The neon skyline of New Camlann burned like a false dawn, bathing the rain-slicked streets in a sickly glow.
Below the towering megacorp spires, where drones patrolled and holograms sold illusions of a better life, the real city festered. Down in the alleys, in the underground racing circuits, in the smog-choked districts where the law turned a blind eye—that was where the real kings ruled.
Arthur used to be one of them.
Now he was just another ghost.
He leaned against a rusted scaffold, hood pulled low, eyes tracking the vehicles screaming past on the elevated track above. Street racers, gang enforcers, courier bikes—all of them moving too fast to see the city swallowing them whole. Once, he'd been in those races. Once, he'd led a crew that ruled these streets.
Before Mordred betrayed him. Before Excalibur was taken.
His fingers curled into fists, the memory still raw. The Vortigern Syndicate, the gang Mordred now controlled, had taken everything. His ride, his crew, his reputation. He should’ve been dead—was meant to be dead—but somehow, against the odds, he’d survived.
And now, the city was about to learn the mistake of leaving him breathing.
A flickering neon reflection shifted in the puddle by his feet. Arthur didn’t react—not at first. He just listened, waited, let the footsteps draw closer. They were light, deliberate. No cop walked like that. No enforcer, either.
“Arthur Pendragon,” a voice murmured behind him. Smooth, knowing. Like a magician with a trick up his sleeve.
Arthur exhaled slowly. “If you’re here to collect a bounty, you’re about to be disappointed.”
A chuckle. “Bounty’s not worth my time. You, though? You might be.”
Arthur turned. The man standing before him looked out of place in the slums—a coat of shimmering holo-thread, fingers twitching like they were always typing on an invisible keyboard. His eyes flickered with faint lines of scrolling code. Merlin. Hacker, info-broker, lunatic. Some said he could crack any system in the city. Others said he could see the future.
Arthur didn’t believe in prophecies. But he did believed in leverage.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Merlin grinned, pulling a small data chip from his sleeve. He twirled it between his fingers, then tossed it to Arthur.
“I know where they’re keeping Excalibur.”
Arthur caught it without hesitation. His heart didn’t race, his breath didn’t quicken—he was past excitement. Past hope. All that was left was purpose.
"Where?" he asked.
Merlin’s grin widened. “Not so fast, King. You’re gonna need a crew first.”
Arthur glanced up at the elevated track again, the roar of engines splitting the night. A slow, cold smile crept across his lips.
Then let's go find them."
The Iron Kings. That was the name Arthur had chosen. No myths, no prophecies, just power—forged in metal, speed, and blood. If he was going to take back Excalibur and carve his name back into this city, he needed people just as desperate, just as reckless, as he was.
And Merlin, the slippery bastard, already had a list.
They started in the Red Market, the underbelly of New Camlann where deals were made in whispered voices and bloodstained credits. The neon haze flickered overhead, the scent of burning synth-fuel mixing with the acrid bite of ozone from overloaded circuits. Here, loyalty was currency, and betrayals were paid for in lead.
Arthur found Lancelot in a backroom of The Grail, an underground fight club where men with cybernetic augmentations turned their bodies into weapons for sport. Lancelot wasn’t fighting—he was watching, drink in hand, a smirk tugging at his lips as the current champion got his skull caved in.
He hadn’t changed much. Still built like a street-racing god, all wiry muscle and cyber-enhanced reflexes. His metal-plated hands flexed around his glass, fingertips twitching like they missed the wheel.
Arthur slid into the seat across from him. “I need a mechanic.”
Lancelot raised an eyebrow. “And I need a drink that isn’t watered down. Guess we’re both looking for impossible things.”
Arthur ignored the sarcasm. He placed a single encrypted keycard on the table—a pass to an off-grid race with a quarter-million credit buy-in. An event that could make or break a man’s name.
Lancelot’s grin widened. “You always knew how to tempt me, Pendragon.”
Arthur leaned forward. “I need people who don’t flinch. Who can kill when the race calls for it.”
Lancelot’s eyes darkened. “So this isn’t about honour, then?”
Arthur’s lips barely twitched. “Didn’t you hear? That king is dead.”
Lancelot exhaled, then downed his drink. “Fine. Let’s burn this city.”
Guinevere was a different story. She didn’t need tempting—she needed convincing.
They found her at a hover-bar called Avalon, perched high over the city’s mid-level slums. The glass walls pulsed with ads for synthetic pleasure, and the dance floor below was a blur of movement and flashing lights.
She sat alone, watching the streets below like she owned them. Barely looked up as Arthur approached. “I heard you died.”
Arthur slid into the seat opposite her. “Disappointed?”
She tilted her head, her cybernetic eye glowing amber as it scanned his vitals, processing his movements. “Not surprised. You were always too stubborn to stay down.”
“I need a driver,” he said simply. “The best.”
Guinevere sighed, tapping her fingers against the table. “I don’t do crews anymore, Arthur. I run my own ops. No kings, no knights, no bullshit.”
Arthur tapped his knuckles against the table. “I know where Mordred is keeping Excalibur.”
That got her attention. The glow in her eye pulsed, her jaw tightening. She hadn’t forgotten. None of them had.
“If we do this,” she said slowly, “I’m not following orders. I’m your equal. This time, you don’t get to play king.”
A wolfish grin spread across his face. “Deal.”
They found Percy in an abandoned subway station where the city’s underground had become a hacker’s paradise—glowing terminals, makeshift server farms, and people living off stolen power.
He was young, barely old enough to drive, but his fingers flew across his screens like a concert pianist on a death march.
“You’re Pendragon,” Percy said without looking up. “I thought you were dead.”
Arthur sat down on a broken console. “I get that a lot.”
“I don’t race,” Percy said. “I break systems. And I don’t do charity work.”
Arthur tossed a data drive onto the table. “This is the encrypted security layout for Mordred’s hideout.”
Percy blinked, then snatched it up. His hands twitched as he plugged it into his system, eyes flicking across the scrolling code.
“No way,” he breathed. “You stole this from the Vortigern Syndicate?”
Arthur smirked. “I have my ways.”
Percy’s fingers tightened. “Mordred’s people killed my brother.” His voice was flat, empty. Then he looked up, and for the first time, Arthur saw something dangerous in his expression.
“I’m in.”
The last piece of the puzzle was Gawain—a street-brawler built like a tank, covered in scars, his left arm replaced with an industrial-strength cybernetic limb that could tear through steel.
Arthur found him where he always was: in the pits, cracking skulls for credits. The underground fighting rings were a sea of sweat, blood, and neon haze, the air thick with the scent of metal and adrenaline.
Gawain was in the ring when Arthur arrived, his opponent already half-dead on the floor.
Arthur waited for him outside the cage, arms crossed. “Done playing?”
Gawain wiped blood from his lip. “That depends. You come to offer me a real fight?”
Arthur nodded. “I need a wrecking ball.”
Gawain cracked his knuckles, his metal fingers sparked. “Where we starting?”
Arthur smirked. “At the top.”
The Iron Kings had their first target: a high-speed cargo convoy carrying black-market cyber-enhancements for the Vortigern Syndicate.
If they could take it, they’d have money, weapons, and respect.
The convoy was running through Sector 9, where the streets were barely roads anymore—just twisted metal and collapsed highways. The perfect place for an ambush.
As the night fell, Arthur and his crew lined up their vehicles on a ridge overlooking the road.
Engines rumbled. Tires screamed against the pavement. The neon glow of the city flickered in the distance, but out here, it was just them, the road, and the hunt.
Arthur pulled down his visor. The King was back.
He hit the gas.
The convoy raid had been just the beginning.
After that, the Iron Kings didn’t stop. They hunted the Syndicate’s operations, hitting them where they were weakest—fast, brutal, and relentless.
A midnight blitz on one of Mordred’s underground garages, where stolen cars were stripped and rebuilt for Syndicate enforcers. Arthur and his crew stormed in hard, burning half the vehicles and stealing the rest. By dawn, the streets were littered with twisted metal and the scent of scorched fuel.
Percival cracked into a Vortigern financial hub, bleeding their encrypted accounts dry. A single cyber-attack, and hundreds of thousands of credits vanished overnight—wired to Arthur’s safe accounts, laundered through the city’s underbelly. Syndicate pay cheques bounced, bribes went unpaid, and suddenly, Mordred’s foot soldiers weren’t so loyal anymore.
Guinevere led them into a high-speed assault on a black-market shipment, weaving through the labyrinth of the city’s slums while Syndicate gunmen opened fire. By the time the dust settled, the cargo was gone, the Syndicate enforcers wrecked, and their supplier network in chaos.
A raid on one of Mordred’s gambling fronts, where his lieutenants met to launder money. Gawain walked in like he belonged there, let his cybernetic fist introduce itself to the bouncers, and an hour later, the Syndicate’s safe was nothing but scattered credits and smoke.
The Iron Kings weren’t just taking territory. They were ripping Mordred’s empire apart piece by piece. His drivers were spooked. His enforcers were stretched thin. His network was unravelling.
But that only made him more dangerous. Mordred wasn’t going to sit back and let his empire be chipped away.
The announcement came through hacked frequencies, digital graffiti smeared across the city’s networks:
THE GRAND RACE. NO RULES. NO MERCY.
WINNER TAKES EXCALIBUR.
It was the Syndicate’s way of dragging Arthur into the open. A trap disguised as an opportunity.
Arthur didn’t hesitate.
He gathered the crew in the back of an abandoned mechanic’s garage, where the flickering lights barely cut through the oil-stained darkness. The air stank of burnt rubber and gasoline.
He slammed the race announcement onto the workbench. “We’re taking that car back.”
Guinevere folded her arms. “It’s a setup.”
Lancelot leaned against the wreck of an old hover-cycle. “Of course it is. But you’re still going, aren’t you?”
Arthur locked eyes with him. “Yeah. I am.”
A beat of silence.
Then Gawain cracked his knuckles. “Then we’re all in.”
Percival pulled up the race schematics on his tablet. “It’s worse than you think,” he muttered, swiping through the data. “They’re running the race through Sector 13—that place is a graveyard. Collapsed highways, half-flooded tunnels, drone snipers on the rooftops.”
Arthur exhaled long and low. Mordred wanted him dead before he even reached the finish line.
Good. Let him try.
Race night came
The streets pulsed with neon, the sky choked with smoke and storm clouds. Thousands gathered in the shadows of towering holo-billboards, their faces illuminated in flickering colours as they placed bets, drank, and howled for blood.
The starting line was set at the edge of the old highway, a crumbling overpass that curved into the abyss of the dead city below.
Arthur tightened his grip on the wheel. Excalibur wasn’t here—Mordred would only bring it out for the winner.
His modified street beast, black as night and armoured like a war machine, rumbled under him.
Across the line, Mordred sat in his own car, a sleek, predatory machine that gleamed under the neon lights. He met Arthur’s gaze with a slow, taunting sneer.
“Welcome back, Pendragon,” his voice crackled through the comms. “Let’s see if you remember how to lose.”
Engines snarled.
The countdown flickered in holographic red.
3…
Arthur’s heart pounded with the engine.
2…
He flicked a switch, feeling the thrusters hum beneath him.
1…
A flicker of movement in his rearview mirror—
Go!
The street exploded into chaos.
Cars shot forward, fire and smoke trailing behind them. Gunfire rattled in the distance—some racers had brought more than just speed to this fight.
Arthur weaved through the pack, slamming the front of his car into an opponent’s bumper and sending them spinning into the wreckage below.
Then his comms buzzed.
“Arthur!” Percival’s voice cut through the static. “We’ve got a problem—”
The bridge ahead detonated.
Arthur’s instincts screamed, and he yanked the wheel hard. Concrete and fire rained down. The racers behind him weren’t fast enough—several were swallowed by the explosion.
Arthur skidded into a narrow side street, wrestling the wheel. Someone had set that charge.
And then the realisation hit.
Someone had sold them out.
He flicked through the comm channels. “Guinevere! Lancelot! Report!”
Silence.
Then Lancelot’s voice, ragged with fury: “It was Gwen.”
Fury iced through Arthur’s veins.
Guinevere had betrayed them?
Arthur’s tires screeched as he launched his car off a shattered overpass, landing hard on the final stretch of the race—an abandoned industrial strip, lined with rusted factories and blinking red emergency lights.
Ahead, Mordred’s car roared towards the finish line.
And waiting just beyond it - Excalibur... Its sleek lines, unmistakable; the long hood covering the powerful engine restrained within a bomb proof bay. Armed with the most up to date offensive and defensive systems. Excalibur wasn't just a car. It was a statement of intent. A crown of authority and a regal chariot all rolled up in one ruthless package.
Arthur gritted his teeth. He slammed the accelerator, thrusters kicking in with a fiery burst, closing the distance.
Mordred veered right, trying to force him into a collapsed pipeline—Arthur refused to yield.
Their cars slammed together. Metal screamed against metal.
Arthur reached under the dashboard, gripped the sawn-off shotgun hidden there, and fired point-blank into Mordred’s side window.
Glass shattered. Blood sprayed.
Mordred’s car swerved violently—but he wasn’t out yet. He regained control, engine snarling as he pulled alongside Arthur.
Through the broken window, his eyes blazed with fury.
“You’re too late,” Mordred growled. “New Camlann belongs to me.”
Arthur didn’t bother with words. He spun his wheel hard, slamming into Mordred’s car one last time.
The impact sent Mordred’s vehicle careening into the wreckage of an old cargo hauler. The explosion lit up the night sky.
Arthur fought the skid back under control, wheels shrieking as he crossed the finish line.
He had won.
The crowd roared, the city watching as the King returned.
Excalibur’s doors hissed open in front of him, sleek and waiting. His car. His throne. His kingdom.
But as Arthur stepped out, a shadow loomed.
Guinevere. Gun in hand.
Arthur’s chest rose and fell, eyes locking with hers. Betrayal thickened the air like smoke.
“Why?” His voice was hoarse.
She didn’t answer. Just raised the gun.
A single gunshot shattered the night.