Light around me brought me around a bit, and I blinked, trying to focus.

RACE – LOST – RACE – LOST – RACE – LOST – RACE – LOST – RACE – LOST – RACE – LOST – RACE – LOST – RACE – LOST –

I stared at our car, smashed to pieces. This was it. It was over. I had to get up. I had to run.

“For god’s sake, move!” I could hear Bail yelling in my ear. “ACE are already on their way.”

I couldn’t move, though. My head hurt. My face hurt. Everything hurt. I put my fingers to the back of my neck and pulled them back, sticky with blood. Fuck. I tried to move the arm that was stuck under me at an ugly angle. I couldn’t move it, or me anymore.

“Bail,” I said, my voice as broken as I was. I could barely talk; it was more a mumble than actual words. “I’m seriously hurt.”

“Rus, we can’t come for you,” he said. “Move.”

No, no, no. I cursed.

“Rus, if you don’t move and they catch you, it’s not just jail time. You’ll be sent to the canning mines. You know it.”

I sucked in a breath and pushed myself up with the other arm. The canning mines . . . I was a runner, not a miner. The canning mines were underground production facilities where you were worked to the bone. Food production for this city was massive, but it was something that had to be done. The city didn’t care about the people who were working in the facilities, or if they were starving while working. They were death traps.

“Never,” I said to him. I saw my helmet, several feet before me. I don’t recall what happened, but my face . . . The helmet wasn’t worth anything anymore; it had, however, no doubt saved my life. I spat blood on the ground and walked forward a step. Burning, stabbing agony spread through me with every single step. I kicked the helmet as I passed it, and it shot off skittering and spinning down the street.

“We’re out,” Daisy groused, her voice so cold, so very cold. “Good luck, Rusty. I hope I’ll see you soon.”

Out? What did she mean by that?

My mind whirled with the consequences . . . we were fucked. No car, no money, no nothing.

All of us. We had nothing.

I saw my mom again at my funeral.

Then in the canning mines herself.

No, no way . . . it couldn’t happen.

I staggered away from my car as quickly as I could and moved towards Dimi’s. There was nothing left of his car, either, but when I looked in, I couldn’t see him. His belt had been cut. He’d got out already and already run? He’d left me, left me for dead! I would never have done that. If he’d still been in there . . . I would have helped him.

M-Corp - Depository

Credit Balance: 0

Sirens blared in the background. I had to make a run for it. I was miles from home, miles from anywhere.

Aug-World Credits = 0

Time Remaining = 3 minutes.

I tried to reach Daisy with my limited dumb-only texts from the free Aug-World. I couldn’t waste the small few Aug-World minutes I had. Neither Bail nor anyone else answered me.

There was nothing.

They’d cut the comms through, and the only way to contact them after would be the texts. I walked on, trying my best to reach them. Nothing.

I made it back to where the race started. Everyone had gone. There were no signs at all that we’d even been there. My bag and clothes were sitting at the side of the road. Our garage doors were wide open, and nothing was left inside at all.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

They’d cleared everything out so fast. So, so fast. How?

No one had touched my stuff; it was all there. I grabbed my clothes and slipped on what I could over what was left of my suit. I really had lost weight these last few months. My trousers, shirt, and jacket all fit over the racing suit’s bulk. Then, I slung my bag over my good shoulder and made the slow walk home.

I was sure my arm was broken, or dislocated. Something. “That fucking prick,” I said. “If he hadn’t . . .”

There were always so many what ifs, so many things that always could go wrong. But he pushed it at the most stupid place. Why? It didn’t make sense.

I needed to get home, or somewhere else safe, to be able to use the system to assess the damage to my body. My HUD could do a self-assessment, I just didn’t want to see them.

I couldn’t go home like this. Who was I kidding? My mom would have a fit.

I did the only other thing I could; I tapped Tsomak’s HUD ID and waited for him to answer.

When he eventually did, his voice was low, sleepy. “Rus, do you know what time it is?”

“There was a crash,” I just about managed to stutter out. “I’m walking home.”

“Fuck, your mom’s been going nuts. She finally fell asleep. I’ll come. Send me your location.”

I did, and I waited.

I waited, when all I wanted was for my mom to wrap me up and tell me it would be okay.

This would not be okay. Ever.

By the time Tsomak rounded the corner, it was past 1 a.m.

“It’s the only pack I have,” he said and held something up. The plain brown wrapped crinkled, then fell apart. He’d hit that for a very long while.

“Medikit?” I croaked out.

“Here,” he pulled it open, took out the syringe, and stabbed me in the arm with it.

I never flinched, the nites flooding my system. They wouldn’t make a dent in the damage I’d taken. “It has some pain relief in it too, just not sure how much, its old.”

He stood before me, took my wrist in his hand. It didn’t take him long to assess the damage to my body. “From what I can see, your shoulder is dislocated,” he said. “You have skull fractures, a possible concussion. Your arm is broken in two places, shattered wrist. Fuck, Rusty—”

He froze.

I went to talk, but he put a hand up. “Internal.” He tapped the side of his head and connected to my HUD.

“What?”

“Your system is flooded with nites, remnants from your father, I presume. A med pack, life pack . . . I’m not sure, but it would have been expensive as hell.”

From my father? Nites? I was alive because of something my father had given me, had installed into me?

“Mom can’t see me like this.” I said to him. My voice shook even inside my head. Fear threatened to engulf me. “I can’t come home at all like this.”

“What are you saying? You can’t just not come home, leave her with nothing, not even a note.”

“You know she won’t let me go out there like this,” I said. “She’d persuade you and I to do something, anything. I’ve got friends. I’ll go stay with them for a couple of days, sort out a plan.”

“Don’t be stupid. You can’t work with broken bones. No one’s going to take you on anymore. Not like that. You can’t pay your way through anything.”

“I’ll have to,” I retorted, anger bubbling to the surface. “I’ll figure it out.”

Silence stretched between us. “What happened out there?”

“Dimi’s family’s getting booted, too. He just lost it. I’ve never seen anyone drive so stupidly. Even I wouldn’t have risked what he did.”

Tsomak had seen me race, against my mother’s wishes, of course. He’d been the one that was supposed to come bring me home afterwards.

“This is gonna hurt,” he warned and took a step toward me. “I can set the shoulder back. Won’t do anything for the breaks, but you’ll be able to move it, at least.”

I looked up into his eyes. This man had been with us for near seven years. He’d helped my mom after my dad’s death, and he’d kept me mostly on the straight and narrow.

He put a hand on my shoulder and the other under my elbow. “Three, two . . .”

Then he yanked and shoved before he even got to one.

I couldn’t help but wail as pain shot through the rest of my arm to my hand, even if the shoulder did feel better almost instantly. “I wasn’t letting you race just for the hell of it.” Tsomak held onto me and whispered, “You’ve got skills, Rusty. Skills that could have, would have, gotten you a better life.”

He lowered his head, and I struggled to find my voice to ask, “What?”

“Leave your mother a message saying you’ve got yourself a place to stay, steady job, et cetera,” he said, his voice low. “She’ll need to know you’re okay before we leave.”

“You want me to lie to her? But—”

Tsomak put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a card, a real old-fashioned card. “This is the comm ID for an old friend. I’d already told him about your skills. He’d asked me to get you to eighteen, but I can’t do that now.”

“I’m almost eighteen,” I said.

“Contact him. He’ll help you.”

“A friend?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you with any friends.”

“Yes, and he owes me.”

“But my bones?”

“It will come at a price,” Tsomak cautioned. “They won’t take you in unless you sign their contract.”

A contract. That meant only one thing. I swallowed. “Scripted?”

“Kind of. You’re way past subscription age.”

Tsomak tucked the old ID card in my pocket. He put his wrist to mine. “You won’t be able to reach us very often down in Molsk,” he said. “This is all I can spare.”

He gave me two hours of Aug-World time. “Use it wisely if you can’t get real work. It won’t last long.”

“I’m scared,” I admitted.

“You’ll be fine,” he said and attempted to smile, the crinkles around his eyes and forehead scrunching up. “I was in service on the wall at fourteen. My parents signed me over at ten as soon as they discovered I wasn’t good at anything. Your mom and pops did everything they could to educate you early on. They kept you out of the factories and the mines. This is the best I can do to honor both their wishes.”

Tsomak hadn’t ever expressed any emotions around me other than frustration, but maybe that was how he dealt with things. His face, his eyes . . . now they were full of emotion. Emotion I’d never seen or expected from him.

“Keep in touch,” he almost pleaded. “When you can. I’ll let your mom know how you’re doing.”

“I will,” I replied, feeling myself tear up. “I promise. If I can get you word, I will.”

“I need to go,” he said and turned to face away from me. “Before she wakes, and we have to move. If you need anything from the apartment, get it after 8 a.m. We’ll be gone, and they won’t know till nine or ten.”

“Okay,” I said. My body trembled now; all my adrenaline was wearing off. “Will he answer if I call? Or should I call in the morning, later?”

“He might answer, I’m not sure.”

“I’ll call.”

Tsomak went to move, then came in close, put his arms around me, gently, and hugged me. “I’m rooting for you,” he said. “Prove everyone wrong, that you’re worth something, something more than they could ever pin on you.”

I found my words had left me. I couldn’t face him; I couldn’t face him walking away.

Watching that would be the hardest thing in my life.

When I eventually looked up, Tsomak had gone.