Lucy groaned as she got off my bike while I turned it off, holding her hand up to shade her face from the sun. It was only eight in the morning, so the weather was practically chilly for NC standards, but it’d only get hotter from here on out.

  I had pulled up in front of Falco, Pilar and Becca, who were leaning up against a shinied up chrome and white quadra, several twelve-packs worth of beers stuck inside an ice box that sat against the car, protected by the shade it cast. Becca leaned over and fished out a beer before carelessly tossing it at Lucy. Lucy, for her part, caught it without missing a beat. “Thanks,” she groaned. “God, I can’t believe I got talked into showing up so early.”

  The immediate area around us were packed with cars, mostly quadras, and some emperors—all of them with thick off-road tires and raised bodies, built to brave the bumpy desert. I saw a few nomad tents being set up, with shops in the process of being constructed, likely to provide refreshments to the spectators. This whole area was in a plateau, and from what I had gathered while driving over, the bulk of the racing track would be on the lower ground, which made this place an ideal lookout.

  I unslung my guitar case from the side of the bike—releasing the cord I had used to secure it—and braced the case so it stood upright. “It’s only eight, Luce—that’s not early.”

  “Fuck off,” Lucy spat. I chuckled. “It’s early for a Saturday,” she cracked open the beer with one hand, having pushed the tab with her index finger, before gulping down a steady stream.

  Pilar tossed me one too. I caught it, but didn’t really know what to do with it. Didn’t fancy assaulting my tongue with carbonation this early in the day. “Nah,” I said, tossing it into the ice box. “Gotta stay sober for the race.”

  “Pussy!” Pilar cracked open two cans with two hands and lifted them over his head before pouring them out, the streams joining into one before hitting his mouth. He swallowed it all without any problem, emptying the cans in less than two seconds.

  I blinked at the sight. “Is that cyberware?”

  He finished up both cans, crumpled them and burped loudly before shaking his head. “Pure fucking skill, rookie!”

  Then I spotted Falco taking sips of beer. He raised an eyebrow at me. “In small amounts, this stuff’s as good as any ol’ PED.” I somehow doubted that. “But—glad to see you came ready to rumble, Lucha-D.”

  “It’s bullshit!” Becca groused, “I’m your shooter, Falco! How could you just toss me aside like this?”

  “I’m sorry, Becca,” I said, bowing my head at her. “I wanted to learn some stuff for a thing I’m doing and—”

  “Don’t make me feel bad for getting angry now!” she glared at me. “You know I can’t say no to those puppy-dog eye-holes of yours, skullface!”

  “Hah!” Pilar cackled, slapping his thigh. “You know, I still can’t get over that gonk-ass mask of yours, D. It’s really fucking ugly. Not the design—honestly, that goes kinda hard. But it’s a low-quality cloth mask that you tore a hole in to let your hair out. The fuck’s wrong with you?”

  “You can afford better, Lucha-D,” Falco twirled his mustache, giving me a shit-eating grin.

  Lucy snorted, her spirits having picked up visibly—or maybe that was just the beer. “Says he wants us to invest in ballistic threads, too, but what the hell does he know about threads anyway? Falco, did you see his corpo outfit yet?” Her eyes glowed golden, and so did Falco’s for a moment.

  Then his eyes widened and he burst out laughing. “Sweet Jesus on a cross, you tryna make me go blind or something? That’s bright.”

  [Hah!]

  D: No, not you, too. Shut the fuck up.

  [Hah! Hah! Hah!]

  “Why is it always me?” I growled, “why is it always me?”

  Lucy giggled, and Becca just cackled evilly at my misery.

  Pilar tossed me another beer. “Drown out your sorrows.” Fuck’s sake.

  Well—wasn’t like I was doing much other than standing around right now.

  “Falco,” I said to him as I cracked open the beer and hiked up my mask to take a sip. “When’s the race starting, and… why do you even need a shooter to begin with? Are we allowed to just shoot other contestants?”

  A few of the nomads with their cars parked near to us looked at me and gave me nasty glares. The hell was their problem?

  "Settle down there, cowboy," Falco drawled with a chuckle. "Nah—you’re here for my protection. Races like this tend to draw all sorts, and plenty of 'em ain’t above doin’ whatever it takes to make sure they cash in big. Even if it means riggin’ the game. And more often than not, that means hirin’ Wraiths."

  “Fucking Wraiths,” Rebecca spat. “They’re like the Strom of the badlands—or the scavs. Worthless scumfuckers.”

  “I resent that,” Pilar said. I blinked—wait, was he a…?

  “You’re a worthless scumfucker too, big bro. That’s why I’ll be the one to kill you someday.”

  “No you won’t,” he snorted. “Was gonna say though—the Wraiths are way sweeter than the Strom. It’s not even a competition. You got some fucking unwashed desperados led by a guy who called himself, what, Dogfucker? Dogeater? He’s dead now, so it doesn’t even fucking matter. But that’s just some gimmicky bullshit. The truth is, they’re low-tech savages, sweeter than sweet. All the Raffen Shiv are—the Wraiths are just a speck shinier.”

  Well, I had taken out a whole bunch of them on my lonesome, with minimal weaponry to boot.

  "Sweet or not, they’re still packin’ iron," Falco said. "And while I’m fast, I sure as hell ain’t faster than a bullet. Now, D, I seen that trick shot you pulled on the Tanaka job—dropped two corp boys with one bullet, clean as a whistle. That ain’t somethin’ you see everyday. I think you’d do a mighty fine job on this race."

  “Okay, but,” I said, “I asked for this so I could learn how to race, not shoot while riding in a race car. You still think you could give me some pointers?”

  “Sure, just keep your eyes peeled on what I’m doing and the road, alright?” Falco suggested.

  I nodded, “Sounds good.” I’d have to really pay attention though, and I doubted that this exercise would do anything but launch my skill into the realm of pure basics. Maybe if I was lucky, I could absorb some tricks here and there, but the bulk of my real training would be taking out an actual Caliburn for a spin.

  I muscled through the beer and rewound the conversation a little, “Pilar—you said you were Strom?”

  Pilar chuckled, “Yeah—back in the day.”

  “Wow,” I chuckled, unsurely, “Were they that much fun to party with or what?”

  “Ain’t no party like a Maelstrom party, no,” Pilar said before cracking open another beer. Right before downing it, he paused, “I wasn’t there for the parties, though.” The atmosphere seemed to darken a little at that proclamation. No one said a word, and even I felt a slight pit in my gut at that. Then Pilar’s grin returned in full force. “Enough about that dark shit—I’ll tell you some other time when there ain’t as much fun to be had.”

  I nodded, though I couldn’t help but feel this twist in my gut. Despite how he was, I honestly liked Pilar. He’d helped me out a ton without any expectations of payback—and he was apparently helping Maine out with his chrome, too. He had his problems, but I felt like I could count on him.

  Hearing about his past was…

  No. Fuck that noise.

  Don’t care if he was the devil’s deadbeat dad, none of that shit matters anymore.

  He was in the Crew, just like I was. And he hadn’t let me down yet.

  “Any reason why you got the urge to learn racin’ anyhow, D?” Falco asked, changing the subject.

  “Ah, right,” I said, “… schoolmate of mine tipped me in about some corpo race,” I said, keeping my voice low so strangers wouldn’t hear me. “Seems like a half-decent way to earn some extra edds on the side.”

  "Ah," Falco nodded, takin’ a deeper swig of his beer. "Well, hate to break it to ya, but a corpo street race ain’t the same as tearin’ up a dirt road, I’ll tell ya that much for free. That bunch is all ‘bout driftin’ and handling, threadin’ the needle, all that fancy showboatin’—‘specially if they’re ‘Saka. They call it Toe-Gay racin’ or somethin’ or other. Parlor tricks, really. You know if they’re runnin’ it through a parkin’ tower or takin’ it to the streets? Usually one or the other, since there ain’t no mountains around with good driftin’ roads. ‘Cept for the canyon down our way—but ain’t no corpo brave enough to take their Caliburns down here. Too many Wraiths prowlin’ about."

  Well, shit. “Don’t know, really.”

  "Well, if it’s a street race, you might just pick up a thing or two ridin’ with me—if it’s one of them Cat and Mouse drift races, though, you might wanna hit the books and do some learnin’ on your own. Ya see—this here’s a Vale Tudo race, partner. Ain’t no holds barred—'cept for straight up shootin’ other racers, ‘course. That there’s bad form. Yer job’s simple: keep that iron ready in case any Wraiths get ideas. Only the Wraiths, alright? Other’n that? The rules don’t get much simpler—git ahead, by any means necessary."

  “You’re racing corpos?!” Becca asked me. “Can I come?” Lucy clicked her tongue and I sighed.

  “I’d rather you not,” I said, lowering my voice, “I’m keeping my identities separate, remember?”

  “It’s the whole point of the fucking mask!” Pilar chided, “You pint-sized bimbo.”

  “Fuck off!” Rebecca put a hand on her pink lexington, holstered on her side. Jesus, not again.

  “I’m sorry, Becca,” I said, putting my hands up placatingly. “Look, I’ll scroll a BD for you if that’s fine. But there likely won’t be much to see—I’m probably just gonna crash and burn anyway.”

  There was only so much that speedware could do for your driving skills. Superior reflexes and information processing time, sure, but what would that do for my control over a car I had never driven before? If it was a bike race, I’d feel more confident, but Jin had specifically mentioned cars—the Caliburn at that. And now Falco was inundating me with incomprehensible racing jargon.

  “Hah! I’ll hold you to it!” Becca yelled. I crumpled my beer can and tossed it into the ice cooler.

  “Well, well, well,” I heard a gravelly, low voice intrude into our space and turned towards its source—a mustachio’d man wearing a cowboy hat and a leather vest on top of a stained white shirt, blue denim jeans, and brown leather boots. Flanking him were a pair of desperado-looking motherfuckers, one wearing a bandana over his lower face, and another sporting a blood-thirsty grin and wore a bandolier with three tech revolvers, as well as two attached to each side of his hips. "Well, if it ain’t the renny-runner himself, ridin’ in like a fool to try his luck ‘gainst the Wraiths for pocket change."

  Falco chuckled darkly, tossing the empty beer can over his shoulder and making it land perfectly on the roof of his Quadra before stepping up to the cowboy man. "Well, if it ain’t the dust-covered Aldecaldo kibble-muncher, still sore ‘bout playin’ second fiddle to his betters."

  The man’s disdainful grin turned into one of genuine delight. “Hah!” He spread his arms and hugged Falco, who returned the hug. “Always a pleasure to hear you run that razor-sharp tongue of yours, Falco.” He pulled back from the hug and put his hands on his hips, still wearing an ecstatic grin. “How ya doin’?”

  “Seen worse days,” Falco nodded. “How bout yourself?”

  The man shook his head, “You know me, Falco—ridin’ low and keepin’ my chooms out of trouble as always.”

  Falco chuckled, “Still raisin’ hell, I see.”

  “Nothin’ like that! You know trouble’s always got a way of findin’ me—just plain bad luck.”

  “Still mighty chipper for a misfortunate feller, though.”

  “If you’re gonna be unlucky, then you best be strong, too. Just the way it is. And if you’re strong, what’s the use in havin’ a long face?”

  “Amen,” Falco nodded. “Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure, Buck? Not that this conversation ain’t a right pleasure in and of itself.”

  “Just makin’ my rounds, seein’ chooms, dispensin’ some good ol’ wisdom so my favorite people in the world don’t get caught lackin’.”

  Falco perked up, “Really, now?”

  “Really,” Buck nodded, “Got some shifty out-of-towners nobody knows or trusts. They’re setting off my alarm bells,” he looked over his shoulder and I tracked his line of sight. “The guys in the blue and black R-7s. Here for the money, but I doubt they’re all about playing fair while they’re at it.” I blinked. Implying that everyone else were going to play fair? I already had half a mind to quickhack the whoever was the frontrunner and hold them back for Falco.

  Or maybe that sort of cheating was just old-hat, and those assholes were planning on being way more blatant. You never fucking knew.

  Then again, he’d said ‘out-of-towners’, hadn’t he? I hardly considered anyone living outside of this shithole called Night City to be a credible threat. Should we even be worried?

  I looked at the shifty people. They looked like any old nomad to me—dressed to brave the desert, wearing machine-like cyberware with no Realskinn, like Falco’s mech-arm.

  I shrugged internally—I was already wary against everyone here, being that I was Falco’s muscle for this race: Buck and his gang included.

  Towards that end, I made to Breach Falco’s Quadra to check for any intrusions.

  “Appreciate the heads-up, Buck,” Falco nodded. “You stay safe, too.”

  Buck dug through his pockets and retrieved a couple of items—a booklet of rolling papers and a pouch. With both hands, he pulled out a pair of papers, fished out a pinch of tobacco from the pouch and his fingers blurred as he rolled both cigarettes within three seconds tops. He handed one of the unfinished rolls to Falco, who took it and licked the length of paper sticking out before sealing the cigarette shut while Buck did much the same. “Just remember, Falco—don’t start lettin’ yer pecker do the thinkin’ for ya. Never ends well.”

  Falco snorted. “Doesn’t always—but when it does?” He whistled.

  “Hah!” Pilar cackled.

  Buck chuckled. “So be it. So long, renny-runner.”

  “You too, cowfucker.”

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Buck snorted as he pointed his index finger at his cigarette. The tip detached on a hinge to reveal an inbuilt lighter, which he used to light his cig before tipping his hat with his other hand and leaving.

  “You sure got good friends, Falco,” Lucy noted.

  “The fuck’s a renny-runner anyway?” Becca asked.

  “Don’t even bother,” Pilar laughed, “I don’t understand half the shit these cowboys say anyway.”

  “Renny, as in renegade," Falco said, tapping his mech finger against the tip of his cigarette. The metal split open like a little hatch, spitting out a tiny blue jet of flame that lit it up in an instant. "See, my folks had it better’n most nomads—they ran a farm out in Texas for Biotechnica. Livin’ high on the hog, least compared to most road dogs. Nomads who cozy up to the corps? Folks call ‘em renegades. Which makes me a double-renny, ‘cause I left them, too. And ‘Runner’? Well, that’s just our trade, ain’t it?” He took a deep drag of his cigarette, "And I wouldn’t be so quick to take Buck’s plain ol’ Southern hospitality for kindness. He’s itchin’ for that cash prize same as the rest of us. Hunned thousand ain’t chump change, ya know. And it’s winner takes all. Might be he’s tryin’ to throw me off his own dirty play, or maybe he’s shootin’ straight—but either way, it don’t change a damn thing. I’m takin’ this win today.”

  Pilar’s hand darted towards Falco’s face, probably to klep the cig. Falco smoothly leaned backwards, dodging the hand by a mile. The moment Pilar adjusted his hand, Falco dodged the other way, merrily puffing on the cigarette.

  I finally managed to access Falco’s Quadra, and immediately spotted the hastily constructed backdoor someone had built within its security protocol. I shut that shit down and barricaded it for dear life—wouldn’t stop anyone from trying to build a new one from a different angle, so I had to make damn sure I was the only Runner poking around. “Found some shit in your Quadra’s system, Falco. Patched it up, though.”

  “Huh!” Falco gave me a raised eyebrow, and then grinned sharply, “Invitin’ you over’s already beginning to pay for itself. Good job, D!”

  “Still gotta be careful,” Lucy folded her arms and glared at our competition. “Having an airtight system won’t stop some of these guys from pinging the ride and sending the Wraiths coords as well as a bounty on it.”

  I picked up my guitar case of weapons from the ground and approached the Quadra, unlocking the door with a mental tug and opening it. “That’s where I come in, ain’t it?”

  000

  The starting line was almost twenty meters wide, and the cars were stacked into over ten different layers—an enormous mess of vehicles of every shape and size.

  At the very, very back of the entire pack sat Falco and I. I sighed as I scrunched my nose at the smell of exhaust from so many of the cars. I watched as Falco brushed the many different buttons all across his dash with a feather duster, fiddling with them and seemingly making sure that they weren’t snagged on anything.

  The inside of Falco’s Quadra looked like a fucking space ship, truth be told. There were buttons and switches even on the ceiling, and between us, on the console, sat a glass tank containing some sort of fluid. The tank narrowed to a spout at the top, sealed by a silver metal cap.

  So many fucking buttons, though—no way more than half of them even did anything. “Sweet ride,” I muttered. “You gonna tell me the specs or what?”

  “Specs don’t make the racer,” Falco said, “I done poured more blood, sweat ‘n tears into this ride than you can fathom, but I’d still scuttle it in half a heartbeat if it meant winning—pays not to get too attached.”

  Wow, “That’s… kinda brutal. For a gearhead.”

  “I’m a racer, D,” he said with a light tone as he continued to meticulously inspect every button, every dial and every switch. “I win races. S’what I do. Now, the Emperor—that’s my baby. Love her more than life itself. Built her with Pilar’s help to last—it’s an urban tank with enough speed to outrun even the most determined badge in town, and enough firepower to take on a whole damn squad of cyberpsychos if it came down to it. In comparison, this baby’s just a means to an end.” He grinned at the windshield. I couldn’t even begin to guess at what he meant. Winning, probably, but there was something more. Something almost romantic in his grin and eyes.

  I couldn’t deny his passion, though. Guy was playing to win, that much was for certain.

  “The hell are we all the way back here for anyway?”

  “The hell’s the point of racing if you’re gonna frontrun the entire way?” Falco asked. “Gotta make it fun to make it worthwhile. Can’t just be for the money. ‘Sides—this way, you’ll get to at least watch me pull some fun lil’ tricks before it’s your turn to earn your keep.” He started poking around in his dashboard before pulling out a shard and slotting it into his sound system. Immediately, a quick bassline and drum beat started to play.

  “It’s a beautiful evening here as we get ready to start the race,” came the voice of an announcer playing through the radio. Wait—it wasn’t evening. Was this part of the song? Falco grinned like a loon as I stared at him. “The drivers are at the line and it looks like we’re almost set. Racers, start your engines,” Falco did exactly that. A loud blaring sound came from outside the car and the ones ahead of us slowly began to push forward, “go!”

  “Perk up, Lucha-D! It’s all in the game!” Falco pulled the stick, changing gears and driving into the thick dustcloud ahead of him, obscuring literally everything.

  “The fuck?!” I shouted. “How can you even see anything?” I sent out a Ping immediately, just to make sure we weren’t crashing into another car or something.

  “The hell do I need eyes for? I know this track like the back of my hand, and I got a screen to tell me the rest” Falco claimed, “Speaking of hands, Lucha-D, keep your eyes fixed on mine. This right here? It’s my favorite part of racing!” He poked at a screen on the dashboard, currently keyed to this race. It contained our placing and a general map of the track. We were currently in the seventy-second place, out of seventy-two cars.

  “You wanna guess how long it’ll take for me to get to top ten, young buck?”

  “A minute?” I hazarded.

  “Twenty,” he said.

  “Wait—twenty minutes?” I asked. That sounded pretty terrible.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Never said nothing about no minutes, Lucha-D. I mean twenty seconds.”

  I looked back at the screen that still said seventy-second.

  “What’s this?” the song’s narrator said, “A mystery car has just entered the race! And he’s coming from behind! Like. A. Bullet!”

  “Start the count, D!”

  I started the count on my Kiroshis and said “Go.”

  “Can’t slow down this time,” the vocals finally arrived. “I gotta rev it up and go.”

  Falco changed gears and floored the pedal. The G-force instantly flattened me to the backrest. Falco then slammed a button on his dashboard and I felt a lurch in my stomach as my butt pushed against the seat. Having finally escaped the dust cloud, I could see what we were doing—landing on the roof of a Chevillon Emperor before driving over the windshield. Falco pressed his button again and the wheels jumped from the emperor, probably shattering the windshield in its wake and getting us extra speed as we then landed on the dirt again, this time, clocking in at a whooping two hundred klicks an hour.

  “I gotta keep it in the lines, tonight there’s blood on the road.”

  Falco pressed another button, a different one this time, and started driving closer to other cars. I could still barely make out shit through the dust, and was only able to see the cars through Ping. Falco’s only way to get visuals would have been one of the screens on the dashboard. I looked up at his face and saw that his eyes were fixed on that very screen, not what was in front of him. The cars we drove up against made loud popping sounds and began to slow down while we were only speeding up and getting closer to more cars. The hell was he doing? I craned my neck to look to the side of our car to satisfy my theory—yep, we had blades sticking out from the wheels.

  Fuck!

  Ahead of us was a row of tightly packed muscle cars, providing an uncrossable line that I couldn’t see Falco getting past—without using the fucking jump thing again at least. Was he going to?

  I looked around for a seatbelt actually, now almost certain that I definitely fucking needed one, but I found none. Jesus Christ.

  Falco rammed against the truck, twisting his car so the collision came at an angle, causing the truck to crash into one of its neighbors, opening a spot for us to shimmy through within a split second.

  “I keep the pedal down. They’re gonna know how this felt.”

  Then Falco started singing, his voice perfectly matching the vocals as he slammed into the big red button in the middle of the dashboard, firing a fucking harpoon at the biggest, baddest truck in the running. “No one gets into heaven…” The harpoon struck the back of the car, reeling us in at gut-wrenching speeds. Just as we were about to ram into the truck’s back, Falco pushed the jump button again, managing to wrench the harpoon back from the truck as we soared through the air, flipping the truck on its back on our way over the damn thing. “Without racing through hell!”

  The air finally cleared, allowing us to see the fucking track without instruments.

  My Kiroshis beeped and I yelled, “time!”

  I looked at the leaderboard—ninth. Just like he promised.

  “Eye for eye!” Falco belted, “Lap for lap! There's no turning back!”

  Then the narrator’s voice came back. “And he’s caught them! That’s one hell of a driver!”

  Were these the sort of mods that my car needed to win that corpo race? There was no way any of these were street legal.

  Falco changed gears again, kicking up our speed and pushing me against the backrest again so that we could catch up to the pack ahead of us—numbers nine, eight and seven.

  “You’ve got to slow down,” came a chorus of pessimistic voices. Falco then sang, “feels like my blood is runnin’ hot.”

  He swung the wheel violently and then the other way, against the turn? What—why? We were going to run straight off the track at that rate.

  But against the conventions of physics, the car turned against the steering wheel’s direction. The hell?

  “The needle’s in the red,” came the pessimistic chorus.

  “Gimme everything you got!” Falco sang. His drift raised up a plume of dust that carpeted numbers nine through seven as he pulled ahead of them. He straightened his wheels and sped off once more.

  I took note of that—turn one way to drift the other. Fuck, that was confusing. How did that even work?

  “Can’t escape! The blood and steel! Death behind the wheeeeeeeels!”

  “What the actual fuck, Falco?!” I breathed, my mouth dry as I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I swung my head at him as he grinned maniacally, staring straight ahead. “This is fucking nutty!”

  “Hah!” Falco cackled, “NC racin’, kid. It is what it is. I was just thinnin’ the herd is all—” Yeah, right! He fucking tore their asses up and probably caused a fifty-car-pileup in his wake. “They weren’t ever gonna win anyway, so it wasn’t like I was racing against them. Here on out, I’m playing straight as an arrow. Speakin’ off, you’re almost up, D. I’ll pull the top when the bogeys start crowding.”

  “Right!” I said, looking up ahead. We were in a three-kilometer long stretch of straight road now. “Also—is this your music, Falco?”

  “Damn right!” He grinned toothily. I looked down at his gear and saw that he was out of upshifts—already on the sixth and highest gear. We were moving fast, but the other cars were moving just as fast. "Used to ride with a band once, back when I thought makin' a quick stack o’ eddies meant strummin' chords instead o’ runnin’ jobs—when I wasn’t racin’, that is. Sang my guts out on a bunch o' ballads just to get ‘em to produce one damn track I believed in. Critics called us soft—said we didn’t got no bite—but I tell ya what, D… it was worth every damn note. Whole damn ride."

  We were still in seventh place by quite a few lengths—how we were going to catch up was beyond me. “I thought you said you were gonna win this, Falco.”

  “I ain’t even turned on my nitro, yet,” he grinned. Right. He rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a glass-like capsule filled with a bright blue liquid. With a swift motion, he uncorked a glass tank sitting between us, dropped the capsule inside, and twisted the top back on. The tank erupted in a burst of color, sending a stream of energy into the car’s hidden systems. Ahead of us, the engine roared to life, spitting blue flames. The G-forces slammed into me, pushing me back so hard it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Falco gripped the wheel with white-knuckled determination as the car surged forward, accelerating relentlessly—five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred kilometers per hour.

  Falco hammered the wheels as the song picked up with a sick guitar riff, “Faster! I can hear my heart beatin’!” Another riff. “Faster! Like a piston in my chest!” Numbers six and five failed to keep up as we sped past them, reaching eight hundred. “Faster! I’m a phantom racer, justice in a steel machine of death!”

  I noted that numbers six and five were the blue and black Sport R-7s that Falco’s friend had warned him about. True to form, I felt a ping about an impending Breach, and undid it as it arrived, sending my own cyberattack to keep them stalled.

  Number four was Buck himself, driving a Thorton Mackinaw pick-up truck, with a machine gun nest in the bed and a disgustingly oversized engine at the front that completely obscured the windshield. He was probably using a camera system to see past it.

  “Get on up now, D!” Falco yelled as he sent me a call. The top of the roof rolled back and I grabbed the tech rifle from the back before poking my head out and accepting the call.

  Falco: See anyone?

  D: Dust-cloud three klicks away, just about. Quadra Reavers.

  I focused my eyes and zoomed in on the cars, spotting a guy also poking out from the top of one car, an enormous rocket launcher on his shoulder, aimed at the race. Shit. Couldn’t shoot him from all the way here—he was fucking far away. I’d probably have better luck shooting the rocket out from the sky once it fired.

  D: I see a Wraith with an RPG—fuck, he just fired it. At us!

  Falco: Shoot the rocket, D.

  I activated the Sandevistan and lined the shot, waiting for the rocket to come closer as I charged the precision rifle to max power.

  When it was a hundred meters away, I finally fired.

  The bullet struck the flank of the rocket instead of the nose, but that was enough. It exploded mid-air.

  I heard the plink of gunfire at the back of our car and turned around to see some scumfucker at number nine take potshots at us. The out-of-towner whose systems I had attacked.

  D: Got a bitch in the back tryna shoot us—should I flatline him?

  Falco: eeeeeeh, fuck it. Guy should have known better.

  I pulled the trigger, detonating the shooter’s brains. His body went slack and wind resistance did the rest of the job, immediately pulling him from the vehicle, tossing him back. The driver looked behind in shock, and then up ahead at us. I showed him the finger and dragged my thumb over my throat before refocusing on the rapidly approaching Wraiths.

  Falco: turn up ahead—get in, D. Can’t afford drag for this one.

  I slid smoothly back into the car as we approached the turn—or series of turns as it were. A drift challenge along a canyon to our left and a cliff wall to our right. At least we’d be obscured from the incoming Wraiths on the right.

  “Watch closely, D,” Falco warned, his voice steady even as his hands moved like lightning. A part of me numbly noted that he was no longer singing. His fingers danced across the wheel with precise jerks, pulling it left, then right, each turn sharp, uncontrolled almost—but I knew better. Knew that I didn’t know shit, at least. There was no way that anything about this was uncontrolled. As I looked down at the snaking road between the unyielding cliff wall and the death drop, I knew that every maneuver of Falco’s would have to be perfectly precise for us to survive while still keeping our lead.

  He downshifted, then slammed the gearstick up a notch, revving the engine high before quickly easing the clutch in and out. The car’s tires screeched in protest, kicking up gravel as he drifted effortlessly into the first curve.

  He nudged the throttle, sending a burst of power through the wheels, then flicked the wheel hard to the left, throwing the rear end of the car wide into the canyon’s edge, causing me to grab my seat with all my might. His foot hovered over the brake for just a fraction of a second before he slammed it, shifting the car’s weight, making the back end snap sharply back onto the perfect trajectory.

  In a seamless, fluid motion, he punched the gas again, the car sliding sideways like a wild animal before he spun the wheel the opposite way, pulling us back into line, just inches from the cliff.

  “Hold on,” Falco muttered under his breath as the car whirled through the next set of turns, drifting with ease, each movement a perfect balance of speed, control, and reckless precision. The car's rear end swayed dangerously, but with each shift, every tap on the pedals, Falco kept us gliding effortlessly through the narrow canyon, leaving the Wraiths trailing far behind.

  “We got past the Wraiths!” I shouted.

  “Just the first group—still the ambush up ahead to consider, and any surprises that might crop up. ‘S why I’m keeping good ol’ Buck and the others up ahead. They’ll make a fine early warning system. Frontrunning’s a fool’s game, D, sure as.” I nodded numbly as we finally reached the bottom of the canyon. All that was left was an uphill slope and two other sharp turns. Falco upshifted to keep up with the rest, but didn’t look like he was able to overtake them. At this point, though, I knew better than to doubt that he was trailing behind on purpose. “Important question. What do you think about number one?”

  I looked down at the console, at the screen showing number one, in a violet Quadra Sport model, the R-7. As far as I could tell, the Sport series was built for speed whereas the Type 66 that most nomads, including Falco, seemed to drive were more for survivability. “They’re fast.”

  Falco snorted, “ain’t nobody in this entire race that I’d call fast. I’m talking about her looks, D. What do you think?”

  “Huh?” The Sport’s looks?

  Falco grinned cockily. “That right there’s my missus. Sure as shootin’. Only she don’t know it yet.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s the belle of the ball, D. She caught my eye from the jump. Beautiful car and a beautiful rider. She’ll learn my name once this race is over and done with. Ain’t a doubt in my mind that she’ll learn it.”

  I blinked. “Best of luck with that.”

  “Luck’s for suckers, kid,” he straightened his mustache and his voice took on a low, gravelly tone, “I don’t do luck. Roof, D—and keep that rifle charged up.”

  The roof rolled back and I hurried to obey, charging the rifle and keeping an eye out on the horizon, the back of the race and the front all at once.

  More Wraiths were approaching from a distance, these ones way closer. Buck’s car up ahead was already starting to rain a holy hellfire of fifty caliber gunfire on them—same with the other three cars up ahead, providing a thick veil of cover fire that stopped the incoming locust’s hail of Raffen Shiv dead in their tracks.

  Since they had that well handled, I focused up ahead at the race-track that was only now beginning to slope upwards for the last stretch.

  A pair of poles that looked like tesla coils sprung up from the dirt on either side of the road just as number one drove right through and immediately began to slow down.

  D: Falco!

  Falco: I saw—Buck’s doing, no doubt about it.

  He swerved to the side, going around the pole.

  And then slowed down. The fuck? Did we get hit as well?

  No way! The system was still online!

  Falco rolled down the window as he slowed to the speed of the sputtering Sport R-7 that the former number one was driving. “Need help, pretty mama?” He said as they both finally came to a stop.

  My eyes widened in shock at what I was seeing. Then I remembered Buck’s words:

  “Just remember, Falco—don’t start lettin’ yer pecker do the thinkin’ for ya. Never ends well.”

  He planned this.

  And Falco was falling for it! For fuck’s sake!

  The woman—beautiful, as Falco had noted—glared at him. She was blonde and her violet cat-like Kiroshis matched the color of her ride. “Fuck off!”

  With the main pack long gone and no more cover-fire to impede the Wraiths, they sped up ahead once more. Fuck. I activated my Sandevistan, though I kept the output low, and began to aim my tech rifle at one of the drivers of the fleet of eight cars making their way over. It had been three times that much before the frontrunners had gunned them down, but this was still too much for me, especially at this distance.

  I took aim and fired at one driver eight hundred meters away. I missed, instead hitting the windshield. Falco dove out from his car, popped the hood, grabbed some jumper cables and—

  I had to look up again at the Wraiths once I spotted another rocket launcher. Fuck! I had barely managed to hit the last rocket, too!

  I took a deep breath and remembered Falco’s advice. Keep cool. Remember your training—the hours spent at the gun range, raining hell on a target I imagined was Katsuo.

  I braced the tech rifle against my shoulder, aimed, and stilled my entire body. Once the rocket came close enough, I fired in between the gaps in my heart beats, just like Becca had taught me to.

  The bullet struck an inch off the nose, but still hit, exploding the rocket and granting us a quick reprieve via a smoke screen. I was getting closer to the target at least.

  I activated Ping. Then I fired through the smokescreen at where my Ping indicated there was a driver. This time, I managed to hit—from eighty meters away, just in range of my Ping. Two-ninety.

  Falco jump-started the R-7’s car. She gave him a wicked grin and sped away, the cables still attached to her fucking battery. The hood lowered by itself while Falco scrambled to get his ass into the car.

  D: Was it worth it?

  Falco: It will be

  I could hear his mischievous tone.

  Falco: Good job on the cover-fire, D, but it’s time you get your ass down and watch me win this shit.

  “If you lose this race because you couldn’t help yourself,” I groused as I dropped the rifle on the backseats and sat down once more.

  “Y’ain’t seen my turbo yet, Lucha-D,” Falco chuckled, his attitude still smooth as ice, and every bit as cool. His right hand reached over to a button encased in glass on the console, right in front of the nitrous tank. Without hesitation, he flipped the cover up and pressed it.

  If I thought we’d been fast before, I was dead fucking wrong. The car didn’t just accelerate—it detonated forward, the sudden boost making our three-hundred-kilometer-an-hour sprint feel like an old lady crawling out from a car wreck. My cheeks peeled back, my vision blurred, my entire body compressed against the seat as the G-force tried to crush me flat.

  Ahead of us, the track twisted violently—a brutal set of hairpin turns, the kind that would force even the most seasoned racers to slow down or risk hitting the forest of rocky outcroppings that would wreck any vehicle’s underside. But Falco? Falco didn’t slow down.

  Instead, he veered off the road entirely.

  For a moment, my brain screamed at me to activate the Sandevistan, to blink the hell out of this coffin on wheels before he buried us both. Then I saw it—an outcropping barely distinguishable from the rest of the jagged terrain. It wasn’t a ramp, not really, but it was just sloped enough. Enough for a madman like Falco to use it.

  I looked at the insanity in his grin and made my decision. No bailing. Not this time. I’d have faith in the crew’s getaway driver.

  The car hit the slope, and we flew.

  The track below was a blur of motion. The racers ahead were still grinding through the sharp turns, their vehicles fighting to maintain traction on the narrowest parts of the only safe road through the badlands. Falco? He was above them, soaring over the bends like they didn’t even exist.

  Beneath us, two cars struggled through the snaking canyon route, engines roaring as their tires clawed at the asphalt. They had no choice but to navigate each brutal turn. We had already bypassed them.

  Falco reached up, fingers tapping rapidly against a set of buttons on the ceiling. A shudder ran through the car. A second later, I realized why.

  Jet thrusters.

  A deep, bass-heavy whumpf sounded from beneath us, and the entire vehicle shifted. Not just forward—angled. Falco twisted us mid-air, orienting the car toward the final stretch of the race as we soared over the last remaining turn.

  Then, with his metal fist, he slammed the dashboard.

  With a hiss, two handles extended outward, resembling the control grips of a fighter jet. He yanked them free, then hammered his fist against the center, forcing the thrusters to push us forward at an even greater speed. The G-force slammed into my chest like a freight train and my eyes could hardly fathom the number I was seeing on the digital speedometer—there was no way we had just peaked at eleven hundred klicks an hour, even if it had been for just a second. I turned my eyes on the track, letting myself feel a moment of shame for ever thinking that I was fast.

  Being in the air was just cheating, though.

  Below us, the racers were only now breaking into the final stretch. They had taken the fastest, most traversable road available in the mess of rocks that littered the badlands. But Falco? Falco had just rewritten the rules, utterly erasing their lead and putting us in contention with number one.

  As the ground rushed up to meet us, he pulled the handles down, then let them go. With a snap, they retracted into the dash. He seized the wheel just in time for impact.

  The tires hit the road. The suspension screamed. Sparks exploded outward as we landed, but Falco was already correcting our trajectory, hands a blur as he stabilized the vehicle.

  And we weren’t alone.

  To our right, practically level with us, the violet R-7 roared ahead—the racer Falco had rescued. Somehow, some way, she had fought her way back into the lead.

  Falco grinned. I exhaled sharply, my heart still hammering.

  Final stretch. One racer left.

  This wasn’t over yet.

  He flashed a shit-eating grin at his window. I heard a kissing sound before he refocused ahead of him and made one last push. He pushed ahead by half a length before his grin died. “Fuck.”

  “What?!” I looked around—we were number one!

  “Out of juice,” he chuckled self-deprecatingly. “That move done bled us dry. And all them other bogeys been saving up for this last stretch.”

  I blinked at him. No. No, no, no! Not like this! I didn’t want to believe it.

  The finish line was right fucking there! And we were leading by half a length!

  Two hundred meters! One-fifty! One hundred!

  Then little miss R-7 pushed ahead of us effortlessly. I turned around to see numbers three and four do exactly the same. I felt possessed for a moment with the irresistible urge to flatline those fuckers before they took what was rightfully ours!

  God, this was painful.

  “Out of juice, not options.”

  Falco pressed another button. My eyes widened in shock—what would this one do?

  I heard a hail of gunshots behind us and turned to see a pair of machine gun barrels stick out at an upward angle at the back of the car, firing recklessly, but not at the competition. Only in the air. Crazy as he was, Falco did have a conscience.

  The recoil of the guns pushed us forward, letting us take back number three—then number two.

  But not number one, I noticed, feeling a deep disappointment at that fact. She was leading by an entire length. There was no way we would be catching up without—

  Falco pushed another button—detaching the entire fucking trunk from the car. Metal panels peeled off and littered the ground behind us, crunching under the tires of our competitors. The back window dropped as well. Then the panels surrounding the hind wheels.

  As a result of the reduced weight, falco’s car began to eat up the R-7’s lead.

  And I immediately knew what to do.

  I activated the Sandevistan, gently patted Falco’s shoulder, and retreated into the backseats, grabbing all my guns and shoving them into the guitar case before clicking it shut. Then I climbed out from the hole where the back window used to be, and crouched on the backmost ledge of the roof.

  I took a deep breath and jumped off from the ledge as hard as I could, floating in slow motion above the other cars. The race had been so much tighter than I had anticipated. When I finished flipping over, I landed roughly on the ground, already trying to run, trying to ignore the massive shock of energy that immediately shot through my body, shattering damn-near every bone in my lower body.

  I had to wait a precious few seconds for my body to barely reform into working order before booting up the Sandy to get out of the way. Falco’s car received one extra bit of speed from the reduced weight just as he dropped the machine guns from the car’s chassis, too. A literal tenth of a second later, it was over.

  Airhorns blared as both cars crossed the finish line, seemingly at the exact same time. “AND WE HAVE OUR WINNER BY PHOTO FINISH!”

  “What the fuck?!” I heard someone behind me shout and turned around to see a crowd of people waiting by the sidelines. Right, the spectators. “Did he just come out of that car?!”

  I eyed my Critical Progress just to see how much that landing had wrecked me. I was sitting at a staggering twenty-five percent. Sheesh.

  I muscled past the sidelines and ran up ahead for Falco’s car as he came to a stop nearly a hundred meters after the finish line. Unfortunately, an enormous crush of bodies stopped me from getting any closer to the car, but then I remembered—I was still on that call with him, wasn’t I?

  D: Falco, did we win?! Did we win?!

  Falco: Shit kid.

  My stomach dropped at that.

  Falco: I dropped damn near every bit of weight I had, and it still wasn’t enough.

  Fuck!

  Falco: But then… you went and threw your own ass out, too. Lost me a cool hundred and seventy pounds from that alone. Dangit kid, you took your guns out, too. That was quick thinking, sure as shootin’.

  My eyes widened in hope.

  The sound system blared to life, “YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS! THE WINNER IS THE SILVER TYPE-SIXTY SIX!”

  Falco: Whew

  I couldn’t believe it. I jumped up at the crowd, still holding onto my guitar case of weapons, and started swimming over their heads towards the car until I reached the roof.

  Then I took a deep breath, looked up at the sky, and shot both fists in the air.

  “WOOHOOOOOOOO!”

  https://discord.gg/W5BqBBym28