Silence falls. All Clarke can hear is her breathing, ragged through the hand she has over her mouth, and her heart, pounding against her ribs like it’s trying to get out.
Whispers, from the patio. They’re worried Anders’s yell might have woken Clarke. There’s the sound of soft footsteps, then the double click of the patio door opening and closing.
Clarke had instinctively crouched when she realized she was eavesdropping, despite there being no chance of Naomi and Anders seeing her from the patio directly below. She drops to her butt now as she tries to comprehend everything she just heard, stunned.
Anders and Yves are going to buy Elemental. They’re going to purchase majority ownership. It’s perfectly legal (active and former team members own portions of their organizations or parent organizations up and down the grid), but…wow.
That confusing conversation she’d had with Anders last time she was at this house, when he’d asked what she thought team ownership might do after a string of disappointing seasons—had he been trying towarnher, in some roundabout way? Because it seems like he’s regretting his suggestion to hang Elemental’s struggles on Clarke. But if theyaregoing to do that—blame Clarke for sucking up resources that could’ve been spentimproving the ship, souring the atmosphere with her personality like the Matthew article implied, having a flying style that doesn’t jibe with Elemental’s technical foundation—they’re not keeping her after this season. There’s no way. If they’re saying Clarke’s the problem, they have to get rid of her.
She hugs her legs up to her chest and presses her kneecaps into her eye sockets, taking shallow, damp breaths in the confined space between her belly and thighs. When she’s not hyperventilating anymore, she releases the hold, tilting her face up and back to the night sky.
It’s hot. Martian seasons are twice as long as Terran and Lunar. It’s September by the standard calendar, but on Mars it’s still the height of summer. The air is humid and close. It’s what she was raised in. She fills her lungs with it, finds her center, finds her resolve. Oddly—or maybe not oddly at all—hears Julian’s voice in her head.You’re one of the best pilots of our generation, but you’re wasted at Elemental.
She will not be their scapegoat.
There’s nothing she can do about it tonight. She needs to try to get a few hours of sleep so she can pretend she doesn’t know any of this when she and Anders have a photogenic breakfast tomorrow before Naomi and Clarke catch a shuttle to the next race site. She can call Rhynn from the hotel, figure out some next steps.
Because therewillbe next steps. Clarke doesn’t know what they are yet, but there will besomethingshe can do. There will be a way to use this information to Clarke’s advantage. And if there isn’t? If there’s no way to salvage Clarke’s place at Elemental, and if no other teams want her?
She’s not going to go quietly, if it comes down to that. She’s spent too long bottling herself up, cutting pieces of herself off,whittling herself down into exactly what Elemental wanted only for them to move the checkered flag farther out to step away with grace.
If Anders and Yves try to paint Clarke as the problem, Clarke will damn suremakeherself a problem.
31
TheJulian & Clarkeboxinggym video gets released the week after Iani. It’s the same format as the prep room one: a short montage of clips showing how in sync they are, how they orbit around each other even when doing separate activities. Clarke watches it for the dozenth time while waiting for her training buddy to arrive on Wednesday evening.
“Am I late?”
“No, I was early,” Clarke says, collapsing the screen into her cuff. “Hi. Ready?”
“Ready,” Delphine says, and they start a measured jog.
They’re on the Ohars space station. Ohars exists just inside the asteroid belt, locked at a steady distance from Mars, and is the most common stopover point for people crossing the belt in either direction. It’s also the site of this weekend’s race.
Like most space stations of its size, Ohars is built around a central green space. This is where Clarke and Delphine have met up for what will look like a companionable joint training session. If word gets back to Yves about this, he’s going to have a coronary, but that’s half the point. As for the other half:
“Did Atreus ask you to set this up?” Clarke asks when they’re a few minutes in.
“He’s not a man who gets canceled on very often,” Delphine says. Her ponytail bobs with every even stride. “It piqued his interest, but all your manager will say is that you don’t think you’d be a good fit at Provenance. He thought you might be more open to talking to me.”
“You’re my racing hero,” Clarke says, only able to say it without embarrassment because Delphinetotallyknows. “I wasn’t going to turn down the invitation.”
“But you turned down Atreus’s invitation?”
Clarke figured this was the direction this conversation would go, and practiced how to get out of it without alluding to having overheard something she shouldn’t know. “You’re not going to retire anytime soon, and I don’t want to just be on a team that wins.Iwant to win. Me.”
“I can respect that.” Delphine side-eyes her and deliberately slows to a walk as they enter a small copse of dense growth. “It’s not going to happen for you at Elemental. You’re smart enough to know that.”
Clarke slows, too, linking her fingers together and resting her hands on the top of her head. They weren’t running long enough or fast enough for her to be out of breath, but she is. “I don’t feel smart enough. You’ve been doing this for a while. How do you tell truth from bullshit? How did you know moving from Chronicle to Provenance was the right choice? How—”
Delphine’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “Big questions for what was supposed to be a friendly workout.”
Clarke’s laugh is hollow. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve kind of got a lot going on right now. I’m looking for answers anywhere I can get them. If you’ve got a solution for my ship’s shimmy problem, I’ll take that, too.”
Delphine doesn’t join in the laughter. “I can’t say I have asolution, but I can tell you what Atreus would do if our ship was having chronic mechanical issues that the technical team hadn’t resolved this far into the season.”
“No one deserves to get fired over this. It’s no one’s fault.”
