The final corner: a left-hander under the rail bridge, lined with those unforgiving concrete barriers. Razor’s ghost braked early. You didn’t. You downshifted twice—third to second, a heel-toe that felt like breaking a horse—and let the McLaren rotate. The rear kissed the barrier. Sparks. The smell of ground metal. Then the exit.
The terminal was a rust labyrinth. Stacked containers, cranes frozen mid-sigh, and the smell of salt and stale gasoline. But there, under a halogen work light that buzzed like a trapped fly, sat a silver tarp the size of a small yacht. You killed the engine. The rain ticked on the tarp like a thousand tiny hammers.
It was the McLaren F1. Central driving position. Gold foil heat shields in the engine bay. The odometer read 413 miles. The key was in the ignition, wrapped in a twist tie.
Tonight, you had that speed.
The tunnel ate your headlights. The Porsche’s V8 screamed, hitting 220, then 225, then 230 as the tunnel’s orange tiles blurred into a single, molten stripe. A chime. The in-dash screen flickered:
The finish line flashed. The ghost dissolved.
You didn’t need to check Razor’s time. You knew it: 2:14.7. Impossible in a normal car. But this wasn’t a normal car. This was the ghost of Woking, a three-seat middle finger to physics.
The BMW-sourced V12 didn’t roar. It inhaled . Then it began to idle with the menace of a caged predator.
The first straight: 130, 150, 180. The ghost appeared ahead, flickering through your windshield. You caught it at the Overpass Jump. Took the inside line at the Stadium Curve. Tied at the Industrial Park straight. Two miles to go.
You slid into the center seat. The gearshift was bare titanium, cold as a scalpel. You turned the key.
On the windshield, a sticky note, smeared by humidity:
The rain over Fairhaven City wasn’t just water. It was liquid asphalt, greasing the streets and turning every red light into a dare. You were behind the wheel of a beat-up Porsche 918 Spyder—fast, but not fast enough. Not for him .
