Amira doesn’t look convinced. “We’re still seeing that data glitch on power unit start-up. Doing a full power cycle is a risk.”
“We’ve done a dozen full power cycles since that bug was logged, and there’s no noticeable impact,” Timothy argues. “It’s more of a risk to leave a faulty diffuser in place.”
Amira drums her nails on her biceps and looks to Clarke. “What do you think?”
Clarke’s surprised to be asked. “I—”
“We’re doing it,” Timothy interrupts. “I already cleared it with Yves.”
“Hereallydoes not like me,” Clarke says, after Timothy turns on his heel and starts barking orders at the crew.
“He certainly does not seem to,” Amira agrees, and goes to oversee the work.
There’s nothing for Clarke to do except stay out of the way. She steps out into the pit lane, stretching her arms overhead. Five garages up, Julian’s doing the same thing.
He sees her, too. He waves, and makes an up-and-down motion with his palm, as if cuing a calming breath.
Clarke can breathe just fine on her own, thank you very much. But it’s nice that he cares.
—
Ninety minutes afterUmeko’s crash, they’re back on the track, lined up on the grid. Clarke goes through a truncated version of her mental routine, sinking back into that place where this is all she needs to think about. Atreus’s gift and if it means what she might think it means: irrelevant. Anders’s judgment: irrelevant. Yves’s refusal to engage in contract negotiations, Raff’s animosity, Matthew’s silence: irrelevant.
The blues go out. The reds go out. Clarke shoves her hands and feet forward.
Nothing happens.
She doesn’t get slammed back into her seat by familiar thrust. The power unit doesn’t roar through her bones. The kickdrive behind her seat doesn’t kick.
Step one of surviving a Formula Zero crash is shutting off the power unit. Clarke can’t do that, because the power unit isn’t responding. And there are three ships directly behind her that are expecting her to move forward, and don’t wait to confirm that she is before engaging their own power units.
She feels the first impact. She doesn’t feel the second.
—
“Sorry,” she sayswhen the door to Medical slides open. “I’m fine, really, I just—what are you doing here?”
“I’m your father,” Anders says, following Imogen into the room.
“You are not who I was thinking of when the doctor said that my parents wanted to see me.”
He shrugs and leans against the wall, eyes on one of the screens showing post-race coverage.
Imogen comes to the side of the cot Clarke’s sitting on. “You’re really okay?”
“I’ll be sore for a few days, but I wasn’t actually injured,” Clarke promises. “It looked worse than it was.”
“It looked bad.”
“I know.”
“That part never gets easier.”
Clarke returns the squeeze of her mom’s hand. “I know. Is Kuari okay?”
Kuari wasn’t as close to Connor as he is to Julian, since Connor never lived with them, but he still knew him well. Connor’s death shook him badly. He used to not be able to watch Clarke’s and Julian’s races live, distracting himself until it was over and Ihaka and Imogen could tell him that they were both okay. The first time Clarke got in an accident after Connor, Kuari was inconsolable. Watching her crash today can’t have been easy.
Shame bubbles in Clarke’s chest at the thought of what she puts her family through.
