The road seemed to wake as they crossed the zone boundary, not by borrowing light from anywhere outside itself, but by making its own. Colors slid over the surface at an unhurried pace, red giving way to orange, then blue, then a pale green, none of them staying long enough to claim the place before the next one arrived.

On either side of the road, there was nothing but darkness of space. Above that, stars had been put by someone who valued them more as decoration than accuracy.

The road veered left at once in a long, wide curve. At the far end, through the curve, was the finish line.

Nyx looked at it and kept both hands on the wheel. Her fingers tightened there anyway.

"Finally," she said. "Something pretty."

Her truck had one working headlight, a crushed right panel, a strip of roof peeling back under the airflow, and an engine still protesting the kick-start it had been given in a volcano.

Even so, she threw it into the sweeping curve with the kind of acceleration that suggested she considered consequences to be a genre of fiction. Her line cut to the inside of the curve, shorter and faster, a gamble she clearly believed her speed could afford. Before the curve reached its midpoint, she was already ahead of his dark chassis.

"You should start thinking about what you’re doing for me~" she called back.

He kept the truck steady and looked ahead. "You wish." he said.

"It’ll be my wish for sure!"

The long curve ended, and the road delivered three corners without bothering to introduce them.

First a right that was tighter than the sweep, then a left tighter than that, then a right tighter than both of them combined, each one allowing less preparation than the one before it. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The luminous surface had warnings in it, if you knew how to read them. A subtle deepening of the color bands before the inclination changed, and a brief brightening near each apex a moment before the turn appeared.

Proxy had been watching for those signals since the first curve. His eyes stayed on the road. When the bands shifted, he began braking for the first right turn well before the corner entered his sightline.

She braked when she saw the corner. It was late.

Her truck had too much speed into the first apex and had to spend that speed on the exit, which cost her the inside line. He came through on a shorter curve, and by the second corner they were even. By the third, he was ahead.

"That’s all you got?" he said.

Nyx gave the wheel a quick steer and kept the truck straight. "Someone’s cocky!" she shouted. "I want to see you keep that attitude in the finish line!"

He did not answer, because there was no need to, and because the long straight was coming, which had his attention.

The three-corner sequence ended, and the road opened out into several hundred meters of luminous surface, rising only slightly, the colors drifting across it at their own pace. The void on both sides kept its distance. It was very committed to not being there.

Her acceleration brought her alongside him within two seconds of the straight beginning. Her speed put her ahead in four. By the midpoint, she had two lengths on him and the gap was still growing.

She glanced back once, then forward again. "Is that all you got~" she called back.

"It’s not over yet," he said.

She eased the wheel a fraction, still ahead. "Riddle me this, who has been at the lead most of the race?"

He kept his truck level and close. "For most of it," he said.

She made a short sound that was half laugh and half scoff, which was probably the most honest reply available.

The straight went on. The stars beyond the road drifted slowly behind her, the way distant things do when they have no urgency whatsoever. She was ahead, and the finish line was close enough now to make out the podium at its end.

At the far end of the straight, the road showed a gentle right curve, wide, readable, almost courteous. She took it easily. Beyond that curve, not visible until she was already inside it, the road cut hard left into a hairpin that narrowed at the apex to barely more than truck-width. The void waited right at the edge below it.

He had seen the inversion in the inclination signal a hundred meters before the gentle curve. The color bands deepened toward blue-green before a descent instead of before a rise, and that wrong direction told him the corner was sharper than the entry claimed.

He took the gentle right at the proper speed. He took the hairpin at a speed three meters per second too fast.

His front-left wheel went over the edge at the apex.

The steering went light on the left at once, resistance vanishing where the wheel lost the road. The front end dipped left, the weight in the cab shifted with it, his shoulder pressed against the door, and the void outside the left window was uncomfortably close and contributing nothing.

He put full right input into the wheel and held it. One second. Two. Three. The front-left wheel came back onto the luminous surface, and the truck leveled.

He said nothing. He revised his analysis of the road, the inverted signal being specific to concave corners, and moved on.

She had seen his truck dip at the apex. Now she knew the hairpin and what it did, so she began braking two hundred meters earlier than he had. She took the apex correctly, both sets of wheels on the road, the right speed through the narrowest point.

The exit was where her speed on the long straight caught back up with her. The hairpin bent left again at the exit, and she still had momentum to the right that the last thirty meters of braking could not fully cancel.

Her right wheels left the road at the exit.

The damaged right panel scraped along the luminous surface as the truck dropped onto that side. Metal on road, direct and ugly, for a full second it shook through the chassis and into her hands on the wheel. She steered hard left. The right wheels found the surface again. The truck straightened.

"You sneaky piece of shit," she said, at the road, at the hairpin specifically, at whoever had decided a forgiving entry followed by a concave exit counted as acceptable.

He kept his eyes on the road ahead. "Eyes on the road, Nyx." he said.

She did not answer. He was right, and the road was already opening ahead, and she did not have the time to argue with the turns.

Past the hairpin, the corners softened into wide, readable curves.

His truck came up on her left side. His endurance had not paid what hers had across the zones. Her engine was starting to lose output. Her right panel dragged a little whenever the corners pushed her close to the edge. He matched her pace and held position at her left shoulder.

"Close," he said.

She looked at the finish line.

"It always is," she said.

The finish line was in front both windshields.

Nyx’s truck on the right, one headlight working, the roof strip flattened in still air, every obstacle it had crossed still written across its chassis. Proxy’s truck on the left, dark and low and intact. The void surrounding them.

The stars above, decoration without accuracy. The finish line ahead, close, and both of them side by side, covering the same distance to the same line, with nothing left between them and it.