5 Minute Freewrite - Prompt: canal

Sirens blared as the car sped through the streets, swerving around carts and bigger obstacles, but paying no mind at all to people scrambling out of the way.

As far as getaways go, everything had gone to hell and no actual getting away was happening. Three squad cars followed behind, and according to the scanner mounted under the dash three more were joining the pursuit.

A chime sounded from the dash, the possible predicted exits just dropped from six to three and the display darkened the no longer viable routes.

Three chances to exit quickly became two and then one as the metropolitan forces closed them off and raised the mechanized barriers, the police nets weren't mapping out the same routes, just closing off all possible exits from the arterial to minimize risk to the public, so he still had time.

Time, he thought, glancing at his watch, he was fifty seconds ahead of the simulated run time, ironically he wasn't going to make it because he was making better time than predicted. If he slowed down, the police that were tailing him wouldn't catch him, but he couldn't predict the location of the three that would be closing on the route.

He sped up. His team behind him was eerily silent. Eyes staring at the route, not so much as a muttered curse, some were probably holding their breath.

The system detected the increased speed, chimed again, and mapped out two new predicted routes, but one was quickly cut off, that must be one of the new squad cars catching up, he sped up again.

The system reacted to the new speed and closed off the remaining routes and the dash went dark for a fraction of a second. He jammed in the clutch, yanked the emergency brake and managed to spin the van ninety degrees, the display lit back up, three new exits, but he ignored it, popped the clutch and laid on the gas.

He began to laugh as the display went dead again, the cluster couldn't keep up with the newly opening and closing possibilities anymore. The cars that had been behind him were closing in too fast and he wasn't gaining speed fast enough.

His new route brought him perpendicular to the rail system. He glanced at his watch again. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but hypothetically he could beat the rail and regain a forty five second lead for the fifteen seconds he'd just lost.

Before he made it back up to speed he swerved onto an off ramp and barrelled away from the rail. It was a stupid plan, he'd end up killing his team, he really needed a better plan.

The pursuit happened so fast that the city couldn't close down fast enough to stay ahead of it. The time of day meant he had plenty of room to maneuver around cars on the ramp, but when he hit the expressway it was going to be a different story all together.

He intentionally overshot the entry to the express and went back down the ramp. The unpredictability of the move had worked, the squad cars had lost valuable time and he had managed to spend down his timer just enough while increasing his lead time.

The display lit back up, one route left. The system chimed, the display dimmed. Forget the rail, he grinned, the original plan could still work. He sped through the double gates for the canal way bridge just as they were coming down. The police hadn't predicted his escape over the canal. The display was only dark because the route was only technically unavailable because the bridge was going up in about fifteen seconds.

It was an older bridge, one of the few remaining that hadn't been outfitted with a remote over ride because it was manually operated. Except the command had already been given to raise, so it was raising.

Squad cars came to a halt at the lowered barriers.

The van cleared the divide. It was only a few inches when it cleared, but if the police cars had been dumb enough to follow, they would have been swallowed by the span, or at the very least, crunched to a halt and prevented the bridge from closing again.

On the other side of the canal the team piled out of the van and went their separate ways.

There was no teary goodbye with this bunch, he grabbed his duffel bag and abandoned the van just as quickly and headed for the subway.