Chapter 8
brON
The thing about catastrophe is that there’s always a beat right before the floor gives way.
A pause.
A breath.
A tiny, treacherous sliver of time where the world still looks intact, and if you’re stupid enough—or hopeful enough—you can almost believe the worst has already happened.
I’m standing in that beat when Captain Photonic decides to make it everybody’s problem.
Tilda has just walked away from me.
That’s the immediate condition of the room. The emotional weather system. She cut me to ribbons in a voice low enough not to trip the microphones, then left me standing there with half the reception pretending not to stare and the other half staring professionally.
Dax whistles softly beside me. “Well.”
I pick up the drink I don’t remember setting down and throw back the rest in one swallow. It tastes like citrus and chilled regret.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a whole paragraph out of one syllable.”
He lifts both hands. “Fair.”
Across the hall, Tilda is near the windows now, rigid as poured steel, a glass of water in her hand like she’s choosing civility one swallow at a time. She doesn’t look back.
Which, honestly, is probably for the best.
Because now that the first shock has worn off, my body is doing all sorts of treacherous things.
Waking up old instincts. Old heat. Old pain.
She’s here. Actually here. Not in a memory, not in a photograph worn soft at the edges, not in the private half-lit corner of my head where I keep all the conversations I ruined.
Here.
And furious.
Sonya strolls up on my other side with the air of a woman approaching an active crime scene for educational purposes. “So,” she says, “that went well.”
I cut her a look. “I hate both of you.”
“No you don’t,” Dax says. “You hate yourself and you’re projecting.”
Sonya snorts. “Damn. Straight to the organs.”
“I’m surrounded by therapists with poor boundaries,” I mutter.
Sonya glances toward Tilda, then back at me. “Ex?”
The word lands with too much weight for one syllable.
I stare into my empty glass. “Something like that.”
“That’s one of those answers that means yes, but with damage,” she says.
“Generous,” I murmur.
Dax studies me for a moment. Less amused now. “You okay?”
I bark out a laugh. “No. Obviously not.”
Before either of them can add anything more irritatingly perceptive, the lights in the hall shift.
Music swells—big, bright, triumphant nonsense with drums under it, the kind of score that says something dramatic is about to be inflicted upon you for ratings.
The suspended light sculptures dim to a cooler glow.
The hum of conversation falters, then slides into a curious hush as everyone’s attention tilts toward the far end of the hall.
A circular platform I had assumed was decorative begins to rise from the floor.
“Ah,” Sonya says dryly. “Here comes the host-shaped problem.”
Captain Photonic ascends on the platform like a man personally invented by a boardroom. White suit so tailored it looks aerodynamic. Teeth that could guide ships in at night. Arms flung wide with the confidence of someone who has never once doubted that a crowd exists to adore him.
“Contestants!” he booms.
The room answers with scattered applause, groans, and a few sarcastic cheers.
He beams harder. “Welcome to Fratvoy One! Welcome to the greatest season launch in Galactic Extreme Challenge history!”
Dax leans toward me. “They say that every season, right?”
“Of course,” I murmur. “It’s legally required if you’re wearing that much hair product.”
Photonic paces the stage while cameras swoop in around him like worshipful mechanical birds. Giant display screens descend from the ceiling in a glittering ring, each one flashing the GXC crest.
“Tonight,” he says, voice rising with practiced relish, “you begin more than a competition. You begin a journey! A transformation! A test of your bodies, your wills, your hearts!”
At hearts, half the room visibly stiffens.
Oh no.
No, no.
I have spent enough time around production people to know when language starts getting ornamental for dangerous reasons.
Beside me, Sonya mutters, “I don’t like that.”
“Neither do I,” I say.
Across the hall, Tilda’s attention is on the stage now.
Her expression has gone careful. Assessing.
She feels it too—the shift in the air. The way the room subtly tightens when producers are about to spring something on people who signed waivers but not, perhaps, this particular flavor of humiliation.
Photonic claps his hands once. “You all know the Challenge tests endurance, strategy, courage, and charisma. But this season…” He turns in a slow circle, milking the silence. “We’re adding an element of emotional truth.”
A ripple moves through the contestants.
“What does that mean?” somebody calls.
Photonic points dramatically into the crowd. “Excellent question, future icon.”
“It means,” he says, lowering his voice to a theatrical purr, “that this season is built around unfinished business.”
My stomach drops.
No.
No, absolutely not.
A few people laugh uncertainly. Somebody near the back says, “Oh hells no,” with enough heartfelt conviction that it gets a burst of agreement.
Photonic grins like he’s being fed energy through the floorboards. “Every one of you was selected not just for your competitive potential, but for your story. Your spark. Your past.”
The word lands like a live wire.
Past.
My pulse starts banging hard enough to blur the edges of my vision.
Dax glances at me. “Bron.”
“Don’t,” I say, too quickly.
He goes still.
Onstage, Photonic gestures grandly, and the ring of giant screens flickers from the GXC crest to a storm of stylized silhouettes, hearts splitting into lightning bolts, names dissolving and reforming in silver light.
“Producers,” he declares, “have secretly paired each contestant with someone from their romantic history.”
The room detonates.
Not literally, though give it time. But sound hits all at once—shouts, swearing, laughter sharp with disbelief, one high incredulous scream from somewhere near the media pod, the furious bark of a contestant who sounds like he’s already planning murder.
“What?”
“You have got to be kidding me!”
“No. No, no, no.”
“That violates several spiritual principles!”
I don’t move.
I can’t.
It feels like the hall has gone both too hot and too cold, my skin unable to decide whether to sweat or ice over. The smell of perfume, champagne, polished stone, and human alarm sharpens into something metallic.
Sonya slowly turns her head to look at me.
“You,” she says, voice flat with dawning horror, “have got to be kidding.”
“I am not kidding,” I say.
Dax makes a helpless little noise. “Oh my God.”
Captain Photonic is talking over the uproar, delighted beyond reason. “Yes! Former flames, almost-loves, exes, heartbreaks, unfinished epics—reunited at the greatest competition in the galaxy!”
Somebody yells, “I’m leaving!”
Photonic points at them. “You can try!”
The crowd roars, not with joy exactly, but with the chaotic energy of people realizing they have been professionally ambushed.
Around the room, contestants start scanning for each other with a new kind of panic. Faces go white, red, slack, murderous. One woman near the champagne tower puts both hands over her mouth and whispers, “No, not him,” with the dead stare of a soldier seeing artillery crest the horizon.
And across the room—
Tilda.
She doesn’t look at me yet.
She’s looking at the stage with the stillness of somebody who has gone past surprise and landed in a colder, more lethal country.
Captain Photonic spreads his arms to embrace the whole disaster. “This season’s theme—our guiding star, our central test, our beautiful catastrophe—is…”
He pauses.
The music cuts to a low, vibrating thrum.
Then he shouts it.
“LAST CHANCE AT ROMANCE!”
The words explode across every screen in giant silver letters surrounded by animated sparks and blooming neon hearts that fracture into challenge symbols.
I actually laugh.
Not because it’s funny.
Because my nervous system briefly gives up and starts improvising.
Dax stares at the screens. “That is criminal.”
Sonya says, “I think I just felt my soul leave through my teeth.”
All around us, contestants are reacting in real time. Outrage. Denial. A few delighted maniacs who apparently enjoy pain if it’s packaged romantically. Reporters are nearly vibrating with pleasure. Camera drones dive lower, greedy for every flinch and curse and expression of personal devastation.
Captain Photonic is still talking, but now it’s just decorative noise under the blood-rush in my ears.
He says something about chemistry. Redemption. Teamwork under emotional pressure. Couples-based twists. Audience investment. Narrative arcs.
None of it matters.
Because the screens are changing again.
The silver title dissolves. New graphics spin up, more precise now: contestant names arranged in pairs, accompanied by photos, archived clips, whatever ugly little data set the producers scraped together to make our private histories presentable.
“Contestants,” Photonic cries, “meet your match!”
The display screens erupt.
Names everywhere.
Faces.
Gasps ripple through the room as pairings appear overhead.
Sonya finds hers and actually chokes on air. “No. Absolutely not. He’s in prison-adjacent.”
Dax squints upward. “Oh, hell. Mine is that woman from the Vexa campaign? We went out twice. Twice! That barely qualifies as disastrous.”
“Apparently it qualified enough,” I say, but the words come out thin.
Because one of the largest screens, centered right over the room, flashes and locks.
brON VAREK
paired with
TILDA ROBERTSON
For a moment all I can do is stare.
The letters gleam white against deep midnight blue. My name. Her name. Joined by a pulsing silver symbol so aggressively romantic I want to punch the technology.
All the noise in the hall rushes back at once.
“Ohhhh.”
“Damn.”
“Wait, those two?”