Page 15 of Blood & Throttle

Up ahead, the track bottlenecks into a rigged kill zone, a brutal, Syndicate-designed execution trap. The kind of shit made to thin the herd, force collisions, and break necks.

If the track doesn’t kill us, the other racers will.

A bike ahead of me hits the wrong patch of asphalt—

Boom.

The explosion rattles my ribs, heat licking up my spine as metal, flames, and body parts scatter across the track.

The Gauntlet doesn’t just want blood. It demands it.

Flames roar outward, swallowing everything in their path.

The racer ahead doesn’t even have time to scream.

His bike shatters apart mid-air, chunks of twisted metal spinning off like shrapnel, one of the tires bouncing violently down the track before catching fire. His body—or what’s leftof it—bursts through the smoke, one arm still attached, the other torn away in the blast, flesh seared black, bones jagged and exposed.

I see his helmet bounce once, twice, then rolls off the track, visor cracked, blood pooling beneath it.

The heat still licks at my back, the scent of charred flesh and burning oil thick in my throat.

One down.

Too many left to go.

I don’t blink.

I don’t look back.

Because I’m still here.

For now.

I swerve hard, dodging a wreck, my chest heaving, heart hammering. The bike underneath me groans, the engine struggling, but I don’t ease up on the throttle.

Then I hear it.

A click. A sharp, high-pitched beep.

The kind of sound that means I’m already dead.

I glance down. A blinking red light near my exhaust.

Fucking hell. An explosive dart.

I don’t have time to think.

Another sharp, high-pitched beep kicks in, and a flashing red lights up on my frame, blinking like a goddamn countdown.

Five seconds.

Four.

Panic claws up my throat, but I shove it down, twisting hard on the throttle. I can’t stop. Can’t slow down. If I jump now, I’ll wipe out. If I stay on, I’ll be fucking vaporized.

Three.

The thunder of an engine cuts through the chaos as Riot pulls up alongside me.