Chapter 90: INTERCEPT

C-17 stayed ahead of them by the length of a bad decision. Five vehicles slipped between low ridges, red tail lamps vanishing whenever the road dipped and returning higher up like sparks caught in the dark, while Caspian kept Aureole’s transport close enough to see them.

The engine note had climbed into something Sio could feel through the seat frame. Sterling’s projection jittered above the dashboard whenever they struck a seam in the road. "Thirty-two minutes until the split. After that, one branch enters a monitored freight corridor and the other disappears under private land records."

Rhea leaned forward until the belt cut across her shoulder. Three subject codes hovered above the convoy markers, but Sterling’s search only showed that the prisoners had been reassigned after Harrow Ridge. Rhea’s tail struck the floor once, hard enough for the panel to answer with a dull knock.

Dust leaked through the door seals as the road roughened. Sio tasted grit and watched Rhea lower one hand to the floor, her palm flattening against metal already buzzing with tire impacts and engine vibration.

Angle followed her movement. "Can you feel them through this?" Rhea’s brows tightened as Caspian changed gears. "Our vehicle is too loud."

Sio looked through the windshield at C-17’s lights rising and falling ahead. "Then don’t listen to us. They’re hitting the same road." Rhea opened one eye at him as her fingers slid back toward the floor.

This time she let the repeated impacts pass beneath her instead of fighting the noise inside their transport. The engine and loose panels blurred together until her ears angled toward the windshield.

"Two prisoner carriers in the middle. Armed escort ahead. Support vehicles front and rear." Her hand stopped. "Children in the second carrier."

Fern pointed toward C-17’s rear support vehicle. "Take us to that one first." Caspian pushed the transport harder, and the rear vehicle grew from two red points into a black armored shape.

Its hatch opened before they reached it. A rifle came out first, muzzle flashing white against the road, but Caspian flicked two fingers from the wheel and the barrel twisted sideways in the guard’s hands. The burst chewed sparks from his own rear door instead of Aureole’s windshield.

Fern had her door open before the echo died. Cold air slammed through the compartment and snapped her coat behind her as she planted one boot on the side rail, making Sio grab the overhead handle. "You could warn people before doing that."

"You saw the door open." Fern waited for the gap to narrow and launched herself across while Sio was still deciding how to explain why that was not remotely a warning.

She hit the support vehicle with enough added weight to crush its rear suspension downward. The gunman stumbled inside the hatch, and Fern followed him out of sight while Caspian dragged their transport left around another burst from the lead escort.

Angle planted one palm against the inner wall. Heat ran through the outer seams until the armor buckled inward and folded over itself near the door frame. The next burst hammered into the doubled metal with heavy thuds instead of punching through, and the smell of hot paint mixed with road dust.

Fern reappeared on the support vehicle roof, ducked under a second guard’s swing and lightened herself through two quick steps. Then her weight dropped again, buckling the roof as the vehicle lurched toward the shoulder.

"Second carrier," Rhea said. Sio opened a portal beside it, but the exit appeared over empty asphalt and wind blasted grit through before he snapped it shut.

Angle looked from the empty space to him. "You missed a truck." Sio wiped grit from his mouth. "The truck moved."

"We are also moving." Sio gave him a patient look he did not feel. "Yes. I have identified the problem."

Sio watched the distance between the vehicles instead of their positions. Both kept moving, yet the gap between them widened and narrowed along the same road like a line being stretched rather than broken.

Heat gathered under his scar. He followed that line instead, and Silas stirred inside him. There.

Sio held the moving relation in his head and opened another portal against the carrier’s rear quarter. Purple light spread along armored metal instead of dropping behind them, the opening shivering whenever Caspian changed speed but staying beside the carrier.

Angle leaned toward it. "That’s new." Sio kept his fingers rigid around the edge as pain pressed behind his eye. "It’s unstable."

"That was not praise." Rhea looked through for less than a second and shook her head. "Wrong carrier. Prisoners are ahead."

Sio collapsed it before the shaking worsened. Fern returned at the same moment, jumping back through Aureole’s open side door with a gust of cold air and hot-rubber smell.

"Rear support won’t keep up." Through the back window, Sio saw it limp toward the shoulder, one wheel throwing orange sparks.

The lead escort and forward support vehicle tightened around the prisoner carriers. A mounted lamp snapped on ahead and flooded Aureole’s windshield with white, turning the road into glare.

Rhea pressed her fingertips to the side wall. "Second carrier. Right side." Sio found the same moving relation beneath the glare and opened a portal against the vehicle’s side door, its edge trembling hard enough for purple light to ripple over his wrist.

Angle reached through while Sio was still fighting to keep the shaking portal stable. His palm struck the locking plate, heat rushed into the mechanism, and smoke curled back through the opening before Sio killed the portal.

Sio stared at him while rubbing beneath his scar. Angle pulled his hand back and shrugged. "You saw me reach through."

Fern pointed ahead. "I’ll take the first prisoner carrier with Caspian. You three take the second." She shoved open the opposite door, then caught the roof rail as Caspian slid Aureole’s transport between both carriers.

The road broke into flashes of headlights, armored panels and gravel as Caspian forced Aureole’s transport between both carriers. He twisted the lead escort’s momentum just enough to make it overcorrect through a bend. Fern crossed to the left carrier and vanished through its rear hatch. The forward support vehicle tried to box them out until Caspian shoved its vector toward the shoulder, forcing it wide without sending it into the ravine. Angle burned the lock on the right carrier while Rhea counted bodies through the floor and Sio held a portal steady against metal that refused to stay still.

The left carrier swerved once, then straightened. Its rear door burst open and two Organization guards hit the gravel shoulder in quick succession, rolling through dust while Fern remained inside. Caspian dropped back long enough to guide the carrier toward the wide verge, then accelerated again before the lead escort could recover.

"First carrier secure," Sterling said through the dash speaker. "Caspian is slowing it down. Forward support is breaking off." Rhea kept one hand against the wall. "Six adults, three children in ours. Two guards near the cab."

Sio widened the opening into the rear of the right carrier. Warm stale air pushed through, carrying sweat, disinfectant and the rubber smell of restraint straps, while nine prisoners lined both walls with three children pressed between adults.

Rhea crossed first. A guard near the cab turned toward her, but she covered the aisle before his rifle cleared his chest and drove him shoulder-first into the metal panel.

Angle came through behind her as the second guard raised his weapon. He caught the man’s wrist, heated the rifle until the guard dropped it, then shoved him into an empty restraint frame.

Sio stepped through last. The floor shuddered beneath his boots, and the first guard was already trying to rise behind Rhea.

A palm-sized portal opened beneath the man’s boot. His foot vanished through it and reappeared half a meter sideways, leaving the rest of his body to follow in a direction it had not agreed to.

He hit the rubber floor on his hip. One of the children made a startled sound and covered his mouth when it almost became a laugh.

Sio closed the portal. "Probably no permanent damage." Rhea looked at him until he added, "The probability is encouraging."

The child’s shoulders shook once behind his hand. Rhea turned toward the rear bench and stopped when a woman there stared back at her with one torn ear and the narrow wrist markings Sio had seen on hunters from Rhea’s settlement.

"Rhea?" Her voice came out rough. Rhea dropped beside her, one claw slicing through the restraint strap before both hands moved over the woman’s face, neck and shoulders, checking swelling and dried blood before she asked anything else.

Sio worked down the opposite bench while Angle moved toward the cab. Another restraint fell loose just as Sterling’s voice cracked through the communicator. "Lead escort is retreating. Forward support is gone. Both prisoner carriers are stopped. All living prisoners accounted for."

Through the rear window, Sio caught the first prisoner carrier on the gravel shoulder with Fern in its open doorway and Aureole’s transport beside it. C-17 had broken apart across the road, and neither prisoner carrier was still moving with the remnants.

A soft chime sounded beside the rear door as Sio freed the last restraint. A black device mounted near the control panel lit by itself, pale blue light collecting above it until a tiny figure in an old-fashioned transit coat stood in the air.

The hologram smiled at the room. Its uniform did not match the Organization guards on the floor, and its bright voice belonged somewhere cleaner than a carrier full of bruised prisoners.

"Route update received. Passengers, please remain seated for your next connection."

The freed prisoners stared at it. Rhea slowly turned from the woman beside her as the little guide pivoted toward a direction beyond the armored wall and raised one glowing hand like someone directing travelers toward a platform. "Next transfer confirmed." Sterling’s voice came through Sio’s communicator a moment later. "That device is still receiving route data even though C-17 is gone."

Sio reached toward it, and the hologram turned its cheerful little face toward him while the carrier settled crookedly against the roadside. Beyond the open door, Fern was helping children down from the first vehicle and Aureole’s transport idled between both rescued groups. "Yeah," Sio said, looking from the smiling guide to the broken convoy spread across the dark road. "And I think the kidnapping convoy has a tour guide."ℯℯ𝘭.