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(MA AU) Can't Look Away - for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
onebehind
Nov. 26th, 2025 10:47 pmthe_death_cardJack keeps his hands steady on the wheel of the sedan even as he looks between the front of the car and its mirrors, keeping an eye on what's in front of him and what's behind. He needs to keep the FBI just close enough for the grand finale but not so close that they interfere with the switch they have planned on the bridge.
He's run this a dozen times now at a much slower pace, knows generally how traffic moves on these streets - but it's New York traffic, and that's always only going to be predictable in its unpredictability. He mentally ticks off checkpoints as the chase continues, watching for the signals they have set up to let him and the others know what's next, where he needs to go, where he needs to be. He can feel his phone buzz in his pocket as he passes the next one, the turn that takes him onto the bridge.
He doesn't see the cars Henley and Daniel are in, but he does see the bus he knows Merritt is driving, the one he needs to get in front of so Merritt can drop the other car, so Henley can fake the wreck. Jack doesn't quite dare to let out a breath yet, won't until he's safely on his way to hole up and wait for the others at Central Park, but he grins - and that's when the tire blows.
The car swerves wildly, and he still remembers what he's been taught about regaining control in a skid - but he's going too fast, and there's another car too close, and he pulls the wheel to the side, trying to avoid making them collateral damage and keep control. The bus is there, thank God for Merritt slowing down, because he knows he's never going to make it clear in this car, it's just a matter of how bad it all ends up being, which of their thousand contingency plans they end up using.
And then his car hits the wall.
For a moment, he thinks he can save it - but there's nowhere to go, and the car is on its side, and then Jack loses sense of which way is up at all as the car rolls. Glass rains down all around him, and he throws his arms up in front of his face reflexively - and just as reflexively, in the moment before his head slams into the steering wheel and everything goes dark, he drops the wall he's kept around his connection to Dylan for the last year and calls for his dad.
He's run this a dozen times now at a much slower pace, knows generally how traffic moves on these streets - but it's New York traffic, and that's always only going to be predictable in its unpredictability. He mentally ticks off checkpoints as the chase continues, watching for the signals they have set up to let him and the others know what's next, where he needs to go, where he needs to be. He can feel his phone buzz in his pocket as he passes the next one, the turn that takes him onto the bridge.
He doesn't see the cars Henley and Daniel are in, but he does see the bus he knows Merritt is driving, the one he needs to get in front of so Merritt can drop the other car, so Henley can fake the wreck. Jack doesn't quite dare to let out a breath yet, won't until he's safely on his way to hole up and wait for the others at Central Park, but he grins - and that's when the tire blows.
The car swerves wildly, and he still remembers what he's been taught about regaining control in a skid - but he's going too fast, and there's another car too close, and he pulls the wheel to the side, trying to avoid making them collateral damage and keep control. The bus is there, thank God for Merritt slowing down, because he knows he's never going to make it clear in this car, it's just a matter of how bad it all ends up being, which of their thousand contingency plans they end up using.
And then his car hits the wall.
For a moment, he thinks he can save it - but there's nowhere to go, and the car is on its side, and then Jack loses sense of which way is up at all as the car rolls. Glass rains down all around him, and he throws his arms up in front of his face reflexively - and just as reflexively, in the moment before his head slams into the steering wheel and everything goes dark, he drops the wall he's kept around his connection to Dylan for the last year and calls for his dad.
