“That’s right. You die young, the insurance company says, ‘You win!’” He laughs again, and Abe is cheered to see it. Abe adds:

“And if you lose the bet, you’re still alive.”

“Exactly.”

They reach Nutwood, turn off the freeway and head west to College Avenue, shooting through the shops and restaurants and laundromats and bookstores that serve Cal State Fullerton. Crowds watch them pass, cars skitter over to the slow track or slide into empty parking slots, giving Abe little scares each time they hesitate and almost scatter into his path. Familiar surge of power as they part traffic likes Moses at the Red Sea. Up ahead traffic is dense, stopped, the brake lights go off in his brain, Chippie car lights rolling red and blue in the intersection. “We need the cutters,” Xavier reports from the radio. “Code six.”

Abe sucks down air, he’s breathing rapidly. He drives onto a sidewalk to make half a block, thumps back over the curb and crawls by cars to the sota.

They’re there. Three-car job. Sits, something in the silicon. Or maybe this was a combination of silicon breakdown and human error. College had a green light, cars were pouring through, apparently; a truck fired through its red light on Nutwood and broadsided a left-lane car that was caught against the car in the right lane, the three of them skidding over into a traffic light and a power pole, knocking the poles flat over. Both the cars are crunched, especially the middle one, which is a pancake. And the truck driver isn’t too well off either, no seat belt natch.

Abe is out of the truck and on the move, dragging his cutters over to the cars, where Chippies are gesturing violently for him. Someone’s caught in the middle car, and with all the sparks from the power lines, they fear electrocution for those inside.

There are two people in the front seat of the sandwiched car. Abe ignores the driver as she appears dots, sets to work on the roof of the car to get to the passenger. Again he’s at work, cutting with a delicate touch as the snips shear the steel with great creaks and crunches, metallic shrieks covering repeated moans from the girl in the passenger seat. Xavier slithers in from above and is quickly at work, giving a rapid sequence of very exact commands to Abe above, “Cut another foot and a half back on the midline and pull it up. Farther. Okay, take that sidewall out of the rear door, we can get her out here.” Stretcher set, for a teenager in yellow blouse and pants, all stained blood red in an alarmingly bright pattern. Xavier and the Chippies run her to the truck and Abe works his way into the smashed car to check on getting the driver out. In the right rear door, lean over the blood-soaked seatback—