The end of the baton fires into her skin. She screams inhumanly at the pain of it, her body twisting in agony. Her arm and chest and head are enveloped in a shower of sparks and flashes.
Her scream cuts off halfway through, in a sudden stop that is the scariest sound of all. She falls to the ground, making no effort to protect herself from hitting the concrete.
And lies there.
Lifeless.
64
Seth doesn’t think. He doesn’t call out or scream her name or make any sound.
He just moves.
The Driver is standing over Regine, and Seth doesn’t even consider that the baton is still crackling and flashing in its hand. He races past Tomasz, who’s crying out Regine’s name, and he leaps at the Driver, throwing his full weight against the faceless black shape of it.
It sees him at the last moment and tries to bring the baton up, but Seth hits it hard, and as they both fall to the ground, the baton is knocked from the Driver’s grasp and goes skittering across the road.
They hit the pavement with a hard whumpf. Seth lands on top of the Driver and has the air knocked out of him. It feels as if he’s thrown himself down onto a pillar of steel. Pain shoots through his ribs, but he ignores it and tries to use his weight to keep the Driver on the ground.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do next –
Only that a rage unlike anything he’s ever experienced is surging through him like a forest fire.
He throws his fist down, hitting the Driver’s throat on the exposed area beneath its visor. It’s like punching the concrete of the sidewalk. He calls out, and the Driver bucks underneath him, throwing him off easily and regaining its feet.
Looking up, Seth has a clear view of its chest, where Tomasz sent the shotgun blast. Some kind of repair seems to have been made, but there’s still a cavity that’s deeper than it should be.
Deeper than should be survivable, Seth’s mind registers.
Tomasz is now curled over Regine a few feet away, wailing into her ear to wake up, wake up, wake up, his face so twisted with disbelief and shock, Seth can barely look at it.
The Driver spies the baton and runs toward it. Seth jumps to his feet throwing himself again at the Driver, knowing it won’t work but having to try, having to at least try –
But this time the Driver is ready for him. It spins around, its fists up, catching Seth in mid-leap, knocking him hard across the side of the head, hard enough to drop him to the ground.
Seth’s vision disappears in flashes of light. He’s dimly aware of the concrete below him, his forehead pressed against it, his suddenly distant body twisted in the fall.
He’s unable to move properly, unable to get his arms and legs to do what he wants, but he rolls over just enough to see the Driver hurrying toward the dropped baton with those freakily silky steps it takes.
He sees Tomasz scream out and throw himself at the Driver.
He sees the Driver cuff Tomasz across the crown of his head as if he were no more than an annoying wasp, sees Tomasz crumple to the ground.
He sees the Driver retrieve the baton and turn back to where Seth lies helpless.
Here it is, he has a moment to think. Here is my death.
The Driver approaches, closing in fast.
I’m sorry, Seth thinks, but he doesn’t know to who or why –
But the Driver stops beside Regine. It makes a complicated motion with its arm, and the baton disappears into an invisible sleeve. Seth tries to make himself rise again, but new pain thunders through his head and he feels as if he might black out. He slumps back to the ground.
All he can do is watch as the Driver kneels and puts its arms beneath Regine’s body. It stands, lifting her tall, heavy frame with an ease that would be laughable if it weren’t so horrific.
The Driver turns to him one last time, Regine in its arms, its face as unreadable as ever, and the last thing Seth sees before unconsciousness claims him is the Driver taking her body away.
65
“Wake up,” he hears distantly, like someone calling from the next street over. “Oh please, please, please wake up, Mr. Seth.”
He feels taps on his cheeks, muffled by the bandages still somehow on Tomasz’s hands, taps too small to hurt, but large enough to be noticeable.
“Tomasz?” he says. His mouth and throat feel as if they’re covered in feathers and sticky toffee.
“It has taken her, Mr. Seth!” Tomasz exclaims, nearly hysterical. “She is gone! We have to find her! We have to –”
“She’s . . .” Seth says, barely able to lift his head.
“Please,” Tomasz says, pulling on his arm. “I know you are hurt, but we have to stop the Driver! It will kill her!”
Seth looks up at Tomasz, squinting at the pain in his skull. “Will kill her? It didn’t . . . ? She wasn’t . . . ?”
“She was gone and out,” Tomasz says, “but she was breathing. I swear she was breathing –”
“You swear? Tomasz, are you sure you aren’t mistaking –”
“Her light was blinking.” Tomasz flashes his fingers fast. “Blink-blink-blink-blink-blink. It has never done that before, Mr. Seth. It never come on even once. And it was red. Not like ours.”
“Why did it take her?” Seth asks, forcing himself to sit up, his head spinning. “What’s it doing?”
Tomasz gasps. “Maybe it is going to reconnect her.”
Seth looks up at that. “Reconnect her?”
Tomasz grabs the sides of his head with a cry. “I figure it out, Mr. Seth! We are not supposed to be here! You said it yourself. We are a malfunction. We are accidents.”
Seth breathes through his mouth, trying not to vomit. “And it’s trying to fix those accidents. It’s a kind of caretaker or something. Putting us back where we belong.”
“It will put her back into her old life!” Tomasz shouts. “Where she is supposed to be dead!”
“Why didn’t it just kill her here, though? She said it killed the woman she met.”
“Maybe Regine only thinks her friend was dead when the Driver took her away.”
“Oh, hell,” Seth says. “It’s going to put her back. . . .”
He thinks of Regine, big, angry, brave Regine, being thrown down the stairs by a man she was trying to fight, a man she shouldn’t have had to fight.
And she was going to be put right back there. A world where she was dead.
Seth gets to his feet, Tomasz helping. Seth looks down at him, at a face he knows will go to hell and back to save Regine. Save Seth, too, probably.