Out upon the winding roads, Felzein’s Range Rover Sport thundered across the asphalt, a dark blur against the afternoon haze.
The route from Koba to Porbo, where Cherlyn’s parents made their home would, under ordinary circumstances, demand the better part of two hours.
But ordinary was never quite in Felzein’s vocabulary, especially when provoked.
Cherlyn’s remark had not fallen on deaf ears.
Rather, it had struck a chord, a quiet gauntlet thrown, and Felzein, ever the tempest behind the wheel, accepted it with a gleam in his eye and a tightening of his grip on the steering wheel.
He was no stranger to speed. He wore it like a second skin.
And now, as he slipped into that rare and reckless state he called 'In Overdrive', the car became an extension of his will.
The engine snarled as they broke the hundred mark, a low growl echoing through the chassis, wheels eating up the road like hounds set loose on a scent.
Time itself seemed to buckle under the weight of the velocity, the world outside reduced to streaks of colour and wind-tossed silence.
“Wow… Still addicted to speed, are you?” said Cherlyn, clutching at her seatbelt, half-laughing, half-bracing.
Felzein’s lips curled into a slow, knowing grin, “I’ve got far more in me than this.”
“Then show me,” she challenged, a spark of playful defiance lighting up her eyes.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he murmured, and with a swift press of his foot.
VROOMMM!
The Range Rover roared to life with renewed fury, tearing through the air like some great beast unshackled.
Felzein’s hands danced across the wheel with unnerving grace, slicing between cars as though the world had slowed to accommodate him.
Each movement was calculated madness, effortless, reckless, precise.
The vehicle surged forward, overtaking with an audacity that made heads turn.
He skimmed past lumbering trucks and swerving sedans, weaving through gaps that defied reason, his foot never so much as grazing the brake.
Tyres screamed against the tarmac, their cries drowned by a crescendo of horns and gasps from drivers whose morning commute had turned into a theatre of chaos.
Behind the wheel, Felzein was no longer a man. He was instinct incarnate.
The road stretched before him not as a path, but a canvas, and he painted in velocity.
Cherlyn had fallen silent, eyes wide, breath shallow, caught somewhere between fright and fascination.
There was danger in his driving, yes, but also something strangely beautiful.
The way the machine responded to him, as though it were an extension of his pulse.
“Not bad,” she said eventually, her tone deliberately flippant an invitation for escalation.
“Oh?” he shot her a sidelong glance. “Still unimpressed, are we?”
VROOMMM! VROOMMM!
With a grin bordering on feral, Felzein slammed into a higher gear.
The speedometer surged past 140 km/h, and the engine let loose a growl that vibrated through steel and bone alike.
Vehicles blurred past like phantoms as he threaded the Range Rover between them with eerie ease.
One hand on the wheel, the other deftly flicking into sport-plus mode, he eyed a deadly curve ahead, then took it without hesitation.
The SUV swerved, tyres screaming, smoke curling from the asphalt as the rear end slid in protest.
For a moment, the world tipped sideways.
Then, as if answering only to him, the beast righted itself. Graceful, unrepentant, alive.
A driver in a silver SUV up ahead very nearly veered off course, panic overtaking reason, while from the opposite lane.
A woman behind the wheel of a modest city car let out a sharp scream and instinctively covered her eyes.
Her knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, as Felzein’s vehicle blazed past scarcely a hand’s breadth from her wing mirror.
Cherlyn was silent now. Her body had tensed without instruction, muscles taut as drawn wire, both hands gripping her seatbelt as if it were a lifeline.
Her breathing came shallow, caught somewhere between awe and apprehension.
In the midst of adrenaline and disbelief, her eyes betrayed it, a glint of admiration, quietly blooming beneath the chaos.
Felzein, by contrast, merely laughed. A soft, amused chuckle, the kind that suggested the game had only just begun.
“Well?” he said, glancing sidelong at her with boyish defiance.
Cherlyn gave no reply, her gaze fixed instead on the mirror, watching the flashing lights of authority draw closer, like hounds picking up the scent.
Behind them, the road had erupted into sirens. The police were in pursuit.
“If you can shake them,” she said coolly, pointing behind with an effortless flick of her thumb. “I might just start believing all those tall tales you used to spin.”
Felzein cast a glance at the mirror, registering the cluster of patrol cars gaining with every second.
He turned his head, one brow raised in bemused detachment.
“Them?” he asked, voice tinged with mockery.
“Yes,” Cherlyn replied, crisp and humourless.
He exhaled through his nose, smiling the faint, lopsided smile of a man who had made peace with mischief long ago.
“The FBI once chased me across three states,” he said as though recalling a particularly lively dinner party.
“And they had satellites, but these lads?” he gestured casually at the mirror. “They're not even close.”
Her expression sharpened, eyes sparking with old defiance, “Then prove it,” she said softly. “Show me you’ve still got it.”
Felzein rolled his neck once, hands tightening on the wheel, “As you wish,” he murmured, and the engine obeyed before the words had finished leaving his lips.
The Range Rover growled, a guttural, mechanical snarl, and leapt forward once more.
“Vehicle registration VR 4 DZ!” barked a distorted voice through the crackling loudspeaker. “Repeat! Range Rover VR 4 DZ! Reduce speed immediately and pull over!”
But Felzein was no longer listening. His eyes were fixed ahead, where the road curved like a dare, and the world began to blur around the edges.
Felzein and Cherlyn exchanged a glance. Brief, electric, and filled with a mischief too reckless to name.
With the nonchalance of a woman thumbing her nose at consequence, Cherlyn lowered the window, leaned slightly out, and raised her middle finger in a crisp, deliberate gesture towards the flashing blue lights behind them.
Her expression was one of gleeful defiance, lips curled in a grin that dared the world to try her.
She wasn’t bluffing. She was provoking.
Felzein threw her a sideways glare, “Are you completely mad?!”
Cherlyn only laughed rich, unapologetic, free, “Probably. But isn’t that why you like me?”
Felzein muttered something inaudible under his breath, half-frustrated, half-amused, and then, without warning, slammed his foot onto the accelerator.
The response was immediate.
VRRRROOOOMMM!!!
The Range Rover snarled to life like a caged beast let loose, launching forward with a savage grace that tore through the tarmac.
Vehicles ahead scattered, drivers veering aside instinctively as the growl of the engine announced their presence like a war cry.
Streetlights blurred into streaks of gold, a kaleidoscope of speed flashing past the windows.
The cityscape twisted and warped at their velocity, the world behind reduced to sirens and fury.
The patrol cars pursued with earnest desperation, their engines straining to keep up, tyres screeching, sirens howling into the night like wolves in failing chase.
“Increase speed! Do not lose them!” barked a police officer into the radio, gripping the handle above the dashboard as though it might offer some measure of control.
The driver shot him a look, exasperated, “We’re in a bloody standard-issue hatchback, and they’re flying a damned rocket on wheels!”
“I said don’t lose them!” came the retort, voice tight, panicked now.
“Then maybe try praying,” the driver growled, as he swerved into the slipstream, chasing ghosts on a road where speed had become religion.
The pursuit had reached its crescendo.
Felzein steered the Range Rover Sport with an elegance that bordered on the surreal, threading his way through traffic as though the very laws of physics bent to his will.
He slipped between vehicles with a grace both reckless and refined, darting into narrow thoroughfares, overtaking from either flank at speeds that would make seasoned drivers blanche.
Rubber shrieked against asphalt as he swung into a brutal curve, scarcely touching the brake.
Behind him, the banshee wail of police sirens tore through the air, but rather than drawing nearer, they seemed to fade, swallowed by his widening lead.
“He’s taken the left turn! Go, go, go!” bellowed one officer from the passenger seat of the lead patrol car.
His partner, knuckles white on the wheel, swore beneath his breath, “You joking? We nearly mounted a bloody lamp-post back there. This lad’s certifiable.”
Felzein allowed himself a low laugh quiet, almost tender, “Come now, darling,” he whispered to the car, shifting into manual sport mode. “Let’s give them something to remember.”
Beside him, Cherlyn clung to the dashboard, breathless with a strange exhilaration, “You’re insane,” she gasped between bursts of laughter. “Utterly, magnificently insane. But God help me! I’m enjoying this.”
Felzein’s smile was all teeth and mischief, “They haven’t the faintest idea who they’re chasing.”
He feathered the throttle and veered onto an elevated bypass, an old flyover long forgotten by modern navigation.
It was barely wide enough for one vehicle, the weathered concrete gleaming slick under the streetlamps.
The tyres kissed the edge of the barrier. The SUV never faltered.
Behind them, the first patrol car skidded to a halt.
“He’s taken the old flyover! Damn, it’s lethal! One wrong twitch of the wheel and he’s airborne!” came the shout from the passenger seat.
“Didn’t even slow down,” muttered the driver, blanching. “That curve could launch you off the city.”
Felzein, unfazed, inhaled deeply, his hands steady.
A flick of the wrist, a calculated downshift, and then, with the precision of a marksman, he rejoined the main road.
Straight into the knife-edge gap between two oncoming lorries.
Cherlyn shut her eyes, a scream caught somewhere between fear and exhilaration.
“OH MY GOD!”
Felzein only laughed, his voice low and calm, “Darling, this is merely foreplay.”
Behind them, a police car attempted the same feat less deftly.
With a sickening crunch, it clipped the rear end of a lorry. Sirens sputtered into silence.
Steam hissed from the bonnet like a defeated sigh.
“…Captain, we’ve… lost control,” came the sheepish voice over the radio.
“Call it off. Pull them back,” ordered a weary senior voice. “We’re not trained to chase bloody phantoms.”
At last, Felzein eased off the accelerator. The chase, for now, had ended.
He turned to Cherlyn, his expression somewhere between pride and playfulness.
“Well then. Still think I’m easily dismissed?”
Cherlyn, cheeks flushed, heart still pounding, gave a breathless laugh. She shook her head slowly.
“You’re mad,” she said. “But it’s the sort of madness that might just make you legend.”
Meanwhile, within the confines of a weary police cruiser, the crackle of static was broken by a breath heavy with resignation.
“Commander, we’ve lost visual. The suspect's vehicle is far too swift,” came the voice, drained and defeated, over the radio.
“Continue the pursuit! We don’t stop until we have them!” came the bristling reply from headquarters, a tone of duty clashing with desperation.
A different voice, this one tinged with dry defiance, responded, “As you wish, sir. But should I end up tomorrow’s headline buried nose-first in a drainage ditch, I’ll be holding someone accountable!”
Back on the open road, Felzein cast a nonchalant glance into the rear-view mirror, one brow lifting with quiet amusement.
The flashing lights had long since melted into the shadows behind them.
“They’re no longer in sight,” Cherlyn remarked, a grin tugging at her lips, the thrill of victory dancing in her eyes.
Felzein gave a single, knowing nod, “Today’s lesson! Never challenge a man who’s spent more time with the wheel than with sleep. He won’t drive! He’ll waltz!”