She paused, looking up.
“If anyone else asks about the engine, you don’t know anything.”
She nodded once, sharp and efficient. “Understood.”
I turned on my heel and strode toward the garage, the weight of Elena Archer’s smirk still burning in my chest.
Elena Archer – Melbourne, Saturday Night
The air conditioning in my hotel room was broken. Again.
Warm air pressed against my skin, heavy with the smell of city dust and hotel detergent. I kicked off my heels and leaned back against the head of the bed, laptop balanced on my thighs.Beyond the half-drawn curtains the lights of Melbourne bled into the sky, flickering like restless ghosts.
The glow of the screen painted the walls electric blue as the qualifying replay looped. Volkov’s car. Volkov’s car. Volkov’s—
There.
Pause. Rewind. Play.
The engine note. Just a fraction too smooth in the mid-range. Like it was hiding something.
I leant in, squinting. The revs hung just a beat too long before the shift. Not obviously illegal. But wrong.
My fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up the FIA’s technical regs. Fuel flow limits, engine mapping parameters, the works. Cross-referenced with Obsidian’s public data.
Nothing.
But I knew.
I queued up the press conference again. Volkov, all ice and arrogance, dismissing me like I was nothing. “Rumours are for people who don’t win.”
My lips curled.
Oh, champion. You have no idea how much I love proving men like you wrong.
My phone buzzed. A text from my editor:
Heard you ruffled some feathers today. Good. Keep pushing.
I grinned, typing back:Oh, I’m just getting started.
I shut the laptop and let the silence rush in. Somewhere outside, a siren wailed and faded. A gull screamed over the bay. The city didn’t sleep; it just slowed its pulse.
Stories like this didn’t come along often—whispers of a juggernaut team breaking the laws of physics and getting away with it. The kind of story that made reputations. Or ruined them.
I slid off the bed and padded barefoot to the window. Melbourne glittered beyond the glass — towers lit like circuitboards, the streets below glowing with nightlife and neon. I pressed a palm to the glass. It was warm.
Someone had cheated. I could feel it as surely as heat through the window. Maybe it was Volkov. Maybe it was the men in suits who spoke for him. Either way, they thought they were untouchable.
People always did—until someone like me proved otherwise.
My reflection stared back, hair falling loose from its knot, a smear of mascara shadowing one eye. My mother used to say that curiosity was a hunger. Feed it, or it eats you alive.
She wasn’t wrong.
I turned back to the bed, reopened the laptop, and pulled up my notes. There was a pattern hiding in there somewhere. I just needed to find it.
Tomorrow the race would start, and the world would be watching the lights go out.
