Excerpt

"Welcome, Lena," the car said in a silky female voice. The door slammed shut to secure us inside, and the motor started with a low, artificial hum. Despite the natural silence of electric motors, car companies added the hum to alert pedestrians of oncoming traffic. "Your mother instructed me to take you straight home."

The word AUTO-DRIVE lit up on the dashboard's display.

I reached for the door handle to get out. I'd planned to go straight home, after dropping Jackson at his place, but that didn't give my mother the right to make decisions for me.

The door didn't budge.

"I'm sorry, Lena. I cannot open. Your mother instructed me to take you straight home."

"Are you kidding me?" I slammed my palm against the steering wheel, as if that might somehow change the car's mind.

"What?" Jackson jerked into a sitting position. "You say something?"

I spun my seat around, so I could confront Jackson face to face. "You really think I would want to own CyberCorp?" I couldn't help myself. This conversation would make more sense if we had it tomorrow, when Jackson sobered up and I felt less like killing my car. But my irritation bubbled at the surface, like water in a tea kettle on the verge of screaming. "Do you even listen to me when I talk?"

"Sure, babe. It'll be perfect. You'll see."

"I'll see? Anti-technology isn't a phase for me. People aren't connecting anymore."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." His words agreed with me, but his indifference said otherwise.

The conversation struck a familiar chord. He knew the words to this exchange just as well as I did because he had listened every time I told him how I felt. But as far as he was concerned, his picture of our future meant more than my feelings. And that wasn't something I could live with.

"I want to break up," I said. The words flew from my mouth on their own. But once they were out there, I meant them.

"No you don't, babe." His eyes drifted shut.

"Go back to sleep." I spun my chair to face forward again. In the morning, we'd have a serious talk.

Obediently, he leaned against the window behind me and, ten seconds later, started snoring.

The car steered itself toward the road, and I figured I'd try my luck at a detour. I yanked the wheel left at the edge of the parking lot, but it locked.

Groaning, I hung my head while the wheel rotated to the right on its own and pulled onto the street in the direction of the fastest route home. When we hit the highway, the car shot into the night, zooming past the white dashes that marked the lanes to my left and right. The needle on my speedometer inched upward until it pointed straight at the line between sixty and seventy.

Winter break had just begun, but the night held barely any chill. I pressed the control to roll down my window, and the wind whipped across my face so hard it stung.

Outside the window lay a starless sky. When I was small, there had been stars visible overhead, instead of this matte gray covering a city too bright for them. The city's lights hid them now. I missed the stars.

I pressed my foot hard on the accelerator.

"The speed limit is sixty-five miles per hour," came the car's syrupy voice.

"Oh, come on," I muttered.

At the precise speed of sixty-five, the car took me to my side of town, while I sat in the driver's seat with my arms crossed over my chest. I ripped the glove compartment open and extracted my emergency bag of gummy candies. Too frustrated to fumble with the tie, I tore the bag open and stuffed three in my mouth.

A mile from my house, the car stopped at a red light. For the hell of it, I slammed my foot on the accelerator again, but the car ignored me.

There was an emergency manual override somewhere. My dad had pointed it out on the day he bought this vehicle to replace my older one, only a week ago. I squinted at the controls between the driver and passenger seats. Manual controls for navigation and music, but nothing for switching to manual drive.

My hand brushed against a button under the steering wheel. I slammed it, and the word AUTO-DRIVE disappeared from the dash. I pumped my fist into the air in celebration.

The movement tipped the bag of candies off my lap and onto the floor.

"Crap." I ducked beneath the dash to retrieve the bag, muttering a curse for the lost gummies strewn across the vehicle floor.

"Collision imminent," the car said. "In three . . . two . . ."

"What?" I sat straight up.

A silver vehicle streaked along the cross street, angled toward me. My stomach shrank into a tight ball.

This time, when I slammed my foot on the accelerator, the car jumped forward. For an instant, I squealed. But the other vehicle slammed into the side of my car, and my celebration morphed into a throat-tearing roar. Metal crunched and folded against more metal.

Numb.

Time slowed and skipped ahead in tiny blips.

To my left, someone moved in the silver car. A man stumbled out. He stood beside my window, his face painted with concern and panic.

The rush of adrenaline passed, and pain ripped through my arm. It burned, like it had been ripped apart, seared in two. The crushed car door hid most of the limb from view, and what I could see of it was only the smashed, bloody flesh of my shoulder.

I yanked to free it. Sobs mingled with my screams, and darkness crept inward until nothing else existed.