"?Yes!?"

  Latham's triumphant shout echoed through the cockpit. The onboard computer had finally crunched the numbers: if all racers maintained their current tenth-tier lap times over ten circuits, he'd not only erase his 100-kilometer deficit but clinch victory by a razor-thin margin.

  His mind briefly drifted to the 900,000-credit bet—now poised to multiply fifteenfold into 13.5 million. For a teenager who'd once considered 100,000 credits life-changing, this windfall bordered on surreal. A phantom itch at the base of his skull snapped him back—the neural interface implant. Right, he thought grimly, ordinary kids don't harvest rogue AI souls to win races.

  A shadow flickered ahead. The 22nd-place racer—a matte-black custom job—loomed like prey. Its driver, assuming the pursuing engine roar belonged to frontrunner Carey, nearly veered off-track when the T-20's boxy silhouette filled his rear cam.

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  ?"Impossible..."?

  The black racer's momentary hesitation at 200 km/h proved fatal. In the split-second between two hairpins, the T-20—locked at 500 km/h—slipped through like mercury through fingers. The overtake played across every trackside megascreen, spectators roaring as the black car careened into energy-absorbent barriers.

  Latham felt no pity. These vultures had circled when they thought him easy prey; let them choke on their hubris.

  By lap seven, the T-20 carved through the field like a monomolecular blade. Nineteenth... twelfth... fifth... Each victim's cockpit cam captured the same tableau: drivers white-knuckling controls, jaws slack as the "grocery-getter" sedan devoured tenth-tier switchbacks with machine-gun precision.

  The leaderboard ignited pandemonium. Odds recalibrated in real-time—1:15 shrinking to 1:3 as desperate bettors flooded the T-20's wager pool. In the control suite, Harrison's brandy sat forgotten. "He's toying with them," the old man breathed. "Like a goddamn orchestra conductor."

  When the T-20 muscled past fourth place—a cobalt-blue turbine beast—its path cleared to the ultimate prey: the blood-red Carey and obsidian Galaxy, now mere specks in the distance.