Run.

That's the only word that's been on Iris' mind for thirty five hours, 3 minutes and 40 seconds. She counts them up in little ticks when she's bored under highway hypnosis, hands stuck stubbornly on the wheel and eyes on the road.

Thirty five hours, 3 minutes and 49 seconds now. Tick, tick, tick.

The sparks from her busted hand may be irritating and the stretching road ahead may be daunting, but there's only a few more hours to California and it's pedal to the metal— literally. Her eyes flit up to the mirror, the reminder of the money in the backseat and her own reflection filling her with a surge of energy, like a lightning current from head to toe. Santa Clarita is so close.

The radio's blaring some jaunty pop tune and Iris leans back in her seat, one hand on the wheel as the other one (she's dubbed it Sparky) toys with a charging cable that runs from the USB port of the car to her USB port on the side of her thigh. She doesn't run on sunshine, apparently.

She wonders idly how Josh managed to hide that from her— before Sergey, when she was still playing the picture-perfect girlfriend every day— until an arc of electricity jumps from her hand to the cord and runs up it like fire.

An actual fire starts soon after, because the radio fucking explodes.

"Fuck!" Iris exclaims, the first word she's said today. She swerves the car to a halt on the side of the road and yanks the cord from her thigh, patting out the fire with her busted hand. Sparky gets the job done. Fuck electric cars, though, since the blow is enough to send it smoking at the hood.

Fuck being a runaway android, too, because she's got the knowledge of an MIT-trained engineer rolling around in her head but no tools.

She hops out of the car, scouting the area. A lone, ragged house stands a few hundred feet away, up a hill. Not promising, but it's got a garage. That's a start.

With a grumble, she starts walking towards it, stretching stiff limbs.

Fuck a lot of things right now. She just needs a damn car jack.