Love.exe: Surviving Chapter 40: Death Battle Race

Chapter 40: Death Battle Race

The garage was gone. In its place was the desert.

Cracked earth spread in every direction, flat and pale beneath a sky with no sun in it, only ambient light, sourceless.

Far off, the horizon shimmered in a way that suggested heat without actually giving him any. Proxy considered the contradiction, shrugged, and moved on, because not every lie deserved a second look.

He was in the truck. The truck was at a starting line.

To his left and right, the line ran farther than he could see from the cab. Twenty-four vehicles in a single row.

The one immediately to his left had side plating welded on after the original frame, the work uneven and obvious, with a winch mounted at the front and the chain already extended for reasons that were clearly going to become somebody’s problem.

The one two positions to his right sat higher than the rest, a narrow truck on an elevated frame, chrome finish catching the flat light in every direction except a useful one.

The truck immediately to his right had its window down.

The driver had thick arms resting on the door frame, reinforced knuckles visible even from here, and was looking at Proxy’s cab with the patient focus of someone who had been waiting to start a conversation since the garage.

"Ay," he said. "Proxy, yeah?"

Proxy looked at him.

"You’re the little fucker they’re all hot about. The one with the free extraction attached to him."

He had spent time on the idea and decided he liked.

"It’s a hella good deal."

"Isn’t it," Proxy said.

"So when the flag drops," the man said, "I’m going to put your head through your own dash. Nothing personal, choom."

"I appreciate the transparency," Proxy said. "It’s rare to find it nowadays."

The man blinked.

Then he laughed, a short one, as if he didn’t know if he should feel insulted or impressed.

"Gonk," he said, not unkindly, and looked back at the start line.

Proxy looked back at the start line too, because the conversation seemed to have reached its natural end and there was still more to observe.

Four trucks to his right, a vehicle that was round in its proportions and pale in its paint and had headlights like something that paid too much attention sat a little shorter than the trucks on either side of it.

Standing on top of it, one hand shading her eyes against light that did not really need shading against, was Nyx.

She found him.

The hand left her eyes and became a wave.

He lifted his hand and moved it. It qualified, technically, as a wave.

He knew that it was only technically.

She seemed to like it, because even at this distance he could see the expression it got, the warm one that appeared when something had met an expectation it had no right to meet.

He put his hand back on the wheel.

Athena appeared above the start line, or projected above it, scaled to the open space, visible from every position in the line.

She was displayed, the way a signal is displayed, which she seemed not to object to.

She looked down at the field with the wide, composed expression she had worn in The Pantheon.

"Welcome to The Crucible," she said.

"The game you are about to play is called the Death Battle Race. The name is accurate, which we find is the kindest thing to offer at the start of an event like this."

She let that warmth do its work.

"The race runs through a series of zones. The zones are not disclosed in advance, because we find that surprises keep interest that preparation tends to remove."

"You will pass through them in order. The race does not stop between zones. There is no recovery stop. Those who complete the course are safe."

A gentle pause.

"Those who do not complete the course enter the sponsor roulette."

"How many of that pool survive is determined in real time by our audience’s generosity. Sponsor credits are donated live. The funds decide the number."

"We have found this format performs extremely well with our viewership."

She smiled, which on her face meant exactly what it always meant.

"The race begins in thirty seconds. Your vehicles are ready. Your abilities are loaded."

"We wish you the very best."

She looked down at the field for another moment.

"Five," she said, and the countdown was real.

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

She stopped.

The pause at one lasted longer than it had any reason to.

The silence sat on the starting line long enough to become a specific kind of pressure, the sort that shows up in the moment before something becomes irreversible.

"One."

Twenty-four engines hit at once.

The sound was immediate and complete, the start line breaking into forward motion all at once, and the open desert became a problem to cross at speed rather than a space to observe.

Burst fired somewhere ahead of him and kicked a truck into its neighbor.

The neighbor went sideways and almost spiraled.

Both of them lost three seconds they were not getting back.

Smokescreen poured across a huge area at his left, thick and sudden, and then it was behind him and therefore no longer his concern.

Ahead, the flat terrain gave way to the first visible change in the horizon.

He was still watching that change when the truck to his right made its decision.

The ex-boxer had not been waiting for the field to spread.

He had been waiting for the start line to thin by exactly one truck’s width, enough room to come across without clipping the vehicle beyond him.

The heavy frame swung right and then came left with the purpose of something built to collide with things rather than avoid them.

Ram was already active, the grill of his truck lit along its leading end with the flat white of a charged ability about to hit.

Proxy had Overdrive available.

He had not yet decided whether using it here was the right move against the threat that was now about to hit him from the right.