The next couple of weeks were back to business as usual. I went to work, and the Endr universe mostly left me alone. I’d tried to message Lanie a few times, but she hadn’t responded, so I tried to put her out of my mind.
Our first snowfall of the season arrived in the city, causing numerous traffic problems. The familiar pattern repeated: New England residents forget how to drive in snow, then quickly recall, and traffic eventually settles.
Over the long days, I was able to redeem myself a bit in the eyes of Sergeant Hanlon and the rest of Barracks 4. Hanlon eventually admitted they’d briefly had a poll about how long I would last after calling off my second day of work.
Cam and I both picked up a few extra shifts leading into the Christmas season. I even got to work with him a little bit one night when some asshat led him and his sergeant on a chase from the airport through the Sumner Tunnel. A part of me had laughed inside as I’d blasted the cruiser through the narrow streets of the North End while the normally reserved Hanlon clutched the grab handle and swore.
We’d managed to pin the suspect in next to the Coast Guard base at the end of Hanover St. after about 20 minutes of some pretty thrilling driving. Our cruiser was undamaged, but the same couldn't be said for the suspect's vehicle or a few of the vehicles parked on the streets he’d fled down. Hanlon had treated me with more respect ever since.
It was December 12 when I got my next fare. It was a Friday night, and I’d been about to head home after a long week. The notification seemed to come out of nowhere.
New Fare Assigned!
Target: Josiah MacFarlane
Profession: College Student
Location: Medford, Massachusetts
I felt my pulse quicken, and I had to ask myself why. My first thoughts weren’t about the job at hand, but the other Endrs. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget the messages Lanie and I had shared all fall…or the image of her standing mostly naked in her apartment.
Then there were my two memories of Axel. The first was when he had taken the photo of me lying on the ground, temporarily trapped under Johnson’s corpse. The second was the split second I had looked into his eyes just before his vehicle plowed into mine. I hated Axel for what he’d done, but I couldn’t find it in me to hate Lanie. I had simply put too much hope in someone I didn’t know well enough to trust with my heart.
I did my best to shake the thoughts out of my head as I drove to Tufts University. I had selected the Ford Ranger again, even though at my new level I now had access to a Honda Accord, a car that I actually already owned and was deeply familiar with. I spared a few seconds to wonder just who made up these car levels. They were bonkers. The good news was that Level 19 also gave me access to an H&K VP9 handgun in the bed and the Nitrous Boost. Those I enabled.
A few minutes out from my destination, I realized I was passing an inordinate number of police cars. As I neared the Medford line, I glanced at the rearview to see that a couple had begun following me. Shit! Something wasn’t right.
I cruised through the Powderhouse Rotary, seeing that the number of cruisers tailing me had increased to three. The first car flipped its blue and red lights on. I started to pull over, before realizing that I couldn’t exactly pull out a license and registration for the Ranger.
“Who does it belong to, officer?” I imagined myself saying. “I’m so happy you asked. I work for an underworld organization presided over by the Grim Reaper; they gave me this magic car so I could run people over.” The best-case scenario ended with me thrown in a jail cell. The worst-case scenario had me in a straitjacket.
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As I was considering my options, I looked over to the sidewalk, where a tall, black man stood. He tipped an imaginary hat to me, his dark eyes glittering with malice. I knew that glare; I’d been trying to get it out of my head for the last two weeks. Axel smirked as I passed, throwing a hand up in an asshole wave as I gunned it past him, flying up College Ave toward the main section of the university.
More lights and sirens flipped on behind me. I had a feeling more cruisers would be waiting for me along whatever path I chose to go through campus. Axel had set me up. He must have called in a tip, banking on me choosing the same truck model I’d had in Southie.
I told myself I didn’t know why he would target me, but inside, I knew the answer. While Lanie had been polite when she broke my heart, I doubt she had been nearly as reserved with her ex after he’d had attacked me openly only two blocks from her house. Whatever she’d said, he clearly hadn’t taken it well.
I didn’t have time to think about this anymore. I activated my newest upgrade and flew out of range of the police cars. The Nitrous Boost was no joke. The closest sensation I’d ever felt was when I’d ridden a motorcycle with Power Bands. When it kicked in, I’d been forced back in the seat, instinctively pulling back on the accelerator, which had only sent me further back in the seat, and thus made me pull back even further on the accelerator in a period of exponential acceleration.
That was precisely what the Nitrous Boost did to my Ranger, only this time, I didn’t have to worry about popping a wheelie and falling off. Instead, I simply had to navigate Medford traffic, which was pretty awful this time of day. My getaway path to the bridge onto Boston Ave involved more than a few broken traffic laws. I wondered if I might have actually invented some new, creative ways to break traffic laws.
My best course of action was to avoid Tufts completely, given the number of video cameras the university had on nearby private roads and campus buildings. I was pretty sure that I could lose the police on all the side roads if I could make it to Winthrop Street. It would be as simple as turning a blind corner and transforming the Ranger back into my Accord or literally any other vehicle.
At Winthrop, I whipped the Ranger into a left onto Orchard, then floored it to the corner of Marshall and North Street. Seeing no one on the quiet one-way street, I quickly switched my ride back into my mild-mannered civilian vehicle. I pulled into an open parking spot, waiting for the police cruiser to go screaming by before I pulled back out onto the road.
I passed another five cruisers heading to where I lost the other officers, but this time I followed every traffic law and drove at precisely the same speed as the other cars to better blend in. By the time I made it back up to campus, my fare had been canceled. Had I missed my window, or had Axel simply gotten to Josiah before I could?
Over the next week, the same pattern repeated. With every new fare that came through, I found Axel one step ahead of me, either distracting me or doing something that made it impossible for me to complete my fare. Dispatch was frustrated. I was frustrated. But worse, I could feel myself growing weaker with every missed opportunity. I’d started to experience familiar bruising and rogue pains in my extremities, just as I had back in the academy.
It had been eight days since my first failed fare, and in the two days since, my cancer symptoms had begun returning, growing worse with each miss. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the amount of time that had passed, more that the system believed I was willfully not doing my job. Then again, maybe it didn’t matter to the Bureau whether it was willful or not–chances were good that renegade Endrs and incompetent ones were treated the same.
By the morning of the 20th, I felt so weak that I called off work to rest. Cam offered to call off too, to take care of me back at The Central, but I waved him off, telling him I just needed some sleep. That part was a lie, obviously, but I didn’t want Cam getting in trouble for me.
I hadn’t heard from fourth_wall in two days, since my third and most recent failure. I lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Never, in all of our back and forth in chat, had I mentioned Axel’s interference. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was as simple as fear…fear of the stronger Endr, fear that I would only end up putting more distance between myself and Lanie if I ratted out her ex. Or maybe it was that somewhere deep down, I knew that I should be dead, that I deserved everything that Axel had done and more.
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