“What the hell was that, Ghost?” she yelled over the ringing silence.

Ace looked in his mirror. Rose was still coming, a wounded, beautiful disaster of fire and noise. She didn’t know she was about to win. She was just driving.

Rose shot through the slot, crossing the dead zone under the silent radio tower. She’d won. But she slammed her own brakes and spun the car sideways, blocking the canyon.

Something inside Ace—something he’d buried under years of contracts and telemetry—snapped.

Ace punched the throttle. The S-7 responded like a panther, its electric turbines whining a frequency that made his teeth ache. He took the first hairpin at 140, his neural-linked steering reading his thoughts before his hands could move. Perfect. Clinical. Ghost-like.

They were throwing the race. From a boardroom.