Chapter 26 #2
I leave the commons and duck into one of the maintenance balconies overlooking the lower arena access roads before I answer.
The balcony is empty except for a row of locked supply cabinets and a cleaning cart that smells aggressively of lemon solvent.
Warm wind moves up from the service lanes below, carrying dust, fuel residue, and the distant metallic bark of cargo loaders. I tap the call live.
Julo’s face appears in a holo bloom above my wrist. Narrow features. Bald head. Silver tooth catching the light when he smiles. He looks exactly like a man who would sell strategic advice at a funeral if the margins were good enough.
“Bronwyn,” he purrs. “Still alive. Delightful.”
“Your concern moves me.”
“Don’t be sentimental. I’m calling because your life has become expensive to other people.”
I lean back against the rail. “That sounds bad.”
“It is bad.” He sucks air through his teeth.
“There is serious money moving through the underground books on this contest. Serious enough that small operators are getting squeezed out by syndicate bets. Everybody wants the upset structure. Big swings. Final-round blood. There’s chatter your old friend Mysk has positioned himself heavily. ”
Cold slides cleanly through my chest.
“On me winning?” I ask.
Julo laughs. “Bron, if Mysk had faith in you, he wouldn’t have threatened to redecorate you. No. He’s spread action across a couple of likely finalists, but the big angle is manipulation. He thinks the result can be nudged.”
“Nudged how.”
“Accidents. Sabotage. Pressure. A contestant under debt suddenly underperforming at a useful moment.” Julo tilts his head. “Sound familiar?”
I say nothing.
He reads the silence correctly and keeps going. “Listen to me carefully. This isn’t ordinary degenerate gambling anymore. The books are too fat. When that happens, men like Mysk stop playing games and start rearranging outcomes.”
A service lift groans somewhere below the balcony, chains rattling in the shaft. The sound scratches at my nerves.
“You sure this is him,” I ask.
“As sure as I ever am about anything that doesn’t involve cash on a table.
” Julo’s smile fades. “There was a message bounce through two shielded relays asking whether contestant family housing had independent security or just show security. That’s not proof, but it’s the kind of question people ask before they decide how ugly to get. ”
Every muscle in my body goes rigid.
“What.”
Julo lifts one shoulder. “I said what I said.”
For a moment the world narrows to the metal rail under my hands and the sound of my own pulse. Family housing. Jesse. Tilda. The sweet domestic pocket of the compound I have just begun to associate with some fragile version of hope.
“Tell me everything,” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore.
He does. Not in perfectly useful detail, because men like Julo trade in probabilities and whispers, not sworn testimony, but enough.
Enough to sketch the shape of the threat.
Heavy betting on bracket disruption. Side bets on whether frontrunners crack under pressure.
Odd interest in route schematics for the later arenas.
Chatter about a “correctable outcome” if cameras are distracted and security response is predictable.
None of it proves the exact move Mysk intends. All of it proves intent is in the room.
When the call ends, I stay where I am with the wind rough against my face and the taste of rust in the back of my throat.
I was already afraid of Mysk because he might kill me.
That fear was simple.
This is not simple.
This is what happens when a man who once only endangered himself begins to understand collateral damage.
By the time I head back inside, my thoughts have sharpened into something much colder than panic.
Panic thrashes. This is steadier. Tactical.
Ugly. Useful. I need information. I need to know what security around the family wing actually looks like compared to what the producers claim it looks like.
I need to know whether Mysk has anyone embedded among vendor staff, tech crews, or support contractors.
I need to know which challenges are still coming and where a manipulator would most likely interfere if he wanted chaos rather than a clean throw.
I also need, very badly, not to tell Tilda everything immediately.
The instinct to tell her is strong. Stronger than it would have been even a month ago.
But I know her. If I walk into the evening meal and tell her that a gangland idiot with a theater fetish may be sniffing around the family sector, she will either panic silently in that terrifying competent way of hers or do something brave and logistical and dangerous.
Maybe both. Right now I need her focused, not burning her nerves hollow before the next challenge.
So I choose the option I used to hate most.
I prepare.
That night, after dinner, while contestants drift toward the lounge and strategy corners and their various rituals for surviving stress, I pull up facility schematics on a terminal in the analysis lab.
The room is dim and cool, smelling of electronics and stale caf, banks of monitors reflecting cold light across polished tables.
I work through the maps layer by layer. Main arena access.
Service corridors. Family wing proximity to daycare, medical, and emergency egress.
Blind spots. Technician-only routes. Maintenance shafts that should be alarmed and possibly are not.
The whole compound is built like what it is: a machine optimized for traffic flow, media capture, and controlled risk.
That last phrase is doing a lot of labor.
Controlled by whom remains an open question.
Tilda finds me there an hour later.
Of course she does.
She stands in the doorway with one shoulder against the frame, arms folded, wearing loose lounge clothes and the expression of a woman watching me do something suspiciously competent. “Why,” she asks, “are you studying ventilation schematics at ten p.m.”
I don’t turn from the screen right away. “Maybe I’ve developed a deeply unsexy passion for infrastructure.”
“Bron.”
I sigh and lean back in the chair. “I’m looking at emergency routes.”
Her eyes narrow. “Why.”
“Because we’re down to final five and the challenges are going to get uglier.”
“That is true and not a complete answer.”
I glance at her, weighing how much lie I can put in my face before she notices. Not much, as it turns out. So I offer a version that is true without being the whole truth.
“I don’t trust this place to stay clean under pressure,” I say. “Too much money. Too much spectacle. Too many people with reasons to interfere if they think they can profit.”
She goes very still. “You think something’s wrong.”
“I think it would be stupid not to consider the possibility.”
She steps into the room, the soft fabric of her trousers whispering against itself. “How wrong.”
I rub at the back of my neck. “I don’t know yet.”
That part, at least, is honest.
She looks at the schematics, then back at me. “And your response to uncertainty is apparently becoming responsible in secret.”
“That sounded mean.”
“It was observant.”
I smile faintly despite the knot in my chest. “I’m trying something new.”
“Mm.”
For a moment I think she’ll push harder. Instead she comes to stand behind my chair, reading the map over my shoulder. Her hand settles briefly on the back of my neck, not a demand, not even quite comfort, more like acknowledgment. I lean into it before I can stop myself.
“If there is a problem,” she says quietly, “you tell me.”
I close my eyes for half a second. “Yeah.”
Not the full truth. Not yet. But close enough to sting.
She squeezes once and steps away. “Don’t stay up all night.”
“I make no promises.”
“That was the wrong answer.”
“It always is.”
When she leaves, the lab feels colder.
I stay another hour anyway.
By the time I finally shut down the screens, I have no grand plan, no cinematic certainty, no perfect way to stay ahead of a desperate criminal and a system designed to monetize chaos.
What I do have is a clearer map of the building, a list of weak points, three names of likely contractor shells Julo mentioned that I can start quietly checking tomorrow, and a calm, ugly understanding that if Mysk decides to touch this contest, I may have to stop thinking like a contestant entirely.
As I head back toward the residential wing, the compound has gone mostly quiet.
Floor lights cast amber bands along the corridor.
Somewhere deep in the building, a generator shifts load with a low mechanical thrum.
I slip a hand into my pocket and close my fingers around the fossil Jesse gave me. The stone is cool and rough and real.
Top five. Final stretch. Money everywhere. Cameras everywhere. A criminal idiot sniffing around the edges of something he should not touch.
I keep walking.
If Mysk wants to manipulate the ending, he is going to discover that there is a meaningful difference between the man he lent money to and the man walking these corridors now.
The old Bron would have waited for the threat to become dramatic before reacting.
The old Bron would have assumed charm, luck, and a decent right hook could solve the problem in real time.
The man I am trying to become starts sooner.
The man I am trying to become makes sure there is a line in the sand before anyone crosses it.