Singstones. You’d see them in the badlands: weird rock formations found near craters left by orbital weapons. Cassica and Shiara had discovered one once, passed half an hour singing and shouting at it, laughing as it spoke back to them in a shivery, spectral whine. The louder you shouted, the louder the song came back, and if you kept at it constantly the song would keep rising in volume till the stone itself shook. In fact, they’d heard that if you made enough noise for long enough …
… they sang so loud they shook themselves apart.
Cassica heard a crunch from above, saw something plummet past in the dark. And then the stalactites started coming down, dropping like bombs toward the racers below. Panic bubbled up in her as the first stalactites fell into the abyss on either side. It boiled over when they started hitting the bridge.
Behind Maisie there was a wrench of metal as a stalactite came down square on the hood of a car. It smashed on impact, flinging shards and chunks of rock in all directions. Two racers swerved and went over the edge. Cassica heard their screams on the way down.
“Drive!” Shiara shouted, and Cassica threw all caution to the wind.
The bridge was chaos. Racers skidded this way and that as stalactites detonated around them. Cassica shot through gaps as they opened, driving aggressively, consumed by the need to get off that bridge. There was a screech of metal as cars collided. From the corner of her eye, she saw a trike go tumbling into the void, its rider flailing as he came free of its saddle.
Stone chips pattered against her helmet, speckled her goggles. She swung through the traffic, squeezing between cars, riding the perilous edge. Somehow, wherever she went, the way opened up before her. Somehow the falling missiles never found their mark. In her most acute moment of terror, she was most in control, and she sewed through the pack like a needle.
She burst loose of the group and covered the distance to the end of the bridge at speed. A tunnel swallowed them. After the empty expanse of the cavern, the tight space was a relief, the walls and ceiling bright with the glow of headlamps and the air pulsing with the growl of engines. She was close behind another racer, breathing his fumes. There was no space to overtake.
They were in the tunnel mere seconds before they saw the end. A dim circle, gray and murky. Shiara recognized what it was before Cassica did.
“Brakes! Slow it right down!”
Mist. Mist, down here underground. They plunged into a world of bleary shadows, warm and wet, and were dazzled by the reflected light of their own headlamps.
A dark shape loomed on their right. Cassica saw it too late to do anything but brace. The Rhino slammed into them, crashing the flank of his vehicle against Maisie. They were flung against their harnesses and knocked skidding away. Cassica’s teeth clacked together, her neck whipped hard enough to dizzy her with the pain, but through it all, instinct kept her fighting with the wheel. They spun through the muggy, murky half world, fishtailed wildly on slick rock, and came to a halt with their back wheels teetering in the air.
Neither moved, stunned by the impact. Unseen, other racers whipped past them, mosquito-fast.
Shiara looked over her shoulder. They were hanging over a bubbling pool, natural springs hot enough to boil them alive.
Dragged by the weight of her engine, Maisie began to tip backward.
Shiara screamed as Maisie tilted toward the bubbling pool below them. But what she screamed was, “Turbos!”
She ejected her harness and flung herself forward, adding her weight to Maisie’s nose as Cassica thumbed the button. Maisie lurched forward, shoved from behind by the force of her boosters. She gave a lurching hop, and her back wheels found the stone lip of the pool. They bit, throwing her forward; her front wheels crashed down, and she stalled.
Cassica swore loudly as she battled to restart the engine. Shiara began frantically strapping herself in again, her mind awhirl. How to make back the time? How much turbo fuel had they burned? Had Maisie been damaged by the crash? She checked readings, adjusted this and that, but it was hard to hold on to any thought with all the death she’d just seen. She’d come a hairbreadth from getting boiled like a crayfish. Half of her didn’t want Maisie to start again. Better if this was over right now.
But she’d built Maisie too well. The engine caught, and she gunned into life.
“Follow that guy!” Shiara said, pointing. They could see headlamps in the mist, the shadow of a racer’s rear. It was the best idea she could pull out of the muddle. Let the others prove the path. Her priority now was getting them out alive.
Maisie tore off, chasing the lights. Shiara watched the dash, alert for signs of damage, but the impact from the Rhino hadn’t been as bad as it felt. Just a sideswipe. It could have been much, much worse.
She raised her head, saw the edges of other pools to either side, bubbling away. They lay in wait as deadly traps for the unwary and reckless. She glanced at Cassica. Steam dewed her friend’s forehead. She was angry; Shiara could see it.
“We’re too far behind!” Cassica snapped, as if Shiara had complained about her speed. Shiara said nothing. She knew Cassica’s moods, knew she was apt to be terse and rude when stressed. It rolled off her. She wasn’t the kind to take offense.
They raced up a shallow slope, making time on the heavier car ahead. As they rose, they left the mist behind. Shiara looked back; the cavern, broad and flat, lay shrouded in steamy murk. She saw by the lights that there were still racers behind them, despite their delay. Cassica’s heroics on the bridge had put them ahead of the main pack. But where the leaders were, or how many were in front of them, was a mystery.
They swept round a corner, through another tunnel, and suddenly the darkness turned to startling, dazzling light, bright enough to blind.
The car ahead of them skidded as the driver stepped on his brakes too hard. Cassica shot past him into a cavern filled with immense crystals, a field of transparent broken teeth whose angles reflected their headlamps endlessly. All around were the other racers, their own headlamps flashing, switching this way and that, refracted through a hundred prisms. The whole cavern was ablaze with shifting light, so that it was hard to see where they were going at all.
“Slow down!” Shiara said, but Cassica wouldn’t slow now. Whatever they threw at her would only make her more determined to beat them. She slipped and skidded between the towering crystals, dodging lances of light thrown back by her headlamps as they moved, battling past the blindness.
Out of the disorder in her head, Shiara plucked an idea. She reached over and flicked off Maisie’s headlamps, more as an experiment than anything else. It worked. Suddenly there was no longer light shining back at them, but the cavern was bright enough with the headlamps of the other racers to see where they were going.
“Genius,” Cassica muttered approvingly and put her foot down. Despite herself, Shiara felt warm at that.
Maisie tore through the cavern, overtaking other racers who’d been forced to slow because of the dazzle. They made good ground, enough that Shiara began to hope again.
There were two exits from the cavern: one at the top of a slope, the other at the bottom of a dip. Shiara had enough of a handle on the designers of this place now; she knew better than to choose the easy option.
“Upslope,” she said, and Cassica obeyed.
One more tunnel and we’re out, Shiara thought. Their crude map had told her that much. They’d broken the back of this course. She scanned around for the Rhino, but he was lost somewhere in the swarming light of the cavern behind them.
Into the tunnel, alone. There was no one ahead of them, it seemed, or they were so far ahead as to be out of sight. The leaders had headed for the other exit. No need to climb a slope with their heavy vehicles if it wasn’t necessary.
But Maisie was a good climber, and what went up had to come down. They intended to come down fast.
There, ahead: sunlight! Shiara couldn’t help a smile breaking on her face. Just to be out of this place felt like a win.
&n
bsp; Maisie burst from the tunnel, and before them was the sky, banded with a sour rainbow of color as it met the wide-open horizon. A long, dry incline led down toward the distant finish line and the crowds in their bleachers, cheering as they turned from their screens to watch the racers emerge from the dark. Another tunnel, lower down, let out onto the flat hardpan, and other cars had already come through it, powering toward the finish. But Maisie had gravity on her side and a bellyful of turbo fuel that they’d saved for this moment.
“Hit it,” said Shiara.
Cassica whooped, let off the leash at last. Maisie surged forward as the turbos kicked in, and Shiara was squashed back in her seat as they went faster, and faster, and faster, until it seemed that Maisie wanted to rise up off the ground and float. Shiara adjusted the angle of the rear spoiler, increasing the downforce there, but even so, they were going so fast they were barely in control anymore. It felt wild, throwing off all care like that. They were stripped of everything but velocity.
Maisie came off the slope and into the pack in sixth place, but she crept up on fifth and pushed past without opposition, and then they had their sights on fourth. First and second place were out of reach, they both knew that, but they only needed third to qualify.
They could catch third. Maybe.
Shiara got busy at the dash, making adjustments, tweaking Maisie’s systems to squeeze every last bit of speed out of her. All the racers were blazing full turbo now, but Maisie had the edge, and she closed the gap on fourth. Wind buffeted them like the breath of an oven. In the distance, the tips of the crowd emerged from the heat haze.
They inched alongside fourth. Shiara saw the driver grimace, her teeth gritted as she tried to force more speed from her car. But she couldn’t stop Maisie moving slowly in front.
Third place ahead. A low, lean speedster, dust clouding the sponsor’s logos on its rounded flanks. The finish line was approaching fast, too fast: already the crowd was going wild as the winner drew close.
They weren’t going to catch up in time. Shiara felt the realization settle on her like a weight. All they’d been through, and they wouldn’t even qualify. Even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to go to Anchor City, she wanted the choice.
Then the gap between them began to close, faster and faster, Maisie eating up the distance. Shiara looked at Cassica in wonder, unable to understand where she’d found the extra power. But Cassica was doing nothing at all; she was focused only on the win.
They weren’t going faster. The car ahead was slowing down.
“The safety limiter!” Shiara said. The tech had miscalculated the distance, and the driver had pushed their turbos too hard until they overheated. Now the automatic cutoff had shut them down, to prevent the car blowing up.
“Go!” Shiara cried. “Go!” As if her encouragement might make Maisie move faster. Resurgent hope swept her along on a wave. Their car clawed forward, dragging their opponents closer, engine screaming as each part was taxed to the maximum. The cracked hardpan thundered beneath their wheels as they raced to the finish line. The cameras stuck to them eagerly, the announcer’s metallic voice a frenzied babble on the wind, the roar from the bleachers growing.
Go!
They were wheel to wheel.
Go!
And edging forward.
Faster!
And the finish line was beneath them, and gone, and they heard for an instant the riot of the crowd and saw a flash of screens. Then they were slowing, slowing, the turbos cooling, everything spent and only fumes left in the tank. They rolled into a pit area marked off with a chicken-wire fence, where the winner was already getting out of his car. Only when they reached a halt did they let out the air in their lungs.
“Did you make third?”
Harlan’s eager face thrust into Cassica’s, his expression amazed, elated, desperate. He leaned into the cockpit, slapped them both awkwardly on their helmets in congratulations. “Great race, girls. Great race! Did you make third? It was too close to tell!”
Cassica was as bewildered as Shiara was. “Don’t know,” she mumbled. “It was too fast.”
“Come on, we gotta see!” Harlan said, and he practically pulled Cassica out of her harness in his haste. Shiara unclipped and followed. Cameramen hovered around, capturing their uncertain faces for the crowd.
Harlan led them to a corner of the pits where a small screen, shaded by a tarpaulin, showed the race feed to the managers and medical crew. The announcer’s voice came through the screen and the nearby loudspeakers at the same time, a disconcerting echo in the sky.
“And now I’m hearing that we have the results of the photo finish ready to show you!”
Shiara saw Harlan clutch Cassica’s upper arm. Cassica didn’t seem to even know he was there: she was fixed on the screen. It bothered Shiara somehow, that familiarity he had, so she looked away to her left and saw the driver and tech whom they’d been racing for third place. The tech, a freckled, pug-faced boy, gave her a rueful smile, a look that said, Well played. Shiara nodded back. Drivers drove as enemies, but most techs felt like they were in it together, united by their passion for machinery and their willingness to live in the shadow of another.
A grainy photo came up on screen. They all looked. Shiara felt the blood leave her head.
Maisie was in front by inches.
“Third place … Cassica Hayle and Shiara DuCal!”
The crowd cheered. Harlan hugged them and babbled congratulations, and those around them applauded. The pug-faced tech clapped Shiara on the shoulder; the driver stalked away, glowering like a thunderhead.
“You did it!” Harlan cried, his forehead glistening. “You’re heading for the Core League qualifiers! Oh, you beautiful girls! What a race! What a race!”
Shiara and Cassica exchanged a glance, each reading the other. They’d been tossed into a meat grinder and come out whole. Many others hadn’t. Only fools would volunteer for that kind of treatment again.
But Shiara saw the savage joy in Cassica’s eyes and knew her friend would forget the horror by morning. She wondered if they’d end up as fools after all.
Shiara lay on the hard, warm stone, head pillowed in her hands, feeling the heat of the day on her bare arms and legs. She watched the sun through closed eyes, red through her lids, her heart bumping against her ribs. From nearby and all around came the splash of water, raucous laughing cries, and shouted insults. Young voices: the youth of Coppermouth, strutting and flirting and jostling for favor.
I could stay here, she thought. Like this.
But she couldn’t stay forever, and she knew it.
She raised herself up on her elbows, eyes narrow as they adjusted to the glare. The riverside was busy this afternoon. Kids basked on ledges on the steep banks of red rock, or dived off into the brown waters beneath. On the far side of the Copper River, tanglefruit groves sprawled across the lee side of a range of broken hills. Beyond them was the ridge, the last barrier before the Rust Bowl.
It was a hot, drowsy day, the kind of day when it seemed nothing important should be done. Yet Shiara couldn’t find it in herself to be restful. There was a decision to be made, and it weighed on her.
Harlan had a lot to say when she told him they might not go to the next round of qualifiers in Anchor City. The look of wounded disbelief on his face was something to behold. It was the first time she’d known him lost for words. Of course, pretty soon he got his tongue back, promising this and that, apologizing for what they’d been through.
“I didn’t know it’d be that way! My heart was in my throat the whole time when I saw the traps those snakes had hid inside those caverns. Those Outer League cowboys, thinkin’ they can do what they like just because there aren’t any really big sponsors to answer to! That’d never happen in the Core League. When we get to Anchor City, I know people. I’ll make damned sure the organizers never get near a Maximum Racing circuit again!”
But all his pleading and outrage didn’t move her an inch. Shiara wanted time to t
hink about it, and she wouldn’t be swayed. Harlan invited himself over for dinner with the family the next day, but it soon became clear he was out to persuade Blane and Melly of the righteousness of his cause, so Shiara sent him packing. Now he was stewing in the bar of the Crab and Hook, waiting for their word and drinking more than was good for him, if the gossip was right.
Among those playing in the river, she found Cassica, trying to escape Card as he chased her through the water. Benno, Jann, and Boba were flinging a ball about and splashing everybody. It looked like fun out there, but Shiara preferred to stay on the shore. She was pear-shaped and short, and even when she wore a long T-shirt to hide herself, the water made it cling to her curves unflatteringly.
She watched as Cassica let herself be caught, and they kissed, her hair sleek and seal-like as she held Card’s face. Cassica, of course, looked great in a bikini; but that was Cassica.
Card had been on his best behavior since the race. No more sulks, no passive-aggressive sideswipes. Cassica was confused but happy: she wasn’t used to relationships that didn’t involve arguments and wondered why he was being so nice.
But Shiara knew. He sensed that soon he might lose Cassica. It was the same thing she was thinking.
Maximum Racing. The Core League. Anchor City. It was a dizzying, terrifying thing, to be given the key to all that. A temptation like she’d never had. And all it might cost was their lives.
Cassica wanted it, of course. She lived her life headlong, and Shiara got pulled along in her wake. Since Cassica was taken in by the DuCal family at six years old, she’d been leading Shiara into some kind of trouble or another. But all the scraps and falls, the close calls and heartbreaks, hadn’t tamed Cassica one bit. She forgot them and moved on, learning nothing. Bad outcomes happened to other people as far as Cassica was concerned. For her, the opportunity that Harlan offered was something to seize with both hands.