resource access,
recovery advantages,
public favor points,
and in certain phases, elimination thresholds.
No.
Absolutely not.
My pulse begins to hit like a hammer behind my eyes.
Next to me, Bron lets out a low whistle. “Well. That’s deranged.”
I turn my head slowly. “You think?”
He lifts both hands slightly. “For the record, I’m against the state-sponsored emotional extortion.”
“That is not as comforting as you seem to think it is.”
“Fair.”
The coordinator keeps going. “Contestants are not required to reconcile with their matched partners. However, visible emotional engagement, growth, and teamwork will factor into overall audience attachment scores.”
A man near the front says, loudly, “You can’t gamify closure.”
Captain Photonic, from his central dais, spreads his arms. “We absolutely can.”
The room groans in collective agony.
I close my eyes for half a beat and open my challenge packet on my comm, because if I don’t start dissecting this immediately, I may actually scream. The rules are all there in detail, slickly organized, written in the grinning language of a production team convinced manipulation becomes wholesome if you put enough formatting around it.
Couples don’t have to behave romantically, technically. But if we don’t show progress—whatever that means to a crowd of strangers and a producer’s edit bay—we risk audience votes. Lose votes, lose advantages. Lose advantages, possibly lose rounds.
So we have to cooperate.
Publicly.
Convincingly enough to satisfy an audience.
Without killing each other.
I can do cooperation.
I do not want to do cooperation with Bron.
That is a very different skill set.
Then the full implication lands, sudden and icy.
Jesse.
It slides into place so fast I feel a little sick.
If Bron is linked to me publicly—if cameras are now encouraged to mine our history for emotional content—then every private detail around me becomes more dangerous. Every room I enter. Every offhand question. Every line of inquiry about why I’m here, who I’m protecting, what I’m hiding.
Because Jesse has Bron’s face in miniature.
