Page 179 of Knot So Fast
The regret tastes like copper and wasted time.
The braking zone approaches—150 meters, 100 meters, 50—and I move my foot to the brake pedal for the heavy deceleration required. We're doing 320 kilometers per hour, and we need to shed over 200 of those in the space of a heartbeat.
My foot goes down.
The pedal doesn't move.
"Fuck!" The curse rips from my throat as I pump the brake, trying to build pressure that isn't there. The pedal is solid, locked, like someone's wedged a steel bar behind it.
"What's wrong?" Harrison's voice crackles through the radio, sharp with sudden concern.
The car is starting to vibrate, the engine confused by the lack of deceleration. The hairpin rushes toward us, that tight right-hander that's claimed more victims than any other corner on this circuit. At this speed, without brakes, I'm not going to make it. The physics simply don't exist.
I pump the pedal again, harder, desperate. Nothing. The hydraulics are completely locked, probably the same sabotage that nearly killed Auren in Canada. How did we miss this? How did Terek get to my car when Kieran said he'd checked everything?
Unless Kieran didn't check everything. Unless in the chaos of Auren's "death" and resurrection, in the emotional devastation of thinking we'd lost her, someone made a mistake. Left a window of opportunity that Terek exploited.
I'm going to crash.
The realization hits with crystalline clarity. At 300 kilometers per hour, heading into a corner that requires dropping to maybe 60, with no brakes and nowhere to go, I'm going to hit that barrier like a missile. The car will disintegrate.And at this speed, at this angle, the survival cell might not be enough.
"My brake is jammed," I whisper into the radio, the words feeling like a confession, like an epitaph.
The entire team channel goes silent. That specific silence that comes when everyone realizes simultaneously that they're about to watch something terrible happen.
"What?" The voice that cuts through is unmistakably Auren's, her cover blown in her panic. But there's no time to process that revelation, no time for anything except the wall of Armco approaching at fatal velocity.
I grit my teeth, hands locked on the steering wheel, already bracing for impact. Maybe if I get the angle right, if I can somehow scrub enough speed, if the safety systems hold?—
Lucius's eyes widen as he reads my face, understanding dawning in that twin telepathy we've always denied having. He knows. Sees the locked posture, the desperate pumping of my brake pedal, the trajectory that's going to send me into the barrier at unsurvivable speed.
Time dilates the way it does in moments of absolute crisis. Seconds stretch into hours, heartbeats become drum solos, and I have enough time to think about everything I'm about to lose.
Auren, who came back from death three times only to watch me die on the track.
My team, who'll blame themselves for not catching the sabotage.
My parents, who'll lose a son to the sport that defined our family.
And Lucius, who'll have to live with watching it happen, being right there and unable to help.
Except—
His car moves. Not away from me, creating space for the inevitable crash. Toward me. A deliberate, calculated movement that speaks of instant decision and terrible mathematics.
"No—" I start to say, but it's already happening.
Lucius turns his wheel hard right, bringing the nose of his Ferrari into my sidepod with surgical precision. Not a racing incident, not a desperate move for position, but a deliberate sacrifice. He's using his car as a battering ram, taking the impact to redirect my trajectory away from the barriers.
The contact is violent. Carbon fiber explodes in a shower of black shrapnel. Both cars lift onto two wheels, and for a moment we're flying, suspended in that terrible space between control and chaos.
My car spins, the world becoming a kaleidoscope of track and sky and barriers. But the impact has changed my vector—instead of head-on into the Armco, I'm sliding sideways across the runoff area. The gravel trap catches my car, slowing it with violent jerks that make my teeth rattle, but it's survivable. The barrier approaches in slow motion, and when I finally hit, it's a glancing blow that crumples the rear wing but doesn't penetrate the survival cell.
I hear Auren's car scream past, her engine note rising as she floors it through the corner we couldn't take. She's going to make it. Going to win. Going to secure the championship despite everything Terek tried to do to stop us.
But Lucius?—
His car took the worst of our impact. The Ferrari is airborne, rotating on multiple axes in that sickening way that means all control is lost. It's not sliding or spinning—it's tumbling, each impact with the ground launching it higher, making the next impact worse.
