Illusion Report

"Go after them."

The three words came out calm and weightless, as if a stray thought had barely grazed him — one too insignificant to pull him fully from the hazy dregs of sleep.

The last syllable was swallowed whole by the engine’s sudden, thunderous roar.

The car lurched forward like it was trying to hurl everyone out the back window. Jin Xueli was caught completely off guard — the force slammed her forward, and she barely caught herself on the front seat before she would’ve gone tumbling onto Han Liuyue behind her.

Her heart was slamming against her ribs, but sitting back down obediently wasn’t something her curiosity would allow.

She stayed plastered to the front seat, eyes wider than usual — through the windshield, the glass became a movie screen, the night road rushing up to meet them, streaking past. Through a lens blurred with mist, the red taillights of the black SUV swelled rapidly larger.

Cold wind and rain poured in through Chaisi’s window, coiling through the cabin like razor wire.

As the gap between the two cars closed fast, Chaisi had already unbuckled his seatbelt. One hand on the MP5, the other braced against the seat, he shoved his entire upper body out the window.

Wait — was he actually going to—

The next second, Jin Xueli’s thoughts were blown apart by a rapid, unbroken string of gunfire.

Muzzle flashes ripped the darkness open, flickering white sparks skittering across the SUV’s body, the wet road, the tires.

A burst of rounds tore across the SUV’s roof, throwing up a curtain of searing light that scorched through the rainy night — enough to send the SUV fishtailing sharply, swaying and lurching up onto the cross-sea bridge.

If she’d gotten the wrong car, that would’ve been...

A hand emerged from the SUV’s passenger-side window.

"Watch out!" Jin Xueli screamed.

The hand held a compact pistol. The barrel swung around and cracked off several shots toward them — but Chaisi was already ahead of it, snapping low in one sharp motion, letting the wind and bullets pass overhead before unleashing another sustained burst into the SUV’s flank.

...Well, thank God she had the right car, Jin Xueli thought.

***

"Get down!"

Dylan’s shout came just as Brianna felt his hand drive into her shoulder, wrenching her hard toward the floor. "Hold on!"

She had no idea what Dylan was planning, but he was a trained professional bodyguard — when it came to defensive driving, he had far more experience than she did. In the last instant before she dropped, her eyes swept across the window.

In the rearview mirror, Chaisi was still very much alive, the submachine gun in his hands strobing white light, burst after burst fracturing the darkness.

The cars nearby had already lit up red, peeling away to both sides to get clear. The ones that stopped — they’d call the police, wouldn’t they?

That thought had barely formed when Dylan slammed his palm down on the emergency brake and simultaneously drove his foot to the floor.

Without the seatbelt holding her, Brianna would almost certainly have cracked her skull open.

The SUV pitched forward in a posture that nearly had the rear wheels lifting off, tires locked and screaming, hauled to a violent, abrupt stop in the middle of the road. The rain on the asphalt seemed to sizzle from the friction, a cloud of white smoke rising into the night air.

The car chasing hard on their heels had no room to brake and nowhere to swerve — with a heavy crash, it drove straight into the SUV’s rear end, and for one jarring instant, Brianna’s world became a boat shoved suddenly into the black of a dark lake.

She blinked hard. A few seconds passed before her vision steadied, and she realized Dylan had one hand pressed against her.

"You okay?" Dylan asked, restarting the car.

"I’m fine," Brianna said. The aftershock still seemed to be rolling through her body, her mind still slightly swaying. She wanted to look back but couldn’t quite turn her neck. "Why did you—"

"Hope it worked," Dylan said, something almost like a sigh in his voice.

The SUV’s engine caught again, and they surged forward into the night road ahead.

***

Tian Xi swore and stomped the accelerator several times. The engine replied with a series of useless, furious whines.

"Did it break?" Chaisi settled back into his seat, voice low and flat.

After a rear-end collision that vicious, he hadn’t just stayed in the car — he’d somehow kept the MP5 firmly in his hand throughout.

Jin Xueli had been thrown back and forth so many times she was starting to feel dizzy, and genuinely regretting how much she’d eaten earlier. "It doesn’t seem broken, but I hit myself so hard—"

"Wasn’t asking you," Chaisi cut her off. "I’m asking about the engine."

That was how he treated someone who’d saved his life?

"That guy’s got fast reflexes," Tian Xi said, jaw set, trying the ignition again with barely restrained fury. "Brother Chaisi, if it’s dead—"

Chaisi turned and glanced at the car that had pulled over to the bridge’s shoulder just moments ago.

He didn’t say a word, but Jin Xueli felt the hair rise on her arms anyway. At this rate, one night with him and she’d have nearly checked off every federal felony on the list. They might as well drive straight into a prison — at least it’d save some time.

She was about to open her mouth when the car gave a shudder beneath them, and the engine finally turned over. Inside the hum, Tian Xi slapped the steering wheel with a wave of relief. "There we go!"

The engine hadn’t given out entirely, but the hood had buckled and crumpled under the impact, twisting upward and blocking half the windshield.

Chaisi stared at the warped hood. For some reason, he paused — just for a moment.

"...Go after them," he said again, just as quietly as before.

***

"They’re on us again," Brianna said, glancing at the rearview mirror, her voice low.

"So what exactly is your plan?"

Dylan’s hands were tight on the wheel, the speedometer needle creeping steadily rightward. "If you just didn’t want them to find you, there are plenty of places to hide in Blackmoor City — but you didn’t hide. Did you actually arrange for them to recognize this car too?"

"No," Brianna shook her head. "That wasn’t something I expected. As far as they’re concerned, this should’ve been just another unremarkable car on the road... Strange. How did they make us? I thought the first place I’d run into them would be somewhere near the Westley Building."

Dylan’s irritation was written all over him. "I’m responsible for your security — but that doesn’t mean you can do whatever the hell you want and expect me to just go along with it. Are we clear?"

"We’re clear."

Brianna looked back once more at the car closing in behind them — its front end crumpled and caved in on one side — and said, "You’re right. I do have an idea, one that could get them off our backs for good. But I’m going to need your help."

Dylan let out a long breath.

"What do you need me to do?"

***

Jin Xueli was kneeling on the floor of the car, both hands locked around the front seat to keep herself upright.

She squinted, tilting her head back toward a sky weighed down with rain clouds, and for a moment she felt almost weightless — like her soul had quietly slipped out of her body.

She had no idea how she’d ended up here, inside a half-wrecked car hurtling across a bridge, watching tens of thousands of silver-white cables sweep through the night sky overhead, watching the slick dark road unroll beneath the wheels like a long, gleaming river.

Her hair and lashes were already soaked through. She sat shivering in the wind and rain, the sea somewhere close in the dark.

Right beside her head, Chaisi’s large hand — rain-pale, rain-soaked — clicked a fresh magazine into the MP5 with a sharp, clean snap.

Both cars had long blown past the speed limit, tearing through the howling night wind, sending a ripple of sharp horn blasts from the cars they passed. Smaller private vehicles, reading the situation, either bled off speed and fell back or veered to the shoulder to get out of the way — yet up ahead, a heavy freight truck hauling a towering shipping container was grinding steadily along, apparently oblivious to the gunshots and collision of a few minutes ago.

It seemed equally unaware that a black SUV was currently driving straight at its rear end, dead center, with no sign of slowing down.

"...Wait," Jin Xueli couldn’t help sitting up a little. "Why aren’t they changing lanes? Are they not worried about hitting that truck?"

"Tian Xi," Chaisi said, low and steady, "whatever he does next — stay on him. Don’t let go."

Which meant if the SUV didn’t change lanes, neither could they.

The moment they fell off the SUV’s tail, they’d be handing the man called Green a clear way out. Even a brief window could make all the difference.

"Got it," Tian Xi said, and swallowed.

Jin Xueli felt a strange, involuntary wave of relief. So there was someone else on edge besides her — at least someone understood — wait, no. The only person visibly nervous was the driver?

Her heart lurched right back up into her throat. Then she heard Chaisi say, "Han Liuyue."

Han Liuyue, who had been watching the whole car chase in silence, let out another very human sigh.

"I know," she said — and the tone alone was enough to give Jin Xueli a flicker of instinct. She ducked her head fast — and sure enough, something skimmed past the back of her skull.

"You needed my face, right?"

Jin Xueli watched Chaisi’s large hand open and close, snatching up several fragments.

From his profile, it was impossible to tell whether he found this disgusting.

Tendrils extended from between his fingers, swaying and probing, and he pressed them against the muzzle of the gun. They immediately wound themselves around the barrel. A bridge lamp swept past overhead, and his jaw, the bridge of his nose, his brow — all carved hard and clean through the light and shadow.

"Brother Chaisi," Tian Xi suddenly said, his voice dropping.

Jin Xueli’s head snapped up.

The SUV hammered the accelerator again — almost suicidal — and drove straight at the back of the freight truck. Then, a split second before impact, the wheel jerked hard and the nose swung right.

There on the cross-sea bridge, in a thousand threads of falling rain, the black SUV seemed to begin some kind of wild, desperate dance — revs screaming, the rear wheels breaking loose, the back half of the car sweeping sideways in a long drift, throwing up a curtain of white spray.

A single hand held the wheel pressed over, still wrenching the nose around. For one instant, the SUV was completely broadside — blocking the road between the freight truck and Jin Xueli’s car. Top-heavy and drifting that fast, it lifted off one set of wheels, tilting and swaying, before finally slamming back down to earth with a heavy bang.

The moment it landed, the SUV threw itself into reverse, backing straight into the left lane between the truck and the sea — and the shipping container it had just cleared was bearing down on them now, fast and inevitable as a falling mountain, its shadow flooding over Jin Xueli’s face.

"Change lanes!"

In that instant, Jin Xueli thought she heard Chaisi shout.

She couldn’t tell whether it was his call that came first or whether Tian Xi had already turned the wheel — there was no time to sort it out. The car’s momentum threw her hard to the right, slamming her into the door, and everything went dark for a moment, all thought wiped clean.

Before Tian Xi brought the car rocketing off the cross-sea bridge, he had managed, just in time, to swing back around — driving straight and hard toward the SUV that was still rolling in reverse ahead of them.

The next second, Jin Xueli felt a sudden lightness. The car that had been wrapped around her disappeared.