The Invitation
Nolo Pasaro knew something was different about the portal before Synkro ever entered it. Normally the AcceleDrome erupted with activity when a Racing Realm opened. Drivers scrambled toward their cars, engines fired throughout the facility, and everybody wanted to know what kind of nightmare waited on the other side. This time there had been no warning. No announcement. No race. The portal simply appeared while Nolo was working beside the Hot Wheels AcceleRacers Synkro, filling the chamber with blue-white light. Even stranger, the portal seemed to react when he approached it. Its surface brightened, and Synkro’s onboard computer suddenly displayed a message that hadn’t come from the AcceleDrome: DRIVER IDENTIFIED — NOLO PASARO.
Nolo stared at the screen. Somebody was playing games with him, and Nolo had never been particularly good at walking away from a challenge. He climbed into Synkro, started the engine and watched the portal stabilize directly ahead. Another message appeared: ONE DRIVER. ONE VEHICLE. ENTER. Nolo didn’t bother asking permission. Synkro accelerated across the chamber and disappeared through the portal before anyone could stop him.
The Teku machine emerged onto a brilliant white roadway running through a city unlike anything Nolo had seen in the Racing Realms. Towers of glass rose thousands of feet on either side, connected by tracks that twisted between buildings at impossible angles. Some ran vertically up the structures. Others disappeared through windows before emerging hundreds of feet higher. There were no other cars and no visible obstacles. Nolo smiled. Whatever had invited him there had made one mistake. It had given him a racetrack.
Then a voice came through Synkro’s speakers.
“Welcome, Nolo Pasaro.”
The Driver in the Mirror
Nolo immediately checked the radio. The frequency was closed, and there was no indication that anybody was transmitting. “Who is this?” he demanded. The voice didn’t answer. Instead, something appeared on the track several hundred yards ahead. At first Nolo thought another vehicle had entered the Realm, but as the distance closed he recognized the metallic orange body, blue windows and enormous rear wing. The car ahead was Synkro. Not something similar to Synkro. It was an exact duplicate, right down to the graphics across the body.
The duplicate accelerated. Nolo reacted instantly and pushed his own Synkro after it. Both cars entered the first corner at nearly identical speeds. The duplicate took Nolo’s preferred line perfectly, braking at exactly the point he would have chosen before accelerating through the exit. Nolo narrowed his eyes and increased speed. The next series of corners produced the same result. Every move he made, the other Synkro seemed to anticipate. When Nolo tried braking later, the duplicate did the same. When he attempted an aggressive inside pass, the other car closed the opening before he reached it.
The realization bothered him more than he wanted to admit. The duplicate wasn’t reacting to him. It already knew what he was going to do.
Nolo remembered something Tork had mentioned after returning from Porkchop’s strange race. The Realm had seemed to learn how Jack Hammer responded to obstacles. Nolo had dismissed most of the story because Porkchop’s explanation included smashing half the Realm until it surrendered. Now he wasn’t laughing. The machine in front of him wasn’t simply copying Synkro. It was copying Nolo.
The voice returned through the speakers. “You always need to be first.”
Nolo tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“Damn right.”
A Race He Couldn’t Win
The city transformed around them as the two Synkros accelerated. Sections of roadway rotated vertically, forcing both cars onto tracks running straight up the sides of buildings. Gravity seemed to change with the pavement, pinning Synkro against the surface while the city dropped away beneath it. Nolo pushed harder, but every attempt to catch the duplicate failed. The other car wasn’t faster. That was what made it infuriating. It simply anticipated every decision Nolo made and positioned itself exactly where he wanted to go.
Nolo became increasingly aggressive. He attacked corners harder, accelerated earlier and took risks he normally would have considered unnecessary. The duplicate responded perfectly. The harder Nolo pushed, the more mistakes he began making. Synkro clipped a barrier and nearly spun. Several turns later, Nolo entered too fast and had to brake violently to avoid leaving the track. The duplicate continued smoothly ahead. For the first time since entering the Realm, Nolo began wondering whether winning the race was exactly what the Realm wanted him to try.
The voice returned. “Faster.”
Nolo ignored it.
“You can catch him.”
Nolo eased off the accelerator.
The duplicate Synkro slowed too.
That was the first thing Nolo had done that seemed to confuse it.
He slowed again. The other car hesitated before matching his speed. Nolo suddenly understood. The Realm knew how he raced because it understood what motivated him. Put another driver ahead and Nolo would chase. Challenge his ability and he would push harder. Tell him he couldn’t win and he would risk everything proving otherwise. The Realm wasn’t controlling Synkro.
It was controlling him.
Nolo brought the car to a complete stop.
The duplicate stopped fifty yards ahead.
For the first time, Nolo smiled.
“Now what?”
Breaking the Pattern
Nothing happened for several seconds. Then the duplicate began reversing toward him. Nolo remained still until the other Synkro was almost close enough to touch. At the last moment, he turned sharply, accelerated across an adjoining lane and headed in the opposite direction. The duplicate spun around and followed, but something had changed. Its movements were no longer perfect. Nolo had stopped behaving like the driver the Realm expected, forcing the system to react instead of predict.
The city responded immediately. Roadways shifted ahead of him, attempting to force Synkro back toward the original route. Nolo ignored them. He spotted a maintenance-like section running between two towers and jumped onto it. The track wasn’t designed for racing. It was narrow, uneven and filled with structural supports, but that was exactly why Nolo chose it. The duplicate followed and struck the first barrier. Nolo accelerated. Another roadway crossed overhead, and instead of taking the obvious turn, he launched Synkro from the maintenance track onto the upper level. The duplicate attempted the jump several seconds later and barely landed.
For the first time, Nolo was pulling away.
He finally understood the challenge. Speed wasn’t going to beat something that knew how he used speed. Precision wouldn’t beat something trained on his own driving. The only advantage Nolo possessed was the ability to make a decision that didn’t make sense until after he made it.
The voice returned. It no longer sounded calm.
“Return to the course.”
Nolo laughed. “You invited the wrong guy.”
Ahead, the city opened around a massive tower. A portal glowed at its base, but the duplicate Synkro was approaching rapidly from behind. Nolo could race directly toward the portal and probably lose the lead before reaching it.
Instead, he drove straight past it.
The duplicate followed.
Exactly as Nolo hoped.
The Name on the List
Nolo circled the tower at full speed with the duplicate only feet behind him. At the last possible moment, he pulled the handbrake, threw Synkro into a violent turn and reversed direction. The duplicate couldn’t react quickly enough. It continued around the tower while Nolo accelerated back toward the portal. By the time the other car understood what had happened, Synkro was already disappearing into the light.
Nolo returned to the AcceleDrome expecting questions. Instead, he found several people staring at Synkro’s computer. A file had downloaded itself during the race. Nobody knew where it came from, and the system couldn’t delete it. Nolo climbed from the car and opened the file. At the top were three words he had never seen before: BEHAVIORAL RESPONSE INDEX. Beneath them was his name, followed by hundreds of observations about his driving habits, decision-making patterns, aggression, patience and reactions under pressure. The Realm hadn’t merely raced him. It had constructed a profile of him.
Nolo scrolled farther.
There were other names.
Porkchop appeared first. Beside his name were the words FORCE RESPONSE — TESTED. A second entry contained no driver’s name, only a Silencerz vehicle identification code that Nolo didn’t recognize. Beside it were the words TECHNOLOGY DEPENDENCE — TESTED.
Then came Nolo.
COMPETITIVE RESPONSE — TESTED.
Below his entry were several drivers whose tests hadn’t happened yet. Nolo recognized some of the names, but one entry caught his attention because the Realm hadn’t identified the driver. It had identified only the vehicle.
RD-06 — AUTONOMOUS RESPONSE — PENDING.
Nolo stared at the screen. Racing Drones didn’t need invitations. If a Realm opened, they would enter because that was what they were programmed to do.
Somewhere far from the AcceleDrome, a portal opened inside a dark Racing Drones facility. Green light reflected across the black body of RD-06 as its systems activated automatically.
There was nobody behind the wheel.
RD-06 entered the portal anyway.