Chapter 1: After-Hours Training
The locker room air tasted like chlorine and cheap cleaner, the kind that scratches the back of your throat. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, one of them flickering like a faulty heartbeat, throwing the rows of rusted lockers into brief, stuttering shadows. My bare feet were cold against the peeling linoleum, a shock after the stifling heat outside. I ran a hand through my hair, the brown strands still soft from my shower this morning.This was it.First day.
I wasn’t naive.I’d done my research. I knew what this industry could be, the sharks and the sugar-coating, the burnouts and the lucky few. But I also saw the control, the ownership.To look at a camera, unblinking, and say, This is me. Take it or leave it.That held a power I wanted to taste.
A door swung open with a metallic groan, and he walked in.Dex.My "gym instructor." He was all coiled muscle in a tight gray tee, a clipboard clutched in his hand like a prop. He had that look, the one they all seemed to have here—a mix of practiced nonchalance and a hungry calculation just beneath the surface."Erin, right?" His voice was lower than it had been on the phone, smoother."That's me." I leaned back against the cool metal of a locker, letting my towel dangle loosely from my fingertips."Ready for my… orientation."
He gave a dry chuckle, setting the clipboard down on a bench."Right.Well, standard procedure. We go over the equipment, safe words, hydration. The director likes to start with a basic solo, get you comfortable in front of the lens."I nodded, pushing off from the locker. I took a few steps toward him, the silence between us growing thick, charged.He was following the script. I decided to tear it up."I was thinking," I said, my voice dropping to just above a whisper. I closed the distance, the smell of his cheap cologne mingling with the chlorine. "Maybe we could skip the treadmill."His eyes, a flat blue, flickered."Is that so?"
"The thing is," I continued, my fingers finding the rough fabric of his shorts, tracing the line of the waistband.I felt him tense, then slowly relax into it.A confirmation. "I've got a very specific area I'd like to work on.My stamina."
I saw his throat work as he swallowed.The clipboard was forgotten. This was the unspoken contract, the real audition happening right here, under the flickering lights. He groaned, a low, rough sound, as my fingers found his zipper.The metal teeth gave way with a hushed sigh.
I dropped to my knees.The linoleum was unforgiving, a hard shock against my skin. His cock sprang free, thick and already hard.He wasn't acting.This part was real. The shaky breath he let out was real.I didn't hesitate. I took him into my mouth, the salt-and-skin taste of him flooding my senses. I focused on the mechanics, the pressure, the rhythm I’d practiced in the dark of my bedroom. His hands came down, not gently, to fist in my hair.His hips gave a shallow, involuntary thrust.
And through it all, in the back of my mind, a cold, clear point of focus: the crack in the door to the main studio. I’d checked it when I came in. From that angle, they’d have a perfect shot. The director would be watching on a monitor, judging the angle of my head, the submission in my eyes, the hungry acceptance.This was the test. Not the sex, but the performance of it.I lost myself in the performance, the push and pull, the sounds he made. My jaw began to ache, a sweet, honest pain. A bead of sweat traced a path down my temple."Christ," Dex muttered, his voice strained.
A sudden, sharp click echoed in the tiled room.A door latching.Not from the studio side.From the hallway.
Dex froze, his whole body going rigid. I pulled back, looking up, his cock slipping from my lips with a wet sound.
A man stood in the doorway, holding a professional-grade camera, its red recording light a glaring, unblinking eye.He wasn't Dex. He was older, lean, with a sharp beard and glasses.He lowered the camera, a slow, deliberate movement.
"Cut," he said.His voice was calm, detached. "Dex, you're dripping on the floor.Go clean up."
Dex scrambled back, fumbling with his shorts, his face flushed with a mix of embarrassment and irritation. He shot me a look I couldn't quite decipher—something between resentment and respect—and shuffled out a side door without a word.
The man with the camera stepped fully into the room.He didn't offer a hand."I'm Simon.The director. You're Erin."I stood up, my legs tingling from being knelt so long. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, meeting his gaze directly."Yeah."
"That," he said, nodding toward the space where Dex had been, "was adequate. A little rehearsed, but the instinct is there.You remembered the camera angle."It wasn't praise.It was an assessment. Cold, clinical.
"The next scene," he continued, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket, "is with two performers.Male and female.It's more complex.There's a narrative. Well, a premise."He handed me the paper."You'll be the enthusiastic new roommate. They want to see if you can handle dialogue, hit marks, and maintain character while engaged. Can you?"I looked down at the paper, at the lines of simple, cheesy dialogue. “I’ve never seen a cock that big before.” My heart was hammering, but it wasn't from fear.It was a fierce, rising excitement.This was the work.The craft.
I looked back at Simon, at the camera held casually at his side. "When do we start?"
“Now,” Simon said, his eyes scanning me like I was a piece of equipment he was checking for defects.“You’re wet.”
I looked down. The front of my towel was damp from where I’d knelt. A trivial thing, but it felt like a mark against me.“I can change.”
“Don’t bother. The scene starts in the living room of the apartment, but it moves to the shower. You’ll be wetter.” He turned and walked out, expecting me to follow. I did, my bare feet slapping against the linoleum, then onto the colder concrete of a narrow corridor.
The locker room door had sealed shut behind us, swallowing that cloistered moment with Dex.Now, the hallway opened into a vast, warehouse-like space. It was a shock of sound and light after the sterile quiet. The air was different here—dusty, warm, and alive with the tang of electronics and the faint, acrid sweetness of vape smoke. Green screens stretched along one wall, but the set we were approaching was a detailed replica of a trendy apartment living room: a sleek gray sectional, a fake plant in the corner, a large TV screen displaying a paused video game.Two people were lounging on the sectional. They looked up as we approached. A blonde woman, probably mid-twenties, with a sharp bob and watchful eyes, and a man, maybe older, with a swimmer’s build and a relaxed smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. They were both already in costume, which is to say, barely dressed. She wore a silky pink robe hanging open over lace, and he was in just a pair of low-slung jeans, unbuttoned.
“Jenna, Leo, this is Erin,” Simon announced, not as an introduction but as a deployment of resources.“New girl. She’s doing the roommate scene.”
Jenna gave me a slow, appraising look.“Fresh meat. You okay? Dex can be a little… enthusiastic.”
“I’m fine,” I said, the words coming out quicker than I meant.I didn’t want their pity or their camaraderie. Not yet.Leo just nodded, his gaze traveling over me with a detached professionalism. “Cool.”
Simon clapped his hands once, the sound sharp.“Let’s block. Erin, you enter from that door.” He pointed to a fake door frame beside a bookcase filled with prop books. “You’ve just moved in. You’re carrying this.” He handed me a medium-sized, empty cardboard box.“Leo, you’re on the couch playing the game. Jenna, you’re in the kitchen area, making a smoothie.The script is a guideline. Hit the beats, but keep it natural.The dialogue is trash, so sell it with your face. Understood?”
I nodded, hefting the box.It was lighter than I expected.
“Sound?” Simon yelled.A guy with headphones around his neck gave a thumbs up from behind a large boom mic. “Ready.”
“Camera A, B, you know your marks. We’ll start wide, then tighten on Leo’s reaction for the offer. Erin, your key moment is the line about the size of his dick.It’s stupid, but you have to mean it. It’s awe.Juvenile, giggly awe.Can you do juvenile?”
I felt a hot spike of irritation. I was eighteen.Juvenile wasn’t a stretch. “I’ve got it.”
Simon’s mouth quirked.Maybe that was a smile. “Places.”
I retreated behind the fake door, the cardboard box in my arms. My heart was doing a strange, fluttering dance against my ribs.This was different.Dex had been a predator I’d chosen to feed. This was a choreographed dance with two strangers, under lights, with a crew of bored-looking people watching. Through the crack in the door, I saw Jenna take her place by a counter with a blender prop, and Leo slump back on the couch, picking up a game controller. A monitor off to the side showed what the main camera saw: a perfectly framed, shallow-focus shot of the apartment.
“Quiet on set!” Simon called from his chair by the monitors. “And… action.”
I took a breath, pushed the door open, and stepped into the light.It was blindingly hot. The lights were like physical pressure, a heavy, radiant weight on my skin. I shuffled forward, making the box look heavier than it was.“Hello? Anybody home?”
Leo paused his game, looking over his shoulder.A friendly smile.“Hey!You must be Erin. I’m Leo.Jenna’s around here somewhere.” His voice was warm, believable. He was good.Jenna came out from behind the counter, her robe swirling. “Oh my god, hi!I’m Jenna. We’ve been so excited to meet you!” She came forward, air-kissing near my cheeks.She smelled of coconut oil and mint gum. “Let me help you with that.”
The box was taken from me. The dialogue was inane—exposition about the neighborhood, the wifi password, where the good coffee was. We moved through the space, my character marveling at the view (a green screen that would later be a cityscape), their character being the perfectly welcoming, attractive roommates. I tried to hit my marks, a piece of tape on the floor here, a specific spot by the coffee table there. My voice sounded tinny in my own ears, over-bright.Then Leo stood up, stretching. The jeans hung low on his hips. The script had Jenna saying, “Don’t mind Leo, he’s always been a show-off.” And then it was my line.
I looked at him, at the defined lines of his stomach, the trail of hair that disappeared into his waistband. The camera was on me now.I could feel its lens like a physical touch. I let my eyes widen, just a fraction.Let a nervous, genuine-sounding laugh bubble up.It wasn’t hard. The whole situation was absurd.
“I’ve just never seen a… you know.” I dropped my gaze, playing shy, then looked back up through my lashes. “A cock that big before.”
There was a beat of silence on set.Then Leo laughed, a rich, easy sound. “Well,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, his finger hooking into his waistband. “Since we’re roommates now, no need for secrets, right?”
It was the cue.Jenna moved behind me, her hands coming to my shoulders. “We’re pretty open around here, Erin. It’s all about… sharing.”
The scene unfolded like a well-rehearsed, surreal play. Clothes came off—first mine, then Jenna’s robe, then Leo’s jeans. The movements were practical, almost clinical, interspersed with lines of terrible dialogue. “You’re so beautiful.” “I want to taste you.” “Do you like that?” My skin grew slick with a fine sheen of sweat under the lights. The texture of the couch fabric was rough against my back. Leo’s body was solid, heavier than I’d anticipated, his sweat tasting different from Dex’s—saltier, with a hint of some pre-workout supplement.
Jenna’s hands were more sure than Dex’s, guiding my head, her touch firm but not cruel. There was a strange camaraderie in it, a trio performing a complex athletic routine. I focused on the mechanics: the angle of my neck, the arch of my back for the camera, the rhythm of my breathing so it wouldn’t sound like panicked gasps. I remembered to moan at appropriate intervals, to whisper the scripted lines with what I hoped was convincing desire.“Cut!” Simon’s voice cut through the humid air. “Hold positions.”
We froze.Leo was above me, Jenna beside us. The sudden stop was jarring, like a record screeching to a halt. Simon stood up and walked onto the set, his footsteps quiet on the fake hardwood.He crouched by the couch, ignoring our nakedness completely.
“Erin, you’re doing fine, but you’re thinking too much. I can see you thinking.Your eyes are calculating the next move.I need them glazed over. I need you to look like you’re lost in it, even if you’re counting the ceiling tiles. Jenna, when you kiss her, dominate more.Leo, you’re good.Solid. But give me a little more surprise when she takes you in her mouth. Like it’s still a shock, even though you’ve done this nine hundred times.Okay? Reset from Jenna’s line, ‘Be a good girl and open up.’”
We nodded, a tangle of limbs and sticky skin. Simon retreated. “And… action.”
The lights, the heat, the taste of skin and sweat—it all folded back over me.This time, I tried to let my mind go blank. I focused on the physical sensations alone: the pressure, the friction, the dull ache in my muscles. I let my eyes lose focus, staring at a blister on one of the hot lights above until my vision blurred. I stopped trying to perform desire and just surrendered to the sheer, overwhelming physicality of it.My sounds became less controlled, more ragged.This seemed to work. We moved through the rest of the scene, from the couch to the shower set—a tiled platform with a real, steaming showerhead.The water was a shock, lukewarm and smelling faintly of sulfur. It washed away the sweat, made our skin glisten under the lights. The scene ended with the three of us tangled under the spray, a mess of limbs and satisfied, scripted sighs.
“Cut!That’s a wrap.”
The words were a release. The shower shut off with a final drip.The intense, focused energy that had held us together dissipated. Leo stood, helped Jenna up, then offered me a hand.His grip was firm, impersonal.
“Good job, kid,” he said, and walked off set, grabbing a towel from a waiting assistant.
Jenna wrapped a towel around herself, squeezing water from her hair.“You okay? First day is a trip.”
I was trembling, but not from cold.A deep, vibrating adrenaline was working its way through me.“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“You will be,” she said, not unkindly. “Just don’t drink the water they leave in the bottles on set.Always bring your own. Trust me.” She winked and walked away, already in conversation with a makeup artist.
I stood there dripping, alone on the shower set.A crew member handed me a thin, scratchy towel. I wrapped it around myself, suddenly aware of every eye in the room, now indifferent, moving on to strike the lights or coil cables. The intimacy of the last hour had been an illusion, a product confined to the lit square of the set.Outside of it, I was just another worker, damp and done.
Simon was back at his monitors, scrubbing through footage. He didn’t look up as I approached.“Well?” I asked, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.
He glanced at me, then back at the screen.“You got better.The shower stuff was usable. You’re a quick study.”
“What’s next?”
“Next?” He finally turned to me. “Next, you go get cleaned up for real.There’s a bathroom down the hall. Then you come see me in the office.Paperwork, payment, schedule.”
Payment. The word was a concrete anchor in the surreal sea of the day. “Okay.”
The real bathroom was a grim, utilitarian space with a stained shower stall and a dispenser of harsh, orange soap. I stood under the hot water until it ran cold, scrubbing at the smell of chlorine, sweat, and other people off my skin. My body felt used in a new way—not violated, but utilized, like a tool that had passed its first test.I examined myself in the smudged mirror. My eyes were brighter, my skin flushed.I looked alive.
Dressed in my own clothes—jeans and a simple t-shirt—I found Simon’s office. It was a cluttered room with posters of old movie posters, none of them pornographic.He was typing on a laptop.
“Sit.”
I sat.“Standard contract. Performer rate for today’s work.” He slid a check across the desk. The amount was more money than I’d ever seen for a single day’s work.It felt unreal.“If we use the footage, you get residuals. The contract outlines everything: testing schedules, boundaries, travel if needed.Read it. Don’t sign it now.Take it home.”
I took the stack of papers, the check on top. It was heavy.“You’ve got something,” he said, leaning back.“A look. A willingness.But this industry eats willingness for breakfast.You need to be smart.The scene with Dex? That was you taking initiative.I respect that.But it also makes you a target. Be careful who you take initiative with.”
“Noted.”
“Your next shoot is Thursday.A solo.Here. The concept is ‘innocence corrupted.’ Think lace, think dim lighting, think you discovering your own body for the first time.But with the knowledge you showed today in your eyes.The contrast. Can you hold that contrast?”
I thought of the mirror in the locker room, my own gaze staring back at me—curious, determined, already a little harder than it was yesterday morning. “Yes.”
“Good.” He stood up, a clear dismissal. “Don’t be late.”
I walked out of the warehouse into the late afternoon sun. The light was golden, ordinary, hurting my eyes after the artificial glare of the set.The check was in my pocket, the contract in my hand. My body ached in new places, a detailed map of the day’s activity.
A car honked.A bird chirped. The world was going on, completely oblivious to the tiny, tiled universe I’d just inhabited. I started the walk home, the adrenaline finally subsiding, leaving behind a deep, resonating fatigue.
And beneath the fatigue, a solid, humming core of satisfaction.I had done it.I had stepped into that light and not blinked. It was messy, strange, and profoundly unglamorous.But it was mine. I had taken the first step into a world that was as brutal as it was electric, and I had not been chewed up and spat out.I had, in fact, taken a bite of it myself.
The momentum of the day carried me down the street.Thursday seemed both a lifetime away and just around the corner. Innocence corrupted. I thought about what that would require me to project, and what, in some secret part of me, it might actually reflect. The sun warmed my face, a mundane counterpoint to the memory of the hot, staged shower. I kept walking, the contract crisp in my grasp, already thinking about how to prepare, what to wear, how to hold my eyes just so. The work was waiting.
The work was waiting.She walked. The city sounds were a dull roar in her ears, the check a stiff rectangle in her pocket next to the folded contract.Her body hummed with a strange, exhausted energy, a live wire wrapped in fatigue. She replayed moments: the crack in the door, the taste of chlorinated water in the fake shower, Simon’s flat, assessing eyes.Usable.It was a start. A foot in the door.Her heels clicked a steady rhythm on the pavement, a normal sound in a normal afternoon. A pigeon pecked at a discarded wrapper.A bus exhaled a cloud of exhaust. She turned onto her street, a narrower lane of older brownstones with patchy lawns. The adrenaline was truly gone now, leaving a hollowed-out feeling. She just wanted to get inside, to stare at the ceiling of her tiny studio, to feel the quiet and piece the day together.
A single drop splashed onto her bare forearm.She flinched, stopping mid-step.It was warm. Warmer than the air.She looked up, expecting a leak from an air conditioner, a bird, something. The sky was a clear, vacant blue.No clouds, no overhanging pipes.
The droplet wasn’t water. It was silvery, with a faint, iridescent sheen, like a drop of mercury but lighter.It didn’t bead up. It seeped. As she watched, her skin tingling where it landed, the liquid seemed to dissolve into her pores, disappearing in less than a second.There was no stain, only a lingering, localized heat.
Then the sensation spread.
It started as a sharp, pleasant jolt right at the point of entry, a tiny zap like licking a battery, but instead of pain, it was a shock of pure, radiant warmth. It raced up her arm, a wave of euphoric heat lighting up her nerves.Her breath caught.It felt… good.Incredibly good. A head-to-toe rush, as if her blood had been replaced with sparkling, carbonated light. For three seconds, she stood paralyzed on the sidewalk, awash in a pleasure so intense it bordered on nausea.
The warmth condensed in her chest, a sunburst behind her sternum, then shot down her arms, into her fingers.Her fingertips buzzed.She looked down at them. Tiny, visible arcs of blue-white static cracked between her knuckles, snapping with a sound like miniature velcro tearing. The air around her hands shimmered with heat haze.
A deep, resonant hum filled her skull, a frequency felt more than heard.And with it came the urge.It wasn’t a thought. It was a primal, limbic command, overwriting everything else.
A man was walking his dog across the street.A small, yappy thing pulling at the leash. The man was middle-aged, wearing a tracksuit, looking at his phone.Erin’s hand lifted of its own accord. Her index finger pointed. Her vision sharpened, zeroing in on the pulse thrumming in the side of his neck. Every detail was crystalline: the sweat stain on his collar, the grey in his stubble, the delicate tracery of veins under his skin. A surging, hungry need roared up from that warm place in her chest.It was simple, clean, and absolute.
Kill him.Her finger trembled.The hum in her head became a pounding drum. The energy in her fingertips coiled, eager, aching for release. A bolt of it would lance out, she knew it.It would pierce that throat, cook him from the inside. She could almost smell the ozone and burnt meat.Saliva flooded her mouth.
“No.” The word grated out from between her clenched teeth.She forced her hand down, slamming it against her own thigh. A small, involuntary crackle of energy discharged into her jeans. The fabric smoked faintly, and a sharp, painful jolt, the first truly unpleasant one, shot up her leg.It broke the spell.
She gasped, staggering back against a brick wall.The man and his dog turned the corner, oblivious. The urge receded, not vanishing, but pooling in her gut like a heavy, hot stone. The compulsion remained, but she could see it now, separate from herself.A foreign thing. An infection.Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. She looked at her hands. The static was gone, but a residual glow seemed to linger under her skin, a network of faint blue lines tracing her veins like a sinister map.She felt powerful. Terribly, horrifically powerful.And the power wanted out.It wanted to be used. It sang to her of clean, instant endings.She pushed off the wall and started walking again, faster now, her whole body trembling. The check, the contract, the shoot—it all seemed like a faded dream from another lifetime. This was real. This liquid, this energy… this was a different kind of performance, and there was no director, no safe word.She fumbled for her phone, her fingers clumsy and buzzing. She needed to tell someone.But who?The police?They’d lock her up. A hospital?They’d think she was psychotic.Simon?Her thumb hovered over his contact. He was a part of the other world, the one of staged fantasies. But he was also practical, amoral, and operated in gray areas.He wouldn’t panic. He might know… something.She called.It rang three times.“Yeah.” His voice was the same. Impatient.Clipped.“Simon.It’s Erin.” Her voice sounded thin, stretched.
“I know who it is.You lost the contract already?”
“No.I… something happened. On my way home.” She was breathing too fast, trying to keep it steady. “Something… fell on me.From the sky.A drop of something.”
A pause.“Rain? Genius.”
“It wasn’t water.It was… metallic.Warm. It went into my skin.” The words sounded insane even as she said them. “And now I… I feel… I can…”
“Spit it out, Erin. I’ve got a lighting setup about to go tits up.”
“I think I can shoot electricity out of my hands.” She blurted it out, squeezing her eyes shut waiting for the derisive laugh.The line was silent for a full five seconds. When he spoke again, the edge of impatience was gone, replaced by a focused, cold curiosity. “You think, or you can?”
“I can.I saw sparks. I felt it.It’s… inside me.” She swallowed. “And it wants me to hurt people.”
Another silence, shorter this time.“Where are you.”
“A block from my apartment. On Fairview.”
“Don’t go home.Don’t touch anything. Don’t talk to anyone.Go to the alley behind the Thai place on the corner of Fairview and Seventh. The one with the green dumpster.Wait there.I’m five minutes away.”
“Why? What are you—”
“Just do it.” The line went dead.
The authority in his voice cut through her panic.It was an order, a direction.She needed direction. She turned, walking quickly toward Seventh.The urge pulsed within her, a second heartbeat. A woman passed her, laughing into her phone.The urge flared: A quick jab to the temple. She’d never know.Erin clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms, and hurried past.
The alley was narrow, smelling of stale grease and rotting vegetables.The green dumpster was there, lid half-off. She stood in its shadow, leaning against the grimy brick.Every nerve was on fire. The warm stone in her gut glowed hotter. She concentrated on breathing, in and out, trying to quiet the hum.She held her hands out before her, turning them over.They looked normal. They felt like reactors.A black SUV, sleek and silent, slid into the mouth of the alley. The passenger window descended.Simon looked out, his glasses reflecting the alley’s dim light. “Get in.”
She didn’t hesitate.She pulled the door open and slid into the leather seat. The car was immaculate, cool, smelling of cleaner and new car scent. It felt like a spaceship compared to the organic, buzzing mess of her body.Simon didn’t pull away immediately. He looked at her, his gaze clinical, scanning her face, her hands. “Show me,” he said, no trace of doubt in his voice.“What?”
“The electricity.Show me. Not at me.There.” He pointed to an empty paper coffee cup sitting in the cup holder.
Erin stared at the cup.The urge wasn’t for the cup. It was for him, for the pulse in his neck, so close.She wrestled it down, focusing on the inert target. She raised a trembling hand, index finger extended.She didn’t know how to do it. She just… wanted the cup to be destroyed.A surge of heat writhed up her arm. A brilliant, jagged fork of blue-white energy, thin as a wire, snapped from her fingertip with a sound like a gunshot.It struck the paper cup. Instantly, the cup wasn’t just knocked over.It vaporized in a puff of black ash and a tiny pop. The plastic lid melted, dripping onto the console.The smell of ozone and burnt plastic filled the car.
Erin jerked her hand back, panting.The release had felt good.Too good. A spike of pleasure accompanied it, sharp and addictive.The warm stone in her gut sighed in satisfaction.
Simon didn’t flinch. He stared at the smoldering ring in his cup holder, then slowly reached over and brushed away the ash with a napkin.His face was unreadable. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay.”
“What was that?” Her voice was a raw whisper. “What happened to me?”
“I don’t know.” He put the car in drive and pulled smoothly out of the alley.“But I know someone who might. And I know this: what you just did? That’s worth infinitely more than anything you could do on my sets.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your career just took a very different turn.” He drove with calm precision, heading away from her neighborhood, toward the industrial edge of the city. “The feeling.The urge to hurt people.Describe it.”
“It’s… a command. It’s not me.It’s like a voice, but not a voice.A pressure. It points at someone and just… wants. It wanted me to kill a man on the street. It wanted me to kill you just now.” She looked at him, desperate for some sign of fear, of understanding. “Why aren’t you afraid?”
“I’m pragmatic,” he said, turning a corner.“Fear is a luxury.You controlled it. You directed it at the cup.That’s data.Control is what matters.” He glanced at her. “Can you summon it without the… violent impulse?”
Erin focused inward. The energy was there, humming, warm.She tentatively reached for it, imagining a tiny spark between her thumb and finger. A small, controlled arc responded, flickering harmlessly.No urge.Just power.“Yes. I think so.If I focus.”
“Good.” He seemed pleased.“The impulse is a problem. We’ll have to manage that. But the power… that’s an asset.”
“We?” She felt a new kind of cold seeping in. “Simon, what is this?”
“You fell into my world this morning, Erin.A small, grubby, competitive world. This,” he nodded toward her hands, “is a much bigger world.With different players. And much, much higher stakes.” He drove through a chain-link gate into a vast, mostly empty lot surrounding a nondescript low building that looked like a former machine shop. “My brother,” Simon said, parking near a side door, “is involved in acquisitions.Of a unique kind. He’ll want to meet you.”
“Acquisitions? What does that mean?”
“It means,” Simon said, killing the engine, “that you’re not a performer anymore.You’re a specimen. And your survival depends on making yourself more valuable alive than you would be dissected.”
The words hung in the ozone-tainted air. Erin looked at her hands, at the faint blue tracery glowing faintly under her skin.The check in her pocket was meaningless paper.The contract, a joke. The power inside her was real, hungry, and now it was all she had. She had walked out of one kind of performance and into another, where the cameras were undoubtedly far more sophisticated, and the consequences of a bad take were final.Simon got out. “Coming?”
The urge rose again, not for him, but for the sheer, destructive release of it. To blast the door off its hinges, to reduce the SUV to a molten frame, to arc lightning into the featureless grey sky just to feel the torrential flow. She controlled it, holding it in a tight, burning coil at her core.She had spent the day learning to fake intimacy, to simulate desire. Now she had to learn to fake normality, to cage a lightning storm behind her ribs.
She nodded, swallowing the metallic taste in her mouth.“Yeah,” she said, her voice steady, colder than she felt. “I’m coming.” She opened the door and stepped out into the concrete lot, the alien energy humming its fierce, tempting song under her skin. The sun was setting, casting long, distorted shadows. She followed Simon toward the door, each step a conscious effort to keep the storm contained, to walk like a human and not a conduit for something that had fallen, unknowable, from a clean, empty sky.