The morning at the Silverstone circuit was cold enough to make the lungs ache. For Leo Kaito, it was the first day of his official life as a racing driver. No longer a ghost in the garage, no longer the man with the laptop and the toolbox. Today, he was the asset of the team.
He stood in the middle of the Arcadia Racing garage, watching the chanics move around the Dallara F2 chassis. It was the sa car he had driven during the Young Driver Test, but now it felt different. It was his. His na, "L. KAITO," was printed in small, white letters on the side of the survival cell, right next to a small Japanese flag.
"Stop staring at it and get in," Anya said. She was wrapped in a heavy team jacket, a clipboard tucked under her arm. "We have three hours of shakedown before we pack the crates for lbourne. Every minute you waste is a minute of data we don’t have."
Leo nodded. He felt strangely calm. The night before, he had finished Level 1 of Phase 2 in the Six pod. The victory over the "Ghost of the Master" and the completion of those hundred grueling laps of Suzuka had rewarded him with ten extra Freedom Units. Added to his previous balance, he now had twenty-seven days.
Twenty-seven days. It was a fortune. It was enough to cover the flight to Australia, the race weekend at Albert Park, and the flight back. For the first ti since the pod had sealed him in, the countdown in his mind wasn’t screaming. It was a steady hum.
"Seat fitting first," Sarah, the lead engineer, called out. "Leo, jump in. We need to pour the foam."
The seat fitting was a slow, uncomfortable process. In the simulator, the seat was a generic bucket designed to fit anyone. In a real F2 car, the seat was a custom-molded piece of carbon fiber and high-density foam. They poured a chemical mixture into a plastic bag, and Leo had to sit on it while it expanded and hardened around his body.
"Stay still," Sarah warned. "If you move, you’ll have a pressure point that will feel like a knife in your back after ten laps."
Leo sat perfectly still. He used the "Focused" ntal state he had developed in the pod to ignore the heat and the chemical sll. He focused on the contact points, his shoulder blades, his lower back, the curve of his thighs. He could feel the foam pushing into every gap.
Once the seat was set, they moved to the pedal box.
"How’s the brake pressure?" Sarah asked as Leo pressed the pedal.
Leo closed his eyes. He didn’t just feel the pedal; he felt the hydraulic fluid moving through the lines. He felt the way the pads touched the discs. "It’s too long. Give a shorter throw. I want the bite to be imdiate, like a trigger."
Sarah looked up from her laptop. "Most rookies want a bit of travel so they don’t lock up."
"I won’t lock up," Leo said.
It wasn’t arrogance. It was a statent of fact. His "Perfect Braking" skill was at the Max Tier. He could sense the friction limit better than the car’s own sensors.
By noon, the car was ready. The engine fired up, a raw, vibrating roar that filled the garage and made the floorboards tremble. This wasn’t the digital sound of the pod; this was a physical force.
"Okay, Leo," Anya’s voice ca through his headset. "This is a shakedown. Check the systems. Warm the tires. Do not push. I repeat, do not push."
"Copy," Leo said.
He rolled out of the garage. The pit lane was quiet, the air slling of cold tarmac and unburnt fuel. As he crossed the line and hit the track, the reality of physics hit him.
In the simulation, the G-forces were represented by pressure pads and a tilting base. In the real world, they were a violent, invisible hand trying to crush him. He turned into Abbey, the first corner, and his neck muscles strained against the weight of his helt.
[Reaction Speed: SSS.
Track Adaptation: 98.1%.]
The stats were there, but his body was the bottleneck. He realized that while his brain could process the corner at 300 kiloters per hour, his neck was struggling to keep his head upright.
"He’s taking it easy," one of the junior chanics remarked, watching the teletry screens in the garage.
"Wait for it," Anya said, her eyes fixed on the sector tis.
On lap three, the "taking it easy" ended. Leo felt the tires reach their operating temperature, 100 degrees Celsius in the core. He heard the pitch of the engine change as the turbo reached its peak efficiency.
He didn’t decide to go faster. The frawork simply opened the throttle.
He flew through the Maggots and Becketts complex. In the F2 car, the car didn’t just turn; it flexed. He felt the chassis twist under the load. He felt the wind trying to lift the front wing. He used his "Auditory Mapping" to listen to the wind whistling through the bargeboards.
"Sarah, the front-left is washing out at high speed," Leo reported, his voice steady despite the 4G load. "The aero balance is too far back. Give two clicks of front wing when I co in."
"Two clicks?" Sarah whispered to Anya. "That’s a huge adjustnt for a rookie to ask for."
"Do it," Anya said.
Leo pitted, the chanics scrambled to adjust the wing, and he went back out.
The change was imdiate. The car felt more "pointy." He could dive into the corners with more aggression. He started to use the "Human Glitch" lines he had perfected in the pod, lines that used the kerbs to rotate the car faster than the engineers thought possible.
[GARAGE RADIOS: "What the... look at the sector two ti! He just beat the track record for an F2 car at Silverstone. In a shakedown!"]
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