PETAR'S HANDS WERE SLIPPERY with sweat, making the hard rubber steering wheel that much harder to control. Wind whipped into his face through the shattered windshield. He'd barreled down the highway after Jem without slowing for over an hour, and by now he'd formulated a golden rule for handling the truck's gearbox: It was all easier the faster you went.

So Petar went faster.

Now, instead of slowing down as Petar had hoped, Jem was still trying to get away from him. More than once he'd felt a sinking jolt in his stomach as one of the truck's wheels threatened to leave the pavement, but it hadn't happened yet. Petar knew it was only a matter of time.

Up in the tall cab, Petar couldn't see Jem, so he had no way of communicating with him. He could only keep up and hope Jem eventually got tired of their little game. But how long could Petar go on like this? He looked up. Damn. Not long, apparently.

Ahead, the tight road opened up over a gorge, the same one they'd passed on the way up the mountain, and Petar's truck was rumbling along the outer edge. He silently cursed whoever had designed this highway. Ever since he'd been nine years old, Petar had had a paralyzing fear of heights. You kind of got that after coming through a wormhole and finding that it had just spit you out a thousand feet up in the sky.

As far as Petar could tell, the gorge was about a mile ahead. That meant he had less than a minute to make his move. From here to there, the road was a straight shot down. That would help.

He took a deep breath, then opened the door of the cab. It swung about a foot and then sharply rapped the speeding SUV. It would have to do. Giving the gas pedal a quick pump to compensate for the next few seconds, Petar stood on the bench seat and poked his head out the top of the door. His arms came out next and, using the door frame as leverage, he swung himself up on top of the cab. The wind was merciless, threatening to yank Petar right off his feet. He crouched and gripped the vertical exhaust pipe beside him.

Driverless, the semi began to veer slightly off course, pulling away from Jem's Escape.

No time to think. Do it now. Petar looked, wished he hadn't. The roof of the SUV looked twenty feet below him, even though he knew it was only about six at the most. That was his intellectual reasoning, and it flew away faster than the wind whipping through his hair, leaving him in the grip of pure emotional thought. And right now, that emotion was terror.

The semi slipped farther to the right. Now the gap between vehicles was at least two feet. Not that that mattered; what mattered was that, on the other side, the truck's tires were quickly running out of pavement. And the gorge was now less than a quarter of a mile away.

Petar switched hands on the exhaust pipe, leaving his right hand free. He flexed his wrist, twisted it. Purple beams shot out under his skin, and a black syrup oozed from the tips of all five fingers.

Now or never.

Petar lept.

He hadn't accounted for the wind. With his feet planted on the truck, Petar had all the truck's velocity, if not its momentum. The second he left its comforting forward surge, he lost his grounding in that force. His body swept through the air, propelled forward, still traveling seventy miles an hour sideways through thin air.

Unfortunately, the air wasn't as thin as it looked. Its resistance was a tangible drag on Petar's outstretched body. It was like being pulled under by a breaking wave. He had no control. He'd more or less aimed for the front of the SUV's roof, but by the time he dropped the six feet to the roof's level, he'd been dragged all the way to its back.

Arm stretched to breaking point, Petar slapped down on the Escape. His midriff hit the very edge, knocking the wind out of him. His right palm hit flat metal. His legs hit nothing. The adhesive properties of the black van der Waals fluid smeared over Petar's fingers sucked onto the metal roof, gripping it down to its molecules. Despite the sheer forces trying to fling Petar off the roof, the fluid held.

With his hand as his sole anchor point, Petar's body swung violently toward the left side of the SUV. His body rolled, twisting his arm at the wrist where it was stuck to the roof. His hand slipped and he cried out. Dug in his fingers. Stopped sliding.

Beside him, the massive semi veered away further, then lurched as all nine of its right-hand tires left the flat surface of the road. It bounced away from the edge with a violent shudder and it looked to Petar as if it would swing straight back at the SUV to crush them against the sheer cliff face on the left side, but then it seemed to change its mind and continued straddling the edge of the pavement.

Petar landed a boot on the Escape's rear fender and grabbed the luggage rail on top, reflecting that this was the second time in just over an hour that his life had hung on the strength of those slim silver poles. He just hoped this time would go a little better than the last.

Petar slid the hand covered in van der Waals fluid forward and broke the molecular attraction, then slapped his palm a foot farther up the roof. The fluid was primed to connect when pushed a certain way on contact, then release when forced in the opposite direction. Petar tugged the hand toward him. It held fast. Using the fluid as a grip, he lunged forward over the rim of the roof and grabbed the luggage rail farther up with his left hand. Repeated both a second time.

Now Petar was fully prone on the roof of the speeding SUV, and he risked a glance at the rumbling truck beside him. Jarring thumps rocked the semi's length, and beyond it Petar could see open sky. They'd reached the gorge.

Fresh sweat having nothing to do with exertion broke out across Petar's forehead. Dripped into his eyes. Blinked salty. His fingers locked in place. His body went rigid. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't move. Not with that yawning chasm reaching out to swallow him.

Metal shrieked from his right. Petar whipped his head around just in time to see the driverless truck carom off the aluminum guard rail. If not for gravity's pull, it would have slowed long ago. For a breathless moment, the truck scraped the rail and seemed as if it would hold the road. Then a weak anchor gave way and the whole rail ripped away from the highway like a fluttering ribbon. As they had with the road, the semi's right wheels left first, spinning on clear mountain air. Then the cab pitched downward and the truck launched into space.

It was a breathtaking sight, almost spectacular enough to make Petar forget that he was perched on top of a speeding car at the edge of a cliff. Eighty thousand pounds of metal and rubber and power took flight like a dove, soaring on its own momentum. Hung. Then plummeted.

The trailer hit the slope full-on broadside and the truck bounced and barrel-rolled. Landed on its roof, bounced again. Petar tore his eyes away as the truck settled into a jittery roll and disappeared beneath a cloud of dust.

The gorge closed off and the SUV sped back into a canyon of dynamite-blasted sandstone.

Petar wrenched his fingers loose, took a breath, and returned his attention to the task at hand. Although the day was hot, his hands were chapping from the wind tearing past him. Sweat and tears blurred his vision. Only by turning his head and dipping it into the lee of his shoulder could he take a proper breath. The rushing howl of the wind was so loud and constant he'd stopped hearing it.

Jem still wasn't slowing. He had to know Petar was up here. Must have heard the thumps of his movement. Must have watched the big rig careening off the road into a vast yawning nothing. Yet he hummed along as if this were a casual Sunday drive. Petar had to admire his determination, if not his absolute bull-headedness. Not many people could shake off a day like this so easily. They were hidden beneath a flimsy exterior, but nerves of steel flexed beneath that boy's skin. He had been a good choice.

Now Petar had another choice. He made it quickly – he was getting tired of riding like a suitcase. Releasing his right hand, he first pulled up a fluid to dissolve the black adhesive gunk. Then he tapped the pad of his pinky to his thumb three times. A silver sheen grew out of the fleshy web under his thumb and expanded across his palm, then solidified. Solid quantium, a flexible metal mined by his father with six times the tensile strength of steel. There were perks to being a Tesla.

Reaching down past the rim of the passenger-side door, Petar rapped sharply on the window. Glass exploded inward under his palm, and he quickly gripped the right-side luggage rail with both hands and swung through the opening feet first. He was in the seat before the glass had finished falling.

He held up his right hand and waited quietly while the quantium skin retracted, then looked over at Jem's awestruck face and said, "We need to have a talk."

Thanks for reading my story! Please VOTE and let me know what you think of it so far, then check out Chapter 25!