The train ride came to an end, and I disembarked as quickly as I could. Reemerging from the subway, I found myself on the other side of Valport. The atmosphere in that part of the city was much more high class. Bright, multicolored lights blinded as far as the eye could see, and dozens of advertisements for plays and movies flashed on electronic screens. Most of those promos were for movies starring some actress named Raven Blackwell.

  Despite being so late in the evening, for some reason, there was a decent crowd of people I had to push through as I left the subway. I took care to hold the box tightly against my body. The last thing I needed was for someone to swipe the damn thing when I’d already made it so far.

  Once I was through the congestion of the subway exodus, my pace quickened. It was about one in the morning, and I was beyond ready for bed at that point. Thankfully, the closer I got to the destination, the more the streets emptied of both vehicles and people.

  In a short time, I found myself at the apartment complex of the delivery recipient. I made short work of the stairs despite my tired legs and knocked twice, not expecting an answer at the ungodly hour. To my surprise, the door opened instantly, and a pair of hands snatched the box into the unit, slamming the door shut in my face before I could say a word, let alone process what just happened.

  “O…kay?”

  Whatever, the job is done.

  I pulled out my phone to text my parents as much.

  Great job, sweetie! Now, get home already! Your father and I will wait up for you. Be careful, I love you very much, my mother replied.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket and descended the steps. The streets were desolate, a fact that would likely fill most with anxiety given the time, but it was bliss for me.

  The absence of smothering swarms of people and an overabundance of automobiles was a rare occurrence in Valport. City air was never truly “fresh”, but during such times of quiet, one might be tricked into believing they were breathing clean air.

  To be honest, it was so peaceful that I would’ve been okay walking the whole way across Valport rather than take the train.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d never sign up to make a habit of being out so late. But there was admittedly something special about the empty city streets that made it feel like it was all mine.

  But just as I was truly beginning to enjoy the tranquility, the low hum of an approaching car became audible behind me. I glanced back to get a view of the only vehicle I’d seen in minutes, and my eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.

  The vehicle driving down the road was all black with all its windows fully tinted. The design of the car was regal, with a midnight blue trim extending around the length of its form. Antennas on the roof formed a “crown” that was, in actuality, the nodes for the vehicle’s magical shield. On the hood of the car, an unmistakable coat of arms sat proudly branded for all to see.

  In short, this was a car I’d seen many times before; one I’d recognize anywhere in the world.

  This car belonged to the royal family.

  What are the odds? I thought, as the fancy car slowly passed me. I couldn’t see inside due to the darkened windows, but I felt as though eyes glanced over me in the moment.

  The happening was nothing special to me, of course. I couldn’t give any less of a care about anything pertaining to the royal family, but upon seeing the car, the first thing that entered my mind was the confounding, wild excitement my parents would surely have when I told them about what I witnessed. With that in mind, I pulled out my phone again and began to record the car as it pulled ahead of me. I knew mom and dad would get more excitement out of the moment by living vicariously through me than I would ever get from it myself.

  Suddenly, a deafening screech rang out from the far-left side of the intersection. A roaring engine followed soon after, drawing nearer at disarming speed until something appeared from behind a building that was obstructing my view. It was a car—another familiar one.

  I immediately recognized it as the getaway vehicle belonging to the thieves I had seen on the news. It was barreling forward at breakneck speed with no signs of slowing down. Both the driver and the passenger in the front seats were looking over their shoulders through the rear window of the vehicle, not caring at all about what was in their path: the royal family’s car.

  I sucked in a breath as the inevitable happened. The ghastly, thunderous sound of metal-on-metal screamed into the air as the thieves’ car violently T-boned the royal family’s vehicle. I had expected the magical shield to deploy, but to my surprise, it didn’t. Instead, due to the frightening speed at which the thieves’ vehicle had been traveling, the royal car began to flip and tumble, rolling over the sidewalk and bouncing horrifically off the front of a nearby building.

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  The two thieves whipped forward but were saved from being ejected from the vehicle by their seatbelts. Their car, however, was completely crushed in the front, and the two men were left visibly stunned by the collision. Meanwhile, the royal car now lay flipped over on its top like a turtle on its back.

  The blares of a dozen sirens rang out from down the same street the thieves sped in from. Sure enough, a fleet of police cars appeared from the same direction and rapidly approached the scene of the accident.

  “Crap, we have to go!” one of the thieves urged, smacking his surely concussed partner in the face. “Wake up and grab the cash!”

  “Unh… right!” the other one groaned.

  The pair of injured dimwits grabbed a sack of money from the backseat of their wrecked car and hopped out into the street. As the police closed in, I tried to flag them down, but the useless morons ignored me completely. Instead, they rounded the corner, pursuing the robbers who had taken off limping down an alley with their cash haul.

  As quickly as the thieves and police had appeared, they vanished, leaving me with deafening silence and a disgusting car wreck.

  Before I could process what had just happened, a strange sound emitted from the antennas that were now pinned below the roof of the upside-down car. The magic shield, which had failed to deploy during the collision, attempted to activate itself. It failed once again, but this time it shorted out, sparking and erupting into flames.

  “Shit!”

  There was no time to call for help. No one had made a peep, let alone emerged from the car since the accident. If whoever was in there was unconscious or trapped inside, they’d surely burn to death unless I did something immediately. So, I broke into a sprint towards the wreck.

  Damn it all.

  I rounded the scene, looking for access inside the car as the flames began to spread quickly. One of the backseat windows seemed to have shattered when the car bounced off the building, providing me an entrance inside.

  I dropped to my hands and knees and peered inside the broken window. Right in front of me, a girl anyone in the world would recognize sat upside-down and unconscious, confined to her chair by her seatbelt. Her golden hair and snow-white arms dangled limply, dragged downward by gravity. Her face was cut and bleeding in several places where the ruptured glass sliced her skin. Her once immaculate white and pink dress was collecting droplets of blood from above.

  “It just had to be the princess,” I whined. “Why couldn’t it have been some random guards?!”

  I winced, cutting myself on broken glass as I crawled into the vehicle. Once inside, I tried to unbuckle the princess, but the mechanism refused to release. I took a moment to glance forward into the car and identify any other passengers. Thankfully, there was only one other person: the driver. Unfortunately, he was also fully unconscious, because of course he was.

  Come on, think… got it.

  My hand retrieved my pocketknife from my right pocket and flicked it open. I positioned my body the best I could beneath the princess and quickly began cutting through her seatbelt. It wasn’t the most elegant job, and even though I tried my best to bring her down gently, her body dropped hard onto mine the second I sliced through the belt.

  There was no time to worry about that, though. The flames outside were starting to burn hotter atop the vehicle and I was beginning to sweat. Putting that unpleasant fact out of my mind, I dragged the princess outside the window and a good distance away from the flaming wreck. When I was satisfied with her proximity away from the car, I rushed back and crawled inside again.

  I’m not the biggest guy, horizontally or vertically. So, getting the huge man out of the front seat was not something I was looking forward to doing, but what other choice did I have?

  “Sorry about this, man…”

  My knife made short work of the driver’s seatbelt, allowing him to plunge downward, sloppily. I cringed at both the sight and sound of his body dropping down like that, but he seemed pretty okay to me. His tall stature ensured that he didn’t fall very far, luckily. And he was still breathing.

  I hooked my arms around his shoulders and pulled with all my might. His dead weight was overwhelming, but I was able inch him out of the front area more and more with each heave.

  In other words, it was bowling shoe ugly, but it was working. So long as this guy paid for my inevitable hernia surgery, we were all good, I guess.

  After much effort, I freed the driver from what had quickly become an inferno. I knew the car could blow any second, so I didn’t dare slow down. I kept dragging him until I pulled him beside the princess.

  “Finally!”

  I groaned and dropped to my knees.

  The sound of an engine in the sky rapidly approached as I checked on the still unconscious girl. A bright spotlight shined down from above and engulfed the three of us. Instantly, I was blinded to hell by what I only briefly made out to be a news airship, presumably broadcasting my ordeal.

  The very next second, an armada of black cars rushed up to the scene, coming from absolutely nowhere. Dozens of doors opened simultaneously, deploying tons of men and women in black suits and dark sunglasses. They calmly spoke to one another about something, but the airship’s obnoxious engine deafened me to the specifics of their chatter.

  A man and woman approached me. The man said, “I’ll take it from here,” while the woman roughly yanked me to my feet.

  “Are you the one who saved them?” she asked, sternly.

  “Y-Yes.”

  Her abrasiveness made me stutter.

  “Okay, don’t move.”

  The woman began to speak into her earpiece while more men and woman appeared. Four of them lifted the princess and the driver into two of the many cars surrounding the area, while about eight of them began casting some kind of magic on the burning vehicle that extinguished the flames. It didn’t take much analysis to tell that these people were the Steylian royal guard.

  I’d like to say I was impressed by how smoothly and quickly they worked, but I was too busy wondering why the hell they didn’t get there at least ten minutes earlier.

  I checked the time on my phone to find it was already after two in the morning, and I decided I’d had enough for one night.

  “Look, I’m going home now. Good luck with the rest of this.”

  The woman grabbed a tight hold of my arm and barked, “not so fast, kid. You’re wanted at the castle.”

  “I’m what!?”

  So much for an easy delivery.