Julian’s not expecting her. He’s probably busy. He might not even be on the planet. He might have company. He might havecompany. Clarke really should’ve just gone back to Luna or over to her mom’s, but—it just—
This week felt like driving down the pit lane toward the veil. You’ve done everything you’re about to do a million times before, and you’re sure it’s going to be fine, but what if it’s not? What if a mechanic didn’t fully secure a thruster shell? What if your air line is crimped? What if your wheels don’t retract, whatif the semipermeable force field suddenly turns nonpermeable, what if, what if, what if?
All of Elemental HQ has been tense. No one’s supposed to know about Clarke’s extension offer, but it sure seems like most of the team does and has jumped to the obvious conclusion that if Clarke was happy about what Elemental brought to the table, they’d have made an announcement by now. Clarke mostly kept her head down, drilling sims for the upcoming races ad nauseam, emerging only to step in when Raff was going too far berating team members again. By the time everyone was dismissed on Thursday night, she knew she needed to throw herself into something else instead of going back to her house and stewing all weekend. Something where she felt like she was taking action, not waiting for someone else’s decision.
She went to Val’s. She has a plan. There are holes in her plan she could fly a neighborhood-size cruiser through, but she has a plan. The plan does not include pacing outside Julian’s apartment.
Her pacing brings her close to the building’s front door. The scanner chimes. She backs away on instinct, sure it’s going to flash anAccess deniedmessage and tell her to leave the property, but instead the light bar goes green.Access granted. Welcome back, Ms. Clarke.
Julian still has her listed as an authorized guest?
The door opens for her. She steps across the threshold. There’s a bank of elevators; another scanner sets her destination to the tenth floor.
Julian’s waiting when the elevator lets her out. He’s standing in the open door to his apartment, an inscrutable look on his face. “I thought the system was erroring. What are you doing here?”
“Talking to you, hopefully,” Clarke says. “Can I come in?”
His apartment is as she remembers. Two stories, tidy but not clinically so, a pair of racing sims tucked into the corner, a display case of trophies and helmets and model ships against one wall. A picture of Julian and Connor in racing suits, arms across each other’s shoulders. The floor-to-ceiling window running the length of the living room looks out over a lake. There are traces of Clarke’s family everywhere she looks: a brightly colored blanket that must’ve been a gift from Imogen, a book about arthropods Kuari was reading a few months ago, a pot simmering on the stove that smells familiar.
“Is that Ihaka’s boil-up?”
Julian brushes past her, moving to the kitchen and stirring the pot. “It’ll be ready in thirty minutes, if you’re staying for dinner. I always make enough of this to feed everyone.”
“You should probably hear what I have to say before inviting me to stay for a meal.”
“Ominous. Should I be worried?” When Clarke doesn’t answer right away, Julian speeds up his motions, resetting the pod’s lid and crossing quickly to where Clarke is at the window. “Clarke?”
“You shouldn’t be worried,” Clarke says. “Well. Not. It’s—there’s a situation. There’s possibly a situation.”
“Let’s sit,” Julian says.
“I can’t sit. I’ve been sitting all day. I need to—” Clarke holds up her hands and kind of flaps them, trying to wordlessly articulate that she’s got too much pent up inside her.
“Okay.” Julian tilts his head toward the sims. “Race me?”
33
They pick Suzuka, a Terrantrack that hasn’t been used in F0 recently. Clarke doesn’t speak for the first few laps, trying to remember how she’d phrased everything when she was practicing on the trip here from Val’s.
“Anders and Yves are going to buy Elemental,” she begins.
On the screen in front of her, Julian’s ship jerks to the left. “Wow.”
“Yves offered me an extension. It’s the exact same as the contract I’m on now. If I stay, I’m agreeing that that’s what I’m worth, and giving Anders formal power over me.”
“So go somewhere else! I don’t believe for a second that other teams wouldn’t—”
“I’m not done.” Clarke passes one of the computer-generated pilots on a tricky cutback. “I think Yves is withholding repairs to my ship on purpose. So that after he and Anders take over, they can magically fix the technical problems and say that it was my fault for not being able to handle the ship properly.”
Julian pauses the sim. He closes his eyes, knocks his head against the headrest, and takes a very audible, very slow breath. “Your suspension, at Tempe Terra?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure yet which exactly—”
“Your power unit failure, at Monza?”
“I don’t know.”
Outrage rolls off Julian in waves. “You could have died. You need to—”
