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| Scene Title | Pursuit |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After Brandon Timm makes his escape, agents Ayers and Sawyer are forced into a high-speed chase to catch the telekinetic bank robber. |
| Date | April 7, 2010 |
The sound of the garage door exploding open is like a shotgun going off inside of the car.
Tires screech and a black Honda rips backwards out of the garage at the front of the Timm residence. Fumes exhaust in puffs of steam from the tailpipe and the shredded aluminum garage door lands in two pieces on the ground, twisted and mangled in a way that doesn't imply the speedily moving car having damaged it.
Tail lights flash red, headlights come on that burn bright through the windshield of the Company Mercedes that Veronica Sawyer sits in the driver's seat of. Smoke roars out of the rear wheels of the Honda civic and the tiny car spins around on the one way street, offering the crimson glow of its tail lights to the Company agents.
The car's engine roars to life and then peels out leaving black streaks on the icy pavement, driving at full speed towards the police barricade on the south side of the roar. Officers steps out from their cars, raising pistols and opening fire on the Honda as it barrels towards their parked cars across the road. Gunfire pops off with the report of small arms, but a haze of rainbow color floods in front of the Civic as he careens towards the gunfire, accompanied by the sounds of ricocheting bullets that shatter neighboring windows and punch through walls.
As that tiny black car speeds towards the police, the officers dive out of the way, and just a split second before the Honda broadsides the cruisers, one of the cop cars just bursts up into the air off of the ground, crunching at the middle like a tin can smashed against the forehead of a Frat boy at a wild party.
Glass shatters and rains down from the car as it's crushed in mid air and then flung thorugh the front window of a neighboring duplex, and that tiny, maneuverable Honda weaves through the space the car occupied, clipping the nose of the police cruiser before veering off down a sidestreet.
The police scramble for their cars, jumping inside and slamming doors as their engine roars to life and the undamaged car pulls forward, clipping a snowbank before plowing through the drift and taking off after the Honda.
Agent Ryans and Richards are still in the house, but Timm is getting away. This is why they had people waiting in the car outside—
— it's time to move.
Veronica jumps as the car suddenly pulls out. "Shit. Ayers, see if you can shoot out the tires —" she begins as she throws the Mercedes into drive, lurching forward with enough momentum that their coffees slosh over onto the center console. She is slower than the driver of the other car as she passes the police — Timm might not worry about loss of life, but Veronica does. "Holy shit," she gasps, peering up through the windshield as she sees the other car get crushed and thrown like it was a matchbox car — or hell, a matchbox.
"Call for backup — give the directions — maybe someone can come from the other end and we can trap him that way," she says, tossing the Blackberry she was fiddling with at Corbin. "And see if you can find out what happened from Ryans and Doctor Whatsherbutt," she adds, swearing as her speeding car skids a bit on the icy road, though she recovers quickly enough.
Okay— shoot out the window, call for backup, give directions—
By the time Corbin's got his gun out, the car's already moving to fast for him to even hope to hit the tires— and the rainbow like repulsion of the bullets of the officers with them…
The gun falls into his lap as he jumps to catch the Blackberry that got thrown at him, catching himself against the door as the car swerves, and he uses the quickdial to call on the phone, holding it against his ear as he quickly says to whoever picks up, not even waiting for a hello or anything.
"We need back up at the Timm residence— The telekinetic is running— Sawyer and I are in pursuit going south.. south-west. Toward Red Hook. And see if you can get an update on Ryans."
«Copy that bookworm, me an' Bryan are right around the corner. We'll follow the trackers on your phone.» The last person Corbin was hoping to get on the other end of that phone was Elle Bishop but at least the boss' daughter gets the job done, even if it typically winds up being done with a ten-thousand volt lightning bolt and look a little crispy afterward. Agent Buckely is hardly any better, all things considered.
Tires squealing and Veronica's fast thinking keeping the Mercedes on the road, the Company agents in pursuit of the Timm vehicle have only one thing on their side in this race; stability. That tiny Honda Civic has a powerful engine and a light body, allowing it to whip and weave down narrow back streets and swerve around slower cars, but that lack of weight has it skidding and sliding across the road, just now wiping out a trio of trash cans on the corner of a shoveled sidewalk, sending an explosion of garbage bags and trash into the air.
When the Honda takes a sharp right, back tires fishtailing out with the rear of the car smashing into another car halted at an intersection, Veronica is forced to give a last minute jerk of the wheel to not lose Brandon Timm. The Mercedes sideswipes the car stalled at the intersection; grinding metal and crunching plastic hopefully not coming out of Sawyer's paycheck.
Moving down the street it becomes horrifyingly obvious to Corbin how bad of an idea following Brandon was when he sees the black and white One Way sign whip past that they're now going down the wrong way. Horns blare up ahead and Timm's Honda mounts the curb, swerving around a brown luxury car now slamming on its brakes and trying to avoid a head-on collusion. Veronica's left with two options— slam on the brakes or mount two tires on the curb and scrape sides with the oncoming car.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she imagines Brian would've loved this.
"The fuck, this guy's been playing too much Grand Theft Fucking Auto," Veronica hisses. Being from Southern California, her Evolved ability is turning into a sailor when behind the wheel, especially of a luxury car.
She winces as she collides with the car at the intersection; the seatbelt tightening around her chest no doubt going to leave a bruise. It dawns on her the air bags should have gone off, and didn't — apparently Company vehicles disemploy them just for such activities. Somehow that doesn't make her feel any better as she finds herself speeding down the one-way street against oncoming traffic. "Hold on, Ayers," she snaps, as she drives up onto the sidewalk, her eyes narrowing in anticipation of the scraping that's about to happen, leaning toward the center of the car to avoid any damage that might come flying her way through the window. "Shit shit shit shit shit."
Yeah, starting to wish they had abilities that could actually do something to stop it. Corbin leans back in his seat, holding tight to the cellphone as he scrambles to get his seatbelt back on, and duck away from— who is he kidding. Ducking won't save them if the car starts imploding under telekinetic force.
"I think I hate telekenetics," he grunts as he finally gets the seatbelt snapped into place. With the gun rattling around on the floor next to his feet, there's really nothing that he can do other than…
Wish he was back in the archives.
There's a crunch again as the driver's side mirror smashes off of the car and shatters the oncoming car's windshield in front of the driver. The black Mercedes scrapes down the entire length of the opposing car, plowing up snow onto the hood on Corbin's side where the nose digs into the snowbanks. When Veronica's able to come down off of the curb again, she's just able to see Timm's car driving right out into a busy four lane street through criss-crossing traffic, fishtailing and then heading west.
Flooring the gas, Veronica bursts out of the alley and narrowly misses an oncoming box truck that swerves to avoid the agents, smashing head on into a snowbank with an eruption of white powder. Veronica's Mercedes screams through the lanes of traffic, and Corbin's able to spot Timm up ahead, but more importantly Corbin spots the very brief poke of a blonde head up from the back seat of the car before it's yanked back down by the driver.
The little boy's in the car's back seat.
«~Coooorbie!~» Comes sing-song over his phone gripped between his hands, «We're almost right on you, Bryan's going to try and cut ahead of Timm and block him off.» Obviously she Elle didn't see what happened to the last roadblock.
Veronica glances in her rear view mirror and winces as she sees the windshield of some innocent passerby get smashed, before she has to gun through the intersection. "See if … shit, there's no time. Why do we have to have Fangs and Sparky to help out — where the hell is Rene when I need him," she mutters.
"See if Rene's in the vicinity; maybe we'll get lucky for once…" The Mercedes skids on black ice again, and the agent manages to correct it once more. She reaches up with one hand to push her hair out of her narrowed eyes. It's a good thing she was a snowboarder and learned to drive the snowy and curvy mountains as a teenager, or they wouldn't have a chance of maneuvering through the snowy and icy streets. As it is — their chances are still not that good.
"Unless you and snake boy want to end up on Agent Lash's autopsy table, you will not block his path. I mean it. He crushed the last barracade in his way, and the kid is in the god damn car," Corbin yells into the phone as he tries to keep himself from being jerked around. Okay, he's ready half the case files of the Company…
What would Bennet Do?
"If we can't get in their way, we have to herd them, drive them to a place they can't get away. The water front! You need to come from another direction and keep him from turning away from it. If we can get him to force to stop— " They'll all be crushed like human peas.
"Get the Haitian here, if you can! We can't just torch the car." Cause there's a kid on it. "Don't shoot first, blondie."
<Fff! You're not much fun you know that Corbie? Fine, I'll go call tall dark and handsome— » There's a laugh on the other side of the phone, «No not you Buckey shut up!»
Call Ended.
When Corbin looks up from the phone, there's a semi-truck driving straight at the Mercedes, horn blaring and headlights shining brightly. Just as Ayers' heart leaps up into his throat Veronica jerks the wheels to the side, swerving along the left side of the semi truck and then cutting around the back side of the trailer, now almost directly behind the Timm vehicle. There's a roar of horns and honking all around the mercedes as it swerves back onto the proper side of the street and Timm's vehicle plows straight into a four-way intersection as a red SUV comes screeching on its brakes towards the side of the car. Before it can impact there's a flare of rainbow hued light and a crunching of metal as the SUV smashes into an unseen barrier of some kind, causing the four-wheel drive vehicle's window to shatter, hub cabs to burst off of the tires and hood to fly off as its rear end pops up and the SUV is sent cartwheeling end over end through the air.
Hot on the Civic's tail, the SUV flies right over the hood of the Company car, crashing down on its side in the street between three other cars that immediately impact with the undercarriage, spinning it around on the icy street. The back of the SUV slams into the tail end of the Mercedes, causing it to wildly spin out of control, leaving Veronica trying to regain control as she and Corbin careen wildly into the oncoming traffic.
"It'll be okay." A voice whispers in Corbin's ear from the back seat, a pale hand laid on his shoulder, squeezing tightly.
Not that there's anyone there when he looks. Don't ask Veronica either, she sure didn't see or hear anything.
Turn into the skid. Take your foot off the brake. Accelerate. The directions are somewhere in the back of her mind, her father's voice teaching her how to drive. "Hold on," she whispers again, and turns what seems to be the wrong way, as it will surely bring them right into the path of the oncoming traffic — her foot presses down on the accelerator to shift the weight from the front to the back of the car, hopefully giving the rear tires the control once more, so she can then make a U-turn and follow the Honda once more.
For a moment, Corbin's not sure what happened. It's as if his heart stopped, and the world went blurry. The phone is held in his hand by sheer force, his hand would crush it if it were any softer of a metal. There's letters crunched into the pad, trying to find a number in the phone book that matches the string of gibberish. The phone crushing hand presses up against his shoulder, where he could have sworn…
"Did you…?" He doesn't finish the question. Too much going on. He must have blacked out for a moment.
Next time, he's going inside. He's not cut out for this. No more car chases. No more shootings. No more SUVs flying over his head. This shit is for people like Noah Fucking Bennet, not for him.
It's amazing, every single ounce of agent training in Sawyer and every single near collision on every freeway in her life must have led up to this single moment. Through some miraculous combination of luck, willpower and skill she manages to drive through oncoming traffic, weaving across icy roads between swerving cars blaring on their horns and spin in one hundred and eight degrees after spotting Timm's car take a hard right down a narrow side street between two skyscrapers. Apparently the vehicular acrobatics in front of them did exacty what Corbin had hoped, forced them into the waterfront.
Tires peeling out on the middle of the freeway they've come to a near standstill in, agent Sawyer slams on the accelerator and cuts across two lanes of traffic to push down the narrow alley that the Timm's vehicle had just slipped down. Just a few moments down the street though, tension and adrenaline coursing through both Veronica and Corbin's veins begins to ebb, and they're noticing something— there's no sign of the black Honda in front of them.
They'd gone a solid two minutes down the road at full speed and not caught up yet, and with a straight shot out to the harbor ahead of them there's no way Timm could have gotten that far of a head start. There was only one way to turn off from this one way street once they got onto it, but that would have bottle necked them in a salvage yard with no way out…
White-knuckled and white-faced Veronica doesn't dare look at Corbin despite her amazement at the fact she didn't just kill them both. It's only when she sees the sole turn-off into the salvage yard that she exhales, a long shuddery sigh that tells just how afraid she was for those several tense moments. "He had to go this way unless he floated his car up to sit on top of a building or something. That's something Varlane would have done," she says, pushing the sunroof button so that she can peer up skeptically. "I don't like the idea of going in there without back up… there's way too much crap for him to fling at us," she says, pausing at the entrance.
"I don't like the idea of going in there at all," Corbin says, already convinced he almost died a little while ago. There was that distinct feeling of death hanging on his shoulder ready to take him away— and part of him didn't mind it being there. Considering… No, everything was okay. That'd been one of the last things he'd tried to say to her.
"Bishop said she'd been calling the Haitian. Hopefully he'll get here."
Here— oh. Deleting the jibberish, he calls the number again. "Hey blondie, the guy's been forced to the water front. A salvage yard. Get the Haitian and whoever is nearby here."
«Oh I'm way ahead of you Corbie, I've got the old man and Doc with us and we're on our way to meet you. Don't let 'em get away!» Elle cheerily notes into the phone as she responds to the agent. «If you let the bad guys get away, Corbie, you'll be getting extra zaps when we get back to base.» Extra implies he's getting any at all, oh Elle.
With Veronica turning the Mercedes around and coming up on the entrance to the salvage yard as blisteringly cold air comes wafting in through the now open sunroof. Jittery still from the adrenaline, the two agents have a choice to make; wait outside the salvage yard for backup to arrive, or pursue Timm and his son inside.
It's a decision they'd be consider carefully.
"Corbie." Veronica mimics Elle as she reaches up to push the button once more, closing the sunroof as her teeth begin to chatter. "I'm so moving back to California," she mutters. "All right, shall we pursue? I'm not sure I really feel like our odds are better with Doctor Whatsherbutt coming to help. Shall we head in on foot? Might be able to sneak up on him easier that way, take him out with a tranq dart? I don't really want to kill him in front of his kid."
"I'd like it if she said the Haitian were on the way," "Corbie" says, groaning as he hands back the cellphone and reaches to pick up his gun, which he puts in the holster under his coat. "Might as well get closer. Make sure they're still there and aren't flying away or floating down stream." Or floating away. "I'd rather not wait in the car. Not when they might decide to crush me inside it." Rather die on feet than in a car? Rather to die in a bed, by his opinion.
"I hope the tranq guns weren't in the trunk," he comments, looking at the back of the Mercedes. They're never going to get to use expensive Company Cars again.
As the agents survey the damage done to the Mercedes on getting outside of the vehicle and start making their way to the chainlink fence and smashed open fence gate of the salvage yard, there's a noise rumbling inside of the wrecking yard, a sound that shouldn't be heard so distantly since by all appearances the snow filled business has been closed due to the inclement weather.
It sounds like a car crusher's been turned on…