Chapter 1: 1 Viktor Vladimir

July 01, 3022. City-state of Ainazi. Latvia, Earth.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu*k!”

Someone’s cursing out loud.

Winds howling nearby.

The sound of sirens is added to the mix. The late afternoon sun is nowhere to be found as the cloudy gray sky is masking its brilliance effectively.

The day is gloomy with a chance of precipitation. But not uneventful.

“Everything’s turned to shit since we took this job, Vik. This whole plan was rigged from the moment we said yes to this suicide fest.

Aargh! I want to chop off that baldy’s Little Guy if it’s the last thing I have to do before dying.”

Fernando Torres couldn’t stop cursing as he drove the truck that had only two passengers including him at breakneck speed. The expressway was wide open for him to drive carelessly– barren even. So he wasn’t worried about running the truck onto something.

But what was at the back of the truck pursuing and closing in on them was an entirely different matter.

“Tory, don’t you fokin lose your shit now. Eyes on the road.

I’ll… I’ll do something about the cops. Give me that M-16 you have.”

Viktor commanded Fernando Torres, AKA Tory. He tried to calm his friend down even when he was feeling the pressure coming from the relentless pursuit.

The cops were almost breathing down their necks at this point. Their in-pursuit vehicles were a few meters away from the back of their truck.

Four high-tech Jeeps were pursuing a heavy truck that was easily zipping through hundreds of meters of distance in the blink of an eye, despite its large size. The cops’ vehicles were right behind that truck monstrosity.

The half-deafening sirens were blaring off in the background. But the combination of opposing wind pressure and its resultant noise was so loud that it almost acoustically overshadowed everything.

Almost!

Both the stolen truck and four high-tech cop vehicles had no wheels. They were gliding over the earth at a fixed height without any contact with the surface. So the ride was smooth for both– the perps and the cops.

Vik had to admit. Tory was right. They shouldn’t have taken this job. It looked like a job entailing a simple hot-swap of a goods-carrying truck at first. But the “heat” they generated told them a different story.

What’s more, they hadn’t even checked what was in the truck they were currently riding on. Neither did the party that assigned them the job tell them anything about what they were stealing.

Maybe they should have done their recon better before executing this job. Maybe they shouldn’t have trusted the baldy that had acted as their mediator.

But the pill of regret has to be swallowed no matter how bitter it tastes. They couldn’t do anything about something that they’d already messed up.

Vik and Tory first thought it was someone backstabbing someone in an arms deal. The usual fiasco of some gang facing a mutiny from within. Or just local gang wars among non-Metas.

Sure, it held a fair share of risks too. But it wasn’t something they hadn’t done before.

But Vik and Tory knew the sheer number of police deployed on this chase meant the goods in the truck were extraordinary. And that same extraordinary aspect had created this situation for them.

“M-16? Hahahaha. I carry that thing just for the show, Vik. That super ancient scrap won’t be able to get past the cops’ energy shield. We should…”

“Shut your fuking mouth, Tory. Do what I say first. Your rants can wait.”

Vik couldn’t understand how Tory could laugh in situations like these. His co-called “cajones” that he often referred to whenever he did something brag-worthy were indeed… something.

Vik looked at Tory with stoic expressions that borderlined on suppressed anger. Tory begrudgingly gave Vik the rifle he was keeping beside him and started cussing everything from Vik to cops to his entire life choices in a hushed voice. They both didn’t know what they were angry at.

Vik heard Tory cursing some more in his fast-paced Spanish but paid it no heed.

The M-16 Beason was an old-gen rifle. It shot bullets that were made of compressed air. The gun was used by non-Metas a lot to handle their daily skirmishes in the past.

But there’s a reason it belonged to the bygone era now.

Vik knew it wasn’t enough in a frontal clash against the cops who were blessed with the most advanced equipment the city-state of Ainazi had to offer. He also suspected that there would be cops who were Metahumans, just waiting for the truck to stop so that they could apprehend the two ordinary perps swiftly.

Plus, the cops were using advanced military-grade jeeps that had energy shields deployed in front of them, which protected them against harm. In a frontal clash, the both knew they stood no chance against the cops.

But Vik wasn’t planning to shoot at them head-on anyway.

He found a beer keg stocked in the backseat. The driver that was supposed to drive this truck was no fan of the “don’t drink and drive” philosophy it seemed.

Vik wasn’t in the mood or place to judge someone else’s driving choices. He was in a soup of his own now which he needed to deal with quickly. And in his current situation, he could only thank the guy for being so overenthusiastic about the booze.

Vik knew he only had one shot at this. He took a deep breath before yelling loudly:

“Tory…..

Now!”

Tory nodded at Vik and suddenly steered the wheel sharply. The truck took a sharp turn and was positioned parallel to incoming cops’ jeeps.

Vik just opened the window of the driver’s cabin and let the wind pressure generated due to their kinetic state do its job. He simply released that beer keg and let the wind carry it where he had intended it to. He had already aligned the release in such a way that the keg would crash directly onto the pursuing vehicles.

Time seemed to have slowed down. The released beer keg was shot hard by Vik before it was about to crash onto one of the cops’ vehicles.

The energy shield was deployed but it didn’t prevent the vehicles from getting affected by the keg’s impact.

As it crashed-landed on one of the vehicles, the keg caught fire because of Vik’s shooting. But that was not all.

When the keg hit the ground and the other vehicle was passing over it, its gyro stabilization malfunctioned. It lifted the vehicle and allowed Vik a wide, unprotected area to shoot at.

Vik wasn’t one to let such opportunities pass him by. He had a wild idea to set the cops’ jeeps on fire. That plan didn’t work since the wind pressure made it difficult for the beer to get combusted and spread the fire.

Raise. Aim. Shoot.

Thankfully, something favorable came to pass that had not been planned before. Vik took aim and fired at the exposed bottom of the vehicle which wasn’t protected by the energy shield.

It only took a shot or two for the target to catch fire. And in the next moment, it was about to crash land on the other police vehicle running alongside it.

Vik was about to celebrate. But he had almost forgotten to look at what the police car in front of him was aiming for at the time.

The cops had drawn their firearms as soon as they saw one of the perpetrators brandishing a weapon. Now, they had the right to draw weapons and fight the assailants.

The cops in the front jeep fired a volley of laser bullets at the stolen truck. The bullets whizzed past Vik who dodged them at a hair’s breadth by ducking down at the very last moment. He then closed the window with the control panel near him and breathed a sigh of relief.

Soon the car that Vik shot crashed into the leading car. The newly created, still-in-motion debris of the first two cars became an obstacle for the two vehicles behind them to ram straight into.

Vik stretched his neck from his turtling position and watched his accomplishment with his own eyes. He couldn’t help taking a long breath before relaxing his posture that had been tense for a long time. They were getting farther away from the moving debris of four police vehicles.

“Fu*k yeah. Tory, my man. We did it. We are in the clear…”

Vik cut short his victory speech because there was nothing celebratory about the situation. Not when one had a clear look at Tory.

The clothes around his chest looked red.

Fernando Torres was critically injured!

===

Author’s Note: Hello and welcome. First of all, thank you for picking this book and giving it a try.

The pilot immediately plunges you into an action-packed chase without worrying too much about other deets. The character designs and world background will slowly unfold as you progress further. It is suggested that we read first 50 chapters before deciding to hit pause on the novel.

I have added the relevant tags for the story. Those elements would get added to the plotline over time. I’ll write a detailed review about this book once it has enough chapters under its belt. Till then, let’s just read this piece and see where it leads.

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