Page 92 of Knot So Fast
This isn't today's race.
The car feels different, responds differently. The weight distribution is off, the steering heavier, the whole machine fighting me instead of working with me. But I know this track—know it in my bones, in the way my body automatically adjusts for the cambered corner coming up, in the way my foot eases off the throttle at exactly the right microsecond.
"Push harder, Vale!" A voice crackles through my earpiece, harsh and demanding. "We need that podium! The sponsors are watching!"
I want to tell the voice to fuck off, that I'm already pushing as hard as the car will allow, that something feels wrong in the suspension that's making the rear end twitchy. But before I can respond, I see them in my mirrors—two cars working in tandem, closing fast with the kind of coordinated precision that speaks of planning, not racing.
They're not trying to pass me.
They're hunting me.
"Fuck!" The curse rips from my throat as the first car clips my rear wheel, sending me into an immediate spin. The world becomes a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds—sky, track, barriers, sky again—as physics takes over and my car becomes a two-ton projectile with me trapped inside.
I fight for control, my arms burning with the effort of trying to wrestle the wheel back to center, but it's useless.
The second impact comes from the left, a deliberate ram that sends me careening toward the barriers at an angle that makes my stomach drop because I know—I know—what comes next.
The barrier approaches in slow motion and hypervelocity simultaneously. I have enough time to thinkthis is going to hurtand no time at all before impact. The crushing force of deceleration slams me forward, the harness cutting into my shoulders as it fights to keep me in place.
Metal screams and tears, carbon fiber shatters into deadly shards, and then?—
Fire.
It starts small, just a flicker of orange in my peripheral vision. But in seconds it's everywhere, crawling across the cockpit like a living thing, hungry and searching. The heat is instant and overwhelming, turning my racing suit from protection to prison.
I can't breathe—the fire is eating all the oxygen, replacing it with toxic smoke that burns my lungs with every desperate gasp.
My hands fumble with the release mechanisms, but they're jammed.
Everything is jammed.
The cockpit that's supposed to protect me has become a crematorium, and I'm going to burn alive, I'm going to?—
"HELP! SOMEONE—" My voice cracks, dissolves into coughing as smoke fills my lungs.
The fire is so close now I can feel my skin starting to blister beneath the suit.
This is how I die.
This is how it ends.
Not in glory but in agony, cooked alive in a carbon fiber coffin while millions watch on television?—
My eyes snap open as I bolt upright, a strangled gasp tearing from my throat.
I'm drenched in sweat, sheets twisted around my legs like restraints, my heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my teeth. My hands are shaking—no, my whole body is shaking, tremors running through me like aftershocks of trauma my mind won't let me fully remember.
"Fuck," I breathe, pressing my palms against my eyes hard enough to see stars. "Fuck, fuck,fuck."
The nightmare—memory?—is already fading at the edges, leaving behind only phantom heat and the acrid taste of smoke that can't possibly be real.
My racing suit from earlier is draped over a chair across the room, and just looking at it makes my skin crawl with remembered pain that shouldn't exist.
The vibration of my phone cuts through the panic, the familiar ringtone grounding me back in the present.
In Lachlan's bed. In his private suite. Safe. Alive. Not burning.
I reach for the device with hands that are still trembling slightly, frowning at the way my fingers don't want to cooperate properly.
