He has to choose: sidewalk/rail gamble or straight-through at speed.
"Sidewalk," Gavin says. "We ride the rail."
He jerks left. The van climbs the curb with a bone-deep thud. The right tires find concrete. The left tires kiss the lane line. The folded mirror scrapes a steel post and snaps back like a slapped ear.
"Easy," Madison says, voice a metronome fighting panic.
"Hold your line," Rick adds. "Keep the weight high inside."
Gavin keeps his hands quiet. The guardrail shoulder rises to hip height beyond the curb—a thin shelf for people, not vans. The van's right-side rims ride the curb, rubber shouldering concrete. The body leans. Weight goes up the outside walls and hums there.
"Past the spikes," Madison calls. "Two more posts."
"Copy." Gavin threads them. The front right rides clean. The rear right wobbles on the soft tire and spits grit. The rail plates flash: bolt, gusset, bolt—teeth of a different kind.
Ahead, the cruiser coming onto the span eats their lane. Its nose is high and dumb with urgency. Blue strobes turn wet on the river skin below.
"We've got a nose," Rick says.
"Hold rail," Gavin answers. Brakes are lies; geometry is truth. He drops a gear and lets engine drag trim speed. The cruiser's driver sees them too late, overcorrects, swings wide toward center. The gap between the rail and cruiser's bumper opens like a dare.
"Through that?" Madison asks.
"Through that."
He pins the right rims higher on the curb. Steel sings under the slider. The left-side paint kisses the cruiser's push bar with a dry screech. The folded mirror smacks and stays flat. The gap is a shrug wider than the van. The van goes anyway. The cruiser's driver mouths a word Gavin will learn later or never. They pass, and the push bar scrapes a final complaining chord down the side panel.
"Past," Rick breathes.
"Don't celebrate," Gavin says. "The rail has opinions."
It does. Twenty feet ahead, the walkway jogs around a drain box, pushing the guardrail inward by a hand's width. The curb height bumps a little higher at the box.
"Step up," Madison warns. "Drain."
"Setting," Gavin says. He feather-steers a hand-span left, then right, so the front climbs the raised lip square. The van thumps, tilts, and balances. The soft right rear hops, lands sideways, and squeals. For one beat gravity argues which side it likes. Gavin leans his shoulder left like his body can throw mass into the equation. The van decides not to roll. It slides the box, angry but obedient.
"Still with me?" he asks.
"Present," Rick says. "Hate it, but present."
"We drop in three posts," Madison says. "Service road chain in five. If the chain holds, we're a spear into a fence."
Gavin scans the run. Spike strips behind. Cruiser behind. Fire glow a ghost in the city haze. Ahead, the bridge foot, the mouth of River Avenue's service road—marked by a sagging chain looped to a bent pole and a No Trespassing sign that used to feel like authority.
"Angle breach," he says. "Same method."
"Brake status?" Madison.
"Soft. We engine it." He nudges the nose down the rail shelf another car length. A tourist sign flashes by, white text on green, meaningless now but reflective enough to ghost their faces in the side glass.
"Two posts," Madison counts. "One."
"Drop," Gavin says.
He dips the right rims off the curb to the lane as the sidewalk widens for a ramp. The van lands with a belly note. The soft right rear flaps once, then holds air enough. He straightens them into the lane and aims for the chain mouth angled forty-five degrees. The chain gleams a dull nickel in the strobe.
"Heads down," he says.
"Copy," Rick says, involuntary.
Gavin feeds throttle without mercy, then lets off just before impact so weight, not speed, becomes the letter opener. The bumper shoulders the chain midway. Links climb metal, then choose to break off the pole's lag bolts. The chain spits them through with a slap that rings the cargo floor. The van bounds the gutter and dives onto the service road's cracked asphalt, free of the bridge throat.
"Gate down," Madison says. "Left bend, then yard wall."
"Water plant on your right," Rick reads from a sign like prayer. "Authorized personnel only."
"Tonight everyone is authorized," Gavin says. He rides the service road. On their right, high cyclone fence topped with dull barbs. Beyond it, big dark shapes: settling tanks, a grid of catwalks. On the left, a row of sycamores drops leaves that look like hands.
The right rear finally sighs to the rim. The van squats and shudders. The steering wheel tickles, wanting to shimmy.
"Rim," Rick says.
"We keep it flat and straight," Gavin answers. "No sharp inputs. We turn only when the road turns."
The service road bends left under the bridge's far abutment where concrete drops low enough to make a man duck in a truck. The sightline dies for a heartbeat. The world compresses to headlight cones and the angry inner sound of a metal wheel learning to be a plow.
"Eyes," Madison says, almost to herself. "Eyes."
They come out from under to a fork: straight into the plant's rear lot—security gate shut and chain-linked; right toward the river trail—narrow, hemmed by bollards; left into a delivery apron, roll-up doors numbered 3, 4, 5.
"Choice," Rick says.
"Left. Roll-ups," Gavin says. "If three is plexi we're ghosts; if it's steel we're sore." He lines the van along the apron. The roll-ups are half-windowed: plate steel lower, wired glass panes upper. Number 4 yawns half up—someone started leaving and got interrupted by the end of the world.
"Four," Madison says. "Half-open."
"Forklift trick again?" Rick asks.
"No time," Gavin says. "Duck and squeeze."
He squares the van. The opening is twenty-seven inches taller than the roof—enough if he doesn't float. He feathers in, keeps the suspension from compressing, and slides them under the door's lips with paint to spare. Inside: a maintenance bay bright as day, concrete clean, yellow lines crisp. In the far corner: a rack of tools that look like honest work: bolt cutters, pipe wrenches the size of femurs, a four-foot maul.
"Gifts," Rick says, hungry.
"We don't stop," Gavin says, but his eyes do inventory anyway, hands itching to be dishonest with time. "Exit?"
Madison points. "Back gate to the access street. Chain with padlock."
"Angle breach two," Gavin says. "Keep speed five."
They cross the bay. A worker in a blue coverall lies facedown by a spill kit, one hand extended. The hand twitches once as if completing a task in a dream. The other hand is gone from the wrist, neat as pipe cut. Madison looks away, then fixes her eyes back on the exit because that's her job.
The back gate is chain-link between concrete bollards. The padlock is new, dumb, heavy. The chain is threaded wrong—someone locked it in a hurry. The angle is good.
"Eyes up," Gavin says.
"Up," Rick echoes, turning his head to the mezzanine windows above the bay. Shadows move there, then stop—gauging—because they learn.
"Breaching," Gavin says, and does it. The chain takes the bumper at a diagonal and does what chains do when geometry bullies them: it skids and yields. They pop into a narrow access street that runs behind the plant: dumpsters, a row of service trucks with the city logo. A pickup sits with its driver door open and a long-handled bolt cutter on the seat, the universe's late apology.
"Take it?" Rick asks.
"Grab and go," Gavin says, hard stop of a compromise. He nose-parks close; Rick snakes out, snatches the bolt cutter and a pipe wrench too heavy to be moral, and flings them into the cargo. Madison watches the alley's mouths with her hammer sitting quiet on her thigh like a trained dog that can't wait to be bad.
"On," Gavin says, rolling. "Bridge behind, plant to the right, neighborhood ahead."
The access street tees into River Avenue again. To the left, the bridge roar and blue light and the idea of going back. To the right, a dark ribbon bordered by canted mailboxes and hydrangeas slapped down by wind. Farther: a small span over a feeder canal, then more houses, then a billboard asking them to donate blood in calmly kerned letters.
"Right," Madison says.
They turn. The metal rim writes a bright line on the asphalt. The sound is a low growl that sits in their teeth. Gavin keeps the wheel still, feels the van reply like a nervous horse that will obey only if not asked to dance.
"Next safe place we fix the wheel," Rick says. "We can't drag that rim all night."
"We won't," Gavin says. "First walls we can close, we change it hot. Jack, wrench, spare—if we're blessed."
"What if we're not?" Madison asks.
"Then we steal blessed," Gavin says.
They drift under trees that have seen decades of quiet nights with sprinklers and raccoons. Tonight the trees listen like judges. On the left, a shuttered deli with a chalkboard still promising fresh soup like a charm against hunger. On the right, a craftsman house with its porch light still on and its door open. A woman stands there with a baseball bat resting on her shoulder, looking at the street as if waiting for a cue. She watches the van go by and neither signals nor pleads. She is a fact the city will have to explain later.
"Feeder canal ahead," Madison says. "Short bridge."
"Hold rail again?" Rick asks, half a joke, half not.
"No rail," Gavin says. "Just curb."
The short bridge comes up. No block, no spikes. Relief is a drug he refuses. He rides them over and out onto a stretch where telephone poles lean old. The van's nose picks up a smell that is new: the cold metal breath of a train yard somewhere close and awake.
Madison stiffens. "Up right."
A walkway climbs from the river trail to the road, ending at a steel railing that meets the curb—an unkind angle. The walkway is full of motion—too organized to be random. They aren't alone; a half-dozen of them are moving in a low crouch along the rail, hands on metal, learning how to use the rail as a guide the way Gavin used it as a guard. One turns a head with a neck that doesn't bother to curve. It clocks the van, then the others clock it too.
"Keep speed," Gavin says.
"Copy," Rick says.
The rail turns with the curb. The walkway ramps up and ends in a lip that overhangs the road like a gutter's mouth. The geometry is mean: the lip is just low enough to scrape a roof, just high enough to catch a fool. Gavin slides them center-left to dodge the worst of it.
Something else happens. From the river trail below and behind, a shape runs the incline with perfect foot turnover, sprints the last steps, and climbs the railing as if it has been practicing on bleachers all its life. It looks at the van not like prey or food, but like a moving platform.
"Roof?" Madison says, already bracing.
"Roof," Rick answers, lifting the bar.
The van's right rims climb the curb again to clear a parked sedan's bumper. Steel sings. Bodies along the rail pace them, hands grazing metal, patient, ready to be wrong or right together.
The van rides the rail, mirror folded—and then someone drops from the railing onto the roof.