Page 112 of Blood & Throttle

Three…

Sin mounts behind me, silent. Her arms wrap tight around my middle, gloved fingers locking at my stomach. She presses close, her body heat a line of fire down my spine.

I lower my visor.

Two…

All around us, engines snarl to life. Exhaust howls into the tunnels, drowning out the sound of breath, of nerves, of heartbeats.

One…

The light snaps green.

And the world goes black.

We launch forward—no cheers, no sunlight, no sky. Just the hollow scream of twenty-two tires tearing into the cracked concrete of a tunnel built to swallow us whole.

The first curve comes fast. Too fast.

I drop a gear, yank the bars hard, and feel Sin lean with me. Her knee grazes the edge of the tunnel wall, sparks flying. I hear her laugh—short, breathless, unafraid.

Behind us, someone doesn’t make the turn. I hear the crunch of metal, the splatter of flesh, and the engine dying mid-scream.

One down.

The tunnel isn’t straight. It bends like a broken spine, buckling in places, rising in others. The darkness isn’t just an absence of light, it’s alive. Swallowing vision. Eating depth. Your eyes lie to you down here. Every shadow’s a threat. Every noise might be the last thing you hear.

My HUD flickers. A warning.

MOTION: 20m LEFT.

I cut right, banking around a collapsed grate. A rusted ventilation pipe explodes beside us—steam, noxious, and thick. One racer ahead catches it full-face. The gas bursts in a cloud of green haze, and he rides straight into it like he’s got a death wish.

“Wait for it,” I mutter.

Through the flicker of my HUD, I track the spike in his vitals. His bike jitters and he jerks to the left, coughing hard. The signal feed distorts.

“Shit,” Sin breathes into my comms.

He slams the wall headfirst, helmet splitting open like a cracked egg.

The impact alone would’ve been enough, but the bikeexplodes, engulfed in a bloom of fire that punches heat down the tunnel.

The blast lights the path ahead, flickering across oil-slicked steel and shattered barricades. For a second, everything’s visible. Twisted rebar. Blown-out tiles. Smoke curling like fingers.

Then darkness swallows it again.

Sin doesn’t look back, she just tightens her grip on me. “Tell me that was one of the assholes who spit at us in the pits.”

“Was.”

“Good.”

My HUD pulses red—gas pocket ahead. I flick the manual override, rerouting the sensor range. “Mask up,” I snap, even though I know she already has. “Next section’s loaded. Can’t count on the flames lighting our way again.”

“HUD’s still glitchy,” she says. “Visor keeps strobing.”

“Switch to thermal.”