The bass thumped so hard it rattled the ice Jaxen Trace's glass. He sat in a secluded VIP booth overlooking the sprawling dance floor of the Star-Chamber, the most notorious underground club in Neo Mont Delmore. Below him, a sea of bodies swayed to high-frequency synth-metal, illuminated by violet strobe lights and crimson lasers that sliced through the artificial fog. Jax stared out the reinforced plasteel window of the VIP booth.
Beyond the club's neon glare, the sprawling hive city of Neo Mont Delmore stretched into the polluted night. Towering arcologies, owned entirely by the mega-corporation Nova Corp, pierced the smog-choked clouds. Massive holographic billboards advertised various different products and clips from sports like the Iron Fist League and Maelstrom, two of the biggest competitive sports in the world. In between advertisements, corporate compliance and mandatory curfews reminded citizens of who the law was in the city. Their unnatural light painted the lower districts in harsh blues and stark whites.
Up there, in the corporate penthouses, the air was scrubbed clean daily and synthetic meat was considered a poor man's dinner. Down here in the lower-sectors, life was measured in engine revs, stolen credits, and avoiding Nova Corpo Security or the red-eyed glare of Nova's Enforcer Golems.
Jax took a slow sip of his synthetic bourbon. He did not come here for the music or the never ending party that seemed to always take place within the club's walls.
"You are overthinking again, Jax." a voice purred near his ear.
Toni Star slid into the booth next to him. She was a walking riot of 80s glam-metal energy. A unique look one could have in the year 5139. Her black hair, tipped with cherry red, was held back by a cat-ear headband. She wore a tight black tube top that left little to the imagination, showing off her impressive cleavage and the faint outline of her pierced nipples beneath the fabric.
Her belly was exposed, highlighting a shiny silver piercing, while an assortment of band patches covered her low-cut leather jacket. Toni leaned in close, her sparkly red lips curved into a mischievous smile, pressing her arm intimately against his. The scent of sweet synthetic strawberries clung to her.
"I am not overthinking," Jax replied, his voice dry and flat. "I am calculating variables."
"Boring!" Roxi Star interrupted, dropping onto the plush velvet seat on the other side of him. Roxi was the sharp, gothic anchor to Toni's explosive hair-metal vibe. She wore a black schoolgirl mini-skirt, fishnet pantyhose, and a chain leash choker. Her dark hazel eyes were framed by intense, winged eyeliner, and her dark lipstick contrasted sharply with her soft Latina features. Her breasts were accentuated by a deep V-cut shirt. revealing a single piercing.
She did not smile as much as Toni, but the predatory, calculating gleam in her eyes spoke volumes. She kicked her knee-high sneakers up onto the table in front of them. thump.
Suddenly, Jax found himself completely sandwiched between the two women who co-owned the club. He shifted slightly, adjusting the collar of his weathered synthetic leather flight jacket. The faded Ghost-Line patch on his shoulder caught the dim light of the booth.
"So," Toni began, trailing a finger down Jax's arm, stopping just short of the geometric snake tattoo on his inner forearm. "We brought you up here for a reason, hotshot. Nova Corp is moving something shiny tomorrow night."
Jax raised his scarred left eyebrow. "Nova Corp is always moving something shiny. They do not let their toys sit still for long in this city, everyone knows that."
Roxi leaned forward, her feet hitting the marble floor of the booth, her expression turning dead serious. "This is not just standard peacekeeping plating, Jax. We have it on good authority that Nova is transporting a shipment of Class-A quantum stabilizers. The kind of prototype tech that would make your Svalinn-7 handle like it is straight from your dreams."
Jax felt a familiar thrill race down his spine, though his piercing ice-blue eyes remained stoic. "And you want to hijack it?"
"We do not want to hijack it," Toni laughed, tossing her hair. "We want to borrow it. Permanently."
"The plan is simple," Roxi explained, pulling up a holographic map on the table's surface. "The transit route goes right through the Lower Sump. That is Vicenzo Moretti's territory. The Mafia will not interfere because Toni already made a massive bet with The Vulture that the shipment would mysteriously vanish."
Jax sighed. "You made a bet with Vicenzo Moretti? The man wears real wool suits and smokes actual tobacco. If you lose, he does not just take your credits. He takes a pound of flesh."
"I never lose," Toni winked. "Especially not when I have the best driver in all of Neo Mont Delmore on my team."
"Here is the play," Roxi continued, tracing a neon-blue line on the holo-map. "Toni and I will run interference in the Cherry Bomb 86'. We will deploy our EMP burst generator to scramble the escort's sensors. Nova's heavy armored skiffs rely on boxing targets in. If they cannot communicate, they cannot coordinate. That is your window. You dive in, snag the payload crate with a magnetic tether and jet out through the neon canyons here, dropping the cargo off to Socket." Her finger stopping at a row of buildings that were so close to one another it appeared to be a man-made canyon of steel, glass and neon glow.
Jax stared at the map. He could already feel the equation of the turn in his mind, the G-forces of the turn rippling through his body. The angles, the speed, the exact moment his twin repulsor fins would need to twitch to catch the slipstream that is created by the buildings through the narrow passageway between them. It was an incredibly dangerous maneuver, one he had performed many times during races. This time though, he would be dragging a box of highly explosive stabilizers. Nova's Enforcer units used heavy-armored hover trucks called Slabs. They were designed to literally crush smaller hover vehicles into the pavement.
"What about the Chrome Crowns?" Jax asked, his tone darkening. Silas Thorne was a constant thorn in his side. Silas had cut Jax's fuel line during the Grand Mont Delmore Race, causing the crash that split his eyebrow. Luckily, it was the only injury he got from it but the original Svalinn was utterly destroyed.
"Silas will not be a problem," Toni dismissed with a wave of her hand. "He is too busy kissing Vicenzo's ass to risk angering the Boss by messing with my bet."
Roxi shifted closer, her thigh brushing against Jax's. "We need an answer, Jax. We are offering you a fifty-fifty split, plus all the tech Socket needs to keep your rig flying. "And," she added, her voice dropping to a husky whisper, "we promise a very, very exclusive after-party."
Toni leaned in from the other side, her deep brown eyes locked onto his. "Come on, Jax. Be our missing piece." She purred softly.
Jax finished his drink and set the glass down. The romantic tension at the table was thick enough to cut with a plasma torch. "Tell Vicenzo he is going to lose his money," Jax said evenly. "I am in."
On the other side of Neo Mont Delmore, deep within the humid, grease-stained walls of the Ghost-Line headquarters, Socket was up to her elbows in exposed copper wiring and paneling of the Svalinn-7. A creature of her own creation, built and fabricated from the ground up off of a second-generation interceptor frame. She created it specifically for Jaxen, it was his pride and joy of all the things she had built for him.
"Just a little more... come on, you stubborn beast," she muttered, wiping a streak of black grease off her forehead.
Socket lay on her back on a crawler board beneath the Svalinn-7. The hover car sat three feet off the ground, a stripped-down industrial frame that looked like a terrifying mix of an antique hot rod and a slick futuristic vehicle. Above her sat the over-clocked Cinder-7 Overdrive core, it hummed with a faint, violet glow.
She grabbed a soldering tool from her utility vest. The glowing circuit board tattoos on her right arm illuminated the dark underbelly of the vehicle under the ultraviolet shop lights. Socket was a certified genius when it came to hover tech, but Jax's car was a temperamental nightmare.
She adjusted her goggles and activated her mirco-torch. The twin repulsor fins at the back of the interceptor were delicate. They needed to twitch like a bird's feathers to catch the slipstream of rival cars, giving Jax the microscopic advantages he needed to win. If she misaligned the copper wiring by even a millimeter, the energy feedback from the Cinder-7 would fry the entire propulsion unit. She delicately fused the connections, her tongue poking out the side of her mouth in deep concentration.
The smell of ozone and burning copper filled her nostrils. It was not the sterile, climate-controlled environment of a Nova Corp lab, but to Socket, it felt like home. She wiped the sweat from her brow, leaving another smear of grease.
"You know," Socket said aloud, talking directly to the Svalinn-7 as if it could hear her, "your driver is out there right now, probably getting pampered by those Star-Chamber girls, while I am stuck here make sure your repulsor fins do not explode and vaporize us all."
The core hummed a slightly higher pitch, almost as if apologizing.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. It is not your fault he is completely oblivious," she sighed.
Socket rolled out from under the car and stood up, brushing off her cargo joggers. She walked over to her own rig, a wide, chipped safety-orange flatbed hover truck. It was massive, slow, and handled like a tank, but the four over-sized circular repulsor discs underneath gave it incredible torque. It was her mobile pit stop, her safe haven out on the streets of the city that never seemed to sleep. She grabbed a hydro-wrench from a magnetic tool rack.
Her comms unit chirped. She tapped her temple to answer the internal link. "Ghost-Line garage, we fix things that should not fly," she answered loudly.
"Socket, darling. Still working late in the dirt?" The smooth, aristocratic voice of Silas Thorne echoed in her ear.
Socket groaned, rolling her bright copper-red braids in frustration. "What do you want, Silas? I am busy actually getting my hands dirty. You know, that thing you Chrome Crowns are afraid to do.
Silas chuckled. It was a cold, calculating sound. "I just worry about you, my dear. You have such a brilliant talent. It is a shame to waste it tuning up Jaxen's flying scrap heap. Vicenzo and the Mafia are backing a new venture for me. The Nova-Wraith requires a dedicated mechanic. My offer still stands. Corporate-tier garage, unlimited budget, and you would not have to smell like sulfur."
"I like the smell of sulfur," Socket lied, tightening a bolt on the flatbed with aggressive force. "And, secondly, That flying scrap heap is my creation! another thing you would know nothing about..." Her tone mirroring her physical annoyance she got from talking to Silas, " Lastly, I would not join you if you paid me in solid gold, you arrogant snake. Jax is ten times the drive you will ever be."
"Jaxen is a relic," Silas said smoothly. "Racing is a solved math problem. He relies on instinct. I rely on perfection. Tell him I will see him at the Midnight Sprint this weekend. Try to make sure his fuel line holds up this time."
The line went dead. Socket slammed the wrench onto the metal table, letting out a string of curses. Silas always knew exactly how to get under her skin. She looked back at the Svalinn-7, walking over to gently pat its gunmetal grey hood. "Don't listen to him," she whispered. "We are going to ghost their sensors so hard they will not even know what passed them."
Socket leaned against the hood, staring at the empty driver seat. She could picture Jax sitting there, his piercing ice-blue eyes focused entirely on the track, the white-blonde hair messy beneath his headset. Her heart gave a painful, familiar flutter. She wanted nothing more than to tell him how she felt, to break through his stoic exterior. But every time she tried, she froze. She was loud and bold about everything else, from building engines to facing Nova Corp Enforcers, but when it came to Jax, she was paralyzed.
Besides, she saw the way Toni and Roxi looked at him. They were glamorous, dangerous, and confident. They offered him the world on a silver platter. Socket just offered him a clean spark plugs and illegal engine modifications.
"Focus, Socket," she scolded herself, shaking her head.
The midnight race was coming up. Nova Corp was already tightening the city's transit AI, creating artificial dead zones in the alleyways and side streets to trap racers. The Ghost-Line crew was already at the top of the deletion lists if they were ever caught. If Jax did not have his rig perfectly tuned, the Peacekeeper skiffs would crush him flat.
Socket grabbed her welding mask and pulled it down over her face. The sparks began to fly, illuminating the dark, cluttered garage in a shower of brilliant light. She would make sure Jax had the fastest, most dangerous car in Neo Mont Delmore. It was the only way she knew how to say she loved him.