She recognized this effect, though—it was the same as when she passed through a jump gate. She was teleporting.

A flash of light and she became weightless. At least she could breathe again.

She locked onto the sight of a large, windowless building, but there was something wrong with it. It shouldn’t have been upside down as it was, nor should it have been spinning like that. Her car was in free fall. Then she slammed into a wall, her survival shell enveloping her as she blew through wreckage like a cannonball.

Her stomach churned with each flip, but this was far from her first crash. She relaxed and let her shell come to a halt, wedged in a half-blasted wall. Her fuel system exploded, spraying elemental energies in all directions. Fire, ice, and gusts of catalyzed gasses swirled outside the racer’s shell.

The suppressor fired, and Nilah’s bound limbs came free. A harsh, acrid mist filled the air as the phantoplasm caking Nilah’s body melted into the magic-numbing indolence gasses. Gale-force winds and white-hot flames snuffed in the blink of an eye. The sense of her surrounding energies faded away, a sudden silence in her mind.

Her disconnection from magic was always the worst part about a crash. The indolence system was only temporary, but there was always the fear: that she’d become one of those dull-fingered wretches. She screwed her eyes shut and shook her head, willing her mechanist’s magic back.

It appeared on the periphery as a pinhole of light—a tiny, bright sensation in a sea of gray. She willed it wider, bringing more light and warmth into her body until she overflowed with her own magic. Relief covered her like a hot blanket, and her shoulders fell.

But what had just murdered Cyril? Mother had smashed his head open without so much as a second thought. And Mother would know exactly who she was—Nilah’s name was painted on every surface of the Lang Hyper 8. What if she came back?

The damaged floor gave way, and she flailed through the darkness, bouncing down what had to be a mountain of cardboard boxes. She came to a stop and opened her eyes to look around.

She’d landed in a warehouse somewhere she didn’t recognize. Nilah knew every inch of the Galica Speedway—she’d been coming to PGRF races there since she was a little girl, and this warehouse didn’t mesh with any of her memories. She pulled off her helmet and listened for sirens, for the banshee wail of race cars, for the roar of the crowd, but all she could hear was silence.

A Preview of "Adrift"

if you enjoyed

FORTUNA

look out for

ADRIFT

by

Rob Boffard

“An edge-of-the-seat epic of survival and adventure in deep space.”
—Gareth L. Powell, BSFA Award–winning author

Sigma Station. The ultimate luxury hotel, in the far reaches of space.