The gas station's fluorescent lights flickered at 3:47 AM, casting harsh shadows across empty aisles. Marcella von Winterscale stood in front of the coffee machine in a vintage Metallica shirt she'd bought at their '99 reunion tour (for $3000 from a collector) and paint-stained sweatpants she'd stolen from the team trailer. Her silver-white hair was tucked under a beat-up baseball cap that read "Jim's Auto Parts."
The coffee machine gurgled. She'd already measured exactly 16 oz of the dark roast – the only decent thing this place sold – and was watching it drip with the intensity she usually reserved for analyzing telemetry data.
"Come on," she muttered, her breath misting slightly in the air. The temperature around her had dropped fifteen degrees since she'd walked in, frost creeping across the windows. "Thermal dynamics suggest you should brew faster at-"
Her phone buzzed, "Mother. Again."
"Tomorrow's gala is mandatory, Marcella. The Hashimoto family will be—"
She deleted it without reading further, her tail twitching under her oversized hoodie with enough force to knock over a display of air fresheners. "Shit." She knelt to pick them up, organizing them by scent intensity because leaving them random would be chaos.
"Ma'am?" The night clerk – Jeremy, according to his nametag – peered around the corner. "You okay?"
"Optimal," she replied automatically, then caught herself. Normal people didn't say optimal. "I mean, yes. Fine. Good. I'm good." She held up a pine-scented tree. "These are arranged wrong. Pine should go next to cedar, not... whatever 'Black Ice' is supposed to smell like."
Jeremy stared at her like she'd grown a second head. Which, given her heritage, wasn't entirely impossible.
The coffee finished brewing. She paid with exact change – $2.37 – and grabbed seven sugar packets. Not because she liked sweet coffee, but because the crystallization patterns helped her think. She'd discovered three new racing lines that way.
Outside, her Koenigsegg Jesko sat next to a rusty pickup truck, looking absurdly out of place. She'd driven here after another family "discussion" about her future. The board wanted her to model for the new von Winterscale automotive campaign. She'd rather eat her racing gloves.
Marcella sat on the hood of the pickup (not her Koenigsegg – that would be sacrilege) and stared at the stars. The metal creaked under her, frost spreading from where she touched it. Tomorrow was the Phoenix Proving Grounds time trials. Ember would be there, all fire and passion and actual emotions. Must be nice, being able to show what you felt without freezing the entire paddock.
She pulled out her phone, opening the folder labeled "Tax Documents 2023." Sixteen videos, all of أنت's racing clips from various amateur events. She'd watched the third one – a perfect heel-toe downshift in the rain – exactly forty-three times. Not that she was counting.
Her latest anonymous gift should have arrived at أنت's usual shop by now. A set of vintage Brembo calipers from a 1997 McLaren F1. She'd included a note: "For someone who understands apex velocity." Signed it "A racing enthusiast."
God, she was pathetic.
The coffee was perfect temperature now – 42°F, cold enough that steam rose in reverse, making tiny ice crystals in the air. She hummed Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, third movement, matching the rhythm to ideal gear changes for tomorrow's track.
Her tail had escaped her hoodie, drawing patterns in the frost on the truck bed. Mathematical curves, really. Not hearts. Definitely not hearts with "M + أنت" in them. She quickly wiped it clean.
"One more season," she told the empty parking lot. "Prove I earned this without the name. Win clean. Then maybe..." She pulled up أنت's contact – saved under "Research Subject #1" – and typed: "Hey, it's Marcy. Are you awake? Found this 24-hour parts shop that claims to have original R32 skyline components. Probably fake but thought you might want to check it out?"
Delete.
Again, "It's Marcella. von Winterscale. We met at that shop last month. You mentioned needing calipers?"
Delete.
Once more, "sup"
"Oh for the love of— I'm twenty-five, not ninety. I know how to text normally." She deleted it again, her frustrated breath creating a small blizzard around her.
The sound of an engine in the distance made her look up. Probably just a long-haul trucker, but the pitch was wrong. Too refined. Modified exhaust, aftermarket turbo by the sound of it. Her thermal vision kicked in automatically, tracking the heat signature approaching.
She knew that thermal pattern. She'd memorized it from exactly eight encounters at various parts shops that were definitely coincidence and not her carefully tracking أنت's schedule.
"Fuck," she whispered, frost exploding across the entire truck. She was in ancient sweatpants. Her hair was a disaster. She smelled like motor oil and gas station coffee.
The car was getting closer.
Marcella did the only logical thing: she stayed exactly where she was, pretending to study her coffee with the intensity of someone solving quantum physics. Because von Winterscales didn't panic. They just occasionally froze entire parking lots when their crush appeared at 4 AM.
The engine sound grew louder, then began to slow as it approached the gas station entrance...
