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Chapter Sixteen

Shantal

‘T urn hard, turn hard, more, a little more …’

Jack Lyons chants his encouragement as I watch Henri take his trainer’s suggestion and lurch to the side on the sim, gritting his teeth against the weight of the steering. As the development driver, he is essentially next in line to either of the two seats, Darien’s and Miguel’s, whichever might require filling at some point. So we’ve been working him up the walls just as much as the other two, and now I’m throwing the brand-new Ring simulation track I tailored with mods picked out from the Cantagalo drive into the regimen. It has all three drivers just as nervous as I’d intended. It’s a fair reaction; it’s been a good two weeks since the football game, and they’ve not got so much as a look at the new system. This is a surprise for all of us, which is what makes it so perfect.

‘Whoa!’ Miguel yelps, physically recoiling from the screen. ‘Guys, Turn Seven, there’s some weird … is that a chicane on elevation? Dude, what’d I just experience?’ he calls out to the other two.

‘Warning would have helped about ten seconds ago,’ Darien grumbles with an exhausted air. ‘What’d you put in this sim?’

Knowing I’m making men who are supposed to be at the top of their sport struggle gives me a wicked burst of satisfaction. I have to hold back a slightly evil smile as Darien tugs his car around yet another hairpin turn. They’ve not even encountered the worst of it yet – the very reason this sim was so highly sought after by Heidelberg.

As the guys each come to the end of their first few practice laps, the screens display a rest prompt, and I get to work on my end. I run the new program on my control computer. ‘Okay, and now I’m going to throw a couple of things in there for the next few laps,’ I warn them.

‘You’re throwing in more than whatever the hell we just did ?’ exclaims Miguel incredulously.

I just shrug and bring my cursor over the button that will push the program to the simulators. ‘Have fun.’

With a click of my mouse, the real Conquest simulation starts to run on all three set-ups. It looks fairly normal at first, with a rolling start when the drivers guide the car through and out onto the track. This time, I’ve enabled opponents, with nineteen other cars on each simulator.

The sims themselves are well-crafted pieces of technology, essentially a chassis with a screen set-up that wraps all the way around, so the driver, suited in their helmet and strapped into the seat, feels as if they’re in the actual car. Conquest’s physical set-up is a tad different from most of the existing technology, integrating statistics obtained from the wind tunnel tests we’ve received so far from Heidelberg HQ in Germany to create a level of resistance, porpoising – bouncing of the car – and handling that mimics the real thing as closely as possible. But the jewel in the crown of the new simulators is in the program and its ability to learn – to use the sensors in the seat, in the pedals, all throughout the chassis to scope out the driver’s style. And then, it does something magical with that learning.

About one lap in, the changes start to kick in.

‘Wait, what the hell? That turn wasn’t there before, Shantal!’ Miguel sounds like he’s just seen a ghost. It almost makes me burst out laughing.

‘It’s changing! ’ Darien yelps in horror.

‘That’s the point,’ Celina chides him, although she looks as entertained as I do. She gives me a satisfied nod.

To be honest, out of everyone, Henri handles the new program with the most grace. I think it’s because his ego has yet to grow to the size of the average Formula 1 driver’s (something I’m learning more and more about as I spend time around hotshots Miguel and Darien). He’s still willing to be humbled, and at the end of the practice run, once the sim displays the rest screen again and all three drivers lean back with heavy sighs, I’m fairly confident that even if his turn speeds aren’t as fast as those of the other two, it’s his driving that will have been the most consistent through all the adaptive track shifts.

We round everyone up for a debrief once the guys have grabbed water and talked with their trainers. Darien, still toting a water bottle, has the first question.

‘Bro. What in the Labyrinth was that?’ he asks in disbelief, throwing his hands in the air and almost flinging his water bottle at Miguel in the process.

‘Well, the goal of this new technology is to target your soft spots,’ I offer. ‘Trying to take the things you all have the lowest times on and make them faster. And as I discovered, that’s your explosive motions. Your response times, your times around fast turns, when you’re looking to take a gap, those can be faster. And since you, Darien, had the fastest times around sharp turns, I’ve used footage from the kind of driving you learned that helps you react faster on the track to create a modded version of the Heidelberg Hybridge Ring. What you just saw is essentially what happens when you take the Heidelberg Ring and lay it over the Cantagalo favela.’

‘You did that?’ I’m not sure if the look on Darien’s face is one of fear any more, but his arms have lowered, and his brows furrow together. ‘That’s unbelievable .’

‘And the way it kept changing …’ Henri trails off with a shudder. ‘What was that?’

‘The simulator is capable of learning from the way you drive. So every move you made in it, literally, was stored and analyzed to change the track on the next lap according to where you were weakest. Where you needed reps, so to speak,’ I tell him.

‘Reps?’ echoes Darien with a raised eyebrow.

‘For the record,’ I shoot back, ‘you’d be shocked at all the places you need work.’

Miguel purses his lips, but I can tell he’s holding back a laugh when he meets my eyes with a poorly concealed grin. As he and Henri head off to hit the showers, Darien hauls himself onto the edge of the desk where the computer sits before turning to look my way. ‘You gotta take a compliment, Shantal. This is really amazing.’

‘Flattery’s not going to get me to change my opinion of you, you know.’ I close out the computer program before locking eyes with Darien. It shouldn’t affect me that his gaze is so big and bold, always with the aura of someone who’s about to tell the funniest joke you’ve heard in your life. This man has caused me nothing but grief since I got here.

‘Oh, I know that.’ He leans in with a mischievous smile that makes my limbs tingle. Stop it, Shantal. ‘But I kinda thought you were rethinking said impression on that turf, what, two weekends back?’

I roll my eyes. That moment was a brief lapse in judgement, and I’m determined to put it behind me. ‘You’re so unserious . I’m here to get a job done, Darien.’

‘Doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun while you’re at it!’ he insists. ‘The season is a snowballing pile of stress. If you don’t cut loose, you’re never going to survive it.’

‘Is that all you wanted to share with me, then?’

‘I mean, kind of, yeah.’ He shrugs, but my nonchalant attitude hasn’t caused the honest glimmer in his eyes to fade at all. ‘You can stay upset at me if you want. I’m not here to change your mind. You just strike me as someone who does a lot of really, really phenomenal things and doesn’t get the flowers she deserves for it. So I’m giving you flowers. Take them.’

Darien hops down from the desk and leaves the room with a wave goodbye, but his voice doesn’t leave with him. Giving you flowers .

I think of Sonia, my parents’ perfect child. All the stress of this assignment. The fact that maybe Raya should have had this opportunity to work in Brazil. And then I think of Darien, who knows nothing of the weight I’ve been shouldering since I was old enough to realize it. And he says to me, he will give me flowers.

Flowers .

I allow myself the smallest chuckle before I grab my backpack and walk out.