I moved the steering mechanism gently to the side, and the flyer smoothly entered the turn. The finish line was so close. 'This time I'll definitely come in first!'

I passed by gigantic stands, covered by a protective dome, as I made the turn. My friends and acquaintances were sitting somewhere in there.

I switched on the afterburners, trying to recover from the maneuver. A sharp jerk and the acceleration forcefully pressed me into the anti-overload chair. The compensators could barely cope with the heavily increased load, but the flyer's hull managed to withstand it. I heard worrying creaks from the hull fasteners.

"The right engine's power has decreased by ten percent. There is a failure in the energy monitoring system of the first circuit…" The metallic female voice of the onboard artificial intelligence, 'Roxanne', immediately reported and showed me another dozen parameters of the flyer's key systems on the display.

"Honey, please, just hang in there," I whispered softly. "If I win and make up with Kiera, we'll patch you up so well that you'll be even better than before... Now, quickly, conduct the durability tests and fix anything you can!" Roxanne was an advanced AI, and knew what to do without my commands—I never fully trusted artificials though, so I still issued the commands.

An image of the flyer, with green, yellow and red marks, appeared on the central panel. It was good that the red marks were relatively few in number. But the number of yellow and green marks was enough to cause me concern. There were about the same number of yellow markers as there were green ones. 'Damn it, I'm in trouble.' Then, one after the other, the marks began to change color, and, simultaneously, the onboard AI informed me about the work being completed through my headphones.

"I am stabilizing the power of both engines," Roxanne concluded. "The current speed is one thousand... two hundred…"

And a second later, another alert came: "There is a steep turn to the left in... Three, two, one," the AI prompted, guided by the route map stored in its memory.

Immediately, I wrenched the steering hard in the indicated direction, simultaneously reducing the power of the engines. Fuh...My blood was hot with the adrenaline! I had taken a great risk when going into this turn at such high speed. The right wing passed dangerously close to one of the columns that stood at every kilometer, on both sides of the route.

Oh yes, this was the most dangerous route for sure! The Grand Tour finale. A hundred high-speed flyers and professional pilots, all with great reaction times, would handle the course with care. But, despite the best security and protection systems available and the amenities of advanced medical care, fatal accidents were rather frequent.

"Number six is behind you, a thousand meters away," Roxanne said unexpectedly.

"But how?!" Having gotten a lead of almost four and a half kilometers, I didn't think someone could close the distance so quickly.

Without thinking any further, I started the afterburners again, '...I'm torturing the poor flyer's engines.'

"The power of the right engine has decreased by another ten percent," the AI reported.

"Damn it…" I swore.

"Number six is six hundred meters behind you." I think I noticed that Roxanne's voice seemed alarmed.

I've already turned on the afterburners, so how is he catching up to me?I guess it's a power levelling of the both engines, so that they could work equally. That is, if the power of one of them drops for any technical reasons, the power of the second one decreases accordingly as well.

"Turn off the limiters," I ordered Roxanne. "The code is red zero."

The right engine was immediately indicated by a red marker, but the flyer finally jerked forward, as it should have from the start.

"Critical indicators of the control systems…" I didn't pay attention to what the AI was muttering, focusing instead on holding the machine together, aiming to move it to the side.

After adjusting the ship's course, the main thing to worry about was that the sixth had begun to lag behind. The finish line was so close ...

"Turn right in... three, two, one... Danger!" Roxanne suddenly howled like a banshee. "The secondary circuit monitoring the system has lost power and shut down. Initiating the disengagement of the right propulsion system.. Temperature rising in the rear compartment area. Evacuation of pilot..."

But for some reason, the system didn't evacuate me as it should have, and I didn't have the time or the ability to reach over and grab the emergency lever. Fire got into the cabin, and the flames hungrily attacked their helpless victim...

The flyer, like a crippled bird, listed to the side, then... a blow... an explosion... every cell in my body hurt... A dying light appeared before my eyes...

* * *

The interoffice call interrupted the train of thought of the Technical Director of the 'Life' Corporation.

"Mister... Grey, your... son... he... is here…" He heard the excitedly intermittent secretary's voice, a young girl that had recently filled thisvery demanding position.

"Vela! I know how much you like him! But first, what exactly has happened to my son?" The man's confident tone had a calming effect on the girl.

"Your son," a tearful sob came out, "he's in the intensive care unit at the Jefferson Hospital."

"Cancel all appointments for today," the man said sharply.

James hung up and took out his phone: "Will! Bring the car to the entrance, now! We're going to Jefferson!"

"Got it, sir," Will answered urgently.

Only a minute later, the chauffeur drove a black classic 'Mercury' to the entrance of a high-rise hundred-story building. Another minute passed, and then Director of the Technical Department was getting into the car. The car started off with a screech, instantly increasing its speed, they reached Jefferson Hospital fairly quickly.

The short, strong, and completely gray-haired man froze like a statue near the translucent glass capsule of the life support apparatus.

"My son, my son!" he whispered softly. "Why did you need to race? You're only twenty-one, all of your life was still ahead of you, and now…"

Over the past decade, the Director of the Technical Department at the Life Corporation had learned to hide all his emotions behind the iron mask of a hard, but honest man. Even now, as he was standing in front of the body of his beloved only child, ruined by the catastrophe, he didn't give in to the feelings that were tearing him apart from the inside.

He wanted to cry and scream with grief, curse everything in the world and those who had approached his son with those flyers, and this damn sport where young fools risk their smart, and at the same time very stupid selves. It was all useless now that his son was dead. What is done cannot be undone, and the dead cannot be resurrected.

The man left the room looking defeated and closed the door gently behind him. The head physician of the intensive care unit and another physician were waiting for him outside in the corridor. 'These people have saved lives in even more hopeless situations, I am sure of it…' One of them was Alexander Grant, a world-famous neurosurgeon, biologist and, most importantly, one of the members of the Board of Directors at LifeCorporation and a longtime friend of James'. James had contacted him on the doctor's personal phone on the way to the medical center.

"Alex, I'm sorry," James began, shaking his hand, "that I've called you in the middle of the weekend, but you know…"

"It's okay," Alex waved it off, briefly interrupting the man. "Both of us have children. You did the right thing calling me. I need full medical records, the latest data of the diagnostician and the EEG, any and all data concerning his brain activity."

"Let's go to my office," the head doctor suggested. "All the documents are there, and from there we can formulate a plan on how to proceed with his treatment."

Sighing heavily, Alex took out a cigarette and lit it without asking for permission. As the cigarette got halfway to his lips, the fans of the air purification system started to buzz quietly.

"It's possible to recreate the body," the neurosurgeon began, "There are several options. The best one, in my professional opinion, is the deep regeneration camera. James, this doctor here has all the details you'll need in order to make the… right decision for you, and your son. We can make a new body for your son and it'll be indistinguishable from his current one. But I don't know what can be done with his brain."

"And what exactly is so wrong that it can't be cured?" James asked, as the Technical Department's Director began to get nervous and started to fiddle with one of the pens that were lying on the table to distract himself.

"Parts of the brain responsible for motor functions and the vocal apparatus are damaged beyond repair…" the doctor stopped to smoke another cigarette. "Many of the vital sections responsible for those functions are damaged. So... if he regains consciousness and can say anything at all, his first words will most likely be 'kill me.' It'll be far from a pleasant life after such a procedure. It will be, in a word, hell."

"He might not wake up at all?" James asked, thinking about the word "if."

"Alas, yes, he's in an atonic coma."

James raised an eyebrow questioningly and the neurosurgeon perfectly understood the unasked question—how could the Technical Director be expected to know about such medical terms?

"It is a coma of the third degree," he began to explain, "the chance to wake up from it, even with all the modern developments in medicine, is about ten percent."

Khr-r-r—the pen was broken and its fragments stabbed into James' palm. Without noticing the blood from the cuts, he reached for his opened pack of cigarettes with a trembling hand. A long time ago, when his son had been born, James had promised his wife that he'd quit smoking, and since then he had steadfastly kept his word. Until today.

"But there is a way out," Alexander Grant thoughtfully said. "Even if we can't guarantee that your son will, in fact, come out of the coma, and, as mentioned earlier, even if he does, he will be partially brain-damaged... the parts of his brain which are required to enter the virtual world are in order. So I think we should make the best of the situation... I want to try to connect him to Noria."

"Are you referring to that new capsule for virtual reality, the development of which we've just finished?" James frowned, his face blank, having no concept of what they were referring to. "...But these are just prototypes. Production launch is a week away still!"

"That's it! I'll help you, as you are my old friend. We'll take the first capsule from the batch, bring it to my center, refine it, and then connect it to the regeneration chamber. At least let your son... he will at least be alive in there." James saw that his old friend was making an extra effort for his son, as a result of their friendship.

"And will he survive?" The gray-haired man whispered softly.

"Well, we can't establish a connection with him right now." the neurosurgeon answered. "Let's proceed as follows: I'll stay here and keep an eye on his condition, and as soon as Noria becomes more stable, we'll move your son there."

"Okay…" James knew this was the best option for his son. The choice to keep his son awake, but in a miserable state, never even crossed his mind. "But how soon willthecapsulebeneeded?"

"The sooner you agree to it, the sooner my people can get started on stabilizing it. I'll call them today to let them know."

"Got it," James nodded.