Six months ago, Kai was a pit crew mechanic for a League 73 crew. He could tune a turbocharger by ear and shave a tenth of a second off a shift with a tweak to the ECU. Then he took the fall for a rigged race. His boss walked. Kai got a lifetime ban from every garage in the city.
His apartment in the Fort Grove projects was a tomb of dying electronics. A triple-fan GPU wheezed like a sick animal. The second-hand hard drive clicked a desperate Morse code. Outside, the neon-drenched rain of Silver Rock City hammered against a window he couldn’t afford to fix.
Payback was playing him.
Kai stared at the progress bar. 74.3%. It hadn’t moved in twenty minutes.
Kai’s heart didn’t pound. It ignited. nfs payback fitgirl
Then the power flickered.
“No, no, no…”
“Come on,” he whispered, tapping the cracked bezel of his monitor. “Just verify.”