Page 156 of Knot So Fast
There's cursing from multiple voices, panic and professionalism warring in the chaos of communication. But I can smell gasoline stronger now, and smoke is starting to fill the cockpit. My nose is definitely broken—blood flowing freely, making it hard to breathe.
I try to reach for the harness release but my hands won't cooperate. The impact has left me dizzy, disoriented, and I can barely keep my eyes open. Through the cracked visor of my helmet, I can see flames starting to lick at the rear of the car.
The déjà vu is overwhelming. Fire and race cars, the combination that nearly killed me before. But unlike last time, I don't have the energy to panic. There's an odd calm that comes with accepting that if no one gets me out of here soon, I'm done.
My mind drifts to the argument with Lucius—when was that? What was he involved in that had me so upset? The memory feels important but slippery, like trying to hold water in cupped hands.
Movement outside catches my attention. Dimitri is struggling to walk, his left leg clearly injured from his own impact, but he's limping toward my car with determination. When he reaches me, he doesn't hesitate—dropping to his kneesdespite what must be agony and starting to kick at the already cracked glass.
"Blyad!" he curses in Russian, then switches to English. "You better fucking be alive, Vale. I'm not losing my leg because of your dead weight."
I try to laugh but it comes out as more of a wheeze. "Funny, but I still hate your guts."
"Likewise," he grunts, finally breaking through enough glass to reach inside. His hands are steady despite everything as he finds the harness release, and I hear the blessed click of freedom. "You gotta help me out here, Vale. I'm on my last legs. Literally."
"I'll try to crawl," I manage, though my body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.
Together, we struggle to extract me from the inverted cockpit. Every movement is agony, my ribs screaming in protest, my head spinning from being upside down and the impact. Dimitri pulls while I push, inch by painful inch, until finally I'm free.
"Move, move, move!" he gasps, and we crawl across the grass like wounded animals, him dragging his ruined leg, me fighting to stay conscious.
The smoke is getting thicker, blacker, and I can hear the fire spreading. People are running toward us—marshals, medics, someone screaming into a radio—but they seem impossibly far away.
We make it maybe twenty meters before we both collapse, completely spent. I'm on my back, staring at the perfect blue Canadian sky, when the explosion happens.
The sound is enormous—a crushing wave of pressure and heat that makes us both flinch even at this distance. What's left of my car is now a funeral pyre, burning with the kind of intensity that would have left nothing of me to bury.
"My brakes," I whisper, because it seems important to say it out loud. "They wouldn't work."
Dimitri turns his head to look at me, his face pale under the dirt and blood. "Mine jammed too."
The implication sits between us like a physical thing. Both our cars, both our brakes, at the same time. This wasn't mechanical failure or bad luck. We were sabotaged.
"You crashed into me on purpose," I whisper, the realization hitting through the fog of shock and pain.
He says nothing for a long moment, then mutters, "You got balls for an Omega, Vale. You don't deserve to die."
It's the last thing I hear before the darkness claims me, pulling me under into blessed unconsciousness where there's no fire, no pain, no questions about who wanted us dead and why.
Just silence.
And then nothing.
I pass out.
PRESS ROOM REVELATIONS
~LACHLAN~
The conference room at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve feels like a morgue dressed up as a media center. Every face in the crowd of reporters wears the same expression—that particular blend of professional concern and barely concealed excitement that comes when tragedy makes for good headlines.
I sit at the long table, my face a mask of nothing, feeling everything and showing none of it. My hands are folded on the table in front of me, and if you look closely, you can probably see the half-moon marks where my nails have dug into my palms. But the cameras won't pick that up. They'll see what I want them to see—the four-time world champion maintaining his composure in the face of crisis.
The thing is, I'm not composed. I'm barely holding it together.
The image of Auren's car flipping—going airborne in that sickening way that defies physics and reason—plays on repeat in my mind. The explosion that followed, the fireball that could have been her funeral pyre if Dimitri hadn't...
I force the thought down, lock it away with all the other things I can't afford to feel right now.
