On the screens above the track, Asta thought it looked like Vulture’s right flank was bloodied and raw from a run-in with another dragon’s spikes. Asta wondered if they had dosed Vulture with the irritant already, making her unruly.
But Asta didn’t think so. On the streets, the Bruces usually waited until the end of a race, when a little extra boost was needed. They would want to see how the field shook out. Besides, when Vulture was on the stuff, she ran like a devil out of hell, and right now she was looking slow, even for her.
Hummer wouldn’t be pleased to see that. If Vulture didn’t pull ahead soon, she would be up on the auction block before the end of the week. Asta thought Nat and Tru would sooner murder him than let Vulture go. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
Pikki held her second-place position around the next bend. She was looking better than Asta had ever seen her at Pillar. Her form was tight and efficient, and she was making smart choices– textbook perfect, but that was Pikki. The real test would be the terrain section, where improvisation was needed. Ferdo, then Pikki, entered the pits.
‘Pikki’s killing it,’ Asta said to Felix.
Felix nodded. ‘She is.’ A funny look crossed his face. ‘Just so you know, we didn’t stay close.’ He looked nervous. Asta laughed to herself. He thought she was jealous of Pikki. He was trying to set the record straight. ‘After graduation, you know, she signed with—’
A flash and loud bang interrupted Felix’s words. Fire and sparks flew beside the track. The screens flipped from the race to the smoke billowing from one of the pits– Pikki’s.
‘What the hell was that?’ Felix yelled.
On the screen, more sparks and fire, this time followed by a ball of flame, presumably from Pikki’s dragon.
‘The fireworks,’ someone near them yelled. ‘Something set them off!’
A crew member, clothes burning, crawled out of the pit as the medics and the firefighters rushed forward. A yellow flag with a black disc in the middle of it was flown all around the track– a stoppage. The other racers were being held at their pits as they arrived.
Asta had never seen a stoppage called before. It was a technicality in the rulebook, but it was almost never used. Broken equipment, casualties littering the track– it didn’t matter. The race went on. Always.
Already, another dragon had spooked and flamed in the pit, its muzzle dampening the burst of fire. All along the pits, dragons were rearing and flailing. Near the end of the line, far from Pikki’s pit still roiling with smoke, Asta saw Vulture’s bronze head thrashing back and forth.
The stands were in a state of pandemonium. Spectators were shouting down to the track pointlessly. Some cried out in horror. Others were frozen in shock.
‘Is she okay?’ Asta asked Felix, as if he would know.
Felix ran for the stairs that led to the walkway at the bottom of their tier, and Asta followed, but halfway down, he stopped. What could either of them do? They stared together at the track, then the screens, then back at the track.
Underling, painted with logos and gleaming with aerogrease, materialized from the smoke of Pikki’s pit and charged forward, a limp rider on his back. The dragon’s frills were raised as if he were about to fight. His shoulder spikes, which had been in the process of being removed when the fireworks went off, hung awkwardly from his harness.
He galloped across the track, heading for the terrain. Asta saw the tiny forms in the observation deck of the Needle scatter. Underling leapt for the fence that separated the outer track from the terrain, but his dangling spike caught on a rail, and he twisted against the jerk of it. He fell hard on his long neck. Asta didn’t know if she actually heard the crack from where she stood, but she seemed to feel it in her body. Among the many fresh screams that tore through the crowd, Asta realized, was her own voice. Underling was motionless now. Pikki’s body hung limp by the tethers.
The marshals made it to the dragon and rider in a matter of seconds. One of them held Pikki while another unfastened the tethers from her belt. On the screen, Asta could see that her suit was singed and black.
Underling began to writhe on the ground, and the attendants at the scene jumped back from the flames that burst at random from his mouth and nose. A veterinarian in a flame suit ran forward and, after a few misses, caught the dragon’s head by the bridle. He placed a bolt pistol against Underling’s skull and pulled the trigger. Again, a shriek rose from the spectators. Felix made a sound like he was the one who’d just had a bolt run through his brain. The dragon lay still.
The track went silent then. On the screen, medics bent over Pikki’s body, working fast and yet somehow not seeming to do anything at all. All that Asta could see of her were her legs and boots emerging from the cluster of medical personnel. Between the burnt places on her suit, the colors of the house she raced for– pine green and rose– shone brilliant in the sun that had finally found its way to the bottom of the raceway.
And then one of her boots moved. A rush of breath passed over the crowd. A moment later, the other boot wobbled. And then one of the medics was sitting Pikki up while others drew back to give her space.
Pikki took off her own helmet and looked up to the stands. Her neck was dark with soot, but her visor had been down during the explosion, and her face was unmarred. The cameras came in close on her, and she lifted her hand up to the people weakly.
The gesture released a deafening cheer. Asta cheered with the rest of the spectators and grabbed Felix in a hug.
‘She’s not dead,’ he said, stunned. ‘She’s alive. She’s alive.’ It was like he needed to reassure himself that this was true.
‘She’s alive,’ Asta repeated back to him as she released him from the hug. He seemed numb to her hand still on his arm. His eyes were fixed on the screens.
Pikki was trying to get to her feet, but she sank back to the ground and shook her head at the medics. A stretcher was called in, and she was carried off to raucous applause, swell after swell.
The screens now showed a race marshal, his face sober and drawn. He addressed the camera. ‘The remaining teams will be held in the pits while any additional hazards are removed from the vicinity of the race. Teams will be released from the pits in the order in which they arrived, delayed according to their entry time.’
Already, Horizons Raceway staff were jogging to various points around the perimeter of the track. One by one, they removed the unexploded fireworks that had been planted there in anticipation of the victory celebration and carried them quickly but gingerly to waiting carts that whisked them off the track.
Felix slumped down on the closest set of bleachers, and Asta sat beside him.
