[center][h2]>://OVER_DRIVER[/h2][/center] [center]Interacting with: [@Opposition] and [@Prizrak][/center] Mack didn’t like fire-fights. Some may have found the scent of burning propellent and the light tinge of hanging dust in the air thrilling. Mack just found it to be a long, drawn out bout of playing chicken, especially when he and Weaver were both pinned like rats. Delilah’s voice radiated out from the speakers of his helmet, like an announcer for a reality television show. A truck. An escape vehicle. The only thing big enough to haul off those voting kiosks. Now, Cantos was alone over there. He turned around to level the barrel of his Street-Shredder, lethal package already loaded and waiting to be unleashed, towards the head of a Knight before he got knocked onto his ass. " Well, thanks for the help, Amano. Too bad Matrix surfers such as yourself..." Mack grunted a hiss of pain, looking downwards towards his lower thorax where the bullet had impacted. "...can't manipulate reality as you do the Labyrinth." He examined the wound. It was a straight-shot that had lodged into the armor plating, a slight trickle of blood leaking out. He could hear the sound of him typing in his bank account password already. Mack took the familiar pause of reloading to fire another burst from his Secedo, sounds of annoyance blurting out from the King’s mouths as if they were swatting at errant mosquitoes. He’d like to have thought of them more as sounds of pain. It would have provided some much needed optimism to the dire situation they were currently in. Especially with Weaver bleeding all over the once spotless (perhaps, not dustless) floor next to him. Her hastily made torniquet was a bright cherry red and without a medi-vac, she would go under in about half a hour without proper medical attention. “ Weav -” Mack’s distress was cut off by another stuttering staccato of heavy fire from the other side of the Rail-Stop. Mack fumbled with the Type-12 revolver in his hands, leaning against the wall and firing it overhead with one hand, trying to desperately think of a way to get out of this situation. He couldn’t tele-path with the truck and run them over from the back. That was for sure. It was akin to trying to use a hammer on a bolt. Connection probes would be slamming into solid fire-walls. His neural relays couldn't provide enough power for a brute-force attack without overshooting his entire CNS. Nothing Amano couldn’t handle if they weren’t out in the boonies where the Labyrinth was essentially non-existent. Black-market augs came at the cost of modularity and to be able to link with a model as experimental as the Victory, some corners had to be cut. He and Taryn couldn’t get through that blockade without getting shredded. Hell, the only way to get through there was a exo-suited TinHead or a friggin’ tank. Something that he and Weaver didn’t have access to right now. He checked the bottom left hand corner of the chromatic HUD in his Prism before locking onto one message. Maybe, he didn’t have a tank…... [i][center][h3]DAEDALUS Velocity Ultra GSX 4000 in Range Of APEX Nodeless Tactile Smart-Link[/h3][/center][/i] …...But he had the next best thing to one. Another fizzling hail of bullets beated a tattoo of craters into a nearby pillar, glancing off his makeshift shelter. Being covert was out of the question now. He and Weaver kicked the metaphorical hornet’s nest, like a yuppie high-stacker venturing into the lower Zone without proper protection. He stared back at one of the gangers retreating to the back of the Rail-Stop. Stealth was out of the question now. There was only one way to get out of this situation, one road. Mack expended the last bullet in his revolver, an empty chamber and a lack of dead bodies on the floor to show for his performance. He crouched downwards, hiding behidn their rapidly dwindling cover as the Knights closed in on them. “ I’ve got a plan," He took out another energy bar this time, sugar-deprivation beginning to set in once more. "This might get a little loud, but you need a little loud to get some quiet.” Mack closed his eyes, activating the APEX Tele-Path module in his brain and taking a bite of the energy bar. Strawberry. The sensations of the world dulled into a kaleidoscopic shifting jumble of damp light, spicy noises and hard flavour. It was like plunging backwards into a pool of water, bubbles of code and hi-speed frequencies shooting through the air around him, mind burning faster than what was meant to be processed, machine and mind fusing with one another....... [hr] [center] >://NEGOTIATING NEURAL UPLINK CLIENT......NEURAL UPLINK ESTABLISHED. INITIATING SYSTEMS START-UP. >://ACTIVATING ACCELERATION SUB-ROUTINES...... >://ACCELERATION REQUIRED. >://10 mph......60 mph [i]Engines burning....[/i] >://100 mph.....150 mph [i]Tires screaming....[/i] >://180 mph....190 mph.... [i]Flowing like lightning[/i] >://200 mph....220 mph.... [i] Heart's a pounding.....[/i] >://250 mph...MAXIMUM VELOCITY. >://ACCELERATION ACQUIRED. [/center] [hr] He relished taking hold of Monica's drive-shaft, her engine, her heart, her body through his phantom finger-tips, making her dance to his tune like a master conductor. The aluminium honey-combed chassis of the Velocity that he'd bargained his soul for crashed through the rusty front of the gates of the Rail-Stop, sending them flying and jostling on the ground. The four-digit horsepower fusion engine roared like a primeval entity of pure speed and momentum that could be heard for blocks wide. He screamed along with Monica in his mind, dust kicking off from his feet/her tires like an caged animal letting loose for the first time. The all-terrain tires hit several bumps, the car jostling up from the force of recoil, spilling over the soda in his cup-holder. With a thought, he shifted the steering wheel towards the right and pressed down on the brakes, sending the car into a drift, rolling clouds of exhaust and dust intermixed together, re-routing its course of destination towards their location. Monica begged him to take her beyond her limits. The turboblazer him needed to quench its thirst. He pushed the gear forward and floored the pedal, acceleration jostling her frame apart. The fury of his imprisonment by the Reclaimers, the bleeding wound, Monica's condition, the election, all of that faded away into the background. The feeling of pure speed, the symphony of roaring engines and screeching tires that he'd come to love, the ticks of the speedometer, pedal to the meddle.... He lived for this. He loved this. Don't stop! Just GO! [center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBFtKow1Gw8[/youtube][/center] Monica crashed into the scene, swerving across the syn-crete floor and kicking up the loose detritus of yesteryear. Bullets pinged off the chassis, only making the rusted paint-job more ugly than it already was. The headlights were turned on, making night seemingly into day as Monica zoomed past Taryn and Mack's current position, Mack shielding Taryn's downed body with his own, as his car made for break-neck speed towards the Knights. The blurring half-ton machine went on a collision course with the Knight behind the voting kiosk, sending it and the Knight behind it flying off like a cannon. The bulky booth crushed the Knight with a gruesome pulverising snap, his cybernetic limb sticking out from underneath and a slowly forming pool of blood on the floor. Mack looked back at Taryn, face panting from mental exhaustion. “ Like I said, loud.”