Vex walked into the garage and yawned. It was early. Earlier than he would normally even be awake, let alone at work. As he finished his yawn, he noticed he was not the first one there. The biggest surprise was Kade, Arch-Tech’s monitor, who was accompanied by a few others.

  “Morning, Vex,” said Kade, walking over. “We let ourselves in so we could set up.” He pointed at the two others with him. One was positioning a light on a wall while the other set up a tripod. “The marketing guys wanted to film this, maybe do a little livestream for publicity.”

  “Uh, huh,” said Vex, trying to process this information. It was going to be a tough enough day without these distractions, so he was not happy to see them but knew there was little he could do to fix it. “That’s, um, great.” He excused himself from Kade and walked over to Elias.

  “Meet our new friends?” said Elias. Vex grunted. “I’m sure it will be fine. We’re just cracking the mould of the second chassis.” Vex saw several of his mechanics, whom Elias must have recruited to help him and arrive early, pulling apart several large panels. “We put them in the oven last night. Still a little warm, but we should be able to start assembling.”

  Elias had brought in a shipping container and added several heaters to turn it into a giant oven capable of fitting both chassis. The heat was needed to get the fancy material he used to solidify into shape.

  As the mechanics removed the mould sections, they revealed a chassis made from a web of small struts and beams. It looked almost alive. “This is so cool,” said Vex. He had been working with Elias on the design, but Elias had not shared much more than where the mounting points would be for all the other parts: survival tube, motor, and aero-components.

  “Whoa, check this out,” said Kade, walking up to them and waving his people over to film.

  “Maybe not this, guys,” said Elias. “Don’t want to reveal the secret sauce to our competitors.”

  “Oh, right,” said Kade, who turned back to the film crew.

  “To work then?” said Vex.

  “Yup,” said Elias.

  Vex then used his neural implant to flood all the screens in the garage with various productivity memes. The next few hours would be focused work.

  With both chassis freed from their moulds and sitting on stands, Vex’s mechanics started fitting all the various parts. Kade’s film crew filmed bits here and there as they could. When more of the aero-components went on, which also doubled as the car’s bodywork, they could film more and made sure to get some shots of the sponsor stickers going on, especially a large Arch-Tech helix across the fronts of the cars. By early afternoon, the cars were ready.

  “Just so everyone knows,” said Kade. “We will be filming this next part live.”

  “What?” said Vex and Elias in unison.

  “You’re doing a shakedown run, right?” said Kade. “Cass and the drivers are about to arrive. We want to get this out live.”

  Vex looked at Elias, who rolled his eyes. “Fine,” said Vex.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  When Cass arrived, flanked by Riley and Julian, with Nia walking behind whispering instructions on how to act, Kade’s film crew were getting every angle of their faces when they saw the cars.

  “Look at that,” said Cass. Vex could detect a forced enthusiasm, but part of it seemed real.

  “That actually looks good,” said Riley.

  “Don’t act so surprised,” said Vex. He knew she had experience with high-level machines, but he was proud of what they had built here.

  Julian was a bit more reserved as he walked up to his car and ran his hand over the matte-black, neon-blue panels. “I like it,” he said, with one of the cameras in his face.

  “Are we ready for the shakedown?” said Cass.

  Both drivers were already in their race suits, so it was quick to get them fitted with the life support and neural links in the cars. Minutes later, they were rolling out of the garage and onto their small test track.

  “This is just a shakedown,” said Cass over the radio to the drivers. “Nothing over 180 km/h. We just want to make sure they work. The real test is tomorrow.”

  The cars drove around the track, staying within their prescribed limits. “Any issues?” said Vex to Elias, who had been monitoring their progress on a bank of monitors.

  “A few little issues,” said Elias. “Vibrations. We may have forgotten a few bolts.”

  “Nothing major then,” said Vex.

  “We’re doing good,” said Nia, walking up to them. She held up her phone, playing a livestream.

  “Is that us?” said Vex. Nia nodded and pointed to the viewer numbers, over one hundred thousand.

  Out on track, Julian was cruising down a straight coming to a sharp corner. He braked the car, aero flaring to increase downforce, when there was an audible crack. A video feed of the car showed the middle fold in on itself. Several more cracks followed as the car folded up like an accordion, and Julian’s survival tube popped out the back as the car folded around him.

  “What!” yelled Cass as he lifted a hand to his forehead in pain. Vex and Elias exchanged looks; neither of them had an explanation. The cars were not even going that fast.

  “Is Julian okay?” said Nia.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Vex. The survival tube was a standard Ultracar part. It looked fine. Julian might be shaken up, but no harm would be done. “We should get him out of there, though.” Vex dispatched the recovery drones and told Riley to bring her car back, slowly.

  “This isn’t good,” said Nia. Vex was about to agree with her, but then noticed she wasn’t looking at the screens with the cars; she was watching the livestream on her phone.

  “Don’t tell me you’re worried about that,” said Vex. She held up the phone. Viewership had exploded past a million. The flow of comments was mocking; one more issue.

  “Hey, Kade,” said Nia. When Kade looked at her, she made a gesture to cut the livestream. He nodded and ran over to one of the video guys. “It’s off,” Nia said a moment later and took a deep breath.

  A few minutes later, the cars were back at the garage. Riley had driven hers inside, but Julian’s was outside; the folded-up mess would not fit inside the door. It took a few more minutes to get Julian out, as they had to use a small crane to pull the survival tube out completely to get clear access to the hatch. As Vex had said, Julian was fine, at least physically.

  “What happened?” said Julian. “I was braking. I felt like the whole car just kept going and folded up around me.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” said Elias. He had a few small tools and was scraping at part of the chassis, which had become exposed, with small particles falling into a dish. “I want a closer look.”

  He took the crumbs he had scraped off to a microscope and looked at the particles. Everyone was gathered around him by the time he leaned back and put his face in his hands. “Noooo!” he yelled into his hands. He was usually very reserved, so this reaction caught Vex off guard as much as it made his stomach sink.

  “What is it?” said Cass.

  “I should have checked it,” said Elias. “It was a bad batch or something.”

  “A bad batch?” said Cass.

  “I used a titanium-carbon fibre composite,” he said. “Light, strong. Expensive.”

  “I saw the bill,” said Cass. “You said you got a deal, though.”

  “I know why,” said Elias. “It was a bad batch. It was never going to have the strength we needed. I can see it in the microscope. It must have been partially cured before we even got it. No way it would have worked.”

  “So where does that leave us?” said Cass.

  “We’re done,” said Elias.