The Flash and the Fury
The sky was a hard, endless black—cold, sharp, indifferent. Stars hung in it like distant ice. For one perfect moment, the universe felt still.
Then a streak of white fire ripped across the upper atmosphere.
It was fast—faster than thought—and bright enough to burn its shape into the night before vanishing completely. Not a shooting star. Something stranger. Something rare.
Evie didn't see it.
Her attention was locked on the road ahead, her world narrowed by adrenaline. Streetlights smeared into pale streaks. Her pulse drummed in her ears. But something in the air shifted—a flash, quick and violent. Not lightning. Not headlights.
A warning her instincts registered too late.
The sound came next.
Not a horn. Not a brake. A raw, tearing howl—the sound of metal losing control. It hit the air like a shockwave, vibrating through the thin frame of her car.
Evie slammed the brake pedal. The Grey Ghost shuddered. The seatbelt seized across her ribs.
No. Not now.
She snapped her head left—just in time.
A tractor-trailer was sliding across the median. Jackknifed. Its cab—massive, white, and unstoppable—was pointed directly at her lane.
Directly at her.
The truck punched through the guardrail with a brutal, twisting CRUNCH. Air pressure imploded inside her car. Her window warped under the glare of the truck's headlights.
The briefcase on the passenger seat—the one thing she couldn't lose—slid forward.
She reached for it.
The world detonated.
The truck slammed into the driver's side with a force that felt less like impact and more like obliteration. Metal peeled. Glass disintegrated. Her car folded inward as if crushed by a giant hand.
Evie flew sideways. The seatbelt jerked her back, driving the breath from her lungs in a soundless gasp.
Airbags exploded—violent, gunshot-loud. Nylon and chemicals slammed her face. Light vanished.
Then came the drag.
The sedan scraped sideways along concrete, shrieking. Something struck the back of her skull. Pain bloomed. Her world spun, bright and chaotic, then dimmed.
Silence fell like a curtain.
Only the hiss of leaking coolant and the thin ring in her ears remained.
Evie tried to move. Her body refused. Metal pinned her arm. Her ribs ached like shattered stone. She tasted copper and airbag dust.
Through torn fabric, she spotted the briefcase—dented, wedged into the dash.
Safe.
Relief flickered.
Then dread followed.
Helios Corp.
This wasn't an accident. It was an execution.
Something shifted outside the wreck—slow, heavy, deliberate.
Footsteps.
Evie held her breath without meaning to. A shadow spilled across the broken window. A gloved hand latched onto what was left of her door.
She had less than a minute.
The stars faded. The crash dissolved into the past.
Her mind rewound.
Twenty-Four Hours Earlier
The Grey Ghost wasn't pretty. That was the point. A 2017 sedan, dull gray, plates from out of state, nothing special. The kind of car people forgot as soon as they saw it.
Helios Corp's headquarters rose three blocks away—towering steel, mirrored glass, and corporate arrogance.
Helios. Public hero. Private nightmare.
They promised clean energy. Evie knew the truth—buried ledgers, falsified metrics, environmental disasters hidden behind oceans of PR. She'd spent two years digging. Sleepless months inside servers she wasn't supposed to access.
Tonight, she had the core data.
Not digital. Not hackable.
Physical.
A metal briefcase in her trunk held printouts, testimonies, offline drives. Proof that couldn't be erased with a keystroke.
Her job: deliver it to a government contact—codename Oracle—two hundred miles north.
Four hours. Simple on paper.
Her apartment was wiped clean. Electronics smashed and scattered. Even her toothbrush.
She breathed once, steadying herself. Her clothes were plain. Her hair cropped short. Only her silver locket—her sister's gift—remained a piece of her old life.
8:00 PM. Time to run.
The First Sign
At 8:15 PM, she spotted the black sedan.
It tracked her perfectly. Too perfect.
A tail.
Evie didn't react. She took an exit into an industrial zone. The sedan followed.
Predictable.
She darted onto a service road and broke through a rusted fence. The Grey Ghost bounced across weeds and shot into an abandoned shipping yard.
The sedan kept coming.
Between the stacked containers, Evie drove on instinct. Tight turns. Loose gravel. She spotted a narrow gap—barely enough for her car.
She took it.
Mirrors ripped off. Metal scraped. At the dead end, she spun the wheel, dropped into reverse, and executed a tight 180° J-turn.
She launched back toward the sedan.
The driver's face flashed in her headlights—shock, fear—before she clipped his door and sent the heavier vehicle slamming sideways into steel.
She didn't check if he was conscious. She just drove.
She bought time, not safety.
Escalation
For two hours, Evie ran through every counter-surveillance trick she knew—varying speed, switching freeways, ducking underpasses. Her nerves thinned, but her focus stayed razor-sharp.
At 10:55 PM, she felt it.
A wrongness in the air.
She pulled out her RF scanner.
A frequency lit up instantly.
"…Target confirmed. Initiate Procedure 7-Gamma. No compromise."
7-Gamma.
Termination.
Not retrieval.
A helicopter, hunting her.
Evie accelerated.
The Trap
11:20 PM. Interstate 17. Dark woods. No traffic.
Five miles to safety.
Then—construction signs.
Too perfect. Too clean.
Cones funneled cars into a single lane. A white semi blocked the opposite lane, parked at an unnatural angle.
Behind her, headlights appeared.
The black sedan.
A kill-box.
Evie tightened her grip on the wheel.
She didn't slow.
She sped up.
At the last second, she cut left—straight toward the semi blocking the road. The driver panicked and yanked his wheel.
The trailer jackknifed—momentum whipping it across the median like a hammer.
Evie saw it coming. Saw her own fate drawn in lines of physics she couldn't outrun.
Above, a white streak cut across the sky—the same meteor, the same silent flash.
She never saw it.
The truck struck her like a collapsing building.
The Aftermath
Silence.
Pain.
Cold air leaking through crushed steel.
Footsteps approached. Measured. Professional.
A hand tore open what was left of her door. A flashlight illuminated her face. A voice—calm, flat—spoke:
"Retrieve the asset. Secure the package."
The agent's gaze shifted to the briefcase.
His expression tightened.
Evie tasted blood. Forced her lips to move.
"You're… too late."
The real data wasn't in the briefcase.
It was taped inside her locket.
With the last strength she had, she snapped the chain.
The silver charm slipped through torn metal and disappeared into the gravel below.
The agent realized too late.
"Where is it?" he snarled.
Evie's vision darkened. Her hearing dulled.
But before the black swallowed her, flashing blue and red lights broke through the trees—police responding to the massive wreck.
Helios's perfect operation was ruined.
The agent's furious face was the final thing she saw before darkness claimed her.
Evie hadn't survived the night.
But she had won.