Chapter 20
Twenty
Riot
Got It On Me - Pop Smoke
They call it The Dead Zone for a reason.
The Hollow is rot and ruin—an industrial graveyard swallowed by the tunnels that run beneath it. Above ground, the city’s nothing but skeleton scaffolding and silence. Below?
That’s where we race.
The staging zone is five stories deep in Riftline Basin’s gut—buried in blackout concrete and humming wire. The Dead Zone isn’t rot and ruin. It’s engineered silence. Industrial murder wrapped in steel and suffocation.
No light filters from above. Just the cold flicker of floodlamps caged in mesh and the red glow of standby circuits lining the walls like veins.
The air vibrates with static, heavy with ozone and the faint stench of melted plastic and brake fluid.
It's too clean to be natural, too sharp to be safe, like the whole place was sterilized after a massacre.
You don’t smell blood here.
You taste it in the tension.
Every sound echoes. Footsteps, clipped commands, the grind of wrenches on metal. It’s not chaos. Not yet. It’s pressure building in a sealed vault, waiting for someone to light the fuse.
Racers move through the pit like ghosts built for violence—sharp armor, gleaming mods, helmets blacked out for night vision and thermal sync.
Their bikes purr or growl, engines tuned for the kind of speed that breaks spines and shatters lungs.
Drones circle above, silent watchers with multi-spectrum feeds, ready to beam every crash, every scream, every kill to the Syndicate’s network.
Spectators line the upper balconies, outfitted in new-gen headsets and visor rigs that’ll let them see the carnage in full-spectrum color. They’re laughing. Pointing. Placing bets on who’ll die first, who’ll take out who, and who won’t walk away.
And all of them?
Waiting for the lights to drop.
Waiting for us to race into the dark and either make it out breathing or not at all.
The Gauntlet doesn’t just kill you. It fucks with your mind while it does it.
Across the grid, Jace adjusts the bolts on his obsidian-frame deathtrap, lean and quiet, like the kind of machine that doesn’t need to roar to hunt.
Vex stands next to him, scarred throat glinting under the floodlights.
Black-market eyes flicker with artificial light, cold and twitchy. He’s not talking. Just watching.
I’ve seen what he does with a blade.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He just carves.
I feel eyes on me—every crew, every Syndicate fuck, and handler who’s too scared to move unless their orders come from the top. They know who I am. Know what I’ve done. What I’ll do again without blinking.
Let them watch.
They’re not the ones I’m worried about.
Bishop’s been pacing for twenty minutes. Muttering to himself. Chewing that same chewed-up protein bar like it owes him money. I don’t bother asking what’s wrong—he always does this before a race.
He stops near the front wheel of the bike, glancing over what Sin’s wiring into the dash. “Infrared’s reading clean. Pulse is synced. Might actually keep you two from dying ugly.”
Sin doesn’t even look up. “You’re welcome.”
“Didn’t say thanks.”
“Didn’t have to. Your emotional constipation said it for you.”
He huffs, but I catch the edge of a grin before he walks off.
I shift closer as Sin tightens the housing on the left mod. She’s got oil on her knuckles, a streak of grease across her cheekbone. Hair’s tied back but already falling loose, sweat sticking it to her neck. Focused. Sharp. Fucking lethal in her own way.
And she’s right where I need her.
“Looks good,” I say.
She glances at me. “Obviously.”
The corner of my mouth twitches. Just a little.
Ghost is off to the side, tapping away at his handheld like he’s trying to crack the Syndicate’s whole system before breakfast. Luca’s on the floor, arms elbow-deep in a sensor rig we ripped from a totaled bike two districts ago.
Taz is curled up behind them, twitching in her sleep like she’s racing something in her dreams.
It’s almost peaceful. Or it would be, if we weren’t about to tear into The Dead Zone like demons on borrowed time.
The low hum of mod rigs and distant metal groans echo through the staging zone. Dust hangs in the air like static. Everything stinks of anticipation. Gasoline. Oil. Death in a chokehold.
Sin’s crouched beside the bike, checking something on the HUD. The blade’s still sheathed at her back like it belongs there. She hasn’t looked at me once in ten minutes, but she doesn’t need to. I feel her pulse in my ribs.
She got shot in the last race. Just a graze, but that’s all it takes out here. A little off-center, a little too slow, and she’d be a corpse instead of a rider. I told myself I had her. I always have her. But now?
I’m nervous. And I fucking hate that.
Every race gets dirtier. Deadlier. The more we win, the more the Syndicate pushes back. And Kane? He’s not watching us like entertainment anymore, he’s watching us like a problem. One they haven’t figured out how to solve without losing face.
She’s not just riding into darkness with me tonight. She’s riding into a warzone. And if I’m not perfect, if I’m not faster, sharper, more brutal than every other asshole on that line, she’s the one who’ll bleed for it.
We’re the most wanted people on the track.
Not because of skill. Not because of luck.
Because she wasn’t supposed to survive, and I wasn’t supposed to protect her.
Tonight, we’re using the dark to our advantage. We’re turning every shadow into a weapon. But that only works if I don’t fuck up.
And I don’t get second chances with her.
Not again.
“Stop overthinking it.”
Bishop steps into view, arms crossed, reading the tension I didn’t say out loud. He looks down at the bike, then at me.
“You know this track better than anyone. You’ve survived it more times than I’ve watched it. If anyone can get her across that finish line, it’s you.”
I nod once. No words.
Because he’s right.
And if anyone stands between me and that finish line?
They’re already fucking dead.
The launch ramp vibrates beneath the tires, humming like the Earth’s holding its breath.
Above us, the final countdown pulses in crimson light—no announcer, no flashy intro. Just numbers.
Five…
Four…
Three…
Sin mounts behind me, silent. Her arms wrap tight around my middle, gloved fingers locking at my stomach. She presses close, her body heat a line of fire down my spine.
I lower my visor.
Two…
All around us, engines snarl to life. Exhaust howls into the tunnels, drowning out the sound of breath, of nerves, of heartbeats.
One…
The light snaps green.
And the world goes black.
We launch forward—no cheers, no sunlight, no sky. Just the hollow scream of twenty-two tires tearing into the cracked concrete of a tunnel built to swallow us whole.
The first curve comes fast. Too fast.
I drop a gear, yank the bars hard, and feel Sin lean with me. Her knee grazes the edge of the tunnel wall, sparks flying. I hear her laugh—short, breathless, unafraid.
Behind us, someone doesn’t make the turn. I hear the crunch of metal, the splatter of flesh, and the engine dying mid-scream.
One down.
The tunnel isn’t straight. It bends like a broken spine, buckling in places, rising in others. The darkness isn’t just an absence of light, it’s alive. Swallowing vision. Eating depth. Your eyes lie to you down here. Every shadow’s a threat. Every noise might be the last thing you hear.
My HUD flickers. A warning.
MOTION: 20m LEFT.
I cut right, banking around a collapsed grate. A rusted ventilation pipe explodes beside us—steam, noxious, and thick. One racer ahead catches it full-face. The gas bursts in a cloud of green haze, and he rides straight into it like he’s got a death wish.
“Wait for it,” I mutter.
Through the flicker of my HUD, I track the spike in his vitals. His bike jitters and he jerks to the left, coughing hard. The signal feed distorts.
“Shit,” Sin breathes into my comms.
He slams the wall headfirst, helmet splitting open like a cracked egg.
The impact alone would’ve been enough, but the bike explodes, engulfed in a bloom of fire that punches heat down the tunnel.
The blast lights the path ahead, flickering across oil-slicked steel and shattered barricades. For a second, everything’s visible. Twisted rebar. Blown-out tiles. Smoke curling like fingers.
Then darkness swallows it again.
Sin doesn’t look back, she just tightens her grip on me. “Tell me that was one of the assholes who spit at us in the pits.”
“Was.”
“Good.”
My HUD pulses red—gas pocket ahead. I flick the manual override, rerouting the sensor range. “Mask up,” I snap, even though I know she already has. “Next section’s loaded. Can’t count on the flames lighting our way again.”
“HUD’s still glitchy,” she says. “Visor keeps strobing.”
“Switch to thermal.”
She does. I feel the shift in her posture—more alert, tighter to me. Her trust isn’t blind. It’s calculated. And right now? She’s counting on me to get her through this in one piece.
Another burst explodes behind us.
I don’t flinch.
“You good back there?” I ask, eyes locked on the ever-narrowing path ahead.
“Peachy,” she says. “Can’t wait to send Kane a postcard—‘Wish you were dead.’”
A grin tugs at the corner of my mouth.
That’s my girl.
Up ahead, another trap—rebar spires launch up from the floor in a grid pattern. I twist the throttle, time the pulse, and ride the edge of the gap.
Another racer tries to follow.
Too late.
The bars punch straight through his engine and his chest.
Two more bikes scream past us, modded for speed but not survival. One glides low, wheels lined with shock-absorption foam. The other’s a converted dirt racer, back wheel modified to kick sparks that blind anyone following.
I cut left and Sin leans with me.
We shoot under a support beam that scrapes the top of my helmet. No room for error. No mercy. Just teeth and traps.
Up ahead, the tunnel narrows, cracked piping on either side. Too quiet.
“Hold,” I say through clenched teeth.
Sin leans in tighter. “Another trap?”
“Always is.”
I feather the brakes just as a racer guns it ahead of us, too cocky to slow down.
The wall detonates into motion—a blur of fanning blades, spinning like the ribs of hell. His helmet pops like a melon. Blood hits the wall in ribbons. His partner veers, tries to bail but he’s too slow.
One of the spinning saws catches his leg mid-air. It tears clean through, bone snapping like dry wood. He screams once before the rest of his body smashes into the ground in a spray of blood and busted gear.
Sin doesn’t flinch, just exhales.
“They’re getting sloppier,” she mutters.
“They’re getting dead,” I growl.
My HUD blinks red.
ALERT: PRESSURE LEAK DETECTED. TOXIC VENT brEACH.
“East side,” Ghost crackles in our earpiece. “You’ve got ten seconds.”
I yank left.
A hiss slices through the dark like a whisper and the gas floods fast—sickly green in the thermal readout.
To our right, two riders try to outrun it.
Their wheels stutter. One coughs. The other screams.
Both vanish into the fog.
Their HUDs cut out a second later.
Sin glances back, just once. “Think they’ll still be talking shit in hell?”
“If they even make it that far.”
The tunnel vibrates beneath us. A trap’s priming—old gears winding, steel flexing.
“Spike trap,” she barks. “Floor.”
I jolt the bars hard.
Behind us, a rider hits the center panel.
Metal spears explode upward, catching the front tire. The bike flips and launches its riders into the low-hanging piping. One’s head caves in on impact. The other just hangs there, impaled through the gut, twitching.
We ride through their blood like it’s just part of the road.
Because it is.
More bullets slice the air behind us—sharp cracks splitting the roar of engines.
Tandem riders with mounted SMGs—submachine guns, compact but vicious, built for close-quarters carnage—are gaining fast. Back-to-back on sleek bikes, their frames stripped down and modded with silencers and low-gravity stabilizers that let them corner like demons.
“They’re hugging the wall,” Sin snaps. “I’ve got ‘em.”
She flips open the under seat panel, fingers flying.
HUD flashes: FLASH MOD DEPLOYED.
The flare launches, blinding blue light erupting down the corridor. One of the bikes veers, clips a protruding pipe, and explodes. Fire rolls across the tunnel, the blast painting the walls in flame.
Sin grins. “That’s one way to light the path.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
“Never,” she says sweetly. “Just competent.”
I grunt. The tunnel curves hard right—too sharp for speed. I slam the brake and pivot into a slide, dragging the rear tire into a controlled drift. Sparks fly as we skid inches from the edge.
Sin’s body moves with mine, every shift in sync. One machine. One will.
She’s not just holding on.
She’s riding.
HUD flickers again. MOTION DETECTED: 10m ABOVE.
“Ceiling,” I warn.
Her helmet tilts. A second later…“It’s a drop trap. Hinged plate. Ready to fall.”
“I see it.”
We time it perfectly, blades whoosh down behind us like giant scissors and we slide just under the edge. Another rider isn’t so lucky. The trap cleaves his front wheel and sends him into a tailspin. His partner flies off the back, and smashes into the wall. Skull first.
Blood mists across the concrete.
Five bikes left.
Maybe.
“HUD’s showing spike in pressure up ahead,” Sin says. “Could be a vent burst.”
“Could be a bomb.”
She leans into me. “Can’t wait.”
I snort, then twist the throttle harder.
A scream erupts behind us.
Then another.
The bike shakes, the rear coil’s hot. Too hot.
“Back suspension’s fucked,” I mutter.
“I’ve got it,” she says, reaching for the manual override.
Her hand glides under my arm and finds the trigger near my leg. She adjusts the valve, fluid hisses, and the pressure stabilizes.
HUD flickers green. TEMP RESTORED.
“Remind me why I don’t just let you drive,” I say.
She laughs, low. “Because you’d never survive my road rage.”
Something flares in my chest.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Just her.
This track’s designed to kill us.
And the Syndicate wants it to.
The deeper we go, the more I know this isn’t a race anymore—it’s a purge. Cameras stream every second. Handlers watch every move. And Kane?
He’s waiting to see who falls first.
Sin presses tighter against me. Her gloved hand trails down my stomach, steadying herself as we slam through another bend.
“Still with me?” I mutter.
Her voice is a breath in my ear. “Like I could ever escape you.”
I push the bike harder.
We’re not escaping.
We’re declaring war.