The network would assemble its cut. His voice—I want to be the kind of player people remember for the right reasons—spliced against footage of him falling on his face.
It would go viral.
Pickle would see it. Not first—he'd see it the way everyone else would. He'd click a link in the group chat. Someone would textlol, is this you? with a clip that had already been shared ten thousand times.
He'd watch himself become the thing he feared most, not knowing I helped build it.
The phone buzzed again.
Naomi:Call me. Now.
I knew what the call would be. It would be an interrogation disguised as a professional check-in.
She'd want to know what I meant by concerns. She'd want specifics, a framework she could take to the network. I'd have to decide, in real-time, how honest to be.
I could give her the professional version: creative differences and tonal inconsistencies.
Or I could tell her the truth:I'm sleeping with one of the subjects. I sent you footage I knew you'd weaponize. And I'm standing in a hotel room trying to figure out how to undo it.
The phone buzzed again.
Naomi:Adrian. I know you're awake.
She did know. She'd known me for eight years, through Theo and the aftermath. She'd vouched for me when no one else would.
My thumb hovered over the call button.
If I called, I'd have to talk about Pickle as if he were a subject.The hockey player. The chaos gremlin. Our hook.I'd have to choose the machine over the person.
I set the phone face down again.
Pickle deserved to hear it from me. Before Naomi. Before the network. Before anyone else decided how this story would be told.
The phone buzzed one more time, and I didn't look.
One hour and three minutes.
I crossed to the window.
The Sleeping Giant filled the horizon—that massive stone formation I'd seen every day since I arrived. The formation stretched across the peninsula like a body in repose. It was a creature that decided the effort of waking wasn't worth the cost.
I'd spent my whole life trying to be like that. Contained. Controlled. The observer who never got pulled into the frame.
Theo had seen through it.You hold it at arm's length, like if you let it get too close, it would destroy you.
Pickle had seen through it, too. That night in the car, windows fogged, his voice cracking:The part when you aren't sure anyone's going to catch you.
He'd been talking about himself, but he might as well have been speaking about me, too.
I'd been falling since the parking lot. Since the orange Crocs and the broken microphone, andit's not what it looks like. Instead of admitting it, I'd done what I always did.
I'd kept the camera rolling.
Now the footage existed in the world, and Pickle was fifty-one minutes away, and the only thing standing between me and complete disaster was a choice I still hadn't made.
Tell him. Before he finds out another way.
The words weren't complicated. They didn't require eloquence or strategy.
