The chaos.
The creature.
And me.
Running toward it.
Drawing it away.
Buying time.
The commentators’ voices overlay the scene, breathless and awed.
“He’s not even trying to win anymore—he’s protecting them?—”
“Look at that—he’s pulling the creature away from the evacuation zones?—”
The footage cuts to another angle.
Me, standing in the dust, facing down something that should have crushed me.
I swallow.
“That’s… unfortunate.”
Tilda huffs a soft laugh.
“No,” she says. “That’s exactly what people needed to see.”
I shake my head.
“I didn’t do it for them.”
“I know.”
She shifts Jesse on her hip.
“But they don’t.”
I look back at the screen.
At the man I see there.
For once, he doesn’t look like a performer.
He looks like?—
Something else.
Something I’m not entirely sure I recognize yet.
Tilda steps closer.
“We’ll figure it out,” she says quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
