The Soulmate Curse

Endurance - Part 3

The cab was slowing down as it arrived at the apartment building that Zhen had called home until only a few weeks ago. If Zhen was being completely honest with herself, before Finn it had only been a place where she slept and put her stuff. Kind of like her current apartment.

"Do you think it might graduate into something worse? It's already getting pretty bad for me," Zhen asked, paranoia colouring her thoughts.

"It never has for me," said Finn, tensing up, likely as a reaction to Zhen's change in demeanour. "But I've always had the police on my side. And more fans than not."

The cab came to a stop and the AI announced that they had arrived at their destination. They were silent for a moment. The AI repeated its message and then asked for a confirmation.

"Destination confirmed," Zhen finally said. She tried to calm down. Lighten the mood. "I'll walk you up. Go say hi to Joe."

"Yeah. He'll like that."

Zhen came out of the cab first and then Finn followed. Zhen turned her head around and only just caught sight of the gun man walking toward them in the middle of the street. She crashed into Finn, who was clearly the man's intended target. They both tumbled back into the cab. Zhen slammed the door shut behind her and forced Finn down.

"Zhen! What the...?"

The bullets hit the cab windows and fell off outside. All autonomous self-driving vehicles were pretty robust, made up of incredibly resistant materials to provide shelter under urban terror situations like bombings. Or drive-by shootings, which happened a lot decades earlier, in the first few days after mandatory expulsion of all manually driven cars from all urban cities.

"We're being shot at!" Finn screamed.

"Looks like it!" Zhen replied, surprised at how calm she was.

Zhen manoeuvred her way around the cabin, still keeping her head below the windows. They were resistant to shattering under great force, but they weren't completely bullet proof. It would be too expensive to build a fleet of autonomous cars with completely bullet proof windows. She jumped to the front of the car, where drivers would sit in a manually driven vehicle and located the car's computer. She accessed the AI and began working to hack through its systems.

"What are you doing?" Finn yelled above the noise of bullets pummelling the car's exterior. There were more shooters.

"Saving us!"

"How? They've got guns!"

"That's their mistake."

"What?"

"They brought guns to a car fight."

Zhen was finally able to take control of a couple of autonomous cars in the neighbourhood. She directed them to where they were. Using the dash cams, she wielded the cars as weapons. She drifted the first one to the nearest shooter and bashed him, throwing him a few feet into the air before driving straight onto the sidewalk to bash another shooter into the window display behind him. People were so used to autonomous cars stopping before colliding with objects that they couldn't imagine being hit by one. With those two down, Zhen brought her attention back to their car and attempted to drive it away.

"Zhen!" Finn suddenly called out.

Zhen flinched at the sound and turned to see what was wrong.

"You're bleeding!" Finn said, pointing at the cabin floor.

Zhen followed Finn's gaze to the cabin floor. There was a puddle of blood seeping from her flank. It was disconcerting to see, especially because she couldn't feel anything. She reached up to her side. Her fingers came away swathed in blood. She looked at them in shock and horror. Then a new barrage of bullets tore her away from the surreal moment. She went back to working on hacking the cab. She'd worry about the wound later.

"Argh!" Zhen called out. She looked down and saw Finn working her shirt up her torso. Their car veered dangerously, slamming them against the side of the cabin. Zhen stabilised it best as she could. "What are you doing, Finn?"

"You're losing a lot of blood," said Finn, scrambling to get back upright. "You'll pass out soon if it keeps up."

At the words, dizziness washed over Zhen and her vision blurred. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Keep us alive, Zhen," said Finn, pointing to the car's dash screen. "And I'll keep you alive."

Zhen nodded and let Finn continue trying to patch her up. The pain was racing past the adrenaline. She could almost feel it and gritted her teeth against what she knew would soon be hell. The bullets kept coming. Zhen was remotely driving five autonomous cars that she'd appropriated, using the other four to shield theirs as best as she could. Her vision would suddenly blur, her eyes partially close, which meant she'd lose her focus and bang a car or two against theirs every so often. She was continuously switching between manual and autonomous driving between the cars to protect against the volley of bullets that were now coming from motorcyclists driving alongside and behind them.

She managed to bump a few of the motorbikes off the road, but they were outnumbered. She couldn't afford to lose one of the four shield cars by attacking them. And she couldn't control more than five cars at the same time. It was already taking more focus than she could master, and it was a long time before she realised that the motorbikes were herding them. When she did, it was too late. They were being boxed into a dead end.

"No, no, no..."

"What now?" Finn asked. She'd just finished patching Zhen up and was watching the screens with her.

"We're in trouble. Brace yourself! It's going to get a little rough," said Zhen. More to herself, she added, "Time to go on the offensive."

Zhen turned the other four cars into weapons, bashing and taking out all the motorcycles following them like she was in an action movie. She swiped four of them with one cab and three others were smashed by the second cab. She then bashed the front ends of the third and fourth cabs together to form a moving barrier that she smashed into with their car, before barelling through the remaining motorcycles.

"Hold on!" Zhen called out.

Their car and makeshift barrier smashed into a building! Their car flipped at the impact, sending them into the building over the other two cabs. The car landed upside down and the two of them fell onto its roof. Zhen's air was forced out of her lungs. They hadn't been a need for seatbelts in decades. Self-driving vehicles had an all-time low accident rate. The seats were now customised for comfort, not safety. Lying there on her back, trying to clear her mind, Zhen suddenly missed safety belts.

"Zhen," Finn whispered. "Are you okay?"

Zhen took a shaky breath. "I'm okay. You?"

"We need to get out of here," Finn coughed.

The cabin was filling up with toxic fumes. Zhen felt the memories filter through. Shattered glass, spattering blood, smoke, pain, helplessness... This time, however, they were accompanied by a shot of adrenaline that numbed everything. Zhen shot up and took a moment to look around. Finn was struggling to pop open one of doors. Zhen twisted her body in the cabin and tensed up like a spring.

"Move," she said.

Finn tried her best to get out of the way in the confined space, covering her mouth from the cloud of white smoke. Zhen closed her eyes and sent all her mental and physical energy to her hips and legs before violently kicking them out. The door flew off its hinges and clattered to the debris filled ground. Zhen reached out for Finn and helped her out. The gust of fresh air was amazing. They took in gulps of it, stumbling away from the wreckage and coughing out the white smoke they'd breathed in. The scene outside the shop they'd crashed into was chaotic carnage. There were reporters and people with cameras and a flock of autonomous drones surrounding them and the ruins. The police were there too, checking on the victims of Zhen's vehicular rampage.

"Made a bit of a mess, didn't I?" said Zhen, smiling and clutching at her wound.

Finn stopped and turned her, so they were facing each other. "And you took a bullet for me."

Before she could reply, Finn moved in and kissed her. It was hard to ignore all the flashes and clicks rattling off around them, but it didn't faze Finn. She held the kiss for a moment longer then leaned in and gently pressed their foreheads together.

"Zhen, I don't want to wait for the next lifetime," she whispered into the night.