Julian woke up in his bed. It was not his alarm that was waking him, but a call coming in. “Hello?” he said, his greeting also answering the call.

  “Hey, Julian, it’s Cass,” came Cass’s voice.

  “Yeah?” said Julian. He had not been expecting a call. After he had crumpled up the car yesterday, he and Riley had gone home. With no cars to drive, there was no point in them being there.

  “We need you to drive. How soon can you get here?”

  Julian blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes. “Drive what?” Their only intact car was not safe to drive, according to Elias.

  “The car,” said Cass.

  “What car?” Surely he did not mean the one Riley had driven.

  “Oh, right. You weren’t here,” said Cass. “We made new ones.”

  “You made new cars?” said Julian. He was still groggy with sleep and starting to wonder if this was not some sort of dream.

  “How soon can you get here?” said Cass. “Arch-Tech wants test runs. Actually, meet us at the Nova Cascadia Circuit. That’s where we’re going to test.”

  “Um, okay,” said Julian. “I’m on my way.” The plan had been to do the test runs at the Nova Cascadia track. It would allow them to see the actual speed against times from previous races. Julian had not been expecting to do so, so his schedule was all messed up. He called for one of the butlers to get breakfast, something he could eat on the road, and to call a car.

  A few minutes later, Julian was heading for the door. A butler handed him a package containing breakfast, and a quadcopter was waiting on the deck. Julian walked out; the high-altitude cool air contrasted with the bright rays of the sun already high in the sky. The quadcopter carried him from his father’s skyrise home toward the Nova Cascadia Circuit.

  At the track, Riley was already there. By her composure, it seemed she must have known about this ahead of time and had been up for a while.

  “Where are the cars?” said Julian. Riley pointed at the sky. A couple of specks were moving toward them. Soon they resolved into a pair of large helicopters with easily visible Arch-Tech Helixs on their sides. It was then that Julian noticed the film crew from yesterday was back, filming both the incoming choppers and his reactions to them.

  When the choppers landed, Cass and the rest of the team poured out of them along with Kade.

  “Good, you guys are here,” said Cass.

  “You really made new cars?” said Julian.

  “Yeah,” said Cass. Despite what should have been good news, it seemed to make Cass sick. “You guys ready to drive?”

  “I am,” said Riley.

  Julian looked over at Riley and her quick response. “Me too,” he said.

  They got into their race suits. By the time they were changed, sitting to the side of the track in a very photo-ready pose were two cars. They looked almost identical to the ones from yesterday, except for Julian’s, whose paint job had a bunch of scratches.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Sorry, I didn’t have time to fix the paint job,” said Vex, coming up to Julian. “We salvaged as much as we could, then made do with spares for the rest.”

  “But this one will hold up?” said Julian.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Vex. “We got the real stuff this time.”

  As Julian got into the survival tube of his car, he noticed a #2 marked on the hatch. He had not seen it yesterday, but it meant he was in the team’s second car. They had not even had a race yet, and Riley was already being thought of as the lead driver.

  He looked over at her. She was about to submerge into the gel, and he could see her breathing hard, trying to force herself into it. With a quick motion, she rushed down, and the hatch locked in place above her. Julian shook his head and casually slipped himself into the tube.

  Out on track, the first few laps were slow. This was supposed to be a repeat of yesterday’s shakedown to ensure the cars worked. Julian took the opportunity to play with the active aero, moving individual parts like an athlete testing their muscles before competing.

  After a few laps, they picked up the pace. Soon, they were at race pace, screaming down the straights at over 500 km/h and pulling close to ten g’s in the braking zones. It was a thrill. The AI, Aurora, was working well with Julian as he directed the car around the track. The one issue was Riley, who had pulled out quite a lead over him.

  Eventually, she was out of sight, leaving Julian alone on the track. “This is a good pace,” said Cass over the radio. The lap information was piped into Julian’s brain so he knew what he was doing. The times were enough to qualify for the Nova Cascadia Grand Prix, but not by much. And Riley was out there going a lot faster.

  A few laps later, Riley was coming up behind Julian to lap him. He could not see it, but knew this was being livestreamed. Given the numbers he had heard about yesterday, he could only imagine how many people must be watching them now. He did not want to be lapped by his teammate during a test run.

  Riley caught up with Julian on a straight, pulling alongside him as they came to the braking zone at the end. He tried to brake as late as he dared, but Riley was a little later. Julian was on the inside. He tried to move over closer to Riley to force her into a wider line and prevent the pass, but she must not have anticipated this. Instead, the cars came together.

  As luck would have it, their active aero panels slid in between each other and locked the cars together as they went into the corner, causing the cars to spin. They spun off track, across the run-off area and into a barrier.

  From inside the survival tube, Julian could not hear or feel the finer points of what happened to the car, but the feed into his neural implant told him that a lot of things broke. From the camera feeds around the car, he could see a debris field covering the whole runoff area.

  “What was that?” came Cass’s voice yelling over the radio.

  Julian knew he had messed up. “I’m sorry,” was all he could manage, but the radio stayed quiet, and no one spoke to him.

  It took a few minutes for several drones to move the cars back to the pit lane. As Julian got out of the survival tube, he saw Riley getting out of hers and running off, probably to a change room to compose herself after being locked in there. He looked down at his car; it was wrecked, different than yesterday, but there was no way the chassis was intact. Riley’s car was no better by the looks of things.

  No one was paying attention to Julian as he got out, though. The rest of the team was looking at Kade, who was on his phone and looked a little worried. Julian decided to put off getting changed for a few minutes and walked over to the group, still wet with the protective gel.

  “Okay, I understand,” said Kade into his phone. “Yes, I remember…I do think that’s correct…okay, I’ll tell them.” He hung up and looked at Cass. “I’m sorry, but according to the deal we made yesterday, Arch-Tech will be exercising its option to take direct control of Neon Pulse.”

  “What?” yelled Cass. His hand went to his forehead as he winced in pain. “The test went well. We had the speed.”

  “You don’t have any cars anymore,” said Kade. “Elias has confirmed that both chassis are damaged. You can’t meet the agreement.” Kade looked down, clearly not happy to have to say this. “Arch-Tech is not satisfied with your leadership and will replace you. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Excuse me?” said Cass. The rest of the team looked dumbfounded as they glanced at each other.

  Kade looked up at the sky where a large chopper was coming in. “That’s security. They will escort you out. They are also at the garage.”

  The chopper landed and released several dozen armed men with Arch-Tech Helixs emblazoned on their chests below the word ‘SECURITY.’ They quickly had the place controlled and were leading everyone, including Julian, away from the track.