As he and his sister grew more distant, Echo Shen found himself thinking more and more about ‘home’.

Today was race day for the Basinside GP, Lotus’s final calendar race for 2023—and her last chance to punch her name into the starting grid of the national championship.

It was also Echo’s second race in the official capacity of ‘development intern’ for GCC. And on both occasions, he couldn’t help but feel like an accessory rather than an integral part of the team.

“This just came in. Manny Dover’s pulled out in the last minute,” Iver Gambit announced to the members gathered inside the Garage, as part of his pre-race pep talk. “He’s diverting to the Everspring Trophy instead, his hometown race. Going for the guaranteed 20 points instead of fighting Lotus for 30. Doesn’t change what we need to do though. Win the race today and we guarantee our spot in the Morrowtide GP.”

Morrowtide GP… the national championship. The race Lotus had convinced herself would be her and Echo’s ticket home. But why was his sister so fixated on going ‘home’ in the first place?

“Marly, any issues on your end?”

“Fenghuolun’s running like ghee, chief,” Marly Kobukuro the diminutive technical director answered with her trademark dimply smile. “I’m still waiting on confirmation from race control about the track conditions, though. Weather in Basinside gets unpredictable this time of the year. Since we came in this morning, we’ve already had five changes to the forecast.”

“Well, we better hope it’s all good news then. Neto? Anything to add?”

Eyes turned toward Neto Delphi, the latest addition to the team. He was a squat middle-aged man barely any taller than Marly, which meant GCC could surely lay claim to the title of ‘shortest’ engineering department in all of Chakram racing.

Iver had arranged for the new hire while the team had been on the road between Seaforth and Dunehold (where Lotus had won her third calendar race), supposedly having leaned on his father’s former connections to do so. Neto had been with the team for the better part of a month now, but he and Echo had barely spoken.

Echo himself did find that strange, for he considered himself to be shy but capable of getting along with anyone. Yet, while Neto was certainly a pleasant enough fellow, and appeared more than competent in Echo’s untrained eyes, there was just something about the new arrival he didn’t trust—something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

“Kobukuro-san’s got it all under control, I reckon,” Neto now said, displaying his amiable humility by addressing the much younger woman with an honorific. “The only thing I’ll add is, good luck out there, Ms Shen! Not that you’ll need it.”

And now the attention turned to Lotus Shen: GCC’s flagship pilot, the dynamite rookie on the cusp of booking placement on the championship grid after just four calendar races.

Lotus now sat on a bench opposite from the rest of the team, elbows on knees, head lowered to make her appear as though she might be in the midst of a silent prayer. Echo knew that wasn’t the case, for his sister didn’t have a religious bone in her. Seeing her hyper-focused like this, however, he himself felt a shudder down his spine: something of a spiritual experience unto itself.

With every day that drew nearer to the end of the calendar year, Lotus looked less like his sister and more like a championship fighter ready to lay down her life to defend the belt. In these moments before the team wheeled onto the grid, where the air buzzed with nervous electricity and last-minute instructions, Lotus Shen was a creature that agitated within her own plane of existence—an avatar of concentrated hunger and sheer force of will.

Nothing could come between her and her victory. Not even her own brother.

“Lotus?” Iver called, a note of awe tarnishing his picture of calm and command; did he feel the same thing Echo did? “Anything on your mind?”

Lotus looked up, and there, reflected within her eyes, were not the Garage nor the teammates that surrounded her, but the asphalt that stretched toward her main prize, and the fallen rivals that would lie in her wake.

She shook her head, wordless. No words were needed.

“Alrighty then!” Iver clapped his hands. “T-5 minutes to the starting grid, boys and girls. Stay sharp!”

As the team broke the huddle and each member resumed their last-minute routines, Echo couldn’t help but notice that his name alone hadn’t been called during the meeting.

He knew that there was no reason for Iver to include him. He was by far the least experienced member of the team, with by far the meagrest knowledge base and skill set to offer. But there was still something disconcerting about the fact that his sister was doing all of this to bring him ‘home’, and yet she and the team proceeded as though he weren’t in the room with them.

Just then, Echo was distracted from his brooding by a sight that had gotten uncomfortably familiar of late.

“Neto.” Lotus stood from her throne and called to the new performance engineer. “A moment?”

The squat older man quickly sidled up to Lotus as the two of them headed off on their own, away from the Garage and back toward the paddock where teams kept their transported supplies. From where Echo sat, he could see that the pair’s heads leaned toward each other in private conversation. Then they turned a corner and disappeared from view.

Iver and Marly paid them no mind, but Echo couldn’t help but feel a prick of anxiety. That amorphous sense of not being able to trust Neto… he thought he might have found the source. What were the two of them up to, and so close to the start of the race?

The sane and healthy thing would’ve been to talk about it, just ask Lotus: hey, I see you’ve been talking a lot with Neto lately; what’s that about? But communication between the siblings had never been easy at the best of times, let alone now when Lotus constantly simmered with a singular focus.

But maybe I could spy on them? Just like old days…

Echo stood, ready to follow his sister and her performance engineer to the paddock.

“Shit!” Marly’s loud exclamation stopped Echo in his tracks. He thought he was about to be yelled at, but Marly had her eyes glued to the iSlab in her hands. “Word just came through from race control. It’s going to be a wet race. Apparently the drizzle is gaining steam.”

“Shit,” Iver echoed, “do we even have time to make the changes?”

“All the teams are going back out for another sighting lap to test the new settings. We need to do that too. Wait, where’s Lotus?”

“She was here just a moment ago. Where—”

“Well, we can’t test shit if we don’t have a pilot, can we?” Marly yelled, uncharacteristically agitated.

“Stay calm, Marly,” Iver chided, though he himself sounded no less worried. “Couldn’t you do the test?”

“Maybe, if I had someone else eyeballing the data for me. Speaking of, where’s Neto? What the fuck?”

“I mean, I would do it, but I’m afraid I won’t generate any useful data with my shitty riding… or worse yet, I might manage to crash Fenghuolun in my attempt. Naraka! I knew I should’ve hired a test pilot when I took over this company…”

Echo, of course, knew exactly where Lotus and Neto had gone. As he opened his mouth to speak, however, something inside him shifted.

It was a kind of yearning that had soured and festered in its neglect, and he’d finally found his chance for a release. So, instead of informing his team of his sister’s whereabouts, he said,

“I can do it. I’ll be the test pilot.”

Iver and Marly swivelled in unison to gape at him.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“You?” Iver stammered. “No, we can’t let you do that, Echo. It’s not safe. Besides, what would Lotus—”

“Well, she’s not here, is she? And Iver, you of all people should know that I’m ready for this. You’ve seen me.”

At this, Iver cast his eyes to the floor with a guilty expression. He of course knew what Echo meant—had even egged on his ‘secret’ project to its completion.

“We haven’t got any time to waste, Iver,” Echo urged. “Will you let me ride Fenghuolun or not?”

After another moment of painful hesitation, Iver nodded. Marly puffed out her cheeks and blew out a lengthy sigh, shaking her head as she did. Her eyebrows were turned up to the ceiling and spoke plenty of what she thought of Iver’s decision: welp, it’s your funeral.

Then it was a mad scramble to find riding suits that fit Echo (mission failed; his wrists poked out of the sleeves, and his exposed ankles felt clammy inside the boots). Marly yelled a few words of instruction in his ear, then he was off to the races.

As raindrops gathered in momentum and swam across the hydrophobic visor of his helmet, Echo felt, if not the happiest, then at least the freest he’d had in weeks. Fenghuolun beneath him sang with a power and grace he’d rarely experienced, a far cry from Uncle Dave’s Honda he used to sneak out back in the day.

In fact, the last time he’d felt so liberated had been the fortnight he spent as a ‘hostage’ inside Drake Tower. There, he’d been allowed his first taste of Chakrams, and Luna Drake had coached him on the all-important details that separated professionals from amateurs.

Echo could never admit this to Lotus, but those two weeks spent zooming around the Drakes’ indoor racing circuit had by far been the most fun he’d had in Stormvast. Perhaps the most fun he’d had anywhere.

Until today.

A rider from another team passed him on the inside of a sharp turn, cutting dangerously close to Fenghuolun’s frame. Echo let out a whoop of excitement, then lined himself up with the slipstream created by the would-be overtaker. He then got his revenge on the next feature, slipping out at just the right moment to accelerate onto the ensuing straightaway.

“Hah!” Echo exclaimed into his helmet, awash in an addictive concoction of dopamine and adrenaline.

Where had magnificent machines like Fenghuolun been all his life? As Echo rounded the final curve on the track and pulled back into the pit lane, he wished fervently for two things.

First, that the lap would never end. And second, that he’d stumbled into Stormvast sooner. Much sooner.

For he felt the answer to his own doubts as surely as the raindrops that pelted against his helmet. Astride a speeding Chakram was where he belonged. Vying with rivals travelling at 200 mph was when he felt most alive—most himself.

For Stormvast was his home.

But as he pulled into the Garage, his elation quickly dissipated, for there was a tense—almost fearful—mood among the team members that greeted his return.

And his sister somehow stood tallest among them, with eyes that earlier saw only the race ahead now incandescent with rage.

Echo didn’t meet them as he rolled to a stop. The whole team was silent as he doffed his dripping helmet, but even before he could cut the engine, Lotus started in on him.

“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?”

Echo’s hand froze, and Fenghuolun continued to idle beneath him. The boy kept his gaze downcast as he said, as calmly as he could, “Helping Marly test out the wet track settings.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Lotus snarled, her nostrils flared. “Why the fuck are you the one riding Fenghuolun?”

This time Echo did look up, the heat rising in him in an instant. He yelled, “Well, what else was I supposed to do? You weren’t here.”

“But you’re not me!” Lotus nearly screamed. For a moment, a hush went over the entire Garage as the other teams turned toward the commotion. Iver reached out a tentative hand, murmuring half-hearted appeals for peace as he did, but Lotus wasn’t done, “You’re not a Chakram pilot. You don’t get paid to risk your health and life. You’re not even sixteen, for fuck’s sake! You should be in school, learning algebra and doing homework, instead of pretending you’re some grown-up with a real job.”

“I’m not pretending!” Echo matched his sister in volume, summoning a hitherto unknown fire fanned by his impotent rage. “I take this job seriously. Like everything I do. And I do a good job of it, Lotus. Ask Iver. Ask Marly. Ask anyone who actually pays any attention to what I do! Why should I just sit on the bench when you’re out there sacrificing yourself for the both of us?”

“Because I don’t need you to do anything else! Do you realize what this thing is, Echo?”—Lotus slapped Fenghuolun’s front fairing with enough force to shake the whole frame—“It’s not a toy. It can maim and kill, and it has. Why are you in such a hurry to hurt yourself? Do you want to end up like Raul Lampada? Like me, with my bum leg? Do you want to end up like our dad?”

“What’s wrong with being like our dad?” It was Echo’s turn to scream. He felt a rush of savage satisfaction as he saw his sister flinch. He continued, at last giving voice to the resentment that had festered for seven years, “I don’t know why you’re so dead set on hating him, Lotus, but I for one loved him. And I still do. Sure, he wasn’t perfect, but he tried his best for us, in his own way. You’re just too stubborn to see it! And you’re one to talk, when you’re more like our dad than anyone else I’ve met!”

“I—” For a moment, Lotus seemed too stunned to speak. But quickly, she set her face to stone and eyes to ice as she said, “I’ll never forgive Tory Shen for what he put us through. It’s because of him that we have to fight tooth and nail for every scrap we can get. It’s because of him that we’re in this fucking mess in the first place!”

Suddenly a sharp pain erupted in the base of Echo’s skull. It blinded him and sent him reeling, as he instinctively clutched at his chest.

For he, with perfect clarity, recognized the headache and the breathlessness that inevitably followed. It was the same pain that had haunted his childhood for nearly a decade, a pain he hadn’t felt in seven years—not since the night his parents died.

“Echo? What’s wrong?”

Though Echo could no longer see her, the concern was plain in his sister’s voice. But right now, he couldn’t answer her in kind.

Right now, he hated her. He hated her for infantilizing him all these years. He hated her for never believing nor believing in him. He hated her for the person she’d forced herself to become on his account.

For while his sister slept soundly in their shared bunkbed, on that fateful night seven years ago, Echo had heard everything.

In the days and years that followed, he’d managed to convince himself that it had all been a dream, the careless fantasies of a young mind addled by sleep. But he hadn’t imagined it. He had heard his mother resolve to sacrifice herself to save his life.

The seeds of doubt and wrongness from that night had compelled him to revisit it years later. Sure enough, his Internet searches about the night’s accident had turned up more unexplainable incongruencies. That dad’s Hayabusa had been completely undamaged, parked more than a hundred yards away from the scene of the accident. That both of his parents had suffered burn injuries despite there being no sign of a fire anywhere nearby. That, among the broken objects recovered from the wreckage, had been a mangled hunk of metal no one could identify…

Echo’s grip on his own chest tightened. He tried to speak, but his words came out only as soundless coughs. Then the wheezing began, that terrible siren emitted by those who’d lost the most basic function of life: that of filling their lungs with air.

Iver, Marly, and Neto all widened their eyes in alarm. Lotus’s eyes too widened, but hers did so in recognition.

For one perilous moment, Echo’s sister stood over his bent figure, frozen in the realization that he was about to perish before her eyes.

Lotus spun in place, her eyes scanning wildly around her vicinity. Her attention fell upon a large spanner, held limply within Marly’s hand. Without hesitation, she yanked the spanner out of a startled Marly’s grasp, and turned to face Echo again. Lotus then swung, with all the strength she could muster, with the end of the spanner aimed directly at Echo’s head.

Everything happened within an instant.

Echo had the sensation that the very air had been sucked out of his lungs and his immediate surroundings—and though he still couldn’t breathe, this feeling wasn’t accompanied by a fear for his life. For he was safe now—his entire being fully protected—within a spherical barrier of burning wind that materialized all around himself and Fenghuolun. Lotus’s spanner met this barrier with force, inches away from connecting with Echo.

Then Lotus went flying, driven backwards as if by a powerful gust of wind. The spanner clattered to the floor beside Fenghuolun, harmless, yet Lotus herself crashed onto and skidded across concrete.

Akashic Field powered down, and Echo gasped for air. Heart pounding from panic, he nevertheless found that his airways had re-opened, and he could breathe again, albeit not as freely as he had during his screaming match with Lotus.

Lotus! He tried to dismount and rush to his sister, but couldn’t find the strength in his legs. The rest of the GCC team was fully mobile, however, and they were already gathered by her side, looking on in horror as their flagship pilot groaned in pain and struggled to sit up.

“Someone make sure Echo’s okay,” Lotus grunted from the floor, “and if anyone here can track down a puffer… you know, the kind they use for asthma? Give it to Echo as soon as possible.”

Echo limply let himself be carried off Fenghuolun’s seat and onto a bench, where he concentrated on catching his breath. And as he watched Lotus get up and walk toward her Chakram, he saw with a horrible sinking feeling that she was limping again, favouring her left side. The earlier impact must’ve dislodged something in her left leg: the site of her gruesome injury at the Seaforth GP.

“Lotus, I—” he tried to speak, but his sister shushed him with a curt shake of her head.

“Just leave the rest to me, Echo,” she said, not without tenderness. “I’ll check on you after the race.”

Echo sank into his seat, racked with remorse. What if Lotus had aggravated her injury? What if it affected her race, causing her to miss out on the Morrowtide GP, injure herself again, or worse? All because he’d wanted to ride her Chakram out of spite…

As Echo Shen watched Lotus wheel Fenghuolun out of the Garage, he found himself drowning in self-loathing the depth of which he’d never known. For it turned out that, even seven long years after his parent’s death, Echo still needed a loved one to save him from himself.