A Black Mass Over Highway Ninety Novels & Stories

Ghost had three monitors running at once, each one flickering with grainy traffic‑cam footage. The room was dead silent except for the rapid clicking of his keyboard and the pounding of my heart. Then he froze. “There,” Ghost said, pointing at the screen. “Highway 229. Southbound camera picked them up.” I stepped closer. A black sedan. Tinted windows. Moving fast. My pulse kicked hard. “Where does 229 lead?” Wolf asked behind me.

"Here's ten grand for necessities, should be enough till I get back and after too." "Sure." Black slipped all hundred of the hundred dollar bills into his pocket. "Thanks man, I'll catch the next bus." "Okay man. Keep in touch or I will." He dared and they shared a handshake before he was off on his way. He'd made it to the outskirts of the countryside when he saw his car. His baby, the bright red Lamborghini. He got in and kicked it. In no time he was racing down the highway. "He'd been driving for a few hours and it was getting dark out. He was speeding down a lonely highway when he saw a young woman, frantically waving down his car to slow down. He was the only car on the road.

He scrambled into the car without a word. We peeled out of the loading dock just as the concrete ceiling behind us collapsed, burying Black-Site 4 in a cloud of dust and secrets. ON THE HIGHWAY The rain had stopped, leaving the asphalt slick and black under the streetlights. We were doing ninety in a forty zone, heading toward the industrial district. "You knew," my father said from the back seat. He was staring at the back of Dax’s head. "You knew the exhaust port was unshielded. That design flaw... it wasn't in the blueprints. It only manifests after fifty hours of operation."

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫 The heavy rumble of the diesel engines echoing off the limestone cliffs wasn't just a threat to the local grid; it was a ghost from the life Maya had systematically dismantled. Standing at the edge of the stone pier, Maya watched the two armored black SUVs navigate the sharp, crumbling turns of the coastal highway. The vehicles were sleek, reinforced with high-grade carbon plating, and bore no corporate logos but they didn't need to. Maya recognized the specific, customized rumble of those modified engines instantly. They belonged to the Blackwood security detail.

A soft hum of rotors echoed in the distance. Kyu-hun cracked the window open. “Is that...?” “Yes, it’s the Black Falcon,” I confirmed, sliding my phone back into my pocket. A minute later, traffic came to a halt—not from congestion this time, but from awe. The Black Falcon loomed over my convoy. The wind from the rotors whipped across the entire highway. Phones came out. Heads poked out of cars and looked upward. It was hard to ignore the elegant descent of power. Kyu-hun blinked. “This is insane.”

The red and blue lights appear in my rearview mirror at 2 AM on a stretch of empty highway I thought nobody patrolled. Shit. Shit shit shit. I was doing ninety in a sixty-five zone, windows down, music blasting, trying to outrun the disaster of a date I'd just escaped. Three hours of listening to a man explain cryptocurrency while his hand crept up my thigh. I needed speed and solitude and the cleansing rush of night air through my hair. What I did not need was a traffic stop.

My heart did a flip. "Hey, Toby," he said, straightening up. "Perfect timing. Are you done?" I nodded. "Yeah. What are you doing here?" He patted the back seat of his bike. "I want to show you something." I frowned. "What?" "It’s Friday. There’s a motorcycle race just outside the city." I stared at him. "A race?" "Yeah." "I have books to read," I said. "And chores." "You work every day." "I don't mind."

​"How? You said this car was invisible!" ​"Silas isn't tracking the car," Julian said, flooring the accelerator. The engine roared, a mechanical scream that echoed through the foggy highway. "He’s tracking the 'Void.' The memory wipe created a hole in the city's psychic field. We’re a black hole moving at a hundred miles per hour." ​A massive, armored transport slammed into our rear bumper. The impact sent us fishtailing across the wet asphalt. Glass shattered. The smell of burning rubber filled the air.

Up ahead, blacked-out million-dollar trucks glided out of a narrow, tree-flanked driveway that cut across the road. One by one, the machines pulled forward, and then what looks like that last car slid out. It had no license plate in the front, just a slab of polished black steel that looked like it had eaten smaller cars for breakfast. The black was so pure it swallowed the streetlamp’s red and white glow, headlights, neon streaks, all of it hovering on its surface like reflections trapped in obsidian glass. “Jesus,” Niya gushed, but her voice nearly drowned by the sudden quiet that followed the car's exit.