For Kevin, coming back to reality was a slow process. In a trance, he drifted back and forth between dreams and Earth, unable to tell the difference between the two despite how obvious it was. He was in the hospital, then he was biking on Mars, then in the Hospital once more. Kevin went on dates with a woman who could turn into a machine, back to the hospital. A nurse checked his temperature.

  Death herself stopped his journeys to examine him. She was looking for something, then gave him an IV drip. Nevermind, it was a nurse. Kevin woke up and walked out of the hospital, but soon found himself on a highschool racing track. Friends and failures alike pass him, their faces twisted in disgust and rage as they shouted, but Kevin could not hear them. A god beyond comprehension rallied for his attention outside the veneer of reality.

  Kevin woke once more. He was restrained. He wiggled his appendages with the little bits of freedom they are allotted. I’m in a cast. He concluded. With effort, He broke his containment at the right shoulder, and used the newfound mobility to free the rest of his body, discarding the scraps next to his hospital bed.

  The afternoon sun met his eyes but he felt no joy. I Failed again. The thought echoed through his mind, and nothing combated it.

  At least not internally.

  “Kevin!” Oswin spun his friend around and embraced him. “Welcome back”

  “Oh” It was all Kevin could manage.

  Oswin sat back on his hospital bed, which was right next to Kevin’s.

  “I’ve been up for the last few hours. Lots of exciting developments.”

  “Like what?”

  “I got a girlfriend”

  “Oh no”

  “What?”

  “I’ve only known you for the past year but I can already tell none of your problems are going to be solved by more women”

  “Eh, what do you know.”

  Kevin chuckled, enjoying a brief moment of happiness that quickly was smoldered. “I’m going to sleep”

  “Really? I woke up with a lot of energy”

  Kevin retreated inside his mind. Oswin is not gonna leave me alone. Just gotta ignore him.

  Oswin Persisted. “Is something bothering you?”

  Kevin lazily rolled over to face his friend, exaggerating the motion. “Yes, something is bothering me. Can you not tell that something is bothering me?” Venom leaked from Kevin’s facial expressions, and his words. “For the last year we have been preparing for that race. And I much longer than that. If you never needed obvious evidence that you suck, you now have it. The only thing that came out of this is a hospital bill”

  “But we finished,” Oswin countered.

  “Close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades”

  “No, Kevin. We actually–”

  “Oh hey, there you guys are. I hope I am not interrupting anything.” Neither patient recognized the voice. “I brought some flowers,” was stated with such a lack of confidence, that it was a question more than anything else.

  Oswin had a smile plastered on his face before he even knew who was talking. However, once he turned around, he recognized the speaker, but even he could not figure out why that person would be visiting. This left him without a direction to take the conversation in, so he decided to wait for the intruder’s next move. “Oh, hi.”

  “I’m Annie, the enforcer from the most recent race. I wanted to apologise for maybe going a bit too overboard.”

  “Don’t apologise, we were just too weak,” sulked Kevin.

  “But strong enough to finish”

  “You too?” questioned Kevin. “In what world did we finish? I can’t remember crossing the finish line. I remember looking at it, a bunch of creepy dreams, and now I’m here. I can piece together what must have happened.”

  “This one.” Remarked Oswin. “This is the world where we finished,”

  “Has he not seen the video yet?” asked Annie.

  “No, I can show it to him now.” Oswin took his phone out of his pocket and opened the finishing video. From the perspective of the camera, Oswin and Kevin were only a few feet out from the finish line when Annie closed in on them. The very next frame, Annie was in front of their bike, and they were red mist. “Thankfully, the direction of the wind blew most of the vapour that constituted our bodies over the finish line, and the bike crossed from its own momentum. Thus, we finished.”

  The video continued. A nearby ambulance backed up to the scene of the massacre. Trained men and women hopped out with mops and recovered as much of the red liquid as they could, storing it in buckets. Once stowed, the ambulance fled.

  That explains why I have the ‘new limb’ feeling in my whole body. Thought Kevin. “And we finished because the wind blew us over.” Starting with a minor chuckle, Kevin’s laughter grew to shake the bed he was sitting on. “I guess we don’t suck after all”

  Oswin was dumbstruck. “What?”

  “Yea, we finished. It's all good.”

  “You were just moping. Now you are happy”

  Kevin nodded.

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  “The only difference between the two was which way the wind blew. If the wind was going In the opposite direction we would not have finished”

  “Luck is a skill”

  “not in this way it isn’t” exclaimed Oswin.

  “The universe decided we would win”

  “and what if it didn’t?”

  “You are going to argue with the universe?”

  Oswin’s hands held the sides of his head. “Yes! The universe has no brain. No will.”

  “That’s exhausting.”

  “You confuse and astound me.”

  Kevin smirked. “Says the guy who picked up a chick at the hospital.”

  “Hmm?” Annie’s interest was piqued.

  Oswin shrugged. “It’s not complicated. I told a joke, she laughed, I told another, she laughed again. Now we are going on a date tomorrow.”

  “Oh that reminds me, is she the source of this text I got?” Annie pulled out her phone. “It says I’m invited to some party on Saturday.”

  “Wow she works fast.” Thought Oswin out loud. “Yea that would be her, she found my story of the race interesting and said that she would invite some of the participants to her party.”

  Annie’s eyebrows sailed down her face as she focused on the invite. “This looks super bougie.”

  “Oh yea I had to make it past her bodyguards to talk to her. She is related to power, or has power or something. I’m not sure yet.”

  “You what?” Kevin’s jaw scraped the floor.

  “Hey man, all I did was talk to her. Anyway I have to get going, I’m meeting up with some friends for dinner. Either of you want to join?”

  Annie and Kevin declined.

  “I’m glad you both received well. I’m looking forward to seeing you both on the race track again.” With that, Annie left the room as well.

  The last remaining occupant laid down in his hospital bed and readied himself for more rest. While he was conscious once more, fully recovered he was not. But as he lay, attempting to journey to dreamland, a constant shaking kept him awake.

  It followed a defined rhythm, fast and heavy for 16 hits, then slow and light for a few. Concerningly, it was getting louder, closer too. The walls shook around Kevin with frightening power until the source finally came into view.

  “Kevin, right?” stated a massive man with broad shoulders that spanned the full width of the doorway.

  Kevin smiled. “And you were Smith. It's nice to see you. Here to properly finish what we started?”

  “Sorta, but I plan to do a lot more than that.” He dug a hand into his pocket and retrieved a card with an address on it. “I run a fighting gym nearby. Consider yourself welcome anytime, no membership needed.”

  “Cool. But I already have a gym.”

  “There is more to it, we have a more exclusive fighting community. Invite only. I want to bring you into the fold”

  LIke an infant waiting for a reward, Kevin excitedly bounced in his seat while he spoke. “Well, no reason to wait, let's go. I’m assuming you drove here, take me there.”

  “No,” Stated Smith firmly as he shook his head and crossed his arms. “You only get one first impression, and especially for this it better be good. Show up before you are fully recovered and I’ll kick you out myself”

  “So much for being welcome anytime.”

  “Hey– You can use the gym, just don’t go downstairs.” Corrected Smith.

  Kevin stared down at the card, memorizing the address, his eyes filled with glee. “Thanks for giving me some good news, today has been a bit of a mixed bag.”

  “I like to keep things quick, we can talk with our fists once you are ready. See you at the gym.”

  Seeing Smith leave so soon was disappointing, and even without the heavy footfalls of Smith taking the hospital stairs Kevin still was unable to sleep. To satiate his boredom, he decided to look through the race results.

  The best source of information was a data site known as “riders.fyi”. It contained a plethora of information, primarily used for betting. For each race there was a ranking for each racer, as well as a summary of their change in global rank, often abbreviated as GR. Global rank operated on a ELO system, with Kevin sitting at 1517 GR currently.

  There was another, more speculative stat known as power, which attempted to guess the true deserved GR of all racers at this moment assuming none of them increased or decreased in ability and they raced an infinite number of times. It tended to be fairly accurate, but there were some serious exceptions.

  Kevin found his and Oswin’s table entries at the bottom of the list of finishers. Oswin was rated 1530, with a PWR of 1800. A column named “elements” attempted to summarize a rider’s abilities into a few hundred different tags. Oswin was labeled with “CLOTHING” along with a tag that shined on riders.fyi which indicated that it was new: “MASSIVE EFFECT”.

  Just above that was Kevin, who still had no tags. As far as the experts and AIs that managed riders.fyi were concerned, that meant you had no powers. As such, Kevin’s PWR was 1177.

  “Hmm yea you can't really trust the eggheads, they don’t understand what's really going down.”

  Kevin flinched and leaned away from the stranger who was looking over his shoulder.

  How did I not notice him? I must need to recover more than I thought. Concluded Kevin. “Who are you?”

  The stranger was Axel, none other than the man who originally yelled at Kevin to embrace the rule of cool, then slid off into the horizon within a bike with no friction. He introduced himself as such, and continued:

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot when we first met. Or at least, I had the wrong impression of you. You aren't a stick in the mud at all. You have spunk. A spine, a heart.”

  “Uhh yea ok,” Kevin was struggling to remember who Axel was. Checking on the ranking list did not help him either, Axel was not listed.

  “I want to take yall under my wing. You and your friend, wherever he is.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kevin was already out of patience.

  “There’s a height I can take you both to. Places you ain't never imagined.”

  “Listen man, don't take it personally, but I don’t think I’m interested”

  “That's what I’m talking about. You have that direct mindset.”

  “Still not interested.”

  “I’m gonna plan out a trip for you and your friend–”

  “Do your ears not work? Kevin interrupted, but Axel continued to talk over him.

  “--and it's gonna be the most memorable week of your life. Or possibly a month. Months? That part is up to you two. Anyway, expect a call from me later in the week.”

  Kevin buried his head in his pillow in frustration and weakly shouted into it with what strength remained. When he raised his head, Axel was gone.

  Just who is that guy? He searched riders.fyi by looking through the finishers of the most recent race. No results. Did he not finish? Axel was not listed in the group of racers that failed to complete the race either.

  He searched all the racing websites that he knew, eventually finding a list of racers that were banned from most competitions, but still managed to participate for various reasons. Here he found an entry for a rider named “Phantom rider”, which seemed to fit. No PWR rating was provided. Nor was any GR. But this person competed in the same race that Kevin did a few days again, so he opened the stats for that.

  Axel started the race 15 minutes late, and caught up to the rest of the cyclists at an absurd pace. The kind of speed associated with the top 10 bikers in the world, maybe even the top 5. But the madness did not stop there. Throughout the race Axel completely ignored the track, taking random detours, turns, stops, and alleys instead. He traveled twice the distance of any other competitor, and yet still finished second. Or at least he would have if he actually signed up for the race rather than just showing up.

  And What powers does a man like that have? Kevin found the section on abilities. None listed. Not because the information was incomplete, but because the website claimed Axel had no powers. Kevin reflected on Axel’s advice. Can’t trust those eggheads.