Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Reid
Before Scotland, I went to see my father. The memory care facility smelled like industrial cleaner and something underneath it that no amount of cleaning could hide. Decay. Time running out.
I found Dad in the common room sitting in his wheelchair, staring out the window at nothing. He didn’t turn when I sat down beside him.
“Hey, Dad.”
No response.
“It’s Reid. Your daughter.”
His eyes shifted toward me. There was a flicker of something—recognition, maybe—then it was gone.
“I know you,” he said slowly.
“Yeah. You do.”
“You’re… the soldier.”
Close enough. “Yeah. I’m the soldier.”
He nodded, satisfied, and went back to staring out the window.
I sat with him for twenty minutes. He didn’t speak again. Didn’t seem to know I was there. But I stayed anyway, because leaving felt worse.
Mom found me in the hallway after.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Same.” She looked exhausted. Seventy-two years old and running on fumes. “Dr. Morrison says he’s stable. No major declines this month.”
“That’s good.”
“Reid.” She touched my arm. “We need to talk about the costs.”
I was expecting this.
We moved to a quiet corner near the vending machines. Mom pulled out a folder—always organized, always prepared. That’s where I get it from.
“The facility is sixty thousand a year. Your business contributed eighteen last year, I contributed twelve from my pension, and we pulled thirty from Dad’s retirement savings.” She pauses. “He’s got less than a year left in that account. After that…”
“State facility.”
“There’s a nine-month waiting list. And the one that has space…” She didn’t finish, just shakes her head.
I’d seen the reviews. One star. Overworked staff. Patients left in soiled clothes. Dad would be a number, not a person.
Mom would visit him there, and it would destroy her.
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“Reid—”
“I’m working on it. I’ve got some options. I’ll be away for about five weeks.”
She studied my face. As a former Marine wife, she knew the look. Knew I was holding back. But she didn’t push.
“Okay. Just… don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t.”
Another lie to add to the pile.
I gave her a hug. She held on longer than normal, then released me and turned toward the common room without looking back.
The contract sat on my kitchen table when I got home. Twenty pages of legal language that boiled down to: Sign here, risk your life for a month, maybe win enough money to solve your problems.
Elite Crucible: World’s Ultimate Test. I’ve seen the trailers—sweeping drone shots over gray ridgelines, contestants reduced to moving dots against weather.
First place: $250,000.
Second place: $100,000.
Third place: $50,000.
I needed first or second. Third would only buy me another year. Not enough.
The application process had taken three months. Physical fitness test—passed easily. Psychological evaluation—lied my way through it. Background check—decorated Army Major, honorable discharge, no red flags they could see.
They had called me two weeks ago. “Congratulations, you’ve been selected.”
I said yes before they finished the sentence.
I read the contract one more time. Liability waiver. Medical release. NDA. Consent to be filmed 24/7. Consent to aerial surveillance. Acknowledgment that challenges may result in injury or death.
Standard.
I’d signed worse.
I picked up the pen and wrote my name.
I spent the next two weeks preparing the way I’d prepared for every deployment. Research first. Know your terrain, know your conditions, know what you’re walking into.
Elite Crucible doesn’t release its cast list. NDAs, confidentiality agreements, the whole machinery of television secrecy.
But the internet doesn’t care about NDAs.
Forums had been running speculation threads for months—blurry casting-call photos, social media absences cross-referenced against rumored filming schedules, a fitness blogger from Phoenix who’d gone quiet, a former NFL linebacker who’d stopped posting.
One thread stopped me cold.
Someone claimed one of the Fortuna gladiators had applied.
No name. No photo. Just a source who allegedly worked adjacent to production, saying one of the Romans had gone through the vetting process and been accepted.
The thread had hundreds of comments—half calling it wishful thinking, half treating it like confirmed fact.
I’d read every one of them.
The Fortuna discovery had been the biggest news event of my lifetime.
Bigger than elections, bigger than disasters.
Fourteen men pulled from the ice beneath the Norwegian Sea, alive.
Ancient Romans, breathing, blinking, learning to use smartphones.
The world had lost its collective mind, and the coverage hadn’t really stopped—it had just changed shape, from breaking news to ongoing fascination.
I’d followed it the way I followed everything: systematically, filing information away.
I knew their faces. Knew which ones had leaned into the attention and which ones had disappeared from public view almost immediately.
One in particular had gone almost completely dark after the first months. Three photos in circulation, all from the initial discovery period, all taken before he’d had any say in the matter. After that—nothing. No interviews. No sightings. Just absence.
If one of them had applied to Elite Crucible, my money was on him. The one who wanted to disappear into something where nobody knew his name.
I filed it under unconfirmed and kept preparing.
The flight to Scotland is long. I sleep most of it—old military skill, sleep when you can because you don’t know when you’ll get another chance.
I dream about the mission. Always the same dream.
Lieutenant Ramirez ahead of me on the ridge. The crack of gunfire. Him stumbling, falling, reaching for me. My hand closing on his, trying to hold on, trying to pull him back.
His hand slipping.
The explosion.
Screaming.
I wake somewhere over the Atlantic with my heart pounding and the passenger beside me giving me nervous looks.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Bad dream?”
“Something like that.”
I close my eyes. I don’t sleep again.