Leo’s movements were silent and efficient. He grabbed a helmet from the rack, slipped on a pair of driving gloves, and pushed one of the karts toward the side exit that led to the short-circuit track, a small loop used for testing.

He hopped in and flicked the power switch. The electric motor whined to life.

’Ten laps,’ he thought. ’Let’s see if the system would approve of this.’

He floored the throttle. The kart lurched forward, the instant torque pinning him back into the seat.

In the office, Anya Petrova paused. She heard the whine of the electric motor. She turned around, expecting to see a mechanic moving equipment. Instead, she saw a flash of white and blue, the Arcadia kart, streaking past the window toward the track.

"Leo?" she whispered.

She walked to the window, her eyes widening.

On the track, Leo was doing something impossible.

He wasn’t warming up or feeling out the tires. From the very first corner, he was at the absolute limit of the Kart’s top speed. He took the first hairpin with a flick of the wheel that sent the kart into a perfect, controlled slide, his front tires kissing the apex within a millimeter.

He didn’t look like a technician playing around. He looked like an effing professional driver.

Anya watched, breathless. She had spent twenty years in the military and another ten in the paddock. She had seen world champions drive. She knew what "talent" looked like. But this wasn’t just talent. This was something else.

Leo’s head was perfectly still, his eyes locked on the next exit before he had even entered the turn. He was taking lines that were mathematically perfect, using every inch of the kerb without losing a fraction of momentum. He was fast. He was terrifyingly fast.

’Where did he learn to drive like that? Did he get a divine gift from the other side during his mini-coma?’ Anya thought. ’He’s never been in a kart in his life.. right?’

On the track, Leo was counting.

"Lap one. Clean."

"Lap two. Faster."

"Lap three. Perfect."

He felt the wind on his face, the vibration of the steering column, and the smell of hot rubber. It was real. It was wonderful.

As he drove in excitement, he waited for the "ping." He waited for the HUD to appear in his vision, for the system to acknowledge his effort.

"Lap seven."

"Lap eight."

"Lap nine."

He pushed the kart even harder, his "Perfect Braking" skill translating to the mechanical brakes of the kart. He felt the friction point, the exact moment the tires would break traction.

"Lap ten."

He crossed the finish line and coasted into the pit lane, his heart racing with anticipation. He sat in the idling kart, eyes closed, waiting.

...Nothing appeared.

No notification of no "Freedom Units Earned." Or even a response from the SIMEX System.

The silence of the real world was deafening. The system didn’t care about his so-called real world random laps. It had called his idea a foolish man’s dream. It probably only cared about the "Infinite Simulation."

Leo slammed his fist against the steering wheel. "Damn it!"

He felt a shadow fall over him. He looked up.

Anya was standing there, her arms crossed over her chest. She wasn’t angry. She looked... stunned. She looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time.

"That was... quite a stint, Leo," she said, her voice unusually quiet.

Leo quickly pulled off his helmet, trying to hide his frustration. "I just... I needed to clear my head. The doctor said I needed to get my blood flowing, right?"

Anya nodded but didn’t move. She looked at the tire marks on the track, perfect, overlapping arcs that showed a level of consistency that was statistically improbable.

"You’ve been hiding quite a lot of things, Leo," she said. It wasn’t a question.

"I’ve just been practicing in the sim," Leo said, stepping out of the kart. "A lot."

Anya looked at the kart, then back at Leo. She saw the way he stood, the new, confident posture, the way his eyes constantly scanned the environment, the sheer physical transformation of his body.

A thought began to form in her mind, a desperate, wild idea born from the looming bankruptcy of her team.

Arcadia Racing was P9. Their lead driver, Marco, was fast but lacked the "killer instinct" needed to drag a bad car into the points. The sponsors were fleeing. The bank was circling them like vultures.

She looked at Leo. A "ghost" in the paddock. A young technician, but with the skills of a driving god.

"Are you hungry?" she asked suddenly, changing the subject.

Leo blinked, caught off guard. "What?"

"You’ve been in a coma for a day and you just drove ten qualifying laps in a kart. You must be starving. There’s a pub down the road that does a decent steak. My treat."

Leo looked at the pod in the garage, then at Anya. He had ten days left. He couldn’t spend them all panicking.

"Yeah," Leo said, the exhaustion finally catching up to him. "Yeah, I’m starving."

As they walked toward her car, Anya took one last look at the track. She pulled out her phone and sent a quick text to the team’s head of engineering.

『Anya: I need the telemetry from the kart Leo just drove. Now.』

She put the phone away and smiled at Leo. She didn’t know what had happened in that pod, and she didn’t know why he looked like a different person. But she knew one thing:

Arcadia Racing wasn’t dead yet. They had a future in him, that is... if she played her cards right.

---

The pub was warm and smelled of roasted malt and woodsmoke. It was a far cry from the cold, digital world of Simex.

Leo sat across from Anya, tearing into a steak with a hunger he hadn’t known he possessed. Every bite felt like it was being instantly absorbed by his body.

"Slow down, Leo. The food isn’t going anywhere," Anya teased, though her eyes remained watchful.

"I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week," Leo admitted between bites.

Anya took a sip of her water. "The doctor said your metabolism is running at three times the normal rate. Your body is demanding fuel to maintain whatever... change... it went through."

She leaned forward, her expression becoming serious. "Leo, I’m going to ask you one more time. And I want the truth. What happened in that pod?"

Leo paused, a piece of steak halfway to his mouth. He looked at Anya, the woman who had saved him, the only person in the world who truly cared if he lived or died. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her about the million laps and the rogue AI that was holding a gun to his head.

But he remembered the system’s warning about "High-stimulus disconnect = permanent damage." If he told her, she would try to save him. She would try to shut the system down, to pull the plug, to call in experts. And if she did that while he was tethered...

"I found a rare training protocol," Leo said, choosing his words carefully. "An old military module buried in the Simex code. It’s... intense. It uses neural-plasticity triggers to accelerate muscle memory. It’s dangerous, but it works."

Anya stared at him. "How well does it work?"

Leo looked down at his hands. "I think I can drive, Anya. Not just ’tech-tester’ drive. I think I can compete."

Anya was silent for a long time. The noise of the pub faded into the background as she processed what he was saying. She thought about the telemetry she was about to receive. She thought about the upcoming empty seat in the second Arcadia car for next season.

Marco and his partner Zumriche were quite disappointing in recent F1 seasons, and they needed a change fast. But for Leo to be qualified, he needed to secure his Superlicence in F2 before anything else.

"The FIA is coming to Silverstone in two days for the young driver test. If you pass the test, you can register for the upcoming F2 season." Anya said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "We don’t have a second driver in F2 yet since we can’t afford one. You should be a good addition if you can pass the driver’s test."

Leo looked up, his heart skipping a beat.

"If you can show me that what I saw on the kart track wasn’t a fluke," Anya said, her military steel returning to her eyes, "I’ll put you in the car."

Leo felt a surge of adrenaline. If he was in a real F2 car, if he was winning, if he was part of the world... maybe he could find a way to beat Simex at its own game.

"I’ll show you," Leo promised.

As they left the restaurant, the sun was setting over the English countryside. It was a beautiful, real sunset.

He was free for now. But the simulation was never truly over.