Chapter Thirty-One

Reactions around the room were equal measures disbelief that I owned such a transport and horror that I would consider riding one. In the end, I decided the best way to deal with the former was to show them, and the best way to deal with the latter was to ignore it.

Fortunately the garage where I had the bike housed was downtown, close to Prometheus’s current location. Jack, Lucas, Nick, Cole, Daniel and I traveled on foot to the garage using the scramblers. It was an opportunity to test out their efficiency anyway.

Within minutes we were gathered safely in the private underground garage, standing around a tarp-covered shape that was at once so recognizable and so rare, I couldn’t keep the grin from my face. I felt like I was about to unveil a Tron light cycle in 1980 or something.

“Gentlemen, may I introduce… The Wraith.” I pulled the tarp off, and The Wraith’s blackened chrome gleamed beneath the overhead lights, reflecting them like the very Tron lines I’d imagined. My grin expanded and my heart began to hammer. “The one and only Vindian model motorcycle ever made,” I told them breathlessly. “Produced in secret and behind closed doors, The Wraith possesses a modified V-twin Vincent Black Shadow engine in an Indian Chief body.”

I moved around the bike, my hand gently, lovingly, brushing along the blackened chrome and original leather seat. It was a seat big enough for two. “Nine hundred ninety-eight cc V-twin, pushrod OHV, air-cooled….” My voice trailed off when I was on the mounting side and I realized my chest actually ached. I looked at the black-on-black symbol on the side of the tank, the shadow of an American Eagle, its feathers wisping into nothing like the trailing ends of a ghost. Beneath it were the black-on-black words, Built by a Rider. On the other side of the tank was a similar black-on-black marking that read, X-15A-2-66671.

“The Vincent Black Shadow was the fastest engine of its time, and it was built into the most iconic motorcycle casing.”

I placed my hand on the tank, and could almost feel the bike butt up against my palm like a massive black cat wanting a scratch behind the ear – or a turn on the road. Any road would do. Just take it out there now.

“Saman-” Lucas started to say something, and I looked up, but Jack cut him off.

“Holy Hell’s Angels,” he exclaimed just as out-of-breath as I was. I wasn’t surprised. The man owned an original Smith and Wesson .357 magnum revolver. The gun was only slightly younger than the Vindian. “How in the blazes did you… how do you own this… how was it even….” He stopped when he must have realized he wasn’t forming any coherent or complete questions, and just settled with shaking his head and running his hand through his messy gray hair. “Holy shit!”

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up,” I laughed. Daniel looked at Nick, who looked at his brother, who looked between Lucas and Daniel and shrugged helplessly. The lot of them were so at a loss for words, they unwittingly allowed me to plow on.

“It was actually privately commissioned by my foster great-great-tons of greats-grandfather shortly after World War Two,” I told them. “He was a retired Air Force pilot who’d fought in both wars and who happened to personally know the founder of HRD Motorcycles, whose logo you see here on this side of the tank.”

Jack read the words out loud. “Built by a Rider. Huh. What’s that mean?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” I said through my probably way too enthusiastic grin. “HRD Motorcycles was the predecessor to Vincent Motorcycles. And HRD was founded in 1924 by a British man named Howard Davies. Before World War One, Davies was a motorcycle racer. He won quite a few impressive races with impressively bad motorcycles and decided he wanted to build a bike that wouldn’t break on him. But the war came along and he enlisted. He started out as an engineer and worked his way up to the Royal Flying Corps, where he was shot down twice.” I paused reading the logo over as my mind reconstructed events it had never witnessed and I heard airplane engines and gunfire in my head.

“The first time he was shot down over German territory he managed to make it back to his own lines by himself. He was tough. But the second time, he wasn’t so lucky. After a while, he was declared missing in action and an obit was printed for him.”

“Damn,” said Jack. “But the war ended before 1924, so obviously the obit was wrong.”

I nodded. “It turns out he was a prisoner of war. Over the next few years, he would try several times to escape, but unsuccessfully. Until he was helped in his final escape attempt by a man named Samuel Frank Hart.”

“Let me guess,” said Cole at last. “Your foster great-great-tons of greats-grandfather.”

I nodded again. “The two became friends. So it’s not surprising that even though HRD was liquidated only a few years after it began and bought by Phil Vincent to start Vincent motorcycles, Sam Hart wanted to use one of Davies’ engines. They were pretty incredible, after all.”

“Has… this been maintained in its original form all these years?” asked Nick softly.

I took a deep breath. “More or less,” I told him. “A few things have had to be replaced here and there. Rubber dries out, leather will crack if you don’t take exceedingly good care of it, stuff gets old. But for all intents and purposes, yeah. It’s the same now as it was the day it rolled secretly off the belt.”

“And it still runs?” asked Jack, his eyes roving over the bike like it was made of gold.

“It definitely does,” I told him, remembering the rides my parents had taken me on when I was young – then the trips I’d taken alone after.

“What does the X-15A-2-66671 mean?” asked Daniel, who was speaking up for the first time.

“It was added later, in October of 1967, right after William J. Knight broke the sound barrier and set the world’s record for speed in a jet called the X-15A-2. The particular plane he was piloting was model number 66671.” As it happened, that record wouldn’t be broken for more than a hundred years after it was set.

Jack made a quiet, impressed sound before he and the others fell into a companionable, contemplative silence.

I grasped The Wraith’s handlebars, maneuvered myself flush with its left side, and swung my right leg over the saddle as if I’d been doing it my entire life and had never stopped. A body always remembered riding a bike, whether that bike was pedaled – or fueled by thunder.

The saddle made that creaking leather sound when I settled into it. I closed my eyes as my heart thrummed in my ears. “Okay,” I said, “back to the fuel issue. I have about three liters left from a supply raid a few months back. The tank holds around seventeen when it’s full. We should fill it at least half-way to be safe for this mission. So….” I looked up at them. “Any ideas where we can get the fuel?”

Nick rubbed his chin, looking more than a little dubious. “I won’t say I’m not impressed. This is beyond vintage, and it’s in mint condition.”

“And you look fucking hot as hell sitting in that saddle,” added Cole with a dark smirk and a darker look in his eyes.

Luke shot him a warning look. But Nick didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, that too,” he said as if to make light of the comment, which eased Luke’s sudden tension. “But to be frank Sam, I absolutely don’t want you riding this on wet roads while half the goddamn world is hunting us. What if they pursue you while you’re riding?”

Jack sighed. “He has a point, Sam. I have no doubts you can hold your own on The Wraith,” he said, calling the bike by its name, which warmed my heart. “But that bounty is like Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket, and not every hunter is smart enough to know better than to take chase when you’re riding a motorcycle whether you’re wanted alive or not. They’ll just see the prize and go for it.”

“That’s if we’re found out Jack,” I told him. “Remember, this bike’s not registered, which is the point of using it in the first place.”

It was Daniel who wrapped things up, like the leader he was. “Okay. We have no choice. And honestly we’re fortunate we have this option. I’m assuming Sam is the only one here who knows how to ride?”

Riding a motorcycle wasn’t built into android programming. Driving a car was, just in case the navigation systems went down in driverless vehicles or a car owner who also “owned” an android was too drunk to drive. But motorcycles… they were a thing of the past. It would be like teaching an android to chisel a novel into stone.

No one said anything, and Nick looked sheepish. No doubt he was regretting this overlook in his coding for FutureGen.

“That’s what I thought,” said Daniel. “And it’s her bike.” Then he turned to me and gave me a hard look, and my spirits sank a little because I knew what was coming. “But the seat’s big enough for two. You’re not going alone.”

I was way ahead of him. “The bike is harder to control with two people on it, and with the roads as wet as they are –”

But Daniel glanced at Lucas, Luke’s EED flashed yellow once before returning to blue, and then Lucas put his hand over mine on the handlebar. I went still and watched as he gracefully swung his leg over the back of the bike and sank into the seat behind me, then used his free arm to wrap tight around my waist and pull me back against his chest.

I flushed warm and barely heard Daniel when he spoke again.

“No arguments,” our leader said as I looked up at Lucas over my shoulder. He was smiling, his eyes filled with heat. “We may not know how to ride,” continued Daniel, “but balance is mathematical by design. It’s easy for an android to calculate and compensate for on the fly. You’ll be safer with Lucas than without him.”

“In that case,” said Nick with a note of finality, “I have the fuel.”

We all turned to look at him. He sighed and shrugged. “I keep pretty much everything and anything on hand in all my labs…. You never know what you might need.” He said the latter somewhat enigmatically, but I was too thrilled that he had fuel to give it much thought.

I grinned. “What are we waiting for, then? Let’s feed The Wraith and get this show on the road!”

Lucas leaned over me, his hand spanning across my abdomen in a surprisingly possessive grip as he whispered in my ear. “This should prove interesting.” I felt my cheeks redden further when his fingers slid along my waist until his arm was a gentle but firm band beneath my ribcage. Like a nail in my coffin, he added softly, “In more ways than one.”