“Alright people, get your flashlights out,” he said, turning on the light on his phone. “And watch your step.”

Their footsteps echoed in the fetid tunnel and when the gate screeched shut behind them, it was just them, the darkness and the rats. He kept Lucas close, checking the map himself to keep track of where they were. Greasy droplets dribbled on their necks from above, and Thomas was quickly covered in spiderwebs. His flashlight revealed abandoned shopping carts, children’s dolls with the clothes ripped away and piles of trash in such a state of rust and decay it was impossible to tell what they had once been.

“Guess you end up here when it’s you’re not worth the time it would take to properly get rid of you,” Thomas thought. “How fitting.”

They made it to a spot which had caught Thomas’ attention on the map. It was a wider enclosure with steel pipes running above their heads. He tried the pipe with his arm—hot. It would keep them warm during the night. Grates in the ceiling—which was the road above—let through light from the streetlamps, and a breeze. It was also slightly drier than the tunnels leading up to it.

“Let’s make camp,” he said, seeing some of the group was already starting to fall behind. “Try to make yourselves comfortable. We’ll leave at dawn.”

Some grumbled, but then dropped their bags and sat down.

“I’ll check the perimeter,” he told them and withdrew to a tunnel they hadn’t explored. Soon, he found himself in a dead end lit by a pale lamp in a dirty, steel-wire enforced casing, completely alone. There, with nowhere to run, the thought that had he had been able to keep at bay until now, one he had sensed growing larger in the horizon of his consciousness, coming for him like a headhunter for a wanted man, finally caught up with him. It was like the weight of the city above suddenly rested on his shoulders.

“They are gone.”

He struck a wall-mounted pipe in anger, and the corroded wall around the screws gave easily. He grabbed the loosened pipe with both arms, tearing it off and hurling it at the wall. Dirty sludge bled from the open ends of the pipeline, spilling to the floor and exuding a metallic odor.

“Didn’t I learn anything?”

Years ago, when he had lost his child, he had raged and fought for a while, but eventually, urged by Naomi, had tried to go on with his life, expect dead set to stay away from technology that was designed to collect information on him while feeding his baser instincts. He had thought that would have to be enough, but that same system had become so pervasive, his living space had shrunk to down to almost nothing. But he had endured. Some part of him was glad to see Naomi move forward in her life, leave behind the feeling of loss, betrayal and vengeance, but he also knew it would be enough to make impossible the joyous, concordant relationship they once had. Many times, he had thought his new life was a shadow of his old one, but at least he had managed to hold on to some parts he held most dear, and he knew he was the absolute master of the little he had, not just a member of the cattle penned in for somebody else’s benefit. But as he had guarded his domain jealously the thing he had resolved to keep out had grown in strength, feasting on people who sacrificed their privacy, thoughts and independence for convenience and release from effort until it was powerful enough to reach over and tear even that shadow away from him.

In that desolate subterranean abysm of a city hostile to life he buried the idea of leaving and finding a new home untouched by the intrusion of the artificial into the real, of calculations into the realm of decisions, of invisible tools trying to carve the subjective world into a reduced objective cage where everyone and everything could be ranked with some measurement or another. He would take what Crawford had started and make the fight his own, either destroy his enemy or die trying. One way or another, he would be free from their dominion.

He stood up, moving the mountainous weight on his shoulders, fueled by his sorrow and anger turned to conviction. His retreat, which he had begun years ago, was at an end. He spat on its grave and turned to make his way back to the others.

He found them huddled around Lucas, staring at the screen of his laptop with wide eyes.

“You need to see this,” the bespectacled young man told him. “There’s finally something on the news about this.” Thomas walked over, seeing the screen over the heads of the bunched-up group. Video clips of damaged cars being surrounded with police tape, and ambulances and police vehicles flashing their lights filled the screen while a text-to-speech voice narrated from the computer-generated spiel put together from bulletins gathered by net-trawling bots.

“—a string of attacks has terrorized the area and burdened first responders as well as hospitals, but the situation has been brought under control, with the police patrolling the streets. However, the damage done to communication relays will take longer to fix, and therefore it might take days, even weeks until the network can handle its usual load. It is recommended that citizens stay indoors unless it absolutely cannot be avoided and await further instructions from official sources.”

The survivors let out a collective sigh of relief. “Thank God. It’s finally over.”

The news program continued: “The search for the dead and the wounded still continues, but thankfully most suffered only slight injuries, and even the victims requiring intensive care have been stabilized. We have confirmed information of a dozen dead or injured victims, but current official estimations put the actual number somewhere between twenty-five and forty.”

“That’s really lowballing it,” one of the men hooted. “Saw more than that run down on a single plaza.”

“Search continues for the prime suspect, Thomas Walker, who is considered to be the leader of the cell of domestic terrorists behind the violent assaults and who the police warn is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Anyone with information about his whereabouts is urged to call the number visible at the bottom of the screen or contact their police department’s cyber hotline in virtual space.”

The gathering turned silent and stiffly still, a few glancing at him from the corners of their eyes. Thomas’ undivided attention was on the broadcast.

“Walker, who was already suspected by the police of a vehicular manslaughter before the attacks, has a history of negligent driving behavior, and was questioned just a few weeks ago after appearing on the scene of a violent terror attack utilizing a car against a group of protestors. He also has no accounts on social media or on Ampere’s virtual augmentation platform, which experts posit is a sign of anti-social thought and paranoia. Our sources reveal him to be a man without a wife or children whose employment was terminated recently and who frequents the local liquor store.”

The screen changed to show different links and webpages. “Follow us to stay up to speed as the story unfolds and join the millions of people who already benefit from our personalized newsfeeds. The news you want to hear, twenty-four hours a day!”

Lucas muted the broadcast. “Guess we were too quick to celebrate. Looks like they’re coming for you hard.”

“Let them come,” he said. “I’ll meet them halfway.”

“So you didn't have anything to do with this?” one of the other men asked.

“If I did, I certainly wouldn’t have spent the last few days running for my life only to end up in a sewer.”

“So what they told about you was all lies? About you being investigated by the police for the last few weeks?”

“What do you think?” he put neutrally.

“I don’t know.”

“Then it’s fortunate you have the whole night to think it over.” He faced the rest of the group. “Rest up, people. We’ll post guard and watch the streets above, if the traffic dies down, we’ll try to return the way we came so we at least have a few cars. Tomorrow, I’ll brief you on our plan of attack.”

“Attack?” the weary aggregation blurted in a single, high-pitched voice.

“You’re out of your mind,” one complained.

“Look what happened the last time we tried that.”

“We should just hide and wait for things to calm down.”

“Let’s just go home and pretend we don’t know anything unusual is going on. I mean, they don’t attack the ones like that, right?”

“If you’re here,” he bellowed, silencing the outcry before continuing in a lower voice, “that means you don’t have enough points in Routh’s tally system, whatever that is. When you’re caught, you’ll either be killed or tyrannized in some way. If that’s fine by you, then by all means leave since you’re likely to slow us down.”

No one moved.

“Well then.” He pointed at one of the men. “You have the first watch.” He walked off, not wanting to hear any further arguments. A mutiny seemed averted for the time being, but he hadn’t won any devoted teammates either. And it would require a great deal of blind devotion or passion to take up a fight which meant almost certain death. Something one held dearer than his own life.

“An ideal higher than one’s own life and comfort?” he mused somberly. “Won’t find such a thing amongst these people.”