by Ian Bull
“She always had a big head,” Steven says, deadpan.
Elliot, Min, and Ismael punch each other like ten-year-old boys.
“That was so wrong it was right,” Min says.
“Probably slept her way through NASA,”
“She should have listened, but, no, she had to talk,” Elliot says. The misogynistic scene where the uppity woman dies is the one they love the most. It perpetuates the worst of tech-bro culture, but boys like them will watch it.
Douglas sees my face and knows what I’m thinking because he rubs his forefinger and thumb together. He’s right. We’re making money, so why do I care?
“That wasn’t scientifically accurate,” Ismael says.
Elliot throws his hands up. “Who cares? It’s way cray that Julia Travers’s head explodes like a balloon! That’ll be on YouTube forever. Her career is o-ver.”
Douglas whistles and raises his arm high like a football referee, stopping their frat-boy banter. “Can the comments! Last scene!”
Douglas hits play again, and lava comes on screen. It’s the last full scene we shot yesterday with Julia and Steven wearing silver heat suits. They step on rocks to cross a lava stream, which in real life would incinerate them instantly, but, hey, this is Hollywood. Julia leaps from her rock into his arms. Julia whispers, “You saved my life again, for the hundredth time.”
Steven stares at her. “I’m sick of rescuing you. You’re always the woman in peril.”
The boys groan. “Man, he is so bad. Not good-bad. Bad-bad,” Ismael says.
Min nods. “Bible, dude.”
Elliot nods twice. “Bible squared.”
Steven pushes Julia into the lava stream. She bursts into flames and dies.
“Her dying makes it entertaining,” Min says.
“Not by much. That boy needs some acting classes,” Elliot says.
The monitor turns off and recesses back into the cabinet. The boys look at Douglas.
“Thank you for the witty commentary. Will it make money?”
Shit, yeah, dude!” Elliot yells. “And I’m not blowing smoke just because you’re the Boss Man. The shit is lit.”
“Her career is dead, but WTF?” Min says, laughing. “It’s so fucked up, it’s Gucci. People will make memes from it. It’ll be on Twitter in a hot minute.”
I cough to remind my bros that Mama is here. “Ismael, who’s our winner?”
Ismael sits up straight, remembering his job. “Only one person in sixty million submitted multiple entries that matched all five story beats: fighting a puppet, mountain climbing, a killer baby, dying in a spacesuit, and crossing a lava stream. Mr. A.J. Catalone from Salt Lake City is today’s winner.”
“Wire him his money, then post his story on the website. Elliot?”
Elliot smooths his jersey. “Yes, ma’am?” These boys are scared of me, which I like.
“Upload episode two. Let’s make another 100 million.”
Douglas puts his arm around me. “Think we can keep this pace up?”
“I think we can squeeze out enough episodes to reach a billion before they drop dead or kill each other.”
20
STEVEN QUINTANA
Kidnapped 50 hours ago
My body jolts awake. The room is dark. I exhale, calming myself out of fight-or-flight mode. They’re watching us with heat sensor cameras, so I close my eyes and rest my cheek against Julia’s back. She sighs and pulls my right arm tight around her. It feels good to spoon her under the thin wool blanket. It’s the only real comfort we have.
How long have I been sleeping? My body says eight hours. They worked us for fifteen hours straight, and, as each hour passed, I thought we’d found the basement of our exhaustion. Then, we dug deeper and found yet another level below that.
The idiotic horror we endured made me admire Julia even more. She did what they asked with complete commitment, with no shame. She wasn’t pretending to be in ancient Greece; she carried herself like a queen from another time. She really was floating in outer space and battling a sock puppet. I envy how she can become someone else and project herself somewhere else. It allows her to escape, which I cannot.
Her talent is what got us this mattress and blanket, and the shower, and the food. They threw us packaged sandwiches, and we wolfed down five each. The hot shower felt fantastic. I let the jets pound my back until my muscles were par-boiled.
Julia kisses the back of my hand, then squeezes it three times—three syllables, which means I love you. I squeeze her hand three times back. She sighs and falls back asleep.
We should have gone to that cabin and gone off-grid. She should have waited to do the movie, and I shouldn’t have agreed to be stunt coordinator. I shouldn’t have chased her into the metro, trying to be the hero.
My mind interrupts my chattering monkey brain. Stop. Focus.
We’re alive. We have food, water, and time to rest, and time to think. And strategize.
Start with what we know. We’re in a cinderblock room in a warehouse that must be 20,000 square feet. Above us, is an interlocking grid of metal walkways from where the men in black watch. Above those walkways, is a sloped tin roof that has skylights every few yards. Weak, yellow light seeps in through the dirty windows when the sun is up. My body has a good internal clock; the sun rises and sets close to the same time as LA. I don’t think we’ve changed time zones.
When they let me out of the green screen room for my shower, I followed a maze of wooden walls. There was no loose wood, no glass or metal—nothing I can use as a weapon. What I do have are three pieces of sharp glass: two the length of my pinky finger, one the length of my forefinger and thin as a needle. They were in my socks, and I managed to get them into my mouth while undressing for my shower. My tongue pressed them in place until I could transfer them back into the clean socks that they left out for me. Dangling one sock in my teeth while I pulled the other one on helped make the switch back.
Eyes are always on me. If I had cut myself and drawn blood, they would have made me bleed even more. Still, what can I do with three pieces of glass in my socks?
Back in the green bunker, a mattress and blanket were waiting. I collapsed. Julia came in next and fell into my arms and we were asleep in seconds.
Julia trembles as she wakes up, then freezes. Her heartbeat quickens, throbbing through her whole body. I exhale a warm breath on her back, and her heartbeat slows. She’s awake like me now, thinking. We may not have a way out, but between the two of us, we have one good brain.
I nuzzle close under the blanket and draw a heart on her thigh with my right forefinger. She squeezes my hand three times. She gets it. We can communicate.
I trace out the capital letter A with my finger, then tap on her back—first, a dot, then a long press for a dash. One dot, one dash—the letter A in Morse code. She does it back to me. She gets it.
I then draw a B with my right forefinger and tap out dash, dot, dot, dot – for the letter B. We lie still, both pretending to sleep while I teach her the alphabet, and she repeats it back to me. She makes a light snoring noise as she taps back, acting while she’s learning. We do it again and again. It’s something, and we must try.
21
JULIA TRAVERS
Kidnapped 54 hours ago
We need sleep but this is more important. Learn this, and we can communicate. If we can communicate, we may live.
He teaches me letters and then words. I keep at it, squeezing them back to him as fast as I can: Julia, Steven, love, marriage, baby, family—words from our wish list. Sometimes, he drops the vowels, and I can still understand the words.
I tug his hand close when he tries to pull away. He’s tired, but I’m not done. One of my first acting jobs in Los Angeles was playing the “girl next door” on Forever Love, a daytime soap opera. I’d memorize thirty pages of dialogue and regurgitate it on-screen day after day. Learning Morse code isn’t that different.
Three hours after the lesson started, I initiate our first con
versation:
You relax.
You bossy. Stop.
Just say words. No act.
Us team. No fight. No listen to Heyman. Focus. Do job.
He’s right. We have to be a team. I squeeze out my words:
My job. Keep us alive.
How?
Acting. Distracting.
Yes. You distract.
Your job?
Get us out.
Promise?
Promise.
He’s escaped insane situations before, but this seems impossible.
22
CARL WEBB
Wednesday, March 13, 6:00 a.m. (PST)
I tried running on the beach before sunrise, but it didn’t calm me down. Pacing through the house works better. I start at the front door, walk past the office, the bedrooms, the dining room, and through the living room until I reach the sliding glass doors to the tiny balcony overlooking the cove and the ocean beyond.
Yup, the Pacific Ocean is still out there.
At least it’s raining. Calm, blue water and rolling, green hills irritate me. It’s too perfect, day after day. I like these sheets of gray rain that match the shit we’re in.
Concentrate. Find Steven and Julia.
I turn on a heel, walk back to the front door, spin on my other heel, and start pacing all over again. Heyman kidnapped them Sunday night, three and a half days ago …. Bushnell is pulling the levers, but no one believes us …. McCusker acts like they’re fugitives…. Still no trace of Tina Swig or Mendoza or Marsh…. The Miami office is calling every motel, trying to locate a white, panel van or records of a single woman staying alone. I want to drive the entire length of every river myself but can’t be in two places at once.
I reach the balcony again. The ocean is still out there.
“He’ll get here when he gets here,” Trishelle says, irritated. She lies on one of the deep couches, an arm draped across her face to block out the morning light. Her notebook is open. While I went running, she wrote lyrics.
“You can write at a time like this?”
“You went running in the rain. We handle stress differently.”
We’d watched the second episode of The Danger Game, and it kept us awake most of the night. While Steven looked and sounded like a robot, Julia humiliated herself in scene after dreadful scene. Fighting puppets, birthing monster babies, dying in lava, and exploding in spacesuits.
“It was horrible, but I couldn’t turn away,” I say.
“That’s the point. They’re forcing Julia to commit career suicide and probably making hundreds of millions while doing it.”
The security system dings. Someone is outside the main entrance. I check the monitor and see Glenn waving from the front seat of his black, government-issued Chevy Caprice. I buzz open the gate and watch him drive through before closing it again.
Trishelle, exhausted just a second ago, beats me to the front door. She’s wearing one of my tailored shirts and smells clean. When did she have time to shower and steal my clothes? I still smell like a locker room from my run.
She swings the door open, and Glenn strides in with a computer bag on his shoulder and walks straight back into the living room without a hello. He looks like a tall Tiger Woods right down to the red shirt, black pants, and cap—except he’s a phenom with tech instead of golf. He sits at the dining room table and opens his laptop. “Houston, we have a problem.”
Trishelle cocks her head. “My name is Trishelle Hobbes, not Houston.”
“I wasn’t calling you Houston. That’s from Apollo 13, the space mission where the fuel tank exploded, and they got home using the LLM for main propulsion. I’m using understatement to emphasize the size of the problem we face. Plus, my CO is only giving me one week of emergency leave to help you.”
Trishelle raises her eyebrows at me but holds her tongue.
Glenn is a major in the United States Army in cyber-operations, but he lacks social skills. His subordinates call him Major Ass Burger (a play on Asperger’s) right to his face. But his expertise helped save Steven’s life once before, so I called in a favor with his CO at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, who flew him out here. My time as a Ranger and my company’s security work still gets me pull with the Army brass.
“Are you upset with me? If I’m missing a social cue, please inform me.”
“Let’s just start with hello,” Trishelle says.
Glenn stares at us like we’re a weird bird species he’s studying. “Oh, yes. Standard greetings. Hello, and hello. I brought three large, new computers plus an extra monitor for each of us. Please get them out of the car. This place will have to be headquarters.”
“Will you be sleeping here too?” Trishelle asks, half-joking.
“Yes. Commuting to a hotel wastes time. I can sleep in the guest bedroom or on the couch. That way, you two can continue to have sex together without interruption.”
Trishelle walks to the front door to escape him, with me close behind. She opens a big umbrella, and we step outside into the driving rain. It’s big enough to shield both of us from the water bomb that’s drenching the coast.
Computer boxes fill the trunk and backseat, along with empty Mountain Dew cans and Flaming Red Hot Cheetos bags. She holds the umbrella while I lift. “Is he really the best we can do? He almost screwed things up for Julia the last time he worked for you.”
Rainwater runs down my nose. “He helped save Steven. He’s the one who figured out that Boss Man’s real name is Douglas Bushnell. And he’s the smartest cyber specialist I know. And he works for DARPA.”
The rain stops like someone flipped a switch, and the sun bursts through. Trishelle closes the umbrella and lifts out a monitor box, showing off her cut arms. “DARPA? Sounds like a carpet cleaning company.”
“Work with him. He’s the best, Trishelle.”
Back inside, Glenn sits on the couch and types on his laptop, oblivious to us. We put the first boxes on the dining room table.
“I’m ready to share my deep thoughts, Handsome.”
“The ones that come while fiddling on your guitar? I’m ready.”
“Tina Swig isn’t in Wisconsin. I think she’s with Douglas Bushnell, and they’re doing The Danger Game together.”
Her idea hits me like a punch in the face. Have I been too focused on finding Swig and expecting her to lead me to Bushnell? We head back outside. “Keep talking.”
“Robert Snow was the producer who created Six Passengers, Five Parachutes. When we stopped it, everyone split up and went underground.”
“Save your own skin. It’s what people do.” We lift out monitors from the trunk next. They’re big, but the boxes have handles at least.
“But, Tina Swig was Robert Snow’s creative partner. The best way to save her skin might not be to stay hiding, but to find another partner with deeper pockets.”
“And you think she hooked up with Bushnell and created The Danger Game?”
“He was Snow’s boss. She does the work, and he takes the credit and makes the money. Women have been doing it that way in Hollywood for years.”
“Why would she take the risk again?”
“Maybe she needs the money. Maybe she wants revenge.”
We stand in the gravel driveway, each holding a heavy box. “Mendoza’s phone mailbox is full. Other people can’t reach him either.”
Her thin smile can’t hide that she’s scared too. “She’s probably with Bushnell on his pointy yacht. You’ve got people looking?”
“The National Reconnaissance Office is helping me. Let’s get Glenn started.” I don’t say it’s just three analysts helping me in their spare time—guys my Miami staff found. We head back inside.
Mendoza quit the LAPD for me, and I hired Marsh for his first civilian job. My pulse pounds. Where are my guys? I take ten calming breaths. Fear is not what this parade needs right now.
Glenn jumps up as we put the last boxes on the table. “I got inside the game app distribution platforms. The Danger Game
is the fastest downloaded application, with ten million people around the world downloading it since it dropped Monday at midnight. It costs $6.99 a pop, so after distribution gets its cut, they’ve already made fifty million dollars just on the downloads.”
“Can you follow that money?”
“They ping it around the globe through so many nodes that, unless I have a hundred NSA computers chasing them, it’s pointless.”
“Is there another way to find them?”
Glenn sits back down and types, his eyes locked on the screen. “Return engagement is high—over half of the people who buy the app watch again, sometimes multiple times, then make story submissions. There are about one hundred and fifty million submissions so far worldwide, I estimate. That means they’ve made two hundred million dollars on story submissions, with only two episodes so far. At this pace, they’ll make a billion in less than a week—”
He’ll keep going unless I stop this. “Glenn, you’re not researching an article for Forbes. You’re here to help us find Julia and Steven.”
Glenn closes his laptop. His face flushes red. “I don’t know how.”
“We need to pull out all the stops, Glenn. Think.”
“I’ve been thinking since you called me in Virginia!”
“Think some more. That’s why I hired you!”
Glenn walks into the living room, falls backward onto the couch and closes his eyes. He’s shutting down. Yelling is a mistake with him. “Work with me, Glenn. Please.”
He dips his chin and pushes his head back deeper into the pillows. I blew it.
