Cold Days Between Brothers
Harinder hadn't spoken to Sukhman in three days.
They'd been moving in the same space — same hotel, same logistics, same air — but never in the same orbit.
Where once there had been quiet jokes and post-lap banter, now there was just only silence. Like someone had dropped a curtain between them and no one was brave enough to raise it.
Harinder typed, deleted, and retyped a dozen messages on his phone.
> "You okay?"
"I didn't mean it like that."
"She would've wanted you to move on."
None got sent.
Instead, he just forwarded Sukhman a schedule update.
> Memorial service – Charlotte Reid – 4:00 PM, Interlagos Main Hall
---
Her Final Lap – Charlotte's Memorial
The Interlagos main hall was repurposed into a chapel of silence.
A large photo of Charlotte Reid — grinning, helmet in hand — was placed in the center.
A string quartet played her favorite Coldplay song.
Racers stood shoulder to shoulder — grief and reverence keeping them silent. Even Callum Graves wore no jacket, no sponsor logos. Just a black shirt and white jeans.
A message from Charlotte's family was read aloud by the race director:
> "Charlotte raced like a way as if she living the best moment of her life — fast, fierce, and with fire in her chest. We lost her too soon. But the finish line she crossed… was one of legacy."
A reel played highlights from her career:
Her first pole lap in Spain.
The celebratory spinout in Suzuka.
Her laughter during a rain delay in Sepang.
Sukhman watched from the back, arms folded. No tears, just a clenched jaw.
---
Diego Montoya – Hanging by Threads
Back at Hospital das Clínicas, Diego Montoya remained unconscious.
Still intubated.
No progress.
The monitors beeped.
The heart rate steady.
But the spark — the Diego who danced at press events and blew kisses at cameras — isn't there.
His mother sat beside him, whispering stories. His father paced outside, refusing interviews.
A journalist captured a blurry image of Diego's unconscious body.
It went viral.
Racers called it "a breach in humanity."
IRC condemned it.
But the cracks in the racing world are already growing wider.
---
IRC Panel – First Suspicion Surfaces
In Geneva, the IRC's panel sat in stark silence.
A forensic software analyst spoke first:
> "We rechecked Reid's and Montoya's telemetry data."
> "And?"
> "At 39:22.7 in the race, there was a handshake request — unsolicited — between both ECUs. Same milliseconds."
The room fell quiet.
> "There's no reason for that unless something… external pinged both."
Another engineer added:
> "It's not possible from inside the car. The systems are on separate firewalls. This was remote. Likely a ghost signal injected via compromised team cloud infrastructure."
> "So someone accessed them during the race?"
A grim nod.
> "Yes. And they used both cars… as test beds."
---
Ghost of the Grid – Jia Tan's Guilt
Jia Tan sat on the hotel rooftop in her training shorts, staring out at São Paulo's skyline.
Her engineer, Li Wen, found her there with a nearly empty bottle of sake.
> "You didn't even know them well," she said gently.
Jia exhaled smoke from a clove cigarette. "Doesn't matter."
> "You survived. That should mean something."
"I wasn't supposed to. I never place ahead of Diego unless his car fails. That's not my talent. That... that's theft. I kind of robbed him out"
> "You didn't steal anything. The track chose you."
He chuckled, bitter. "No. Someone else chose what happened out there."
He looked out toward the darkening clouds.
> "The track didn't kill her. Someone else did."
---
A Clue in the Quiet – Harinder's Accidental Find
Harinder, desperate to distract himself, had started sorting through the old SIM logs, media archive dumps, and diagnostic copies on a backup drive.
Half out of habit. Half out of guilt.
He opened a corrupted telemetry recording from the Brazil GP — the one flagged as 'incomplete'.
It refused to load on normal playback.
> "Weird... file size is too large for a partial."
He tried again.
Still nothing.
But when he switched the audio feed to mono, something came through: a click—not part of the engine or team comms.
Then, a filtered voice. Just a single phrase:
> "Phase three… confirmed."
His blood ran cold.
---
He ran into the hallway, breath short, eyes wide.
> "Sukhman!" he yelled.
But the door to Sukhman's suite was locked.
Behind it, Sukhman sat at the desk, watching the same crash footage over and over again. Frame by frame. Rewind. Play. Pause. Rewind.
Trying to see if anything made sense.
Trying to figure out… if they were next.