The world stopped. The Supra's engine ticked like a time bomb in the silence. Inside the warehouse, Inspector Rostova stood, waiting. She hadn't drawn a weapon. Her hands were empty, held slightly away from her body in a gesture of non-confrontation. It made her more dangerous, not less.
Chloe's grip on the stun baton tightened. "It's a trap," she hissed. "She's luring us in."
"If it were a trap, you'd already be surrounded by IA assault teams," Rostova's voice cut through the door, calm and unnervingly perceptive. "I'm alone. And I'm unarmed. We need to talk. Now."
I looked at Chloe. Her jaw was clenched, her eyes calculating the odds. Finally, she gave a sharp, reluctant nod. We pushed the door open and stepped inside, the batons held ready.
Rostova didn't flinch. Her wintery eyes took in the Supra parked outside, then swept over us. "The ghost awakens. I hope it's as good as Harrison claims."
"What do you want, Rostova?" Chloe snapped, not lowering her weapon.
"My position has been compromised," she stated, her voice devoid of emotion, as if discussing the weather. "Internal Affairs has opened a full investigation into my 'non-compliance.' They have logs of my patrol routes, financial anomalies, and they intercepted a secure transmission between myself and Harrison. They know I've been turning a blind eye. They just can't prove why… yet."
"Why?" I asked, the word leaving my mouth before I could stop it.
A flicker of something—pain? regret?—crossed her face before the mask of ice slammed back down. "My brother. He was a driver. One of the best. He died ten years ago in a sanctioned electric prototype race. A 'safe,' 'clean' accident caused by a software glitch." Her voice tightened. "The corporation that built the car covered it up. The system protected itself. Harrison… the club… they represent a truth that was buried with my brother. A truth about passion, about fallible, beautiful machines, about the human spirit that sanitized technology tries to erase. I looked the other way because you are the last remnant of that spirit."
The confession hung in the oily air, shocking in its rawness.
"A touching story," Chloe said, her tone dripping with skepticism. "So why come to us now? To warn us? We already know IA is hunting us."
"Not to warn you," Rostova said, her gaze locking onto me. "To join you."
Silence.
"You're insane," Chloe breathed.
"Perhaps. But I am also your only chance of surviving the Silver Run." She took a step forward. "IA knows about the shipment. They don't know the exact route, but they've set up a net. They're monitoring all known desert channels, every old smuggling path. They have drone surveillance and two rapid-response teams on standby. You'll be driving into a box canyon."
My blood ran cold. Harrison's plan to use me as an unpredictable variable was useless if they'd already closed off all the exits.
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"Because I was the one who designed the interception protocol," she said flatly. "Before I was suspended this afternoon. They've frozen my access, but I have the operational plans. I know where their teams are, their response times, their communication frequencies." She tapped the side of her head. "It's all in here."
Chloe finally lowered the stun baton a fraction. "And in return? What do you want? A Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card? A seat in the club?"
Rostova's smile was thin and bitter. "I am past redemption. What I want is to burn the system that killed my brother and then tried to erase him. I want to help you secure that shipment not for the club's survival, but as a middle finger to the men in suits who think they've tamed the world. Get me to the delivery point, and I will give you the data I've collected on IA—names, operations, their entire playbook. It's insurance. With it, the club can fight back."
It was a devil's bargain. The ultimate insider, offering us the keys to the kingdom in exchange for a ride to her own personal damnation.
"We can't trust her," Chloe said, her eyes never leaving Rostova.
"You don't have to trust me," Rostova replied. "You just have to use me. I am a tool. A weapon. Point me at your enemies and pull the trigger."
My mind raced. This changed everything. Harrison's plan was based on stealth and unpredictability. Rostova was offering us a map of the enemy's mind. It was an incredible advantage. And an incredible risk.
"If you're lying…" I began.
"Then you'll be dead, and I'll be in a cell, or worse," she finished for me. "We are bound by mutual desperation, Kaito Tanaka. That is a stronger bond than trust."
I looked at the Supra, then at Chloe, and finally at the disgraced inspector standing in the heart of my secret. Harrison had wanted an unpredictable variable. He was about to get one.
"We have to take this to Harrison," I said.
Rostova shook her head. "No. The club has leaks. Small ones, but enough. Julian's ego, Leo's gambling debts… IA has tentacles everywhere. The only people who can know about this are the three of us. The Silver Run is now a covert operation within a covert operation."
The weight of the decision was crushing. To go against Harrison's direct plan? To incorporate the very person who had been hunting us?
Chloe was staring at me, waiting. The choice was mine. The lead driver's call.
I thought of the roar of the Supra, the feeling of the wheel fighting in my hands. I thought of the silent, humming world I was rebelling against. Rostova, in her own broken way, was rebelling too.
"Okay," I said, the word feeling both foolish and inevitable. "You're in."
Rostova gave a single, sharp nod. "Good. Then we have work to do. The first IA drone surveillance pass is in six hours. We need to be gone before then." She walked to my workbench and picked up a stylus, pulling up a satellite map on her personal datapad. "The route Harrison gave you is compromised here, here, and here," she said, circling points with brutal efficiency. "We go through here instead."
She pointed to a section of the map marked with topographical lines so close together they were almost a solid black mass. The Apex Canyon Gorge. A narrow, treacherous fissure in the earth, considered impassable by anything wider than a motorcycle.
"That's suicide," Chloe breathed, her eyes wide.
"It's the one place they won't look," Rostova said, her voice cold and certain. "Their drones can't fly that low, and their interceptors can't fit. It's our only chance."
She looked from Chloe's horrified face to my determined one.
"This is no longer a race," she said, her wintery eyes holding a terrifying fire. "It's an insurrection. And it starts now."
She folded her arms, the former hunter now standing with the hunted.
"So, lead driver. What's your first order?"
The warehouse, my sanctuary, now felt like a war room. And I was suddenly, terrifyingly, in command.