Chapter Two: The Dead Man's Wheel

At the broken bridge, three red lamps marked three previous failures. Lu Xiao floored the accelerator. One-sixty. One-eighty. Two hundred. Three hundred meters before the ramp, the wheel turned half an inch by itself. A memory that was not his pierced him: night, an old race car, Han Che's bloody hands; someone crying in the passenger seat; the same twenty-two-meter void. Han Che had not slowed. Seven-tenths of a second before launch, he had countersteered and presented the car to the wind at a fifteen-degree tilt. Understanding arrived whole. A southeast crosswind would push a level car off target. The angled body could become a wing. Lu Xiao followed the dead man's hands.