The road seemed to wake as they crossed the zone boundary, not by borrowing light from anywhere outside itself, but by making its own. Colors slid over the surface at an unhurried pace, red giving way to orange, then blue, then a pale green, none of them staying long enough to claim the place before the next one arrived.
On either side of the road, there was nothing but darkness of space. Above that, stars had been put by someone who valued them more as decoration than accuracy.
The road veered left at once in a long, wide curve. At the far end, through the curve, was the finish line.
Nyx looked at it and kept both hands on the wheel. Her fingers tightened there anyway.
"Finally," she said. "Something pretty."
Her truck had one working headlight, a crushed right panel, a strip of roof peeling back under the airflow, and an engine still protesting the kick-start it had been given in a volcano.
