Both trucks coasted through the finish arch and slowed to a stop inside the area beyond it.

When his engine idled down to nothing, the first thing Proxy read was the leaderboard on the far wall.

1 | NYX -- 47:23.441

2 | PROXY -- 47:23.442

He read the second line twice.

The number did not change on the second read, which confirmed the number was the problem and not his eyes.

The finish area had been built with no instinct for restraint and no one around to suggest one.

Grandstands curved around the end of the rainbow road, luminous and tiered, while the finish arch still cycled its colors behind them and the podium ahead sat on a platform elevated to a height that existed only for effect.

The effect was working.

Her door opened before he had finished processing the board.

By the time he stepped out of his cab, she was already waiting at his door, and she had the beam on.

She held up one finger and let that sit between them for a moment.

"One millisecond," she said.

Proxy glanced at the road behind them, then back at her.

"The road narrowed at the end," he said.

She did not lower the finger.

"One," she said, "millisecond."

She bapped his shoulder playfully..

"I won the bet," she said.

He looked at the board once more, then back at her. "Your headlight was ahead of the chassis. That would change the board, which should account for-"

"Proxy," she said.

He stopped, then frowned at the board.

"That should account for a timer that does not accurately represent the-"

"Proxy," she said again, warmer, and bapped him a second time.

"You have won."

She beamed.

"Mhm."

He exhaled through his nose and shifted his weight.

"It’s fine. The timers are nearly identical anyway."

"There’s one millisecond," she said. "Which I have, and you don’t."

She appeared to find that sentence extremely satisfying.

She said it once more, slower, to make sure.

He adjusted his collar and redirected his attention to the grandstands, which had nothing useful to offer but were at least a direction that was not her face.

"So," she said, and the sing-song lift appeared fully into her voice. "I’ve been thinking about what I want."

Proxy kept looking at the grandstands.

"You’ll let me know," he said.

"When I’m ready to tell you," she said. "I have some ideas. Very good ones."

He glanced at her briefly.

"I’m sure they’re reasonable."

"They’re very reasonable," she said, looking at him with that wide, pale-eyed expression that had never been as innocent as it showed itself.

She scrunched her shoulders toward her ears briefly.

"Maybe."

"Maybe," he repeated, flat.

"Maybe something small," she said. "Something you’d barely notice."

She tilted her head.

"Or something very specific. Specific has a certain charm to it."

He looked at her, then away again.

"You should just make your wish," he said.

"Not yet~! I want to think about it very thoroughly."

Headlights appeared through the finish arch.

The third place came through at speed and braked inside the area. It was the drone hacker’s truck.

She parked, got out, read the board, noticed the two of them, and found a space near the arch wall and stood in it without comment.

Six more trucks followed over the next several minutes, arriving in whatever order the rainbow road had sorted them.

One had no hood at all, the engine running open in the air.

One had its rear turned into scrap metal.

All of them were still working.

Nine finishers appeared into the space, and the finish area, which had been large and empty, stopped being empty.

Nyx did not stop talking through any of it.

She revisited the millisecond.

She mentioned the bet’s possibilities the way someone holds a wrapped thing up to the light to see the shape without opening it.

"A general request has flexibility," she said, while the fifth truck came through.

"But a specific one, that’s a different kind of satisfying."

She said it with extreme focus.

Proxy rubbed his neck and glanced toward the growing line of finishers.

"Are you not curious about the other racers?"

She gave him a look that communicated, without using any words, what she thought of that.

It was then that Athena descended from above the finish area, in the unnecessary way as always.

Carmine dress.

Blue pulse at the collarbone.

The wide, composed smile aimed at the nine of them below with the warmth of someone genuinely pleased to see guests she had been expecting.

She announced the results.

First, Nyx.

Second, Proxy.

Third, Watcher.

Then the six remaining finishers in their order.

The virtual reality teleported the top three to the podium without warning.

Nyx on the first step, Proxy on the second, the drone hacker on the third.

The first step was slightly taller than the second.

Athena announced the bonus for the next game.

The nature of it would be revealed at the moment of its use, because she found anticipation was one of the finer things she could offer.

Then, she introduced the losers.

She read the fifteen names from the roulette pool in order.

When the last name was read the screens changed.

Numbers appeared above each name and climbed in real time as the audience made their decisions.

Some climbed quickly.

Some barely moved.

When the numbers stopped changing, twelve names had enough and three did not.

On the island, three bodies lay in three separate locations.

The drone feeds found each one. They were motionless in the specific slack way of people whose consciousness was elsewhere, faces unreachable, the quiet of absence rather than sleep.

Three feeds, three windows on the screen.

The event would proceed.

The first skull exploded at the right temporal region, the detonation propagating left to back in under a tenth of a second.

The top of the cranium separated outward.

Blood and grey matter expanded upward together and came down across the ground in a radius of two meters.

The legs contracted once and stopped.

The second detonation held internally slightly longer before the skull gave way at the rear. The back of the head became the exit point.

Everything behind the body was covered by fleshy bits.

And as for the third, the face distorted first as pressure built, and then the forehead split outward.

Everything above the jaw became a mangled mess.

The three feeds focused on the bodies after.

Proxy looked at the feeds until they cut.

He had understood the brutality of the entertainment when the host first explained the game.

Athena returned above the podium.

Twenty-one remained, she said, and the Crucible had performed as intended.

What followed would be discussed when the time was appropriate, and the time was not yet appropriate.

She said it with the warmth of someone who already knew what came next and found the not-knowing charming in everyone who did not.

The Pantheon released them, and the light went out.