If all they wanted was to grab a meal with him, watch a race together, or hit up a club, Johann thought he’d be genuinely grateful. In a pinch, he could even pour their drinks. He was perfectly willing to listen to their dull stories and clap along enthusiastically. That was just how desperate he was right now.

　　A lack of sponsorship was a problem that had always dogged Johann Hayward. The financial issues holding him back since his feeder-series days in F2 had even driven him to IndyCar instead of Formula 1. Even though he was an American citizen, the motorsport world—an exclusive playground for the ultra-wealthy elite—was a remarkably harsh place for an Asian man with black hair and dark eyes.

　　“I thought IndyCar would be a little better,” he grumbled.

　　A brief silence settled inside the car.

　　Either way, reality remained unchanged. His car had to be repaired before the next race, and fixing the half-wrecked machine was going to cost a fortune. In this sport, a team without major sponsors was basically begging for scraps. Even someone as headstrong as Johann couldn’t help feeling self-conscious.

　　“It’ll work out,” Nicholas offered, giving the only comfort he could.

　　“Yeah, I think so too.”

　　Just as the Porsche, which had been swerving erratically while the two of them bickered like idiots, finally settled back into its lane, the traffic around them took a strange turn.

　　Before they knew it, all the surrounding traffic had been replaced by Starlight GT 800s. Nicholas looked around, confused.

　　“Is there some kind of event today?”

　　“Just focus on the road,” Johann urged.

　　“Is my driving really that bad?”

　　“Well…”

　　Should he be honest, or should he offer a few flattering words out of brotherly duty? He didn’t realize that the mere fact he had to hesitate was already an answer in itself.

　　“Got it,” Nicholas muttered.

　　“No, really! It’s so smooth it feels like floating on a cloud.”

　　“Would you believe that line if you were me?” his brother snapped, exasperated by the blatant lie.

　　“I’m serious! I feel like I’m about to enter the pearly gates.”

　　“Heaven, my ass! That just means we’re about to die together!”

　　Johann was a brilliant driver. Nicholas, on the other hand, was not. After all, Johann had spent his childhood strapped into cockpits with his hands glued to steering wheels, whereas Nicholas, after taking a wrench to the head from Johann, had holed up in his room and done nothing but study.

　　Johann let out what was easily his tenth heavy sigh, staring at the Porsche’s speedometer as it crept along at an agonizingly slow crawl.

　　“Stop sighing,” Nicholas warned. “I might just slam down the gas.”

　　“Yeah, do it.”

　　“I’m serious, I’m gonna step on it.”

　　“Yeah… I said go for it.”

　　Hearing someone doing thirty miles an hour in a Porsche threaten to step on the gas was actually a welcome prospect. Johann egged him on, telling him to push it harder. Anyone looking could tell the car was being driven with absurd caution—so cautious, in fact, that it was practically crawling and backing up traffic.

　　To be fair, the Porsche wasn’t suited for Nicholas anyway. The throttle response was far too razor-sharp, the zero-to-sixty acceleration was blistering, and like any true sports car, the ride comfort was abysmal. It was the kind of machine only someone like Johann could truly appreciate.

　　To Johann, driving meant being slammed back into his seat under G-forces intense enough to tinge his vision red, surrounded by a deafening exhaust roar that numbed his ears, fighting the violent vibrations in his body to keep the car balanced while burying the throttle to hit nearly two hundred and twenty miles an hour.

　　Maybe that was why cruising at a reasonable speed on public roads made him feel like he was in a video game rather than reality. It was so dull it was making him sleepy—even though falling asleep or closing his eyes inside a car should have been physically impossible in his life.

　　That was why, despite owning a sleek, brand-new sports car, he never drove on public streets, leaving Nicholas as its primary driver.

　　Sitting in the passenger seat did give Johann plenty of time to observe his surroundings, though: the steady stream of traffic along the wide boulevard, the road conditions, the weird drivers…

　　“How many Starlights are out here, anyway?” he murmured.

　　There had to be at least twenty Starlight GT 800s around them, custom-painted in eye-searing colors never offered by the factory and recklessly modded with every aftermarket part imaginable.

　　It was the ambitious flagship model of Starline Wellington Industries—and a car Johann wouldn’t be caught dead driving.

　　“Isn’t this weird? Why are they all Starlights…” Nicholas started.

　　“Why on earth did they mount the rear wing like that?” Johann scoffed, staring out the window. “It completely ruins the aerodynamics. Look at that ridiculous rear setup. Are they trying to imitate a variable chassis? What, do they think they’re Transformers?”

　　“I don’t understand half of what you just said. But Johann, seriously…” Nicholas trailed off as a bad feeling took root.

　　“Yeah,” Johann agreed, squinting through the windshield. “Looks like a street race.”

　　Johann easily pieced together why they had gathered. There weren’t many reasons for a mob of tuned Starlights to converge on the same stretch of asphalt. The only surprising part was that it was happening right here, right now.

　　Street racing meant racing however you pleased on public roads where racing wasn’t allowed. Naturally, it was illegal everywhere on earth. But idiots desperate to show off their—shitty—driving skills in their—crappy—modded cars existed everywhere, and New York was no exception.

　　“Why in the middle of New York, at this hour of all times?” Nicholas groaned.

　　“Well, overconfident drivers are a global epidemic…” Johann replied smoothly.

　　“I’m going to hang back and stay clear of them,” Nicholas declared, determination steeling his tone.

　　“Can you even manage that?”

　　“I’ll do what I do best—go really slow…”

　　Nicholas dropped his speed to a crawl. His plan was simple: let all the Starlights race ahead and follow at a safe distance, convinced that keeping out of the way would keep them out of trouble.

　　While Nicholas remained glued to the steering wheel, Johann quickly dialed 911 to report the street race. But the sluggish NYPD dispatch just parroted back empty reassurances like, “Understood, sir, we’ll send a car to check it out.”

　　Man, I hope this doesn’t turn into a total mess.

　　The objectives of a street race varied. If it were a simple sprint to a finish line, that would at least be manageable. But today, several of the Starlights were swerving aggressively across all lanes, deliberately harassing any commuter in their path. It went way beyond reckless driving.

　　That was the real danger of street racing: innocent drivers got dragged into the chaos as collateral damage.

　　Tense as a wound spring, Nicholas muttered gloomily, “Looks like our luck ran out. Look over there—one car’s already boxed in.”

　　Following Nicholas’s line of sight, Johann saw a black sedan completely surrounded by a pack of Starlights. To anyone watching, the sedan was in a terrifyingly precarious spot.

　　The Starlights were driving like mobsters. The cars in front slammed on their brakes at every turn, the ones behind lay on their horns non-stop, and the ones on either side hugged the lane markers to crowd it in.

　　Johann leaned close to the window, his eyes widening as if he’d spotted something fascinating.

　　“What is that?”

　　“Johann! Johann, what if they box us in like that too?!”

　　“That car…” Johann murmured, ignoring his brother’s panic. “It definitely looks like a Signiti…”

　　Unless his eyes were playing tricks on him, that emblem definitely belonged to Motorix Primo’s Signiti line. Yet subtle, undeniable differences separated that chassis from the Signiti R9 he knew.

　　His eyes sparkled at the sight of a machine he didn’t recognize. That wasn’t some sloppy bodykit slapped together in a custom shop. The sleek line sloping from the roof down to the side mirrors, the intricate pattern carved into the wheels, the sharp geometry of the headlights, the sleek finish on the door handles… and above all, the subtle, exquisite curve of the hood was unlike anything in production.

　　Meaning it was a car he had never seen before.

　　“That’s weird,” he muttered. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

　　After all, no such car existed on the market.

　　“Johann! Those guys are insane! They’re brake-checking it!” Nicholas yelled.

　　“It’s not an aftermarket mod…” Johann muttered to himself, hyper-focused. “What on earth is that…?”

　　If an unreleased prototype were undergoing road testing, the manufacturer would have disguised its body with heavy camouflage wrapping or black cladding. If it wasn’t a prototype, then it was a bespoke, one-off build—a machine custom-ordered by an ultra-wealthy individual and kept entirely out of the public eye. Whoever was sitting behind the wheel of a car like that was definitely no ordinary person.

　　Ah, right. Come to think of it, he remembered seeing a headline a few days ago about Motorix Primo hosting an exclusive motor show in Germany. He just hadn’t gotten around to watching the coverage yet due to his relentless racing schedule…