The dragon’s head sat centered across the chest, its body curling over the ribs, tail wrapping low along the hip. It was beautiful work; the color gradation, the stitching, the subtle stainless accents that would catch the light.
But Heidi was right about one thing. With Bree’s arms up, the dragon’s eye tipped toward her shoulder instead of the camera line; the lower jaw distorted along where a rib protector seam would sit.
“It pulls,” Bree said, surprised at her own certainty. “When you lift your arms, the eye tilts. The snout gets… pinched.”
Heidi pointed at her like she’d solved a proof. “Exactly. Thank you.”
She turned back on the manufacturer rep. “See? It’s wrong.”
He sighed. “We can lower the graphic three centimeters and widen the chest panel. Anything more, and the articulation suffers. It’s a tradeoff.”
“Then we prioritize the shot from the outside of the turns,” Heidi said. “Shift the weight of the graphic so it reads clean from the primary camera angle.”
The two of them launched into a rapid-fire argument about seams, relief cuts, and camera placement. Carmen slid closer to Bree, still holding the suit.
“Welcome to my life,” she said under her breath. “She does this with every set of uniforms. You should’ve seen the soccer league last spring.”
“She cares,” Bree said softly.
“She cares about winning the visual,” Carmen replied. “Which, to be fair, matters. Just maybe not as much as not blowing a valve at one fifty.”
Bree’s gaze drifted past them.
Two bikes sat on stands, front wheels off, frame cradled on padded blocks. One of the younger riders tinkered with the chain on a third bike, humming in time with the music. At the far edge of the taped line, near the hauler, Einstein crouched beside a stripped-down frame.
He’d ditched the over-ear headphones from earlier. Earplugs sat in his ears instead, neon cords trailing. His dark hair stuck slightly to his forehead, damp with sweat. He wore black gloves that fit like a second skin and moved with a precision that made everything else seem clumsy.
Wires snaked along the frame, thin and dark, hugging the angles. Bree hadn’t grown up around bikes; most of what she saw looked like a foreign language. But some things were still obvious if you paid attention.
He wasn’t working where everyone else had been working.
He was working where no one else seemed to ever touch.
“Is that one Marcus’s?” she asked quietly.
Carmen followed her gaze. “Yeah. Main race bike. The spare’s over there.”
Einstein shifted, blocking Bree’s view for a moment. When he leaned back, she saw he’d opened a narrow compartment along the inside of the frame rail, just under where a rider’s knee would sit. It wasn’t big; the cavity was long and thin, barely more than a channel.
He lifted something from a tray at his side.
It was cylindrical and small, maybe the size of a travel shampoo bottle, but heavier from the way it pulled his glove a fraction lower when he shifted it. The metal caught the light, gleaming dull silver, with a small valve stem at one end and a hose already attached.
Bree frowned.
He turned the cylinder in his hand, checked a tiny gauge attached near the valve; his lips moved, counting. Satisfied, he eased it into the open frame channel, snug, as if it had been built for that exact dimension.
“The Dragons are proud of their tankless design,” Carmen said. “Minimalist. All go, no fluff.”
“They are?” Bree murmured. “So why does that look like a tank?”
Carmen frowned. “Maybe it’s a dampener that will help absorb the vibration of the handlebars.”
“It doesn’t seem to be mounted where it would absorb anything,” Bree said. The words came out before she could second-guess them. “It’s hidden.”
Heidi’s voice climbed, irritated. “I don’t care what the old spec says, Elliot, the cameras have moved since then, and if you can’t adapt, you’re holding us back.”
Bree forced her attention away from Einstein for a moment. Heidi had stepped closer to the manufacturer rep, gestures sharp. The rep looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.
