As the conflict in Colombia tilts in favour of the son, Hamilton goes outside of the normal chain of command to plan the execution of Barranco and the elimination of the local Shorn representative in a gladiatorial duel. Faulkner finds out about this and barges into a video conference Hamilton is having with Francisco, telling him that he in fact killed his father with his bare hands. He then beats Hamilton and breaks his neck. He is duly captured and placed in a Corporation operated jail. In jail, Chris is offered a choice: be convicted of murder and have his organs harvested after being subject to capital punishment or participate in face-saving (for Shorn) farce by saying he had legally issued a challenge to Hamilton for his position in the firm. Conditions of this agreement are steep however as he must drive against Mike Bryant, who he had grown to be truly close with, but who is now completely done with him with revelation of Chris' affair with Liz Linshaw and Chris' brutal killings outside of the bounds of the challenge process. The night prior to the challenge, the UN representative returns with the chance for Chris to escape and reunite with his estranged wife, who has left the country. He declines. Mike is the superior driver but using a creative interpretation of challenge rules, Chris forces Mike to drive off a bridge and into the Zones. Chris finds the badly injured Mike and kills him just before a gang, who had watched the duel on television, finds them. The gang beats Chris but he survives when the gang is gunned down by Driver Control authorities, the sanctioning body for duels. The story ends with Chris, as the new senior executive, giving the new dictator Francisco Echevarria 48 hours to flee his country in favour of installing Barranco.