“When it’s professional immaturity, I think they just call it spirited competition,” Clarke yawns. She side-eyes the holoscreen on the wall, on which Val is needling Yves, as she passes. “They say anything interesting?”
“Do they ever, when the cameras are on?”
“Not on purpose. I’m counting on it.”
Imogen gives her a confused glance, still mostly focused on the screen. “What?”
Her mom looks exhausted, Clarke realizes. She’s been away from home on short notice for almost a full week. Her work granted her emergency family leave, but Clarke’s seen her trying to catch up on messages.
“Nothing,” Clarke says, pulling her hair into a ponytail soshe can wash her face. “I’m just thankful that you’re here. I really love you.”
“Love you, too,” Imogen says absently. “Hey, come here for a picture real fast before you get ready for bed? I promised the Council of Moms proof of life when you got back.”
—
Clarke watches theOlympic City Grand Prix from the Elemental garage, where a model of the track projects up from the floor and every screen on the walls is displaying a live feed.
It’s a thrilling race, from start to finish. Delphine holds Julian off until the twenty-sixth lap, when he passes her with a daring inversion. She takes the lead back when they both pit on lap twenty-nine, an error from the Chronicle crew keeping Julian stationary for a full two seconds longer than usual. Oliver gets right on Julian’s tail after that, and Julian spends the next fifteen laps defending.
Immediately behind those three, Engel is also defending, putting on a master class in opening up space between P3 and P4 so Julian only has to think about Delphine and Oliver. It works until it doesn’t. He puts off pitting until lap forty-three, but has to come in eventually, and Enclave delayed Thierry’s trip to the box until late in the game, too. Thierry’s got fresh shells and a fresh battery when Engel exits, and he catches up to and passes Oliver quickly.
Thierry’s amazing, but he doesn’t have the machinery or experience to match Julian and Delphine when they’re in top form, which they are today. They pull away, and with six laps to go, Julian makes his move.
It’s perfectly legal. Aggressive, but legal. Julian tries to overtake on the outside of a turn that curves back over itself and intoa vertical drop. Space is tight, and the line he chooses presses Delphine right up to the inner curl of the barrier. She can stay where she is and let him crash into her, or she can cede.
Julian could cede, too, technically, but Clarke doesn’t think for an instant that he’s going to. She watches, her whole body pulsing with secondhand nerves, as Delphine swerves to avoid contact.
It’s a permeable part of the barrier. Delphine’s off the course for less than a second and there’s no damage, but it doesn’t matter. Julian takes P1, and he holds it until he takes the checkered flag, winning the Olympic City Grand Prix for Chronicle at their home race. He’s still behind Delphine by 6 points in the individual bracket, but Chronicle now leads Provenance by 5 points heading into the final three races. The celebration tonight is going to be legendary.
Clarke can already hear the roar from a jubilant crowd and the overlapping music being blared from speakers just beyond the paddock boundary when she finds herself outside Julian’s prep room several hours later.
The podium ceremony has come and gone, as has the post-race press conference. Clarke took a chance, gambling that almost all of Chronicle would be either in debrief or out getting a head start on the party, and was proven correct. The only person she passed in the garage was that same junior mechanic who’dUm’d at her the first time she came by, and he waved her on without comment.
She wants to see Julian. She just—she wants to—
Ugh. She is not this person! She is not the girl who waits around for the guy. She doesn’t even know if he’s coming back! He could have already joined the festivities in the city streets. She should’ve just messaged to see if he wanted to see hertonight, but what if he’d said no, and now she’s standing outside his room like a lovesick fool.
There’s noise from the front of the garage; people coming back from debrief. Clarke, close to panicking at the prospect of being found here, holds her wrist out to the panel by Julian’s door, letting it scan her cuff. Julian still had her programmed into his apartment building’s system. Maybe she’s on this access list, too?
The door pops open.
She rushes inside and shuts the door behind her. It’s not the almost getting caught that has her pulse racing, it’s that Julian’s made deliberate choices to let Clarke into his life. His apartment, hisprep room. Prep rooms are as sacred as it gets for F0 pilots. It’s the one place a pilot has in-paddock to escape the pressure and the never-ending demands and justexist.
She hesitates halfway between the couch and the desk. Should she be in here? Maybe it wasn’t Julian’s idea to put her on the access list at all. Maybe it was PK’s, for convenience, and Julian just hadn’t argued.
The door opens and closes again, so quickly that the lock has snicked back into place before Clarke’s startled jump-and-turn is complete. Julian’s there, striding across the room at speed, breathing harder than a casual walk would require.
“Are you okay?” he asks, holding her at arm’s length while he sweeps a gaze over her body. “Are you hurt?”
“What? No, I’m fine.”
“My cuff said you were here, and you haven’t come here voluntarily inyears, and you got out of the hospitalyesterdayand your team is full of shitheads—”
“Julian,” Clarke says firmly, catching his wrists. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to see you. Say congratulations.”
He goes still. “Oh.”
Clarke releases his wrists. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”