Daemon

horrendous crash came to Merritt’s ears.
    This guy was a psycho.
    A city motorcycle cop raced up on Merritt’s right. Merritt shouted over to him and held his badge up on a chain. ‘FBI!’ He used military hand signals to indicate the target.
    The motorcycle cop nodded and brought his big bike racing ahead past Merritt.
    ‘Hey!’
    Suddenly twin sedans streaked in from side streets, crushing the motorcycle cop between them with a horrific crash.
    Merritt averted his head as he powered through the flying debris and smoke. He emerged on the other side to see nothing but flames behind him.
    Gragg looked into his HUD glasses to see multiple police cars screeching onto the street several blocks back, rack lights flashing. He crashed another one of his AutoM8s into a civilian’s subcompact, smashing it out of the way and sending it spinning up onto the sidewalk. He left a trail of destruction behind him as the police lights zigzagged between wrecked vehicles, falling behind fast. But more sirens could be heard ahead andto either side of him. They were starting to cordon him off. Choppers were no doubt en route.
    He smiled to himself. More AutoM8s were streaming in to aid him. He felt the presence of over a hundred now – some more valuable than others.
    Another BMW 740 screeching in from a side street suddenly joined Gragg’s car. This BMW was scarlet red. The pack expanded automatically to encompass it.
    Gragg motioned with one black-gloved hand, and the electro-polymer paint of his own BMW shifted from silver to red in a matter of seconds – even as the newly arrived red BMW transformed from red to silver. Gragg’s digital ink license plates flicked from California to Oregon vanity tags that read
GECCO
. In a flash, his BMW went into a power slide down a side street and left the main pack behind.
    Merritt was still trying to comprehend what he just saw. A decoy BMW had joined the pack, but then Loki’s BMW transformed right in front of Merritt’s eyes. Merritt leaned hard into the turn and gave chase. Loki’s car was now bright red – but he could still see the pockmarks from his earlier shots in the rear window. He cast a glance behind him to see several squad cars race past the intersection, still in pursuit of the original pack.
    Merritt turned back to face Loki, then he tapped his radio button. ‘Major! Major, this is Merritt. Do you copy?’
    The Major looked up from assembling a scoped SCAR-H sniper rifle in the passenger bay of the chopper. Merritt’s voice came over their encrypted radio frequency again, dissolving occasionally into static.
‘Major, this … Merritt … copy?’
    The Major keyed his mic. ‘Go ahead, Agent Merritt.’
    ‘Listen … police are pursuing a decoy BMW … car has … color, and is heading …’
Static filled the channel.
    ‘You’re breaking up.’
    ‘Repeat … color. I’m giving chase.’
    ‘You’re catching interference from the AutoM8s. Fall back, Merritt.’
    ‘… police they’re …’
At that the signal trailed off into static.
    The Major dropped the handset and spoke into his chopper headset. ‘We still receiving Merritt’s GPS coordinates?’
    The pilot nodded. ‘10-4, Major. Clear as a bell.’
    ‘Then the Daemon is using GPS, too. Get me over Merritt’s twenty.’
    Now out of the chase and heading through wide industrial streets, Gragg monitored a distant AutoM8’s video feed as the pack of cars he just left accelerated onto an elevated portion of the 880 Freeway, smashing cars out of their way. California Highway Patrol units took up the chase on the freeway. Gragg couldn’t help but smile. They were closing in.
    He accelerated the distant AutoM8 pack toward the elevated junction with Highway 260 – and the retaining wall at the steep curve. ‘This ought to be interesting …’
    He selected the lead AutoM8 in the HUD and urged it on ahead of the others. Then he switched to video feed from a car farther back in the pack. The lead car screamed ahead like a missile, then crashed through the concrete retaining wall at a hundred miles an hour, spraying a vacant lot fifty feet below with pieces of concrete and twisted metal. The remaining pack, including the silver BMW, roared through the new gap in the wall and tumbled end over end through the air, smashing down on top of one another in a fiery wreck. The video feed turned to snow.
    Done
. Gragg took a deep breath and felt himself coming down off the adrenaline surge. He could imagine the