( ACT I. ── The Becoming )
chapter three / Plight Left Unsatisfied
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Annika woke up on the morning of the Bahrain Grand Prix with a bad taste in her mouth. She rolled over onto her pillows and struggled to take a full breath, preparing herself to rise.
It was never, ever as bad as it was first thing in the morning.
She lifted herself onto her elbow and agony shot through her stiff neck, red-hot iron hooking into her spine, her jaw, the base of her skull. For a moment she felt as though she would pass out. She tried to rise, and the feeling vanished. Rising to sit was difficult, surprisingly so, and she failed. She felt terrifyingly weak, the muscles scaling her spine resisting even the simple command to sit up. The effort to finally find herself upright was enough to leave her winded, and she had to stop for a moment, breathing hard.
It took up to ten minutes for her to regain her full range of motion, steadily working the stiffness out of her neck until she was able to move her head side to side without resistance.
She swallowed ibuprofen for the pain and took a shower.
Matt would be knocking on her door soon, ready to hand over a printed itinerary of what to do and what not to do in preparation for the race, what she would be doing in the hours between now and then, and how to behave.
As she was brushing her teeth over the sink in her hotel room, her phone began to buzz with a familiar ringtone, one reserved only for the people closest to her. She accepted the FaceTime call and spoke around her toothpaste, "Guten Morgen, Greta."
"Scale of one to ten, what do you think my chances are of getting Mum to agree to let me drop out of school and travel the world with you?" Her teenage sister appeared on the screen, her face barely illuminated in a dark room. As the night owl she always had been, Annika was not surprised that she would still be awake at 3am on a Saturday.
Annika spit out her toothpaste. "I think you have a better chance for getting raptured."
"Come on, be serious."
"I am," Annika laughed as she wiped her mouth. "You are fourteen."
"You could be my guardian. Let me do online school. I'd get to live all over the world and still get my education and stuff."
"Keep dreaming."
"If you asked Mum she would say yes."
"She would not."
"Please Niki, think about it."
Annika picked up her phone and walked to her kitchenette. Her half-sister by her mother, eight years younger than her, was London-born and raised in one single place, never seeing much beyond ─ she had never seen Annika race by the wishes of their mother; most likely because Annika had been relocated so often at such a young age that Renate was adamant on not repeating the process with her next daughter. Their childhoods were so different that it felt like night and day at times. "Why do you want to drop out anyway?"
"I hate school."
"Okay, join the club. That does not mean you get to run away."
"It wouldn't be running away if I was with you," Greta protested.
"I would like to clarify that you still haven't asked my opinion on this."
"I know you wouldn't say no."
She was right, Annika probably wouldn't. She propped her phone up against a bowl of fruit and started arranging items in her fridge. "Okay, go back to my first question. Why do you really want to leave home? It is one thing to hate school, but leaving Mama and your dad is a whole other problem. What is really going on?"
Greta was silent for a while.
Annika began measuring her preworkout into her water bottle, waiting for her sister to respond.
"I just want a change of scenery," Greta said at last. "Even just for a month."
"They have been fighting?"
"No. They just don't talk to each other. And whenever they talk to me it's like they're trying to make me like them more than the other."
Annika sighed to herself, something in her chest twisting and pulling. "Do you think they will divorce?"
"I don't know," Greta said, and she sounded so small.
The signs had been there. They had been there for a long time. The worst part for Annika was that she had no idea what to say to Greta, as she had the wrong kind of experience with this. Her parents, Renate and Kimi, hadn't been together for very long after Annika was born. She had no idea what it was like to watch parents drift apart. Losing a step-parent wasn't the same. For Greta this was worse.
"I have a proposal," Annika began, stirring her drink, "summer break, Swiss alps, for a whole week, you and me."
"Snowboarding?"
"Absolutely."
"That sounds nice."
"If that goes well, I might... maybe talk to Mama about you spending some time traveling with me while you are on a school break. But I am not making any promises, so do not get hopeful."
"Will you really?"
"Yes."
"Thanks, Niki."
Annika smiled at the face of her sister on the other side of the FaceTime call. "Was werde ich mit dir machen?"
"Huh?"
There was a knock on the door, causing Annika to look up casually. "Be right back."
She jogged over to the door, still wearing her towel around her neck, and unlocked the door for Matt. "Morning." She let him in, and he handed her a sheet of paper without speaking, his phone occupying his other hand while he drafted an Email.
"Who's that?" Greta was asking, trying to see outside of the range of the screen.
Annika picked up the phone and turned it briefly to face her manager while he typed away. "Matt."
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"Yes, totally. How do I look?"
"Dog turds on a stick."
"Perfect, he will fall for me even harder."
Matt looked up. "What?"
"Don't worry about it." Annika looked down at her phone. "Look, Greta, I have to go, and you should sleep. I will call you tonight after the race, okay?"
"All right. Don't forget to plan how you're gonna talk to Mum."
"I will. I Love you."
"Love you, too."
The call went dead under Annika's thumb.
Matt gestured to the paper he had handed her upon appearance, "Read."
Annika took her array of vitamins and drank her pre-workout while she read her itinerary, skeptically eyeing the segments labeled Media and mentally crossing them off to be blocked out. The race wasn't until long after sundown, but she would have to be ready and in the Paddock for hours beforehand.
"I am such a popular woman," she said offhandedly, knowing Matt wouldn't respond even if he did hear her.
He was still typing away on his phone when she picked up her backpack and walked out of the room, heading for the hotel's gym. She figured he would be able to find his own way out unless he concussed himself by walking into a wall while texting.
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The stands of the Grand Prix were roaring and ready to go. Annika was squeezed into the cockpit of her Mercedes, situated firmly at her place in P11 with her pit crew all around, performing last-minute inspections and holding tyre warmers in place. She double-checked and triple-checked her harness, helmet, radio.
Lewis had ended up in 7th overall. Annika knew he had been aiming higher, the whole team had been. It would take a lot of recovery for the pair of drivers to come out of this ideally.
From around the halo, she could just barely see P12 to the right and back of her, where the orange McLaren was idling. As she looked, Lando's hand came up from the seat to give her a wave. Annika gave him a thumbs-up in return ─ friendly competition, soon to turn not-so-friendly at the mark of lights-out.
Her crew departed as the clock struck the hour, and Annika placed her hands upon her rumbling steering wheel, flexing her fingers, preparing. The lights flashed green for formation.
Weaving to gather heat in her tyres most of the way, the lap went quickly, and before long she was pulling back into P11 with readiness for the race already building within her like an ignited fire, the flames licking up her lungs and engulfing her heart, and the blood pumped faster, in her ears, in her throat, down to the thready pulse of her fingers ─ resuscitation had begun beneath the engine of this car, and Annika was taking her first breath.
The green flag waved.
One light.
Two lights.
Three lights.
Four lights.
Five.
Lights out.
Annika jumped forward and dove for the right, attempting to take the inside line as quickly as possible for the greatest potential advantage ─ get away from the fights, let them scrap it out and then scavenge out the valuable pieces left over. By turn one she had already cut ahead of an Aston Martin, but it was anyone's guess who's car it was, and she didn't have time to consider it as she was flanked by a familiar McLaren heading into turn two. As the track stretched she pulled ahead and left him behind, the gap building as more cars threaded into overtaking and defense.
Turn four came up and she jammed her gears down to four, taking a risk with the speed as she dove in for an overtake on an Alfa Romeo. Ultimately she was unable to gain a position, but she created a bigger gap between herself and the Aston Martin behind her.
She hit her radio. "Position?"
"You're P9, Annika. P9. Just try to hold your position for now to be careful on your tyres."
"Copy."
Four laps passed without instance, but now with access to DRS, Annika found herself eager for more.
"So what we're seeing back in the midfield is Annika Räikkönen making a move against Lance Stroll in a fight for eighth. Stroll, now with DRS behind his teammate, seems to be keeping tabs on Räikkönen. Her teammate, Lewis Hamilton, at P5 with the fastest lap, is gaining on Carlos Sainz. What is to come for the pair of Mercedes drivers later in this race, we shall see. For the time being, though─ ah, we've had an overtake at turn 5 from Räikkönen, and she's moved herself up to eighth. Unfortunately for Fernando Alonso, this means she's within distance for DRS, and might just continue this fight if she's confident in the state of her tyres."
Annika bided her time for another few laps until she was milliseconds from Alonso's bumper, using DRS as wisely as possible. Coming up to a turn, she activated the battery, and the engine roared as she wove herself out to take the inside line and went wheel-to-wheel with the veteran driver. Her jaw clenched as they remained level, locked in a violent fight for ascension through the turns, down a straight, too fast, too long, too long, too long.
"Concede the position, Annika. We need to preserve the tyres." Lyndon's voice scratched in her ears.
Annika gritted her jaw, but on the next turn she didn't fight when Alonso took his place back, and she was dropped back down to eighth.
After boxing to replace her soft tyres for hards, she was left at eleventh again, right back where she began, but pitting early was to her advantage as she quickly regained places and was able to creep back up to ninth. Thirty-seven laps, and she had only managed to overtake two positions. She was set to earn points here, but that wasn't enough. She was sitting in a Mercedes now, and she had to be better. It was not an option to do anything else.
An opportunity to overtake an Alfa Romeo returned her to her previously-dominated eighth place, but she had to take caution of the Williams within DRS distance.
Lap 41 brought a Ferrari to the curb, and Annika sprang up to seventh.
On lap 49, she had locked herself into a battle.
"Annika, this is a bad time to focus on an overtake. I repeat, do not overtake."
Annika spoke into her radio. "Do you have an anxiety disorder, Lyndon?"
"No."
"You will after this. Godspeed." She disconnected her speaker and activated DRS.
"A tad combative, isn't she? Annika Räikkönen, in her debut for Mercedes, seems to have found herself once again in a brawl with Lance Stroll for sixth place, and she's telling off her engineer. Oh─! And there's contact as Stroll is defending for his life against Räikkönen during a very crucial part of the track. Räikkönen has to be so careful not to lose her front wing!"
Annika centered her focus entirely on overtake. She entered the slipstream behind the Aston Martin, pressed her thumb into overtake, and plunged out around Stroll to speed into the space ahead of him, the car roaring louder than the rush of blood in her ears.
Sixth place was hers.
Another seven laps, and she had taken it home. Her tyres were damaged beyond belief, no grip remaining on them at all, and she nearly didn't make it to the chequered flag without careening into the barriers. But by some miracle she managed it.
Her opening act for Mercedes was complete.
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After the race, the podium ceremony, the media, and the debriefs with their teams, it was almost 4am before the drivers and staff began to trickle back to their hotels. The team's lodgings were scattered around the city, some here, some there, some close, some far, and a couple, including Mercedes, had landed in one at a respectable halfway distance, for which Annika was grateful, as she wasn't sure she would be able to stand on her own two feet much longer.
She would have missed the lift, had a hand not reached out to block the doors from closing, gifting her with a blessed extra seconds to slip inside the box. "Thank you," she said to Lando, holding her travel backpack over one shoulder, feeling about half as tall as she usually was, and her neck ached like mad.
"What floor?" he asked.
"Fifteen."
He pressed the button, and it glowed in duality with floor fourteen as the door slid shut and the motors began to whir around them.
"Congratulations. P6." He spoke in halting sentences and couldn't seem to look at anything for too long without blinking himself back awake. His hair was tousled and messy, sticking up in frayed strands here and there, still not quite recovered from the effect of his helmet; his eyes reflected the slate-grey of the lift when he looked at her.
Annika offered a kind smile. "Thank you." But she struggled to find the words to compliment his own standings, as he had found himself smacking around down at the bottom of the leaderboard by the end of the race. All their banter about the competition the day before now seemed awkward and sore. "I will be congratulating you next week, I can bet," she said cheerfully.
"Funny." He forced a hollow laugh, and it sounded more like being kicked in the chest.
She bumped into him with her shoulder good-naturedly. "You had a bad race. It happens."
"We're fucked."
"Surely the car isn't that bad."
"Shithouse."
Annika grimaced and began to absentmindedly massage the straining muscles in her neck. "Well I am sorry, then."
"No need to be." He glanced over at her. "You okay?"
"Yes. Just tired." She slid her hand down from her neck as the panel made a pleasant chiming sound. The door gaped open.
Lando, for a moment, seemed to forget who he was talking to, and absentmindedly patted her back and moved his hand up to squeeze the back of her neck as he wished her goodnight, in the same way he would one of his male colleagues. Being so close, she could smell the faint remnants of his sweat and cologne. He was halfway out of the lift before he realized what he was doing, and pulled his hand away awkwardly and turned to look at her, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. "Sorry. Night."
Annika giggled as the door closed once again.
She returned her hand back to her neck. Pushing in against the tight, aching muscles, her skin remembered the tender pressure of his calloused hand for the briefest of heartbeats before she replaced the memory with the familiarity of her own touch; a plight that was never satisfied.
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( note )
i feel the need to clarify that of course annika herself is not perfect and she does need to check herself (or be checked) sometimes. she's disrespectful to her engineers, arrogant, reckless, and thinks she knows best just because she's in the car. it's a thing needs to be worked on. humans will be humans.
anyway, i'm trying to take my time in establishing annika and lando, because their arc is colleagues to friends-ish to lovers and i want to highlight the fact that this will be a relatively slow burn... in most aspects. it'll be weird. definitely a will-they-won't-they sort of deal.