The funding for the Disneyland trip went through without a hitch. The LK Foundation pulled the necessary consents from every kid's guardian or placing agency, signed and filed, and Daria, with no travel restrictions hanging over her, was cleared to go along with the rest.
As for Daciana, she was officially a Knight now; she could move anywhere in the state on her own name.
So now Lucas had the whole group loaded onto his private jet, wheels up for LA.
Daciana and Daria and the other kids were beside themselves, faces pressed to anything reflective, gaping at the inside of the plane. It was the kind of luxury that would put a stupid grin on a grown adult, and it had a cabin full of children practically vibrating in their seats.
The Foundation staff weren't immune to it either. More than one of them caught themselves running a hand over the leather and trying not to look too obviously thrilled to be riding in Lucas Knight's famously expensive jet.
The other kids kept stealing looks at Daciana, their usual playmate from the Foundation, now an actual daughter of Lucas Knight. The envy wasn't mean, just wide-eyed and a little wistful, and it didn't take long to spill over.
"Brother Lucas, can you adopt me too?"
"Me! Adopt me, please!"
"Me too, me too!"
A small chorus of it rose up across the cabin. Lucas raised both hands, helpless, caught somewhere between a laugh and an apology, until the caretakers waded in and gently corralled the kids back into their seats with a few low words each.
Daciana watched the whole thing from beside Jennifer, brow furrowed, and turned to the two of them with the question plain on her face: why not the others, too?
Jennifer crouched down to her and kept her voice soft. "It's not that we don't love them, sweetheart. When you adopt someone, it means you're their family forever and ever. And that's a really big thing, so it takes a long time to do, and lots of grown-ups have to check and check again to make sure every kid goes to a home that's good for them. We can't do that for all of them at once, even though we wish we could."
Daciana thought about it, then nodded slowly, satisfied enough to let it go.
Time slipped by in the air.
The kids spent the first stretch glued to the windows, pointing at birds far below and the floors of cloud rolling past, marveling at all of it like it was a cartoon someone had built just for them.
Then the novelty wore them down one by one; by the back half of the flight the cabin had gone quiet, half of them dozing, the rest hunched over video games with the volume low.
Before long, they touched down in LA.
The landing and transfer were handled like clockwork. A pair of vans was already waiting on the tarmac, and the group filtered off the jet in a loose line, sleepy and excited in equal measure, ferried to a hotel the Foundation had block-booked under a name that wasn't Knight.
The kids were fed, washed up, and put to bed with the promise of what tomorrow held, which was enough to get even the wired ones to settle.
The next day was Disneyland.
Lucas and Jennifer wouldn't be going.
That was the whole point. A Knight at the gates would turn a kids' day out into a media siege inside of an hour, and the children deserved a day that belonged to them and not to the cameras.
So the Foundation staff would shepherd the group through the park, with a quiet security detail folded in among them, close enough to step in and invisible enough that no child would feel watched.
Just a big group of kids on a trip, nothing worth a second glance.
Daciana had hugged Lucas around the waist that morning before they left, and he'd promised her there'd be more days like this. Then he sent them off and watched the vans pull out.
That left him and Neil with business of their own.
It was about the Sphere.
The remastered Joker had been set for an immersive run at the Sphere, and word of it had gotten out early; the thing was trending across every platform, fans counting down with a kind of impatience Lucas hadn't seen for one of his films in a while.
He'd taken Joker to the screen back in 2016. Now it was getting rebuilt for the biggest screen ever made, and the internet had decided it could not wait.
---
In Las Vegas, the Sphere was already pulling attention all on its own. It wasn't even fully up and running yet, and the tickets were going for eye-watering prices, but people bought them anyway, chasing the rumors swirling online that Lucas Knight himself would be there for the premiere of the remastered Joker.
Out on the plaza, a steady stream of people stopped to take selfies with the great curved shell rising behind them.
What none of them knew was that inside, the thing was already breathing. At that very moment, the CEO of Sphere Entertainment, James Donaldson, somewhere in his mid-forties and grinning like a man showing off a new house, was walking two guests through everything the venue could do.
They sat low in the bowl of it while the staff ran a test screening of Joker, the 2016 cut.
The sound came from everywhere and nowhere. The image wrapped around and over them until there was no edge to find.
Neil sat rigid in his seat, eyes wide, the hair on his arms standing up. It felt real in a way no theater ever had, like he'd been dropped into another world bodily, and underneath the awe was the strange, shrinking sense of his own smallness against the faces looming three stories tall.
"Mr. Donaldson, this is unbelievable." Neil dragged his gaze off the screen long enough to find him. "Although it kind of makes me feel like an ant in here. A happy ant, but still."
James laughed under his breath. "You should've seen me the first time. Walked in, looked up, and forgot my own name for a good ten seconds. My CFO had to physically turn me around so we could finish the tour." His tone stayed light, easy, but his eyes never really left Lucas's face. He was reading every flicker of it.
He wanted Lucas at that premiere more than he wanted almost anything right now; one carpet appearance from a man like that was worth more marketing than the company could buy outright.
"What do you think, Mr. Knight?" James asked.
"Like Neil said, it's unbelievable." Lucas's gaze stayed up on the screen a moment longer before he turned. "I never imagined Joker could be lifted into something like this. The immersion is on another level entirely."
"Right?" James's smile widened. "And it isn't only Joker. We've got the classics queued up for this room too. The Wizard of Oz is fully ready to go, remastered top to bottom, every frame rebuilt for the dome—"
"Wait." Lucas's attention sharpened all at once. "The Wizard of Oz has been remastered for the Sphere as well?"
James caught the shift in him instantly, the way a salesman catches a customer leaning toward the thing on the shelf. "It has. The plan's to bring it up here right after the Joker premiere."
Something moved behind Lucas's eyes. "I'll come to the premiere, Mr. Donaldson." He let it sit for a beat. "But I'd like to ask you for something in return."
James practically straightened in his seat, the opportunity lighting him up. "Name it. If it's mine to give, it's yours."
"Before you open to the public, run me a private test screening. Just my family in the room, no one else." Lucas's voice was even, certain. "And put on The Wizard of Oz instead of Joker. I'm bringing the kids, and I'd rather not be explaining to a houseful of children why we're all watching me put a man down on the biggest screen ever built."
Beside him, Neil just smiled, already a step ahead.
James weighed it for half a second and found nothing in it he couldn't deliver. "That I can do," he said, putting his hand out. "Consider it arranged."
---
The kids tore through Disneyland in LA like they'd been let off a leash. For most of them it was a first, and for none more than Daciana and Daria, who came off every ride breathless and immediately wanting the next one.
The plan had been a second day, somewhere else around the city. Then word came down that the second outing was cancelled, and the news landed like a dropped balloon. The kids deflated all at once. Daciana went straight to Lucas, tugging at his sleeve, asking why.
Lucas only smiled. "Who said the trip's over? We're just trading it for somewhere a whole lot more magical than another tour bus."
That did it. The disappointment evaporated and curiosity rushed in to fill the space, a dozen kids suddenly bursting with questions about where they were going. Jennifer watched them go from heartbroken to electric in the span of a sentence and bit back a grin.
The Foundation staff weren't much better off than the children. Nobody had told them either, and they kept trading glances as everyone loaded into the vehicles, just as in the dark as the kids about where this was headed.
They drove. And drove. And then the skyline outside the windows stopped being Los Angeles and started being Las Vegas, and the adults' confusion only deepened.
A couple of the caretakers exchanged worried looks, one of them half-convinced for a horrifying second that Lucas meant to march a busload of foster kids into a casino.
Before anyone could finish the thought, the vehicles pulled up in front of an enormous domed structure, and the worry died on the spot.
"Is that— is that what I think it is?"
"That's the Sphere! The one all over the internet!"
"They've been calling it the future of movie theaters!"
The staff recognized it the moment they laid eyes on it. The kids, who'd never heard of any of it, just filed along after the grown-ups without a care in the world.
Jennifer walked in at Lucas's side, Seraphina balanced on her hip. "I still can't believe they signed off on running a whole test screening just for us," she said, half to herself.
Neil caught it and leaned in. "When the alternative is no Lucas Knight at their big premiere? Trust me, they'd have agreed to a lot more than this."
Inside, the staff guided the children into the great curved bowl of seats, and the kids took them with surprising obedience, too busy craning their necks to misbehave.
They turned in slow circles where they sat, peering up and around at the dark vault of the place, whispering to each other, wondering aloud what exactly they were doing in here.
Then the lights dropped away entirely, and The Wizard of Oz bloomed to life all around them.
The sound hit first, full and enormous, seeming to come from inside their own chests.
Then the image swallowed the whole world, wrapping past the edges of what their eyes could hold.
A child shrieked, half fright and half joy.
Then another.
Little hands shot up, pointing in every direction at once, at the sky overhead, at the colors pouring down the curved walls, at faces and fields rising up impossibly huge in front of them. The cabin of awed children erupted into gasps and laughter.
Daciana sat frozen, mouth open, head tipped all the way back. Beside her, Daria gripped the armrest with both hands, eyes enormous, turning and turning to try to take in all of it at once.
Neither of them had ever seen anything close to this in their lives, had never even known a thing like it could exist. For a long moment all either girl could do was stare.
---
The Sphere had wrecked the kids in the best possible way. They talked about it for days afterward, retelling it to each other like none of them had been in the same room for it, hands flying up to mimic the colors that had wrapped clean over their heads, arguing about which part had been the loudest, the biggest, the most.
It refused to wear off.
Lucas watched them buzz about it and felt the whole thing settle into place as worth it. Their happiness was the receipt.
Whatever the premiere ended up costing him in time and obligation, this had already paid it back.
So when the twenty-ninth of September came, he honored the other half of the bargain.
The premiere kicked off and Lucas arrived, and the reaction was exactly what it always was: a wall of flashes, a roar from the crowd, the carpet bending around him the second his shoes touched it. Within the hour, worldwide searches for the single word "sphere" rocketed straight up the charts, dragged there by his presence alone.
And once the doors closed and the film ran, people came out of it needing to talk.
JOKER LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT: Inside the Sphere's Jaw-Dropping Remaster Premiere
LUCAS KNIGHT BREAKS THE INTERNET AGAIN — "Sphere" Searches Explode Worldwide After Joker Debut
Is This the Future of Cinema? Critics Walk Out of the Sphere "Speechless"
"ok I went in a skeptic and came out a believer. that opening shot of his face filling the whole dome? I felt it in my SPINE. no notes"
"the laugh. when the laugh echoes around the entire room from every direction at once I genuinely got chills. they remastered it for this and it shows"
"saw a grown man two rows down flinch so hard at the subway scene he dropped his popcorn. respect. it's THAT immersive"
"Lucas did this nearly ten years ago and it still hits harder than anything in theaters now. the man does not miss"
"me explaining to my wife why we need to fly to Vegas to watch a movie I already own on blu-ray"
"the only villain scarier than Lucas's Joker is the price of these tickets my god. sold a kidney, worth it, would sell the other"
"not me budgeting an entire vacation around a 2-hour movie. the Sphere economy is real and it has me in a chokehold"
The chatter ran for days, half of it raving about the experience and half of it mourning the wallet required to have it. Either way, the Sphere had its launch, and Lucas had given it the face it wanted.
---
With that wrapped, Lucas was finally clear.
The lawsuits had handed off to the lawyers, the adoption was sealed, the girls were home and safe, and the Sphere obligation was behind him.
For the first time in a long stretch there was nothing pinned to his calendar that needed him personally. So by October, Lucas was ready for full F1 production mode, the one thing he'd been circling for months.
He called the studio first and told them plainly that he was ready, that the prep phase was done and he wanted to move into the real work.
The production had been waiting on exactly that word from him; the rest of the machine had been idling, ready to spin up the moment their lead committed his full schedule. They moved fast once he gave it.
The meeting had been running the better part of an hour. Lucas sat across from Joseph and Jerry, the three of them buried in the schedule, marked-up scripts and a track map spread out across the table.
Joseph walked him through the front end of it: Willow Springs first, a closed track with no press and no spectators, where he and Brad would put in real laps until the driving held up on camera. Only once that footage looked genuine would they move, and everything after that was built around the actual race weekends, which left no room to fall behind before they got there.
The door opened partway through and Brad came in, late and unbothered, shrugging out of his jacket.
"Sorry I'm late. Joseph, Jerry." He dropped into the open chair and clapped Lucas on the shoulder. "And the man of the hour. Saw the news. So it's true, you actually adopted a kid."
"Thanks." Lucas grinned. "Not how I'd have picked to announce it, but yeah."
"They had her bundled up in every photo, couldn't see a thing. Boy or girl?"
"Girl. Turns seven this month, actually. I'll be out on a track somewhere when it happens." He gave a small shrug. "First birthday with us and I miss it."
"Eh, she's seven. She'll have cake and forget you were gone by dessert." Brad waved it off. "Plenty more of those coming."
"Her sister's next, too. Paperwork's already moving."
That stopped Brad mid-reach for the water. "Two of them." He sat back, nodding slowly. "My ex stopped at three, you know. And she only stopped because the fourth would've meant trading up to a bigger jet, and even she wasn't ready for that conversation with the accountant."
The room laughed, soft and easy. Even Lucas shook his head, chuckling. "Two's where it ends," he said. "It was always the two of them. The whole point was keeping them together."
"Smart man." The grin eased back, and the next part was straight. "For real, though. Good for you. Those two got lucky." Then he leaned over, slid Lucas's script off the table and dropped it in his lap. "Alright. Family hour's over. Joseph says you're behind on the garage scene."
"I'm most of the way through it."
And just like that the lightness drained out of the room and the work took over.