Second Place: Team Free Love.
Third Place: Team Flamengo.
Fourth Place: The Royal Court of Princess Donut.
Eliminated: Lady Dominators and the Gimp.
HEAT 6 OF 7
[ 67 ]
“What?”Donut demanded as we limped over the finish line. “Carl, we came in last place! How did the stupid unicorn win?”
“I don’t know,” I said, leaning back, exhausted. Had that really only been thirty minutes? It felt like it had been hours and hours.
Dong Quixote was dead. I took a breath, letting it sink in. What a way to go. What a goddamned hero.
Osvaldo was off Bruna, patting the giant gnu affectionately on the side.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
From behind me, Grigori groaned. “Is this a dream?” he asked. “Am I truly still alive?”
Prepotente: We have survived, but it appears we are the only team from our heat to have lived. I fear that means for the final two races some difficult choices will have to be made. Did you complete your quest?
Carl: We did. Thank you for your help.
“Dong is dead,” Donut said, her voice suddenly sad. “Dong is dead. He was my friend, and he’s dead.”
“Yeah,” I said, a sudden urge for a cigarette hitting me out of nowhere.
“Some of us believe,” Grigori said, standing to his full height in the back of the truck, hopelessly attempting to wipe off his filth-covered robe, “that death is nothing but movement on to another plane of existence. Dong did not think this was the end.”
Donut seemed to contemplate that, an unreadable expression on her face.
“It’s still horrible for us who are still here,” she finally said.
“Indeed,” Grigori replied.
Imani: Everybody check in. We survived. Barely.
Louis: Dude, that fucking sucked. We came in last place again, but we got this awesome engineer lady. She’s an upgrade thief. She can take upgrades off someone’s car and add it to your own. A ton of people didn’t make it. But Britney ripped the head off one of the skeleton-astronaut things with her bare hands.
Florin: It was easy for us. We came in first of the whole thing. Tran was in our heat and was just behind us. Zhang, too. Same with Chris’s team. Can’t say the same for a lot of others, though.
I was looking at the list, going over it. Our race had been especially brutal. Out of the sixty teams to start the race, only eighteen had survived.
Osvaldo: That unicorn goddamn cheated. Did you see that shit?
Donut: WHAT DID HE DO? HOW DID HE WIN?
Osvaldo: Jasha says he went OVER the factory. He didn’t even go in. He rode up the wall, went to the roof, and just dropped off to the finish line. He won the whole damn thing.
Donut: WHAT? YOU CAN DO THAT?
Osvaldo: He did. He was the only one who figured it out.
Donut scoffed.