Page 141 of Blood & Throttle

I bare my teeth inside the helmet. “Bring it, motherfuckers.”

We hit the first split. Riot doesn’t hesitate, he takes the upper route, a half-collapsed spiral bridge made of glass and hell. One wrong move and we’ll eat sky.

I lean with him, body moving like second skin. Behind us, a racer overshoots the bend. Their scream cuts short, replaced by the sound of metal shattering against the Verge’s bones.

“One down,” I mutter into the comms. “Verge's hungry.”

Riot’s voice growls back. “Let it choke.”

The road twists into a tunnel—a vibrating throat of strobe lights and glitching holos. The walls pulse with swirling color, shapes melting into each other like someone spilled a neon rainbow and then set it on fire. The panels shift and glitch, bending the space around us in that kaleidoscope-from-hell way that makes your brain want to leak out your ears.

“Don’t stare at it,” Riot snaps through the comms. His voice is sharp, cutting through the noise like a blade. “It’s designed to disorient.”

I smirk even as I squint against the madness. “You’re the one driving. Maybeyoushould avert your fucking eyes.”

“Eyes are locked on the road, Little Stray. You just lock onto me.”

I roll mine behind the visor but don’t argue. He’s right. We can’t afford even a half-second fuckup, not on this track. Not with Syndicate lapdogs waiting to cash in on our corpses.

So I keep my focus where it belongs.

On him.

On the race.

On surviving.

Because there’s no mercy in the Neon Nightmare. Only the wreckage of whoever blinks first.

We drop into the guts of the city—glass tunnels lit from below, oil-slick roads alive with traps. Riot jerks us left just as a plasma dart shoots from a side panel, melting the wall behind us.

My HUD pings red.

TOXIC GAS POCKET DETECTED. IMPACT: 3… 2…

“Left side, now!” Riot barks, voice slicing through the comms like a knife.

We veer sharp just as a side panel hisses open and a thick green vapor surges into the track. It pours like a living thing, tendrils licking across the asphalt.

“Press the button on the left side of your helmet,” Riot says quickly. “Now, Sin. Filters’ll kick in.”

I fumble for the switch, thumb jamming it hard. My visor dims but nothing happens. No filter. No sync. Just static crawling across my display and a spike of heat behind my eyes.

“Shit. It’s not working.”

“Fuck. Strap in.” Riot’s voice is pure command now, sharp and cold. “Use the rig on the left side. Clip it to my belt, tight.”

I don’t hesitate. My fingers scramble to find the strap on the bike’s emergency harness. I lock it to the ring at his hip, yanking it twice until it bites deep into my waist.

Then everything goes sideways.

A blur of chrome slams into us from the right—another racer, masked, snarling, knife drawn. Riot jerks the bike to dodge the blade, clips the bastard’s rear wheel, and sends him spinning across the glass track like a firework gone wrong.

And that’s when the gashits me.

It burns down my throat, coils around my skull, and floods my brain with static. The world tips. My HUD shatters into symbols I can’t read. I see flashes—Doc, my sister, blood on my hands that isn’t mine. Riot’s voice is yelling something in the comms, but it sounds underwater.

Then nothing.