Chapter 6 #2
Of course it does.
I shower, shave the roughest edge off my jaw, tie my hair back neatly, and spend one extra second at the mirror making sure I look relaxed instead of hunted. Easy instead of desperate. Warm instead of feral.
It is an old trick, but an effective one.
Backstage nerves and debt terror both answer well to the same kind of face: I meant to be here.
Solarium Hall sits in the center of the compound like a crystal threat.
When I arrive, the glass walls are already glowing from within, reflecting sunset in sheets of pink, gold, and copper.
Music pulses softly through hidden speakers.
Staff at the entrance scan wristbands and smile too much.
Inside, the room opens into a soaring space full of suspended light sculptures, polished stone floors, curved bars, floating trays of food, and enough media equipment to document a coup.
Contestants have dressed for war by way of elegance. Sharp suits. sleek dresses. sponsor colors. careful hair. careful smiles. Around them drift reporters, sponsor reps, producers, and a few people so obviously important they seem to bend the air around them with entitlement alone.
I take one step in and feel the entire room make a tiny adjustment toward me.
Recognition.
Not universal. But enough.
Ah. Right.
I was almost famous once.
A reporter in silver catches me before I get three strides past the door.
“Bron Varek, GXC rookie contestant and former touring artist—what brought you to the Challenge?”
I glance at her mic, then at the camera hovering just above her shoulder. “A profound commitment to personal growth and several catastrophically poor financial instincts.”
The camera operator snorts.
The reporter grins despite herself. “So not glory?”
“Glory is a side effect. I’m mainly here for rent money and character development.”
She laughs. Good. Human noise. I can work with that.
Another reporter angles in. “Do you think your performance background gives you an advantage?”
“Absolutely. I already know how to smile while something inside me gives way.”
A nearby sponsor rep chokes on his drink.
Within ten minutes I’ve got a flute of something sparkling in one hand, three reporters orbiting, and half a dozen contestants deciding whether I’m entertaining or insufferable. Possibly both. Ideally both.
It gets easier fast.
It always does.
Put me in a room with lights and strangers and I know exactly where to place my shoulders, my mouth, my voice.
I know how to lean into a question just enough to make people feel clever for asking it.
I know how to tell a story that sounds spontaneous but lands on its feet.
How to flirt without promising. How to let laughter travel just far enough that other people start wanting in on it.
By the second drink—not enough to dull me, just enough to warm the edges—I’m in full form.
A producer with a chrome lapel pin asks whether I’m intimidated by the athletic caliber this season.
“Terribly,” I say. “Some of these people look like they bench-press shuttle parts recreationally. I’m hoping to distract them with cheekbones.”
A human contestant nearby laughs into his glass. “That’s not a strategy.”
“Everything is a strategy if you commit hard enough.”
At the curved bar, Dax appears at my elbow in a dark green jacket that says he wants to look rugged and has a stylist. “You really are treating this like a talk show.”
I sip my drink. “I contain performance instincts at a cellular level.”
“No kidding.” He tips his glass toward the room. “You’re killing it.”
“I’m socializing against my will, Dax. Try to keep your praise respectful.”
He grins. “You see the interview ranking feed yet?”
“No. Do I want to?”
“Depends whether you enjoy becoming a problem.”
He points across the room to a translucent display embedded in the wall near a sponsor lounge. Names flicker there under INITIAL IMPACT METRICS. A few early standouts already have arrows climbing beside them.
Mine is in the top cluster.
“Well,” I murmur. “Would you look at that. The people love nonsense.”
Dax laughs. “You’re going to be impossible.”
“Going to be?”
We drift through the room trading comments with other contestants, some friendly, some sharpened.
Sonya is over by a media pod doing an interview with the expression of a woman negotiating hostage terms. Kett from the arena has somehow made formalwear look combative.
The blue-skinned influencer is glowing under ring lights and calling everyone babes with predatory efficiency.
A sponsor woman with diamond chips glittering along her collarbone says, “We love contestants with crossover appeal.”
“That sounds filthy,” I reply.
She laughs too long. “You’ll do very well here if you last.”
Ah.
There it is. The soft center of every conversation in this room.
If.
If you last.
If you perform.
If you become profitable.
If your pain rates high enough to justify lighting design.
I smile anyway.
A waiter passes with trays of smoked riverfish on crisp pastry shells, citrus glazes shining under the lights. I take two because I have learned the hard way that charm on an empty stomach is just self-harm with diction.
The music shifts. Somewhere behind me a cluster of reporters erupts in laughter at something I said thirty seconds ago. Lovely. The sound skims over the room, bright and easy.
This part, I can do in my sleep.
A junior correspondent with magnificent hair asks, “So what should viewers expect from Bron Varek this season?”
I lean one shoulder against a pillar and consider. “Excellent posture under pressure. Deeply questionable judgment. A stirring commitment to survival.”
“Any weaknesses?”
“Authority. Delayed gratification. Certain kinds of red wine.”
The correspondent grins. “Physical weaknesses.”
“Ah.” I pop the rest of the pastry shell into my mouth, chew, swallow. “Gravity, probably. I’ve had mixed experiences.”
That lands hard enough that three nearby people laugh at once. Good laughter. Unforced. Full-bodied.
Mine joins theirs before I think about it, loud and warm and reckless enough to turn heads.
And then, in the middle of it, something shifts.
Not in the room. In me.
That old animal sense. The one that notices attention changing direction before your mind catches up.
I’m still smiling when I glance across the hall.
At first I register only fragments.
A woman near the edge of the crowd.
Dark blue dress.
Pinned-up hair.
A posture so controlled it practically hums.
Then she goes absolutely still.
So still it cuts through all the movement around her.
My laughter dies in my throat.
No.
For one impossible heartbeat, the room goes thin and strange around the edges. Sound drops away from me. The music is still playing, glasses still clinking, people still talking, but it all recedes as though someone shut a glass door between me and the rest of the world.
She’s staring at me.
Tilda.
Every part of me knows her before thought catches up.
The line of her mouth. The sharp, intelligent set of her shoulders.
The way her face goes unreadable when feeling too much would be dangerous.
She looks older than the photograph in my guitar case because time has passed and life has teeth, but she’s still so vividly, devastatingly herself that my body reacts before my mind does.
Heat.
Shock.
Memory.
Gods.
Tilda.
She doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
The reporter beside me is still saying something, waiting for an answer I no longer hear. My hand tightens around the stem of my glass. Across the room, Tilda’s expression has gone white and hard with disbelief, like she’s just seen a ghost show up overdressed to a cocktail party.
Which, fair enough.
Every absurd piece of the past slams into the present at once.
Her in my kitchen years ago stealing food off my plate.
Her under city rain with her hair plastered to her face and her eyes on me like I was either salvation or a mistake.
Her in that doorway at the end, looking tired enough to leave me for good.
And now here.
In this room.
On this planet.
At this godforsaken event.
“No,” I hear myself say softly.
Dax, beside me, frowns. “What?”
I don’t answer.
Because Tilda is still staring at me, and I know that look.
It is not fondness.
It is not relief.
It is not remotely safe.
It is shock sharpened into fury so fast it barely has time to wear a proper face.
And with a cold, clean drop through the center of my body, I understand something else.
This isn’t just impossible.
This is catastrophic.