The same young woman is still there, behind the counter.

"Oh, hello again! Did everything go all right with the pickup?"

"Yes. Kind of. Um. We are having a little bit of trouble with the car? In that it won't start."

"Hmmmmm well it was inspected when it came into our custody, and after the steamer incident we would have done a second inspection upon retrieval to be sure it hadn't been broken..." She retrieves the appropriate paperwork.

"Yeah, inspection certified, the car should be in the exact condition it was stored in. And it worked fine before?"

"Yeah, we drove it to Terminal to get on the steamer when it stopped there. Well, Dr. Marlowe did."

"Hm... and it looks like it's standard electric... has it been charged since then? Extended time in storage will often zap a battery that big dead."

"Oh. I," completely failed to consider the fact of power requirements of vehicles, "thought someone would have charged it."

"No sir, it is your property -- well, Ms. Marlowe's property -- and some people get very particular about their possessions being left alone."

"I see, that would make sense. Do you know where in this town I would be able to charge it?"

"There's a charging station just right down the road on your left," she says, pointing which direction down the road she's talking about. "Will that be all for today, Mr. Evanson?"

"Yes, thank you, Ms. Thompson," because no way is he not getting her name from the little name tag after she just. Was so nice. To him.

And then he can manually drag the car there and charge it, he supposes!

"Have a good day, and good luck on the rescue mission! Ms. Marlowe is very lucky to have employees as loyal as you two."

It does, in fact, turn out to be as easy as charging it. Though he has to pay for the charge. Fortunately, Morgan's still got some leftover money from Yvette, so they're fine there.

Cool! And now they drive!

Zash actually knows how to drive. Or, well, knows some about controlling certain types of vehicles that are not modern cars and can make up the difference using superhuman senses, speed, and reflexes.

It is a little bit of a bitch to drive, and it keeps wanting to list to the left, but! It is faster than a bird and does not require sleep!

Also, there are some official looking people that have spotted them on the way out of the town, and are now shooting at them.

Yeah okay he can accelerate as fast as this thing will go and hope none of the bullets hit the wheels. Once again, superhuman senses, speed, and reflexes mean that driving this hulk of metal as fast as it'll go is not actually that dangerous a proposition, to them or to bystanders.

Nyoom.

This car can in fact go nyoom!! The windows gain a couple bullet holes, but honestly the Military Police were not expecting Zash the Stampede to somehow find a goddamned car.

And Morgan will helpfully roll down a window, lean out the side, and blast the barricade blocking them. She gives Zash a cheerful thumbs up.

Zash keeps going at max speed until they can't see the town guards and Julai Military Police anymore and then he slows down to a more reasonable pace. ...he is not entirely sure what a more reasonable pace is but he's pretty sure that going at maximum acceleration all the time will bust the engine or something.

He's really missing Yvette, right now.

...he's really missing Yvette, right now.

"We should maybe take stock of what this car contains. Because I don't know what all is in this thing's trunk, do you???"

"No. I don't." He doesn't slow his driving down, though. "Can you figure it out without my having to stop?"

"Uh. Open the trunk while driving. No, I think that would go poorly. I guess we can check next time we need to charge. .... Hey why haven't we ever had to do that before?? She'd never taken us to a charging station or anything."

"I don't know. The battery is very powerful? There's an extra battery somewhere in the trunk?

"...oh I bet there's a solar panel."

"Oh! That'd make sense. .... Do we have the solar panel, like. Out. Hooked up to the battery and charging??"

Sigh. He guesses he is pulling up. It'll be better in the long term even though he wants to be moving moving moving.

So, what are the contents of the trunk, and do they in fact have a solar panel?

They do! It is neatly folded up in the trunk, along with what looks like it might be a spare battery.

Other things the trunk holds: little packaged rations, several large jugs of water (these seem to be built into the car itself, and are removable), a device that looks exactly like what the woman at the insurance office had, blankets, toiletries, a first aid kit, and. .... some other stuff?? It looks techy. But that's all that's obvious about the Other Stuff.