I phase in, and the noise of the busy street stops. I pull Eugene in with me. As we exit the car, we start looking around.

“Darren, look at this,” Eugene says. He sounds more scared than I’ve heard him since we started this whole mess.

He stands a few feet to the right of the car and points at something in the air. When I take a closer look, my heartbeat spikes. It’s a bullet. A bullet frozen in its path. A bullet that just missed the car. The sibling of the one that must have shattered that mirror.

“Someone’s shooting at us,” I say stupidly.

Eugene mumbles something incomprehensible in response.

Coming out of our shock, we frantically search the cars behind us. It doesn’t take long to find the source of the bullets. Not surprisingly, it’s our new friends.

How did they manage to get this close? How could I be so stupid—why hadn’t I phased into the Quiet to check on them for so long? Why was I so convinced we’d lost them?

“Eugene, we need to get to wherever it is we’re going. And we need to do it fast,” I say.

“It’s very close. If we turn now, we’ll almost be there. Just a few more blocks.”

“It might as well be miles if they shoot us.”

I’ve never been shot at before, and I hate the feeling. I’m not ready to get shot. I haven’t seen enough, done enough. I have my whole life ahead of me—plus all that extra time in the Quiet.

“Darren, snap out of it.” I hear Eugene’s voice. “Let’s see if we can make this left turn.”

Assessing the situation, we quickly realize that our chances of making this turn unscathed are very small. A Jaguar is coming toward us on the opposite side, driving at thirty-five miles per hour—and we’ll likely crash into it if we take a sharp left turn. Still, we don’t overthink it. A car crash with a seatbelt and an airbag beats getting shot. I think.

I walk to the car, take a calming breath, and phase out. As I’m pulling the wheel all the way to the left, I try my best not to phase into the Quiet out of fear.

With a loud screeching noise, my side of the car touches the Jaguar’s bumper. The impact knocks the wind out of me, but the seatbelt holds me, and the airbag doesn’t activate. Happy to have made it this far, I slam the gas pedal harder. The car makes all sorts of unhappy sounds, but at least we made it through that deadly looking turn relatively unscathed.

When we’re midway through the block, I phase in and get Eugene to join me.

We look at our handiwork back at the beginning of the street. As a result of our crazy turn, the Jaguar hit the Camry in front of it. Its bumper is gone, and the once-beautiful car is pretty much totaled. I think the guy inside will have to be hospitalized—which I feel terrible about. Furthermore, the entire intersection is jammed with cars. Unless they plan to go through them, our trigger-happy friends can’t pass.

Still, Eugene walks over to Read Sergey’s mind, just in case.

“Darren, I’m such a fucking idiot,” he says, slapping his hand to his forehead.

“What is it?”

“They know where we’re going. Their boss texted them the address. That’s how they caught up with us. I should’ve realized that if they’re working with a Pusher, he or she would know the location of the Readers’ community. That they would know we’re likely to head that way.”

“It’s too late to blame yourself now,” I tell him. “Let’s just get there.”

“I’m not sure we’ll make it. Sergey plans to ram this car.” He points at the tiny Smart Car that happens to be the smallest of those involved in the jam, and I realize that we have a problem. Our pursuers can go through the blocked intersection after all.

“We already have a little bit of a head start,” I say, trying to summon optimism I don’t feel. “We’ll just have to make it.”

“Okay,” Eugene says. “From here, we can actually walk to our destination on foot before we get back into the real world. This way, you’ll know the exact way there.”

We take the walk. I realize we’ll make it when we see the wall of the gated community that is our destination. Whether Sergey rams that car successfully or not, we can do this.

We’re a mere three blocks from where we need to be.

When we get back to the car, I phase back out.

I push the little rental to its limits. I’m going eighty, the tires screeching as I make the next turn. I hear the loud bang behind us and know that Sergey followed through with his plan; the Smart Car is probably toast by now.

It’s too late for our pursuers, though. We’ve reached the gate that separates us from our destination. I stop the car in the middle of the street and am about to phase into the Quiet when I’m pulled in instead by someone else.

“Eugene, you beat me to it,” I say when everything goes still. Only when I look to my right, I don’t see Eugene.

I see someone else—someone I’ve never met before.