Underground Circuit

Crooked horse racing. Six horses, one lap, a grandstand full of cameras - and a rival in the next stall who shoves you into the rail and gets pulled for it. Your first race goes to the photograph. And once a day there is one race the whole circuit runs: the same field, going and job for everyone, at triple the purse.

Underground Circuit is an afternoon meeting at a real racecourse, run by people for whom winning clean is only one way to win.

Sprint is free. Everything else is watched. Tap OVERDRIVE for speed you have not earned and it burns your horse's heart. Pull the reins to block the runner behind you. Shove the horse alongside into the rail. Every one of those fills the STEWARDS meter, and the meter fills twice as fast in front of the grandstand cameras and half again in the final two hundred metres. Reach a hundred per cent and the stewards pull you off the track mid-race.

Ride clean for a few seconds and the meter drains. That is the whole game: how much can you take while they are looking.

Underneath the crime there is a real race. Your sprint reserve is finite and never fully comes back once it is blown; slipstream and you burn a third less. Six runners, front-runners, stalkers and closers, each kicking at its own point in the lap. A close finish goes to the photograph: the run to the line again, slowed at the post, then the judge's print pinned to the tote board - a nose, a neck, a length.

Prizes pay clean cash, which buys training. The night's contract pays dirty cash for a specific result - finish exactly third, keep the favourite off the podium, win after two shoves - and dirty cash has to be laundered before it will buy anything. Wash it fast and lose a third of it, or wash it slow and wait three nights. Miss a job and the book keeps a marker until you land one. The first job each day pays double.

Or spend it raw. The fixer takes dirty cash: have a steward look the other way, nobble the favourite, buy the inside draw, or lose the paperwork so tonight's DQ never reaches your record. One a night, and each raises your heat: the stewards start the next race already watching you, and only a night ridden straight cools it off.

Clean cash goes into the yard: a head lad, a laundry front, a vet on retainer. Every overdrive you take tonight leaves the legs heavy tomorrow unless the vet's been. Behind those sit six mounts to collect, from the burning mane of Api to the black smoke of Bayang and whatever Hantu is - and three more sold only for dirty cash, a doped horse, a smuggled one and a ringer.

Race three hands you a sealed box, then every tenth race another: twelve foil cards of the circuit's horses, each with a story on the back. A ledger of goals pays out as you reach them, the names you earn - Master of the Shove - go up on the leaderboard, and checking in day after day keeps a streak that pays on its own.

It is a career, not a single night. Score enough over a three-race meeting and you go up a grade, from the Club to the City to the Grand Cup: bigger purses, tougher fields, and new work from the book at each level. And from your second race on Towkay Hitam's riders, the red caps, are in every field, more of them the higher you climb, and the owner has something to say after each one.

And you are not the only one cheating. Some nights the red cap's stable gets at your horse or tips off the stewards before the off, and you hear about it in the stable: pay dirty cash to fence it off, or ride it out. The meeting runs in all weathers, from afternoon sun to floodlights and rain that softens the going. A race caller calls every race from the off to the photo, and finish with the meter high or a shove too close to the line and the stewards hold an enquiry before the result stands.

It plays in English, Traditional Chinese and Malay, and the riders shout in their own slang. A coach rides your first race with you, one thing at a time. Pick your runner, take the contract, and decide how much you want it.