The only one who can run that last twenty yards. Across the field the other coach, whose once unbroken backs are scurrying to recover from what is certainly a fatal misjudgement in the last 16 clicks before the end of time, far all time, of this game, genuflects and cusses with the rich, thick harmony of his team's disbelief, and fear, as they too watch Mercury on Earth step on the line marked with a 10 toward the lush rewards of victory. The clipboard goes up, then down. Helmets hit the carpeted concrete with the normal earsplitting cracks, only to be washed out by the coalition of caterwauls. And as he strides on those last ten hashmarks, with the timer now at 14, everyone realizes the inevitable.
Nobody has the angle.
No one is going to get there to stop him. Then it gets really loud, like when the Earth tears open its own skin. The glory and despair reinforce the resolve of the cheers to newer, heavenly levels, louder still than before, vibrating seats, glass and bolts of the dome as it approaches shakedown. And in the third stall of the restroom just left of the West 1 entrance, Janis has just beaten 81 to her own end, in time for the blood and water to only hit tile, her voice, her scream now echoing off and muted by the concrete walls, calling out to all of nobody. There is no unaffected enough by the rush of 81's destiny to hear the inception of childbirth 8 weeks too soon.