He drove away in a daze. The car purred. The temperature needle sat dead in the center. He made it home as Maya was leaning over the cake, eyes squeezed shut, lips moving.
She snapped her fingers. From the shadows, a pair of glowing mechanical arms unfolded from the ceiling—like a praying mantis made of chrome and LEDs. They moved with impossible speed. One twisted the radiator cap off while the other injected a silver compound into the coolant reservoir. A third arm—Leo hadn’t even seen a third—slithered under the car and tightened the exhaust manifold bolts with a sound like a xylophone. pitstop pro
“Six dollars? For that ?”
The arms retracted. Fran slammed the hood. The whole operation took forty-seven seconds. He drove away in a daze