Kyle Rasco's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Kyle knew he could ride the shifting gravity now. But he had never watched Dax Merrow ride. If he wanted to beat the favorite, he had to learn how the man moved. So he found a public feed of last year's championship and set it playing on a screen in his cabin. He watched every run twice. Dax Merrow rode clean. He carved the rings like he owned the gravity. Kyle leaned close, boots up, board across his lap, hunting for one mistake. He found nothing. The man never fought a shift. He caught each one early and used it. At his feet, the fluffy black-and-tan dog lay in her harness, ears up. Kyle scratched her chest and kept watching. Hours passed. His eyes burned. He almost quit. Then his son crawled across the floor and stopped in front of the screen. Jake pointed a small finger at Dax mid-turn. "He always looks left first," Jake said. "Before every big shift." Kyle sat up. "What?" "Watch his head." Jake didn't repeat himself. He watched the screen, calm, sure. Kyle rewound the run. He kept his eyes on Dax's head, not his feet. And there it was. Before every hard gravity swing, Dax glanced left. A tiny turn. A tell. The man wasn't only feeling the shifts. He was reading a light on the far rail that flickered a half-second before each change. Kyle's heart pounded. Dax leaned on that light. He trusted his eyes for the warning, then his body for the ride. That was the weakness. In the real championship, the shifts came without warning lights. No far rail. No flicker to catch. "You found it," Kyle said. He pulled Jake into his lap. The boy looked at him with light green eyes, the same as his own. "He needs the light," Jake said. "You don't." Kyle laughed, loud in the quiet cabin. It was true. All those weeks Alysse made him ride blind, eyes shut, trusting his gut, he had hated it. Now it was his edge. Dax would hunt for a warning that wasn't there. Kyle would already be leaning into the pull. He carried Jake to the window. The moon's night stretched out below the glass. He held his son and stared at the dark, planning. But a cold thought settled in. If a child could spot that tell on a public feed, Dax's own coaches had spotted it years ago. They would train it out of him before the championship, or hide it. Worse, they might study Kyle's feeds the same way. Kyle had a weakness too, and he didn't yet know what it was. Kyle set Jake down and pulled up his own qualifying run on the screen. "Now I have to find mine," he said, "before he does." He hit play and started watching himself.