Skacat- City Car Driving 100 Masin -

I accelerated.

The year is 2087. The megacity of Neo-Prague glows under a permanent acid-rain drizzle. Below the floating sky-lanes, in the flooded underbelly known as "The Gutter," speed is the only currency.

My name is Skacat. Not the name my mother gave me. That was lost along with my left eye and my loyalty to the Corps. Now, I am just Skacat—the ghost who drives.

I punched the throttle. The Ram-9 screamed. The first masin followed. Then the second. Then the tenth. We became a serpent of fire and steel, slithering up the wall of a dead mall. Gravity tried to peel me off. Sparks showered from my side mirror. At the apex, the ramp ended in a fifty-meter drop to a lower freeway. skacat- city car driving 100 masin

The first ten minutes were a ballet. I slid between the masin like a needle through a vein. Red lights were suggestions. Other drivers were obstacles to be predicted three seconds before they became threats. A delivery truck swerved. I downshifted, kissed the barrier, and the masin behind me mirrored the move like a school of killer whales. One hundred masin. Obedient. Hungry.

The last five minutes were a straight shot down the Fissure Spine. But the Syndicate had one more trick. A hacker. He hit the lead masin's ghost-AI, made it go feral. The giant machine tried to crush me against the tunnel wall.

The story was never about finishing with all one hundred. It was about proving you could move a mountain through a river of glass. I accelerated

I slid under the rogue masin's front axle, my roof shrieking against its oil pan. At the last second, I popped the Ram-9's emergency ejector bolts—the roof blew off, and I drove out from under the beast like a snake shedding its skin. The rogue masin crashed into the ones behind it. A chain reaction of twisted metal.

"And every cop, every Syndicate soldier, every rubbernecker who looks at those wrecks… they'll ask the same question. What kind of madman drives a hundred masin through a city? "

At the Central Nexus, things went wrong. Below the floating sky-lanes, in the flooded underbelly

The counter stopped at forty-seven.

"No time," I whispered.