The Levatian countryside was flat enough that you could see trouble coming from a long way away.
Zarraz had chosen their route well — back roads, agricultural land, the kind of roads that connected places rather than took you anywhere specifically. They passed two vehicles in the first hour, both going the other direction, neither slowing. The ambassador slept. The trio watched the fields and the sky and the distance and didn't talk much, which was the right call.
Sylvia called Melissa.
On the other end, Melissa was sitting on the edge of the border wall of Levatia — specifically the section of it that had recently contained a functioning Levatian Border Control HQ, which it no longer did. The HQ was in ruins. Smoke was still rising from it. Bodies were distributed across the compound in the systematic pattern of two people who had worked through it quickly and without complications.
Colonel Theo sat beside her. "How are they?"
"Out of the capital, on the road, ambassador is stable." Melissa looked at the horizon. "They made it out."
"I watched the broadcast," Theo said. "I'll be honest — I didn't expect them to move that fast."
"I did," said Melissa.
She hung up and looked at the smoke and thought about what she'd just watched on live television: three of her students materialising from nowhere at an imperial execution, extracting the target, and disappearing in under ten seconds. She filed it with everything else she'd been filing since the trial, in the place where she kept the things that would matter later.
"Four to five hours before they arrive," Theo said.
"Then we wait," said Melissa.
✦ ✦ ✦
Three hours into the drive, Zarraz pulled into a gas station — small, roadside, the kind that existed to serve the specific people who needed fuel in the middle of nowhere.
He got out and started filling the tank.
A woman came out of the convenience store.
She was dressed practically — travelling clothes, two swords at her sides, a flat-brimmed jingasa hat that would have looked unremarkable in another context. She looked at the car with the particular quality of someone who assessed things professionally and then made decisions about them. She looked through the window.
She made eye contact with Levi.
He looked back. She held it for a moment, then turned and walked toward a motorbike at the side of the building with the unhurried movement of someone who had decided something.
Levi rolled down his window. "Zarraz," he said quietly. "How much fuel have we got?"
"About a quarter." Zarraz followed Levi's gaze. He looked at the woman. He looked at the emblem on the back of her jacket — a small, specific design, not decorative. His expression changed. "We need to go. Now."
The woman looked back at them and smiled.
Levi was out of the car before the smile finished.
Her sword was already drawn — a fast draw, the speed of something practised rather than reactive — and he caught both blades with his daggers in a cross-block that absorbed the force and redirected it sideways. The impact registered up his arms. She was strong.
"Get them out of here," he said, to Sylvia through the window. "Drive. I'll catch up."
"Levi—"
"Drive."
Zarraz drove.
—
The woman's next attack came from below — a low sweep that would have taken his feet if he hadn't already moved, the telestride putting him two metres back in a fraction of a second. She tracked the relocation without surprise, which told him she'd done this against ability users before.
"Wanted fugitives," she said, circling. "Five million each. That's fifteen million in this car." She tilted her head slightly. "I'll be honest — I've had easier mornings."
He decided not to keep her entertained and teleported to Sylvia's marker.
He came through next to the car on the road, one hand on the window frame, and dropped inside while Zarraz was still accelerating. Two shallow cuts on his forearm where her blades had found the gap — not serious, paper-cut deep, though he was going to disagree with that description when the adrenaline faded.
"That woman," he said to Zarraz. "You knew the emblem."
"Bounty Syndicate," Zarraz said. He kept his eyes on the road. "Secret organisation, bounty hunters, global reach. If they have you on their list you don't walk away — they track you until the job is finished." He paused. "I got caught by one on a previous mission. The Olympian military had to pay double my bounty to get me back."
"How much was your bounty?" Levi asked.
Zarraz said nothing.
"Do you think she was tracking us specifically or was that coincidence?" Priscilla asked.
"I think it was—"
The motorbike appeared in the rear window.
✦ ✦ ✦
She was fast.
Not vehicle-fast — she was riding a motorbike on a road and they were in a car on the same road, which meant the speed differential was a question of engine output. But she rode it like someone who had spent more time on two wheels than four, the bike moving with her rather than beneath her, and she was closing.
"Faster," said Levi.
"This is as fast as it goes," said Zarraz.
She caught them in ninety seconds and leapt from the bike.
Not a stumble, not a transition — a deliberate launch, the bike's momentum becoming her momentum, and she landed on the roof of the car with the controlled impact of someone who had done this before and expected to do it again. The bike continued behind them on its own trajectory, steering apparently optional.
"She's on the car," Priscilla said. "Her bike is driving itself."
Levi teleported to the roof.
They were moving at speed on an open road and fighting on top of a car, which was objectively dangerous and also, Levi noted distantly, the most interesting fight he'd had since the trial. She was good — her footwork accounting for the vehicle's movement without apparent effort, both swords active, attacks coming in sequences that left fewer gaps than they should have.
He worked the telestride — in, hit, out, reposition, in again — but she was adjusting to the pattern. Not matching his speed, but reading the geometry of where he'd go. He changed the geometry. She adjusted again. She was treating this as a puzzle rather than a fight, and the puzzle was him.
"Four-way split," she said.
Both swords moved simultaneously — two horizontal cuts, intersecting, crossing the car's roofline in a clean X. Levi registered what was about to happen and had one second.
The car came apart.
Four sections, each one going a different direction, the clean cuts carrying enough force that the pieces actually separated rather than just fractured. Zarraz went left. Sylvia and Priscilla went right. The ambassador, still asleep through all of it, went forward.
Levi teleported them. All of them — Sylvia's marker, Zarraz's marker, Priscilla's marker, the ambassador — to the truck that had been running ahead of them for the last thirty minutes. Four people and one unconscious diplomat arriving on the back of a moving freight vehicle, which the driver did not appear to notice.
The car's four sections hit the road in different directions.
Scarlett landed on her bike.
—
"She's still coming," Priscilla said.
Zarraz already had the sniper out — magic circle in the air, weapon through it, his good arm steady. He fired once at centre mass.
Scarlett drew and cut in the same motion. The bullet separated cleanly, both halves going wide.
Silence on the truck.
"Sword artistry," Levi said. "Her technique is refined enough to cut a bullet at that range." He watched her approach. "She's not going to be shot."
Zarraz pulled a machine gun from the next circle. "Try cutting these," he said, and fired.
The rounds went downrange in a continuous stream. Scarlett's swords moved in the rapid-fire sequence of someone who had developed a specific technique for a specific problem, the blades intercepting every bullet with the particular efficiency of something that had been practised until it was automatic. Not a single round got through. Her bike didn't waver.
Zarraz lowered the gun.
"Priscilla," Levi said.
She was already focused. She extended her awareness to Scarlett — felt her weight, her speed, the vector of her approach — and swung her hand hard to the left.
The force caught Scarlett mid-ride and drove her off the road and into the field beyond, bike and all, the impact raising a wave of displaced earth that settled slowly in the afternoon air.
"Nicely done," said Levi.
They watched the field for a moment. Nothing moved.
✦ ✦ ✦
What they didn't see:
Scarlett came out of the field roughed up — hair loose, one shoulder scraped, her bike bent in two places that were going to require work. She stood in the field and watched the truck disappear down the road and took out her phone.
"Jack," she said. "It's me."
A pause while the line connected.
"I just ran into the fugitives from the emperor assassination. Yes, those ones. I fought them." She looked at her shoulder. "They're good. One of them cut through my attack sequence — not many people can do that, and he's not even fully developed yet." She started walking toward the road. "They're heading to the Olympia border. If they cross it, the chase is over."
Another pause.
"I need you to stop them at the crossing. You'll get a share of the bounty." She listened. "Bring the blood bag. Use the SS class." She looked at the road. "See you at the border."
She ended the call and started looking for a ride.
✦ ✦ ✦
Finding transport took longer than it should have.
The truck wasn't heading for the border — they jumped from it when the route diverged, which left them on a road in the countryside of Levatia with a sleeping ambassador and no vehicle. The ambassador was too heavy to carry any distance at speed. Levi could telestride him but not for forty kilometres.
"We stop the next car," Sylvia said.
A family passed — two adults, three children, a dog visible in the rear window.
They let them pass.
"Softies," Zarraz said.
"There are children," said Levi.
"There are always children."
The next car was a couple — no children, no dog, just two people who looked confused about why four teenagers and an unconscious man were standing in the road. Zarraz took the car before anyone had finished deciding whether to take it. Levi, Sylvia, and Priscilla pooled everything they had in their pockets and gave it to the couple, which amounted to a reasonable sum given they'd been paid for a month of work before the mission. The couple looked at the money, looked at the car disappearing down the road, and appeared to decide this was acceptable.
"Cold," Sylvia said, in the car.
"Efficient," said Zarraz.
"Those aren't the same thing."
"On a mission they are."
Sylvia looked at him for a moment. Then she looked out the window. "Fair enough," she said.
They drove for two hours without contact — the route Zarraz had chosen doing its job, the countryside empty, the road clear. The ambassador slept through all of it with the deep unconsciousness of someone whose pain had been chemically suspended and whose body had decided to use the opportunity.
Then the road straightened and ran true to the horizon, and on the horizon, the border walls appeared.
"There," said Levi.
They were visible — the Levatian wall on one side, the Olympian structure beyond it, the crossing point in between. Distance: maybe ten minutes at their current speed. The road was straight and empty and the border was right there.
Sylvia called Melissa.
"Mom. We're almost there. Are you at the crossing?" She listened. "Okay. We'll be there in seve—"
The sonic wave hit from the left.
It wasn't a sound — it was force, the kind of impact that came from concentrated pressure rather than physical mass, and it took the car sideways off the road before any of them had registered it was coming. The vehicle left the tarmac, hit the verge, and rolled — once, twice, the world cycling through sky and ground and sky in a sequence that had no up or down in it.
Then it stopped.
Everything was very still. Dust was settling. Something was hissing from what used to be the engine.
From somewhere outside the wreckage, a figure was walking toward them through the field.
In the overturned car, Melissa's voice was still coming from Sylvia's phone, small and distant in the sudden quiet: "Sylvia? Sylvia. Answer me."
Nobody answered.