The engine roared to life.
Not all at once. It didn't scream like the polished V6s of the pro paddock.
This thing growled—as if shaking off rust from its bones.
The Ghost Line car hadn't been driven in years.
Now it was awake.
And it was pissed.
Rai stood at the edge of the concrete track carved through the back of the abandoned Akuma facility. It wasn't regulation length. No sponsors. No trackside telemetry towers. Just concrete, old barriers, weeds, and walls blackened by old burnouts.
"Test day," Kiera said behind him, arms folded.
"You sure this thing will hold together?" he asked, eyeing the red glow under the chassis.
"No," Luka replied, dropping a wrench with a clang. "But if it explodes, at least it'll explode on camera. That's content."
Rai smirked.
They'd barely finished syncing the telemetry. Most teams took months to prepare a single test session.
Ghost Line had done it in three days—because they didn't have a choice.
Kiera tossed him the helmet. The one with Elias Tanaka etched inside.
No ceremony. No speech.
Just a nod.
"Ignition's on your breath. Don't lose it."
The moment Rai slid into the cockpit, everything blurred.
He'd driven plenty before—karting circuits, illegal street sims, modded regional series cars that were duct-taped together from three different engines.
But this…
This felt like sitting in a coffin made for gods.
The harness locked. The HUD blinked to life. Numbers crawled up his visor.
The Ghost System wasn't just syncing.
It was studying him.
Heart rate: 118 bpm.
Eye tracking: stable.
Neural response sync: 78%… 84%… 91%…
Subject: RAI TANAKA
Ghost Link: Active
Run 001 – Black Sector Test Protocol: Online.
"Rai," Kiera's voice crackled in his earpiece, "don't touch the system override unless your vision starts bleeding red."
"That's oddly specific."
"You'll know it when it happens."
The car trembled beneath him. Static danced across the HUD.
And then—
It launched.
The acceleration was unreal.
Not just G-force. That, he expected.
But the way the car anticipated his inputs. The way it leaned into corners with perfect resistance—
the system wasn't waiting for him to drive it.
It was driving with him.
They hit the first hairpin at 168 kph. No tire screech. No wobble.
Just flow.
And then it changed.
At Turn 5, the HUD flickered. The grip vanished for a split second—and he felt it.
Something injected into the steering feedback.
As if the system was feeding a different line through the wheel. A tighter, sharper angle than the racing line he knew.
It was suicidal.
But it worked.
The car sliced through the turn without losing speed.
What the hell was that?
Black Sector Route: Confirmed
Override Pathway Injected
It was building its own racing line. One no human had ever run.
A line based on minimum escape time — not tradition.
A Ghost Line.
By Lap 3, Rai couldn't tell where his instincts ended and the system began.
Every correction felt like a dialogue.
Every drift through dusted asphalt felt like a question being answered in milliseconds.
He didn't speak.
He felt.
Until Turn 11.
The system glitched.
Only for a moment.
But the static in the headset rose.
The HUD blinked. And a red symbol appeared in the top-right corner of his visor:
SECTOR LOCKED – GHOST PATH ERROR
"Kiera? I'm losing line clarity. What's happening?"
"Abort now. Something's rewriting the pathing. Pull the override—"
Too late.
The car snapped left. Hard.
Rai's shoulder slammed into the side of the cockpit as the vehicle took a corner that didn't exist. The tires bit into dust and oil on the runoff zone, barely gripping—
And then—
The world exploded into white.
The crash was controlled, but brutal.
The car spun twice, hit a soft barrier, and shut down on impact.
Rai gasped as he peeled the helmet off, chest heaving. Smoke drifted from the rear tire. One of the winglets had torn clean off.
And through the broken comms, a voice whispered:
"Driver anomaly… accepted."
Back at the garage, Kiera didn't yell.
She just walked past him, pulled up the system logs, and stared at them for a long time.
Finally she said, "The car took control."
"I didn't crash it."
"No. You didn't. It did."
Rai stepped beside her. The data was a mess. Corrupted lines. Input stacks from both human and AI nodes overlapping.
But in the center of the data flood—was a new tag.
One that hadn't existed before.
GHOST LINE: SECTOR 0 – Pattern Lock Enabled
He looked at Kiera.
"That line didn't come from the system."
"Then where did it come from?"
A voice answered from the door.
"From me."
They turned.
A girl in a matte black team jacket leaned against the frame. Dark brown eyes. Neutral expression. A datapad in one hand. Hair tied back military-tight.
Rai's blood ran cold.
He knew that face.
Sierra Clarke.
Sierra Clarke stepped through the garage door like she'd walked into an interrogation room, not a crash site.
Not a drop of emotion on her face.
Not fear. Not anger. Not curiosity.
Only control.
Kiera's voice tightened. "What are you doing here?"
Sierra didn't answer. She walked past the wrecked Ghost Line car, eyes flicking over the burn marks, the warped tire. She stopped at the monitor still cycling through crash data.
And pointed at the flickering tag:
SECTOR 0 – Pattern Lock Enabled
"That's my code," she said quietly.
"Or… it was. Before your system stole it."
Rai stepped forward. "You're from Seraph Aether. What do you mean it's yours?"
"I wrote Sector 0 patterning two years ago, during deep-sim trials for our hybrid pathing interface."
"Impossible," Kiera said. "That code was never published. And Ghost Line's system is closed loop—"
"It shouldn't be here," Sierra cut her off, "but it is."
She pulled her datapad and flashed a signature sequence: a scrolling DNA of system code signatures.
It matched.
Bit for bit.
"Your Ghost System is leaking. Or worse—someone's using fragments of our unreleased telemetry logic inside it."
Rai stared at the data.
This wasn't some vague accusation. It was precision.
"Why tell us?" he asked.
Sierra turned to him. Finally, her expression shifted. Just a flicker. Not vulnerability. Not anger.
Recognition.
"Because that system is already trying to kill you. And it's using code I helped build."
They sat at the back of the garage, away from the burnt rubber and smoldering machine. Kiera refused to leave the car's side. Luka and Imani hovered around the data rigs, half-silent.
Sierra sat across from Rai.
No formality. No posturing. Just two minds split by circumstance.
"I didn't know your name until three days ago," she said.
"Now your crash telemetry is lighting up FIA databases across three countries."
"I didn't crash," Rai muttered. "It chose a line I didn't know existed."
Sierra raised an eyebrow. "And you followed it?"
"I didn't have a choice."
"You always have a choice."
He didn't respond.
She slid the datapad toward him. "Look at this."
On screen: a real-time sim overlay of his crash. But it wasn't just his car.
Another line appeared.
A second vehicle. Not real, but perfectly in sync.
Following the same line one lap ahead.
"What is that?"
"A ghost echo," Sierra replied. "A recorded neural run from a previous driver."
"You mean—?"
"Someone else ran that path. Years ago. And the system used it to correct your course."
"Who?"
Sierra didn't answer right away.
She looked at him differently now.
Less like a rival. More like someone standing in a place he shouldn't be.
"Your brother," she said quietly.
Rai froze.
The silence after that was absolute.
Back at the monitors, Kiera's voice cut through the tension.
"Rai. Come here."
He stood.
Sierra didn't follow.
On the screen, Kiera had pulled up a diagnostic file buried under multiple corrupt layers. One that had only unlocked after the crash.
It was a runtime copy. Not from today's drive.
But from years ago.
Sierra looked over Kiera's shoulder. She recognized it instantly.
"That's Elias's ghost file."
Rai felt like the floor had shifted beneath him.
The line he took wasn't just random.
It was his brother's.
"Why would the system unlock that now?"
Kiera didn't answer. Neither did Sierra.
But in the silence, the screen flickered again.
New text appeared across the HUD:
Line 37 Confirmed
Driver Recognition: Partial Match
Resuming Ghost Pattern Restoration
And below it, one more phrase:
"Burn Line achieved."
That night, Rai sat alone beside the car.
The damage was bad. But not fatal.
Just like him.
He opened the helmet. Ran his fingers over Elias's name inside.
His breath fogged up the cracked visor.
He remembered being eight years old, watching his brother drive that very kart in a parking lot, using soda cans as cones.
That same feeling was coming back.
That same fire.
But it was twisted now. Filtered through wires and dead code and a system that knew too much.
Ghost Line wasn't a team. It was a resurrection.
And Rai wasn't here to follow.
He was here to rewrite everything.