LEO
The horn sounded and I drove.
Whatever Juno had just said got locked behind a door in my mind. Not gone. Just stored. Because the grid was live and twelve vehicles were accelerating around me and the first corner was forty meters away and none of the bloodline information mattered if I didn't make it through turn one clean.
I made it through clean.
The Redline Final circuit was three kilometers of banked corners, narrow straights, and two elevation drops that separated careful racers from reckless ones. I'd run it underground a dozen times in the dark. In daylight with a full grid it felt different—louder, faster, more compressed.
I pushed through positions three and four before the first straight ended.
Calia was ahead, running precise and aggressive the way she always did. Dax
