REALITY

Chapter 2

Present day

The passenger door of the Jeep flew open.
“Get in! Hurry!”
Scott didn’t move.
The world in front of him refused to make sense. Xavier’s Maserati was no longer a car. It was twisted metal fused against the front of a dark van, both vehicles compressed into something unrecognizable. Smoke curled upward in thin black ribbons. Bodies lay scattered across the street in dark clothing, limbs bent at wrong angles. Weapons glinted between them in the flashing hazard lights.
His ears were still ringing.
He looked down.
There was a pistol in his hand.
He let it fall. It hit the road with a flat crack.
A body lay near his feet. For one split second, he thought it was Woodward. His chest tightened painfully before reason caught up with him.
Not Woodward.
Just another man in a balaclava, blood seeping into the cracks of the asphalt.
Scott crouched without thinking and grabbed the edge of the mask. He hesitated, unsure what he expected to find beneath it. Recognition? Proof? Some confirmation that this had been necessary?
Shouting broke through the fog.
Footsteps slapped against the road.
Xavier clamped a hand around his arm. His face snapped into view, sweat in his chestnut hair, eyes sharp and focused. His mouth moved, but no sound reached Scott at first, as if someone had muted the world.
“Scott, move. If you don’t get in, you’re next.”
The noise returned all at once. Horns. Distant sirens. The Jeep’s engine still growled impatiently.
“What the fuck happened here?” Scott managed.
“I’ll tell you on the way,” Xavier said, waving a gun toward the Jeep. “Move.”
Scott looked past him. The driver leaned across the seat, shouting, her silhouette sharp against the dashboard lights. Something about her felt familiar in a way he couldn’t immediately place.
Xavier grabbed Scott’s sleeve.
“We haven’t got much time.”
That, at least, was clear.
Scott climbed into the back seat just as the Jeep surged forward.

The vehicle fishtailed through the next intersection without slowing. Scott slammed sideways and grabbed the panic rail as the Jeep snapped left, then right again, rain streaking across the windscreen and turning the city into blurred ribbons of light.
Xavier sat in the passenger seat, phone in one hand, gun in the other, scanning the mirrors and the street ahead.
“We’ve got to get in the air,” he shouted.
“I thought you said they’d have the airports covered!” Scott yelled back, forcing himself into the conversation before he lost control of his stomach.
“We’re not going to an airport.”
“Then where?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.” Xavier pause, then, “If we get there.”
Scott swallowed hard. “Is there anything you can tell me? Anything that makes sense?”
Xavier didn’t turn. “Scott, I will explain everything once we’re safe.”
“That’s what you said before the shooting started.”
Silence hung in the cabin, thick and tense.
“Was that Zero Division?” Scott pressed. “Is that who that was?”
“Leave it.”
“At least tell me why they’re after me.”
“They’re not,” Xavier snapped over the engine’s roar. “They’re after me.”
Scott blinked. “You?”
“I’m not some flashy entrepreneur with a sports car,” Xavier said. “I’ve shown you a version of myself, one I wanted you to see.”
The word stuck in Scott’s head.
A version.
“You just got caught in the crossfire,” the driver added.
Scott leaned forward, trying to see her properly. “And who exactly are you?”
“The person who just saved your life.”
“Scott, meet Maxine,” Xavier said evenly. “Maxine, Scott.”
Scott stared at the back of her head. Messy, short blonde hair. The tilt of her jaw. The eyes in the rear-view mirror, bright and assessing.
Recognition hit him harder than the gunfire had.
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?” she asked.
“You’re Maxine.”
“Yes.”
“No. I mean—you’re identical to the Maxine in the app.”
That changed the air in the Jeep.
She glanced at Xavier. “You haven’t told him?”
“Told me what?” Scott demanded.
Xavier’s jaw tightened. “Later.”
“It’s not fair,” Maxine muttered.
“For fuck’s sake, someone tell me.”
“Enough,” Xavier snapped. “We’re not doing this now.”
Scott sank back into his seat, breathing unevenly. He looked down at his coat. The blue fabric was stiff with dried blood. His wife’s blood was somewhere in that mess, mixed with dirt and cordite and whatever else the night had thrown at him.
Days ago, his biggest problem had been quarterly targets and stationery margins.
Now he was fleeing through the city in the rain with a gun in his lap.
His fantasy had a pulse.
And she drove like she had done this before.

A squeal of tires cut through the downpour.
Scott turned. Through the rain-streaked rear window, twin black SUVs burst from an intersection and locked onto their street.
“God damn it,” Xavier muttered.
Scott followed his gaze, then looked down at what he was holding.
His headphones.
The wire hung loose between his fingers.
Xavier’s eyes sharpened. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?” Scott asked, genuinely confused.
Maxine didn’t slow. If anything, she accelerated.
“Are we going to make it?” she called.
Xavier scanned ahead. “There.”
He pointed toward a glass-fronted office building half a block down.
Maxine mounted the curb hard enough to lift Scott from his seat. A mailbox snapped beneath the front tire and shattered into wet splinters. Outdoor tables flipped as diners scrambled clear, chairs skidding across the pavement.
The Jeep slewed sideways and stopped inches from the building entrance. Doors kicked open as the passengers jumped out. Scott grabbed the gun, now alien to him, and stepped out into the rain.
“Hurry,” Xavier yelled, ushering the others inside. “They’re coming.”
“What are you going to do?” Scott asked.
“Slow them down.”
“You’re hit,” Scott said, noticing the blood spreading across Xavier’s shoulder.
“I’ll survive,” Xavier replied, already moving.
The lobby was all marble and glass, pristine and brightly lit, an island of corporate calm. Scott’s shoes squeaked against the polished floor as he followed Maxine across the foyer.
She moved without wasted motion, shrugging the rifle off her shoulder and checking it with quick, economical movements. Her hands were steady. Automatic.
He couldn’t stop staring. She looked exactly like the Maxine he had known through the app. Only this version smelled like rain and smoke.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
Tires screamed through the foyer entrance, the sound ricocheting off concrete and glass as vehicles skidded to a halt outside. A heartbeat later came the slam of doors, the thud of boots striking pavement, and sharp voices barking orders as their attackers converged on the building.
Then the building shook.
The explosion hit before the sound did. For a fraction of a second, the world beyond the glass turned white. Then came the blast, a concussive crack that rattled the facade and sent spiderweb fractures racing across the panels before they cascaded inward in a rain of shards.
Sprinklers erupted overhead.
Water poured down in cold sheets.
Scott flinched, arms rising instinctively. Maxine didn’t.
Xavier burst through the entrance seconds later, soaked and breathing harder now.
“Move.”
They ran for the elevators.
“I didn’t think lifts worked in a fire,” Scott said as the doors slid open before they reached them.
“They don’t,” Maxine replied.
“Unless you override the system,” Xavier added, holding up his phone.
Scott stepped inside and leaned against the mirrored wall. His reflection stared back at him through the descending water, blood-streaked and pale, eyes too wide.
He looked over at his companions.
“How the hell are you two so damn calm?”
Maxine smiled. “You’ll learn.”
“You’ll remember,” Xavier corrected.

The elevator opened onto a glass-walled rooftop enclosure.
Rain hammered against the panels. Beyond them, a black helicopter idled, rotor blades slicing the wet air.
Unmarked. Waiting.
“How long has that been here?” Scott asked.
“Long enough,” Xavier said.
They ran.
The downdraft shoved rain sideways. Scott climbed into the rear seat and fumbled with the harness, pulling it too tight. His chest felt constricted.
The helicopter lifted as the rooftop access door burst open behind them.
Muzzle flashes flickered.
Metal rang beneath Scott’s feet as rounds struck the fuselage. The pilot banked sharply, nose climbing into the rain-dark sky.
Scott gripped the seat until his fingers ached.
Below them, the building shrank. Firelight flickered against the wet pavement. The SUVs were nothing but burning wreckage now.
The gunfire faded.
The helicopter steadied.
Inside, there was only the thrum of the rotors and Scott’s uneven breathing.
Maxine leaned toward him.
“You look like hell.”
“Fuck you.”
“Breathe.”
He tried.
Air came in shallow pulls. His hands were still shaking.
He stared at them.
Minutes ago, those same hands had fired a weapon with certainty. He remembered the recoil. He remembered aiming. He remembered hitting what he aimed at.
He just didn’t remember deciding to.
Scott turned toward the window. Rain streaked the glass, distorting his reflection into something sharper, harder.
For a moment, he didn’t recognize himself.
And that frightened him more than the men chasing them.