Still, the upgrades were more than enough to satisfy Dr. Metcalf. Her acerbic attitude had completely changed. Though she still refused to remove the gag on Dorota.
For the first time, we could now see the other teams at their own starting blocks.
The room was a typical massive lobby in an apartment building. There was a door to the outside, a bank of mailboxes, a bike rack, a pair of doors that led off to the first-floor apartments, the elevator door, the entrance to the main stairwell, and a few more utility rooms.
We were all lined up in a square in the lobby, with just one square-shaped awning after another with a small wall separating each heat.
The moment we entered below our awning, we were transported from outside the apartment to our space along the wall, facing the massive bank of mailboxes. I couldn’t see any of the racers on either side of us, but I started to examine all the heats directly across from us.
Strangely, I could see the multitude of cul-de-sacs behind each heat. I turned, and sure enough, I could see our own street with our garage in the distance. That was unusual and inconsistent with all the previous heats. Usually, once we entered the starting block, we were cut off from going back to our garage.
“Weird,” I said.
I spied a heat with a polar bear, a giraffe, and that same yellow AMC Pacer I’d noticed in a previous heat. I couldn’t see the driver, but I could see the polar bear was jockeyed by a pair of NPC orcs. The giraffe, likewise, had a single slime NPC on the back.
“Carl, that yellow car is team Yokai!” Donut said.
“Wait,” I said. “That means all three teams in that heat are NPCs.”
A horrible realization dawned on me. All that work, all that planning meant nothing if they were allowing NPC-only teams for the final heat.
Race starts in 4 minutes.
And then I saw it the same moment the message came in. The next two heats next to them, right in a row, a double set of gut punches.
“Oh no,” I said.
Donut gasped.
The grouping was a Cadillac floating on a cushion of air, Imani and Elle’s APV, and a red semitruck.
Imani: No. No, no, no, no, no.
Elle: Fucking hell.
Chris was now in the same heat as Imani and Elle.
It got worse.
The next heat over featured a gecko, an NPC-driven sedan, and a moped with Florin at the controls and Lucia Mar sitting behind him in the back.
Louis and Britney were now in the same heat as Florin and Lucia.
[ 81 ]
“Fuck you!”I shouted at the ceiling, rage filling me. “Fuckyou! You did this on purpose! I swear to fucking god, I will kill you all!”
Goddamnit.After all this work, all this time doing our best to keep our circle together, alive, and it had all been undone in a single moment.
Louis: Guys, what do we do?
Jurgen: You know what you have to do, Louis. If you are against Lucia, you can’t let her die.
Chris: It is okay. I should have taken a deal.
Imani: No, Chris. No. You can just fuck off with that right now.
“Carl,” Donut said, looking at me, panicked. “Carl, no. Think of something. You have to think of something! You always think of something.”