During a test session, Speed is overtaken by a mysterious car numbered X3, whose distinctive engine hum is familiar to a vicious gang of racers known as the Three Roses Club, because the engine is from a car whose driver they killed years earlier in a mountain race. When the mysterious driver turns out to be a robot who repeats a prerecorded warning, "Melange still races", it turns out to be the work of Flash Marker Jr., the son of the deceased racer who has vowed to destroy the Three Roses Club at the same mountain course where his father was killed.