Chapter 4: The Water Challenge
The laughter from the shadows was still echoing, a tangible heat on Jacky’s bare skin, when Vanessa clapped her hands together. “Enough admiration! We have a schedule. Water challenge, remember?”
As she spoke, a low hydraulic groan vibrated through the floor. In the very center of the stage, a rectangular section recessed and then rose again, this time filled with swirling, artificially blue water. It was a pool, but shallow—maybe waist deep—and perfectly transparent from the sides. The surface shimmered under the lights, casting liquid, wavering reflections on the chrome ceiling. It smelled sharply of chlorine.
“Jacky, you’ll be on the retrieval team,” Vanessa said, pointing to a narrow, slick-looking platform that extended over one end of the pool. “Five tokens, one for each of our lovely contestants, are at the bottom. You have sixty seconds to get them all. Simple.”
Nothing was simple here. He knew it. The icy pit in his stomach knew it.
“What are the rules?” he asked, his voice too quiet. The microphone on his chest picked it up anyway, amplifying the tremor.
“Rules?” Vanessa smiled, all white teeth. “The women are stationed around the perimeter. Their role is… motivational. To encourage speed. To ensure you’re fully engaged with the task.”
Sloane was already peeling off her tank top, revealing a black sports bra beneath. She stepped to the pool’s edge, her expression one of pure focus. Mira rolled her shoulders, limbering up. Tasha dipped a toe in the water and squealed, “It’s cold!” Ivy merely watched, her arms crossed. Keira stood at the far end, a silent sentinel.
Jacky was ushered onto the platform. It was barely wider than his feet. Below, the blue water looked deeper than it probably was. The tokens were visible—small, glittering discs settled on the white bottom.
A digital buzzer sounded.
He dropped to his knees, reaching into the water. The chill was a shock. His fingers brushed a token. As he fumbled for it, a torrent of water hit him square in the face.
He gasped, sputtering. Tasha was grinning, having cupped her hands to splash him. “Faster, slowpoke!”
He snatched the first token, shoved it into the pocket of his jeans, and shuffled sideways on the platform to reach for the next. This one was nearer to Mira. He stretched out, leaning precariously over the water.
“Posture’s terrible,” Mira commented, just before she kicked, not at him, but at the water. A hard, precise slap of liquid soaked his hair and chest. He flinched, almost losing his balance, fingertips scraping the token away. He had to lunge for it, his torso now halfway over the pool. He got it.
Two down. His jeans were already soaked from the splashing, heavy and clinging to his thighs.
The third token was in the middle. He lay flat on the platform, reaching down. His ribs pressed against the hard edge. Just as his hand closed around the disc, two things happened at once. Sloane, from his left, delivered a massive, two-handed sweep of water that blinded him. From his right, he felt a sharp push against his shoulder.
It wasn’t a splash. It was a hand. Ivy’s hand, small and strong, shoving him off balance.
He tipped. There was a sickening lurch of weightlessness, and then the cold, consuming embrace of the pool. He plunged under, the world going silent and blue. His knees hit the bottom, and he pushed up, bursting through the surface with a ragged, desperate inhale.
The audience was screaming with delight. He stood, chest-deep, water streaming from his hair. His white t-shirt, which he’d been holding clumsily in his back pocket, floated away, a sodden ghost. His jeans were now fully saturated, dragging at his hips. He could feel every seam.
“Time!” Vanessa called, though the clock likely still had seconds. “Retrieval failed. He only secured two tokens before his… immersive strategy.”
Jacky waded to the edge, his movements slowed by the weight of the water. He didn’t need help to get out; Sloane and Mira each grabbed an arm and hauled him onto the solid floor with a wet, messy slap. He lay there for a second, dripping, before pushing himself to his knees.
The water had turned his jeans a dark, translucent gray. They clung to every angle of his legs, to the jut of his hips. The studio lights were unforgiving.
“Another consequence round,” Vanessa sang, her eyes on the audience. “And I think we all see the problem. Those look terribly uncomfortable, Jacky. Let’s vote. Option A: a five-minute time penalty in the next round. Option B: remove the soaked garment.”
The screen lit up. The bar for Option B didn’t just fill; it exploded into full capacity before the countdown even finished. A unanimous, roaring decree.
“You heard them,” Vanessa said, her voice a blend of sympathy and spectacle. “Those jeans have to go.”
Jacky’s fingers were numb, clumsy. The button fly of his jeans was a puzzle under slick hands. The denim was suctioned to his skin. He had to turn slightly, yanking at the material. It peeled away with a wet sound, revealing his plain, light-blue boxers beneath. They were soaked too, plastered to his skin, leaving very little to the imagination of the high-definition cameras now zooming in tight.
He stood, holding the dripping, heavy jeans, shivering violently in the conditioned air. His entire world had narrowed to the feeling of the thin, wet cotton on his hips and the violent, all-over exposure from his ankles to his neck.
“Aw, honey,” Tasha said, her voice dripping with a faux pity that was worse than mockery. “You’re gonna catch a chill. And wow, that fabric really doesn’t leave much mystery, does it?”
The camera feed on the giant screen switched to a shocking, intimate close-up of his lower body. The soaked boxers clung, outlining the shape of him, the pale skin of his thighs visibly goosebumped. A red laser dot appeared, jittering around the edge of the framing, daring to point.
Mira snorted. “Not much to obscure, I guess.”
Sloane looked bored. “Pathetic.”
Ivy’s head was tilted, studying the screen with an artist’s appraisal. She said nothing.
Vanessa let the silence hang, let the image burn itself into the retina of every screen. Jacky couldn’t move. He just stood, a drowned, skeletal thing under the lights, the last shred of his dignity swirling down a drain somewhere beneath the pristine stage.
“Well,” Vanessa finally said, the word cutting through the muffled chuckles and whispered comments from the dark. “Now that you’re properly… streamlined… we can proceed. The next challenge requires agility. And a little bit of balance.” She gestured to a crew member, who wheeled out a large, vertical wheel, like a crude metal ferris wheel laid flat against a frame. It had six padded spokes.
“It’s called The Rotisserie,” Vanessa smiled. “You’re going to be strapped in. And our contestants are going to spin you. Your job is to answer trivia questions correctly. Every wrong answer… well. Let’s just say the spinning gets more creative.”
Jacky looked from the ominous wheel to the women, who were now exchanging glances, a new, unsettling kind of smile on Ivy’s face. His stomach, already empty, turned to liquid. The wet boxers felt like a second, colder skin. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him deeper than the pool, that the spinning was the least of what was about to happen.