Chapter 102: Saturday; Sprint II
The blue notification arrived at 9:23.
He was in the pit lane, walking the grid, when the flicker appeared at the edge of his vision. He stopped beside the P10 marker on the Albert Park asphalt and looked at it.
『SATURDAY REMINDER — FREEDOM UNITS STATUS.』
『Current Balance: 55 FU.』
『Sprint Race (23 laps): Podium Finish = +30 FU. Bonus for Race Win = +45 FU.』
『Feature Race (40 laps): Podium Finish = +40 FU. Bonus for Race Win = +60 FU.』
『Reminder: Balance below 0 initiates pod proximity requirement within 48 hours.』
『Current buffer: Substantial. Current risk: Low.』
He read it.
55 units. Low risk. The pressure that had been sitting underneath every session since he arrived at Albert Park — the specific, cold pressure of a clock that ran in one direction — had lifted enough to breathe.
But not enough to stop.
30 more units for a Sprint Race podium. 45 for a win. He thought about the Feature Race, the main event, the one that generated the real points and the real life-force that kept the system running.
He thought about starting P10 in twenty-three minutes.
He thought about nine cars between him and the front.
The notification faded.
He looked at the P10 marker on the grid and then looked forward at the nine markers ahead of it. At the track surface beyond them — the long main straight, the grandstands, the morning light coming off the lake at an angle that put long shadows across the Turn 1 entry.
Perfect hunting ground.
He turned back toward the garage.
---
Leo suited up in silence.
The race suit went on in the sequence that was now automatic — the same sequence as the pod preparation, the same movements, the same order. Left glove first. HANS over the shoulders. Helmet last. The balaclava tight against his face, the padding pressing against his temples, the world narrowing to the familiar smell and the cool shadow inside the carbon fibre shell.
Around him the garage moved at race pace. Not the controlled urgency of qualifying preparation. The sharper, more compressed energy of the final minutes before a race — mechanics with their attention on each other, on the car, on the pit wall where Anya stood with her headset on and her eyes on the clock above the lane entrance.
Elias ran Leo through the final strategy notes. Tyre temperatures at race start. Predicted degradation curve across twenty-three laps. Two DRS zones — activation points, detection loops, the windows where the wing opened and the straight-line speed differential against different car types would be meaningful.
Leo listened.
He processed.
He filed it below the Racing Instinct that was already running at a level he hadn't opened on Friday. Already present. Already shaping the framework in ways that felt less like calculation and more like current — a live thing moving through the system, reading the environment, waiting to meet the race.
Pete appeared at the car.
"All yours," he said.
Leo climbed in.
The harness went on. The steering wheel clicked in. The screens lit up across the dash. All the same information he had seen in qualifying — sector timings, tyre temperatures, brake bias, DRS status, race gap projections — updating in real time as the car's systems came online.
He looked through the visor at the pit lane ahead.
Nine cars were rolling toward their grid positions ahead of him. He could see the scarlet of the Prema cars, the silver-and-red of ART, the dark blue of DAMS moving through the lane in a slow, controlled procession. The championship frontrunners starting where the reversed grid had put them. Some of them frustrated about it.
Some of them calculating the same thing he was calculating — how quickly position could be recovered across twenty-three laps on a circuit that didn't give it away easily.
He let the car breathe around him.
He felt the engine's idle through the seat. The vibration in the chassis. The specific, real-world texture of a Formula 2 car at rest that the pod had approximated and the real world had kept improving on across every session of the weekend.
He looked at P10 on the grid.
He looked at the track beyond it.
He thought about nine cars. Twenty-three laps. A field that had spent the night building models around what he had shown them on Friday, using those models to prepare strategies that assumed Friday was the full picture.
He put his hands on the wheel.
"Leo," Anya's voice in the radio. "Formation lap in two minutes."
"Copy," he said.
He looked through the visor one final time at the Albert Park main straight. The morning sun was higher now, the shadows shorter, the asphalt in full light — every rubber mark and tyre trace from Friday still visible in the surface. His marks. His corners. His lap record on a circuit that had not known his name twenty-four hours ago.
He let out one slow breath.
Nine cars. Twenty-three laps.
The Racing Instinct was not at 9.1% anymore.
He didn't know what it was at. He had stopped watching the number. Watching it was a management habit and he was done managing.
He pressed the radio switch.
"Elias," he said. Voice completely flat. Completely level.
"Go ahead."
"I'm going to come home first."
A pause. He heard Elias exhale on the radio. Not in disbelief. In the specific way of a man who had been watching telemetry all weekend and had arrived, slowly and then all at once, at the point where the statement was not a boast and was not a claim.
It was a projection.
"Copy," Elias said. "Come home first."
The formation lap light came on above the pit lane exit.
Green.
Leo released the clutch. The Arcadia #24 rolled forward. The tyre graining from the stationary position resolved itself in three metres. The car was moving. The track was ahead. The nine cars in front of him were already rolling through Turn 1.
He looked at the space between himself and the car ahead.
He whispered it into the balaclava where no one could hear it. Not into the radio. Not for Anya. Not for Elias. Not for the paddock or the broadcast feed or the eighty-five thousand people filling the grandstands around the lake.
Just for the framework. Just for the thing that had been building since Silverstone at 3 AM.
"Time to release more."
The formation lap began.