Adon reveled in the anonymity of his dark helmet, ignoring the pounding crowd at the track-level windows. He hadn’t even stopped to see what logo or number was painted on it. He had no affinity for either, he was just a substitute, a ghost, and he didn’t want to get attached. It would be his first and last run on the track, but from inside the helmet, he couldn’t help but smile as he nodded to Troy and the other racers mounting bikes in their start corral gates. At least it was going to be fun.

Adon grimaced awkwardly while the lineman checked his censors, placed his front wheel, and cleared the line of riders with the wave of a bright pink flag that sent a ripple of excited flashes along the panel billboards, lighting up the entire route for a brief second while the stands went wild with anticipation. An Asylum song played too loud, even interrupting his comms, and Adon shivered, uncertain how to feel until Tutor kicked on his silencers and opened the team chat, everyone sounding off with final checks.

"Just focus on me, listen to me, and we'll get through this alive and hopefully with our reputations intact." Tutor huffed, his voice gruff against the rumble of engines and rattling bars of riders hyping of fans from inside their start ages.

Adon heard the rest of the crew mumble their uncertain agreement and wished he couldn't understand Tutor's thick accent either, but both his sarcasm and apprehension were a bit too obvious. Adon shook his head, inhaled, and smiled. This was his plan. He'd raced Y, he'd beaten Phaios plenty of times, and Troy had never done that, besides, his goal wasn't to win, it was only to protect Lu, and to return if he could.

The stadium lights changed, the whole course rumbling and moving as the system mechanics revealed their first map. Each lap would be an entirely different run, all he had to do was follow his assigned line (light blue) until the end of the first lap, when the remaining racers followed the white, and listen to his crew. He'd laughed at Phaios for stressing the rules of the race so much, but now he understood why, it was easy to forget, to get overwhelmed and overstimulated, to get dq’d on a technicality. But he had a top-notch crew in his ear and years of experience with arrogant racers scarred into his knees for every turn he’d failed to drop into properly. 

He bounced the bike, petting it affectionately, and jostled impatiently into the side of his cage as the announcer spoke. The stands roared and Adon set his sights on Troy, three lanes down. Troy, who'd punched Lu too many times. Troy, who'd busted into Lu's workshop because he felt like it. Troy, who thought Ores or Gideon would protect him when the time came. Troy, who was just like Sias and all the other ghosts who didn't keep Adon up at night. Adon couldn’t help the edges of his cruel smile. It was the one he hoped Lu never saw, but it was also the one he needed. He lolled his head forward, shifting into predatory position over the bike as Tutor called for his attention in the comms, and flexed his half ear. This was just another pit, and Troy was just another chain to decorate his bars.

The starting platform spanned thirty-six slots, all of them funneling into a jump only five bikes wide. It was the first test, a quick elimination of dozens of riders. Too fast and they’d jam up at the jump, land on each other and pile-up at the bottom, too slow and they wouldn’t have enough speed to make it. If they were lucky, they’d land okay in the recess and follow the route back to in-bounds to continue the race. 

“What are faces saying, newbie,” Tutor barked.

Adon glanced around and shrugged, “that black-out visors are in this season.”

Tutor sighed so heavily, Adon could feel his palm over his face through the comms.

“Fine,” Tutor amended, “body language, are they still or moving. Wiggling, revving,” turning away from his mic but clearly leaving it on intentionally, Tutor shouted at Phaios in the track booth of the garage, “what kind of fresh bean did you bring us, Phai? Can’t even read a room?”

Adon snorted.

Phai ran over, practically swallowing Tutor’s mic, “don’t fuck around Adon, they’re trying to calibrate a start position. Don’t be a dick.”

Adon rolled his eyes but smiled, “the start plan is: go fast.”

“Well, fuck this guy,” one of the techs muttered.

“Fine,” Tutor pouted, “go fast, you’re in the first four by the time you pass that tire thing, gun it, you’re too slow, you do what I say immediately, biff the jump and take the recon route back to in-bounds. Understood?”

“I’ll be third on the jump, then drop back to twelfth or so for a while.” Adon wasn’t used to working in teams and he felt a sudden profound gratefulness for all the ways Y had never forced him to learn. 

“Seriously, fuck this guy,” another tech tsked. 

“Confirmation on schematic release,” their drone flier crackled in from his perch, letting them all know that the officials had finished reviewing and approved the track run blueprints.

“Not that the newbie cares,” one of the analyst mechs snorted, “but we’ve got a lot of aggressive movement toward the back end of the start line. They’re going to come in too hot to try jostling for fourth, have you ever landed a jump this big?”

“Should we just order the brick box now?” Another added.

Adon smiled.

“None of that,” Tutor barked. “I don’t do the pep-talks, that’s Phai’s job and he’s—no, get out, you gave us a substitute, go. Newbie, don’t be a dick. That was the pep-talk. Now let’s focus up, people, the preview’s coming. Nat, get drone-tracking relay up in his visor. Christiano, eat a cookie or whatever, I don’t want to hear another negative word. 

The team bustled into motion, Adon’s peripheral screens running final diagnostics and insert footage showing satellite feeds from the track drones, team drones weren’t allowed in the air until the white line. Adon smiled to himself, sizing up his fellow riders in all the ways Y and Phaios had advised, observing the dozens of other riders, looking for the tells like Y had taught him, for injuries and favored sides, worn tread and trick mods. He counted the impatient starters who would overclock their revs and the quiet athletes who would make the perfect timing off the blocks, but whose experience would hesitate at the jump. Troy would beat him, because it was a familiar start set-up, but Adon could only let two others ahead of him if he wanted Tutor’s team, Phai’s team, to trust him and get him through the rest alive.

Neon arrows lit up the path in red, strobing ahead of each gate in the designated racer’s line color, directing them toward the megalithic structure of rails and tunnels, highlighting jumps and drops and moguls littering the track before disappearing to the other side of the track as the crowd roared at their first sight of the obstacles. There were momentary glints of slides and stairs and straightaways, but the rest remained obscured by that first big jump ahead of them. Adon adjusted his visor color to yellow, watching the fog machines fill the lower recess below the jump and scanned for the tire Tutor had mentioned in case he had to bail. 

He felt like a character in the stupid video game Mess played with Euri. Maybe when he couldn’t come to the track anymore playing Larsony would be more fun. He could play with Mess and Euri in Lu’s apartment, The Cat asleep behind him, Lu-Lu curled around his tablet drawing in the chair, Aphy knocking awkwardly at the door with a desert clutched in both hands, Gideon, Orestes, Mykos, Troy, all of them a line of uncolored brick-boxes in the mourning wall. 

The arrows in front of the start corral turned orange with a warning crescendo from the speakers and Adon let out a sarcastic laugh, swallowing every fear and replacing it with all the hard-won focus and adrenaline regulation that had allowed him to survive the Pits. He forgot the Lu waiting for him and thought only of the past Lu hurt by Gideon, and the future Lu who would be killed by Troy, and his entire world narrowed to the blue line flickering to life on the track ahead of him. He revved his bike as final bets were called, then looked only forward, the arrows flashing a warning yellow, faster and faster. His mind conjured the image of Lu turning to face him holding a burnt cake, are you scared? He nodded to no one. Good, his imaginary Lu pouted, scared people run home. Dinner's ready, dessert—

The arrows flashed green and the gates flipped open all at once, the buzzer screeching over his comms as he clenched his hand and left the claustrophobic corral behind him. He careened forward, keeping his RPMs in acceleration range for his overclocked bike as Tutor inhaled over his open mic, the rest of the team in push-to-talk silence with nothing to say. Adon shifted flawlessly as his neighbors lugged and overloaded manuals, burned clutches, or yelled at automatics, or else sat back and waited for the chaos to pass, hoping to just get through the cup race. Adon neared the end of his blue line and let two others ahead with a weave around his line that stalled him long enough to correct his trajectory based on their landings and make the jump in fourth place. He smiled at the small number in the corner of his screen, bracing for landing, the team still quiet as they waited to see how he absorbed it, or biffed completely. 

He followed his momentum, and all he remembered about his hang-time was a cramp in his right oblique as he struggled to keep his bike at a neutral angle, and that if there was ever a Most Creative Curses category, he would have won for sure. Even Tutor winced at Adon's long string of words as he muttered darkly about Nika's ingenious trench-swamp obstacles, the fog sticking to him as he landed and was immediately tossed into a second jump. 

Tutor should have warned him, but Adon had been a dick, and now his team was seeing if he was worth rooting for.

He landed the third jump hard, but didn't brake as he fought for air and skidded around a downed rider, navigating his way into a confident twelfth place. He grunted at his crackling headset so they knew he was good and hopped onto a rail, moving seamlessly along his blue line, waiting for the freedom of the flashing whites as riders stayed down behind him or flashed past on parallel rails.

“Keep your pace, take over eleventh and sit in tenth,” Tutor grumbled. 

Adon grunted a distracted “no,” that would have gotten him kicked off any team he was actually a part of. It had to look like a tight race. He had to look like an underdog in his first run, getting a chance at Phai's race, everything the greediest Grounders believed him to be. He let himself fishtail off the rails and a tech groaned into his comms. 

Adon pulled out of the wobble with the elite precision that only Y kicking the back of his bike for years while he raced her at top speeds could teach and one of the more invested crew mechanics yelled for Adon to keep his head clear, the others chiming in with the same harsh encouragement. 

Tutor sat back, already seeing through the facade, already annoyed. He didn't like being tricked, this was no newbie, and he should have noticed the moment Y had clapped his shoulder. Maybe he had. He sighed, "you take over when ready, corkscrew's next."

The others glanced over at Tutor, gauging his changed body language as he watched Adon’s set up, his lean into the curve as his rail descended into a dark tunneled corkscrew. Tutor crossed his arms tight across his chest, watching his screens and feeding Adon information from their cams about the next obstacles, racers crossing into his line, jumpstarting the whites that would dock them points, then signalling for Phaios, who did not go over to him, but simply shook his head from their track booth with a guilty smile. 

Adon sped along the spiraling rail, tracking Troy's lazy lead as he fell into fourth then bumped back into second when the previous second and third collided ahead of Adon. Adon relaxed into the bike, and Tutor relaxed into his chair as the lines went white and Adon slingshot himself around a curve and caught up, eating Troy's tailpipe down a merciful straightaway before overtaking him through the slalom of new obstructions. Adon stayed tight in the drifting curve, registering each of Tutor’s muffled warnings as the team got their drone in the air and Troy howled at him passing. It was almost fun, racking up style points as his team slowly got on board and began throwing out tips, tap that halo, and hit the boards when they flash… now! It really was like a race in Mess' dumb game, Troy yelling behind him as they dropped in on another jump the same way Euri yelled at his controller when Mess cut him off. 

Easing through obstacles, Adon forgot about the world and the politics he’d planted, leaving behind every scar that ached when he was moving under eighty miles per hour. He caught the high Phaios had warned him about, the endorphins rising as he melted into his bike, nearly rolling because he let his gaze drop and leaned too far into a turn. Tutor caught his attention with a slur of curses that rivaled Adon’s first jump, forcing his rider’s eyes ahead, envisioning the next problem, reading the drone map, following his team’s route, then starting over and doing it again, and again, every lap a new race as the track officials marked the procession and added up points and times.

Adon dawdled through his next straightaway so he didn't leave Troy too far behind and hit the wall of boredom that had always stopped him from beating Y, and most of the time Phaios, and sometimes Xeri. He followed the arrows, mindlessly maneuvering the grid, distracted by every racer catching up to him, the hum of bikes at his shoulder, the swing of riders knocking into him to keep the line, the line splitting down multiple tracks, his team screaming at him, “take three, no five!” All of them chirped over each other as the track crowds flashed past in a blur of neon signs and jeering shouts. It was chaos, everywhere, and it was easy as every bit of his existence narrowed back into that old Pits instinct: just survive, and it was almost fun. But it was Adon from the Pits who was thriving, not Adon who Lu was waiting for, and, for a minute, Adon was scared of himself. 

"Focus kid, what are you doing!" Tutor growled over the noise, "slide or stick, pick one! Stop stuttering and get ahead of that momentary glitch in the matrix before he tries any dumb tricks!"