Rain hammered against the tin roof of the old motorcycle shop.
Midnight was closing in when Jake Malone, leader of the Iron Riders, heard the pounding on the door.

Three knocks.
Pause.
Two more.

A distress code.

Ryder glanced up from his engine. “Nobody’s supposed to know we’re here.”

Jake drew his sidearm anyway and unlatched the door.

Wind and pine needles swept in—along with four kids, soaked and shivering, dragging a woman bleeding out between them.

“Please,” the oldest, Harper, gasped. “She’s our mom… she’s dying.”

Jake’s instincts kicked in. He shouted for towels, fire, whiskey.
Nova, the smallest one, couldn’t stop crying.

Cole sliced open the woman’s jacket—there was a gunshot wound through her side, clean but deep.
Jake’s jaw tightened.

“Who did this to her?”

Harper looked at him, terrified.

“The men on black bikes. With a snake on their helmets.”

Jake froze.
That mark belonged to The Blacktop Vipers—the most brutal biker syndicate west of the Rockies.
And their leader, Vince Cade, used to ride under Jake before everything went to hell.

He turned back to the woman.

“What do they want from you?”

She stirred, voice trembling but fierce.

“It’s not me they want… it’s what I’m carrying.”

Jake noticed a torn canvas bag near her boots. Inside was a sealed metal drive, stamped with faded military markings:

PROPERTY OF BLACKSITE 19

Jake felt his blood run cold.
Blacksite 19 had been erased from every defense record fifteen years ago.
Rumors said it was where they built things—living weapons.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

The woman’s eyes flickered open.

“My name is Dr. Elise Ward. I’m the one who created him.”

For a second, no one spoke.

“Created who?” Jake whispered.

She swallowed, pain tightening her face.

“Vince Cade. He’s not… entirely human anymore.”

Then—lights flickered.
Engines roared outside, multiplying, closing in.

Cole peeked through the window and cursed.

“Jake… it’s them.”

Jake grabbed his rifle and chambered a round.

“Lock the back door. Keep the kids down.”

Outside, thunder rolled with the sound of dozens of Vipers tearing through the trees.

Jake’s eyes hardened.

“Tonight,” he muttered, “we fight with fire and steel.”

Twist Reveal:

Dr. Ward isn’t just running from the Vipers—she’s running from her own experiment. Vince Cade was her first “successful” super-soldier, enhanced through a classified nanotech program: Project Augment-19.
But the data drive she carries holds a darker truth—Jake himself was part of that project, his memories wiped clean after a failed trial.

And the one man he’s about to kill…
might share his blood.