Man of few words, very quiet-a man of a figure known by one such name: Axel Cross-that whispers and murmurs in half-a-fearful, hushed tone, half-out-of deep respect, breathed by the shadow world that dares to speak and tell. His exploits beyond the realm of myths could stand no one to challenge his undefeated status in any form of competition. He would never lose determination and speed. He would not let his foes know where to find him. No one had even seen the underground racing, the intense thrill of it that Axel Cross had come to rule over underground, masked as a phantom king with fists of iron. His name turned synonymously with unmatched speed and rebellious instinct against the odds. No man within the radius of a city block stood up to him unless they wanted to taste the bitter realitytruth of licking the asphalt he left behind in his wake. His wins were so total and lopsided that many who had witnessed them began wondering whether he was even human after all.
Tonight was no exception to the thrills of events that often unfold in the heart of the city. City lights were spinning in a vortex; streaks of neon danced across the landscape as the powerful roar of engines echoed and reverberated through the streets. It was not merely a race; it was more of a mesmerizing symphony of chaos, a chaotic harmony of speed and sound, captivating all who bore witness.
And all this pouring like an el deluge of energy and wrath in the face of one perfectly explosive wave of adrenaline, combined with ecstasy thrill - electric charge snapped through the air. And so here came the storm, which with the sun now touching the skyline had so many ablaze in victory, had found its heart in Axel's high-octane chaos-born machine: the predator on asphalt, Koenigsegg Jesko. Now a dominant force ruled over the races; its sleek, angular body sliced throughout the night with contestants being left far and far away on the opposite side of the abysmal chasm called shadow. It stood before this the inviting glimmer of the finish that waved like some grand beacons.
Axeld felt the adrenaline powerfully coursing through his veins, and everything else became razor-sharp focus on the road ahead. Every turn that was in front of him was his to command with confidence, and every competitor who once was a threat seemed no more than a fading memory of the past. It was at the very point when he was on the brink of sealing yet another unbroken win that the unthinkable and utterly shocking happened, catching him completely off guard.
The Jesko coughed convulsively; its potent engine threw up several distressing, hacking fits that brought to mind a wounded animal fighting for air. His eyes darted wildly around the dashboard in front of him, his chest tensing in incredulity and anger as his car jolted to an abrupt stop, mere metres from the finish line that now seemed so tantalizingly close. He spat under his breath, furiously steering the vehicle to the roadside as its headlamps began to fade, their once-fiercely blazing glare rapidly becoming nothingness, as if some star extinguishes in a night sky. The following silence was deafening-it filled the air with such eerie tension that sharply contrasted with the adrenaline he just experienced.
As Axel opened his car door, a stewed irritation lay deep beneath the usual impassiveness with which he normally carries an unyielding expression. It would not be something trivial-something mechanical failure-had to be something momentous. He quickly flung open his hood, with rapid eye movements scanning carefully about the engine laid before him; each component shone clearly under the sun, perfectly complete and functioning, as it were, taunting concern. His heart began to pound more and more with fear: something was indeed amiss. Terribly, terribly wrong.
He dropped down to his knees, taking himself down slowly as he started peeking underneath the car. A hitch in his breathing at what his eyes latched onto: the severed fuel line. The cut wasn't jagged or rough, but rather precise, almost surgical in its execution. This was not a thing of normal wear and tear over time. No, this was unmistakably: sabotage.
Before Axel could even respond to that or even understand what was happening, a strong hand just clamped over his face, binding him. A damp cloth pushed against his nose and mouth did not let him breathe straight. Sickly-sweet chemical fumes from the contents of that cloth strangled him, even as his instincts screamed wildly at him to fight back from his unseen assailant. With a desperate spasm of adrenaline, he felt himself elbowing back, and in that glimmering moment, a brief connection-an impact that had the attacker cursing with a grunt of pain-but then he realized instantly that the drug was seeping into his system at an utterly alarming rate. As it began to come into effect, his vision started blurring, and he sensed his strength draining away like sand from his fingers and leaving him increasingly helpless.
Just in time before he was completely covered in darkness, he caught a glimpse of a figure. This figure stepped elegantly into the silvery light of moonlight; his tailored suit looked absolutely immaculate and perfectly fitted, and his mask masked his features into mystery. Then, as if the world had come to a complete halt, there was only profound silence.
As soon as Axel opened his eyes, he felt his body heaped with lead. A deep throbbing pounded in the sides of his skull. A continuing ringing in his ears muffled out the cacophony of hooting distant voices. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to let them clear up after such dim illumination. Bars of cool metal surrounded him from all around. His eyes looked up at a cage.
The realization hit him like a sledgehammer to the stomach, temporarily taking his breath away. His chest heaved out in exertion as he automatically bucked against the bars of cold, unyielding steel that confined him, but his limbs seemed leaden and heavy, resisting his desperate attempts as though his body was unwilling to cooperate. Panic began to claw at his throat, growing tighter as the cacophony of sounds around him began to sharpen into their outlines: there were distant whispers that echoed in his ears, scattered applause almost surreal, and a sort of hum of anticipation building up in the air-an atmosphere charged with tension.
The darkness crept inward in its place, within his eyes; there the confined was utterly visible outside of it; the tremendous room took possession of shadowy edges absolutely, in the weight intense, of eerie prescience; and upon that one lonely light poised in space hung to be impossibly radiant; then, there was illumination enough at any rate on that whole stage with the prison's foot; at a prodigious distance down there stood the blunted rows athwart, through in silently solemn grouping, masked, vacant face; the mouth worked at lipless grimace and just seemed as it had a purposeful aim to silence effect-and upon the sombre-dropping depression was spread the icy stillness to raise the more and make a respiration brief, all-abandoned for a moment over it.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the ambient murmur that filled the room was cut through, and it drew attention to itself. Axel's eyes followed instinctively in the direction of gaze toward the podium where there stood an auctioneer of the confident kind, well placed under a bright spotlight. The tones of the auctioneer, slickly practiced and played out with all kinds of theatrical flair for notice, were heard now. "Tonight, it is our great honor to bring before you something that really is nothing short of extraordinary. It is such a rare, once in a lifetime acquisition that one truly cannot afford to miss out on. Let me therefore introduce Axel Cross: unbeaten king of the underworld racing world, a hero in his own time, someone whom many have come to emulate and look up to".
Axel's churning stomach was all this: the words had sunk in. His name was being mentioned as part of routine, casually accepted, as if he were some thing on display.
"Shall we open at the figure of two million dollars?" asked the auctioneer, his voice almost a playful question.
"Three million," screamed a voice from the crowd, and all eyes focused on her.
"Fifteen million," replied the other man.
The numbers were rising at a pace that was so alarming; the tug of every single one of the bids was tugging at the knot forming within Axel's chest. The mad racing of his heart, it was pounding deep into his ribcage withusing extreme and insistent movements, while he gripped tightly at the unyielding bars of his cage because his knuckles became whiteeven whitish from the pressure he was putting into it. This just could not be; it was such a vivid dream that he badly wanted to wake up from.
"What is this?!! he bellowed silently, his voice shaking with that fatal mix of intense anger and desperation. "Do you really believe you can handle me like you handled me-me-like I am just some meaningless object to be bought?"
His words concluded into the void, which the indifference and blank look of the masked silent public gorged like a starving cannibal. He did not even bother to look their way. It appeared that way at least, for their gazes fixated with pitiless intent on the woman before, and her prices rose as though on fire, shooting twenty million dollars, thirty million, forty million dollars high.
Axel's mind had gone into a whirlwind of thoughts, and pieces of stories that he used to laugh off as urban myths had him in a struggle. Those sinister whispers of human auctions underground, where the rich and influential traded lives with the carefree abandon of trading stocks, were utter nonsense to him. He is now living proof of that ghastly grim reality the stories had warned of.
"Two billion," a soft, authoritative voice cut through the din and silenced the room.
Axel's breath caught. Two billion. The weight of the number was crushing, a cold reminder of just how high the stakes had become. Even the auctioneer paused, his masked face turning toward the bidder.
"Two billion dollars, going once. going twice.". And with a final and decisive crack, the gavel fell as the bidding ended. "Sold!"
With the thud of Axel's cage rolling offstage, muted sounds filled the applause from the audience. Axel's jaw fisted; his mind spun round and round with anger, with despair. He forced his eyes to fling out at the crowd to settle on a face, something, anything. The masks reflected nothing.
Two muscular men entered the cage. Their faces were blank and expressionless as they flung open the door and grasped Axel by his arms in bruising force. He tried to struggle, but his body was too weak to break free from their grip. A blindfold was placed over his eyes, and once again he was plunged into darkness.
The trip had gone by like a blur of movement and noise: the steady drone of the engine reverberating in the cabin, the hushed, muffled voices drifting through, which could not be deciphered individually; and, at intervals, the car jolted him back to himself. The blindfold pressed roughly against his skin, increasing his sense of disorientation and confusion about what was going on.
It was when it was finally taken off that Axel found himself squinting against the dimmed-down light that filled into a luxurious limousine interior. He was surrounded by the heavy presence of some expensive cologne which had a fragrance that seemed almost understated yet at times utterly suffocating to experience. Before him stood the same two men he had met before: their expressions unchanged. This time, however, as before, they wore that stony, totally unwilling look on their stone-chiseled faces. Axelsen's lips curled into a sneer which spoke of mockery through a burning undercurrent of fear that lay within him. "So what's the big deal here? How much do you get paid for babysitting me? Whatever it is that you're getting paid for, I'll pay double for it."
The men never said a word; rather, they kept staring straight ahead with glazed eyes.
"Not big on conversation, huh?" Axel muttered, settling back into the shadows. His mind was a mile a minute as he tried to piece together a plan. Every second counted, and he needed to be sharp.
But a pugnaciously acute probing of delicate flesh upon the neck arrested his series of thoughts, and with lightning rapidity his hand flew up and closed over that tiny rod thrust into the flesh: "What the hell—" were all the vacant slurring sounds which tumbled forth from lips agape until some form of numbing shock, like some opaque heavy fog, swooned down, so that tightly tensed muscles gave in to this dullness rather freely; swimming visions took on a blur as the last overwhelming veil pulled down about him dragging him in toward some bottomless oblivion.
When Axel finally woke from his slumber, he found that everything around him had changed into something completely new. The room he woke up to was starkly bare and unsettlingly antiseptic, with immaculate white walls that only occasionally yielded to the cold shine of the furniture, so perfectly polished it seemed to mirror the starlight. For all that the environment was sumptuous, it was painfully warm and unwelcoming, an environment more carefully designed to intimidate those entering it rather than offer them the slightest possibility of comfort or solace. In the air there was a slight but telling scent of jasmine hanging over this, creating a jarringly incongruous atmosphere with the pervasively clinical surroundings closing in upon him. There, standing beside the window, her silhouette dramatically highlighted by the soft, diaphanous moonbeams flooding in through the panes of glass, she slowly turned, as if in the deliberate manner of doing it, set on his face an intensity of focus that seemed to pass from the world of sight beyond the actual space of vision to his. Her beauty struck him with an impact as if otherworldly with sharp defined features seeming at once elegant and full of dangers. There was a quiet strength to her, an underlying force of presence not necessarily needing any need to boast to make those about her feel its power. "Welcome to your new life, Mr. Cross," she said with an air of authority, her voice smooth and commanding, ringing with a tone that suggested both confidence and warmth. Axel clenched his jaw, the jaw muscles set, and he listened intently to her whilst, despite the trying circumstances against which he was pitted, his sense of defiance yet lingered unbroken. "Who in the world are you?" he grumbled back, his tone, though tinged with unmistakable venom that defined the irritation in his words, was flat and unmoving. "Selene Luxford," she said, a faint smile playing across her lips as if unveiling a secret joy. "I am your new owner now."