Nikavi glanced around him, eyeing the other racers as he set his feet. A few of them were quite literally built like tanks, big, imposing, heavily armored. Others were wraith thin, depending on nothing more than speed to keep them safe. A few others were slung low to the ground, looking more like sleds than people. Nearly every racer was armed: armblades, finger daggers, a thousand and one ways to cut, slash, and maim the other racers. He was one of the few without any sort of weapon.

The noisily jostling racers grew silent as the starting flag was raised. Concentrating on the flag was the most important thing now. How long it would remain upraised varied, to ensure that the racers would be unable to take unfair advantage of the chaotic few seconds before the race began. If you weren't paying full attention to the flag when it fell, you'd be trampled by all those who had.

As the minutes stretched by and the flag refused to fall, Nikavi remembered the circuit championship race three years back. The flag had remained upraised for nearly an hour and when it finally fell, nearly a quarter of the racers ended up crashing out within the first thirty meters of the race, caught off guard and off balance when the flag finally dropped.

Nikavi's stomach felt tense, a feeling that he had to convince himself was purely psychological, since in fact, he no longer had a stomach. He shouldn't be feeling nervous, he already had twenty races beneath his belt, he should be long over any sort of nerves on the starting line, or so he futilely told himself. Still, the butterflies crashed and fluttered within his non-existent organ, forcing memories to the surface of his mind, of when he had felt the same sensation before, back when he possessed a stomach to feel it with.

------------------------------------

"So, you want to be a roller racer, huh kid? What makes you think you're cut out for it?"

Nikavi didn't even need to consider the question. Even before he had learned how to walk he'd been fascinated by the sport. By the time he reached twelve he had decided that not only would he become a roller racer, he'd become the best roller racer. "I'm fast," he had replied confidently. "I'm agile. Give me a stretch of track and I'll burn it."

The racing trainer had stared at him for a moment. "You'd at a disadvantage. You're only a half-flesh."

The words, 'only a half-flesh,' stung him deeply. The only requirements that you had to meet to become a roller racer were to own your own pair of wheels and know how to use them. When he was younger, Nikavi had seriously considered racing whole-flesh but he had discarded that notion for two reasons. First, he had tried the racing suits, and they were big, bulky, slow, and the neural interface made his brain itch. Second, in the century plus history of roller racing, not a single whole-flesh racer had ever reached any rank of note.

So from the waist down he had sacrificed himself to the machine. Fortunately for him, femoral bones, along with the other parts of the leg's skeletal structure, were fetching high prices on the body parts market, especially if the controlling musculature was still attached. Nikavi used the money he had gotten for his legs to buy and expensive hip/leg package, designed specifically (or so the dealer had assured him) for roller racing.

Many of the other racers were no-flesh, so heavily cybridized that every part of their body, save for their brain, had been replaced with mechanical supplements. Nikavi however, felt that the flesh held certain advantages, instincts, which could never be duplicated by machines, and so kept as much of his as he could.

Nikavi finally convinced the trainer, who happened to be a whole-flesh, to allow him a chance to try out. He had torn around the track, amazing onlookers as he blazed by at nearly 200 kph. The trainer half-heartedly voiced a few more objections before signing him on to the team.

Only one cloud had cast its shadow over that day.

It was late in the day, after the trials had ended, and almost everybody had already left. He had been standing in the shadow of one of the track's banked curves when the trainer had walked by, talking with a rickety old no-flesh who rattled and clanked as he moved. They didn't see Nikavi standing there or they probably would have kept their words to themselves.

"You should have seen that kid today," the trainer told his companion. "He had talent, real talent, like nothing I've ever seen before." The trainer's voice grew wistful, "Hell, twenty, thirty years ago, that kid would've had some real draw. He would have packed the fans into the seats better than if we offered them a free lube job and a tune up."

When the old no-flesh spoke, his voice was somewhere between the scream of a teakettle and the death rattle of a diesel engine. "It's not like the old days. Speed's not important to the fans anymore. Hell, they don't care if you actually finish the race, so long as you're the last one standing. Speed, skill, it doesn't matter to the fans anymore, or to the racers. Nowadays, the fans only watch the races for the violence, so the racers are only in it for the violence." His unhappy sigh sounded like steam escaping from an overheated boiler. "You did try to talk him out of it?"

"Of course I tried, but he didn't listen."

The no-flesh's neck creaked as he shook his head. "When are they going to learn? If you try and race whole or even half-flesh, it's like throwing down the gauntlet to the other races. Racing flesh is like saying 'you're all such a piss poor bunch of assholes that no sweat I can trash all you debs,'" he said, using the slang term for debris. "When are they going to learn that flesh is fragile. Flesh breaks. Metal endures and the roller-racing track is now the kingdom of metal. Flesh doesn't have a place there anymore."

They kept talking, but at that point they passed beyond the edge of Nikavi's hearing, leaving him to gnaw on their doubts.

------------------------------------

Nikavi was still trying to convince himself that the conversation between the trainer and his companion were merely the gripes of a couple of disaffected old men when he arrived at the apartment he shared with his partner/friend/lover.

Lili was in the shower, cleaning up after her last customer when he entered. She was a prostitute this month. Last month she'd been a drug dealer, until the Laws decided that the stuff she was selling was more dangerous than it was worth and dropped the hammer on the drug's manufacturers, its distributors, and all the dealers they could get in their laser sights. Lili had barely escaped and decided to take a job that was a little less hazardous.

"How'd it go?" she asked, emerging from the bathroom, still toweling off her hair. It was green this month. Last month it had been blue.

"A team picked me up," Nikavi replied, dropping his wheels to the floor. He had replaced them with a normal foot/ankle module once the tryouts were finish.

"That's great Niki!" Lili shouted and threw her arms around him, before glancing down and frowning. "What have I told you about wheels in the apartment?"

"Sorry," Nikavi apologized sheepishly, moving his wheels to the entryway as Lili disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, she was filling an old basket out of the refrigerator. "We're going to have a celebratory picnic on the roof," she explained to him. "I even picked up a bottle of champagne this afternoon."

Nikavi raised an eyebrow. " Didn't you have any doubts that I'd make it?"

"Of course not," she said brightly. "Did you?"

------------------------------------

Nikavi resisted the urge to gag on the champagne as he and Lili watched the setting sun from the apartment's roof. The champagne couldn't have been more than week old: three of those days undergoing artificial fermentation, the rest sitting in the open-air market.

Off in the distance he could see one of the circuit racetracks. There were seven in all, scattered across the city. He watched as the sun slanted across its high walls, throwing long shadows across the buildings around it. He'd always seen the tracks from the outside before, but now he was going to get a shot at the inside.

Lili hit him lightly on the back if the head. "Would you stop thinking about racing for just one minute and enjoy the sunset?" As she spoke, the last of the sun's rays fell across the city, causing it to glow brilliant crimson. Then the sun vanished below the horizon and darkness descended.

------------------------------------

Nikavi tried to keep his nerves under control as he waited for the flag to drop, beginning this, his first race. He was now a member of Team Virgil, although the term team was something of a misnomer. What it meant was that they all shared the same corporate sponsor, and the probability was a little less that you would turn around to find a teammate trying to cut your legs out from under you in mid-race.

When the flag finally dropped to the track, Nikavi immediately took the lead. He snatched the checkered cloth from the pavement and brandished it above his head; it was good luck to get the starting flag.

His initial lead quickly diminished as the other racers got up to speed but he was still several meters ahead of the second placed racer when he reached the first curve. It was a fairly shallow embankment and as Nikavi's speed drew him up the banked wall, he savored the feeling of the speed on his flesh, the tug and pull of changing velocities on his body.

It would be the last time he ever did so.

His legs were the problem. Afterwards, when the debris was analyzed, it was discovered that practically everything about them was substandard. The supposedly high quality alloys that they were molded from were actually a pig iron mixture of metals. In one case, an interior-bracing pin, which was supposed to be made from highly refined titanium, was instead made out of substandard steel.

Unfortunately, the dealer who had been all to happy to sell Nikavi his legs had long since disappeared and the cybernetics market was generally considered as buy at your own risk, so there was really nothing that anyone could do.

As Nikavi took the first curve, half the tell-tales in his racing helmet turned bright red as his legs buckled and snapped under the stress and his flesh met concrete at nearly 190 kph.

He still received the occasional royalty check from the video of the crash. The video's promo had screamed, 'See REAL blood spread over a kilometer of REAL race track!'(In reality, from first splatter to last drop, it was only 967.1 meters)

When Nikavi came to a stop, bits and pieces of him, both mechanical and organic, littered the track. He had lost both arms in the initial impact and he had skidded a good distance on what was left of his legs, wearing the metal down almost to where it joined his body at the waist. The fall had practically powderized his jaw, his skull was fractured in twenty-three places and neither of his eyes were really in their sockets anymore.

The emergency crew pulled him off the track and got him to a hospital as fast as they could (even so, they had to restart his heart three times before they actually arrived). Lili had been in the stands, but still made it to the hospital almost as quickly as the emergency crew.

He spent three days in the hospital, three days with his head hooked to a computer that fooled his brain into thinking that it was still connected to a body so that the shock wouldn't shut it down.

On the third day Lili returned to the hospital with every credit chip she had made. Nikavi took the money he had gotten by selling off the few salvageable parts of his body left and what he had earned from the race (three hours after the race you could purchase a copy of the video footage of the crash, something that thousands did gladly; the sale of the blood soaked starting flag to collectors alone earned him thirty-five thousand credits). They gave their combined funds to the doctors, who then started on what would turn out to be a twelve hour operation on Nikavi, freeing his brain from the confines of his skull and putting it into a completely mechanized body.

Nikavi had joined the ranks of the no-flesh.

------------------------------------

"Niki, are you sure you want to go back to the track so soon?" Lili asked.

Nikavi didn't look up from where he sat running stress analysis tests on every joint of his new body. "If I don't race, Team Virgil will drop me. I've already been granted a longer leave of recuperation than usual." Satisfied with the test results, he looked up and noticed that Lili had changed her hair again. It was dyed midnight black and fiber optic threads woven into it glittered brightly, making it look as if she had wrapped her head in a piece of night sky. "You look beautiful," he said simply.

"Don't try to change the subject," she said as she sat down next to him, punching his arm playfully. "It's your drug, isn't it?" she asked, turning suddenly serious.

"What?"

" Racing. The speed. It's your drug, isn't it." Her tone made it clear that her last sentence was not a question.

Before he could respond to her, she took his face in her hands. "Your drug is more dangerous than anything that I ever sold. Don't let it consume you. Don't let it take you from me." She ran her hand down his cheek, caressing his skin. He had gotten the expensive synth-skin treatment only for his face and hands. Beneath his clothes, his body had the hard touch of metal and polymer. Her hands didn't go below his neck.

------------------------------------

Nikavi was feeling strangely calm as the flag was raised for his second race. There were no butterflies. It felt as if he were centered in a sea of calm, unworried by the ripples of anticipation that creased it surface.

His start was too slow to grab the flag as it fell. He didn't even start out in the top twenty. Halfway through the first lap, he was still trapped in the main pack of racers. He was forced to pay close attention to everyone around him as the racers jostled for position. Several times he had to veer sharply to keep from being brought down when someone in front of him fell.

He finally pulled ahead of the pack once they reached the slalom turns, a set of tight curves with a series of edged poles placed at intervals across the track, where his superior speed and agility allowed him to dodge the poles while still maintaining a fast speed.

Not all the other racers were as skillful or as lucky as he was. Nikavi gained his chance to pull ahead when the racer in front of him was to slow in dodging a pole and was sliced cleanly in half.

Silence fell over Nikavi as he entered the no mans' land between the lead racers and the pack. As he entered the straightaway, the only sound was the near supersonic whistle of his wheels and the soft beeping of the readouts on his race helmet's HUD as his speed steadily rose.

Then he heard the voice.

It whispered in his ear. Speed is good, but isn't there something better?'

It whispered to him of that frozen moment when his legs had shattered and there had nothing but air between him and the track. It cooed seductively, reminding him of that glowing moment when everything else ceased to be and he and the track had become one.

The silence thundered in his ears as he brought his right wheel forward, turned it perpendicular to the left, and firmly planted it against the track.

The speed ripped it completely off, taking a good deal of his shin with it. For several seconds he seemed almost to fly, as his left foot came out from under him and his body left the track. He felt as if he was suspended in mid air, the track ripping by, mere inches from his face.

Then, for one glorious moment, he and the track were one.

------------------------------------

Lili was pressed against the wire mesh fence lining the recall lane, as the crash recovery team returned from the track bearing the pieces of Nikavi's body. As he passed by her, he tried to close his remaining hand into a fist a give her a thumbs up, but the only response he got from the damaged limb was a spasmodic twitch.

"Any double vision, disorientation, difficulty focusing?" the team doctor asked Nikavi as he hooked a medical computer to the input jacks in Nikavi's skull.

"No," Nikavi replied.

The doctor frowned as he looked at the computer's screen. "All your neural connections are intact. Your brain does not seem to have suffered any damage." He turned off the computer and began detaching the data cables from Nikavi's head.

The team trainer was waiting for him as he was wheeled from the doctor's station. "What the hell happened out there?" he demanded.

Nikavi shrugged (as much as was possible with only one arm). "I lost my concentration." Now that he had time to stop and think about it, his behavior on the track frightened him, a lot. Remembering the voice, he knew that there was something very wrong with his head, but if he told the trainer that he had started having auditory hallucinations, the team would drop him faster than last year's debs.

After purchasing new parts and having his body repaired, even though he really couldn't afford it, Nikavi went to see a private neural physician and had a full battery of tests run on his brain. He had all the neural connections to his body checked, the vessels in his brain mapped for clots, he even had scans run, to see if someone had planted a chip in his brain without his knowledge. He walked out of the doctor's office changed in two ways: he was several thousand credits poorer and he knew that as far as modern medicine could tell him, he was perfectly fine.

He refrained from telling Lili about it. In the end, he decided that the incident had been a side effect of the stress of the race. It was a one-time occurrence.

Except that it happened again during his third race.

He almost fallen out of sheer surprise when the voice whispered to him. He tried to fight it this time, but its words were too seductive, it promises too powerful for him to win.

So he crashed.

It happened again during the fourth race.

And the fifth.

And the sixth.

Despite the amount Nikavi had to spend on repairs and replacements for his body, the money that he earned from racing allowed Lili and he to live fairly well. There lives were content, except for the worry and doubt that were now Nikavi's familiar companions. More than anything had ever done before in his life, the voice with its promises of the ecstasy of self-destruction scared him.

If Lili noticed his growing hesitance to race, she made no mention of it, although she no longer showed him the support towards his racing that she once had. She still attended every one of his races, but her attitude made it increasing clear that she too was beginning to worry.

------------------------------------

Nikavi was leaving the doctor's station after the seventh race. The crash that time had been at low speed and most of the damage was purely superficial. The team manager was waiting for him and confronted him before he could take more than three steps. "Here's your earnings for today's race," he said to Nikavi, handing him a handful of credit chips. "You're off the team. The sponsors want someone who can actually finish a race." He lit a cigar and put it in his mouth. "You usually don't even make it to the last lap," he said disdainfully and blew a cloud of smoke in Nikavi's face before turning and walking off.

------------------------------------

He broke the news to Lili that evening over dinner. "So what are you going to do now?" she asked him. "Race solo?"

Nikavi shook his head. "Too expensive. Without a team sponsorship I'll have to pay all the incidental costs myself; entry fees, stuff like that. We don't have that kind of money."

"So what are you going to do now?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "After Team Virgil dumped me, I was approached my a representative of Team Murasame."

"Did you accept?"

"I told them that I would think about it." Nikavi felt that his reluctance in accepting the offer was justified. Team Murasame's reputation had nothing to do with racing; instead it was about showmanship. Its members were flashy, violent, and brutal. They won races by being the only ones left standing. Why they wanted him, he had no idea. "What do you think I should do?"

She stared at him intently. "Do you still want to race?"

"Yes."

"Then race."

------------------------------------

As Nikavi sat down in the office of Team Murasame's manager, he idly wondered if smoking cigars was a perquisite of the manager's job. The ashtray on his desk was stuffed with old butts and he currently had a lit cigar clenched between his teeth. "You're willing to join the team?"

Nikavi nodded. "Anything, so long as I can race."

The manager leaned back in his chair, tapping off the ash off the end of his cigar. "Are you aware of the reputation that you've earned yourself?" He went on without waiting for Nikavi to answer. "Nikavi: King of the Crash and Burn. That's what the average laymen in the seats is calling you. There are people in those seats who are coming for the sole reason of watching you burn out. The sponsors like that kind of draw in a racer. It fits the image that Murasame wants to project. That's why they want you on our roster."

"So long as I can race."

The manager's eyes grew steely. "I'm not signing you on to race. I'm signing you on to crash, and crash you will, every race, and you're going to do it spectacularly, with style. Those are the conditions to sign. You got that?"

Nikavi nodded mutely.

------------------------------------

Over the course of the next twelve races, Nikavi lived up to the terms of his contract with Team Murasame. Lived up to and surpassed. The tracks were pulling in record crowds, people who had come to see him smash and scatter himself across the track. And so he did.

It became easier with each race. He stopped dreading the moment when that crystal clarity would descend over him and the voice would begin to whisper in his ear. He even began to anticipate that moment of gestalt, when his body met the track.

It was after his twentieth race that Lili confronted him. It had been his most spectacular crash to date, save for his first. "I whore my body, Niki," she told him angrily, "but you've whored your soul."

Her words hurt, all the more so because he knew that they were true. "What are you trying to tell me Lili? What is it that you want?"

She stared him in the eye. "I want to see you win."

So he told her about the voice.

When he finished, she took his head in her hands and cradled it against her chest. "Oh Niki, how can you not understand? That voice is you. You were always so proud of being flesh and you lost something very important to you in that race. You sacrificed your body for your soul's dream and somewhere, deep down inside you, a remnant of your body still resides and it hates your soul for what it gave up in pursuit of its dream. Your soul's dream is speed. Don't let anything hold you back. Let yourself race."

He looked up at her then, and the image was burned forever into his mind. Her eyes glistened darkly with tears, and her hair, like a patch of stolen midnight, framed her face. "You're right," he whispered. "Thank you."

------------------------------------

His twenty-first race was still twelve hours in the future when he returned to the apartment. He had pulled some strings and had gotten one of the prime observation booths reserved for Lili.

The apartment building was swarming with Laws when he returned and he was prevented from entering by a couple of Laws, hulking Enforcers with pulse rifles in place of their left arms. They refused to answer his questions or even acknowledge his existence. They only moved when he tried to push his way past them, shoving him back into the crowd of onlookers who had gathered.

"Damnit! What the hell is going on!" he swore, viscously kicking a light pole, leaving a dent in the metal. He ignored the tendrils of fear that were trying to dig into his brain.

He heard someone giggle and turned to see a greasy looking half flesh standing behind him, dry-washing his hands.

"I heard," the half-flesh began in a throaty whisper. "I heard that some sexy hooker got sliced in there. One of her customers blew a cortical relay or something and went nuts. Vivisected her and a bunch of other losers who got in his way. Took the Laws an hour before they got him backed into a corner and flash boiled his brains with a laser rifle." The half-flesh giggled again and licked his lips. "I hope a security camera caught it all. The snuff flicks ain't shown anything new for a while."

Nikavi would have vomited if he had still had a stomach.

His face appeared on the surrounding public address screens and loudspeakers blared his name and ordered him to report to the Laws. Leadenly, he walked towards the apartment, the two Enforcers letting him pass this time A bored looking whole-flesh Law pulled him aside long enough to confirm his identity, then sent him up to his apartment. He paused outside the door, dully noting that it now had several new dents in it.

He started trembling as soon as he stepped inside, his brain wildly demanding instinctive responses from a body that could no longer hear it. Red was splashed liberally across the walls, and there was a stink in the air, organic, unidentifiable.

Another bored Law took him over to a sheet covered form. "This Lili Sevan?" he asked unconcernedly, glancing down at a data pad in his hand and throwing back the sheet. Nikavi's fingers began beating a staccato beat against his legs and his joints began trembling as his brain began to wildly fire off neurons.

"Yes," Nikavi said, turning his head towards the wall, his fingers increasing their beat until the sound became a continuos hum.

He heard the sounds of movement and when he looked away from the wall he saw that he was alone in the room. The Laws were gone, as was the sheet-covered form. He refused to think of it as Lili. The hot, acrid smell of burning lubricant began to overlay the organic one as the actuators in his fingers began to overheat.

As he left the apartment, he noticed that the Laws had only gone down the hall, and were confirming the identity of the next victim.

Nikavi left the apartment and walked away in a stupor, his steps placed randomly. His wanderings finally took him back the track, the ticket that he had meant for Lili lost somewhere along the way. He had sat alone in the team locker room, wishing for tears that his mechanical eyes could release.

Then the despair had set in, and when the starting call was given, he had gone out to the track, unsure of what would happen next. She was no longer here to see him win. The fans wanted to see him crash. He could give them a spectacular show, if he wanted. There was nothing to be gained from winning. All that would follow would be another race, and then another, and another. He could make this one memorable for everyone, if he wanted.

He could show them a crash to end all crashes, if he wanted.

------------------------------------

Nikavi was jostled roughly as the flag fell and he nearly went down, right there on the starting line as the other racers streamed past him.

As the flag touched the track, it was immediately snatched up. The racer didn't hold onto it long, as one Nikavi's teammates moved up behind him and slashed downward with ten inch finger daggers, decapitating the other racer. The crowd roared with delight as the smaller cyborg came apart. The flag dropped to the track and was torn to shreds by the racers' wheels before any else could pick it up.

Nikavi's movements were lack luster and by the end of the first lap he had fallen into the last position, far behind all the other racers.

The voice had been whispering in his ear since the start of the race. He tried to fight it but he lost, the words swallowing him. He speed began to increase and he sped through the pack of racers in front of him without regard as to who or what got in his way.

As he entered the no mans' land between the pack and the lead racers, the voice grew exultant, and his body practically ached with the desire to fall.

Crash. Crash. Crash. It cooed at him. Crash, crash, crashcrashcrashcrashcrash!

"I-." Nikavi began. He longed for the tears to come, to leave a hot trail down his face. He longed for the taste of salt as they crossed his lips.

"I-." He wanted to scream. He longed for the raw torn feeling the outward rush of air left in his throat.

"I-" He longed for Lili, to see her face in the stands, to hear her cheer as he crossed the finish line.

"I-." Another voice spoke then, drowning out both Nikavi and the voice inside his head. He no longer saw the track in front of him. Instead his vision was filled with a stolen patch of midnight, stars twinkling gently within its confines. The new voice wrapped around him, binding him tight. I want to see you win.

"I WON"T!" he screamed.

He sped up again, closing the distance between him and the front racers. By the end of the third lap he had caught up with them and by the end of the fourth, he was neck and neck with the leader. By the fifth, he was in the lead.

He not only took the lead, but he increased it. The voice roared angrily in his ears, demanding that he fall, that he crash, that he burn, but every time it grew too powerful, he would hear Lili's voice, calm and strong. I want to see you win.

As he entered the second to last lap, the speaker inside of his race helmet crackled to life. "Good job," Team Murasame's manager told him. "You've got the crowd really worked up. Now give them what they paid for. Time to fall."

Nikavi ignored him as he entered the slalom curves. He wove in and out of the poles at blinding speed. He was almost through when he made an error judging the distance to the last pole and sliced his arm off at the elbow. He tottered momentarily, his balance thrown off, then recovered and sped up again.

"Enough show," the manager said. "Take the fall."

Nikavi continued to ignore him.

"You shit deb bastard!" the manager exploded. "You take that fucking fall now or you're off the team! You crash and burn right now or you never race again!"

"Come out onto the track and make me," Nikavi replied as he crossed the finish line and started the last lap at over 200 kph. He continued to speed up, and did something that had never before been done in the history of roller racing: he lapped the other racers. Even the biggest cyborgs stayed out of his path, not daring to put themselves in front of the barely visible blur that passed them.

As he entered the last half lap, his head was submerged in an ocean of noise: the roar of the crowd, the angry shouts of the team manager, the outraged screams of the voice, and overriding it all, one simple sentence uttered by a soft feminine voice. I want to see you win.

He entered the final banked turn before the finish line at over 300kph and amber lights began to blink on inside his race helmet, warning him of the dangerous amounts of stress he was placing on his body.

He sped up. There was nothing that could stop him now. Nothing but himself.

He could see the finish line at the far end of the straightaway and still he sped up. As his speed broke 400 kph, the amber lights began turning red and he could hear his body groan and creak as it began to buckle under the stress. He could feel his body begin to come apart under the strain.

His head practically thrummed with noise.

Fall

Crash

Burn

He was greeted with silence as he skidded to a stop across the finish line. The voice was silent, Lili was gone, the manager was speechless, and the crowd was quiet.

He took his helmet off and looked up into the crowds. He had won.

The silence was shattered as the crowd began to boo angrily. Cheated from seeing the desired spectacle, people in the crowd began hurling garbage onto the track and booed louder.

Nikavi stood motionless for a moment, pelted by the hail of trash. Then, his head dropped to his chest and his helmet slipped from his fingers. Without a word he turned and rolled off the track and disappeared into Team Murasame's locker room.

------------------------------------

Team Murasame's manager stood outside the locker room door, chewing the butt of his cigar angrily. Two of the team's other members stood behind, huge, hulking no-flesh, each armed with three-foot armblades.

"That little bastard," the manager muttered angrily. "I told him he'd never race again. Make sure you work that deb shit slow," he said, turning towards the two cyborgs. "Teach him that nobody crosses Murasame."

He threw open the locker room door and stormed in, the two cyborgs following closely behind. To his surprise, there was no one in the room: instead, all that he found were pair of wheels, smashed and scattered across the floor.