The heat under the racetrack isn’t just temperature—it’s pressure.
It’s the kind that presses into your ribs, turns breath into currency, and makes every decision feel like it might be the one that ends you.
We move deeper.
The tunnel narrows into a throat of concrete and steel, lit by maintenance bulbs that flicker like they’re nervous we’re here. Water drips somewhere behind the walls—slow, taunting. My boots crunch softly over gravel and cables. Adrian walks a half-step behind me, close enough that I can feel him without looking. The air between us hums, a live wire stretched too tight.
“Two minutes,” he murmurs. “Then we’re ghosts.”
I nod. My mouth is dry. Not from fear—though that’s there—but from the way his voice sounds in my ear, low and focused, the version of him that only c
