Nine kilometres an hour has always been the rule. Now it is the rule in four more places.
Waterplanten. There are weed beds along the banks, which is where the water is shallow, and where that maze of legakkers is. At nine you can potter through one all afternoon and nothing happens: it is a boat going at the limit through some plants. Open the throttle in one and it is round your prop, and you crawl until you go astern to clear it.
The maze was always where you went to lose the police. It is still that. It is just no longer somewhere you can do it quickly.
The engine gets hot. Hold it flat out for the better part of a minute (two kilometres, most of the plas) and it boils. Quarter throttle for twelve seconds while it cools, which during a chase is a very long twelve seconds. A gauge appears on the HUD once there is something worth watching, and it never appears at all if you keep to nine.
Sink a police boat. They used to be indestructible, which made throwing things at them a joke without a punchline. Now they burn, slow and go under like anything else, and that quarter of the lake is short a patrol for the next forty seconds. It costs five stars. It is worth it about a third of the time.
Steal a boat and Thea comes. She used to arrive for the duikzone and for nothing else, which is odd for the one person on this water who knows whose boat that is.
Get away with it and it counts. Lose a patrol that was genuinely on you and you go up a star, not down. Which is worse for you and better for the afternoon.
Three tanks and somebody is swimming. One air tank already empties a traffic boat. Three against another player's hull, inside forty-five seconds, and the crew goes over the side, and the boat stays exactly where it is, floating, belonging to nobody.
And then it is a race. You surface seven metres from your own hull and you can swim for it: WASD swims, Shift swims harder, Space climbs you into any empty boat you can reach. The other one has to come alongside and hold the key for the two to four seconds your class takes. Get there first and it is yours again. Lose, and the boat they left to come and take yours is sitting right where they got out of it, so it always ends with both of you in a boat, and which one is the whole question. Tread water for thirty seconds and the harbour comes out and fishes you out instead.
Rounds add up now. A second drink at Bar Verloren used to just restart the clock. It stacks, up to about three rounds' worth, and if you want out of it early there is patat, from Paula, out on the water somewhere, or from Mario's Verse Frituur, a snack van parked up the path from the boat ramp on Duikeiland that has not moved in years and never will. Either one sobers you up. Both of them take the 1.25x away with the wobble. That is the trade, and it is the whole point.
When a race starts you no longer have to be near it. There is a JOIN button on the race panel now. It puts you on the grid from wherever you are, and when the race is over your own boat is back exactly where you left it. And while you are racing there is a neon line on the water showing where the circuit goes, but only for the people in the race. Everyone else sees open water, which is the point.
And the eight nameless islands have names. Reigerplaat, Het Zwarte Zand, Muggeneiland, Rietkraag, Vergeeteiland, and the Eerste, Tweede and Derde Zandje across the north.
On a phone, going ashore finally works like going ashore. The throttle lever goes away, a RUN button takes its place, and the stick walks you about. It used to be a boat's helm with a different meaning and nothing on screen saying so.
Nine kilometres an hour. Still strictly enforced, now by the plants as well.