~Three~
After leaving Tifa's, Cloud went home fully intending to try for those few hours of sleep he mentioned to Zack while it was still early. Sometimes he found it easier to catch a nap on the couch than in bed. If he was going to be heading over to the flats for 12:30 then he wasn't likely to get back home until 2 a.m. or later. He didn't really want to go, but that hardly made a difference. Something kept compelling him to go even when he knew it was stupid and reckless.
He did manage to sleep for about an hour and a half without any truly disturbing or horrific dreams interrupting him. It was just after midnight when he suited up and went down to the building's parking garage.
Not long after he started working at the college he'd decided with little thought to purchase a motorcycle that one of his coworkers was trying to sell. He didn't even really know how to ride. Zack thought he was crazy but did agree to help him learn and borrowed Johnny's motorcycle to teach him. The one condition Zack had for agreeing to help him was that he promise he wasn't going to start racing around the city chasing some adrenaline high that would probably get him into an accident and maybe kill him or someone else.
Of course that hadn't been his intention and technically he hadn't broken his promise to Zack. He hadn't been racing around the city, putting himself and others at risk. His bike wasn't even really a racing bike and he certainly didn't want to wreck it…He knew people though. People who had the right kind of ride and were just looking for someone to fill the seat. Zack hadn't said anything about racing outside the city…
Obviously, if Zack knew he was tearing across the wasteland at breakneck speeds he wouldn't be happy about it, but Zack didn't need to know. No one needed to know.
It was a little misty outside that night. It seemed like a thin fog was starting to roll in. It was dark. The sky was overcast and the clouds were blocking out the moonlight. Not exactly ideal visibility conditions. He headed to the edge of the slums and toward the flats, the literally flat and barren area of land just outside the city limits.
The meeting spot was busier than what it usually seemed to be. It looked like there could have been thirty or more vehicles parked out there and maybe seventy-five people standing around. He searched out and found Rick's truck. He initially met Rick through one of his co-workers. It was the guy's nephew. He hadn't really been looking for any friends but when he heard about what went on out in the wasteland a couple nights a week, he was curious.
The land around the city wasn't really good for anything anymore. Nothing could grow out there. Without vegetation to help cool it down or act as a wind barrier it could get brutally hot during the warmer months of the year and brutally cold in the cooler ones. It was just as the name suggested. A wasteland. But it was good for one thing. The variable terrain made it desirable for off-road vehicles. It could be fun taking a dirt bike out around some of the more frequented trails during the daytime. That's not really what the large group of people gathered that night were there for, to participate in some fun leisurely daytime recreation. They were there for a night race.
The night races were dangerous. The bikes were modified a little and given headlights but it still meant only seeing so far ahead of where you were going and they didn't always stick to the familiar paths or trails.
Cloud pulled his bike to a stop next to Rick's truck. He could see Rick standing a short distance away with a few other people. When the guy noticed him he abandoned the small group to come talk to him.
"You ain't gonna be sorry you showed up tonight, Spike, I'm promise you," Rick told him excitedly when he set the kickstand on his bike and took off his helmet. "Pot's up to five G's and climbing."
It could only mean one thing. A lot of online spectators and a high probability of wrecking out during the race.
"Why? What's the run?" he asked.
"Crazy as shit," Rick replied. He pointed out ahead of them, past all the vehicles and people standing around getting ready. "Across the flats to the highway, down to the ruts, over the dunes and finally the bed,"
"The what?"
"The lake bed. It's all dried up and cracked to hell. Some of the cracks out there are wider than the bike tires. You gotta be careful. First rider to the other side of the bed or last one riding gets the pot," he explained. "What d'ya think?"
"I'm here," he said with a light shrug. "Split the same?" he asked.
"Fifty-fifty, bro. Winnings and repairs," Rick confirmed. Cloud walked with him to the back of his truck where his dirt bike was parked.
"You get the throttle issue fixed?" he asked and Rick nodded.
"Yep, she's ready to purr."
He hadn't been riding long and when he raced, it was on one of Rick's bikes. The guy said he'd been looking for a rider for a while who was crazy enough to do the night runs. He didn't really like to think of himself as crazy but there were many times that he told himself he must be. Not because he wanted to risk his life or his limbs by doing something dangerous out in the middle of the night but because after everything he'd been through over what, even though felt like a lifetime, was only a relatively short number of years, how could he not be? How could anyone survive and make it to the other side of what he'd experienced and still be in their right mind?
"Who's that?" he asked Rick. He nodded his head in the direction of a rider he hadn't seen before. From looking at him, he'd say he had money. His gear looked top of the line. Judging by the number of people crowding around him, he must have been someone special.
"Street royalty, I guess," Rick told him. "His name's Taggert. He's a champion on the Continental Circuit, back in town to take some money that he doesn't need. Grew up racing out here," he revealed. "Didn't expect to see him tonight. Your beginner's luck out here may run out today," he added with a smile.
Taggert glanced their way and noticed their eyes in his direction. He tilted his chin up in acknowledgment and Rick gave a short nod. A moment later, the supposed champ was heading in their direction.
"Hey," Taggert greeted.
"What's up, man?" Rick said, shaking Taggert's hand briefly. "What brings you back to the flats?" he asked.
"Vacation, family, the usual," Tagged replied. He looked Cloud's way then. "You Spike?" he asked.
"Yep," was Cloud's short confirmation. He wasn't so creative with fake names. Not wanting to give out his real name to anyone, that's all he'd come up with. Might have had something to do with Zack's disappointed voice being in his head all the time. What the hell are you thinking, Spike?
"Heard you been trying to make a name for yourself around here," Taggert claimed.
"Don't know what you mean," he said back casually.
"Right," Taggert replied, glancing at Rick. "Well, this is my playpen now, Spike-O," he announced with a wide grin. He definitely had the perfect teeth of a champion.
"Like what babies play in?" Cloud asked and Rick laughed beside him.
"Funny," Taggert said. "Have fun looking at my ass out there," he stated before walking away.
Rick picked up the helmet sitting on the seat of his dirt bike. "Here," he said as he passed it Cloud's way. "It's all wired up. Hundreds of people are about to see what you see and if you wipe out they're gonna see that too."
There was a small camera attached to the top of the helmet facing forward. The feed from his camera and the ones on the helmets of the other riders would be delivered to a live online audience.
"Speakers and mic are enabled as well on the inside," Rick said as he was about to put the helmet on. He paused. He was about to tell Rick he didn't want to hear his voice in his head while he was trying to focus. "Shut the hell up, I know," Rick acknowledged before he could say anything. "You'll only hear me if you get off course or in the crazy chance you actually win."
He nodded before finally pulling the helmet on. He moved the bike over to where they were supposed to start the race from. A fluorescent orange paint line had been sprayed onto the dirt. It looked like there was going to be about fifteen riders. Numbers had been drawn for the others to determine their placement in the pack to start. They were going to be starting in rows. For him, there was no number draw. He'd won the last race so he was automatically placed at the back.
Taggert passed him on his way to his own position closer to the front and looked at him. He didn't have his helmet on yet and he smiled that wide smug grin at him again. "Good luck, Dog Boy," he said, topping it off with a wink.
Good luck, right, Cloud thought to himself. He hadn't had a ton of that in the past and he didn't think he needed it now.
The start official of their unofficial and technically illegal race told them to start up their engines. There was something undeniably thrilling about the sound. That alone had Cloud's heart beating faster. The time spent idling at the start was the longest and most anxiety-inducing part of the races. The impatience and anticipation of the riders before the starting gun was fired was palpable.
At last the pistol was raised in the air and the loud sound as it was fired had the pack moving. The worst thing about being at the back was the dust cloud or mud spray in the case the ground was wet. It made it nearly impossible to see for the first seconds. All you could do was hold your breath and hope no one had wiped out or stalled right at the start ahead of you.
He wasn't too worried about having to start out at the back. He figured at the very least he could get himself somewhere into the middle of the pack before they hit the ruts out past the highway, the 'highway' being the main road out of the city. Not much about it was characteristic of any highway he'd ever been on. The road, while paved and technically double lane, had no visible dividing line and was old and weathered, pitted with potholes and the pavement crumbling at the edges. During dust storms, portions of it could easily be covered by layers of dirt. The layers, while probably considered 'thin' could easily be a few inches in thickness and hitting the soft texture going at high speeds could easily lead to a crash.
A couple of miles down the highway was a turn off onto the ruts, the remnants of another road that had been used in the past but for years hadn't been maintained. Perhaps at one point it was gravel or paved with something, but once the newer road was established it had been abandoned and the only people who used it were those with off-road or recreational vehicles.
Deep grooves from the tires of the various vehicles using it over the years had been carved into the ground over time. They crisscrossed over one another and easily filled up with water during a storm, making it difficult to judge the depth of some of them. Fortunately, that night, the bottoms of the grooves were dry. It was one small thing not to have to worry about.
Cloud had gained a lot of ground once he hit the highway and was able to edge his way through the other riders to fourth position before the turn off to the ruts. There'd be no chance of passing anyone once he'd entered those snaking cuts into the earth. His focus would be on trying not to wipe out. If he crashed, there'd be a mass of spinning treads coming up from behind to run right into him. He let himself imagine it for a moment but he'd only been imagining what it would be like if he lost control. He didn't think about what would happen if the guy ahead of him did.
He saw the wobble of the guy's bike a split second before his front wheel impacted the left edge of the rut and the rider was getting thrown. All Cloud could do then was try to make a jump to avoid the wreck ahead. He aimed for a patch of ground that seemed to be sloping less steeply into the rut he was running and accelerated, twisting back on the throttle.
He was able to avoid the crash and some of the riders behind him were quick to follow his path. Others must not have been so quick to react. He realized that when they were finally out of the ruts and into the dunes. It was there that he glanced back behind him and could only see four or five headlights.
Looking ahead of him again, he locked his eyes on Taggert for a moment. He could see he had made it to the front. There was only one other rider separating them. He'd already known what to expect from the dunes. He'd been out there a few times. The dunes were a few miles of rolling rocky terrain. Dirt bikers were out there a lot and their paths up and down the slopes were clear to see but it was easy to fall behind while getting caught up on the jumps. Picking the right path, though, could slingshot you ahead of the others.
He wasn't looking to take any chances right then. If what Rick had said was true, and Taggert was familiar with all the wasteland had to offer then he was going to stay close to him and follow whatever path he chose. It seemed the second place rider had the same idea. Cloud wasn't interested in a third place finish though. He wanted the win.
On the other side of the dunes the terrain flattened out again gradually and he took the first chance he had to shift up and accelerate as fast as he thought he could to try to overtake the guy ahead of him. There had to be less than a second between them. Taggert had a larger lead. He could just barely make out his back wheel in the misty darkness ahead. When he looked back he didn't see anyone behind him, at least not close enough for him to detect.
He didn't know what to expect from the so-called 'bed' as they were fast coming up to it, even though Rick had given a brief description. He really hadn't expected what he found himself suddenly running into. He thought of something flat when he thought of a riverbed. He didn't think about the fact there'd also be rocks, some of them the size of boulders. He and the rider he'd been chasing were almost neck and neck until they hit what felt like washboard.
For a moment, he was sure he was about to lose control. He eased back and slowed himself down a little, holding tight to handles, fighting the front wheel's sudden sideways pull. He lost some time and the gap widened between him and the rider ahead, so much so he thought he'd actually just lost the chance to overtake him. He couldn't even see Taggert anymore. He did, however, see the guy ahead of him look back, to see what kind of distance there was behind him now.
In that split second that he took his eyes off the ground ahead of him, he wasn't able to see the large rock in the ground coming up ahead of him. Maybe he did see it for a fraction of a moment before he hit it, but he couldn't have done anything to avoid it if he tried. His front wheel hit it straight on and sent him over the bars and onto the ground.
That was it, Cloud thought, just distance now between him and Taggert. He still couldn't see him, but he was sure he couldn't be too far ahead. He sped up as quickly as he could handle on the rough and rocky surface and it was only a few moments before he could see the tail of Taggert's bike. As they were getting father out into the lake bed, the rocks were becoming fewer and sparser and the ground was becoming flatter. It might have been a relief except for the fact that with the flatter ground came the cracks that Rick had warned him about. He'd told him some of them would be wider than the bike tires. He wasn't kidding about that.
As long as he was intersecting or cutting across the zigzagging lesions in the dried up ground it wasn't so bad. It was just so hard to keep accelerating. He had to keep tilting the bike to move around or across the larger rifts ahead. He was pushing himself faster than he knew he should but as he could see the gap closing between him and Taggert, the voice in his head that told him what he was doing could kill him became drowned out by his surging adrenaline.
Each time he'd decided to race, there was always a specific moment he felt he was accelerating toward. It wasn't just the win or the finish line, it was the point that his fear broke away in his mind and his body and he found himself saying 'screw it.' Everything was fine. He felt only the rush then.
He could feel that moment at his fingertips. He just had to go a little faster. A little harder. A little farther…
Taggert must have felt him closing in. He saw him glace back briefly before he was suddenly leaning forward more and accelerating to increase his lead. Cloud was about to follow suit to try to keep the gap between them small, but suddenly he saw Taggert's bike dip downward, his front wheel sinking into one of the long fissures in the ground, catching hold of it and bringing it to an abrupt and terrifying stop. He passed Taggert before he could really see what the outcome would be. He looked back behind him to see him rolling. His bike had flipped and he thought he saw fire. Holy shit, he thought. He might have just won. He still hadn't seen any other riders behind him since the dunes.
"It's over, Spike, you just fucking won!" Rick's voice seemed to pummel him from inside his helmet. He couldn't help but smile to himself a little in satisfaction.
As he faced ahead once more he felt his stomach plummet. Just becoming visible in the illumination of his headlight was one of the largest wolves he'd ever seen. It was frozen staring at the bike coming toward it.
There was no time to safely stop and no time to stop himself from instinctually panic braking hard and trying to swerve. He was still going too fast and he lost control in an instant. He found himself sideways and he lost his grip on the bike. He hit the ground hard on his left side and the momentum had him skidding and rolling against the dry and rocky surface.
When he finally came to a stop on his stomach, he lay still and tried to determine if he'd just broken or seriously injured anything. His left forearm and his knee were burning. None of the pain felt sharp enough to indicate he'd busted anything in his body but he still felt like he'd had the wind knocked out of him and like he'd just taken a beating.
"Spike, you okay?!" Rick's concerned voice was asking. "The feed's cut," he added.
"Yeah," he replied slowly back, not sure if the microphone would even still be functioning.
"Is the bike wrecked?" Rick questioned.
"I…I'm not sure," he said in return.
Groaning, he turned himself a little onto his side and reached to unclip and remove his helmet. He could see when he took it off that the camera had been destroyed. A sound nearby drew his eyes and he saw the wolf he'd tried to avoid. He realized then there were three pups with it. It must have been a mother. She watched him apprehensively for a moment while her pups were sniffing at the ground.
A few seconds later she was disappearing into the darkness with her young. He sat for a few moments more, trying to catch his breath, before getting himself to his knees and finally up off the ground. He needed to see if the bike would still run well enough to get him back to the flats, or at least back to the road where Rick could come get him. His gear had held up but the feeling like fire on his skin inside his suit had him imagining he was probably still bleeding.
Luckily the bike hadn't sustained too much damage while it slid across the ground. It was still operational so he started heading back the way he came slowly and caught up to Taggert walking back. His own bike was toast. He looked okay though.
"Want a ride back?" he asked as he coasted up next to him.
"My crew's coming," Taggert said, not even really looking at him. Cloud just shrugged and prepared to leave him behind.
"So, I guess I need to worry about you on the circuit," Taggert called and he looked back.
"I'm not registered," he replied.
Taggert gave a short nod to that. "Well," he said then, "you should be."
000
Cloud didn't stick around the flats very long after the race. He loved the feeling of winning, hated the attention. He didn't care about or want for any of it really. At that point, when a race was finished, he'd gotten what he needed for the night and wanted to go home. He never stayed longer than a half hour after. Just long enough for a drink and what felt like a hundred congratulatory handshakes or pats on the back.
After parking and covering up his bike in the parking lot back at home, he made his way back up to the apartment slowly, knowing he was going to have to deal with whatever injuries he'd given himself back out in the wasteland. He was actually tired. Like, normal I could sleep tired, rather than just the usual fatigue that he felt day after day due to his chronic insomnia and low quality of sleep he did get.
He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket while he was walking up from the parking lot, feeling the bits of folded and crumpled paper or napkins, whatever was there. Garbage basically. Something else that went along with winning. Once inside the apartment, he locked the deadbolt on the door and began removing the contents of his pockets while he stood in front of the kitchen garbage. Names and phone numbers. He never asked for them. He couldn't imagine calling some number that some stranger had shoved into his pocket to go hook up somewhere.
One of the folded bits of paper caught his eye though. It was folded up in a unique way. Like a very small origami note square. He couldn't resist the urge to unfold it. Inside wasn't a phone number. It was just a one line. I know who you really are.
As disturbing as the note was if he really let himself think about it, he didn't let himself think about it. Lots of people thought they knew who he really was. He crumpled the paper up and dropped it into the trash with the other garbage. He needed to get off his gear and see what kind of damage he'd done to his arm and knee.
It wasn't as bad as he imagined it could be. Some skin had been taken off his forearm and knee when he fell and slid over the ground. The areas around the shallow wounds were bruised and he suspected there'd be other bruising on him in various places as well from the tumble he'd taken. He felt like his body was becoming stiffer now that he wasn't moving around much. Although he'd never wanted it, he couldn't deny the one handy thing that had come from being equipped with the Seraph strain. There had been a time when the injuries he got when he hit the ground out on the lake bed would have healed in minutes. He never had bruises when he had Seraph.
With Seraph eradicated from his body, all he had to depend on for healing was his own body, his own immune system, and the little bit of extra help that was afforded to him by the mako exposure he'd had in the past and what he had of Jenova still inside him. It was better than nothing but he still kind of missed being able to rely on Seraph to do the speedy healing work for him. One thing was for sure, he'd have to have a story to explain the injuries he had to Zack in the morning because there was no way it was going to go unnoticed.
