The Drive

“I need a driver! I need a driver now!” 190 pounds of sheer engineered brilliance stepped into the ring between the symphonic bells sounding off, signaling the final round between Upsiders and the Undermen, nearly drowned out by the roaring of the crowds circling the 8 by 8 foot ring. Axel, the heavyweight champion of the Undermen, screamed his order again into the tiny ear piece mounted on the team’s operators ear. “I’m getting you one. Hold on. F#cking bollocks.” Thin fingers banged the keys of the old, beat up keyboard, shaking as the server connected… “Who should we pair you with…” Axel waved at the crowd, down by two, he had to take the final Upsider in less than three minutes to earn the winning points that would finally beg the respect and acknowledgement his team had been striving for for the past five years. ” I don’t care, as long as he’s good.” The ladies in the front row jeered as he pulled his thick, greasy strands of hair back into a tight tail at the base of his skull. “He?” With no time to argue, the upload arrested Axels spine, neural data mount arching, heat nearly blowing his receptors making his nose gush blood. The crowd gasped as his neural skeleton lit up with electromagnetic energy from head to toe under the dimly lit match lights. Unlike the multiple hundreds of thousands of times he’d uploaded a driver to his cortex, this time he felt freedom, as though a door into a space of his own mind had been unlocked and he was suddenly able to see the world for the reality it was. Fully defined, it’s colors enriched, everything was crystal clear. His neural pathways were open and hyper extended. “Who is this?” Axel breathed. There was no answer, only the swift arrest of his upper body as his arms crossed each other involuntarily as the driver took over. Axel bowed to his opponent, steam rose from his flexed body, his heavy breaths visible in the cold night air of the underground ring. A titan stood opposite the square, almost a full foot taller in height, the man was a beast, pulsating with adept muscular prowess, his arms crossed and he reciprocated the bow. A heavy clang of an electronic cymbal ignited the fight. Axel felt his conscious release all control of his body, like a hand pulling on a glove, he felt himself forfeit to someone else. The driver crouched low to the floor of the ring, watching; as the beast rose and aimed to pounce. Axel felt his wrist and arm flex, pulling back to the moment the Upsider’s sternum was directly above head. With the speed and power of a hydraulic machine Axel’s hand impaled his opponent, gripping the lowest curve of it’s rib cage and fracturing the bone, splitting open the man’s stomach, releasing his caged bowels. The titan fell as the clock buzzed and stopped for the final points on only 1:35 seconds. A quick electric flicker accompanied by static, the light hum into his cortex ceased, and Axel pushed the corpse from its resting place across his torso. “That was a girl?” Axel whispered into his head piece, dripping with blood and end trails. The operator laughed into his ear.