“They’re armed with Tasers,” I reminded Zyanya in a whisper. “He’ll survive.” Physically. But being hunted through the woods in front of a live studio audience was a trauma and humiliation he might never truly recover from.
Zyanya nodded, but her gaze stayed glued to the screens. After twenty minutes of watching two amateur hunters thrash their way through dense forest, Olive Burnette motioned for us to follow her from the room. I had to practically drag Zyanya away.
We reloaded our trays in the kitchen, then headed back into the viewing room, where one glance at the screens on the front wall made me catch my breath. One of the hunters was squatting, staring right at a thin, hunched figure in the brush.
“I’ve got him,” the hunter whispered into his microphone. “If I can just...get...close enough.”
The audience had gone silent, as had the event coordinators and the handlers. The only person in the room who wasn’t frozen in fascination was Charles, who was quietly monitoring the screens in front of him, to make sure that his audience had the best possible view.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Miles has the target in his sight. If you placed money on him this evening, it looks like you made a very wise decision.”
“If I could just...get a little...closer,” Mr. Miles said, clearly oblivious to Fischer’s narration. On-screen, he lunged through the brush. We heard a soft thunk, then a grunt and the buzz of electricity. The shadowy hunched form in front of him fell into the greenish underbrush with a thump and the crackle of dead leaves. “Got him!” Miles shouted, and Zyanya’s sob was swallowed by cheers from the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like we have a—”
“There he is!” Mr. Brewer whispered from his feed, on the far left.
The coordinator spun toward the wall of screens at his back, and the hand holding the microphone fell to his side in surprise. Square in the middle of Brewer’s view was a thin, hunched figure, similar in silhouette to the form his competitor had just dropped with a stun gun, and was now carefully approaching across a bed of underbrush.
My focus volleyed from feed to feed, and the general movement of heads from the crowd in front of me appeared to be doing the same thing.
“Charles, are you seeing this?” Fischer seemed to have forgotten that the rest of us could hear him. “Did we release two captives onto the hunting grounds?”
Charles shook his head, but I couldn’t hear what he said.
“Can you patch me through?”
“Of course,” Charles said. “Which one do you want to talk to?”
A confused buzz of voices rose from the crowd in front of us and Zyanya grabbed my arm so tightly in her free hand that I almost dropped my full tray.
“Give me Brewer,” Fischer said. Then he turned to face the room full of spectators. “Ladies and gentlemen, there seems to be some confusion in the field. Give us just a moment to sort it out.” His smile blossomed wide enough for me to see from across the room, even in the near dark. “And please consider this extra excitement to be on the house!”
The audience chuckled, but their gazes stayed glued to the screens. As did mine. And when the coordinator waved a handler forward and spoke to him privately, I knew exactly what he was saying.
Go get Vandekamp.
“You’re hooked in,” Charles said, and the coordinator turned back to the screen on the far left.
“Mr. Brewer, are you certain you’ve spotted your target?”
The image on Brewer’s screen jumped as he did, startled by a voice he obviously hadn’t expected to hear from inside his helmet. “Yes. He’s just feet away,” the hunter whispered. “Can you see him?”
“We see something,” Fischer said, and the tension in his voice was quite clear. “But we aren’t sure what, exactly. Please approach with caution.”
“Will do.” Brewer stepped almost silently out of his hiding place, and at the bottom of his screen, his hands extended in front of him, holding his stun gun.
On the other screen, Miles slowly approached his downed target, twigs cracking with every step he took.
Brewer fired his stun gun with an audible jolt of electricity. The form in front of him jumped with the impact, then shook as electricity passed through him. An instant later, he hit the ground with hardly a sound. He’d landed in a patch of bare dirt.
“He’s down!” Brewer bounded forward and his hand rose toward the screen. Something clicked, and a flashlight shone from his helmet onto the form at his feet. “I’ve got him! I won!”
And he had. Payat lay on the ground, unconscious. Still in human form.
“What the hell...?” Again, the coordinator forgot he was holding his microphone, and this time Brewer heard him, as well. “Then what did the other guy catch?”
As one, we turned to Miles’s screen as he finally switched on his own flashlight. The beam skirted the underbrush, then settled on a fur-covered form lying on its side, its ribs rising and falling with each labored breath. “What the hell is that?” Miles demanded, as the audience gasped. “That’s not a cheetah.”
