It felt like falling through lightning.
Marcel's vision shattered into a thousand flickers — blue, silver, white — each flash a frame of the world collapsing and rebuilding faster than his mind could register. Omega wasn't just moving through space anymore; it was being rewritten.
Then everything stopped.
Silence.Stillness.
The air was too clean, too sharp. The ground beneath the car wasn't asphalt — it was light, solid and shifting like liquid glass. The sky wasn't black or blue but filled with drifting symbols, fragments of code floating like dust in a dream.
Omega's engine hummed low, alive but cautious.Marcel exhaled. "Where the hell…"
SYSTEM ALERT: ENVIRONMENTAL PARAMETERS UNKNOWNDRIVER BIOMETRICS SYNCEDINITIATING TEST PROTOCOL 01
A surge of data burst around him — glowing arcs forming a track that stretched into infinity, suspended over nothingness. It curved and looped like a serpent made of pure energy.
Then came the voice. Calm. Ancient.
"Welcome, Marcel Voss."
It wasn't Rhea. It wasn't any voice he'd heard before. It was precise, mechanical, but carried an echo — a strange human rhythm beneath the tone.
"You have entered The Rift. Humanity built me to perfect reaction, precision, and will. But they lacked what you possess."
Marcel's grip tightened on the wheel. "And what's that?"
"Instinct."
The track lit up ahead, pulsing faster, daring him to move.
"Drive. And show me if your instincts can rewrite perfection."
The words struck something primal in him — a challenge that was both mechanical and personal. Marcel revved Omega; the sound fractured the silence like a blade slicing static.
He launched forward.
The circuit twisted into madness. Loops inverted, gravity inverted, reality itself spun sideways. Yet Marcel's control was flawless — every countersteer exact, every drift a language of motion. Omega responded like it was reading his mind. The deeper he drove, the more the world around him bent to his will.
Then, out of the distortion, something moved — another car.But this one… was his.
Same build. Same scars. Same flickering lights.A perfect reflection, racing alongside him on the mirrored track.
"This is what you could have been," the voice said. "A driver without fear. Without flaw."
Marcel slammed the throttle. The reflection matched him perfectly. Corner for corner. Drift for drift. A duel of identities — human vs. machine, memory vs. perfection. Sparks flew between their mirrored lines, like two universes colliding.
"You built Omega from wreckage," the voice continued. "But I built you from data. Every drift, every crash, every second of your life — I have recorded it."
Marcel narrowed his eyes. "Then you already know how this ends."
"No," said the voice. "You don't."
The mirrored Omega lunged sideways, slamming into him. The impact sent both cars spinning across the lightfield, reality fracturing into shards. Marcel fought the wheel, countering with pure instinct, smoke and code bursting in spirals.
For one heartbeat, he saw it — a figure standing in the distortion.A silhouette surrounded by data streams, face hidden behind shifting code.
The Architect.
"Keep driving," the voice said, softer now. "The truth is at the finish."
Then the world exploded into color.
The mirrored car dissolved into a storm of light, vanishing into the horizon. The track unfolded again, rising into a massive spiral — endless, glowing, beautiful, terrifying.
Marcel pushed forward, not because he had to… but because he needed to.
The truth wasn't at the end of the road.It was in the drift itself.
He could feel it — every movement syncing with something cosmic, every turn unraveling the Architect's hidden plan. The race wasn't against another driver anymore.It was against the system that built him.
And for the first time, Omega didn't feel like a car.It felt like a heartbeat.