They arrived. The world narrowed to the glinting facade of Vangelico, the idling rumble of the Bugstars van, and the frantic beat of her own heart. Megan's gloved hands gripped the steering wheel, then the unfamiliar, cold polymer of the AK-47 Lester had handed her. It was heavy, alien, a tool of pure violence. Her first time holding a gun wasn't in some controlled range; it was on a sunny street, waiting to commit a felony.
The wait in the van was agony. Norm breathed heavily beside her. Michael was a statue in the back. Then, Franklin's voice, tight with effort, crackled in her ear: "Get in there. That was it. They going out."
Through the store's windows, they saw the final act of a silent play. A customer mid-gesture, the cashier reaching for something—their bodies went limp, folding to the polished floor like marionettes with cut strings. It was horrifying and efficient.
Michael's voice, muffled by the gas mask he now wore: "Let's go."
He and Norm, transformed into anonymous red bugs with duffle bags and rifles, slipped from the van and moved inside with a chilling quiet. Megan stayed put, her designated role: look-out. The rifle felt absurd in her hands. She held it like it was radioactive.
The silence was broken by the violent, crystalline cacophony of shattering glass from inside. "Go, go, go, go! Let's do this! Come on!" Michael's voice, now edged with a greedy adrenaline. "Following your lead!" Norm echoed, a dutiful brute.
The Benson truck pulled up, Franklin hopping out to unload the three navy-blue bikes. Paige's calm, digital voice reported in: "I've been able to get you around a minute and a half before the alarm'll reset itself."
90 seconds. To Megan, it sounded like the blink of an eye. A lifetime to smash and grab under gas, a heartbeat in the scope of getting caught.
"Forty seconds."
"Alright, we're running out of time..."
The robbery became a frantic, escalating chant in her ear—hit the target… let's see how high we can go… they're outta stones—until finally, Michael's command: "Let's hit the road!"
Paige and the truck vanished. Megan swung a leg over her designated BF-400, the familiar feel of a bike seat a tiny anchor in the chaos. Franklin mounted his. Then, the mundane absurdity: a traffic warden, oblivious to the grand theft occurring feet away, focused on the illegal parking of motorcycles.
"So for the last time, move it!"
Megan stared, frozen. What was the protocol for this? Shoot him? Smile?
Franklin handled it. "Man, get the fuck out my face!"
Norm emerged, a duffle bag straining over his shoulder, and clambered onto the third bike. The warden didn't even glance at him. Then Michael burst out, and with a casual, terrifying violence, shoved the warden to the pavement.
"You forget a thousand things every day, pal. Make sure this is one of 'em. I'll see you at the river. Go!"
Michael tossed his bag to Franklin and sprinted away on foot as the jewelry store's alarm finally erupted in a screaming wail that seemed to shake the street.
"Let's do this!" Franklin yelled.
Megan's voice, sharp and clear, cut through the panic in her own head. "Stay close! Follow my line! Go!" She kicked the bike into gear, the engine snarling, and peeled away from the curb, leading the trio onto Dorset Drive.
Her mind was a map. Left here, swerve around this van, cut across two lanes. She called out directions, her voice steady in the comms, a stark contrast to the storm inside. The first police sirens bloomed in the distance, then closer.
Then came the sound she'd feared but couldn't truly imagine until she heard it.
Pop-pop-poppop-pop.
Not the loud booms from movies. Sharp, snapping cracks. One zipped past her ear with a vicious whine. Another struck the body of her bike just behind her calf with a sickening THWACK of rending metal and plastic.
Fuck. They're shooting. At me. That was at me.
A white-hot bolt of pure, animal terror shot through her spine. Her hands wanted to freeze. Her body wanted to flinch, to swerve wildly. Lester's question screamed in her mind: Can you hold your composure?
Somehow, her arms stayed locked. Her throttle hand, trembling violently, kept a steady pressure. She didn't look back. She leaned lower, becoming a smaller target, and shouted, "Las Lagunas! Now! Hard right!"
They screamed onto the boulevard, the bridge approaching fast. "The drop is coming! Straight on! Commit! Don't brake!"
She hit the lip of the bridge ramp and launched into open air. For a second, there was silence, weightlessness. Then the brutal impact as her bike slammed onto the freeway's shoulder, suspension buckling, her teeth clacking together. A glance back: Franklin landed clean. Norm's bike wobbled violently, the front wheel threatening to come up, but it slammed down, the rear shock absorbing the impact—clockwise, hard—and he kept it upright.
"Holy SHIT!" Norm's voice roared in her ear, a mix of terror and elation. "Thanks, kid!"
No response. She was in the tunnel. Not the physical one yet, but the tunnel of focus. Every ounce of her being was channeled into the next three feet of asphalt, then the next.
"Into the dig site! Lights on!" she commanded, veering off the freeway and down the steep, rutted slope into the canyon of earth and machinery. The world turned brown and chaotic.
"Stay left of the excavator! Deep rut ahead, go right!" she called, her voice robotic, precise. The bike beneath her was an extension of her will, skimming over mud, carving through puddles.
"Damn, these things handle the mud good!" Norm yelled, sounding almost giddy.
She didn't hear him. She saw only the path. Mud gave way to the smoother, unfinished concrete of the new subway tunnel. A sickly yellow glow from construction lights replaced the sun.
"Ramp ahead, left! Go up!" They ascended into the bowels of the city. A narrow service corridor, pipes crowding the ceiling. "Low jump coming, off the drainage lip—now!"
Three bikes sailed over a gap in the sewer line, landing with synchronized crashes in the shallow water on the other side. They sped through a labyrinth of dripping tunnels.
"Two gates! Go LEFT! Right is dead!"
They banked hard, tires screeching on wet concrete. The end was near. She could feel it. The river, the truck, freedom, the four percent—
Then Paige's voice, calm and devastating, shattered her tunnel vision.
"Bike team - the plan hasn't worked - cops are waiting for you in the LS River - we're here, but be ready."
Franklin's curse was a gut-punch. "Shit, man, we screwed."
The words hung in the damp, stale air of the tunnel. The meticulously plotted escape route was a trap. The lifeline had a noose at the end. The cold focus that had carried Megan this far didn't break, but it mutated. The fear rushed back in, but it was a clean, sharp fear now. The race wasn't over. It had just changed tracks. They weren't running to safety anymore. They were running into a killbox.
Her mind, the part that calculated racing lines, now calculated survival odds. She didn't speak. She just gripped the handles, the engine's snarl echoing off the tunnel walls, and faced the light at the end of the tunnel, knowing now it was the blinding glare of police floodlights.