But something’s different.
He’s still covered in blood, but it’s no longer spilling out of him in a great rush.
“What . . . ?” Seth says.
The Driver seems to be regarding him, watching to see what he’ll do –
As if it’s waiting.
The pain is still terrible as Seth pulls up his blood-soaked shirt where the Driver’s leg pierced him, and below, on his skin –
Is the wound, set in the curve just below his ribs. It’s horrific to see, a wound that looks impossible, that looks fatal –
That looks as if it’s sealing itself.
Seth glances up in bafflement at the Driver, still motionless, still watching him, then back down at the wound. There are little sparks flashing within it, inside his skin somehow. He can feel the shocks of them as they fire –
As they seem to be stitching the wound shut.
It still hurts, a lot, but even as he watches, the torn layers of his skin are coming together, like little fingers reaching for one another. After a moment, there’s no trace of bleeding at all.
He cries out as he feels the sparks moving deeper into his body, and he realizes he can feel them working on the exit wound on his back, too. He puts his hand there but has to pull it away when he’s shocked by the sparks.
And still the Driver watches him. However it is that it manages to watch, Seth feels watched.
“What have you done?” he gasps, turning again at the pain in the wound –
The pain as it seems to be healing –
“What have you done?” he says again, and his voice is full of emotion. “I don’t understand.”
He curls forward at another shock in his body, arms around his middle, but he finds he can bear it. He looks back up at the Driver, and his own eyes are clouding with tears.
“Why?” he whispers, and then he says again, “I don’t understand.”
The Driver makes no sound, no sign that it’s even heard him. It’s as mysterious and unreadable as ever, its face as blank and empty as a void.
The shocks in Seth’s body seem to be dissipating. He looks down at the wound again. The scar is ugly, purple, painful to the touch. But it is a scar. His mortal wound has healed.
He looks at the Driver again and repeats his question from earlier. “Who are you?”
The Driver makes no response. Balancing on its one leg, it pulls itself up on the parked car, rises over Seth again, and regards him. Seth licks his lips, tasting the drying blood there. He’s too weak to run, too weak to fight anymore. All he can do is wait and see what the Driver does next.
Seth has absolutely no idea what that might be.
And then the Driver twitches, its whole fractured body twisting oddly in one violent jerk –
It raises its arm as if reaching out for something –
But there’s nothing in front of it, nothing to reach for, Seth is still on the ground at its feet –
A point of light appears in the middle of the Driver’s chest, just a small white spot at first but then exploding out in a shower of sparks so wild that Seth scoots back on the sidewalk, grunting at the ache still running through his torso.
The Driver shakes, its back against the parked car, as if it’s being held there somehow. The lightning surrounds it, diving into and out of its body, causing it to spasm all over, its seams and joints starting to buckle. There’s a buzz in the air now, a whine that increases as the bolts surge through the Driver, increasing in density and speed, a web of pure electricity being woven around it –
Seth moves to get himself to safety. He drags himself behind the stone wall where he can see Regine still lying –
He looks back –
A huge CRACK tears the air –
The Driver disintegrates.
It blasts outwards in burning, melting little pieces –
Seth curls down to avoid the shrapnel, pulling himself onto Regine to protect her –
But not before he sees the Driver’s helmet shattering into fragments and circuitry and unknowable materials that might have even once been flesh –
And then there is only quiet. Just the pitter-patter of little bits of Driver falling to the ground, like noxious rain. Seth uncurls himself and looks over the wall.
The Driver is gone.
Burning, melting parts of it cover everything –
But it’s gone. It’s really gone.
And rising from the seat of the car the Driver had been leaning against is Tomasz, a ludicrous strip of hair completely burnt away from the top of his head.
He’s holding the baton.
“Well,” he says, “that is not what I expected.”
81
Seth gets slowly to his feet, his middle aching, glancing down at Regine to make sure she’s still breathing, before he goes to Tomasz.
“I crawled in the other side,” Tomasz says, getting out of the car. “And stabbed it in the back.”
“Yeah,” Seth says, breathing heavy. “Yeah, I can see that.”
Tomasz half stumbles over to him, still wobbly from being thrown through the air so far. He leans into an embrace with Seth, and Seth hugs him back, getting a close-up view of the almost even stripe of hair missing from the top of Tomasz’s head.
“I saw it kill you,” Tomasz says, his voice cracking. He puts a hand on the tear in Seth’s shirt. “I saw it do this.”
“Yeah,” Seth says. “I don’t know either.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Me, too. I think maybe I was –”
Tomasz looks across the stone wall and cries out. “Regine!” He runs to her, Seth following.
“I think it just knocked her out,” Seth says as they kneel down next to her. There’s an ugly swelling coming up around her right eye where the Driver punched her. There don’t seem to be any other wounds, though, no blood on the back of her head.
“Regine!” Tomasz shouts, almost directly into her ear –
A wince crosses her face. She parts her lips, and a low moan escapes. “Seriously, Tommy,” she says. She says something else, but it’s lost in Tomasz’s cries of relief. He throws himself across her in a hug, which she accepts for a minute, then says, “Get the hell off me.”
Seth pulls Tomasz back, and they wait next to her as she slowly sits up. “What happened?” she asks.
“I wish I knew,” Seth says. He looks around at all the little bits of burning Driver scattered around them.
“I killed it,” Tomasz says, but he doesn’t say it in his usual way that’s asking for more credit. “I stuck the baton in its back.” He takes the baton out of his pocket. It’s completely fried, the end cracked and broken. “I think it overloaded.”