The city didn't show up on maps.
Because Apex Mirage didn't exist.
Not officially. Not physically.
It was a drifting circuit built entirely in the mind—rendered through AR sync, injected through neural ports, and raced only by those willing to risk their perception... and their sanity.
The Syndicate used it as a recruitment test.
Most didn't survive.
Dread Wastes – Neurozone Hangar 11
Ayaka stood by a curved glass tank, watching Marcel get rigged with the Mirage rig—cranial drift halo, spinal stabilizers, pulse inhibitors.
"This isn't like the Riftline," she warned.
"You crash here… your brain crashes too."
Marcel adjusted his gloves.
"Good. Then they'll know I didn't blink."
Inside the tank, the world blinked to white—
—then snapped into color like a memory that never happened.
Mirage City.
A neon fortress built on impossibility: inverted roads, zero-gravity tunnels, and a sky made of shifting data clouds.
RAVYN: "Apex Mirage initialized.
Caution: Opponent is a psychonaut-class drifter. Known alias: Mirrorhand."
A voice echoed in Marcel's skull.
Silky. Sharp.
"Vega… you came to dream in my domain."
A blur flashed ahead.
Silver. Agile.
A car shaped like a blade caught in mid-slice.
Mirrorhand didn't drift the road.
He rewrote it.
THE RACE BEGAN.
The first turn was inside a spiral skyscraper.
The second? Downward, through a glass tunnel that shattered behind them.
The third—on the side of a vertical monorail, chasing digital birds made of velocity code.
RAVYN: "You're not racing a driver. You're racing belief."
"Then believe in me," Marcel snapped.
He drifted sideways off a floating overpass, spinning the Skyline midair while activating a neural jolt stim—
And the road caught him.
Mirage logic.
He made it real by doing it.
That was the rule here:
If you believe hard enough, physics obeys.
Mirrorhand blinked into view beside him, driving upside-down on a freeway made of shattered signs.
"You're fast," the voice said. "But I'm unreal."
"Unreal's overrated."
Marcel hit manual override.
Killed his traction.
Slammed into a controlled fall—through a flaming arc made of code.
They collided at the apex.
Sparks.
Smoke.
Thoughts fractured.
Suddenly—everything paused.
Mirrorhand: "You're in my head now, Vega. You drifted too deep."
Marcel: "Then I'll burn it from the inside out."
He closed his eyes.
And drifted backward, through the illusion.
Not running.
Redefining it.
The skyline around him cracked.
Glitched.
And—
Shattered.
Light exploded.
The Mirage collapsed.
Reality – Neurozone
Marcel sat up in the tank, gasping.
Ayaka rushed in. "You okay?!"
He nodded. Barely.
RAVYN: "You just broke the Apex Mirage. No one's ever… exited on their own."
"Then let the Syndicate know," Marcel muttered.
"I'm not just drifting anymore."
"I'm rewriting the road."