“Clarke,” Graham says, a warning and a plea.
“Not yet,” Clarke breathes. She’s close enough now to hear Val and Julian with her own ears, her engine just a dull hum as she lurks beneath the portico. She waits, because you have to wait for the exact right moment to make a move like this. Even when it seems impossible, you have to wait until that feeling in your gut tells you to go for the overtake, the inversion, the open throttle. Her pulse is hammering everywhere—her fingertips in Julian’s gloves, her bare toes against the pedals of the ship, her spine and her skull and her belly—but she waits. Five red lights, all across the board.
She trusts Julian. She trusts herself.
“A pain in my ass until the very end, I’ll give you that,” Valsays, taking three steps forward. She puts a hand on Julian’s chest. “Goodbye, Julian.”
Julian falls. The reds go out.
“Clarke!” Sara screams, but Clarke’s already moving. She throws the ship forward, bones shrieking at the brutal acceleration, praying—
Julian lands on the nose of the ship.
You can’t just toss an extra seventy-odd kilograms at an F0 ship and expect it to function normally, especially when that weight hits far from the ship’s center of balance.Especiallywhen that ship’s already flying in gravity it’s not built for. The nose drops hard, and there’s nothing for Julian to grab on to that far forward. He starts to slip. Clarke pulls up, heaving on the control deck, jamming her toes against the pedal for pitch so hard that she feels something in her foot snap.
The ship whines in protest, Graham shouts corrections, and Clarke’s heart almost rips through her ribs during the interminable half second where nothing happens, but then it works. The ship levels out. Clarke cajoles it to tilt farther back. Julian slides along the nose until he bumps into the safety bars. He latches on with both hands.
He looks at her. Up close like this, the blood on his mouth is startlingly red, and she can make out popped vessels in his left eye. He double-checks his grip as Clarke slowly brings the ship back into balance, then uses one hand to unmute Clarke’s end—everyone’s end, now—of the call on his audio loop.
“Circumstances being what they are, I’m going to overlook the fine for you touching my ship,” he says.
Clarke’s going to explode, that’s how relieved she is. How euphoric she is, that this is over. How in love she is, with this idiotperched on the hood of her stolen ship, grinning at her like she’s the best thing he’s ever seen.
They have a lot to talk about. Julian’s going to remember to be pissed that she didn’t bring up her concerns about Val’s potential meddling earlier, and Clarke is already pissed that he ran off on his own to confront Val with only a call to Clarke and faith in his friend as a safety net. His team principal, someone they both trusted, tried to kill them. Elemental and Chronicle are going to be scrambling to recover from this. The damage will be extensive.
But they’re okay.
“Very considerate of you,” she says, voice thick. She clears her throat. “Graham? Got somewhere for me to set this ship down, or do we think I should just park on the roof of the Temple of Zeus and call it a day?”
45
The Formula Melee pilots requireon-site medics anytime they fly their ships, even for exhibitions like tonight. Clarke and Julian are tended to by these medics as low-level FIC staff try to get the night back on track. Actual FIC leadership are sequestered somewhere, reviewing footage and figuring out what to do.
Judging by the shouting Clarke can hear from two directions, neither attempt is going well.
“Did they honestly think everyone was just going to sit back down and listen to the third speaker after this?” Maki asks around a cheekful of food. He and Amira are with Clarke, Julian, and the medics in the Temple of Hera, one building over from Zeus. Their dinners were delivered by an intern who politely asked them to stay the hell out of sight until everything calmed down.
Graham has been pulled into an emergency meeting with Chronicle’s owner and directors. Sara, similarly, is talking with what remains of Elemental’s management. Val and Yves are in custody. Anders is being chased down.
What a fucking night.
“F0’s just one of the eight circuits,” Julian says, lispingaround his swollen tongue. “And only our two teams were involved. No need for everyone else’s night to be ruined.”
“Ruinedisn’t the word anyone’s using.” Amira’s the only one of them brave enough to have her holoscreen out, scrolling through media. “This was, quote, ‘the most entertaining event of the year, full stop.’ ”
“Third metatarsal’s definitely broken,” the medic working on Clarke’s foot confirms. “It’s a quick fix with a healing pod. We’ve got one on our ship, if you want to go now?”
Clarke is sitting on the floor, back against the pedestal of a huge statue of Hera. Her butt is cold from the stone. Her foot hurts. Her head hurts. She needs to talk to her mom and Rhynn, preferably in that order, and shower, and sleep for a week. She doesn’t want to move.
She holds up her container of food. “Can I finish eating first?”
“This one needs to go to the healing pod, too,” Julian’s medic announces. He has Julian’s chin pinched between his fingers and a scanner over Julian’s eye. “Hairline fracture to the zygomatic.”
“We can fix thaton our ship,” Clarke’s medic says pointedly.
Julian gives her a flat look. “Clarke said she wants to finish eating first.”
The medic makes an exasperated sound and starts packing her gear away. “I thought F0 pilots would have more sense, but you’re just as bad as the Melee guys.”
