There’s a riot going on

Another few couple of minutes followed, and Peregrine watched as the KISS station was left more or less abandoned as only a skeleton crew stayed behind while the rest of the **** took to the streets in an effort to quell the rioting before it got too bad. Peregrine held no illusions that they would succeed at that.

“Simon to Peregrine,” Simon’s comforting voice crackled in her headset, “the cop radio claims that the riots are spreading in your direction. I suggest that you get a move on.”

“Roger Simon,” Peregrine replied, “what’s the ETA on the rioters?” Maybe she would be able to stay where she was until Tyr’s quartet was done.

“Two, three minutes, maybe…” Simon told her, “Just get out of there.”

“Tyr to Peregrine, do as Simon says. The Bison is better suited for a hot extraction, head for the highway and home.”

“Roger that,” Peregrine hit the accelerator and began to move away from the garage, doing one last check of the surveillance drone to find that rioters were now beginning to build up outside of the station. The cops inside were bound to have an unpleasant evening.

Recalling the drone, Peregrine drove outside and waited for it to arrive before deactivating it and loading it into the back of her vehicle before quickly getting back behind the wheel and reattaching the plugs.

The riot meant that it would be pretty expensive to send up the combat drone as the cops would most likely shoot it down as soon as they spotted it, which they most likely would once they’d gone on full alert. So she’d save it until things got really bad, all the while hoping that they wouldn’t.

Five minutes later, Peregrine got a reason to send up the combat drone as Simon’s voice was heard in her headset again.

Up until this point Peregrine had seen a few looters moving around and a few small groups of people fighting each other, the lineups tending to be humans versus metahumans, and a few bricks had been thrown at her vehicle as she drove past.

“Simon to Peregrine,” Simon’s voice sounded unusually tense, “the cops were wrong, you’re driving straight into the riot! Turn round!”

“Oh drek,” Peregrine cried out as she came round a corner to find the road ahead being barricaded by a throng of burning cars, with people moving around on all sides of them, there was no chance that she could stop and deploy the combat drone at this point.

The barricade was about a hundred feet away, and people were moving towards her van by now, looking pretty damn menacing on account of their numbers. Peregrine also noted with a lump forming in her throat that they were all human. They were probably Archconservatives, and more than happy to **** and lynch a “bastard” like her. More bricks and other hard objects were already being thrown at her, and she felt something hit the right side front tire.

“Frag this!” Peregrine slid into reverse and began to move back the way she’d come, hoping to find a spot where she could easily turn the pretty cumbersome vehicle around.

She just barely managed to spot the burning car being pushed into the road, and performed evasive manoeuvres which allowed her to avoid ramming straight into it. This however had brought her on a collision course with a bench, and that she had spotted too late to avoid.

Grunting as the van smacked right into the bench and climbed up on top of it before the weight of the vehicle caused the bench to collapse, Peregrine was being jolted around in her seat as the van slammed back onto the tarmac while its engine cut out.
This was not great, Peregrine thought as she struggled to restart the engine while the main body of rioters drew nearer.