Ten minutes ago, at the detention center.
The cold light in the steel corridor flickered faintly in the blind spot of the cameras. Jack Atlas was leaning on the hard cot in the holding cell, his red-and-black jacket casually draped over his shoulders. He stared at the ceiling, his knuckles tapping impatiently against the metal bed frame.
"Tch… what the hell is Ushio's lot investigating? Their efficiency is way too damn low." He muttered to himself, sparks of irritation smoldering in his violet eyes.
Jack already had a short temper to begin with; now that he'd been slapped with the charge of "intentional assault" for no good reason, he was fuming with nowhere to vent it.
"Click."
The electronic door lock let out a soft sound, and the instant the red light turned green, the pressure door actually slid open on its own, leaving a narrow gap.
Jack snapped upright.
"…What's going on?"
The corridor was eerily silent; even the usual mechanical patter of patrols had vanished. He stood and walked to the door, giving it a tentative push—the door swung fully open, revealing an empty passageway.
"Hey! Anybody there!"
No response. The emergency lights cast pale stripes of light along the floor, while the exit signs in the distance glowed ghostly green.
Jack narrowed his eyes.
A Trap? Or…
He stepped out of the cell, the soles of his boots ringing crisply against the metal floor. The security cameras at the corner, which should have automatically tracked moving targets, now seemed dead, as if their power had been cut.
"Ha…" He suddenly laughed, his fist tightening until his knuckles cracked. "Interesting. Since someone's 'invited' me to leave—"
His steps abruptly quickened as he raced toward the impound warehouse, following memory. Every security door along the way was strangely standing open, as if the entire facility had suddenly dropped all its defenses against him.
He arrived at the impound sector, the D-Wheel storage bay.
The Wheel of Fortune sat quietly in the center, its silver-white frame gleaming like blood-red diamonds under the overhead lights. Jack yanked off the dust cover in one motion, his fingertips gliding over the familiar control panel.
"Old partner, looks like someone's more desperate than we are."
The engine roared to life the instant he touched it, blue flame bursting from the turbine exhaust. As the D-Wheel shot out of the warehouse, the alarm system finally started wailing, late to the party—but every intercept gate was half a beat behind—
"Boom—!"
The silver Ryusei smashed through the final protective glass barrier, and Jack burst into the night through a storm of sparkling shards. In the rearview mirror, the entire Public Security Maintenance Bureau building was shrouded in uncanny silence, with only a single silhouette flitting past a certain window on the rooftop.
Jack clenched his jaw and twisted the throttle all the way.
"Don't think you can outplay me with crap like this… you bastard!"
The D-Wheel carved a dazzling light trail across the cross-sea bridge, while deep inside the detention center, a certain deliberately shut-down monitoring terminal screen reflected a hand in a white glove—slowly pressing the reset key for the master control system.
The burly figure wore the smile of a hunter watching prey take the bait.
Got him.
Jack Atlas really was a single-celled idiot; he'd stepped right into the Trap without a second thought.
...
...
Jack Atlas gripped the D-Wheel's handles tight, the roar of the engine bellowing in his ears. The night wind howled past his face, and the city's neon pulled into blurred streaks at the edge of his vision. He had to get out of the Public Security Maintenance Bureau's jurisdiction as fast as possible and find evidence to clear his name.
However, just as he was about to enter the cross-sea bridge, a blinding flash of white suddenly flared in his rearview mirror.
—Another D-Wheel was closing in at a terrifying speed.
Jack frowned and instinctively accelerated, but that D-Wheel stuck to him like a shadow, not losing ground at all. What shocked him even more was that the D-Wheel's appearance… was exactly the same as his own Wheel of Fortune!
"That's impossible…?"
His Wheel of Fortune was one of a kind, the only one in the world. Yet the D-Wheel behind him—its streamlined body, the layout of its turbine engine, even the details of its rear wing—were a perfect match. The only difference was its paint job: a pure white coat that gleamed with a cold sheen in the night.
After the WRGP, Jack's D-Wheel had been modified with some blue coloring and the 5DS team emblem. But the Wheel of Fortune opposite him right now was pure white from top to bottom—exactly the configuration it had back when he was the Duel King in New Tongshiyi, before he joined Team 5DS.
Looking at that D-Wheel felt like staring at the ghost of his past self.
The two machines gradually drew level side by side. Jack snapped his head sideways to look at the other driver's seat.
—And his pupils suddenly contracted.
Sitting in the cockpit of the white Wheel of Fortune was someone who looked exactly like him.
Same short blond hair, same sharp violet eyes, even the arrogant curve at the corner of the mouth was identical. The other man was staring back at him too, his gaze carrying a cold, dissecting scrutiny, as if sizing up his reflection in a mirror.
"Who the hell are you?!" Jack barked.
The other didn't answer, only curled his lips slightly, revealing a twisted smile.
The next second, the white D-Wheel suddenly accelerated, slamming its body toward Jack's machine!
"Tch!" Jack quickly corrected his course, barely dodging. The two D-Wheels, still at high speed, scraped together sparks of glaring light, the shrill grind of metal cutting through the night.
"Imposter…!" Jack spat, fury blazing in his eyes. He twisted the throttle hard; the engine answered with an even more violent roar as he tried to shake the other off.
However, the white D-Wheel clung to him like a bone-deep curse, refusing to let go. Worse, the other's driving skills were practically on par with his—every corner, every acceleration seemed to preempt his moves.
"Who the hell are you supposed to be!?" Jack was seething.
"You already know the answer, don't you?"
The Jack on the other side sneered.
"I am the King, Duel King Jack Atlas!"
"Don't screw with me!" Jack snarled. "What's your game, bastard—copying me and framing me like this?"
"Copying?"
The other Jack burst out laughing.
"The true King wouldn't be dumb enough to get caught by the Public Security Maintenance Bureau so easily. By that logic, you're the fake one here, aren't you?"
"What did you just say!?"
Jack was furious.
"Heh heh heh… Your strength and your pride both look like they've vanished right along with the King's might." The other Jack snorted. "Honestly, it even forced me to go out of my way, meddling with the detention center systems…"
Jack's eyes widened. "So it was you who let me out just now?"
"You've already lost the glory that once made you a King!" the other Jack shouted. "Stripped of all that, you're the imitation—and I'm the real deal!"
As he spoke, he raised his right arm high, one finger stabbing toward the sky as he made an outrageously arrogant declaration.
"There is only one King, and that is me, Jack Atlas!"
Jack was stunned.
Not because it felt like watching the cringeworthy chuunibyou phase of his own past.
But because this fraud—his voice, his phrasing, his behavior, and that one-of-a-kind chuunibyou aura… were all literally him!
Even if he were a mimic, how could anyone imitate him to this extreme?
"If you're not convinced, you're welcome to try."
The Jack on the other side sneered, activating the Duel mode of the Wheel of Fortune.
"Let's see how many moves the you of now can survive under the hands of the true King."