An Unorthodox Quest for Justice

Steven Harper was no superhero. In fact, he wasn’t even a particularly good hacker. But when the man that had killed his friend started to chase him down in his car, Steven took any advantage he could.

And this included the power of a car horn. He leaned on it as hard as he could, trying to get the attention of everyone around him in the street. He banged on the steering wheel and shouted for them to move out of the way. They all did, except for one girl walking her dog who just stared at him like he was crazy.

He didn’t care because they were moving, they were getting out of his way. The only problem was that they weren’t *all* getting out of his way. There was a taxi right in front of him, and Steven slammed on his brakes as hard as he could to avoid hitting it broadside. His car shuddered violently as it slid sideways and he was sure he was going to have to take evasive maneuvers again, but somehow he managed to straighten out without clipping anyone else while still keeping the taxi in sight ahead of him. It hadn’t been an elegant maneuver, but it worked and that was all that mattered at the moment.

The taxi bounced over a speed bump faster than Steven wanted to go, and he followed it over with feet to spare. Almost immediately after hopping over himself, though, Steven saw why the taxi driver had been so keen on getting over there: red lights on both sides of the intersection ahead of them turned yellow just as the taxi hit them, forcing it to stop at the corner or risk running through into oncoming traffic.

Steven had no choice but to stop himself too; fortunately, he managed it much more gracefully than before by stopping early enough for his tires to grip again before coming up against a building next to him, skidding slightly instead of fishtailing wildly across several lanes until colliding with something else entirely. After checking that nothing seemed broken or damaged beyond repair -- which thankfully wasn’t the case -- Steven opened his door and hopped out onto the sidewalk behind where he’d parked while keeping one eye on what happened ahead of him and around him thanks to several cameras mounted around his vehicle.

Steven wasn’t sure if that would help much since there were no other police cars in sight right now (he had expected more), but maybe someone else would be able spot him quickly and call for backup before things got worse than they already were. If nothing else, though, it would let him know if anyone tried approaching him from behind where he couldn’t see them first.

When Steven glanced back at his own car now that he was outside, though, he thought maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all: every camera also showed flames shooting out from underneath where his engine used to be located. The fire hadn’t gotten very big yet -- maybe only a foot high -- but it was spreading quickly towards some hoses nearby which presumably fed fuel into said engine...and probably ran into some important systems if Steven recalled correctly from how these things worked correctly. Anything important would light up red if a hose was cut somewhere inside the system; luckily for Steven (and everyone else within range) none of those lights were currently visible from where he stood looking at their dashboards in real time via their camera feeds from all angles except for one: an orange light near where most of these hoses came together in one place...which meant that somehow one hose had been cut and not repaired yet since it shouldn't be orange unless everything else leading up to it checked out fine first!

Steven swore under his breath and ran away from his own car before anything else could go wrong without any sort of warning whatsoever (not that there had been many useful ones previously either). He made sure not to look back while doing so lest he get distracted by something other than finding where Vlad had gone after jumping into this cab with their target ten minutes ago; thankfully there were plenty of different cameras around here -- each one pointed in slightly different directions thanks to being mounted on buildings several blocks apart -- showing various angles inside as well as outside this particular cab as well as what might happen if any bullets or anything else fired anywhere near its vicinity...including whatever kind of reaction might happen if said cab crashed into something else due to either external forces or its own driver not paying attention!