Chapter 24 #2
It devolves into side conversations for the tenth time.
Rhynn does not like Nose Stud or Blonde Bob, and bickers with them in legalese.
Pink Suit and Matthew’s manager review the statement Matthew’s going to release.
Yves calls someone, stepping away from the table to keep it private.
Matthew’s husband comes into frame on his screen, and Matthew pauses the video feed to talk to him.
Clarke looks at messages on her cuff with gritty eyes, exhausted and quickly growing numb.
It’s midday Tuesday, not even a full day since the article came out, and it seems like everyone Clarke’s ever given her personal Link ID to has read it and can’t help sharing their opinion.
Everyone Clarke hasn’t given her Link to is tagging her public profile in comments.
She can’t keep up with the deluge. It’s what she thinks swimming in the ocean must feel like, when you go out too far and a riptide catches you.
“Draft is ready,” Naomi says loudly after a few minutes, and everyone tunes back in.
Naomi’s team has been working on Elemental’s statement, a sort of companion to the one Matthew’s going to put out.
Naomi puts the draft up on a holoscreen that covers most of the EM-64 design spec on the wall. There’s silence as everyone reads it.
Clarke has to go back and reread sentences several times because they can’t—they don’t—
“You have got to be kidding me,” Rhynn says. “You can’t release that.”
“It’s already been approved by everyone who needs to sign off on it except Yves,” Naomi says, calm.
“It doesn’t refute anything in the article! It doesn’t—”
Blonde Bob takes over. “Nothing in the article is factually inaccurate, and Matthew did say all of those things. He wasn’t misquoted.”
“That’s not the point,” Rhynn practically growls. Matthew and Matthew’s manager are protesting, too, but Clarke can barely hear them over the rushing in her ears.
Elemental is hanging her out to dry.
Every line of the short statement is couched in vague language about corporate dynamics.
There’s emphasis on how Matthew leaving Elemental wasn’t his choice, and Elemental understands that he’s unhappy with the decision, but the team wishes him all the best despite this unfortunate airing of dirty laundry.
The dirty laundry itself (Clarke apparently being a tyrannical narcissist) isn’t addressed until the very last line.
Madeline Clarke has been a valuable member of the Elemental team for the past two years. Her personality has no bearing on her ability to perform.
Clarke clears her throat.
The near-shouting in the room dies down. All eyes go to her. She finds herself shifting in her seat, adjusting the set of her shoulders. It is, she realizes distantly, rather like what Julian does when he’s about to say something incendiary.
There’s a cold burn between her ribs as she says, “You could’ve saved yourselves some time and just written, ‘Yep, Clarke’s miserable to work with and we all hate her.’ ”
Naomi and Yves sigh in tandem. Nose Stud looks horrified. Matthew’s manager lets out a strangled sound and ducks off-screen.
“That’s not what this is about,” Pink Suit starts.
“I know exactly what this is about,” Clarke cuts her off, looking at Yves.
“My contract. You’re going to use this as leverage.
It fits the narrative you’ve been working on, that I’m being unreasonable, even though I haven’t had a chance to be unreasonable because you still haven’t made an opening offer. ”
For a fraction of a second, Clarke thinks she’s going to get her answer.
She thinks Yves is going to say it, right here, in front of all these people.
Knowing him, it’d be something dismissive, intended to make her feel childish.
An eye roll and an Of course we’re going to make you an offer, like Clarke’s insane and the last few months haven’t happened the way she’s experienced them.
And Clarke’d be pissed, but she’d take it, because at least that would be progress.
But Yves just holds eye contact and says, “Clarke, can you give us a second?”
The rage in Clarke’s chest screams as Yves dismisses various other meeting attendees—Rhynn, Matthew and his manager, a dozen less important Elemental employees.
This is where Clarke would normally make an effort to rein herself in.
She wouldn’t escalate, wouldn’t push, wouldn’t worsen the relationship.
The fire in her belly would settle. She’d live to keep fighting the same damn fight another day.
That’s what Clarke does. It’s what she’s always done. It’s what Yves is banking on: Clarke, shying away from conflict.
Today, Clarke stands. She leaves the room on steady legs.
She walks down the hall, finds another empty office, calls Rhynn, and when she calms the burning cold in her chest, it’s only just enough to ensure that her words are intelligible, because she’s not sure she’s going to be able to say this twice.
“I won’t let them publish that,” Rhynn says when the call connects.
They’re in a literal jungle somewhere. A snake keeps popping its head into their camera frame.
Pink Suit had asked about the snake the first time it made an appearance, alarmed, and Rhynn had said, It’s harmless, unlike me.
“We’ll figure something out. They can’t—”
“I don’t care about the statement,” Clarke interrupts.
She leans against whoever’s desk this is and looks out the window.
One of the test pilots is on the track, cautiously taking the prototype of the EM-83 around corners.
It’s another ship that wasn’t designed with Clarke in mind, and she gets why, now.
They were building it for Raff. “I can’t actually call Yves on his bullshit yet or he’ll pull the plug on my post-season race with Julian, but I told you we’d talk after Monza about letting other teams know that I’m open to hearing offers. ”
“…you did,” Rhynn says, brushing the snake out of the way. “Is that what you’re saying? You want me to get working on that?”
Clarke pulls Atreus’s business card out of her pocket. “Yes. And I know where we should start.”
—
“This is a call I wasn’t expecting to get today,” Val says. She’s wearing a fireproof smock and safety goggles, which she lets drop to dangle from her neck. “Or ever, really. I rather thought I upset you the last time we spoke.”
“You challenged me,” Clarke hedges. “I think I needed it.”
“In that case, you’re welcome.” Val moves, walking around what appears to be an in-home workshop. The lighting on her side adjusts, flipping to sunlight instead of industrial fluorescents. “What can I do for you?”
It’s Tuesday night, late enough that an unexpected call is borderline rude, but Clarke’s operating on momentum.
If she didn’t call Val now, she’s not sure she would have called Val ever, and while their conversations at Iskret and Lion’s Head certainly hadn’t been comfortable, they’d made Clarke think. They’d spurred her into action.
Clarke sets her cuff’s holoscreen on a shelf in her living room. “I’m sick of being lost. I’m taking steps to try to fix it. To find myself, I guess, and chart my own path or whatever. But it’s…”
Val laughs, not unkindly. “Utterly terrifying?”
“In the extreme,” Clarke admits, leaning on the back of her couch.
It’s a gravity-modulated model, able to float and twist and tilt if she’s watching an action show or playing a game; it bobs under her hands now, and she curses while trying not to overbalance.
“It’s unsettling. I’m not used to this type of unknown. ”
“That’s the thing about you pilots. You don’t know what to do with fear, because you don’t experience it the way other people do.”
“The day you feel fear in the seat is the day you hang up your helmet for good,” Clarke says, quoting a line that’s become so commonplace in racing no one remembers who originally said it anymore.
“Insufferable, honestly,” Val says with friendly exasperation. “Beyond the indignity of being reminded that you’re human along with the rest of us, though, how does it feel?”
Clarke rolls it around in her head. The past two days have been a lot, but drafting a contract proposal with Rhynn, confronting Raff in the loading dock with the whole team watching, calling Yves out during the emergency meeting about Matthew’s article, deciding to talk to Atreus?
“It feels like this is what I should’ve been doing all along. ”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Val says. “So, tell me. Where do you go from here?”
Clarke, for the first time, has an answer, and it’s a relief to say it. “Another team is interested. In me.”
“Unsurprising,” Val says, making Clarke smile. “Tell me everything.”