Page 47 of Knot So Lucky
I process this information while we walk, my mind already calculating implications.
Merged teams mean merged technical crews. New hierarchy structures. Potentially working with people who have completely different methodologies and priorities. The chaos would be astronomical, and the potential for conflict—both interpersonal and professional—would be off the charts.
"The only good news," Roran continues as we approach the garage entrance, "is that some secret player won our virtual race qualifier this morning."
Cale and I share a look.
His grey eyes meet my storm-green ones with perfect understanding, and I have to suppress a smirk that would be entirely too telling.
"What do you mean by 'secret'?" Cale asks, voice carefully neutral.
"Dante dropped out like the childish coward he is," Roran explains, disdain dripping from every word. "So someone logged in last minute and did a twelve-race winning streak. Now the other teams are trying to claim we hacked the system or some shit."
"Hacked?" I keep my tone skeptical. "That's a serious accusation."
"Right? But the officials did a security check, and everything came back legitimate. Login was from our official servers,credentials were properly encrypted, everything by the book. So they can't rule us out or disqualify the results."
We reach the garage entrance, and the sound of raised voices immediately filters through the open bay doors.
"The system's encrypted enough that they can't figure out who actually logged in and raced," Roran continues, oblivious to the fact that he's currently walking next to the mystery racer. "But I'm sure Pemberton's going to be all over it. If someone on our crew can race like that virtually, he'll want to know what they're doing in an actual car."
My stomach does a complicated flip.
That's... not good.
The last thing I need is scrutiny on my racing abilities. Questions about where I learned to drive like that. Speculation about why I'm wasting talent in the pit crew instead of competing professionally.
Questions that would inevitably lead to discovering that Rory Lane, the pit tech, isAuroraLane, and that the talented tech everyone's been praising is actually an Omega woman hiding in plain sight.
We step into the garage proper, and the scene is immediately chaotic.
A crowd has gathered around the three prototype cars lined up in testing configuration.
Richard Pemberton stands in the center like a general surveying a battlefield, his face red with frustration and his body language screaming Alpha dominance in a way that makes my suppressant-dampened instincts want to make myself smaller.
I catch several of the pit crew members' eyes, and they give me subtle nods of acknowledgment.
Marco mouths "good luck" while Jenna just shakes her head like she's watching a trainwreck in slow motion.
"—three models of this shit and yetnothingis working!" Richard's voice carries across the garage with the particular pitch of someone who's been yelling for a while. He whirls on Dante, who's leaning against one of the cars with studied casualness that doesn't quite hide his tension. "Go do another test run and try to hit faster race numbers than Luca's record."
Luca Thorne.
The name makes me pause, remembering the virtual race this morning.ThorneCrownin second place, beaten byGhostShift88.
By me.
Dante huffs, pushing off from the car with obvious reluctance. "I'm going to spin out of control with that shit. The handling's completely off."
"We need to figure out what's wrong with this new model," Richard snaps back, "which may mean you have to take risks with it. We're not waiting until race day to discover problems."
"What's the deal?" Roran speaks up, his voice cutting through the tension with the authority of someone who actually knows what he's talking about.
Several of the techs jump in, explaining the technical issues in rapid-fire succession.
"Suspension's reading is inconsistent across all three models?—"
"Differential's not distributing torque properly?—"
