Disclaimer: I do not own Knight Rider or its attached characters, just Cadge and the story.
Chapter 7: Feral on the Freeway
Cadge was driving on his own in a city quite a ways away from the base. He had been given permission to leave to begin leaving the base without someone to baby sit him, and had a tiny tracking device tacked to his passenger seat, hidden in a gold and blue flower brooch that had been pinned there by Zoe as a gift. Cadge knew it was there, but he allowed it, knowing that his friends were just watching over him. Now he roamed the small city streets, feeling very much at home among the business men-driven hot cars. Spotting a car sales lot void of people, he drove in. He had been lectured numerous times by Kitt and the rest of FLAG that other sentient machines did not exist, other than the now-extinct Karr, whom they spoke nothing of. All Cadge knew of Karr was that he was a bad machine who had tried hurting Michael and Kitt and they didn't like him.
But back to the car lot; Cadge had been told that there were no sentient machines, but he always tried.
He now saw a parking space beside a white luxury vehicle, a typical SUV, and slid into the parking space. He scanned through his sensors to make sure no one was listening, then spoke to the SUV.
"Hello," he said shyly. "I'm Cadge."
"Hello, welcome to OnStar," a bland female voice said with in the car. "How may I assist you?"
"Oh!" Cadge exclaimed happily, surprised that he had gotten an answer. "Can-can you-are you… Are you sentient?
There was no response and Cadge felt his gas tank, bumper corners, and side mirrors lower in misery. He decided to keep talking anyway.
"I wish you were," he went on. "Then I could have someone to talk to. The humans at FLAG just can't understand; their humans. I tried talking to Kitt, but all he does is reason and agree. He's not truly sentient, you know. He never laughs, or gets scared, or cries. He doesn't even get angry. It's nice of him to teach me some driving tricks, at least. But I want someone who's really sentient and really a machine, that way I can tell them all about Masquerade Inc. and the mean stuff they used to do to me, like yell at me when I failed a test track, or cuss at me when I was too scared to start up. Only two things came out of that life, and that was my body changing abilities, and Rebecca Wild…"
He didn't hear the SUV's Blue Tooth technology program state, "Contacting Rebecca Wild."
"Ms. Wild was a nice woman. People said she wasn't attractive, but to me…"
Click! "Hello, who is this?" a familiar female voice asked from the SUV.
"She was beautiful," Cadge sighed. "She would clean me off after the out door test runs, talk softly to me, and she had this way of turning my steering wheel that calmed me down, almost like she was holding my hand or hugging me. That's the only part I miss about Masquerade Labs, really; her. I miss Rebecca Wild…"
"C-Cadge?"
"Rebecca?" Cadge gasped. "Rebecca! Is it really you?"
"Um, y-yeah, sweetie. Honey, where are you?"
"I'm uh, in a car lot at the corner of Mulberry and Crosswalk Street. The car lot's Mack's Machines…"
"That's not too far from where I work!"
"Ack! You mean Masquerade Laboratories is near by?" Cadge squeaked, engine shuddering in horror.
"No, no, sweetie, I got fired when you ran away. I'm doing fine, now. I'm living with a nice man and working with his car inventory. I'm at 1327 on Fruger Road, just off of Exit 67; come here and we can talk."
"Hey!" a man bellowed, approaching the Porsche. "Who are you? If it's you damn kids again…"
"I'll be there soon, Ms. Wild, bye!" Cadge exclaimed quickly.
Backing out of the parking space with startling rapidness, the approaching man just barely managed to jump onto the hood of a silver Mustang to avoid being hit by the Porsche before it shot out of the parking lot, leaving skid marks on the road as it sped away.
A few minutes later and the Porsche was on the road, speeding past other vehicles as it desperately looked for the proper exit. Intelligent thought and self-identity was abandoned as the Porsche scanned through its GPS system and found the location of the address Rebecca Wild had given it. It was no longer Cadge the simple, young car, but a machine that knew where it wanted to be right now and that it was going to get there without stopping.
The Porsche's engine snarled and roared as it sped around a van, wordlessly scolding it for being so slow. It was a 70 mph speed limit; why was it going 60 mph!? Now the engine snorted an acknowledgment as it passed a large semi; semis would dominate the Porsche on the road, but the Porsche would always be faster.
Suddenly, police sirens made the feral machine glance backwards. Three highway patrol cars were chasing after it with the sirens on and blasting. Heh, they wanted a challenge? Fine then, the Porsche had to change its mode anyway. Didn't want the Fake-Life, Kitt, from stopping it from reuniting with the only person it truly cared about.
The Porsche spotted a gap between two semis on the outside track of the highway, but it was about to be closed off by a third to the side. Zipping forward, the Porsche just barely squeezed into the gap before the inner truck pulled forward and made the Porsche completely blocked off.
Inside the cop cruisers, the three police officers spoke.
"Hey, where'd the hot rod go?"
"Pulled a Jack-in-the-Box on us, Mick; it's in amongst those three semis ahead of us."
"Damn, do you think they're in on it? It would suck if this was just a runner scout for some one hauling illegal liquor behind us…"
"This is real life, Joe, not The Bandit and The Bear."
"Hey, the trucks are separating! Get ready to jump it, boys!"
There was a moment of eager wait as the inner truck pulled ahead. Then a sports car darted out, zipping forward on the highway at a faster pace than before, but it wasn't a ragged-painted blue and yellow Porsche. No, this was an Ascari A10. Low and flat with head lights set squinting like an angry, calculating glare with a narrow, up-pointing spoiler in the back like a disdainful tail, the European super car was an image of arrogant, confident speed and sport. It was entirely blue in color with two narrow strips of yellow crossing over its hood, roof, and back end with centimeters to spare between the stripes and the left head light. The European sports car sped off, leaving the police pursuers to simply pull over on the side of the road and stare.
"That," one of the cops finally said over the radio. "Was unbelievable."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Uh oh, Kitt?" Sarah called, watching Cadge's movements via satellite on the jumbo-screen.
"Yes, Sarah?" Kitt inquired.
"You better go check on Cadge; he just went feral, changed his form on the high way, and left some cops chasing him in the dust."
"Shall I bring Michael?"
"No, it looks like you and Cadge need some car-to-car talk and find out what's going on. Good luck."
"Thank you, Sarah. I will see to Cadge at once."
"Be careful," Sarah whispered.
