Page 96 of Hyperspeed
“So I ran. I ran before you could wake up and confirm my fears. In my mind, I thought I was making it easier—for you, for me. I was protecting myself, because as much as I want people to think so, I’m not infallible.”
I panted, chest heaving.
“I’m fragile, just like everyone else. The only difference is that I hide it better.”
My eyes burned, mirroring the anger that consumed me from the inside out. But I wasn’t angry with Kai. I was furious with myself for bottling it up, for lacking the courage to speak like the adult I believed I was.
Now it had exploded like a shaken soda can, and the pressure was too much. I’d blown up, dragging Kai down as collateral damage, and he was going to hate me for it.
I sat in silence, alone with the hum of my engine and the roar of the thrusters. I wanted to say his name, to plead with him to speak, but fear held me back. I couldn’t face the dreaded confirmation.
The radio crackled. “Rev, I—”
I didn’t hear what he said because the team radio kicked in, overriding the other frequencies. Kai’s voice cut out, replaced with the frantic voice of my engineer, Kileen.
“Rogue meteor heading straight for you, Rev. We missed it on the radar. You need to—”
Something hit the side of my vehicle with such force my helmet smacked the glass dome covering the cockpit.
“Shit!”
My vision swam, and when it cleared, the world was spinning. Not from a head injury, but because my vehicle had veered off the race line, crossed the track boundary, and plunged straight into the surrounding asteroid belt.
“Rev, are you okay?” I heard Tavoris ask, but I didn’t respond. I was too busy shaking off the fog in my brain, white-knuckling the wheel.
I hit the button for my backup thrusters, the ones meant to stabilise the vehicle, but nothing happened. An insistent beeping filled the cockpit, and that made my stomach drop.
The asteroid hadn’t just clipped me; it had obliterated the thrusters on the right side. The left ones were still firing, but with nothing to counterbalance them, all they did was spin me wildly, making the damage worse with every sickening rotation.
I fought between trying to stop the spinning and not throwing up inside my helmet. If this is what the Tilt-a-Whirl felt like at the theme park, I was glad I’d missed out as a kid.
Slamming the button to kill the thrusters, I powered down everything but the radio, hoping it would stop the dizzying spin.
It didn’t.
Another comet struck with a deafening crash, throwing me sideways.
I barely had time to see the mass of rock looming beside me before we collided. The impact shattered the asteroid into a thousand shards, debris pelting my vehicle like bullets. It chipped the glass above my head, while metal shrieked and bent. A large chunk slammed into the side panel, crumpling it inward.
Pain exploded through my lower leg, white-hot and blinding, like fire tearing through my nerves. I screamed, but it sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.
The vehicle stopped spinning, leaving me hanging in deep space, surrounded by debris.
My hands clenched the steering wheel, but I couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t feel anything except the buzzing in my head. Shock was setting in, my body beginning to tremble, and all I could do was sit and wait for the medical shuttle to arrive.
My team talked, saying words I couldn’t comprehend. I was too busy drifting away in my head, floating somewhere I could just relax for a while, ignoring the shitshow going on around me.
And at the edge of it all, Kai’s voice crackled over the radio. Calling my name, over and over. Like maybe if he said it enough, it would bring me back to him in one piece.
Out of This World & Into Your Arms
Rev
The medics returned me to the paddock and sent me to the nearest hospital for stitches.
The crumpled metalwork had tried to take a chunk out of me when it jabbed me in the side. It wasn’t so deep that it would cause permanent damage, but it looked gnarly when I saw the shredded leg of my racing suit, sticky blue-black blood covering my calf.
The doctors insisted it looked worse than it was. That despite the volume of blood, the laceration hadn’t hit anything important. It was basically a giant paper cut—stinging like a motherfucker, even though the damage wasn’t substantial.
