The bottom drops out of Clarke’s gut, replaced with rising fear. She can’t think straight. She’s a danger to herself and everyone on the track. She’s—
“We think there’s something wrong with your ship’s air supply.” Who’s talking? “Pull to the top-right relative.”
Clarke’s dizzy. There’s a curve up ahead. She takes it.
“Clarke?”
There’s blood in her mouth. What track is this? Where is she?
“Clarke, if you can hear me, you need to slow down.”
She tries. She really does. But she forgets that the spiral was last lap’s changed variable, and it’s a loop longer now. Her oxygen-starved brain can’t compensate in time. She tries to straighten out while the track keeps curving, and her perception splinters further.
A streaky view of a spectator platform, and—
Her control deck goes red, and—
The barrier’s impermeable in areas where there are spectators, and—
The first rule of surviving a Formula Zero crash is to kill the engine, but—
Impact.
38
“—Mars. You are recovering frominjuries sustained while competing in a Formula Zero Grand Prix. Please remain calm and still. Staff members will arrive shortly to assist you. Good afternoon, Madeline Clarke. You are in Olympic City Medical Center on Mars. You are recovering—”
Sound comes back first, a set of short, clear sentences on a loop. They float around in her brain like leaves on running water, finally making sense somewhere around the tenth repetition.
She crashed. Badly, if she’s at a full hospital, not just in-paddock Medical. A hospital onMars? Wonderland’s closer to Earth than Mars, why would they—
Vision, smell, and taste all come back together. Dim light filters in through her eyelids, the crisp scent of sterility tickles her nose, the backs of her teeth leave a heavy staleness on her tongue. She slits her eyes open warily.
Healing pod. A full-size one, like she’s inside a giant bubble, as opposed to the smaller models they seal around injured limbs to repair more localized damage. The curved walls are a shade of blue that’s probably supposed to be soothing, but is too close to Elemental blue to have that effect on Clarke. There’s nogravity; she’s floating, suspended mid-bubble. Her body, the parts of it she can see, is dotted with adhered sensors between the modesty wraps around her hips and chest. An IV access line is secured to her inner elbow.
There’s a holoscreen in front of her face. The words she can hear are displayed there in the six most common written languages.
She’s missing a sense. She can’t feel anything.
It’s probably drugs. She’s probably not paralyzed.
She closes her eyes.
—
There’s a flurryof activity that Clarke experiences in bits and pieces, once the hospital staff realize she’s awake. A nurse and a doctor enter the healing pod, run her through a series of tests, and transfer her to a gurney. Gravity reasserts itself on her body the instant she’s out of the pod, and while she’s relieved to find that she’s not paralyzed, the pain is—
A noise tears out of her, primal and wounded. The doctor bursts into motion, ready to up the dosage on her painkiller, but the nurse stops them. “Give her a second to adjust. This pain will pass, Ms. Clarke. Your partner said to remind you to breathe like you’re in the seat.”
In for four, hold for four, out for eight. Yes. Yes, she can do that.
Her first exhale is choppy. A wheezing cough that racks her whole body forces itself free of her lungs right after, but the next cycle of respiration is smoother. The next is smoother still. The sluggish-spiky-gnarled sensation starts to fade, receding along her limbs, centralizing in her chest and head. It’s manageable there, at least. She can build walls around the pain, cordon it off.
“Well done,” the nurse says. “Would you like stronger—”
“No,” Clarke croaks, fragmented thoughts going to the next race and eligibility to compete. Strong painkillers can take days to filter out of the body, and she can’t fly if there’s anything impairing her system. “I’m fine. It’s better. I’m fine.”
—
