Chapter 9
TILDA
The reception ends the way public humiliations usually do: with applause, lighting cues, and a smiling man in a white suit acting like he’s handed us all a gift instead of a psychologically targeted weapon.
I would like to throw Captain Photonic into a decorative water feature.
Instead, I stand under the Solarium Hall lights with my shoulders locked, my jaw aching from restraint, and listen to the post-announcement briefing while every relevant system in my body attempts mutiny.
Contestants are clustered in our assigned pairs now, some pretending this is funny, some very obviously calculating legal options, some already fighting in low savage murmurs.
Across the room, a woman in red is hissing, “He cheated on me with a spiritual consultant,” while her alleged match keeps saying, “That is not the point right now.” Somewhere else, a man is trying to explain that a six-week affair on a cargo moon should not qualify as a formative romance. Production appears unmoved.
Bron stands beside me at a distance I appreciate and distrust. He has gone quieter since the stage reveal. Not harmless—never that—but more watchful. I can feel his attention like heat off a live wire, even when I refuse to look at him.
A production coordinator steps onto a smaller platform below the main stage and projects a holo packet above us.
“Contestants,” she says brightly, with the dead-eyed poise of a woman who has introduced impossible demands to furious people before breakfast, “you’ll now receive the season cooperation framework.
Please review carefully. As Captain Photonic announced, Last Chance at Romance integrates both challenge performance and relational progression metrics. ”
I stare at the screen.
Relational progression metrics.
That phrase alone should be grounds for arrest.
The holo blooms wider, spilling out rules in neat glowing columns.
Paired contestants will be assessed on:
cooperation under pressure,
conflict resolution,
communication,
mutual support,
and demonstrated relationship development as perceived by judges and audience.
I stop breathing for one second.
Then the next line appears.
Audience voting may influence:
resource access,
recovery advantages,
public favor points,
and in certain phases, elimination thresholds.
No.
Absolutely not.
My pulse begins to hit like a hammer behind my eyes.
Next to me, Bron lets out a low whistle. “Well. That’s deranged.”
I turn my head slowly. “You think?”
He lifts both hands slightly. “For the record, I’m against the state-sponsored emotional extortion.”
“That is not as comforting as you seem to think it is.”
“Fair.”
The coordinator keeps going. “Contestants are not required to reconcile with their matched partners. However, visible emotional engagement, growth, and teamwork will factor into overall audience attachment scores.”
A man near the front says, loudly, “You can’t gamify closure.”
Captain Photonic, from his central dais, spreads his arms. “We absolutely can.”
The room groans in collective agony.
I close my eyes for half a beat and open my challenge packet on my comm, because if I don’t start dissecting this immediately, I may actually scream.
The rules are all there in detail, slickly organized, written in the grinning language of a production team convinced manipulation becomes wholesome if you put enough formatting around it.
Couples don’t have to behave romantically, technically. But if we don’t show progress—whatever that means to a crowd of strangers and a producer’s edit bay—we risk audience votes. Lose votes, lose advantages. Lose advantages, possibly lose rounds.
So we have to cooperate.
Publicly.
Convincingly enough to satisfy an audience.
Without killing each other.
I can do cooperation.
I do not want to do cooperation with Bron.
That is a very different skill set.
Then the full implication lands, sudden and icy.
Jesse.
It slides into place so fast I feel a little sick.
If Bron is linked to me publicly—if cameras are now encouraged to mine our history for emotional content—then every private detail around me becomes more dangerous. Every room I enter. Every offhand question. Every line of inquiry about why I’m here, who I’m protecting, what I’m hiding.
Because Jesse has Bron’s face in miniature.
Not fully. He has me too. But the Vakutan markers are there: the scales, the golden eyes, the impossible strength, the way heat collects in him when he’s upset. If Bron gets too close to my quarters, too curious, too persistent—
No.
I go cold all the way through.
Bron notices the change in me immediately. Of course he does.
His voice drops. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That is very obviously not nothing.”
I turn toward him just enough to keep my mouth hidden from the nearest drone. “Listen to me carefully.”
He goes still.
“Whatever this stunt is, whatever the producers think they’re doing, our partnership remains strictly professional.”
His brows lift. “Professional.”
“Yes.”
“We’re on a reality competition themed around exes.”
“And yet I still managed to form a sentence. Miracles happen.”
One corner of his mouth moves, almost a smile. “Tilda—”
“No.” I step closer by half an inch, not affection, just tactical proximity. “I mean it. We cooperate only as required to survive the competition. We do not discuss us. We do not improvise. We do not play into this absurd narrative any more than necessary.”
His eyes search my face. Too intent. Too familiar. It irritates something deep and old in me.
“Required to survive,” he repeats.
“Yes.”
“And what counts as necessary?”
“Winning.”
That seems to land somewhere real.
He looks at me for a long second, then nods once. “All right.”
I narrow my eyes. “That was suspiciously easy.”
He huffs a laugh. “I’m capable of agreeing with you occasionally.”
“I’ve seen no evidence.”
“I’ll work on my messaging.”
The production coordinator announces that first-phase training begins immediately at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow, but pair orientation and initial physical familiarization will start tonight for all contestants still upright enough to participate.
Groans rise again. Somewhere behind us, Sonya says, “They really looked at this room full of trauma and thought let’s add cardio. ”
Accurate.
Bron glances toward the projected schedule. “Well. Romantic.”
“Touch that word again and I’ll remove your hand.”
“See? Cooperative spirit.”
I should walk away.
I should collect Jesse from childcare, go back to my room, barricade the door, and begin planning how to survive this with a minimum of emotional blood loss.
Instead I stay long enough to force myself through the rest of the briefing because information matters more than comfort.
First elimination challenge:
paired obstacle course,
timed stages,
communication tasks embedded within physical trial,
limited equipment,
public score modifiers,
bottom-ranked pairs at risk.
So the first test is designed not just to exhaust us, but to expose the fault lines.
Of course it is.
As contestants are finally released toward orientation staging, the room fractures into motion.
People start arguing in earnest now, some privately, some with the reckless confidence of those who have never learned walls aren’t really barriers when drones exist. Staff usher us toward the central arena concourse in pair order.
Bron falls into step beside me.
I hate how natural his stride still feels next to mine. Hate that my body notices things my mind wants redacted—his warmth at my shoulder, the deep timbre of his voice when he says my name, the way he takes up space without seeming effortful.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
I keep my eyes ahead. “What.”
“You looked scared for a second.”
That stops me.
Not visibly, I hope. But enough that he notices I’ve noticed.
I turn my head. “Do not psychoanalyze me in a hallway full of cameras.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
His expression shifts. Less teasing now. “Something about those rules hit you sideways.”
I can’t let him anywhere near the truth.
Not the edges of it. Not the smell of it. Nothing.
So I put frost in my voice and hand it back to him.
“What hit me sideways,” I say, “is the realization that I now have to trust my survival odds to a man who thinks shoulder-grabbing counts as strategy.”
He exhales through his nose. “I said I was sorry.”
“And yet I remain unhealed.”
We reach the arena concourse before he can answer.
Training Arena One is even worse up close.
At the reception distance it looked intimidating.
At ground level it looks vindictive. The structure stretches up in steel ribs and suspended platforms under a vaulted shell of glass and composite mesh, all lit in white strips that reflect off metal edges like blades.
The air tastes faintly of dust, coolant, and ozone.
Trainers move across the floor with tablets and harness packs.
Drones hover in assigned lanes, waiting.
The obstacle course for pair orientation is already assembled inside.
I stop at the rail and feel my brain click over into a different gear.
Good.
Useful.
The course begins with a dual climb wall—two angled surfaces separated by a narrow gap, studded with holds at uneven intervals.
Beyond that, suspended balance beams, then a rotating cylinder section over a safety pit, then a low crawl tunnel with pressure-trigger panels embedded in the floor.
Farther on, a weight-transfer station: one partner lifts, one navigates.
Then a puzzle lock set mounted on a vertical gate.
Finally, a sprint finish across unstable platforms.
It’s not random.
That’s the first thing I clock.
It’s curated to force dependency.
One person can’t simply dominate through strength without costing time elsewhere. Each stage requires complementary timing or communication or both. It’s a test of cooperation disguised as spectacle. Brutal, but legible.
That, at least, I can work with.