Mercedes Dantés | FRESH • Handbook |

You smile, reattach your leg, and shift into first gear. The hunt is just beginning. And in Neo-Paris, the night is young, the roads are long, and Mercedes Dantés has a full tank of vengeance.

You spent seven years in the Château d’If, a floating prison barge anchored in the acid-black waters of the Seine Estuary. They took your legs below the knee—a “precaution” against escape. They pumped you full of calmers until your thoughts felt like cold honey. But every night, you rebuilt your nervous system in the dark. You mapped every bolt, every circuit, every flaw in the prison’s grid.

“Get up, Laurent. I’m giving you a head start. Three blocks. Then I come for you. And I am very fast.”

Your face is new. A “gift” from the prison’s medic—sharp cheekbones, a jaw like a chisel, eyes the color of leaded fuel. You wear a coat woven from Kevlar and asbestos, stitched with the logos of a hundred dead racing teams. Underneath, your titanium legs hum with a low, predatory frequency.

Your father, old Heinrich Dantés, didn't name you after a car. He built you like one. From the moment your neural cradle booted up, your lullaby was the growl of a V12, and your first steps were taken in carbon-fiber exo-boots. The Dantés family didn’t just sell automobiles; they were the last dynasty of internal combustion in a world of silent, humming electric drones. They were kings of the Gendarmerie Rouge , the lawless red-light district where the speed of your machine equaled the length of your life.

The green light isn’t a light. It’s a guillotine blade dropping.

Your titanium arm doesn't tire. Your hydraulic joints don't strain. You simply apply pressure until his reinforced glass spiderwebs, then shatters. The wind rips through his cabin. His AI shorts out. His car swerves.