Page 140 of Blood & Throttle
“Fuck that. They don’t own The Gauntlet. Not the Syndicate. Not Kane. Not anyone with a title or a trigger finger.” I look back to the screen, jaw tight. “The Gauntlet belongs to us. The ones bleeding on this track. The ones fighting tooth and nail to breathe another fucking day.”
Riot’s quiet for a beat, then flicks his cigarette away and steps closer, his voice low and dangerous in my ear.
“Then let’s remind them who they’re fucking with.”
I grin, all teeth and violence.
“Oh, we will.”
“Thirty seconds!” the announcer shrieks. “Racers, lock in your kills! Viewers, place your bets! Which name gets erased tonight?”
We mount up. I slide in behind Riot, my arms locking around his waist. My chest presses to his back, steadying the burn rising in my gut. The engine hums under us, vibrating with a hungry growl.
He doesn’t turn, doesn’t have to. He knows I’m here.
I lean in close, mouth at the edge of his helmet mic.
“Don’t crash,” I whisper into the comms. “I like my face. And I really like screwing up people’s bets.”
He laughs, low and dark. “I like your face too,” he says. “Especially when those eyes are rolling back for me.”
The lights above the grid begin to drop.
Red.
Orange.
White.
I tighten my grip around him, my heart syncing to the countdown. The heat, the noise, the weight of every eye locked on us, it disappears.
All that matters now is the green.
The chaos.
And getting out alive.
Green.
We launch, and The Neon Nightmare lights up like a warzone.
Twenty-Six
Sienna
Fire Up The Night - New Medicine
Funny how a citycan look like a rave and a funeral at the same time.
That’s Halcyon Verge for you—glitching lights, colors that shouldn’t exist, and buildings that look like they’re mid-meltdown. The whole place pulses with synthetic adrenaline and the promise of death. If hell opened a nightclub, it’d look like this.
And we just hit the dance floor.
Riot launches us off the grid like he’s got a devil to outrun. My arms lock tight around his waist, heart slamming into my ribs as the bike roars beneath us. The track is slick with neon oil, blinding light bouncing off mirrored panels. I can’t even tell where the road ends and the walls begin.
Above, drones swarm, cameras blinking like red eyes as the announcer's voice screams over the roar.
“Halcyon Verge is heating up! Racers are off the line and coming in hot—The Reaper and his strayare already slicing through the grid! You’ve got minutes left to lock in your bets, so put your credits where the carnage is!”
