(EDITED)
(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be fixed to be in line with the new edits)

Let's not be on different pages. We're not animals.

Well, technically we're all animals, what with the science of it. But we're not feral animals, that's to say. Lycans makes us sound like something that turns rabid at midnight—that's a werewolf, by the way, and an entirely different thing altogether—when really that gene died out centuries ago around the same time all of your human jaws stopped being the same size as your egg-shaped foreheads.

Depending on the bloodline, some could still shift all the way and go frolic in the fields as their naked, furry selves, howl at the moon or scratch their ears with their feet or what have you. But those were mostly packs in Europe and Middle Asia who were more concerned with the shifting tradition. The Americas had tried to become progressive over the last few centuries which meant shifting was pretty much a no-go.

In the world of lycans, it was whatever those pretty three lines said on your secondary profile that made you something. 

The top bun of the shit sandwich that was the hierarchy were the Drachmann, who were an originally Danish bunch that eventually spread into France before deciding they were to be a global empire and stretched over to North America. They created gaming systems, owned hydrocarbon and energy companies, controlled international shipping docks and manufacturing, ran hotel chains throughout the Americas, and dominated the top of the racing industry with iron claws.

Then there was the bottom that got purposefully squashed beneath the weight of the six other packs on top of it, which were the Stirling, who hailed from the damp desolation of Britain before scurrying off to the US. They owned third-rate fast food chains, created indie record labels, operated east and west coast metro systems, owned a few fast fashion companies, and were consistently, without fail, dead last in all levels of the racing industry for centuries going.

Good news for me, you see.

I like to keep the expectations low.

You're bored of my talking, but guess what, you'll thank me for it later when you're not conjuring explanations mid-way through someone getting their teeth knocked out going eighty miles per hour. 128 kilometers, for you international folks.

You'll hear racing, but the right term is square racing, as the entire thing requires a special square track to be played. Square racing to lycans was as football was to a Catholic Republican all-boys, Florida-based household: you did it at some point whether you liked it or not, and you never escaped its sounds unless you happened to move to Argentina.

And if you did like it, you'd be stupid not to make some money out of it.

Sports betting was fairly illegal in the US, but square bets were the only ones allowed as it was the entire basis of the game. Every game, aside from little leagues and juvenile recreational teams, was towards a cash prize of some number. From betting your lunch money all the way to your life savings, square racing was really just a gambling den. It was, at its core, a rich kid's sport and a poor kid's demise.

You learn that the hard way.

"All right, listen up and listen good. You're gonna go in there with this paper, you're gonna say my name, you're gonna go in there with the bike I—what the hell are you drinking?"

"Fuel," I replied, and tipped the energy drink back for the last drops. "Liquid courage, if you will." I scanned the Corvidae's parking lot, the great big beast of a stadium looking more like a spaceship up close, shrouding the parking lot in shadows. Cars were packed into the slots like sardines, promising the competition inside. I gritted my teeth. "Why the fuck is this so early? How many people try out?"

She scoffed. "It's Corvus, man. What's that question?" But she smiled as she said it. "I'll be watching in the stands, if it makes you feel better."

"Do you have to watch?" I said. She turned her car in a sharp left as we headed down Vera Road. Up ahead, the distant black scaffolding of Avaldi's square stadium threatened to eat me alive.

"A few Jackdaws are gonna be there, too," She made a right. "Maybe you'll have some allies."

"Or more enemies," I argued. 

She swiped her student card at the scanner right before the silver gates to Corvidae. It beeped and they swung wide. In a little booth beside it, a woman waved us to my demise. The black hole swallowed us in.

The Corvidae was the third largest collegian track in the US, and the darkest one with every inch either black or blacker than black, spanning a whopping 2.4 miles with a risky thirty two degree banking, and a 325 feet elevation change. There were only 40,000 students and staff at Avaldi, but it seated 45,000 for all the people that came to watch the races. It had two locker rooms, for the home and away, a lounge, and a press room.

And it was damn glorious.

Save for the parking lot.

I swallowed. "How many rookies are they recruiting?"

Nia pursed her lips. "For your head's sake," she murmured, "hopefully a lot."

I let my head fall back on the headrest. "Hell alive," I muttered.

"Calm down," she assured. "It's just a race."

I could almost laugh. "Exactly," I said.

It took another thirty minutes to find a spot, and it led to Nia shoving my bag into my chest just to help me unhook my bike out from the back of her truck. After another fifteen minutes of that, she faced me, black strands wild around her face.

"How do you race when you can't pick that up?" she asked.

"I can pick it up," I argued. "With time."

"I don't think you're gonna grow anymore."

"I'm nineteen," I argued. "Men stop growing at twenty five."

"I think that's a myth," she said, patting my back. 

The clock didn't allow me to argue with her so I let her help me steer the bike towards the entrance, my bag over my shoulder. Two guards were at the front, and we flashed our IDs before they parted to allow us through. One gave a confused look at me, then the bike, then back at me, before saying, "Good luck."

"That'd be nice," I murmured, then saluted them. 

Nia ushered me forward. The tunnel going in was pitch black, no light to be let in or out. She nudged my shoulder and said, "Hey, maybe you're the underdog. That's good."

"I like your hope," I sighed. "Enough for both of us."

The bike stations were still full so no one had taken off yet, to my relief. There were only four left, and Nia and I scrambled for the nearest one to prop up between the bars and charging pillar. Up ahead, the chatter of voices was a distant echo behind the stadium walls.

I began plugging the wires into their respective ports. I chewed my lip. "They're not gonna crush someone at tryouts, are they?"

Nia blinked. "Uh."

"'Uh'? What's 'uh'? 'Uh' like yes?"

"They're not gonna crush you," she assured. "At worst, a sprain. Or a tooth. Or your head."

I got to my feet and nodded. "Oh, cool. I didn't need my whole head anyway." 

"You're overthinking it," she sighed. "They haven't recruited freshmen, ever. That must mean they want to try something new, or they're antsy for players. That's to your benefit, right? Corvus has never not gone to Red Diamond."

"I'm barely at tryouts," I said. "Don't get all Red-Diamond-worshipping on me."

"Red Diamond could turn your whole life on its head, man," she said, and although it was a bitter reminder of the "life" she referred to, it was an equally sweet idea of something almost like a future beyond it. "This could change everything for you. Forget whoever's here, forget Corvus, even. Just get yourself going somewhere." Nia jabbed her finger into my chest. "What do you have to lose?"

I dug my nails into my forearms. My life had a timer, had months that I could count on my two hands. My life was boxed in a year that would take more miracles than a damn tryout to fix. My lot didn't get chances. We got dreams.

But I'd probably kill me myself if I didn't at least try.

I gripped the strap of my bag. "Thanks for the ride," I said.

She let me run off to the locker rooms without another word.

With nothing but an over-modded motorcycle to keep you off the scathing concrete and bloodthirsty opponents, the second most important measure of square racing was your gear.

Mine was courtesy of thrift stores and Nia's hand-me-downs, but it had kept me from enough nasty spills to keep around. You had your two-layer undershirt, your nylon pants. Then you had the shinguards, the arm guards, the knee pads, the elbow pads, and the chest guard. Then you had your neck guard which seemed like a glorified leather velcro choker, but was pretty handy for when you wanted to keep your head on your neck in a fall.

After a few gory accidents, NCAA and IPRA had made it mandatory for racers to wear certified jackets in all matches. As you went up, sponsors pasted themselves all over you, but if you couldn't already guess, mine was adorned with nothing but black stripes and years' worth of wear, tear, and concrete scrapes. Only two pant pockets were allowed since they wanted no one smuggling any weaponry or other contraband onto the track, but mine were not exactly racing-grade, and it left me with only one back pocket to rely on. 

The helmet was a typical motorcycle helmet for the most part, save for the fact its material was far stronger and its face shield twice as thick. It was longer in the back to hold in the wires that connected to speakers and a mic for team communication. 

Mine, obviously, did not work. 

I set it down and yanked on my gloves. There were no regulations on your gloves or footwear, but it was a general consensus that you wanted the best you could get. A fall or a side sweep elicited serious hand protection, after all. The best were double strapped that you could wrap around your wrist, but I could only afforded single strap ones. Footwear, we were on our own, but similarly to the gloves, you wanted something that could withstand the concrete's kiss, and without laces lest they get caught in the wheels. It meant that all my meager money had gone into decent cleats, which were the most durable part of my gear. They were boot-like things with half a dozen straps, and crisp steel teeth on the bottom, ready to bite.

I grabbed my helmet, and gave a prayer.

"God," I whispered, undoing the helmet's straps, "tell Hell to save me a demon."

If the stadium was square, you wouldn't know it at first glance.

The innards of the Corvidae was more than enough to rival the outside. Black coated the walls in thick, impenetrable, acrylic shadows, spanning around the high walls, just skipping over the silver railings lining the inky, empty stands. The silver scaffolding spliced up the black ceilings like criss-crossing stars shooting over vats of tar. A four-faced screen hung from the ceiling's epicenter for all the stadium to watch the action up close. Whatever vestiges of the dripping black ceiling that made it to the bottom splashed the track's concrete in stripes and streaks of royal purple. Great white lights, big as town blocks, radiated LED ivory over its domain in one, fiery breath. 

But the pulsing heart of the whole stadium, the aorta of the Corvidae, winded back to the pitch black, ultramarine crow embedded against the entry wall, mid-flight, wings spread, beak wide, and painted to strike.

It took me a moment to remember how to breathe. 

I clutched my helmet. I closed my eyes, maybe just to bask in it for a few, meager seconds. The Corvidae. Corvus. The best of the best of the best. All in one square.

I wheeled my bike towards the starting line.

My eyes wandered to the stands. Friends or colleagues and several of the Jackdaws had come to watch the tryout, their bodies scattered about the stands as they chattered away to those on the track and those beside them. As I passed by, I caught wind of reassurances and fleeting wishes and last-minute advice. I set my bike at the edge, in a row of ten dozen others. Some bikes were simply beasts, others were amateurish, some were beaten beyond what should be usable in the first place, others looked brand new down to the paint on their front fender. 

This is your chance.

I pursed my lips. I headed for the pit.

There were at least thirty or so racers gathered, every single one in anything from all black to rainbow, some with helmets off, others already ready with helmets on. Some average, others tall, others taller. Women and men and everything in between. A few were already paired or grouped with people of their packs. Only a few stood alone.

The pit was a wide, sunken space at the east side of the track. It scraped out the concrete in order to create an open station for the pit crew to settle and do last-minute, on-the-fly adjustments to anything pre-race, mid-race, or post-race. Adjacent to it sat the canopy, a steel platform with a violet awning that was one of two on either end of the track. One for home and one for away, where the teams would congregate.

I took a look up at the one on the home side, expecting to see Corvus there watching. But only two people occupied the space. I frowned.

"I think they're here."

My head whipped to the source of the voice.

A girl, only a handful of inches taller than me, her black hair divided into dozens of braids, was gesturing around her as she whispered the words to another girl in front of her. She couldn't have been much older than me, and neither could her friend, who was many handfuls of inches taller than me, her black locks wound around her head in a pinned bun. Her pale lips frowned, and her bangs hung over her furrowed brows in one, straight curtain.

"There's no way," she told her. "They'd never race at the tryout. And we'd see them."

"Half the people are wearing helmets," the other girl pointed out, a faintly European accent curling around her vowels, lifting them out of their roots. "And they're wearing masks." She pointed at a scattered several people, all of which had their faces covered with thin, nylon coverings, for a reason unbeknownst to me.

I turned my head to the girl. "Who?"

They both startled. The girl with the braids whirled on me. "Pardon?"

"Who wouldn't race?" I asked.

Being up against more than thirty of the best rookies in Avaldi meant allies would be the smartest thing to acquire first, and even if not allies, at least those that I could rely on for any extra details or inside info I might miss. Such as just who wouldn't race.

The girl in the bun and bangs hesitated. She narrowed her eyes at me. "Who's asking?"

I hesitated. The girl with the braids waved her off at that, sending her a look that was almost chastising.

"Wynter," she said. "Don't be rude." 

"Don't be eavesdropping, then," she said, sending me a look.

I held up a single, gloved hand. "My bad," I said, a bit unapologetic. "Who's not racing?"

The girl in the braids held out her hand, shucking off her pristine black glove with it. Her smile was slightly gap-toothed and full of life. 

"Don't mind her," she promised. "She can be a bit plucky sometimes."

"You don't say," I murmured, cocking my head. 

She waved that off. "I'm Zoe," she said.

I shucked off a glove and took her hand. "Echo."

"Echo?"

"Echo." I tugged at my neck guard. "Like the park."

Zoe blinked, then threw her head back in a bubbling laugh. "Of course."

The girl with the bangs stuck out her hand at me with about as much desire as I had to shake it. "Wynter," she said. "You're not from the Jackdaws, are you." It wasn't a question.

I took her hand. "No," I said plainly. "How'd you know?"

"We are," she replied, dropping my hand. "I think the whole Jackdaw lineup is here, to be frank."

I sighed. "You don't say," I murmured.

"You don't seem nervous," she said, narrowing her gaze.

I re-strapped my glove on. "That's the objective, no?"

"To not be nervous?" Zoe asked.

"To not seem so?" I said.

Zoe frowned. But Wynter cocked her head at me, and almost smiled.

At that moment, a long-limbed woman clapped her hands with a ricocheting echo to snatch all our attentions to where she stood up on the canopy. She wore black track pants and jacket, a puffy vest overtop and a black cap that read a plain and simple AVALDI CORVUS across it. The only color was in her blonde curls, tucked into a tight ponytail. She waited until we quieted, and stared the crowd down with a pale blue gaze.

"Hello, amateurs," she said, but she didn't smile as she said it. "Welcome to the Corvidae. I'm Coach Emeline Edwards. That's Coach or Edwards or Coach Edwards or whatever other variation you can come up with that isn't hey you." She reached down, and plucked a clipboard up with a single piece of paper attached to it. "I'll be overseeing your tryout. There's about thirty four of you that have checked in. There's three spots on this team to take."

Panicked whispers rippled through the crowd. Edwards held up an unimpressed hand. "We're going to do a group warm up, and then, we're gonna race."

"This many people?" a girl in a pink jacket murmured. "On one track?"

"Yes, bubblegum," Edwards called. "If you're insecure about it, the exit's to your left. There's thirty four, not three hundred, figure it out." She pointed her finger down to the right. "If any of you split a lip or a ligament, either grab a Band-Aid and circle back or—" She re-emphasized the exit. The crowd shuddered. "Until then," Edwards said. "Let's get started."

I closed my eyes. "God have mercy."

Zoe smiled at me, slightly amused. It faltered when she stared longer, and she said, "You're...not a Jackdaw."

I hesitated. I pursed my lips. "No," I confessed. "I'm not."

"Are you here alone?" Zoe asked.

I shrugged. "Sure."

Zoe just hummed. She grabbed her helmet, a bright purple thing with a white DAVENPORT printed in crisp bold letters across the jaw. Her helmet and hers alone. I flexed my fingers, and wondered what that was like. To have. To own.

"Let's get started," Edwards emphasized with a bark, "as in now."

"You're not," Zoe acknowledged. "But one amateur to another still counts for something, right?"

I blinked, confused. Wynter sighed behind her and called, "Means you've got yourself some convenient allies. But for your sake, man?" She raised a brow at me. "I really hope you can race."

The smile I flashed her was mirthless and dry as the winter wind running through the Corvidae.

"Me, too," I said.

The warm-up was not a warm-up, but rather, a preliminary elimination.

The first course of action was drills. With gloves and gear, we scaled the ramps of the track, dashed from one pillar to another, performed jumping jacks, burpees, pop squats, and every other imaginable hellish physical test Edwards could come up with in the two-hour interval.

People began dropping by the thirty minute mark, and were downright fleeing by the end of the first hour, their breath thinning and their sweat thickening beyond repair. We weren't allowed to shed any gear except for helmets, leaving us to run about in endless rounds upon rounds of sprints in three layers of nylon and heavy-grade leather. 

"This is crazy," Zoe gasped beside me as she skidded around the bend to keep up with the group as we raced to the other side of the track. "She's trying to kill us."

"Pumpkin! Green Lantern!" Edwards yelled, pointing at a young man in bright orange and a girl in blaring lime who had fallen behind at the last checkpoint. "Up and out of here! You're done!"

"She's succeeding," Wynter gasped. 

I pushed myself off the concrete wall to flee for the other checkpoint by the pillar. A boy tripped over his own feet and went careening into one of the masked racers. The racer, not even stopping to look, simply shoved him off to send him reeling into the concrete track. When he fell, he didn't bother getting back up.

"Brutal," Zoe whispered.

"Necessary," I replied.

It wasn't the Corvidae. It was the Thunderdome.

Edwards clapped her hands for us to speed up. "Pick it up, kids," she called to us, pointing towards the ramps. "That was just the first exercise."

"First?" we whispered.

Edwards caught our eye from above. She raised a brow. She yelled to the crowd, "About twenty of you are left, to remind! I don't think I have to recount how many spots we're offering at the end of the day."

"This isn't even racing," a girl spat bitterly.

Edwards cocked a brow. She took her clipboard and cap and headed for the stairs. When she waltzed onto the track, she did so with such insouciant ease I was almost floored, had I not been fighting for breath.

"Listen up," she said. "If you think you can just show up and rev a bike and you call that square racing, get off this track now. Little leagues. Drag races. Tricycles in the streets. That's where you can get away with that," she said. "But when you're going 130 miles per hour getting your ass bashed by 300 pounds of metal and two and a half miles of concrete every fifteen seconds, wheels are gonna be the least of your worries. If your bodies can't even withstand this, then trust me." She gave the girl a scathing look. "You'll burn to a crisp on this track before you can even make the first lap."

The girl hesitated. Edwards hummed, and began to walk towards the ramps, not waiting for us to catch up. 

"Second drill has already started," she yelled. "Why you all are just standing there is beyond me!"

We scurried like roaches to run after her. Edwards jutted her thumb at the ramps, then dragged it all the way until she was pointing at the bridge. It was a great rainbow arc of painful gray stone. Below it, a pool of undisturbed water ran ten feet deep into the shadows. It was steep, with an incline at nearly forty five degrees, as it was meant to be crossed only by things on wheels going at unholy speeds. Ergo, not what we had on hand. 

She said, "Climb it. Last three are out."

Wynter used Zoe's shoulder to push herself upright. We looked amongst each other, then, began to bolt. "What the hell kind of tryout is this?" she wheezed.

I tightened my gloves. You'll burn to a crisp on this track before you can even make the first lap.

"A real one," I said.

I ground my teeth together. Heat swelled in my stomach, my head, my bones. My skin felt like cellophane wrap coated in honey residue. The gloves had been a saving grace, as there was a hell of a lot more friction in rubber and leather than sweaty skin, but they only seemed to worsen the feeling of being cooked alive. If I had any more water in my body to sweat, it'd be blood.

This is your chance.

I hauled myself up, up, up.

"First ramp," Wynter gasped to us.

"Only?" Zoe said.

I ground my teeth. I sank the metal knuckles of my gloves into the concrete and hauled myself up the ramp.

We slid down the other side and tumbled to the ground, only three above the last ten. Next ramp.

Every breath punctured a piece of my lung out of place. How the masked racers ahead of us were not only surviving, let alone winning, was beyond me. Even Zoe and Wynter, who were Jackdaw-trained, were not besting anyone anytime soon.

The sound of cleats and knuckles kissing concrete screeched in my ears, right alongside the sound of my effervescent heartbeat. People dropped like flies, like gnats, like dust particles being whacked away by wind and force. Thirty turned to twenty. Twenty turned to fifteen.

Next ramp.

A masked racer ended up beside me at some point, a girl whose hair had refused to budge out of her high, blonde ponytail. I took the chance—and some of the last of my oxygen—to take a look at her. But the moment I was turning my head, she was shoving me aside with a surprising bout of force to eagerly scale the ramp ahead.

"Who are they?" I asked Zoe.

She gasped a breath, lugging her leg over the side of the ramp. "I've got a theory," she said.

We headed for the bridge.

"Which is?" I asked.

"She thinks they're Corvus," Wynter said behind us.

My knuckles sank into the concrete and froze there. "Corvus?" I said, incredulous. "Why would they be trying out with us?"

"What I said," Wynter replied with a grunt. We crawled up the edge, the sound of the water below us growing less and less deafening, replaced with my own breath and heart. "Although, seeing how well they're doing, it makes me suspicious."

"Less talking, more climbing!" Edwards yelled.

We climbed.

By the time we hit the bottom, the final three behind us were already slowing down with their known defeat. I shuddered. We'd only been one ahead of them. 

Edwards raised a brow at them and sighed. "Go on, get out of here," she said. "Don't give me that look, you're all a sad sight and you know it." 

We all collapsed on the track. I pounded on my chest in some futile attempt to re-invite some oxygen back into my body. My vision swam. My bones were liquid, and my muscles thinner than. If this was how Corvus trained, it was only in my worst nightmares how they raced.

Edwards was right about at least that much: we had to survive at least this much. 

She lifted her hat to stare us all down. We stared back at her, either pleading for mercy or just to look at something to keep our vision steady. She hummed, then gestured all the way across the track with a flick of her finger. 

"Get your bikes and be back here in ten minutes. If you manage to grab water during that time, that's up to you. If you're not back here in ten—" She pointed at the exit. "—then no race for you."

I rolled my shoulder and winced at the stretch of the overworked muscles. "I'm ninety percent sure I'm about ready to dislocate the left side of my body," I muttered under my breath.

Wynter heaved herself to sit upright, then gave a hard jostle. I yelped, whirled on her, then groaned at the sting. She patted the back of my neck. "There. I just gave you an extra ten minutes."

"Bold of you to assume," I said, "that I'd last that long out there anyway."

There were mopeds, there were motorcycles, and there were beasts.

You couldn't race a regular motorcycle, considering aerodynamics. Too much drag, no ventilation, unintentional vortexes, uneven channels, the list is extensive. So, companies had long figured out they needed their own line to shut us all up.

The best in the game were Drachmann Bikes, but they were a specialized company and I had no business in making the five-digit investment. TRAX was the next best thing for race bikes. You just had to make some serious modifications for it to be a winning race bike.

We were fast in unhooking our vehicles and wheeling them out to the starting line. A few people had been stupid enough to bring gas bikes, and were wheeling them out of a separate garage, to my surprise.

Gas bikes were too combustible in the first several years of modern racing, and electric quickly took on popularity, which made touch-ups take less time and speed quicker to gain. It also made the inevitable crashes less we all burn and die and more chestnuts roasting slowly. That being said, gas bikes could go faster if you timed it correctly. Electric bikes, however, could go farther if you were smart about your acceleration. So, in a game of numbers, speed was your best friend, or your worst enemy. 

Which meant, in a match like this, against racers with bikes that could crush mine in a blink, it was to be a game of timing above everything. 

I took my place at port side, towards the back. Zoe took a centermost position. Wynter remained up ahead, starboard side. Other racers took their respective regions that they were comfortable in. The masked strangers were scattered apart from each other, and in the now-dwindled-down group of racers, were even more stark in the crowd than ever. 

One rolled their bike past me, his hair a shock of bleach-tipped black, and paused to take a look at me. He looked from me, to my bike, then, let out something almost like a scoff. He wheeled away.

It took me a second to bristle. I bit back my glower. I undid the buckles of my helmet to strap it on tight.

Professional teams were provided special helmets that had sound devices to communicate between your teammates. In addition, external mics were instituted to turn on or off according to what you did or didn't want to hear in your surroundings. Most generic racing helmets came with the external, just to keep you from being completely deaf on the track, or in the streets.

I flicked mine on just in time to hear Edwards prepping our round two doom.

"All right!" Edwards yelled. "Congrats to you, now. Here's the deal." She gestured at the track, chock-full of twists and turns and obstacles galore, from pillars to rock piles to walls to metal logs to tire stacks. That excluded the ramps and bridges still awaiting us. "The first three of you to win this match in the next ten minutes, are the three I'm taking on."

"That's it?" I muttered.

"That's it?" someone called.

Edwards shot them a look. "There's eighteen of you and over thirty obstacles in the next 2.7 miles, and I'm taking three," she snapped. "But yes. That's all of it."

We sobered fast. Edwards snapped her fingers.

This is your chance.

When no one moved, she raised a brow. "Don't know why you're looking at me," she said, and pointed ahead. "You should be racing."

Everyone looked amongst each other. Then, scrambled to start our bikes and secure our knees and arms in their respective sockets. The pop and crackle of the engines met my ears. Thunder boomed from the metal pipes. Heat swelled out of the silver intestines. A rumble. A roar. A howl. Metal and leather and embers and lightning. 

One by one, racers shot off in rockets. They were lightspeed, airborne. Liquid hurricanes screamed through my veins from my spine to my fingers.

I sunk my foot into the socket to let the engine roar to life.

The money was great, sure, but the meat of square racing was in its players.

Lycans were bastards right down to their origins. I was convinced it was in their blood to be unbearable at most times of the day. Fae were sneaky, and bloodsuckers were pompous, and pixies were downright annoying, but lycans. Lycans were just born and bred jackasses.

They made one hell of a show, though.

All that to say, it got dirty fast.

Wynter swooped around a neon blue rider to my side. The rider swerved left, rounding around to launch themselves over a stack of logs and right up against her, the metal on metal screeching sparks.

Wynter pushed her brakes and nearly broke the concrete in the process. Blue flashed across my vision and they flew too far left, crashing head and shoulder first into the pink rider right in front of me. They blurred purple and careened into the scaffold of the ramp in an eruption of grating steel and rubber.

I cursed and spun myself away, skidding onto the ramp and flying upwards. I slammed my knee deep and surged forward fastfaster. Three others had followed. Every one had a hair on the other.

I sank back, front wheel spinning like a pinwheel, before crashing onto the concrete with a shuddering impact that nearly broke my teeth. The three riders had all landed together ahead of me. An all-black beast revved his engine and wasted less than a breath in yanking his bike nearly horizontal, smashing into the back wheels of the other two. One in green lost grip and spun in a less-than-graceful spiral that only ended when his front wheel went rumbling over a log pile. The other took the instigator out with a vengeful hand, grabbing their black jacket by the neck and ripping it down as both bikes along with their bikers collided painfully with the cold ground.

Five riders, just like that. My stomach twisted twice over.

I checked behind and ahead of me. There were five riders still in front, five trailing behind. It left few options at the sudden box around me that had formed.

I migrated to the edge. Two riders in similar yellow leather, brighter than the best highlighter, spotted me in less than an instant. They split, jumping over two tire piles. Their bikes landed less than inches from me.

I cursed and swung my bike away. I zipped up along the curve. A steep wall approached fast, nothing but steel to soften the blow. The yellow rider zoomed closer, and the two bike heads brushed in an metal-on-metal scream.

Thinkthinkthink.

Think up. Think around.

I headed for the wall, headlights parallel to the pole series ahead. The rider next to me didn't move. We sped faster for it, gearing for a death blow.

I popped my knee out of the bike's socket. The wall loomed.

The rider looked between me and the wall, the wall and me, me and the wall. A mile turned to half, a third, a quarter. They slowed.

I sped.

With an eighth left, they swerved away in a hasty turn, but the drawback was too late and their back wheel collided with the other yellow rider's. The two barreled into the concrete, bikes skidding into a pile of metal logs.

I yanked my bike back to burn the rubber enough it nearly smoked. My cleat rammed into the concrete with so many flames I thought I'd start a fire. The bike swerved in a deadly left. I tipped down, down, down.

Think down.

The wall missed me by a hair. My bike zipped up the curve of the track, nearly shredding the white fencing. The thick leather of my glove and the still-sparking metal of my cleat howled along the concrete in a precarious parabola. Up. Over. Smoke. Exhaust.

I shoved myself upright and sank my knee right back into the socket. My bike gave a heaving groan and swung towards the poles. Through, around, swinging between the narrow metal rods with such dizzying speed, my eyes blurred together. My back wheel cracked against the final one, and the impact sent me reeling leftleftleft, back onto the track. 

Two down.

See? Faith.

Wynter rolled up beside me. Neither of us could see each other through our face shields, but I figured I didn't need to in order to know the look she was sending me. She shook her head, then pointed ahead, where Zoe was riding.

I turned my gaze. Six helmeted strangers were still ahead of us. What animals.

I rode.

Five minutes. Chicanes. Ramps. Tunnels. The bridge. It was Herculean.

"God help me," I said.

As if hearing such a thing, faster than lightning could strike, a racer appeared at my left. In a blink like a comet, they cleared a diagonal line across my path, wheels screeching. They jutted around to smash my wheel in with theirs. My wheels slipped, slid.

This is your chance.

I gritted my teeth so hard I could've chipped them, and slammed my wheel right back. The rider seemed startled, losing momentum for a moment. I unhooked my leg and sent a metal cleat into the base of their bike, shoving them down.

I had no victory, though, when their leg came up and planted itself above the engine's pipes. My heart split in a jump. Think. Think through.

The first tunnel approached.

Two more riders came up on my right. My lungs stuttered and burned. My whole body ached from hanging onto the bike, from hanging onto chance, from the heat and sparks. The rider shoved their foot into the gears deep, cleats to metal, and the killing strike was seconds, if not fractions of, away.

I slammed my bike on the brakes with such an impermissible force that I was surprised it didn't take off both my tires with it. Two of the bike's fins sank into the rider's calf and the metal pipes caught their cleats with a pitbull's bite. The rider didn't even hesitate. They planted their foot on the socket and flew off their bike. In one swing, their body slammed into mine.

The second their arm detached from the bike, I swung my knee up and planted it into the empty socket. Their great metal beast waned near horizontal with my imbalanced weight. I skidded leather to concrete, metal to stone. Heat on heat on heat. 

I let my bike go completely and take the rider with it. The uncontrolled vehicle went careening into another rider. Their bodies crashed into the tunnel's entrance wall, a heap of limbs and metal. I didn't know if I should've breathed or stopped altogether. Adrenaline was liquid gold in my blood.

Now this was racing.

With less than half-seconds, I grasped the handlebars of the rider's lost bike, and wrenched myself onto the massive vehicle. I sunk my knees into the sockets and held on for dear life. This much power with this much ungodly intimidation wrapped up in pitch black metal, it had to be a Drachmann. I could cross something off my bucket list.

Four racers remained, two at my side and two trailing Zoe and Wynter behind me. The two at my side were looking between each other and the remnants of their friend behind me, before finally turning their attention to my stolen bike.

The tunnel was darkness and darkness alone.

I flicked the headlights on. I searched the pitch black for obstacles. But the bike was heavy and every turn was weighted with a delay I wasn't accustomed to and a drag that made my lungs go heavy. The speedometer hiked its speeds higher and higher, and yet, I could practically feel the other racers gain on me. 

A ghost of light began to grace the path. I accelerated for it. 

To no avail, of course.

A body slammed into mine with so much sheer force, it was a miracle I didn't go flying off the bike in that moment. It was a near thing though, and I clung onto the handlebars with slippery hands. They tilted us leftleftleft until my helmet was a few breaths from the ground. My body burned.

I ground my teeth and shoved back. I swung my foot and let it collide with their side. They didn't fall, but they did falter back enough for me to swerve ahead. I dodged a wall and headed for the next tunnel, which, although a series of arches to let the light in, was where the vast elevation change occurred, and threatened annihilation simply by its god-like height.

I swallowed. My bones rattled in my skin.

Three minutes.

I immediately regretted leaving my bike behind when the higher acceleration feature was completely lost on me on the unfamiliar vehicle. The racer caught up to me in no time, their wheels singing on the track. They swung the head of the bike for my rear wheel. I jerked. They chased. I headed for the ramp. They followed. The heat of my and their engine burned my legs.

Track racing was a bit different than street racing, mostly in how many rules you could bend, or think to bend. Tracks were contained. You worked with what you had and abided by the strategies. Streets were open, were dirty, camera-less, lightless, as brutal as the day was long. If you weren't doing something questionable, well. You were either new, or you were losing.

In a match like this, I couldn't afford to be either. 

Not speed.

A game of timing.

I slammed my cleats to the brakes, cutting my speed in half. The racer faltered. I yanked my bike in a clean half-moon. I went up, up, up, and right to the fencing.  

The wheels skidded along the base of the fence, riding the line between the stone and white metal all the way past the arches—between out of bounds and in—past the obstacles, down and down and down to the end of the final tunnel.

I spun my bike out of the fencing just in time to descend the bridge, neck and neck with the racer. I zipped through the pillars, sped around the tire piles, jumped the logs. For every clumsy maneuver I managed just to clear it, they practically floated through it without breaking a sweat.

"For fuck's sake," I hissed. I looked ahead for something, anything, that'd shake them.

The bridge was a perfect rainbow over black waters. I turned my head around.

Zoe and Wynter were fighting for their lives against the two other racers, feet flying and heads knocking, metal to metal at every turn. But, importantly, they were still ahead.

But, more importantly, they weren't ahead enough if this guy was still next to me.

I made a beeline for the bridge. Time ticked. Legality was an afterthought. 

I bolted with the racer at my heels and together, we headed up the steep bridge. I leaned forward. Timing, timing, timing. 

Then, I took the handlebars, and slammed our bike heads together in one, ear-splitting supernova.

They barely flinched, slamming right back. Their foot came around and swiped a smooth line across the bike to strike the left side of the back. I fishtailed for a heart-stopping second, and the racer surged forward.

It took a cleat to the ground for me to keep the bike from going completely over its head. I glowered with a burning huff. 

I surged after them.

I shoved my bike into the side of his. It wasn't anything better than bullfighting, metal horns to metal horns. Gravity threatened to yank us down to the waters.

We hit the highest peak of the bridge.

Think up. Down. Through. Around. Diagonal. Think diagonal.

Or, something like that.

I slammed the brakes. The momentum swung me sideways. I held my breath, and swung my leg up. The racer spared me only one more glance within a lightless face shield. 

"Please work," I wheezed, and smashed my cleat into the metal guts of their bike.

Not even thunder matched the crashing noise it made.

In a clean sweep beneath their very feet, the racer's bike slipped left and my foot scrambled to return to my bike. I careened myself as far as I and bike could go, bike to bike, body to body shoving against each other as I willed them to the other side.

With a breath, they and their bike slid right over the edge, and down, down, down to the dark waters below.

I hauled the bike down the bridge with nothing but black tire marks and dust in my wake. The finish line was a brimming purple ahead, beautiful and glorious like a violet angel could only dream to be.

I crossed it, and felt myself breathe.

I came to a sputtering, shuddering halt. The bike teetered about and I hurried to tear myself off its seat. I slammed the engine off and stumbled out. The ground swam. The sky swam. The whole damn everything and everyone was a fucking fishbowl.

I tore my helmet off with shaky hands. Wynter and Zoe were shouting, cuts across their faces, a scratch or five on their skin. Zoe yanked her helmet off to toss somewhere or other. She shrieked a laugh.

"We made it, we made it!" she cried. "We really made it, that was amazing."

"That was illegal," Wynter corrected, sending me a pointed—and bloody—look. "Impressive. But probably illegal."

"And painful," I promised.

Zoe punched my arm with a laugh and I nearly crumbled. Wynter raised a brow. "You look like shit," she said. "Did you die in that suit?"

I held my ribs, which had been nicely displaced during that last tussle over the bridge. Blood was acrid in my mouth and filled my nose with metal from my lip. A stream of it was running over my eye, if the red in my vision said anything. But we stood on the finish line, beyond it, and that was damn well enough for me.

This is your chance.

Thirty four. Three left standing. It was enough to be a dream.

I shoved my hair back. "I think that was amazing," I breathed, then, "I also think I'm in dire need of serious medical assistance. There's a bone in my kidney and kidneys don't have bones. Not this one, at least." I breathed and gagged. 

"Drama," Wynter murmured. She gave my shoulder a pat. "Nice work, cotton candy."

"I can taste light."

"Better enjoy it," Zoe said, smile fading as she looked behind me. "You might not see it again."

It took an immense bout of strength for me to turn my dilapidated body around. Four of the six strangers slowed to the finish line, one on my TRAX bike. Behind them, where the bridge rose, were their companions.

I waved Zoe off. "We won," I reminded. "This is all in fair game."

Wynter gave me an unimpressed look. "You stole one of their bikes."

"I traded bikes," I corrected, and gave a likely bloody smile at her. 

"What about the one you pushed off the bridge?"

"Fell," I argued. "They fell. Take me to court."

The other racers left finally gathered before us, Edwards traipsing down to the track. One by one, they tore off their helmets, revealing the thin nylon masks covering their faces. Every drop of blood in my body immediately froze.

"Oh," Zoe said.

"Oh," I sighed.

Zoe and Wynter beside me both let out a slew of curses. I said, "I'm bleeding over my eye, tell me what I'm missing."

"The point," Wynter replied.

I squinted. The six racers eyed us. The one on my bike was the first to break the silent judgment session and took the machine by the handlebars to wheel towards me. As he did, he tore his mask off with it. 

He couldn't have been a freshman, not with the sheer amount of certainty he walked with and the two feet he held above my head. That being said, even with the cuts across his brow and the gash marring his Roman nose, his smile was surprisingly bright through sweaty black curls and bronzed skin.

"I believe," he said, and propped the bike beside me, "this is yours."

I blinked up at him. I opened my mouth, closed it. Zoe cleared her throat behind me. 

"It is. His, that is." She took the bike from him to wheel next to me. She stuck out her hand. "You...You're Corvus."

I closed my eyes, waiting for him to bust out a laugh at such an idea. 

"You're Jackdaws," he said, and grinned wider.

Zoe lit up. She nodded. "Zoe Davenport," she said. 

"Diego de la Cruz," he replied and shook her gloved hand. "You three are quite the group. That was the most fun this track has seen in the past several months."

"Misuse, maybe," a new voice said.

The woman with the blonde ponytail from before approached us, her carbon black helmet tucked under her arm and her face an angular construction of contempt. She swiveled her head to me, her hair sticking to tan, sweat-dotted skin. Pale green eyes were bullets in me. "Serious misuse," she added pointedly.

My left leg was loosing too much feeling for me to make an argument, especially with the helpful added information that Corvus had been alongside us the entire time just to try to yank the floor out from under the first years they asked to try out in the first place. I remained relatively speechless.

Edwards finally made it to us with a clap of her hands. "Congratulations, rookies," she said. "You actually made it."

"She says it like we weren't supposed to," I murmured.

"Don't know if we were," Wynter said.

Edwards put two fingers to her mouth and whistled. "Quit sobbing and be civil!" she snapped to Corvus, who were still scattered about on the track as they made their way towards us. "Introduce yourselves to your newest teammates."

Zoe just about fainted at that. Wynter let out a long breath of relief, holding her fists to her chest.

"Did you hear that? Am I hallucinating?" Zoe shrieked. "Pinch me now."

"Pretty sure I'm losing feeling in my whole left side now," I muttered.

"King," Edwards snapped. "Quit moping and say hello."

We all turned.

It wasn't difficult to spot the person that had fallen off the bridge, considering there was only one racer in the lot that was drenched from head to toe and wasn't particularly happy about it. Especially since said racer spun around the moment Edwards called, and looked straight at me.

It was a bit difficult to see him as he likely usually was considering he was soaking wet from head to toe. The water had flattened his black hair to his skin and washed the blood off a large gash across his cheek to streak down to his jaw. He wore a dark purple leather, void of patches, nothing but simple white lines to decorate it, but he'd shucked the jacket to let it drip onto the pavement from his hand. 

The whole sight would have, granted, been very intriguing had he been staring at anyone else. So, really, it was just terrifying.

"Nope," I said. "No. My life is worth little but not that little."

"You did push him," Wynter told me.

"I didn't push anyone, he fell," I argued.

"You pushed him a little," Zoe said. 

"For the last time, he fell."

"Hey."

God. Be with me.

I looked up.

The man had cleared the yards between us to stand only a few feet from me now. I craned my neck high up, and pretended the criminally steep angle didn't make my stomach drop. 

I cleared my throat and ignored the excruciating bite in my side as I straightened. "'Hey'," I said, "is for horses."

"Wow," Zoe and Wynter said.

The young man's eyes were black holes, lightless and soul-sucking things framed by furrowed brows. Water dripped over his soft jaw, marred by a gaping, red gash, and over his emboldened nose, with an equally unhappy cut breaking the skin open. When he spoke, a mole beneath his left brow moved, and it might've been the only safe part of his face to look it lest I be burned to a crisp right then and there. 

He narrowed his gaze, and said, "Who the hell are you?" 

I considered that for a long, long moment. I said, "Who's asking?"

"King," Edwards snapped. "I said, be civil."

"Civil," he repeated, glancing at her. "He pushed me off a bridge."

"Fell," I corrected. "He fell off a bridge."

If looks could freeze hell twice over. He pointed at me. "You pushed me."

"You pushed me first," I argued pointedly. "So, by mathematics, you pushed yourself."

Diego let out a laugh. "I like him."

"I clearly remember saying you all needed to introduce yourselves," Edwards said. "And just about one of you have done so. King, get over it and hurry this up."

"That's not allowed," he snapped. "That's grounds for disqualification."

"There was water," I said, then quirked my head. "King?"

He said, "What?"

I hummed. "That's not a real name."

"Dude," Wynter said.

He blinked at me. He leaned down towards me. I shrank back. "Then you can answer my last question," he gritted. "Who the hell are you?"

My skin crawled a bit at that. I swallowed hard, but forced myself to straighten. "Echo Yun." I extended a hand. "As in the park."

King looked wholly unimpressed to such a maximum degree that I didn't even know if it was possible to display such a degrading expression without thorough practice. "That's not a real name."

"If a park can have it, so can I."

"Echo."

"Echo."

"Echo?"

"Echo."

"Hey," Diego laughed. "There's an echo."

We stared. He cleared his throat. 

King looked me up and down. "Are you even a first year?" he snapped. "In college, that is?"

My jaw tightened. "Well, I beat you."

His scoff swept that away. He took a step towards me and leaned down. "You didn't beat me. You cheated."

"There's nowhere in the handbook that says you can't push someone off the bridge when there's water."

"So you admit you pushed me?"

"If you admit I beat you." 

He bristled, and I swore I could feel the heat of his temper flare from where I stood. He sneered. "How the hell did you get in here? Did you even get a paper?"

"I could ask you that," I muttered back.

"O-kay," a girl called, hurrying over to us all. Her hair was a hazardous fire on her head, redder than was legal, a storm cloud of curls around her little head. She placed herself between us. "Introductions first, feuds later."

"You're feuding with the captain and you've been here for a day," Wynter hissed at me. "Can we take you anywhere?"

"Who's feuding with who? I'm bleeding out here, if anything, maybe he shouldn't have fallen off the freaking bridge," I shot back, then paused. "Who's the captain?"

"You don't even know Corvus? Who let you try out?"

Edwards pointed at them. "If we don't cover these introductions in the next five minutes, bleeding out or not, you can all run laps until you really drop."

Corvus lined up quick. 

The redhead stuck out an enthused hand, her grin crooked and bright like starlight. "Meredith Russo. Starboard tail."

"It's good to have you all here." When she took my hand, she whispered, "I like your hair. Reminds me of saltwater taffy."

I offered a quick grin. "I like your hair, too," I said. "Reminds me of Hot Cheetos."

She laughed and pranced off. The blonde girl approached me next, her hand splayed out to me with a bored look across her face.

"Rosalie Gossard," she said. "Centerback."

The young man with the bleached hair from before approached us next. He shook our hands with a careless gesture, face plain and uninterested in his own words. "Kenzo Watanabe," he said. "Center tail."

We didn't get the chance to reply before he was turning away to his teammates. The last of them approached us with Diego at his side, his long black hair pulled back in a small ponytail, and his face already smiling when he found us.

"Zahir Gupta," he said. "Front starboard." He looked to Edwards. "This is a nice crop you got, Coach."

Edwards put a hand up and pointed at us. "I'm writing you three down. Go on, if you've got all of them memorized I hope you know your own."

"Zoe Davenport, ma'am," she said, puffing her chest out. "Centerback. Class I Padmore Beta."

Wynter said, "Wynter Truong. Front starboard. Class I Padmore Beta."

Edwards wrote it down. She gestured at me. I tugged at my neck guard and swallowed. Moment of half-truth.

"Echo Yun," I said. "Class III Stirling Beta."

Edwards raised a brow. When a moment passed in silence, she beckoned at me with, "Position?" 

I paused. I had never truly raced, not legitimately, not anywhere that wasn't solo on a street. Positions didn't matter there, so I'd never become acquainted with one. My head briefly scrambled for an answer. 

"Front port," I blurted. It had been the only position I'd ever truly been tried on, back in Incheon. 

Edwards cocked her head at that, but wrote it down anyway. 

King did a double take. His head snapped to her. "You can't be serious," he said. "We can't let him on."

"I said three, we have three," Edwards stated. "Did you ever introduce yourself? What are you, an animal?"

"A wet dog," I said, and Zoe elbowed me hard.

King's glare could peel skin. Rosalie filled the silence.

"Kane King," she said, giving him a look, "Front port." She cocked a brow at me. "Your captain."

Fuck prayers. God only ever had a sense of humor for me.

"I said three, this is three," she replied.

"Coach," he argued. "Did you even hear what he said?"

"Loud and clear," she snapped. "End of discussion, not that this was one. The tryout is over." King gaped. She finished her scribbling, ignoring him altogether, and turned on her heel. "Get cleaned up!" she called. "All of you, that is. As for you three—" She craned her neck. "—welcome to Corvus."

This is your chance.

Even with my body half-functioning and the blood getting sticky, I nearly jumped to the moon at the sound of it.

"You start Monday!" Edwards yelled.

I waited for it with arms open.

(ah ty for readin', this is a very long chapter, I'm aware, so thanks for making it. the little star sits above and thanks you too)