Fault Line

The radio in my hand crackles, but I ignore it, sitting very still with my head tilted slightly as I listen to the police scanner on the table—stolen, temperamental, and worth more than anything else in the room. Olly’s beside me at the computer—normally my workstation in the garage office—his fingers moving without looking while camera feeds flicker across the screens: street corners, main roads, factory gates, and a couple angles he definitely shouldn’t have. “Well?” Zach says behind me. Third time. I don’t look at him. I just lift a hand and shush him. Static, then—dispatch. Units called to Eastend. Past the rail yard. Zach shifts, can’t help himself. “C’mon—” “Shut up.” My other radio crackles in my hand on a different channel—racers, runners, people already half out the door just in case, all of them waiting for someone to say something real. Biggs is by the door, watching me without moving. Another call comes through the scanner—different code, same direction. Rail yard. Harley side. That’s two. “Indie—” Zach tries again. “Can you shut the f**k up?” Kian says from behind me, low. He hasn’t moved either, just leaning against the desk like he’s not waiting on the same answer as everyone else. The scanner hisses again—third call. Eastend. Farside. Not random, not coincidence. Pressure building. I glance at the clock on the screen. If I call it, it’s mine—not just the location, but everything that follows: money, cars, people, cops. If it’s wrong, it doesn’t just die out. People get boxed in. Cars get taken. People end up in the system. And I don’t get another turn. I reach for my radio anyway. “Port Lowen shipyards,” I say, cutting clean across the chatter. Silence—half a second—and then everything moves. Voices explode back over the channel, people repeating it, locking it in, passing it on. Engines turn over outside before the sentence has even finished echoing. No one questions it. That’s worse. Olly stays where he is, already pulling feeds, tracking inbound routes, looking for blockages, while the rest of us move—chairs scraping, someone swearing, a door slamming—and I’m already out into the yard, cold air hitting hard, wet concrete throwing light back in broken strips as cars fire up one after the other, too many and too fast. Kian’s already in his. I slide into the passenger seat, and he glances at me—quick, measuring—before flooring it. We tear out of the garage and onto the road before the last car’s even started moving, the radios behind us never stopping. They’re all coming. The engine bites hard as we hit the road—not fast, immediate. Kian doesn’t ease into it, doesn’t build—just throttle. The car snaps forward, tyres catching late on damp concrete before gripping, the back end shifting just enough to feel it, and then we’re gone. Streetlights smear into lines. Harley at night isn’t quieter, just… different. Less people in the middle of the road, more movement where you don’t expect it—side streets, alleys, shadows that aren’t empty. I’m already on the radio, scrolling channels—static, voices, nothing useful. Too many people talking, wrong people. I switch again. Static. Again. Someone laughing, someone calling out a plate—not police. Useless. Kian takes a corner too fast. The car dips, suspension protesting, then rights itself clean. He doesn’t look at me. “You get anything?” he asks. “No.” Flat. Controlled. I switch again—nothing. My thumb taps the side of the radio once, then stills, and I slow the movement down, deliberate now. One channel at a time. Listen. Move. Listen. Move. The car surges again, blowing through an intersection just as the light shifts, not slowing, not checking. Another car honks somewhere behind us—too late to matter. Harley blurs past in pieces: industrial fencing, dark windows stacked four, five stories high, a lit balcony with someone watching us go by, water on the road catching headlights and throwing them back in broken reflections. I switch again. Static. Too much static. I hold it there a second longer than I should and listen—there, something under it. I adjust the dial slightly, lose it, back—nothing. My jaw tightens, not outward, not enough for him to see. Just enough. Kian cuts off a truck without hesitation. The horn blares, long and aggressive. He doesn’t react, doesn’t even check the mirror. We’re moving too fast for most of Harley to keep up. That’s the point. Halfway there—I know it without checking. I try again, slower this time, careful. Static. Then—a break. “…units responding—” It’s faint, buried. I stop moving completely, holding the dial exactly where it is. “…Eastend—repeat—Eastend—” There. I adjust it a fraction. The signal fractures. Back. Hold. It’s there, but not clean, words dropping in and out like someone talking underwater. “…multiple calls—unconfirmed—” Another voice cuts over it, louder, closer to the channel but wrong frequency. I shift again, lose both, exhale once—quiet—reset, find it again. This time I don’t try to fix it, I just listen through the distortion. “…movement—rail—units—” Good enough. Kian glances at me. “Well?” “They’re moving,” I say. “Not fast.” Which means we beat them. For now. He smiles at that, brief and sharp, and the car pushes harder as we cut off the main roads, threading through secondary streets, then narrower ones, then back out again. He’s not following anything clean—he’s shaving time wherever he can, slipping through gaps that barely exist. Another turn—tight, fast—the back end slips, catches, and we’re straight again. The radio crackles in my hand, still not clean, still enough. I don’t touch it again. If I lose it now, I won’t get it back. The first sign is the light—not streetlights, something warmer, flickering. Then the sound, low at first, then building—engines, voices, a lot of both. Kian doesn’t slow. We come off the last stretch too fast for the space ahead, the open yard unfolding in front of us—cars already lining the edges, people moving, headlights cutting across concrete—and he finally hits the brakes as we push into the crowd, rolling slow now. Music bleeds out of open doors, bass heavy enough to feel in your ribs, rolling across asphalt and mixing with revving engines, laughter, shouting—everything loud, everything layered. Lights everywhere. Underglow spilling blue, red, violet across the ground, cutting through smoke and dust and turning the whole yard into something unreal. Headlights flash, someone slams a door, another car pulls in too fast and brakes hard just for the sound of it. Kian reverses into a space near the centre. The engine ticks under the hood as it cools. I don’t move. The radio stays in my hand, angled toward the windshield, catching what signal it can while people keep arriving—cars rolling in slow, deliberate, doors opening and closing, someone lighting a smoke beside us, the smell drifting in through Kian’s window. Fifteen minutes. Maybe less. Kian’s already out of the car, cutting through the crowd without looking back, cash in his pocket—folded, thick, earned the hard way and spent just as fast. Someone clocks him, nods. Another steps in his path—quick exchange, numbers agreed without dragging it out. He doesn’t linger. Near the line, he settles beside another driver, leaning back against his door like he’s got nowhere else to be. Candice gets to him first, saying something close, familiar. He answers easy, doesn’t step away. I look down at the radio. Static. I switch channels—nothing—back again. My grip tightens, then I ease it off deliberately. Reset. Slow down. Listen first. The signal drags in and out, weak under the interference—too many bodies, too much metal bending it just enough to make it useless. I adjust the angle. “…units—” Gone. I hold still. Let it come back. Kian’s still talking. The other driver laughs, nudges him with his shoulder. Kian says something back, quieter. Candice lingers a second too long, then drifts off when she realises she’s not getting anything else out of him. Stop watching. Focus. I turn the dial a fraction. “…standby—” There. Faint, but there. I lean forward, bracing my arm against the dash so I don’t lose it. “…possible—” My jaw tightens. Too early. The yard shifts around it—more cars pulling in, engines cutting, people pressing toward the centre as it starts to feel real. Someone refreshes the spray line across the concrete, dragging the can in a line that isn’t quite straight. Still not time. I don’t move. “…multiple vehicles—” Closer. I glance up. Kian’s still at the line, still not in the car. Still talking. Not paying attention. I switch nothing. Touch nothing. Just listen. “…units en route—” That’s enough. I shove the door open and lean out the window. “Now.” It cuts through everything. For half a second, no one moves—then it lands. Heads turn, people stepping back, clearing space as tension snaps tight where it was loose a second ago. Kian looks up, already moving, back in the car before the door’s fully open, sliding in and pulling it shut in one motion. No hesitation. No question. Three cars make it to the line—too early for the rest. Less money. Doesn’t matter. Engines turn over hard, one after the other, revs climbing fast to catch up with lost time. The starter steps forward, thrown off for a second, then adjusts, raising his arm. I’m back on the radio, holding the signal steady. “…confirming—” Not yet. The cars edge forward, lining up against the fresh spray paint. Kian’s sits dead centre, engine already higher than the others, steady, controlled. I don’t look at him. I don’t need to. “…location—” There it is. The revs spike. The starter’s arm hangs— “…Port Lowen—shipyards. All units respond—” —and drops. “Go!” My hand slams on the dash and the cars launch, the force throwing me back into the seat as Kian puts his foot down. I recover quickly, already back on the radio, switching channels. “Olly, multiple units headed our way—call them out.” My voice echoes through the office in the garage, through the radio by the keyboard. I know he’s already watching.