Danny appeared in the same red sports car he used to race in his previous qualification race, on the same track where he practiced his drifting. No other racers, just him. The way he wanted it.
This racing track, void of other racers, was called a private track. Every official and unofficial racer had access to one. It was supposed to help racers prepare for the qualification races by getting familiar with their vehicles and the track.
Danny had spent several hours on this track trying to improve his skills but had made little progress. The most optimal way would be to race with other racers, but that would be expensive—really expensive for an unofficial racer.
Unofficial racers didn't have access to most of what Overdrive Online had to offer. They were just given a plain sports car, the same one given to every racer when they made an account and a simple race track.
The only way for unofficial racers to become official racers in Overdrive Online was to win in the qualification race by placing first out of ten drivers. The only problem was that to participate in a qualification race costs ten thousand dollars.
A ridiculous amount of money just to have full access to a game. But Overdrive Online wasn't just any game. It was the world's first Virtual Reality dive game.
It had been a whole decade since its release, and Danny, from a young age, watched the awesomeness of the game on the internet. He watched popular races on Overdrive Online every free moment he could get. It was his dream to become an Overdrive racer.
This wasn't what he was expecting—a mountain of debt he could never repay, from a loan shark who wanted to take his organs. "Ha! Nothing I can do about that anymore. I'm done. I just wanna drive," Danny said to himself.
He stomped on the pedal, and the red sports car moved quickly. Danny drove around the track for hours, trying to enjoy what little time he had left, but he couldn't.
Thoughts kept creeping into his mind. He was going to die. He was really going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. If he ran, he would have to run for the rest of his life. Jim's gang was quite a huge one, and he had no doubt that Jim would use all his resources to hunt him down and end him.
That wasn't even an option. One of the conditions that Jim gave Danny when he loaned him the money was that Danny provided information about his family, which he foolishly did. Danny had no siblings, no cousins, only two loving parents—a construction worker father and a librarian mother, who scraped together enough money to send him to college.
And how did he repay them? By ditching college without telling them and putting their lives in danger. He deserved death. He deserved worse. He knew that, but he didn't want to die. He still had many things he wanted to do: get a girlfriend, go to a club, travel. But he'd never be able to do that now. Still, better he dies and not his parents, right?
Danny kept driving and sped up the car, full speed ahead, into one of the walls of the arena, with no signs of stopping. Danny closed his eyes and crashed into the wall.
This was a game, not reality, so Danny would be fine. Normally, when a racer crashed into a surface in the game, their vehicle would be stopped and damaged, but surprisingly, that's not what happened.
Danny crashed through the wall and arrived at some digital cave. It kept glitching, and static noises were constantly heard.
"What was I trying to do? Kill myself? In a freaking video game? I must really be losing it. Anyway, where the hell am I?"
Danny, in his red sports car, observed the glitching cave and decided to exit his vehicle, which was something all racers, official and unofficial, could do. It might've been a game, but Danny could do a lot of things he could do in the real world, which was one of the reasons so many were attracted to virtual reality.
"What is this place, some secret stage? Am I the first one to discover it? Cool! Maybe I could video this place and post it on UsTube and gain a lot of views. Maybe I could make some mon…"
Danny stopped. What he was thinking of doing could take weeks or a whole month to earn some money. His deadline was tomorrow. Still, it felt nice to have a little hope, even if it was just for a moment.
While exploring the cave, something caught Danny's eye. It was something Danny could only describe as a box made of light in the distance. This intrigued him, so he approached the box of light.
When he finally reached it, he found something floating inside—a blue orb of light with a vertical ring constantly moving.
"What is this?" Danny touched the box of light. Surprisingly, it was solid. Then a blue screen appeared in front of him, showing a strange prompt:
Would you like to release the A.I. CANE? Yes. No.
In the short time that Danny played Overdrive Online, he had never seen such a prompt. "It's saying something about an A.I. Maybe I'm messing with something that shouldn't be messed with. If that's true, I could end up doing something really bad to the whole game."
Danny considered this, but he remembered something. He was going to die tomorrow. "Screw it. I got nothing to lose." Danny selected "Yes." The box of light started to disperse into white particles, freeing the blue orb inside.
The blue orb with the vertical ring floated until it was at face length with Danny.
"Greetings, Overdrive Racer. I am Cane. My acronym stands for Centralized Autonomous Network Entity. How may I be of assistance to you?"