Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“Good start, good start,” Bex encourages. “Hold your line into Turn 1.”
I do, braking hard, my body lurching. I feather the pedal, dive inside and snatch a single position, which is a victory in and of itself. The car twitches but I straighten it and floor it out of the corner.
Two laps in and I’ve clawed up to P12. The pack is thick, every car ahead a driver in the seat that wants it as much as I do. Sweat slicks down my spine and my throat is raw from the breezing in through the duct in my helmet. The straw of my hydration system brushes against my lips and I catch it long enough for a sip. The water’s lukewarm, but it cuts the sandpaper edge.
Lap seven—yellow flags ahead. The Freedom Dynamics car has spun out, rejoining the fray clumsily. I juke wide, heart in my throat, and manage to clear him safely.
“Careful… nice save,” Bex says.
“That was close.” I respond flatly. I’m locked in, and I’ve already forgotten it. I can only look forward.
The laps blur. Corners, straights, overtakes, all muscle memory. Adrenaline narrows the world. Bex continues to offer instruction and feedback, guiding me up two more positions to the tenth spot, which will earn us points.
Then lap eleven.
We charge down the back straight, cars strung together in a tight line, our DRS flaps open and tilted like wings. The air shudders around me as the slipstream pulls us faster, each of us fighting for inches. Carlos is directly ahead of me, locked onto the Matterhorn car in front of him, ready to pounce.
“Car left, car left!” Bex shouts, warning me someone’s pulling along my blind side. I twitch the wheel to cover, but I’m a fraction too late…
A rush of turbulent air smashes against me as another car edges close, shoving mine sideways. The back end wriggles out from under me, and for a heartbeat I feel the car slipping away. My stomach lurches, panic surging, but I wrench the wheel and wrestle it back under control. The save costs me, though—by the time I’ve steadied it, the burst of speed I had is gone.
“Good recovery,” Bex commends, and I huff out a breath of relief.
But up ahead, everything starts to unravel. The Matterhorn in front of Carlos brakes too late going into the chicane and his rear tires lock. I watch his car snap sideways across the racing line and Carlos has to throw on his brakes to avoid colliding with him.
It all happens so fast and I’m about a tenth of a second away from running up on them.
I hit my own brakes hard, the shriek of tortured rubber piercing through my helmet. My car shudders violently as the nose drifts sideways, jolting across the flat runoff strip. I am no longer in control.
And then I see him. Carlos. Directly in my path.
He swerves to avoid the Matterhorn, instinctive brilliance in motion, the kind of lightning-fast move that can be the difference between avoidance and catastrophe. But the track is too narrow, the space already gone and I just can’t avoid him. My front wheel catches his side as he cuts across. The impact jolts through me, violent and final, and Carlos’s car is launched into a dizzying spin. I hear metal shrieking against asphalt as he whirls out of control.
Time slows. I see everything with clarity.
Carlos’s car lifts into the air, spinning like it’s caught up in a tornado but then gravity calls. His nose pitches downward and I watch in horror as his chassis slams front end first into the exposed end of the Armco barrier. The force is monstrous, the sound of the impact sickening. The car crumples like an accordion on itself, the sound of metal tearing like paper.
The red flag indicator on my dash burns bright and an audible warning in my helmet rings. But I don’t need those to tell me what I already know… this is very bad.
I continues to skid, until hitting the barrier and coming to rest with my nose facing Carlos. My heart is hammering so hard I can’t breathe and tears burn my eyes as I see the mangled wreckage of his car, half-folded against the barrier.
Bits of debris litter the asphalt, tires sheared clean off and scattered like broken bones. The rear of Carlos’s car is gone, shredded into unrecognizable scraps.
But the survival cell is still there. The cockpit—his only shield—rests at a crooked angle against the barrier, scarred and stripped bare but whole. That’s what it’s designed to do… withstand major impacts.
Except inside, Carlos isn’t moving. His helmet lolls, body limp against the belts, and the sight twists something deep in me.
While the cell is virtually indestructible, I know the truth… it doesn’t have to crumble to destroy him. The force alone—the violence of a car stopping faster than the human body was ever meant to endure—can do what twisted metal can’t. My breath saws out in short, shallow gasps, every muscle locked, waiting for any sign of life. A twitch, a hand, anything.