Brno, Czech Republic
The rain didn't fall here. It whispered.
Brno was quiet, post-tourist season. Harinder leaned against a cracked brick wall, his hoodie pulled tight, scarf wrapped loosely to obscure his face. He wasn't a bodyguard anymore — he was a ghost with a tracker in his boot, a burner phone in one pocket, and a small EMP chip in the other.
He had already been followed twice.
The contact — encrypted through the dark data dump he received post-Zandvoort — had led him here. Not to a warehouse, not to some villain's lair, but to a sleepy office labeled:
> Helix Logistics – Czech Division
"Data Forwarding Solutions for a Faster Tomorrow."
Behind the glass door? A backend server that housed the patch injection protocols used in multiple teams' telemetry systems, including Vaayu GP's.
---
Infiltration
Harinder used his old tactics — diversion and observation.
He watched shift schedules.
Learned employee names.
He waited three nights, monitoring who stayed late.
Then, on a Thursday night, he slipped in through the rear door, using an ID badge lifted from a janitor at a nearby bar.
Once inside, he wasn't greeted by the hum of routers or the blink of terminal screens.
No — he was met by a cold, sterile silence.
Until a whisper of static pierced his earpiece.
> "You shouldn't be here, Singh."
The same synthetic voice from before.
He froze.
"I'm not here to follow you blindly. I'm here to understand, I need answers," Harinder whispered. "You said Sukhman could be next. Why?"
The voice chuckled, then went quiet.
A new signal flashed on the building's master console:
Outgoing Encrypted Data Stream — Destination: Jeddah Corniche Circuit | Internal Race Systems
> They're preparing something for Jeddah GP. A test in Mumbai was just a rehearsal.
---
Elsewhere – Vaayu GP HQ, India
Raghav stared at the blinking voicemail light on his office phone.
It had been eight days since Harinder vanished.
He didn't know where he is, didn't know who he'd contacted.
But the words haunted him:
> "Don't trust the new telemetry engineer."
That was bold. Raghav liked Meenal — a skilled, sharp data tech from Pune — but ever since Harinder had gone, she had gotten oddly… quiet. Too focused. Never left her tablet unattended.
He locked his door, pulled up the engineer activity logs from the last three GPs, and saw something that made his blood turn cold:
> Unauthorized Data Pull – Lusail GP – Driver ID: S.Singh
Logged by: Meenal Rathi – Access Time: 02:43 AM
"What the hell were you doing that late?" Raghav muttered.
He clicked the server trail. The file? A ghost telemetry scan Harinder had quietly set up on Sukhman's backup module.
It had been scrubbed.
But the deletion log still bore her username.
---
Mumbai – Sukhman's Discomfort
The home win brought no peace.
Every time Sukhman looked at the empty stool beside him in the garage, it felt wrong. Harinder used to call it Vaayu GP's "data throne."
Now it was just a seat.
Nandini, who had returned to full managerial duties, tried her best to keep him focused. But even she noticed the way he lingered behind after briefings, glancing over logs, asking to "double-check" his own telemetry.
> "Why are you suddenly obsessed with data modules?" she asked one evening.
> "Because recently Harinder was even though it was not part of his job. And I thought he was being paranoid. Now I think… maybe I was just blind."
---
Berlin, Germany – 1 day ago
Harinder had traced the ghost data pipeline further north to Berlin. A shell company — Digital Escrow Holdings — was functioning as a "consultant" for four teams on the circuit, providing custom firmware services for car control modules.
He didn't enter this one directly.
Instead, he posed as a freelance logistics courier and tapped into their parking garage signal port. There, he intercepted a packet labeled:
> BlackPath Integration Protocol – Preload for GP9 (Jeddah)
Tags: #SignalHandoff #LiveOverride #DetonationSafeguard
That last term chilled him. "Detonation"? It's not a tech jargon. It is a deliberate terminology.
Someone was planning to cause a critical systems failure.
> And the module signature matched Diego's crash in Brasilia. And Charlotte's final lap.
---
Mumbai Airport – Night Before Jeddah Departure
Sukhman packed in silence.
His mother had texted him, proud. His sister sent a meme. But neither knew the weight of his shoulders.
He stared at Harinder's spare cap, hanging on the doorknob.
He hadn't reached out. Couldn't.
> "You idiot…where are you?"
He pulled out his tablet, trying one more thing — accessing archived satellite logs of the Lusail GP.
And there it was:
> A microburst signal detected 0.4 seconds before a stutter in backup driver's throttle.
> Frequency: 56.5 GHz
Location: Vaayu GP Pit.
Whoever did this? They were right in the belly of the beast.
---
Harinder – Refuge in Vienna
Tired. Unshaven. Harinder rented a cheap hostel room in Vienna under a fake name. He worked out of a beat-up laptop patched to a borrowed signal jammer.
A message blinked to life on his encrypted net portal.
> YOU'RE CLOSE. YOU HAVE ONE WEEK BEFORE JEDDAH.
Harinder typed back, finally:
> "Why do you care? Who are you actually?"
The reply:
> "Because I was supposed to die in Monza 10 years ago."
Then another:
> "Finish what I couldn't."
---
World News – Growing Heat
The media storm was rising again.
"Diego Still in ICU – Jeddah Race Sparks Controversy As Safety Concerns Grow"
"Harinder Bajwa Missing – India's GP Hero Vanishes Before Final Stretch"
"Is Vaayu GP Involved in a Sabotage Plot? IRC Begins Internal Review"
Other racers weighed in.
Callum Graves smirked at a press conference:
> "If Singh's team needs to resort to spy games to win, maybe they're not as fast as they claim."
Erik Holtz looked visibly uncomfortable when asked about Charlotte.
> "She was… a veteran. Let her rest. Stop using her name for headlines, please."
Jia Tan posted a cryptic message on her social feed:
> "Some of us race for glory. Some of us race despite danger. Not all victories are clean."
---
Back at Vaayu GP – A Flicker
Raghav confronted Meenal.
She deflected, grew agitated, then panicked.
In her bag, they found:
A signal emulator
A modified transceiver
A thumb drive labeled "Z-Alpha"
Raghav didn't call the cops. Not yet.
He called Nandini.
> "We have a rat. And Harinder might have been right the entire damn time."
---
Vienna – Final Revelation
Harinder sat on a park bench as church bells rang in the distance.
He cracked the Z-Alpha protocol. It contained a roster:
Vaayu GP
Rip Jaw Racing
SBA Motorsport
Helix Logistics (Backend)
Digital Escrow Holdings (Signal Manager)
BlackPath Tech (Module Fabricator)
And at the bottom:
> Phase 3: Jeddah – Real-time Interference on Dual Driver Modules
Target: Erik Holtz
Backup: Sukhman Singh
Harinder exhaled sharply.
They were playing a game beyond podiums. It wasn't about rivalry anymore.
It was about control.
---
End Scene – Harinder Prepares to Move
He booked a ticket to Jeddah under an alias.
He wired Raghav one last encrypted file.
No words. Just:
> "You'll know what to do. Protect him. It's almost time."
Then he disappeared again, leaving behind only footprints in Vienna's snow, heading for the next battleground.