“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, butenough. 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.”
