My beat-up-looking bicycle was crushed by a speeding McLaren. The driver threw cash at my face and told me to “buy a new toy.” He had no idea the bike he destroyed was a classified aerospace prototype worth more than everything he’d ever own.

The world flipped sideways before I even registered the sound — a scream of a twin-turbo V8, a flash of acid-green paint, then a violent slam.

I hit the asphalt so hard the breath was punched out of my lungs.

My name is Aria. I’m 24. And with my thrift-store hoodie and duct-taped sneakers, most people assume I’m a broke grad student.

Which is exactly how I like it.

I staggered up onto my elbows. My bike — my project — lay mangled in the road. The matte-grey frame was folded almost in half, like someone twisted steel into a pretzel.

And parked right behind the wreckage, purring like a smug tiger, was a neon green McLaren 720S.

The driver climbed out, adjusting his too-tight suit like it was glued to his ego. Slick hair. Flashy watch. The human embodiment of “Do you know who I am?”

He stormed to the front of his car.

“You have GOT to be kidding me!” he shouted. “Look at this! A SCRATCH. ON. THE. SPLITTER!”

He wasn’t even looking at me — still sitting in the gutter, blood dripping from my palms.

“You came out of nowhere!” he roared. “You cut me off!”

“I was… in the bike lane,” I breathed.

“You were in MY way! Do you even understand how much this car costs?”

He reached into his jacket, pulled out a thick money clip, and peeled off five crisp $100 bills. He crushed them into a ball and threw them at me.

The bills bounced off my shoulder and fell into the oily water on the curb.

“Here,” he snapped. “Five hundred bucks. Go buy a new toy. And try not to ruin anyone’s day again.”

I stared at the money. Then I stood up, brushing gravel off my knees.

“Pick that up,” I said calmly. “And keep it.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You’re going to need it,” I said.

“For what?” he scoffed. “Gas?”

“No,” I replied. “Your insurance.”

He laughed in my face — loud, obnoxious, barking laughter that drew a small crowd.

“You’re insane,” he sputtered. “That trash heap is worth maybe a thousand bucks. Maybe.”

I tilted my head. “That ‘trash heap’ was the only Hyper-Titanium Lattice Prototype in existence.”

He snorted. “Hyper what? It looks like you built it out of leftover plumbing parts.”

“It looks like that,” I said, “because the real alloy is disguised under a composite shell.”

“I’m done with this,” he said, turning away. “Last chance — take the cash before I make sure you never work in this town again.”

Then the sirens arrived.

Two officers stepped out.

“What’s going on here?” one asked.

“She swerved into me!” Julian — that was his name — lied instantly. “I already compensated her.”

The officer turned to me. “Ma’am, is this your bicycle?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Value?”

“The material cost alone,” I said clearly, “is 1.2 million dollars.”

His pen froze mid-air. “Come again? Million?”

Julian let out another laugh — until a third vehicle pulled up.

A black SUV. Government plates.

And when the men inside stepped out, Julian’s face drained of color.

Because the emblem on their jackets wasn’t police, or FBI…
But Aerospace Defense Research Command.

The same agency I worked for.

Full story in the first comment 👇

The $28 Million Bike Ride: How One Arrogant McLaren Driver Learned That Looks Can Be Worth a Fortune

I never meant to be on Sand Hill Road at 4:17 p.m. on a Thursday.

But the only wind-tunnel slot the agency could give me was at 5:00, and the only way I could get my prototype from the secure lab to the test facility without breaking twelve different NDAs was to ride it myself.

So there I was: hoodie, ripped jeans, duct-taped Vans, pedaling what looked like the world’s saddest fixie past rows of gleaming Teslas and G-wagons.

Then came the acid-green blur.

I remember the sound first: twin turbos spooling like an angry hornet. Then the impact. My body left the saddle, the sky spun, and the next thing I knew I was tasting asphalt while my life’s work lay folded like a cheap lawn chair.

The driver unfolded himself from the McLaren 720S like he was stepping onto a red carpet. Julian Harrington IV, thirty-one, trust-fund venture capitalist, minor Instagram celebrity with 1.2 million followers who think “term sheet” is personality.

He saw the scratch on his carbon splitter before he saw the blood on my hands.

He screamed about the scratch.

He screamed about insurance.

Then he peeled five hundreds off a clip thicker than my wrist, balled them up, and literally threw them at my face.

“Go buy a new toy.”

I stood up slowly, wiped blood from my lip, and told him the four words that ended his entire bloodline’s good day:

“That won’t be enough.”

He laughed. The growing crowd laughed with him. Someone started filming.

I let them.

The first police cruiser arrived in under four minutes. The second vehicle (matte-black Suburban, government plates, no lights, no markings) arrived in four minutes and twelve seconds.

Two men stepped out wearing navy windbreakers with small embroidered lettering most civilians never learn to fear:

AEROSPACE DEFENSE RESEARCH COMMAND CLASSIFIED MATERIALS DIVISION

Julian was still mid-sentence (“Officer, I’ve already compensated her, this is ridiculous”) when the taller agent flashed a badge that made both cops stand straighter.

“Ma’am,” the agent said to me, “are you Dr. Aria Chen?”

“Yes.”

“Is that the X-77 Hyper-Titanium Lattice airframe demonstrator registered to your clearance?”

I looked at the twisted heap of matte-grey tubing that had, until recently, been capable of Mach 8 in wind-tunnel testing.

“Was,” I corrected.

The agent winced the way a parent winces when you drop the family Fabergé egg.

Julian found his voice. “This is a joke, right? That’s a bicycle.”

The second agent was already on a satellite phone. I caught fragments: “…total loss… yes, the only prototype… insurance valuation twenty-eight million, yes, million… immediate airspace lockdown…”

Julian’s face transitioned through every shade of confused money I’ve ever seen.

“Twenty-eight… million?” he whispered.

I nodded. “1.2 in materials, 4.6 in proprietary manufacturing, 22.4 in sunk R&D. Give or take.”

One of the officers was now taking photos of the wreckage with the reverence usually reserved for crime-scene evidence.

Julian tried to speak again, but it came out a squeak.

His lawyer arrived seventeen minutes later (helicopter, naturally). By then the tow truck that arrived wasn’t for the McLaren; it was a flatbed with armed escort for what remained of my bike.

The lawyer took one look at the windbreakers, one look at the classified-materials sticker now being applied to the wreckage, and asked Julian the question that will follow him to family reunions forever:

“Did you get anything in writing?”

Julian couldn’t speak. He was staring at the five soggy hundred-dollar bills still floating in the gutter like the world’s saddest confetti.

The settlement was finalized three weeks later in a windowless conference room on a base I’m not allowed to name.

Twenty-eight million, four hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars, wired before close of business.

Julian’s insurance (Lloyd’s of London specialty policy for “exotic automobiles”) denied the claim in a twelve-page letter that essentially read: “Are you insane?”

He sold the McLaren at auction for 40% under market to cover the first payment. The rest came from liquidating the watch collection, the Miami condo, and the seed fund he’d been bragging about on podcasts for eighteen months.

The last time I saw him, he was taking the Caltrain in a Patagonia vest and the hollow expression of a man who just learned that “unlimited funds” has limits after all.

I bought a new bike.

Same beat-up paint job. Same thrift-store hoodie.

Only difference: now it has a little carbon-fiber plaque welded to the down tube that reads, in engraved letters:

Property of the United States Government Value: Priceless Attitude: Still better than yours

Some days I ride past the exact same corner just to watch the new money slow down at the crosswalk.

Karma doesn’t always need a cape.

Sometimes it just needs two wheels and a nondisclosure agreement.