Work Text:
It was 3 a.m. when Charles was awoken by the ringing tone of his phone. Darkness engulfed the room, and with it, his senses. He turned over, struggling to lift his eyelid. What he saw on the phone confused him. That was an unfamiliar number to him, calling him 3 times in a row within just 10 minutes, bypassing his Do Not Disturb.
An ominous feeling crept down his spine. Then, a voice—clipped, unmistakable—shattered the silence and the last remnants of his sleep. "I'm Christian Horner."
A pause, loaded and absolute. "We need you as Max Verstappen's race engineer."
He wasn't awake enough. Yet the voice, with its dreamlike quality, jolted him physically awake. He felt it was unreal.
"If you're in, get to Salzburg Airport by 10 a.m. tomorrow. Someone will be waiting."
"I'll be there." The words came out by instinct, just like how he responded to every instruction at work, though he could barely hear his own voice. He couldn't tell whether it was from his muddled, drowsy mind or the very nature of dreams.
"Great,Charles. I'll fill you in on the way."
**
The disorientation followed him into the cabin. He was still not sure whether any of this was real, but luckily, the doubt barely registered. Not that he cared. He connected to the onboard Wi-Fi, putting himself back within the team's reach. Sleep deprivation had left him acutely, unnaturally awake. He could recognize the individual elements swarming his vision—the backs of seats, the buttons, the tray tables—but he couldn't process how they fit together. His mind was lucid. In fact, it was this very lucidity that convinced him it must be a dream.
The last time such feelings had seized him was back in his GP3 days, when he'd been grappling with jet lag on his way to Australia. That was the first time he had ever travelled to a race entirely by himself. He hadn't finished all that he had to say to his team before boarding, but there was no Wi-Fi onboard back then, so all he could do was to rack his brain to put whatever came across his mind down on the notepad of his phone, imagining what his team would ask him and how he would reply. It had been clear to him that there was not much time left for him and his team. The earlier he finished his words, the more time left for his team to tune everything right. He had been intense, as well as nervous. His soul was consumed by the clock—a destiny sealed from the first time he slid into a go-kart. The scenes back then had seemed so real and full of destiny, but now it had been no more than a grand and imaginary dream. Through all these years he had been doubting whether it had really happened, or if it was all indeed just a fantasy, much like what he was experiencing now. Every day spent outside a racing car had been wearing down the authenticity of his memories, fading them into the quality of dreams.
His phone vibrated.
"You have boarded,haven't you?"
"GP is in the hospital. We need you to stand in for him for the next few races."
"Look for our staff in Red Bull gear at arrivals. They'll take you to the factory."
**
He had been Red Bull's reserve engineer for only two years, a young man whose very career seemed woven from the fabric of motorsport itself. His pedigree was impeccable: a standout karting career, a racing record in the junior categories, the formal credentials of an engineering degree and a stint in F2. No team could overlook such a past.
His rich on-track experience first earned him a role in the technical department, before prompting a transfer to the race team where, at just twenty-five, he was groomed as a reserve race engineer. He had always imagined serving promising young talents and had kept a keen eye on the junior drivers in the Red Bull stable, convinced that they were the future colleagues he would ultimately collaborate with.
The only name he had never even given a thought to was Verstappen.
The words were still burned onto his retina. It wasn't because of "GP," nor anything else—it was the name Verstappen. The name itself sizzled like a red-hot steel plunged into freezing water, sending a cloud of steam through the frozen depths of the memories he had struggled to forget.
He could see an incandescent steel ball cocooned in ice, sizzling and sputtering, carving a hollow tunnel through the frozen block as it melted its way forward. Everything he had built himself into was fated to be set ablaze the moment that ball breached the ice, just as he had felt the first time he climbed into his GP3 car. All his cultivated indifference and skepticism was merely a defense, a desperate attempt to prevent the resurgence of that devastating past.
For ten years he had submerged himself in the endless flow of telemetry data and the intricacies of race strategy, his only sunrise the one that found him still hunched over the simulator. The drivers he had imagined serving were the ascendant talents, the crown jewels of the junior series—the company he was meant to keep. He had forged himself into a precise instrument, all calibrated coolness and flawless function. He had believed this relentless precision could scour away the past, reducing it to a dream that should never have existed.
The instant he saw that name on his phone, it finally crashed in on him: he could never truly extricate himself from those red whirlpools swallowing his dreams with astonishing speed. He could never really leave behind the tracks he had once raced on.
And Verstappen was exactly the name that held the power to shatter it all.