Subject A250: The Flame (COMPLETED)

Twenty-Nine: The Race Winner

Trace left him and wandered over to the next car, expecting to find Newt in the driver's seat. Instead, he was sitting on the roof, waiting for her.

"Ace," he grinned. "I've missed you."

Trace felt her eyes well with tears. "I've missed you too, Nut," she said. "Why are you in this race?"

Newt shrugged. "We have to be. It's the rules. Race or erase."

"Race or erase?"

"Mhm. The others who refused to race just disappeared. I don't want to disappear. Neither do the others. So we race."

Trace was about to reply, when Newt suddenly looked startled. "Time to race," he said. "Get in your car." He climbed down from the roof and got in the driver's seat. Another car appeared on the other side of his. It was black with painted flames on the side of it. Classy.

Trace leapt over the bonnet of Newt's car and climbed inside her own. She looked down and saw that there was no steering wheel, and no pedals. Just two buttons that said 'stop' and 'go'. When she looked out the window again, she saw a sight that, in retrospect, should have been odd, but, in the dream, made perfect sense.

Gally was wearing a leather mini skirt and black jacket, holding a racing flag in each hand. He held them high above his head, smiling brightly. Trace put on her seatbelt, clicking it into place. Then the flags came down, and Newt, Thomas and Minho's cars shot forward. Trace's reaction was delayed, but the second the others left, she leaned forward and pressed the 'go' button. The car lurched forward, speeding after the others.

She motored down the track, watching as the cars ahead of her jostled with each other, scraping along, side by side. Trace's car wasn't catching up; it remained at a constant distance behind them, watching it all ensue.

Then Minho's car took a sharp turn, crashing hard into Thomas'. Both cars went airbound and started rolling. Newt, on the far end, was hit by Thomas' car, and went sliding sideways, into the grass middle of the track.

Due to the crash, the other two cars had slowed down significantly, but Trace was still going at full speed. Her car plowed into Minho's and went flying overhead, much further than the others' had gone. But, when the car started falling, Trace didn't fall with it. Instead, she hung suspended in the air for a few seconds, flying on her own, without a vehicle.

"Trace! You need to be quicker! Quicker is good!" someone yelled from below. It sounded like Teresa.

Then she fell.

She awoke with a gasp, an excruciating pain rolling through her body from her shoulder. Trace gritted her teeth and groaned, her eyes prickling with tears. She had to do something about this.

She pulled her sleeve down off her shoulder, took one glimpse at it, and immediately looked away. Definitely dislocated.

"This is stupid. This is Thomas level of stupid. I'm not Thomas, so why do I get put in these stupid situations?" she muttered, wincing as another sharp bolt of pain shot out.

It was late afternoon; she'd managed to sleep for an hour or two, but the pain had woken her. Trace groaned. She knew what she had to do; she just really didn't want to do it.

"Okay, shoulder," she murmured. "Be normal. I know you're my shoulder, so you're not very normal by default, but at least return to your anatomical position and be weird there. Please?"

She placed her hand gently on the outermost side of her shoulder, already dreading what she was about to do. This had to be at least 400 times worse than waxing, and it was going to take some real motivation to actually convince herself to do it.

Apparently, she was still half-asleep, because her mind supplied her with the words 'quicker is good'.

"Quicker is good," she muttered. "Thanks, dream Tomato. Here goes nothing."

She took a really deep breath, internally kicked herself, and then heaved as hard as she could, pushing her shoulder in the direction it needed to go.

It was excruciating. Worse than listening to a speech from Ratman. Worse than enduring Thomas' endless stream of questions. Worse than waiting months and months for the release of The Fever Code, only to find that only the prologue was written from Newt's perspective.

Trace screamed; she couldn't help it. It wasn't like anyone was going to tell her to shut up, unless WICKED decided to intervene just to do that. If Trace worked for WICKED, she'd do that all the time: pop in on a hologram just to leave a sassy comment before disappearing. Sometimes you just need a sassy, one-liner hologram in your day-to-day life.

With a pop, her shoulder returned to its position. That part hurt the most.

"Ow! Why would you betray me this way? You're worse than Teresa!" she yelled, tears streaming down her face.

But, she'd done it. That was sorted. Now she could focus on other things, like the fact that her leg was dark purple and throbbing from where she'd been hit with the brick, or that she had hundreds of tiny shards of glass embedded in her, or her newly-acquired mosaic of bruises she'd received from baseball bats or tumbling across the dirt and rocks.

I mean, who put those there? It's like they designed they were put there simply to be in my way. Stupid rocks.

With a deep sigh, she began to pick the glass from her body, watching the sun set on the horizon. The mountains weren't far now. Possibly only a day's walk away- less if she put some real effort into it.

She was so close to seeing her friends again.