Ah, good. The road.
She loved the road. Straight, bendy, it didn't matter. The asphalt tasted like freedom, like places to go and people to meet. She didn't have much left, in truth, not since Davide had died. And it was her fault, she knew that.
It was night again, now. Only a few stars were aloft in the sky, outshone in their splendor by the white and yellow light of the city down below. She often came here to talk with him. Together they savored the night air, that peculiar hilltop air: if they stood facing the city they could still feel that, but as soon as they turned they would be able to sense the scent of jasmine and, perhaps, the soft sighs of the young couples in love in adjacent cars not far from them. But now all of this, once so intense and familiar, had lost its charm to her.
She drove away, distraught, to once again taste the asphalt beneath her. On the long straight way home her mind wandered, as if hypnotized by the unrelenting scrolling of the broken white line on her left. She could almost feel the non-existing noise of it.
Suddenly, something brought her back to reality: further down the road, in an orderly line, a series of police cars were driving towards her. "Stay calm", she said to herself, "they can't already know about tonight, not so soon." Feigning confidence she shifted to third gear and slowed down slightly, as if she was driving with all the calm in the world. The police cars were getting ever closer, she could now feel the stares of the men inside.
"Pull over!" A siren screamed behind her. Shit, she didn't notice it coming, she was too focused acting natural. She was trapped, surrounded. There was nothing else to lose now. Suddenly, catching even herself off-guard, she pulled on the hand brake and performed a flawless 180, coming headlights to headlights with a single patrol car. She went balls to the wall on the accelerator, swiftly passing by the patrol and leaving the police behind. She could do this, she knew she could. She was a far better driver than they were, after all.
Then, out of nowhere, a helicopter. "Fuck! I can't outrun that, it'll stay glued on my ass until I run out of gas or crash myself!". Now in a frenzy, she began turning left and right, trying to lose the cops behind her. It worked for a while, a many of them crashed trying to keep up with her, and yet many more, plus the helicopter, were unrelentingly chasing after her still, and the bright light singling her out from above was making her very nervous. After a while, the helicopter flew over her and landed further down the road, blocking it. She now had no escape.
Filled with dread, she tried yet another 180, but right then someone shot from the helicopter, piercing her rear right tire and sending her wildly tumbling along the asphalt road. As the deadly joust came to an end she felt dizzy e aching all over, but still alive. She landed tires in the air, leaving her with no hope of escaping.
A group of uniforms was now walking towards her from the helicopter, one of them wielding a sniper rifle.
"For Christ's sake, Marchese! What the hell were you thinking, shooting unprovoked like that? The bastard at the wheel must have died after all this mess!"
"They were going way too fast, heading for the city. The only logical solution was to stop them before they could massacre dozens of civilians in the city streets."
"Ah, fuck, whatever. Guns out, boys, we don't know if the suspect is armed or not."
Carefully, the cops continued to get closer, their flashlights aimed at the inside of the upside down vehicle. She was terrified, she didn't want to be there, she did nothing wrong! "It was all an accident, I didn't do it on purpose! Don't shoot, I'm not armed!"
"What the… Did the car just fucking talk?"
She forgot other humans didn't like this about her. They were not Davide. They didn't understand. None of them. None, except one.
As the other policemen were increasingly more distressed, pointing their guns at the windshield and shouting to a non-existing driver to crawl out of the vehicle, a group of men desperately clinging to their sense of normalcy and trying to convince themselves their eyes must be mistaken, she managed to shift her headlights on the man with the rifle, now standing at some distance away from the others: he was calm, a narrow satisfied grin on his face. While the other cops were too busy freaking out, the man calmly pressed a finger on his ear and started speaking. Through all the chaos of sirens and yelling, she could barely hear him:
"Yes. I've found it. Foundation code Aleph-Zeta-484871."
