Chapter Three: Betrayal

There were a few things that Flynn Rider carried on his person during tech running. Always hanging on his neck was a gas mask. No one knew when one is going to be face to face with a threat to one's lungs. On his waist was a belt with a small pouch containing three spheres the size of golf balls. And some light snacks. He chewed gum as he rode happily back from the heist. Meanwhile, the elder Stabbington had sped up to be right by his side and shouted to him.

"Give me the satchel, Rider!"

"Relax! We're approaching the City! We'll do the split there," Rider yelled back at him.

"I don't trust you, Rider!"

"What? Can't hear you, man!" Rider yelled to the wind and continued speeding. The elder Stabbington grunted and picked up speed to catch up with him.

"Shit!" Flynnagan said as he spied what the dots were as they got closer. A cohort of ten men, on vehicles similar to their hover mobiles. And Flynn was glad that he had got his hands on those three EMP bombs the size of golf balls when he saw little dots of approaching entities from behind in the rear view mirror. The elder Stabbington saw the change in his face and asked.

"What?"

"Coronian guards! We gotta loose them. We must separate."

"Not without the LifeData, you motherfucker."

Flynnagan raised an eyebrow. He'd been called that, so no fucks were given. But his mind was running. "There!" Flynnagan threw the satchel at the Stabbington's face. And sped on. The Coronian guards were closing the distance. Soon they would be able to corner them. Who knew what kind of armament the guards have? Ten against three, the odds were not very promising. Flynnagan was not going to separate from the Stabbingtons. Not yet, with his beloved satchel with them. And the Stabbingtons, ever so wary about the other's transparency, were stuck together. The Coronian guards were really dynamite. They closed in matter of seconds. Obviously the Captain of the Guards had advantage with his ride. He was leading and he was fast.

It's time. Flynnagan killed his engine while he was speeding in mid air. The sudden halt made him flew off his hover mobiles and slid and rolled on the sand and gravels. The Stabbingtons and the guards, on top speed lurched on with their vehicles. But before he hit the ground, he had thrown an EMP bomb towards the cohort. And the machines with their engines running were disabled as the bomb threw a blast of electromagnetic pulse. The men were thrown off their vehicles and they were no less different from Flynnagan, all spitting sand and gravel. But Flynnagan, who had his engine dead before the EMP bomb, was able to restart his engine and went back on his ho-mob. He rode to the group of fallen men and their dead machines. The elder Stabbington, after shaking off the sand and hurting limbs, checked the satchel for its content. The giant of a man shouted madly.

"Rider!"

Flynnagan rode pass him and snatched the satchel from the Stabbington's hand.

"Sorry. I can't let them have it. See you in the City!" He said in a voice that was a trail of mocking sound. Flynnagan Rider was off again, peerless and proud, with his own private plan.

o-o-o-o

The Coronian guards were sprawled on the sand in various positions that warranted pain. The Captain, on the speediest ride was knocked off his hover mobile more spectacularly than the rest. The fall on the sand knocked him out. As the cohort and their pursuits, the Stabbingtons were struggling with sand in their eyes and mouths and getting their limbs to coordinate, the machine which was the Captain's ride hummed deeply. Its headlight turned on by itself and the rotors started running, providing the machine with its uplift force. Beeping sounds came out from its control panel, accompanied by the action prompt. Resuming the pursuit of target, Flynnagan Rider, dweller of the City. As suddenly as it was turned on by itself, the vehicle sped off on its own volition, its radar wired to the homing device in the LifeData tablet, which was in the possession of its target, Flynnagan Rider.

The Captain regained consciousness and spurted out sand and dirt from his mouth. His thick, serious-looking moustache was completely white covered in sand and dust. He stood on his feet and looked around to find his vehicle. All his men were already reunited with their vehicles, and his seemed to be nowhere within sight.

"Dammit, MAX! Not you too," the Captain cursed.

"What happened to MAX, Captain?" One of the guards asked him.

"The thief Rider had stolen it!"

"Waiting for your orders, Captain!"

"We're going to ride to the City. Rider and LifeData must be found before we can go back to Corona," the Captain ordered his men.

o-o-o-o

Flynn had a good distance of five miles away from the Coronian Guards and the Stabbingtons after the EMP bombing happened.

"Shit," he cursed when he saw that his vehicle was low on fuel. He slowed it down so he could reach the City and get it refuelled. He hated slowing down for anything. But he felt quite safe. A standard issue City hover-mobile would need at least an hour to regain its system functions after being struck by an EMP bomb. He would be beyond reach in an hour.

But the fantastic feeling of being safe beyond reach was temporary. A sharp whirring sound made him turned his head. What he saw made his face lose color. What the hell? A hover-mobile without a rider? Anyone would be right to say that it was like Flynn was looking at a ghost. Flynn sped away from the way to the City. If anything happened, he didn't want it to happen there. It would cause too much damage and attract too much attention. Not the kind of attention he wanted. He preferred things to happen in the Wasteland, the roughly twenty square miles of junkyard for metal scrap. He had been there once or twice, scavenging for parts. Maybe something would come up there and help him go through this mess.

Shit shit shit shit dammit, his mind kept running about the new menace. This is not standard issue hover mobiles. How the hell a backwater backward backyard place like Corona have such technology? A vehicle which needed no rider to operate, homed in on a target of pursuit. He had completely messed up his own fool-proof plan by overlooking this technical possibility. And worse, his own ho-mob was really running low on fuel. He couldn't speed, and he couldn't be without a vehicle in a desert wasteland.

"Sorry, babe. Gotta move on," he said and he climbed onto his ho-mob. Steadily, carefully he stood on the slowing vehicle. The pursuing Coronian vehicle was getting really close. Flynnagan had no idea what the machine was going to do. Sprout mechanical arms and snatch his satchel? But it seemed that it was going to nudge into his dying vehicle. With one swift jump, Flynnagan jumped onto the back of the Coronian vehicle. He used one hand to control the handle of the ho-mob and with the other he took out a small hand-held device and jacked a little implement into the vehicle's control panel. At least, the interface is identical with the City's ho-mobs, he breathed. A series of command appeared. Flynnagan could read some of it. Some missed his eyes when he blinked. Something beeped after a few seconds of running commands. The interface showed the vehicle's identity: MAXIMUS – Maximum Intelligence Mobile Unmanned Speeder.

Ahah! It's done, he exhaled. What a fancy name, Flynn scoffed. And how simply he had overridden its system. And he pressed on for speed. The vehicle was his. The Coronian version of the ho-mobs, or MAX ran according to his control for about fifty meters before it bucked and halted, almost throwing him off its back.

What the h – Flynn stuck the drive into the interface again and began pushing in commands through his handheld device. The machine ran again and not a few minutes before it buck and halt. A new prompt appeared on the screen. Apprehend Flynnagan Rider. Rescue the LifeData.

Shit. Flynnagan cursed. He was on the back of the very machine whose objective in existing is to take his captive and free him of his precious cargo. Flynn knew what he had to do. He took out the now tasteless chewing gum from his mouth and stuck it on one of the two EMP bombs he had left. He stuck the bomb onto the vehicle. He jumped off it and hugged the ground littered with metal scraps. The EMP bomb exploded, giving off a ring of energy as it disabled MAXIMUS for the second time. The energy from the EMP subsided and Flynnagan made a run for his life. He didn't know how long the vehicle would stay immobilised. But he was running as fast as he could.

The Wasteland got denser as he got to its centre. At a clearing, he saw a sunken entrance into the ground. He approached cautiously. He could hear the machine whirring back to life. There was a warning sign against biohazard threat on the door. But he would face biohazard threat rather than be taken by the machine. Anyway, most things were tagged as biohazard threat these days. People ill with flu. Stale food item. Pollution. Rain water. He'd take them on one at a time.

He came face to face with a metal door and its panel for code entry. Flynn took out his set of screwdrivers and dismantled the panel. He cut the wires and put the panel back together. Taking a deep breath he put on his gas mask and twisted the metal handle. It opened with a click. He entered a poorly lit subterranean tunnel and clicked the door back in place. There was a dead bolt inside and he put in on. He faced another obstacle. A thick metal door with wheel like ones he sees in ship compartments. He held the wheel with both hands and turned it clockwise.

Postcript: Yup, I'm still here.