The morning ritual unfolded with mechanical precision. Fernanda's hands gripped the wheelchair handles and guided Tavo through the hallway. They did not speak. The house was quiet except for the hum of their father's car outside.
The lift groaned as it raised Tavo. Metal scraped. Their father muttered, "Wait, just wait." No one answered. The lift jerked, then finished its job. Tavo landed in the backseat. Fernanda folded the chair and put it in the trunk. She sat beside her brother.
Rain threatened. Tavo leaned his head against the window. The city blurred. The car vibrated. He closed his eyes.
At the campus, the lift failed again. A small crowd watched. The platform froze, whining. Their father sighed, reaching for the manual override. Some students laughed. One pointed. They hurried inside.
Tavo's face did not change. When he was on the ground, he took his backpack and set it on his lap. He pushed himself forward. The right wheel squeaked.
Fernanda watched from the car. Her hands twitched. She stayed in her seat. The car drove away, carrying her to the university. Tavo was left at the campus doors.
He did not enter.
He looked at his phone. A message glowed:
SKY: Be on the main avenue, two blocks away from your college campus at 7am. Barkhad will pick you up.
Tavo watched the last students slip inside. The doors would close soon. He sat still. The phone was heavy in his hand.
He thought of the classrooms. The looks. The routine. He thought of the avenue, of Barkhad, of the unknown.
His hands trembled on the wheels. He listened to the rain start. The bell rang. The campus guard closed the doors.
The world went on.
And for the first time, Tavo stayed behind on purpose.
Tavo stared at the ground. He didn't remember looking down. The first raindrop touched his cheek, then another, then many. He reached for his backpack, searching for his umbrella. His hand moved through empty space-no books, no lunch, only a paper bag and a folded note.
He unfolded the note, creased at the corners, his father's handwriting pressed deep into the page:
I know you'll go, my son. The world fears what it doesn't control. But I'd rather you walk toward fire than wither in silence.
Rain spotted the paper. The ink bled. Tavo's fingers trembled, not from cold.
He opened the paper bag. Inside was a thin, worn book: On the Shortness of Life by Seneca. Banned, dangerous, precious. His father had risked everything for these pages. The book's cover was soft from years of hands, its spine cracked. A bookmark stuck out. Tavo opened to it. One sentence, underlined in fading ink:
"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it."
He hunched over the book, shielding it from the rain. He read quickly, turning pages with wet fingers. The words blurred but did not vanish. He absorbed them as the water tried to claim the paper.
The last page. The last paragraph. The last word. He closed the book. The cover warped, the paper swelled, but the words endured. The vessel would not last, but the wisdom had already crossed centuries and now crossed into him.
He looked up. The college campus doors were shut. The avenue waited.
His decision was no longer a decision. It was a path, clear as the lightning that shatters earth and sky. He turned his wheelchair toward the main avenue.
The right wheel squeaked once more. The rain fell. The world resisted.
But he moved anyway.
The rain began as mist. Then it stung. Tavo blinked against the burning droplets, tasting iron on his lips. The wheelchair's right wheel caught a crack in the sidewalk-a fissure that hadn't been there moments before. Concrete teeth gnawed at rubber.
The caustic kiss of poisoned air-decades of smog condensed into amber droplets. His skin blistered where collars and sleeves didn't cover.
The flat street tilted upward. No visible slope, but his arms strained as if hauling stone. Wheels left grooves in asphalt gone soft as clay.
Cars accelerated past, inches from his knees. Drivers stared ahead, blind to his existence. A delivery van's mirror clipped his shoulder. No brake lights flared.
The wheelchair's left bolt sheared mid-rotation. The armrest dug into his ribs. A screw vibrated loose, buzzing like a trapped wasp.
Phantom pain lanced through legs long atrophied. His lungs burned-not from effort, but as if the air itself had turned to chalk.
Two blocks stretched into kilometers. Storefronts melted and re-formed-a cafeteria became a pharmacy then a blank wall. Clocks in windows spun backward.
His watch froze at 6:50 a.m. The second hand trembled, refusing to advance.
Tavo vomited bile, grip unyielding on the wheels. Blood slicked the rims. Each rotation cost him something primal, a tax levied by spacetime itself.
The street lights flickered in no pattern. Shadows pooled too deeply beneath fire escapes. A crow landed on a dumpster, its head rotating 180 degrees to track him. No malice-only observation.
Tavo's breath came in ragged hymns. He charted progress by the rhythm of his heart, not the unmoving watch. The avenue's sign loomed ahead, letters warping: MAIN AVE became MAEL AV became MAELSTROM.
Above the smog, stars wheeled in constellations older than human fear. Their light reached him now, photons emitted millennia ago, indifferent to his agony.
A manhole erupted steam, veiling him in sulfurous fog.
His right wheel locked. Metal screamed. Tavo fell forward, palms scraping asphalt.
He crawled.
Hand over bleeding hand, dragging the dead weight of chair and destiny.
Rain dissolved the bandages on his knees. The pollution etched his bones.
The sky cracked. Lightning sheared the world into before and after. A century-old oak ahead split with a sound like continents divorcing, its trunk erupting in blue-white fire. Branches fell across the pavement-charred arteries, dead pathways. The burning colossus collapsed, sealing the final meters to the avenue.
Tavo halted. He had no choice.
Beyond the flames stood an angelic being. Not arrived, but revealed, as if the universe had peeled back a layer to expose his eternal vigil. His beauty was geometric violence-shoulders sharp as event horizons, eyes refracting light into colors unnamed. He spoke without moving his lips:
"Futility has its own nobility. Relinquish this path, and find dignity in surrender."
His voice was the click of a lock accepting its key.
Tavo's palms met concrete. The wheelchair lay abandoned, its frame warping in the heat. He crawled.
Rain stung his neck-not water, but time's acid, eroding him second by second. The burning tree ahead pulsed like a dying star. Bark scraped his hands, searing flesh, yet the pain felt distant, borrowed. His heart beat in triple rhythm: defy-defy-defy. A muscle tore in his forearm. He did not stop.
The angel watched, motionless. Cars roared past, their drivers eyeless, their engines howling the same note-a cosmic dirge. The universe tightened around Tavo like a vise.
An engine growled-a sound extinct for eighty years. A 1977 Charger roared in the avenue, black as entropy, gold gleaming like star fire. It halted. A man emerged: Barkhad, shoulders broad as bridges, hands calloused from bending laws.
Seeing Tavo, he accelerated toward the burning tree. No hesitation. He stepped through flames as if they were merely suggestions. Kneeling beside Tavo, he scooped him up in a single motion.
"You bleed stardust," he said, voice gravel and grit. "Good."
The angel's form flickered-a glitch in reality's code. Barkhad met his gaze, unflinching.
"Ramiel. Still enforcing fate's fine print?"
"Barkhad. Still peddling false hope?"
No answer. Barkhad turned, Tavo cradled against the storm.
Over Barkhad's shoulder, Tavo watched Ramiel grow smaller. He raised his hand—not with the index finger extended, but the middle one. A human gesture, imperfect and ancient. A declaration.
Ramiel's perfect form shimmered with displeasure. Then he was gone, dissolved into the mathematics of absence. The tree's fire guttered, rain hissing on embers.
Barkhad laid Tavo in the Charger's womb. Leather sighed beneath him. The engine roared, a primal chord shaking the street.
"You made your choice," Barkhad said.
"No," Tavo breathed, blood pooling in his palm. "I refused the absence of choice."
This wasn't strength. It was refusal. And that was enough.
The car surged forward, leaving wheelchair, flames, and destiny's script in the ash.
The 1977 muscle car, a slab of gold glinting beneath the morning sun, barrels down the Teotihuacán Highway-a relic among the silent, glassy pods that scatter before its advance. Its body gleams in molten waves, chrome flashing, curves whispering vanished ages. The engine's roar is an animal's bellow, echoing off the ancient land, swallowing the thin whine of electrics. In its wake, dust unspools in golden ribbons, swirling and rising, as if the car drags the past behind it.
Barkhad commands the wheel, his wrestler's shoulders crowding the cabin, the faded dashiki stretched across his frame. The seat's old leather, cracked and warm, creaks beneath him; his hands-broad, scarred-move over the wheel with a gentleness reserved for old friends and lovers. He grins, teeth bright, and the car seems to shrink under him, a toy in the hands of a gentle giant.
Tavo clings to the window frame, knuckles white, hair whipped wild by the wind. The air rushes in, hot and dry, tasting of earth and ozone, carrying the scent of sunbaked stone. The wind slaps his cheeks raw, fills his mouth, steals his breath. The seat vibrates beneath him, the engine's pulse hammering through his bones-a rhythm that shakes loose something caged inside.
Barkhad's voice rumbles, deep and warm, threaded with music from another continent.
"Eh, petit frère, you feel her heartbeat? This car, she sings louder than any of those silent machines out there. She's my reine, my queen."
Tavo stares, wide-eyed, as the engine's growl drowns out the world. His fingers tighten on the window, feeling the tremor of power. He's never known motion like this-no smooth, antiseptic glide, just the raw, living violence of pistons and fire.
"It's… alive," he whispers. "Like it's breathing. My grandpa talked about cars like this, but… I thought it was just stories."
Barkhad laughs, thunder in the small space, the sound rolling through the car and out into the open.
"Stories? Non, non, this is truth! Back in Dakar, we raced these beasts by the Lac Rose, hearts pounding, salt in the air, sand flying. Your grandpa, he knew the real world. Not this… cage of quiet machines."
He shifts gears, the stick rough in his hand, and the car surges forward, overtaking a sleek transport that shrinks away, its sensors blinking in confusion. The electric pods scatter, silver minnows before a golden shark. Tavo leans out, wind stinging his eyes, the world blurring past. For the first time, he is unbound-not by chair, not by rules, not by fear.
"It's so loud!" he shouts, voice trembling with awe. "The shaking… it's like… I don't know. Like I'm flying, but I'm right here."
Barkhad nods, eyes fixed on the horizon, the pyramids of Teotihuacán rising like old gods in the distance.
"That's freedom, petit. Not the kind they sell you with batteries and rules. This-" he pats the cracked dash, "this is fire in your blood. You feel it, eh?"
Tavo nods, speechless, chest tight with something fierce and unfamiliar. Barkhad glances over, then slides a cassette into the ancient stereo. Van Halen erupts, forbidden and wild, the speakers crackling with life. The music is raw, electric, a current that runs through the car and into Tavo's heart.
"What is that?" Tavo breathes, leaning forward. "It's like the car's talking! They banned this? Why would they ban this?"
Barkhad smirks, tapping the wheel to the beat, his fingers dancing.
"They ban what they can't control, mon frère. Music like this? It makes you feel too much. Makes you want to break their rules. Back in my time, we danced to this under the stars. You ever dance, Gustavo?"
Tavo's smile falters, a shadow flickering in his eyes.
"Not really. My legs… they don't work like that. But this…" He gestures to the car, the music, the dust. "It's like I'm moving anyway."
Barkhad's grin softens, his voice gentle, almost reverent. He turns the volume up, letting the music fill every corner, every crack.
"You're moving now, petit. This car, this sound, it carries you. Teotihuacán's waiting, and whatever your grandpa told you about heroes? Today, you live it. Hold tight, eh? She's got more to show you."
Tavo leans back, the leather rough against his skin, the world rushing past in a blur of gold and dust. The music and the engine's growl merge, a pulse that fills him with something wild and wordless. The car charges on, a golden beast on the ancient road, carrying a boy into freedom, toward the pyramids-toward something older than silence, older than fear.
Far above, a drone blinked to life. Cold. Watching. Recording. Its lens caught the glint of gold and named it… anomaly.
He pats the dashboard, the car-his "queen"-roaring in answer, a sound not of this era but of something wild and unbroken. The speedometer needle quivers past 130 km/h, trembling with the promise of more. The highway unfurls before them, broad and sunlit, while Teotihuacán's pyramids rise on the horizon-golden fangs, ancient and impassive, bearing silent witness to every rebellion since the dawn of men. Dust swirls in their wake, gilded by the morning, as if the land itself remembers the thunder of old gods.
Suddenly, a siren slices through Van Halen's defiant wail-a note sharp and sterile, out of place in this symphony of combustion and courage. Red and blue lights flicker in the rearview, cold and clinical, chasing the golden beast. Two police pods, all glass and algorithms, weave through traffic with mechanical grace, their presence more threat than authority.
Tavo twists back, voice thin and cracking.
"Barkhad! Cops! The music-it's too loud, they're coming for us!"
Barkhad's grin widens, a flash of teeth and memory, eyes kindled with the reckless light of men who have outrun more than sirens.
"Cops? Pfft. These future toys can't touch my queen. Back in Dakar, we outran devils for breakfast. Hold tight, petit-this is where we dance!"
He cranks the volume, Van Halen's riffs turning feral, a war cry hurled at a world that has forgotten how to roar. His hand falls to the gearshift, muscles taut beneath worn fabric, and he floors the gas. The engine answers with a guttural snarl, surging to 150 km/h, the vibration a living thing under their skin. The police pods, bound by their own codes-safety, order, restraint-struggle to keep pace, their lights receding in the dust storm kicked up by the Trans Am's wide tires.
Inside the pods, officers watch the analog monster slip away, their faces lit by screens, eyes hollow with the knowledge that rules have made them spectators to their own pursuit. Their disappointment is silent, masked by tinted glass, but palpable-a longing for the days when men, not machines, chased legends.
Tavo clings to the window frame, knuckles white, terror and exultation warring in his veins.
"They're falling behind! How's this thing so fast? It's… it's older than my grandpa!"
Barkhad steers with a loose wrist, movements as fluid as water over stone, cool as the desert night.
"Old? Non, mon ami, she's timeless. Built for the fight, not the rules. These cops, they got no heart-just batteries and limits. Watch this, mon frère."
He swerves onto a narrow side road, tires shrieking, the car fishtailing like a wild horse before biting down on the blacktop. Dust billows, turning to gold in the sun. The police pods hesitate, their auto-drives balking at the unpredictable-a risk not worth calculating. Algorithms falter where instinct reigns.
Tavo whoops, wind tearing at his eyes, the music and engine merging into a single, wild pulse. For a moment, his wheelchair is a memory, a ghost left behind in the dust. This car, this moment, is a rite of passage-freedom not given, but seized.
His laughter starts small, then grows, fierce and raw.
"They can't catch us! It's like… like we're the heroes grandpa talked about! Like we're untouchable!"
Barkhad's eyes never leave the road, but a smile tugs at his mouth.
"That's it, petit. Heroes don't ask for permission. Back in my day, we raced for pride, for freedom. You feel it now, eh? This is what your grandpa meant when he spoke of glory."
Desperate, the police deploy a holographic barrier-a lattice of light meant to corral and contain. Barkhad only laughs, a sound deep as thunder, and pushes the car past 160 km/h. The Trans Am barrels through the hologram, shattering illusion with reality, the analog heart immune to digital chains.
Tavo's eyes widen, awe and disbelief mingling.
"Did we just… break their tech? With a car?"
Barkhad winks, tapping his temple.
"Tech's just noise, Gustavo. This car's got soul. They'll give up soon-look, they're already choking on our dust."
Above, media drones swarm, lenses whirring, broadcasting this anachronistic rebellion to a world starved for wonder. In newsrooms, anchors and analysts stare, bewildered, at the spectacle-a golden relic outpacing the future, a boy and a giant writing legend in tire marks and music.
Tavo points skyward, voice trembling with realization.
"Barkhad, look! Drones! They're filming us! We're on the news now!"
Barkhad's laugh is triumphant, his eyes reflecting the pyramids looming ever larger-eternal sentinels to human defiance.
"Good! Let them watch! Let them remember what freedom tastes like! Today, petit, we're not just news-we're legends!"
The car roars on, outpacing the pods, the drones, the world itself, racing toward Teotihuacán-a place where men once became gods, and where, for a heartbeat, a boy in a golden chariot lives his own myth, heart pounding in time with the music, the engine, and the laughter of the unbroken.
Tavo's fingers tremble as he draws the phone from his pocket-a fragile, futuristic artifact in the cockpit of a golden beast. The holo-screen blooms, awash in a torrent of feeds: "MYTHICAL CAR OUTRUNS POLICE!" "PONTIAC TRANS AM: TIME TRAVEL OR HOAX?" The digital tide surges, a million voices rising in a chorus of longing and awe: "This is what cars USED to be!" "Smash those pods!" "FREEDOM ON WHEELS!" For a heartbeat, the world remembers what it means to hunger for the untamed, to ache for the wild pulse of rebellion.
Barkhad's laughter rolls out, deep and thunderous-an anthem echoing across the ages, shaking dust from the bones of forgotten heroes.
"Ha! My reine, she's no museum piece-she's the sovereign of this road! Dakar taught me: you don't cage a creature born to run. You don't tame what was forged in fire."
The Trans Am devours the highway, its speedometer quivering past 160 km/h, sunlight blazing from its body like the tail of a comet. Dust rises in its wake-earth, not the sanitized particles of the future, but the ancient ground itself, stirred to life by the car's passing. Behind, the police pods falter, their lights shrinking to distant, impotent stars, their algorithms and protocols powerless before the raw, analog fury of rebellion. Sirens wail, a futile dirge, as more pods join the chase, their formations precise but spiritless, flanked by drones that stream every moment to a world spellbound by the spectacle of defiance.
Inside their pods, the officers watch the chase unfold on their own screens, faces pale behind glass and data overlays. They are not participants but witnesses, their disappointment a silent ache-realizing, perhaps for the first time, that their world has traded courage for compliance, spirit for circuitry. Their hands hover above controls, but the moment for heroism has passed; they are outpaced by something they cannot quantify, cannot command.
Tavo's grin is a sunrise, fierce and uncontainable. His wheelchair is not just absent-it is irrelevant, a relic of limitation cast aside in the slipstream of this mythic flight. This is freedom reclaimed, not as a privilege but as a cosmic birthright-wild and absolute as the engine's roar.
He laughs, breathless, words tumbling out like sparks.
"Grandpa said cars like this were legends, but this... it's like we're living in one of his forbidden films! They can't stop us, can they?"
Barkhad shifts gears, the motion as old as the first stories told around fire.
"Stop us? Non, petit. These cops, they drive toys-machines that think for them. Back in the 80s, we raced for blood and glory. This Trans Am? She's not transportation-she's a hunter with a metal heart. Watch her roar."
Ahead, the highway constricts, and the authorities marshal their last hope: six electric pods, sleek and luminous, form a barricade-a wall of logic and fear. Drones swoop in, hungry for spectacle, their feeds streaming to millions. The officers inside expect surrender, blind to the truth that what approaches is not a car but a philosophy on wheels, a legend that refuses extinction.
Tavo's voice quivers, tension and awe braided together.
"Barkhad, they're blocking the road! What do we do?"
Barkhad's eyes blaze, his grin a challenge hurled at the universe.
"Do? We show them what real power is, what it means to be truly alive. Hold tight, mon frère-this is for your grandpa's stories, for the heroes we believed in!"
He slams the accelerator, the Trans Am surging forward-engine howling, Van Halen's riffs peaking in perfect, riotous harmony. The car becomes more than machine: it's a meteor, a dragon, a cosmic force unleashed. The pods hesitate, their AI shrieking warnings-algorithms faltering in the face of human will, that unquantifiable spark that has toppled empires and written revolutions in blood and hope.
The impact is apocalyptic. The Trans Am tears through the barricade, pods crumpling and spinning, sparks showering the asphalt like a meteor storm. Drones capture every instant: the golden beast emerging unscathed, the pods scattered like broken icons, the officers inside left blinking in the aftermath-humbled, their faith in order and progress shaken to its core.
Online, the world erupts: "HOLY HELL, IT ATE THEM!" "TRANS AM SUPREMACY!" "THIS IS WHAT FREEDOM REALLY LOOKS LIKE!" A generation raised in captivity glimpses, through glass and code, the wildness they never knew they needed.
In a modest Mexico City apartment stitched together by love and hardship, a folded wheelchair stands sentinel beside humming medical monitors. The holo-screen dominates the wall, its cold glow cutting through the faded paint like a beacon of impossible hope.
Tavo's mother, Mariana, stands frozen, hands twisting a rosary with trembling fingers, eyes locked in fierce prayer on the live feed. Her face is etched with worry, a map of sleepless nights and whispered fears. Nearby, Manuel, his father, weathered yet unyielding, leans forward on the sagging couch, eyes alight with a dreamer's fire, breath caught between hope and dread.
The screen blares the chaos: a golden Pontiac Trans Am, a blazing comet of rebellion, smashing through a barricade of electric pods, sparks erupting like a meteor storm against the night. And in the silence of a cramped living room, the universe and his family held their breath. For there, unmistakable, their son-frail yet fierce-grinning wildly in the passenger seat, a smile untamed and radiant, brighter than any dawn they have ever known.
Mariana's voice breaks, rosary beads clicking like a heartbeat.
"My God, that's Gustavo! My baby-in that machine! They'll kill him, Manuel! His body can't bear this!"
She steps closer, trembling, as the feed zooms in on Tavo's face-hair whipped by the wind, eyes blazing with life, laughter spilling free as the Trans Am roars like a golden beast unleashed. The caption screams: "MYTHICAL CAR DEFIES POLICE!"
Tears spill down Mariana's cheeks, her hand flying to her mouth.
Manuel exhales a soft, reverent whisper.
"Mariana, look at him. That smile… have we ever seen him like that? Not once, in all his years."
The screen flashes-pods crumple, the Trans Am unscathed.
Manuel's eyes trace his son's joy, a warmth blooming in his chest, a fire long dormant now ablaze.
Mariana sobs, turning to him.
"He's happy, yes-but at what cost? They warned us the procedure could take him from us! And now this? Chased by police, in that relic? What if he doesn't make it?"
Manuel rises, steady hands finding her shoulders, grounding her trembling form. The holo-screen shows drones circling the Trans Am, the internet erupting: "TRANS AM LEGEND!" "THAT KID'S LIVING THE DREAM!"
His voice firm, eyes shining with unshakable faith.
"He's not just surviving, Mariana. He's living. My father told me of heroes who faced the impossible, who burned like stars in the night sky. That's our Gustavo-choosing his fight, blazing his path."
Mariana buries her face in his chest, sobs muffled, the rosary slipping from her fingers. The screen shows Tavo leaning into the wind, his smile a beacon, the pyramids of Teotihuacán rising majestically in the distance-a cosmic stage for a boy unleashed.
Manuel strokes her hair, voice soft but resolute.
"He's free, my love. Our boy's free. Whatever comes, he carries that fire now-just like my father said. Let him run."
The holo-screen flickers, the feed cutting to a close-up of Tavo's radiant, untamed grin-a boy transformed, riding a golden chariot into legend. Mariana lifts her head, tears streaking her face, and for one sacred second, the fear loosens its grip. Her boy is not safe—but he is alive. And for the first time in forever, that is enough.
Tavo whoops, a sound torn from the marrow of his being, his fist punching the air. The car's rumble is the heartbeat of a forgotten epoch, the music now his own pulse. The drones, tireless and awestruck, stream this resurrection of chaos, this golden phoenix blazing across the sky of a tamed age.
"YES! We broke them! We BROKE them! This car... it's unstoppable! Like... like a dragon or something!"
Barkhad's chuckle is rich, satisfied, as he strokes the dashboard.
"Dragon? Oui, petit, that's my reine! No tech can tame her, no algorithm can predict her heart. Those cops, they'll cry to their computers tonight, wonder what went wrong in their perfect simulations."
The police pods recede, their pursuit broken, their certainty shattered. The drones linger, chronicling the legend for a world that has forgotten how to raise its voice in rebellion. The Trans Am glides forward, regal and untamed, a comet on the highway, the pyramids of Teotihuacán swelling on the horizon-ancient stones nodding in silent recognition to this new myth written in speed and sunlight.
Tavo's voice is soft now, reverent, as he gazes at the growing monuments.
"I've never felt... this. Like I'm part of something bigger than me, bigger than all of us. Grandpa's heroes-they were like this, weren't they? Free. Wild. Unstoppable."
Barkhad nods, his words warm as sunlight on stone.
"Exactement, petit frère. That's the fire in you now, not given but claimed, inherited from the glory your grandpa used to share in whispers. This car, this music, this road-they're all saying the same thing: you're alive, truly alive. Teotihuacán's waiting for his grandson, the procedure is waiting for you, and whatever you find beyond those ancient stones, you carry this fire with you now, eh? It's yours to keep."
The Trans Am thunders onward, Van Halen still screaming defiance, the drones trailing like celestial witnesses. The pyramids loom, eternal and inscrutable, a destination that is less a place than a cosmic destiny. Tavo leans into the wind, his heart blazing-a wild, galactic fire that no future can extinguish. The car roars approval, apex predator of a tamed world, bearing its human cargo toward stones that remember when men dared to challenge the gods-and sometimes, for a moment, became them.