Steven stepped out of the elevator and walked to the Superleggera.

He stopped beside it and looked at it for a moment, with a proud and satisfied look on his face. He had bought it over a week ago and it had been sitting in this garage, waiting. Now he was finally here, properly cleared, properly geared, with no reason left to wait.

He put the helmet on, settled it over his head, and clipped the chin strap carefully the way the MSF instructor had shown him. He checked the fit with a firm press at the crown, then swung his leg over the bike and sat down.

The seat was lower than he had expected and the weight of the machine was immediately present beneath him. It made the machine feel real.

Steven sighed softly, rubbed his hands together and pressed the ignition.

The Superleggera came to life with a sound that was unlike anything he had heard before. It wasn’t the deep, composed note of the Aston Martin or the tight, precise bark of the Porsche. This was something rawer and more immediate, a sound that suggested the engine was doing him a favour by staying within the legal limits.

He let the sound fill his ears for a moment, listening, with his hands resting on the bars.

Then he gave it a gentle rev.

The note sharpened and rose and he smiled behind the visor.

He walked the bike backward out of the bay, found his balance, and steered slowly toward the exit ramp. The tyres picked up the concrete beneath him and the machine moved with a precision that was different from anything with four wheels. It was more direct, more responsive, and every input travelling from his hands and feet into the bike without any intermediary softening it.

He came up the ramp and out onto the street.

He kept it slow for the first stretch, moving through the River Oaks streets at a pace that let the bike settle beneath him and let his body learn how the machine communicated.

The MSF course had given him the foundation. What he was doing now was something the course couldn’t fully replicate, which was what he calls the first conversation between a rider and a specific machine, the process of building familiarity one mile at a time.

The bike felt good. Better than good even.

He had been out for over twenty minutes and moving through the quieter residential streets without pushing the machine. People noticed the bike as he passed. He caught heads turning and a few phones coming up, as they took pictures and videos of the machine. But he didn’t acknowledge any of it. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

He stopped at a red light on a wider stretch of road, the engine sitting at its composed idle, and became aware of a car pulling up beside him.

A McLaren 720S Spider. Deep orange, roof down. The driver was somewhere in his mid-twenties, watching Steven with the sideways attention of someone running a comparison.

After a few seconds the driver called across.

"You want to run it?"

Steven looked at him once and shook his head in response.

The driver’s expression changed immediately. "You scared of losing?"

Steven said nothing. He looked back at the light and he saw that it went green.

The McLaren launched immediately, the driver pulling ahead with a sharp exhaust note and a smug angle to his shoulder as he went.

Steven scoffed as he watched him go, then pulled away at his own pace and turned onto a different road entirely.

He continued moving through the streets at the same unhurried pace, following no particular route, simply riding and feeling the machine respond.

The Physique upgrades had given his body a baseline awareness that translated well to riding, as the balance came naturally, the inputs were clean, and the attentiveness required to keep a motorcycle stable at lower speeds felt less effortful than it should have for someone who had never ridden before.

His greatly increased peripheral vision also helped, as he could see things around easily without turning his head.

But what was doing the most work for him was his perception, as it helped him process his environment faster more completely — noticing things happening around him without looking directly at them, his instincts responding faster, his spatial awareness sharpening.

Steven understood the feeling of familiarity but didn’t trust it. Feeling familiar with something on the first real ride was exactly the kind of thing that produced bad decisions. He kept his pace measured and his ego entirely out of it.

After another twenty minutes, he found himself on a longer, clearer residential stretch with good sightlines and light traffic. He looked ahead, assessed it, and decided it was the right place to find out a little more about what the machine could do without doing anything genuinely dangerous.

He gave it more throttle than he had at any point in the ride.

The Superleggera V4 responded instantly and completely. The front end lifted slightly and then settled as the acceleration pulled everything into alignment, and the road ahead compressed fast.

Immediately, the difference between this machine and everything he had ridden on the course was immediately and emphatically clear.

He held it for a few seconds, watching the road blur at the edges, feeling the wind pressure against his chest increase sharply, and then eased back.

The bike dropped to a composed cruise and the road returned to its normal proportions.

He let out a slow breath behind the visor, and what followed was a short laugh filled with both satisfaction and childishness

Steven rode for another stretch at normal pace, letting everything settle, before eventually turning back toward River Oaks.

By the time he descended the ramp into the underground garage and brought the bike to a stop in its bay, he had been out for just under an hour.

He killed the engine and sat for a moment in the quiet atmosphere of the underground garage.

Then he unclipped the helmet, lifted it off, and held it against his side.

He looked at the Superleggera — the white bodywork catching the fluorescent light, the low exhaust, the carbon everywhere — and said nothing for a moment.

He had been right to wait until he was properly cleared because the machine was everything he had expected and more.

He thought about the feeling of the short ride he just had and he smiled, feeling really satisfied.

While he didn’t push the machine to its limit or race a very eager driver, he had still enjoyed the entire ride. The short moment of pushing the bike to moderate was the highlight of his ride, as it told him everything he knew about the machine and rewarded his decision for taking it slow.

"I also kept my promise to Lena," Steven smiled.

He climbed off, locked the bike, and walked to the elevator.