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Neon Skyway: Holding a Lane on a Road That Won't Hold Still
Six thousand metres ago you crossed the sea on a concrete bridge in the sunshine. At 7,000 metres, a hundred years later, you cross it again: the Neon Skyway is the same eight-lane, two-way crossing rebuilt as a dark composite ribbon hung high above a city at night, with magenta light running along its rails. The rules underneath are the ones the Bridge taught you. What has changed is everything around them — you are now at full speed, deep in the Impossible phase, and the deck itself swings from side to side beneath you.
| Where | 7,000–8,000 m, between Metropolis 2126 and Suburbia 2126 |
|---|---|
| The road | Eight lanes on a suspended deck: four your way on the right, four oncoming on the left, a median of glowing posts down the middle — and the whole ribbon sways |
| What moves | Hovercars, hover haulers and hover bikes your way; oncoming hovercars and hover bikes; the deck itself; drones and sky traffic overhead (scenery) |
| What kills you | Any vehicle on the deck, either direction, and the magenta plasma barriers in the median. The cyan photon posts do not. |
| Difficulty phase | Impossible, all the way across, with your speed pinned at 300 km/h |
The same crossing, a century on
If you have read the Bridge guide, most of the mechanics here will be familiar. The differences are the whole scene:
| The Bridge (1,000 m) | Neon Skyway (7,000 m) | |
|---|---|---|
| Light | High sun over open sea | Midnight, a lit city far below |
| Speed | Still climbing | Pinned at the 300 km/h maximum |
| Phase | Rush Hour, then Chaos | Impossible |
| Harmless median posts | Orange flex-posts | Cyan photon posts |
| Lethal median blocks | Yellow-and-black barriers | Magenta plasma barriers |
| The deck | Dead straight | Sways sideways for most of the crossing |
| Traffic | Thin on arrival, back to full strength as Chaos hits | Thin on arrival, keeps building to the exit |
Two things carry over unchanged. Oncoming hover traffic never changes lanes, carries no haulers and often rides off-centre near a lane line. And traffic on your side never crosses the median and still blinks amber before it merges — a century of progress has not done away with the turn signal.
What you see from the chase camera
The skyway is the most dressed-up road in the game. Suspension towers stand over the deck at intervals, with main cables swooping between them and hangers dropping to the parapets. Red aviation beacons blink along the edge of the deck, the same warning lights real tall structures carry for aircraft. Lit platforms jut off the edge with people waiting under a canopy and a hovercar parked beside them. Other skyways cross the bay above and below you at an angle, ad blimps drift past, mist rolls under the deck, and the towers of the city rise from far below to well above your height. Holographic gantries pass overhead with slogans — one of them, fittingly, is a wind advisory.
Almost all of that is scenery. The hovercars crossing overhead and on the other skyways can't reach you, and neither can the delivery drones or the surveillance saucer whose searchlight sweeps the lanes and turns red when it finds you. If it isn't on your deck, ignore it.
What is on your deck reads differently at night. Every hull carries lights, and they tell you its direction before its shape does: a white pool of headlight on the deck in front of a hull means it is driving at you, while a coloured streak trailing toward you means it is going your way.
Driving a deck that moves
After a straight first stretch, the skyway starts to sway: the whole ribbon slides sideways on a long, slow wave with a shorter wobble laid over it, and it settles back to straight well before the exit. Traffic, coins and the median hardware all ride with the deck. Your car doesn't. Hold the wheel still and the lane lines drift across your bonnet, and sooner or later the median drifts toward you. Wind streaks blow across the deck the whole way over, quickening as it swings further out.
Real suspension bridges are built to flex sideways in strong wind, and on the longest spans the deck can move metres at its centre. The skyway's version is gentler than it looks. It never swings as far as a full lane width either way, it never slides faster than your car can steer to follow, and it follows the same pattern on every run, so the rhythm is learnable.
- Watch the lane studs ahead, not your bonnet. The lights along the lane lines show the drift early. Correct in small, continuous taps. One big correction late usually turns into a second one the other way.
- Use the parapet when its lane is clear. Steer into the right-hand edge and the parapet keeps you lined up with the deck as it moves, so the sway costs you nothing. You still have to leave it for anything in that lane, and with nothing to your right, there's only one way to go.
- Cross the median at a turning point. Head-on shaves work exactly as on the Bridge: double charge on your shield meter, and you have to put your wheels over the centre line, or go into the oncoming half, before they count. On the skyway the line you are straddling is moving. The slide eases off at each end of a swing, and that is the moment to cross or to ride the posts.
- Do your shield hunting early. Traffic builds from the abutment all the way to the exit, so the first half of the crossing is the cheapest place to fill the meter, and the second half is where you will want to spend it.
- Spend the ghost on one specific problem. At 300 km/h a shield covers a lot of road and is gone in a moment. Point it at a pair of haulers side by side, or the dash back out of the oncoming half — not at open deck.
- Coins are your only brake. Out here nothing else takes you below top speed. A coin bleeds some off for a moment, though never below Impossible's 130 km/h floor. The usual caveat applies with interest: a coin in the oncoming lanes, on a deck that is sliding sideways, is bait.
On and off the ribbon
The arrival mirrors the Bridge's. Near the end of Metropolis 2126 the left three lanes of the six-lane avenue clear out, a cyan holo gantry reading 2-WAY SKYWAY AHEAD passes overhead, and the avenue fans onto the eight-lane deck over a glowing abutment. Traffic is thin for the first stretch, and oncoming hovercars hold off for a short beat before the first one comes at you. (How you got a century forward in the first place is covered on the science page.)
The exit is the Bridge's too, rebuilt in light. The deck stops swaying first. Then oncoming traffic stops arriving, the median hardware runs out, and traffic going your way gathers into the lane just right of the median. A lime-green holo gantry warns ROAD NARROWS / 2 LANES, and the ribbon necks down onto a two-lane street. The funnel walls push you inward without hurting you; merge into a gap early rather than letting them shove you into a hull, then settle into the right-hand lane, because the left one is oncoming again on the street below. That street is Suburbia 2126, and Redline, the next difficulty phase, takes over as you arrive.
Skyway questions
Why does the road move sideways in the Neon Skyway?
The skyway deck sways. It is a fixed feature of the road, the same on every run: a slow side-to-side swing that starts after the entry and dies away before the exit. Your car doesn't move with it, so you steer to stay in your lane.
Is the plasma barrier on the Neon Skyway lethal?
The magenta plasma barriers are, unless you are ghosting. The cyan photon posts between them are not: drive over one and it snaps and stays down. Crossing the centre line is fine as long as you cross between barriers.
Can the hovercars flying above the skyway hit you?
No. Sky traffic, the hovercars on the crossing skyways and the drones are all scenery. Only vehicles on your deck can end the run.
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