ACCELERATE (POV: Adrian)
1591 Words
There’s a fine line between focus and fixation. I used to know where that line was.
Now it’s blurred — somewhere between her voice and the sound of an engine at full throttle.
Three monitors glow in front of me inside my Cross Tech office, but none of them display the numbers they’re supposed to. They’re all tuned to her.
Telemetry. Dashcam feeds. Throttle pressure. Cornering speed. Brake heat signatures.
Every line of data from Luna Vega’s car runs through my systems — through me.
I should be analyzing market trends, signing contracts, pretending to care about quarterly profits.
Instead, I’m tracing the pulse of a girl who doesn’t even realize her heartbeat has become my favorite frequency.
“Sir?”
My assistant, Clara, stands at the glass wall, tablet in hand. She’s been there for two minutes. I hadn’t noticed.
“Quarterly report,” she says, voice careful. “You were supposed to—”
“I’ll review it later.”
“That’s what you said yesterday.”
I finally look up. Her brow is furrowed, but her eyes flick toward one of the side screens — the one showing Luna’s latest street run. The camera shakes with speed and smoke.
Clara exhales quietly. “Still research, Mr. Cross?”
My jaw tightens. “Always.”
She doesn’t believe me. No one would. A billionaire CEO spending hours studying a freelance mechanic from Brooklyn isn’t strategy — it’s insanity.
But obsession looks a lot like genius until someone calls it by its name.
When she leaves, I replay the footage again. Luna’s car — that battered Mustang she rebuilt from scrap — roars across the screen. The telemetry spikes at 176 mph. Every time she shifts gears, my pulse shifts with her.
She drives like she’s trying to outrun something. Maybe guilt. Maybe grief. Maybe herself.
I understand that language better than I should.
The footage ends with her laughing — breathless, victorious, alive.
I zoom in on the frame until her smile fills the screen. There’s something wild about it — unfiltered, electric. I don’t know whether I want to protect that fire or burn in it.
---
Hours later, I’m still at my desk when the building empties. The skyline outside is a blur of chrome and fog — New York pulsing with late-night chaos.
I type her name into the Cross Tech network, opening a private subroutine I coded months ago. A map of the city appears, dotted with racing circuits and data points. I swipe my finger along one — a small event scheduled under the Syndicate’s underground list.
Her name is on it.
She wasn’t supposed to be there. That’s not one of my approved circuits.
I curse under my breath.
The Syndicate has been circling her ever since the last race. I can’t let them near her again.
Within minutes, I reroute the event’s entry files through a proxy system — switching the track layout, downgrading the purses, deleting the record of her registration. No one will know she pulled out. She’ll think the race was canceled.
It’s not control. It’s protection.
That’s what I keep telling myself.
But my reflection on the glass looks nothing like a savior. It looks like a man rewriting a woman’s fate because he can’t stand to see her risk herself without him.
I lean back, rub the bridge of my nose, and whisper to the dark window,
“You drive like you belong to me.”
The words sound wrong the second they leave my mouth.
Because she doesn’t belong to anyone — least of all to me.
But when I close my eyes, I still see the way she looked at me in the garage. Suspicious. Defiant. Glorious.
---
When sleep won’t come, I head to the Cross Tech private track.
It’s silent, silver-lit, and waiting.
I slide into the driver’s seat of my prototype Veloce — the one that once made me Rogue. The engine hums awake, a mechanical heartbeat synced with mine.
I push it.
Hard.
Every turn, every drift, every gear change — it’s her I’m chasing, not speed.
Her laughter echoes in my head, ghosted by the sound of tires kissing asphalt.
By the time I stop, the car’s shaking. So am I.
For a long minute, I just sit there, gripping the wheel, breathing like a man coming down from something dangerous.
Then my phone buzzes. A notification.
Luna Vega — New Upload: “Back from the Dead.”
A live-stream thumbnail flashes: her, grinning, grease on her cheek, wiping sweat from her brow as she announces her next race.
And just like that, every firewall I built around my sanity burns out.
“Of course you did,” I mutter.
I hit play.
Her livestream plays across the triple monitors like it owns the room.
Luna’s wearing her usual: ripped jeans, oil-stained tank, hair tied back in that reckless way that says she doesn’t need to look pretty to be dangerous. Behind her, the Mustang gleams under harsh garage light. It’s half rebuilt, half resurrected — a beast she keeps willing back to life.
“Next race,” she’s saying, her voice all fire and caffeine. “New track. No sponsors. No rules. Let’s see who’s got the guts to show up.”
She grins at the camera. A grin that punches straight through my armor.
She shouldn’t sound that alive when she’s walking into a trap.
I pause the feed and lean back in my chair. The office lights flicker off automatically, leaving only the screen’s blue glow reflecting in the glass behind me — and in my eyes.
She thinks she’s running the show. But out there, the Syndicate owns every circuit. They decide who wins, who crashes, who disappears.
And I won’t let them take her.
I open a secure link — RogueNet. A ghost network buried under the city’s digital veins, one I built when I still raced in the dark. From here, I can watch, edit, control everything that happens on the underground tracks.
A few keystrokes, and Luna’s name lights up on the event list.
A few more, and I add a failsafe: a trigger in her engine’s telemetry that sends an alert to me if her RPM spikes past danger.
It’s invasive. Immoral. Illegal.
It’s also the only way I’ll sleep tonight.
One Week Later.
I’m in the pit area of a corporate-sponsored race at Hudson Yards — dressed as the version of myself the world worships: tailored suit, faint smirk, no shadows.
Every camera that turns toward me sees power, not guilt.
Every handshake feels like a lie.
Across the venue, my phone buzzes — a RogueNet ping.
Unauthorized heat spike: Mustang-76V. Luna Vega.
My chest tightens.
I slip out of the crowd, ignoring some investor droning about expansion in Dubai, and step into the back hall. One tap and her feed opens. The camera mounted on her car shows the world blurring by in neon streaks.
She’s racing. Not the corporate kind. The real kind.
“Damn it, Luna…”
The other racers box her in. Someone’s tampered with her rear tires — the heat pattern’s too uneven. Sabotage.
I don’t think; I move.
“Sir?” Clara’s voice over comms. “Are you leaving the event?”
“Reschedule everything.”
“Why?”
“Because something more important just caught fire.”
Two hours later, I’m in my penthouse again — tie gone, jacket abandoned, every screen alive with her feed.
She’s outdriving the sabotage, pure reflex. It’s beautiful. Terrifying.
Every near miss makes my pulse stutter. Every drift feels like she’s carving her name into my skin.
When she crosses the finish line, the Mustang fishtails, tires smoking, and she’s laughing again — that sound that haunts me.
I should feel relief.
Instead, I feel hungry.
I open the encrypted channel. The one no one else knows about. The one that still connects to the modulator voice system I used as Rogue.
I shouldn’t.
But I do.
I type the message before I can stop myself:
> Rogue: Nice drift. Dangerous line, though. You like flirting with death, Vega?
It takes her thirty seconds to reply.
> Luna: Depends. You like losing to it?
My lips twitch — the first genuine smile in weeks.
> Rogue: You still think you can outrun me?
Luna: I don’t think. I drive.
She’s baiting me, and I love it.
I should close the channel. End this before it spirals. But then she sends one last message:
> Luna: Whoever you are, Rogue… you make losing sound tempting.
My pulse spikes.
I stare at the words for a long time before replying:
> Rogue: Careful. Some roads don’t have brakes.
The conversation ends, but I don’t move for a while.
I just sit there, staring at the city outside the glass — the reflection of my own face half-lit, half-lost in the skyline.
This isn’t curiosity anymore.
This is gravity.
And she’s the pull I can’t escape.
I’ve spent my whole life building empires, writing code, rewriting fate — but none of it feels like control now. Not when a single racer from Brooklyn can make my world feel too slow.
I whisper her name to the dark room like a confession:
“Luna Vega.”
It feels like a prayer I have no right to say.
And for the first time in years, the man who thought he ruled every race realizes he’s already losing one he never meant to start.
- Writer
