Page 134 of Blood & Throttle
Halcyon Verge.
District built on chrome and illusion. It glows from the outside, all color and static, but underneath, it’s just rot in a prettier dress. The Verge is where failed tech goes to pretend it’s still alive. Syndicate prototypes, unstable mods, half-tested race stimulants that haven’t been cleared by anyone with a conscience.
The fourth Gauntlet.
The Neon Nightmare.
The name doesn’t lie.
Glass roads slicked with oil and rain. LED-lit tunnels that loop and dive without warning. Strobe rigs that hit like flashbangs. One stretch of track is supposed to drop you straight into pitch-black and feed hallucinogenic gas through your comms. Just a little taste. Just enough to make you see things you’d rather forget.
This one isn’t about speed.
It’s about sanity.
If we’re not locked in step, if even one thought between us misfires, we don’t make it out.
Sin is the only one I trust on the back of my bike, and the only one who can keep me from riding headfirst into a fire just to fucking feel something.
The escort meets us at the district gate. Black Syndicate transports, crawl out of the Verge’s mouth and box us in like a funeral procession. Drones buzz overhead, low and deliberate, scanning us as we roll in. Guns sweep with their movement. The warning is clear: stay sharp, stay silent, stay in line.
We do.
The gates slide open, metal teeth grinding in protest. The Verge yawns wide, pulsing and flickering like a broken circuit board on the edge of overload. Everything here hums wrong. Too bright, sharp, and clean in a way that makes my skin itch.
Digital billboards flash product ads so fast they look like seizures. Glitching faces sell guns, pills, sex, and fame. One screen shows last week’s race deaths like a highlight reel.
Her voice crackles through the comm, dry and unimpressed. “This place looks like a rave and a war zone had a baby.”
I smirk, eyes on the skyline. “Welcome to Halcyon Verge.”
The pit is already half-built when we pull in. Metalscaffolding. Strobe lights flickering in sync with bass lines no one asked for. Billboard towers are stacked above the loading docks, displaying names, stats, odds. And us burned across the middle in stylized fonts and blood-spatter backgrounds.
CARTER & VEGA – 3RD PLACE ODDS. 1ST PLACE BODY COUNT.
Ghost hops down first and starts barking orders. Bishop throws open the side panels on the crew hauler. Luca’s already bickering with a handler who parked too close to the mod station.
Sin swings off the bike and gives the new mod panel a quick once-over. The green demon’s already bolted into place, right above the rear fork—smug little bastard grinning like it knows something the rest of us don’t. Her monster. Our warning sign.
“Not creepy at all,” Luca mutters, eyeing it like it might blink.
“It’s watching me,” Ghost adds under his breath. “I hate it.”
Sin smirks, brushing her fingers across the edge of the panel. “Good. That means it’s doing its job.”
The bike’s been rebuilt better than before. Stronger. Cooler. Faster. And it feels like it’s ours in a way it didn’t before. Not just something we’re riding into hell, but something we’ve pulled out of it.
I light a cigarette. Smoke coils between my fingers as I lean against the frame of the bike, watching the crew work like the grief hasn’t gutted us, like we’re not all bleeding under the surface.
Bishop and Luca are bickering at each other over torque specs, sharp little jabs that almost sound like normal. Ghost ishunched over a wiring panel, mumbling curses at a faulty sensor like it personally betrayed him.
And Sin, she wasted no time getting to work. She’s crouched low on the other side of the bike, ratchet in hand, dark braid looped messily over one shoulder, grease streaked across her cheekbone. Tank top clinging to her in all the right places, shoulders slick with sweat, arms cut tight from work and rage. Legs poured into shredded combat leggings, boots scuffed to hell, like she kicked her way through every bad day that ever looked at her wrong. Mouth fierce. Eyes sharper than any blade I’ve ever carried.
And fuck me, she looks like war.
Not some delicate thing you protect, but something you pray to before the killing starts.
I take another drag and hold the smoke, letting it burn in my lungs while I watch her swipe the back of her wrist across her face, leaving a smear of oil and fury in its place.
