The motorcycles had been polished to a glossy shine. Numbered from one to thirteen, they reflected orange and gold gleaming in the sunset. They had been placed to the millimeter as if machined to each spot. The Race would be visible to all the people of Infinius. Attendance was obligatory. The long summer solstice provided sunlight until the very last moment.
Official betting started a month before The Race, giving the Overseers a long lead for their vig on every bet placed. Regime bookmakers stood on street corners, writing in small black books. They were easy to spot: disheveled men in suits with bulging pockets that held all their pieces of betting scrip. Their tout sheets stuck out of side pockets, and their greasy fingertips were black from counting out coins and bills.
They hawked from designated street corners. “Hey, I got a lead on number eight. A sure winner. Who’ll make big money on number eight?”
“I’ll take two.” A fat woman raised her hand and held up wadded bills.
The bookie grabbed her money and tallied it in a thick notebook he had pulled from his pocket.
“Name,” he barked at her.
“Juanita O’Brien,” she whispered back. “He better win, too.”
The bookie stared at her, his head tilted down so he could see over his grimy glasses.
“Yeah, sure. I guarantee it. That’s why they call it ‘betting.’” He snorted and slipped her money into a fat pouch hanging from his belt loop.
Everything was tabulated, regulated, notated, stored, and audited. The bookmakers changed the odds from day to day, but there were certainly favorites. It was said that the entrant from Building Six was as close to a sure thing as you could get. Odds were he had an in with one of the Overseers.
Now the day had arrived, with crowds wild in anticipation. Under the crushing weight of the Regime, they’d waited for this day all year. It was a festival of epic grandeur. No expense had been spared on visual technology. Free food and liquor helped stir excitement. Bruyaha in all its forms was everywhere, even though the Regime had outlawed private sales years before. Still, like everything else, if there was money to be made, it was a commodity to be traded. And if you had to pay off the Watchers, well . . . it was just a cost of doing business.
Thirteen boys, each eighteen years old, stood by a preassigned bike. Some were solemn, some arrogant with raised fists. These were the crowd favorites. When a fist went up, a deafening roar erupted from all the rooftops surrounding the Tower. The boy would beam and puff out his chest in defiance of his probable fate. Some pumped both fists into the air and twirled for the crowd. There was foot stomping and tossed confetti. Rolled-up newspaper sheets were also a crowd favorite. Lit at one end, they rained down from the rooftops like a meteoric shower of fire to the streets below.
Although the Tower at its highest was the tallest in The Ring, its jutting lower roof was two floors below the others, so when crowds gathered on the twelve roofs of The Ring, they could look down and see The Race from all angles. The Race. Captivating in its gruesome theater in the round.
From huge hovering jumbo screens on the high-rise rooftops to small window-sized units all over the city, screens of all sizes kept track of the betting and profiled the racers in an endlessly looping hype.
Miriam spotted Niko on one of those giant screens, his face set and grim. So young. So determined. And she wished she could stand next to him and take his hand in hers at that moment.
As she stared at his image, she thought there was something about the set of his jaw or the look in his eyes that told her he felt different from the other boys. It was such a subtle distinction that it wasn’t until later that she realized she had caught it at all.
Last-minute betting continued in a frenzy. People cast whatever meager savings they had into the pot. They may as well have rolled it into the flaming papers and tossed it away in the hot solstice wind. Debts piled up with the ashes and the Regime took its piece of every bet.
The winner would be showered with gifts and money, of course. But beyond that, he would have a seat at the Protectors’ table. A novice’s seat, yes, but a place from which to start building his own empire within the system. And since even the Protectors were not safe from Villinkash, periodically there was a purge, which created room for more junior-level hopefuls to move up closer to the head of the table.
That wasn’t all, however, in this system of rewards and punishments. If a young man from one of the thirteen buildings was chosen to be a rider and refused the honor, his choices were dismal to downright deadly. He could be shipped off to a forced labor camp, working in mines where he would never see the sun again, and would probably die within the first year. Or he could simply disappear. There were certainly occasional escapes from one of these fates. One year, an eighteen-year-old named Garret from Building Four escaped to The Shanty Alleys to melt into the vast melee of people who lived like rats in endless warrens. With a price on his head, he was soon handed over for the reward.
Rewards and punishments began long before The Race. Once the thirteen riders were identified, the Regime brought them to a replica of the rooftop track where they were each presented with a motorcycle and ordered to practice, which seemed like a benign request until they started the bikes and began to ride. Each boy quickly discovered that applying either the front or rear brake resulted in an electric current that shocked the rider. If a rider applied the front brake, the shock ran through his hand and up his arm to his neck. Pressing the foot pedal brake sent a shock through his leg. The first shocks were mild but the more a boy applied either brake the stronger the shocks and the more severe the pain. The same was true of throttling down. And so the boys learned, like race horses on a track, to ride full throttle as fast as they could. But the training didn’t end there. The Regime took no chances on The Race. A sniper was assigned to each boy. Should a boy fail to perform at the last minute or anytime during The Race, his assigned sniper would shoot to kill.
But this was not the final treachery of The Race. Each year riders were chosen from families who had been allowed to keep their sons at birth. And now after raising them for eighteen years, the spoils would be doled out in the order that the riders reached—and went over—the roof edge. The faster the rider, the bigger slice of the winning pie his family would get. Speed, agility, and sheer bravado were at a premium and were rewarded by The Regime. Niko, having no family, had no such incentive, yet everyone knew there was also no percentage in holding back. Punishments would be doled out as often as rewards.
The track that year began straight, then curved slightly, leading to a straightaway toward the edge. Racers had to throttle up and gather speed as they advanced, leading to the straight run at the end. The rider who came to a hard stop at the edge of the roof would win.
Everyone knew there was no way to escape, and only one boy would survive The Race. The rest would catapult over the edge as David had done because only one of the motorcycles had brakes. And everyone knew it.
At one time the stairs El climbed had solid concrete walls, intended only for a fire emergency, but now she could see through to the blight that had once been a thriving metropolis. She was too young to remember the time before everything changed. She’d heard stories from the nuns. Rather, she’d heard them speaking in hushed tones as they went about their chores, looking furtively around as if afraid (or, El thought as she got older and more curious, ashamed). But of what, El never asked.