Chapter 258 Permanent Damage

Chapter 258 Permanent Damage
Chapter Two Hundred And Fifty-Five

Nathan barreled into the road.

The city opened around him in the afternoon light and he pulled into traffic with the aggressive assertion of a vehicle that was not interested in the established order of the road, and horns sounded, and someone braked hard to his left, and he was moving.

He drove.

He drove with the focused, tunnel-vision speed of a man who had one thought and that thought was distance, and the city moved around him, and the streets moved under him, and he was three blocks from Graves Tower when he heard the first siren.

Then two.

Then more.

Behind him, in the configuration that he understood immediately and completely, the blue-white flash of police vehicles entering the road from a cross street to his right and orienting toward him with the practiced efficiency of a coordinated response.

He accelerated, just as the horn speakers came on.

“Pull over immediately. Pull over the vehicle immediately. This is the Crestmont Police Department. Pull over now!”

Nathan did not pull over.

Instead, he pushed through a yellow light just as the light went red and the intersection sounded with brakes and horns and the particular chaos of disrupted traffic.

He was through it and on the next block in seconds and the sirens were behind him and still coming.

He thought about the route.

He thought about the western road that ran along the river, which had fewer intersections and better speed and an exit to the outer roads that could take him out of the city’s immediate grid and into territory where a single car could lose a pursuit in the older road network.

He turned the steering hard.

Now, he was on the river road.

He pushed the accelerator and the car responded.

The river was on his left, grey and wide in the afternoon, and the road was opening ahead of him.

Nathan pushed harder and the speed built and behind him the sirens were still there but slightly further and he thought about the outer roads and the territory beyond them and the specific quality of possibility that distance created.

He was doing over a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour when he first felt it.

It was subtle.

A resistance in the steering that was not the usual resistance of a fast-moving vehicle on a straight road but a different quality, a softness in the feedback from the wheel that suggested something between the wheel and the road was not behaving as it should.

He adjusted.

The car adjusted late.

He pressed the brake.

The brake gave.

Not failed entirely. 

It gave. Softened. The pedal went further than it should go before it found resistance, and the resistance it found was insufficient for the speed he was carrying, and the car slowed but not enough and not fast enough.

He pressed harder.

The pedal went to the floor.

Nathan’s heart slammed in his chest, and sweat trickled down his back.

In a flash, he understood what had happened in the specific, cold, comprehensive way of a man whose thinking had suddenly become very clear because the body under threat had prioritised clarity over everything else.

He had taken the wrong car.

No, that was impossible!

He knew his own car!

Had there been a mistake?! Why was there a mistake?! Didn’t Lucian thwart his plans?!

What the actual fuck?!

He was on the river road at a speed that the brakes could not address, and the road ahead of him was curving left with the curve of the river, and the barrier between the road and the river was the specific kind of barrier that existed for minimum compliance, and the car was not slowing.

He turned the wheel.

The car turned late.

He turned it harder.

The speed and the soft steering and the failed brakes and the curve combined in the particular mathematics of a situation that had been arranged for someone else and had found him instead, and the car crossed the remaining distance to the barrier with the absolute indifferent momentum of physics completing itself.

The barrier gave.

The river road disappeared.

The river came up to meet him with the cold grey certainty of a thing that had been there long before any of this and would be there long after.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​



Zach came into the private office adjacent to the boardroom at twenty past six.

Lucian was at the window.

Aria was at the desk.

The meeting had formally concluded an hour ago, the board dispersed, the legal and law enforcement personnel having completed their immediate procedural requirements and departed with the documentation and, in Monica’s case, with Monica herself, who had been taken into custody with the particular quiet efficiency of a process that had been prepared in advance.

The room was calm in the specific way of a space where significant things had recently concluded.

Zach set his tablet on the desk.

“Tell me,” Lucian said, without turning from the window.

Zach looked at the tablet and then at Aria.

“The plan was not fully foiled,” he said.

Aria looked at him, an eyebrow arched.

“The operative Nathan engaged,” Zach said, “completed the brake modification before we could intercept her. We identified the vehicle she targeted and we secured her and we cleared the truck from the route.” He paused. “But the brake modification was completed.”

“On our car?” Lucian asked.

“No,” Zach said. “That’s what I need to tell you.” He looked at the tablet. “She modified the brakes on the vehicle in the space adjacent to the Graves company car in the underground garage. The spaces are close. In low light and under time pressure, the adjacent vehicle was the one accessed.”

Aria looked at him steadily.

“Whose vehicle?” she asked.

“The space belongs to Nathan’s driver,” Zach said. “Beale. It’s the car Beale uses when he drives Nathan.”

The room was quiet.

“Nathan took that car,” Aria said.

“When he ran from the boardroom,” Zach confirmed. “He went to the garage and took the keys from Beale and got into the car in what he believed was his space. Beale tried to stop him. He didn’t listen.”

Lucian turned from the window.

He looked at Zach.

“The river road,” Zach said. “He was on the river road at speed, pursuing an exit from the city grid. The police were behind him. The brakes gave on the curve.” He paused. “He went through the barrier.”

The room absorbed this.

“What about Nathan?,” Aria said.

“The car went in,” Zach said. “The police were on the scene within four minutes. Emergency services pulled him out.” He paused for the specific length of time that preceded difficult information. “He’s alive. He’s at Crestmont General, but…”

Lucian was very still.

“Condition?” he asked.

Zach looked at him.

“Alive,” he said again. “Stable. But the impact and the water and the—” He paused. “The initial assessment from the emergency team is spinal. They’re running full diagnostics but the preliminary indication is that the damage is significant and likely permanent.”