Page 229 of Code Bound
He jerks the stick and the automobile grinds again before lurching forward hard enough to make my head snap back.
Stryker does seem to know the controls for the moving box, but that doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing. The car screams as he pulls into the traffic, and he jerks at the stick again, making the car sound like it’s fighting for control. I scream as he jerks the wheel, narrowly missing other moving boxes.
I’m not the only one. Behind me, Locke is shouting, too, and Havoc is yelling profanities as Stryker jerks the automobile around the road recklessly. When he jumps the curb and starts driving on the sidewalk, I clutch onto the seat.
“We’re all going to die!” Svetlana shrieks, and then descends into her other language, so I don’t know what she’s saying.
“Watch out!” I scream, pointing out the front glass as a bunch of NPCs get in the way of the moving box.
Stryker doesn’t jerk the wheel. Instead, he slams into the group and they go flying around us, and at least one of them rolls over the car. Another goes under. The front glass breaks and shatters, leaving it open as glass rains down on us.
“What the fuck?” I shout at Stryker. “Don’t hit them!”
“They’re NPCs,” Stryker laughs. “They’ll be fine.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Locke repeats in the back seat where he braces himself into the corner to keep from flying around.
While the moving box is faster than walking, and this is the fastest I’ve ever gone in my life besides the Cyclone, we still don’t move that fast. The other moving boxes in the street and the people on the sidewalks prevent us from going full speed ahead. Stryker is forced to weave in and out of the traffic, pushing through when there’s no space available. Two hours later, Stryker has gotten the hang of it, but he hasn’t slowed down any. If anything, he’s gotten angrier.
“Move out of the way!” he shouts at another moving box. “Before I drain you!”
“Fuck you, Leech!” an NPC fires back.
Stryker bares his teeth. “I’m going to?—”
“We only have an hour left,” I snarl. “Stop getting in fights with NPCs or the kiss is off the table.”
Stryker shoots me a glare. “Perhaps you could stroke me and ease my tension.”
“Or for fuck’s sake, just fucking go,” I snarl at him. “You’re the fucking worst.”
“Or the best. Depends on which way you look at it.”
“Shut the fuck up and go,” I snarl, hitting his shoulder gently.
I’ll never tell him, but the Leech is growing on me.
In front of us, the buildings come to an end and we’re staring at a massive crowd swarming around a wooden platform just like the one we’d stepped out on in the Verdant Nexus. Stryker slams to a stop before he barrels into the crowd of waiting players and NPCs.
“Fifteen minutes and fifty-one seconds,” Cipher says as we all scramble out of the automobile.
I blow out a puff of air even as I ignore all the blood smeared on the front of the moving box where Stryker had hit people. We’d made it here. We’d come all this way.
“You’re certain she’ll be at this Gate?” I ask him, my chest tight.
“I will try my best,” Cipher murmurs. “It takes a lot of effort to guarantee something so large.”
“But you can do it?” I ask.
“Of course,” he replies. “I did it for you.”
I blink in surprise. “You what?”
“I will be quiet for the next thirty minutes, Vespera,” he replies. “It takes a significant amount of computing power to force your friend to this Gate. Please forgive me.”
And then he disappears from my mind.
I grab Locke’s hand, nervous as I stare at the Gate before us. There’s a countdown running on top of it, the numbers flicking down, down, down as we all wait. We’re at the back of the crowd, so far back, I’ll have to shoulder past so many to reach Dox when she walks through. I stand there, watching the seconds tick down, unmoving.
