Super Hero Rhapsody: 1975

Front Street falls behind in a smear of wet asphalt and warehouse lights. In Devlan’s car, the hardcase gives off a sharp, rising whine that sets every nerve on edge.

A black sedan slips out of the industrial shadows behind them, steady and patient. Its headlights stay low, but the car never loses the trail.

Blaze’s muscle car roars up on the flank, boxing them in against the curb. Beyond him, the sedan keeps closing, government clean lines in the rain.

The whine sharpens to a scream from inside the hardcase. If Sally opens it now, she may expose the Department’s trail. If she keeps moving, the agents will stay on her.

Sally attempts to phase her hand into the hardcase, but the dense, oscillating energy field surrounding the device repels her touch with a violent static discharge. The signal remains locked and piercing, its frequency immune to her interference.

Sally drives both hands down, brute force beating the signal's sting. The hardcase skids off Devlan's lap and jams under the floor mat with a hard thunk, half-hidden by rubber and shadow.

Blue sparks spit once against the mat, then gutter out. The piercing tone muffles, trapped low in the cabin instead of screaming into the street.

Outside, Blaze's car surges closer, its headlights washing the windshield. The black sedan behind them stays glued to the bumper, hemming them in from both sides.

Devlan braces at the wheel, eyes flicking from the boxed-in lane to the muffled vibration underfoot. In the backlight, the hidden case trembles once, waiting for Sally's next move.

The floor mat begins to smoke, the hardcase vibrating with a rhythmic, magnetic pulse that defies the rubber barrier. Outside, the sedan's high beams strobe in sync with the signal, and Blaze's car swerves to clip the sedan's rear, forcing the entire convoy into a tighter, more aggressive formation.

Sally thrusts her glowing hand toward the wheel wells, and a red beam snaps loose from her palm. It strikes the nearest tire, not as a clean blast, but as a hot, sputtering flare that scorches rubber and shoves the sedan sideways.

The shot misses the second tire entirely. Instead it punches through the road spray, lighting up the undercarriage and washing the street in a harsh red flash that makes the beacon inside the hardcase stutter.

Devlan jerks the wheel as the car bucks. The sedan outside veers hard, one tire whining on the rim, but it keeps rolling, now blind to one side and angrier for it.

For a split second, Sally feels the beam answer her hand like it has been there all along. The glow fades, but the heat lingers in her palm, and the hardcase’s pulse under the mat drops into a weaker, broken rhythm.

The lead tire on Blaze’s car is shredded, smoke curling off the rim, and the convoy swerves wide. Ahead, a loading bay opening flashes past, briefly clear, with the bystander and the crate just beyond the curb.

Sally snaps the wheel into the open loading bay, and the car cuts under the awning just as Blaze’s line of fire loses the street. The tires squeal on wet concrete, then bite.

Devlan yanks the sedan deeper inside, using the bay wall as cover. The hardcase thumps under the floor mat, its broken pulse fading to a thin, ugly twitch.

Blaze’s car overshoots the curb outside and slides past the entrance, its smoking tire throwing sparks into the rain. For a beat, the chase is outside the bay instead of on top of them.

A bystander crouched near a crate flinches at the shout, trapped between stacked pallets and the bay mouth. Beyond them, the loading dock door hangs half-open, offering a narrow way out or a worse trap.

Devlan reaches for the mat, then stops, eyes on Sally, on the box, on the mouth of the bay. The engine idles rough in the tight dark, and the choice lands there with them.