Page 190 of Blood & Throttle

“Knock it off,” he mutters, shifting in the seat as I give him one last stroke. “We didn’t survive all that just to crash and die because you can’t keep your damn hands to yourself.”

I hum low, dragging my hand back slowly, fingers curling just a little tighter around him. “Suppose you’re right,” I whisper near his ear, voice dripping sin. “Shame though. All this adrenaline and the way this bike hums under us…” I squeeze him, just enough to make him twitch. “I can practically feel it—how tight my pussy would grip you… while you slam into me, over and over.”

He groans. “You’re gonna fucking kill me.”

I grin wider and laugh as I pull my hand from his pants and grip his waist. “At least you’d die happy.”

And with that, we ride. Into whatever the hell comes next.

Because they said only one racer would survive.

But they didn’t count on us.

And the world?

Well, it’s about to learn who the fuck we are.

Epilogue

Ghost

Seven Nation Army - The Glitch Mob Remix

Dead Sector D11 – Abandoned relay station, 3:03 a.m.

I sparkup a joint as I log into WireSplice.

The flame catches with a softchhk, bright for half a second before it fades. Synthetic blend, laced with a stimulant that keeps the edges sharp and the heart slow. Tastes like copper and burned-out circuits. Doesn’t matter. I need the hum.

The bunker smells like fried wire, raccoon piss, and mold. Somewhere in the wall, a rat’s dying. Sounds like it’s trying to take the pipes with it. Three floors underground in a relay station no one’s touched since before the Syndicate fell, I rerouted the door locks and rewired the perimeter cams my first night here.

No one’s found me.Yet.

One monitor runs motion-sensing thermal feeds from outside. Another cycles through decrypted OmniCast updates I scraped from the back end last week. A third’s locked onforum chatter across modding networks. The last two are mine—custom split-screens tracking power usage, signal pings, and dead drops that haven’t activated. The walls flicker with spill-light from their glow, and I’m wired straight in through my headset, patched to the cranial jack behind my right ear.

Home sweet hellhole.

The air here buzzes like old code trying to hold on, and a guy like me, I fit right in.

I’m scrolling through a garbage thread about signal feedback when I see her. Not her face. Not her voice. Just a reply. Terse. Brutal. Flawless.

“You’re frying your cap delay with a feedback choke. Either your coil’s unshielded or you bought your gear from a corpse. Cut power, reroute, stop being stupid.”

Username: glitch588

Clean. Sharp. Doesn’t care if anyone likes it. No emotes. No soften-the-blow niceties. Just the truth, like a bullet with a serial number filed off.

I read it twice. Then a third time. Then I open her post history.

Sixteen replies across a range of boards—SignalLoopers, ModNest, GhostNetArchive. Each one clipped, technical, correct. Zero tolerance for incompetence. She’s not trying to be helpful. She’s trying to end the conversation. That alone makes her rare.

And yeah, I know she’s agirl.

The username doesn’t tell me much. Could be anyone. Most are. But her syntax? That’s the tell. She types like she’s been ignored more than she’s been answered. Not corrected—dismissed. Every post clipped clean, no fluff, no patience. Like she’s allergic to small talk and done waiting for people to catch up.

There’s a pattern in her code—too defensive to be casual, too surgical to be performative. That’s not a girl trying to impress. That’s someone who only speaks after biting her tongue down to the root.

Men posture. Women defend.