Running From Himself 3-1 (Preview) (Patreon)

Shit! The wheel shook under his palms, Rastro’s fingers halfway to fucking numb as the heavy leather fought him. Shit!  The suspension was bottoming out every half-minute and he knew it was a miracle they weren’t already trailing sparks out the ass already. Shitshitshit! The New Jersey Turnpike at midnight was a black smear under the tires as they did an eighty that was anything but easy, late night air rushing through the car and mixing with the sharp stink of plasma and wet bone.

"¡Pisa a fondo, cabrón!" Mazo’s stupid ass screamed from the backseat, bellowing over the wind roar like Rastro wasn’t in the same car. “¡Pisa a fondo!” He didn't wait for an answer, one heavy fist going right through the remaining shards of the rear window.

The air outside warped as the idiot punched out again, pressure walls thrown up dead-center in the leanes behind the speeding Caddy near-invisible this time of night. The cop car closest on their tail slammed head-on into the pocket of hard air, front axle grinding into asphalt in a shower of sparks as it fishtailed into another cruiser.

"I'm flooring it, I'm flooring it, just… shut up!" Rastro bit back, vision swimming as harmless blue static sparked from his eye sockets, his own power doing nothing but giving him faster eyes and a better body. It wasn’t much but it gave him a great getaway driver. So, when it came to a job like a jewelry store heist, these fools knew who to call. “Just shut the fuck up and keep throwing!”

“Haahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!” To his right, Abrojo was already halfway out the passenger window, heavy wind peeling his lips back and forcing tears from his eyes as he kept cackling like a madman. “I’m throoooowing!” Bone tore through the skin of his forearms with a sound that made Rastro shudder, the man’s bone quills rocketing out into the road behind them.

They hit the highway one-by-one, each of the white knives chewing up the pursuit tires. 

"¡Toma, putos!" Centella shouted, the small woman still hanging out of the sunroof, her hands strobing pink as she turned the dark highway into a stuttering nightmare worthy of one of those big-ass seizures. Baseball-sized bursts of hot-pink plasma formed in her palms, unstable and hissing as she sent them flying, each one detonating in mid-air. They weren’t hot-enough to melt the engine blocks of the cruisers on their ass, but the neon burst flash-baked ugly scorch marks on the chasing cars and did their part to blind the cops.

"Grasa, the slick, man!” Rastro yelled again, wondering when he became the brains instead of just the wheels. “Drop the slick!"

"I'm dropping it, coño, watch the road!" The greasy bastard hung both arms out the rear passenger window, thick orange liquid that looked too much like throw-up pouring from his hands and coating the asphalt behind their rear tires. The front-wheel-drive gripped the road fine, but the cruisers behind them hit the low-friction oil and spun out, sirens wailing as two million dollars of police budget smashed into dividers.

Rastro eyed the rearview mirror, blue static fizzing back at him..

Flashing red and blue lights shrunk, half of them spinning out as they faded into the dark curve of the turnpike. Sirens died away, swallowed entirely by the wind and the roaring V8.

"¡Ya coronamos, mi gente!" Rastro slammed a hand against the steering wheel, a laugh as manic as Abrojo’s tearing free from his chest. "We ghost! They ain't got shit! We fucking ghost!"

The car erupted, joining him in laughs and whoops. Mazo slapped the roof, as Abrojo pulled himself back inside while laughing hard enough to choke, and heavy canvas bags of jewelry rattled against the floor. “We fucking gh-!”Tap. Tap.

A sound cut through the wind, right next to Rastro's ear.

He flinched, the Cadillac drifting into the next lane before he wrestled the wheel straight at seventy miles an hour on a near-empty highway. Dragging his sparking eyes away from the high beams, Rastro looked out his driver's side window to see a black man jogging right outside the glass.

A black and blue costume stared back at him, the supe’s shades reflecting the dashboard lights as his sneakers ate up asphalt like he was taking a casual stroll.

He lifted two fingers in a slow, lazy salute.

"Hey."