Stepping out of the steaming shower, Jayden dried off and threw on a simple pair of jeans and a fitted t-shirt, then he left his room.
He went downstairs to the kitchen for a second breakfast… one that would serve as fuel for the long journey ahead. The distance between Jade City and Autumn City was close to a thousand kiloters. Running that kind of distance would definitely take a toll on his stamina.
He ate everything in the refrigerator that could be reasonably consud in four minutes, drank another cup of coffee, and left the house.
The street outside was mid-morning quiet, most people already at their place of work. Jayden walked two blocks before turning into an alley that ran between a storage facility and the back of a convenience store. There, he summoned his tactical suit from his inventory. The dark fabric materialized seamlessly over his casual clothes.
Then he dropped into a runner's stance, rolled his neck once, set his feet… and pushed off, heading straight for Jade City.
Whoosh!
Jayden beca a blur. He went from standing to 500 km/hr in just two seconds. He bolted out of the alley and hit the open road, the ground trembling under his every step.
He continued to accelerate, increasing his pace rapidly without holding back. And after five seconds, he reached his top speed and tore through the sound barrier with a thunderous crack,
As he ran, the city dissolved behind him, the slow-motion clarity of his enhanced perception holding everything in crystalline detail while the world moved at a fraction of the pace he was moving through it.
The road ahead was a single vanishing point, the surrounding landscape a sar of colour so compressed it had lost any individual quality and beco a single sustained tone on either side of him.
The 80-kiloter distance to Jade City lted away under his feet. And exactly four minutes after leaving the alley in Erald City, Jayden arrived at the outskirts of Jade City, the towering, industrial skyline of the city looming ahead.
Just before he reached the city's central district… where the train station was situated, he unequipped the tactical suit, letting his imnse agility effortlessly bleed off the kinetic energy from the dash. He slid to a halt in his casual clothes, looking like just another civilian, and blended perfectly into the massive crowd gathered at the Jade City Grand Railway.
It was almost noon. The station's waiting platform was packed with onlookers, reporters, and wealthy elites watching the passengers board the sleek, chro-and-sapphire marvel that was the Aero-Apex supertrain.
The train was longer than it looked on tv… with twelve carriages, each one flowing into the next with the seamless continuity of sothing grown rather than assembled, the joins between them invisible at this distance. The chromatic blue surface moved in the daylight the way certain minerals moved… the colour not fixed but dependent on angle, shifting between the deep navy of open water and the hard electric blue of sothing charged.
The nose was the part that genuinely stunned Jayden.
It was not the rounded, compromised nose of sothing designed to look aerodynamic. It was the geotry of sothing that had been built by people who started with physics and worked backward to appearance… the taper was so severe it ca to almost a point, the profile so aggressively sculpted that it looked like it was already moving at speed even standing still.
Jayden navigated through the sea of people, finding a high vantage point on a pedestrian overpass that offered a clear view of the tracks leading out of the city.
Once the final passenger boarded the train, its seamless airtight doors hissed shut. Down on a makeshift ceremonial platform near the waiting section, a chubby man in a tailored suit, flanked by heavily ard guards, stepped up to a microphone. He was the city leader of Jade.
"Forty years ago," he began, his voice carrying the quality of soone who had given many speeches. "a proposal was submitted to the Transit Authority. We wanted a train that could run at the speed of sound." He paused. "It was rejected. Twice."
"But today—" He gestured the aero-apex. "Today, the proposal is on the track." He turned back. "The ridian Transit Authority, in partnership with the engineering teams of Jade City, Autumn City, and six other municipalities across the three continents, has built sothing that our predecessors were told was impossible." He let the silence sit for a mont. "They were wrong. We proved them wrong!"
The crowd cheered in excitent and anticipation.
"The Aero-Apex represents not simply an advancent in transportation. It represents the understanding that distance is a solvable problem. That the space between cities, between families, between opportunities, between people, is not fixed." He looked back at the train one more ti. "It is a question. And today we answer it. Today, we launch a new era!"
The crowd erupted into cheers. The leader bead, drawing a ceremonial, antique revolver from his coat. He pointed it toward the sky, then fired.
Bang!
Almost instantly, the train's engines humd to life with a deep, bone-rattling vibration. It began to glide forward, accelerating slowly at first, then rapidly gaining montum as it cleared the station limits.
The leader watched it go, smiling proudly. "Godspeed.." he whispered.
Suddenly, a violent, localized hurricane ripped through the station.
The blast of displaced air caused the crowd to yelp, won holding down their hats and guards staggering backward as a shockwave rattled the glass of the station. They hadn't even seen what passed them. It was nothing but a violent blur of displaced dust.
It was Jayden.
The second the train had cleared the station, he had re-equipped his tactical suit and bolted.
By the ti he caught up to the train's slipstream, the machine was already pushing 650 km/h. Jayden locked onto its rear, matching the pace effortlessly. He stayed just a few ters behind the glowing thrusters. Within seconds, the train's engines roared, rapidly increasing its velocity.
700. 800. 900. 1000. 1100.
Finally, the train hit Mach 1. It beca a chro blur on the elevated railway. Just as the broadcast had promised, the train didn't catch fire; its advanced aerodynamic shielding parted the air with absolute zero friction.
Jayden watched the thrusters stabilize and knew it had reached its top cruising speed. A wild grin spread across his face. He increased his own stride, accelerating gradually until he matched the sonic speed. They were even.
Wanting a better angle, Jayden leaped from the railway gravel onto the paved service road running parallel to the tracks.
The real race had begun.
He pumped his arms, his legs moving in a frantic, rhythmic blur, pushing himself forward until he was running alongside the middle cars of the supertrain.
He glanced to his left. Inside one of the luxury cabins, a young boy with his face pressed against the reinforced glass spotted him. The kid's eyes widened to the size of saucers in pure, unadulterated fascination. He yanked on his mother's sleeve, pointing outside. The mother leaned over, and her jaw dropped in absolute, stunned awe at the sight of a human matching pace with their state-of-the-art machine.
Jayden pushed harder. He accelerated past the passenger cars, catching up with the sleek, bullet-shaped nose of the train.
Up ahead, the track plunged straight into the base of a massive mountain. A tunnel. The service road Jayden was running on abruptly ended at the rock face ahead.
Jayden didn't panic. He didn't even slow down.
He increased his stride, and right as he reached the sheer wall of the mountain, he leaped. He bounded across the gap, planting his left foot heavily onto the curved roof of the speeding train. Using the montum of his speed, he vaulted off the tal casing, launching himself dozens of feet into the air and landing squarely on the steep surface of the mountain itself. He scrambled up the incline without breaking stride, running directly over the top of the tunnel.
Beneath his feet, the train roared through the dark rock. Jayden activated his Dragon Eyes, shifting his vision to the thermal spectrum.
The solid rock of the mountain beca translucent, revealing the massive, glowing heat signature of the train hurtling through the earth directly below him. Its nose was perfectly aligned with his feet. They were still tied.
Jayden smirked. He dug his boots into the soil, pushing his muscles to the absolute breaking point. He sprinted across the mountain peak, and as the edge of the tunnel's exit rapidly approached, he leaped.
Using his imnse kinetic energy, he turned the leap into a super-jump.
He soared high into the sky, suspended for a breathtaking mont, before crashing down onto the service road several hundred ters ahead of the tunnel exit.
A second later, the train burst out of the tunnel behind him. Jayden was now squarely in the lead.
[Stamina: 120/337]
His stamina bar was burning low, the strain of maintaining the speed tearing at his muscles, but he refused to drop his velocity.
Inside the cockpit, one of the train's conductors spotted the dark figure running ahead of them. The man's eyes bulged. He grabbed his co-pilot, pointing frantically through the reinforced windshield. Both n froze in their seats, utterly bewildered. Was this guy insane? Or was he on drugs?
Jayden felt their eyes on him and smirked. He gritted his teeth and pushed past his limit. With a final, explosive burst of wind, he began to put distance between himself and the technological marvel. ter by ter, he pulled away until a solid 200-ter gap separated them.
He was now fully ahead.
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