The starter—a girl with neon green hair and a crop top that said "FINISH LINE"—strutted between the two cars.
The crowd pressed closer, phones out, livestreaming to private channels that would vanish by morning. Someone had brought industrial floodlights, turning the underpass into an amphitheater of concrete and shadow.
Jayden's hands rested loose on the wheel, his breathing steady. Beside him, Rico's GT-R growled like something hungry. The Nissan had maybe half the McLaren's price tag but twice the soul—built, not bought. Rico had turned wrenches on every modification himself.
"Quarter mile!" the starter shouted over the noise. "River Street to the storm drain. Ten grand buy-in!"
She raised a red bandana high above her head. The crowd noise died to a whisper. Engines snarled in the sudden quiet.
Jayden's foot found the accelerator, holding the revs at exactly 3,000 RPM. The McLaren's computer brain calculated optimal launch parameters, traction control ready to save him from himself. All that technology, all that engineering perfection, and in about forty-five seconds he'd find a way to lose anyway.
The bandana dropped.
The world exploded into motion and sound.
Both cars launched hard, but Rico got the better start—his practiced clutch control beating Jayden's paddle-shifted precision by half a car length. The crowd erupted as they shot forward, two missiles aimed at the same target.
First gear disappeared in a heartbeat. Second gear came with the McLaren's turbo spooling into violent life. Jayden felt the acceleration press him back, that familiar sensation of the world stretching like taffy.
The speedometer climbed past 60, 70, 80...
He caught Rico at the hundred-yard mark, the McLaren's superior power starting to tell. This was the part where he usually held back, kept it close. Make it look good for the crowd, Rico had said.
But something felt different tonight.
The steering wheel trembled in his hands—not the normal vibration of speed, but something else. Something wrong. The engine note changed, a subtle harmonics shift that shouldn't exist in a perfectly tuned machine.
Third gear. They were side by side now, Rico glancing over with that practiced confidence. The GT-R was maxing out, but Rico knew the script.
Any second now, Jayden would make his mistake.
The trembling intensified. Jayden's vision blurred for a fraction of a second, the world swimming sideways.
What the fuck?
He hadn't been drinking. The pre-race burger couldn't have been bad—he'd eaten from Nobu a hundred times.
120 mph. The storm drain finish line rushed toward them.
Then the world cracked.
Not the car—reality itself. For one impossible moment, Jayden saw everything. Every possible line through the corner ahead. Every micro-adjustment Rico was about to make. The exact moment a teenager in the crowd would drop his phone. The precise angle of wind that would hit them in 1.3 seconds.
Time stretched like molten glass.
His hands moved without conscious thought, making corrections for events that hadn't happened yet.
The McLaren carved through space with surgical precision, finding a racing line that shouldn't exist. He saw Rico's eyes widen in his peripheral vision as the orange missile pulled ahead by inches, then feet.
The finish line—
Pain exploded through Jayden's skull like someone had driven a railroad spike through his temple. His vision went white. The McLaren's rear end stepped out as his hands spasmed on the wheel.
At 127 miles per hour, physics stopped being forgiving.
The car went sideways in a spray of tire smoke and burning rubber. Jayden fought for control, muscle memory battling against the agony in his head. The concrete barrier rushed toward him in slow motion.
He could see every crack, every piece of graffiti, every impact that was about to—
The McLaren struck the wall at an angle, the carbon fiber body work exploding in a shower of orange fragments. The force of impact triggered every airbag simultaneously, turning the cockpit into a white cocoon. The car bounced off the barrier, spinning like a demented top across four lanes before coming to rest against the far wall.
Silence.
Then screaming. Running feet. Someone yelling about calling 911—no, fuck that, no cops. Get him out, get him OUT!
Through the spiderweb of cracked glass and deflating airbags, Jayden could see figures rushing toward him. But they moved so slowly, like they were running through honey. His head felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.
Blood ran down his face from where his head had struck something despite the airbags.
It dripped onto his white designer shirt, each drop falling with impossible clarity. He could see the blood cells separating from the plasma, could count the individual platelets if he wanted to.
What the fuck was happening to him?
Strong hands pulled at the butterfly door, forcing it open with a screech of protesting metal. Rico's face appeared, genuine fear replacing his usual swagger.
"Jayden! Jay, you good? Talk to me, man!"
Jayden tried to speak, but the words came out slurred. His vision kept switching—normal, then that horrible clarity where he could see everything, then back again. Like someone channel-surfing between reality and something else.
"—need to get him to a hospital—"
"—can't, cops will—"
"—fuck the cops, look at him—"
The voices blended together into white noise. Jayden felt hands pulling him from the wreckage, felt the cool night air on his face. The pain in his head peaked, a crescendo that made him scream.
Then, for just a moment, everything stopped.
The pain. The noise. The chaos. All of it frozen like a photograph.
Jayden stood in the eye of the storm, watching his own body being pulled from the McLaren. He could see himself bleeding, unconscious now. Could see Rico shouting orders. Could see the crowd with their phones out, some recording, others calling for help.
He could see further, too. The police cruiser that would arrive in four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. The ambulance that would follow two minutes later. The trajectory of every piece of debris from his car. The exact amount of force it would take to—
Reality snapped back like a rubber band.
Jayden gasped, back in his body, being laid on the concrete. Someone had wadded up a jacket under his head. Faces crowded above him, backlit by the industrial floods. Their mouths moved but the words took forever to reach him.
"—stay with us—"
"—so much blood—"
"—his eyes, look at his fucking eyes—"
Rico leaned close, his face pale. "Jay, your eyes, man. They're... they're doing something weird."
Jayden tried to focus, but his vision kept fracturing. One moment Rico had one face. The next, he had a dozen, each showing a different possible future. In one, Rico called the cops. In another, he ran. In a third, he—
The pain returned, worse than before. Jayden's back arched off the concrete as electricity seemed to run through every nerve. Someone was screaming. Maybe him.
Through the agony, one thought crystallized:
He hadn't thrown the race.
For the first time in six months, he'd actually tried to win. And the moment he had—
The moment he'd stopped playing games—
Everything had gone wrong.
'Or maybe,' a voice whispered in the back of his fracturing mind, 'everything had finally gone right.'
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer. The crowd began to scatter, loyalty evaporating in the face of legal consequences. But Rico stayed, holding Jayden's shoulders as he convulsed on the cold concrete.
"What's happening to me?" Jayden managed to gasp out between waves of pain.
Rico's face was grim. "I don't know, brother. But your eyes... they're glowing."
The last thing Jayden Cross saw before the darkness claimed him was his own reflection in Rico's phone screen. His eyes—normally dark brown—were crackling with threads of electric blue light, like lightning trapped in amber.
Then the world went black, and Jayden Cross fell into dreams of infinite possibilities.