Chapter 2 #2
“You’ll have it.”
“I do enjoy optimism in the condemned.”
“Mysk.”
He lifts his brows.
“If you send anyone else to kick in my door before I’ve even had coffee, I will consider it a personal attack on culture.”
That gets me a real laugh from one of the enforcers. Mysk glances back, annoyed, and the sound dies instantly.
Then the crime lord looks at me again and gives a little bow. “Survive your week, performer.”
He turns on his heel. The enforcers follow.
At the threshold he pauses and glances back into the apartment, at the bottles, the clothes, the wreckage of me.
“Do repair the door,” he says. “If I have to murder you, I prefer a more dignified entrance.”
Then he’s gone.
Bootsteps recede down the hall.
Silence rushes in after them.
For a long time I just stand there with my hands braced on the counter, staring at the curtains puddled on the floor like a joke that’s gone bad in the mouth.
Then I say, very softly, “Well. That’s not ideal.”
The room smells like fear now. Funny how fast that cuts through whiskey.
I move before I can think too much. Cross the apartment. Slam the broken door mostly shut. Engage the manual deadbolt out of pure spite, though the frame hangs crooked and one hinge is whining. Then I go back to the couch and sit down hard.
The cushions exhale a tired little whuff.
My heart is still slamming.
I pick up the comm and open my finance accounts.
Savings: insulting.
Primary account: wounded.
Secondary account: morally offended.
Hidden stash I once told myself was for emergencies only: not remotely enough.
I check royalty statements. Old streams, old appearances, licensing crumbs from songs that had one beautiful season on the holonet before the next shiny disaster rolled over them. Money drips in. It does not arrive. It certainly does not materialize into the kind of sum Mysk wants in seven days.
I open messages from promoters.
One ghosted me two weeks ago.
One says they’d “love to reconnect in the future.”
One says current market conditions no longer support live-risk bookings for my genre, which is a very elegant way of saying nobody wants to insure me onstage anymore.
“Traitors,” I mutter.
I pull up contacts and start making calls.
Renn doesn’t answer.
Julo answers, hears my voice, and says, “No.”
“I didn’t ask yet.”
“You were about to.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
“I need a bridge loan.”
“You need exorcism.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. You still owe me from the Serkai residency.”
“That was an accounting misunderstanding.”
“That was theft with cheekbones.”
“Julo—”
“No.” He hangs up.
I stare at the comm. “Rude.”
Next call. Voicemail.
Next call. Declined.
Next call. A former manager who answers just long enough to say, “Bron, if this is money, I have none, and if it’s an apology, I’m busy,” then disconnects.
By the fifth refusal, my apartment feels smaller. Airless. The city noise outside presses against the windows—traffic hum, distant sirens, a fruit vendor somewhere in the street below shouting the virtues of spiced rind melon like civilization depends on produce.
I scrub both hands over my face.
All right.
Inventory.
I can sell the holo-projector. Maybe the soundboard. Definitely the gold wrist cuffs I bought because a reviewer once described me as “dangerously ornamental” and I made it my personality for six months. The problem is that even stripped clean, this place isn’t worth enough to buy back my life.
I look around anyway.
The apartment is bigger than Tilda’s ever was—Gods, there’s a thought I do not need right now—but it’s all surface.
Long windows. Gloss walls. Good view of the mid-tier transit veins.
The illusion of success laid over cash-flow rot.
Every object in here was bought by a version of me who assumed there would always be another crowd, another show, another night where the room would open for me like a flower.
I bark a laugh at myself. “You absolute idiot.”
The laugh doesn’t stick. It falls flat against the walls.
I stand, step over the curtains, and start rummaging anyway. Cabinets. Cases. Jacket pockets. Old instrument bags. I find credits here and there, enough for a meal, a cab, a hangover cure. Not enough for Mysk. Not enough for anything.
The smell of dust rises from the cabinets. My fingers come away gray. There’s a half-eaten protein bar in one drawer that has become geological. I throw it out. I find a stage pass from two years ago and sit on the edge of the bed staring at it longer than I mean to.
I was good.
No, that’s not right.
I am good.
But good and solvent have never been faithful companions.
My gaze snags on myself in the mirrored closet panel. Barefoot. Hair wrecked. tattooed shoulders tense and shining faintly with sweat. Eyes bloodshot. Too much man in too little room, and somehow still not enough to hold his own life together.
“Pathetic,” I tell the reflection.
It doesn’t argue.
I toss the pass aside and head back into the living room, because if I’m going to drown, I may as well do it with noise.
I slap the wall screen on. Static flares, then a midday stream of ads, commentary, market updates, celebrity scandals, and one panel discussion about whether cybernetic tails are back in fashion or a sign of spiritual decline.
I’m halfway through ignoring all of it when the audio spikes.
Triumphant music.
A blaze of silver graphics.
A voice like somebody poured sugar over a grenade:
“Citizens of the galaxy, do you have grit, guts, and a concerning disregard for personal comfort?”
I stop.
The screen erupts into spectacle.
Contestants sprint through fire-lit obstacle tunnels on some jungle world.
A woman swings over acid fog with a laugh in her throat.
A four-armed Khepri veteran lifts a wrecked engine block while a crowd screams. Then a wide shot: stadium lights, banners, impossible terrain modules unfolding beneath a roaring sky.
GALACTIC EXTREME CHALLENGE blazes across the screen.
The host—Captain Photonic himself, teeth bright enough to signal aircraft—throws both arms wide. “This season’s prize purse is the largest in Challenge history!”
Numbers explode onto the display.
My whole body goes still.
That is a lot of money.
That is exactly the kind of money that turns curtains back into decor.
The ad keeps going. Sponsors. Rankings. Triumph packages. Human-interest clips. Contestants grimacing nobly into the middle distance while inspirational drums try to bully the audience into feeling destiny.
I step closer to the screen.
“Ordinary people,” the host declares, “pushed beyond their limits for glory, fortune, and galactic fame!”
“Ordinary,” I repeat. “Rude.”
My heartbeat shifts. Different now. Still hard, but alive in a new key.
Because the thing about televised humiliation is this: I know how to perform.
I know how to suffer prettily. I know how to turn a camera into a lover and a crowd into weather.
And if the Challenge wants reckless charm, athletic spectacle, and a contestant with just enough self-preservation instinct to make the near-death experiences marketable—
Well.
I’m right here.
I lunge for my comm before I can talk myself out of it.
The registration portal loads in a whirl of sponsor logos and liability waivers. My thumb hovers over the first form.
Then I laugh.
It comes out a little wild.
“This,” I tell the empty apartment, “is either my salvation or the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
The apartment, having witnessed my catalog of achievements, offers no opinion.
I start filling in my information.
Name. Age. Species. Occupation.
I hesitate over that one, then type: Performer.
Special skills?
I snort and start listing them. Stage combat. Climbing. Stamina. Improvisation. Public charisma. Vakutan endurance. Experience with live audiences and hostile environments.
That last one feels particularly honest.
The app requests an audition video or in-person screening. I choose immediate remote submission, because if I stop moving, fear will catch up and bite a chunk out of me.
I prop the comm on a bottle.
Then I look at myself and swear. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not introducing myself to destiny looking like I died in a nightclub fire.”
Five frantic minutes later, I’ve splashed water on my face, yanked on a clean black shirt, tied back my hair, and done the kind of emergency grooming usually reserved for surprise exes and high-value witnesses.
I don’t look fresh, exactly. I look dangerous and sleep-deprived, which on me can pass for intentional.
The recording light blinks on.
I plant my hands on my hips and grin at the camera.
“Hello, Challenge darlings. My name is Bron Varek. I am Vakutan, occasionally famous, chronically underestimated, and very motivated to win your absurd little death pageant.”
I pace as I talk, energy building, voice rough and warm and coming fully online for the first time all day.
I tell them I know how to take a hit, how to read a crowd, how to survive ugly odds.
I tell them people like watching me because I never do anything halfway, including regrettable choices.
I tell them if they want blood, spectacle, and fantastic interviews, I’m their man.
Then I stop, lean in, and lower my voice.
“And if you’re worried I’m only here for the money”—I flash my teeth—“you’re absolutely right. Fortunately, desperation is incredibly motivating.”
I end the recording before I can ruin it with honesty even I might regret.
Upload.
Processing.
Pending review.
I stare at the screen until confirmation hits.
APPLICATION RECEIVED.
A laugh breaks out of me, helpless and sharp.
There it is. My brilliant plan. Win a galaxy-famous competition full of lethal nonsense, collect the purse, pay off a crime boss, and continue pretending this counts as personal growth.
I glance at the curtains on my floor.
“Not today,” I tell them.
Then I grab a trash bag, a toolkit, and the first of my panic, and start getting ready for war.