Trying not to look at Donal gets harder as time goes by. He keeps trying to catch my eyes whenever the car makes impossible turns or when the red lights blinks furiously at us.

Unusual is unusual I guess.

I don't think I'd have done so much better than Nick considering the state of the traffic and the second call that has caught us all upon climbing in the car. Our bracelets haven't stated any victims yet, but the land security has been triggered and that, I have never seen it happening ever since I have been officially integrated as an officer.

Which means this case is going to be a lot bigger than what we first thought.

And I don't even know if the victim is alive or dead. Bracelet or not, there has to be a victim or we wouldn't have been called. We're a victim's unit, after all. I can't tell how it bothers me not to know wether it is a cold crepe or a hot pancake. Meaning a crime already done or a crime in the making.

I hate to think that, maybe, someone's out there in danger while we're on the move. That someone actually WAS in danger while we'd been babbling about who got to drive.

All we have been told is that we are required in the luxurian suburbs AKA the overfeds levels. In a residence, to be precise. One of those mega building where people could find everything without ever stepping outside : markets, theatre, work, doctors, schools... Some people were born there, lived there and died there without ever setting a foot outside. That felt weird to me. And that hadn't really thrilled any of us when we'd reached the car.

Residencies are a kind of city inside the city.

They have their own rules, their own systems. Real privileged people live in there and more often than not, they are more troublesome than the criminals we usually chase. That definitely means no good for us.

I don't want to make any difference in victim treatment based on social class, but if it's an ongoing crime, I have to consider the fact that things could really get out of our hands in such a setting. It's quite unnerving to know the number of times the overfed population shot officers on their way to help because they thought they were 'some kind of criminal reinforcements'.

My duty is to help the victims, that's what I signed in for, but I also have to make sure neither Nick nor Don gets wounded in the process. I ordered them to wear the ballistics plates under their shirts, full gear being only allowed on special cases, but that doesn't really calm me down.

Too many victims started shooting on sight out of psychosis.

It could very well happen to us.

Especially considering who we are.

A black boy, a sewer orphan and a choir child.

By all standards, we are on the lowest possible social class team of officers.

Is that a joke ? A hazing of sort ?

The car's rear slips violently on the road, making me flinch. Nick pushes the engine harder to get it straight again.

« That ain't a race. » Donal voices loudly.

« Nobody has talked about a corpse yet ! Which means there's a living victim waiting !» Nick yells back, eyes on the streets. « We'll never get there in time unless we get there fast. »

« Once we crash we never get there at all. » grunts Donal behind my seat.

« We'd never have made it if grand pa' there had taken the wheel and as for you, Blender, if I recall a car needs to be on four wheels. »

I don't even try to defend myself from that very free violent blow.

It is a lost cause.

I have, indeed, crashed a car said to be impossible to crash. What can I say ? That I apparently like a good challenge in spite of myself...? I honestly would have appreciated to keep the car on all four wheels. It would have prevented my little hospitalised holidays... and that brand new scar.

And having to deal with my two terrible partner's driving...

« You can't deny it was well played. » I try.

« You really want to go there ? » Nick snaps at me, waving one hand I can't help but wish he'd keep on the wheel « I have like MILLIONS of reasons not to do what you did then. »

« It worked! » I protests even though I have just told myself not to.

« You almost got killed! » Nick suddenly yells, turning sharply. « I'm telling you now : no more hero bullshit alright ?! You pull a trick like that on us again and I fucking shoot you in the legs ! Boss or not ! So that at least I am sure to bring you back alive and conscious to the hospital. »

I don't need to look at Donal to realize they've talked about this little speech before hand. To be honest I had expected Donal to do something like that. Hearing it from Nick makes it only harder to hear.

I guess that's the goal.

« You scared us, Boss. » Nick says, glancing at me. « We're a team. I don't want to lift your white corpse off the ground because you think you have something to prove out there. »

I think it is the closest thing to a « I like you » that I will ever get from Nick.

And I have absolutely no idea what to answer to what he just said.

Especially since I know they definitely had lifted what they had, at the time, believed to be my corpse off the car I had crashed. I had tried to stay away from the records of their portable cameras when, after the hospital, I had to fill my report of the events. Someone had remotely played the footage on my desk though. Someone I suspect to be Nick. Donal's heartbroken voice still rings in my ears when I think about it. The way he kept repeating my name and God's while disentangling my moveless body from the car wreck. Nicks voice booming in the radio for medical care while he brought everything to scan and revive that pale lifeless thing I was then.

It is one thing to know I have been close to death, that I have terrified my friends and given at least one of them nightmares about it.

It is a whole other thing to see myself hanging dead in their arms, to see their wide eyes and frenetic moves and hear their desperate screams for help.

I feel like a heartless monster.

What can I fucking say ?

« Be kind to us and shut the fuck up. » Nick orders me, reading my mind « We're almost there. See grand pa' ?! Alive and well ! »

Donal only grunts back.

I barely hear him.

I barely feel the car braking hard to park in a single manoeuvre at the feet of the building where we're expected. My eyes are drifting along my memories.

Nick has no idea why I do the things I do. Neither does Donal.

I do have everything to prove.

I have to be worthy of all of it. Each and every second. Each of my fucking breath has to mean something. Crashing that car had directly saved at least six people and something like hundreds of others, somehow. I didn't have any other solution then. A remotely controlled car full of explosive was being directed at an educational building. A very big school full of kids of all age. Our techies were powerless at hacking it and we didn't have the time to evacuate. I was at the wheel of our police car, alone, I had the rogue car in sight and less than three minutes to find a way to save hundreds of kids.

It was either crash both cars, or watch them all die.

I chose to crash.

That was the only thing I could do then.

The more I live, the more people I want to help and save. I am not going to selfishly preserve my life when it doesn't really belong to me anymore. I owe it to Yves.

I wasn't trying to get killed, I didn't want to die, I am not suicidal, I didn't want to hurt anybody either, but if I have to throw my life in any bargain again, the very price I'll settle for it will only be against a handful of people saved.

It has to be.

I won't stand and watch people die again if I have my say in it.

I lost too many people already.

I watched too many death.

And I know that, if I don't, Yves' sacrifice will feel wasted on me.

I can't, I won't, have that.

That's all I can think of as realize the car has stopped and it's time to move on.

I wish I could tell Nick and Don. I wish I could talk to anybody about all that has happened, but every time I tried before, the pain just brought me to my knees.

One day, maybe, I can find it in me to tell them.

But now isn't the time.

I take a breath, lock these thoughts again and open the car's door onto a whole new mess.