“Kane DeSoto has read all the notes on Gyon’s character,” he continues, pumping my hand like we’re old friends, “and Kane DeSoto is ready to channel that primal power. That emotional depth. That raw, predatory sensuality.”
“I need to sit down,” I whisper.
He follows me. “You don’t mind if Kane DeSoto gets a selfie with you, right? For the fans.”
Deb steers him away with a death glare, and I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath for hours.
The first take starts an hour late.
It’s a scene based on a real moment—one where Gyon and I had to crawl through a collapsed maintenance tunnel, no light, no map, just each other’s breath to go by.
The script turns it into a love confession.
“I’ve never wanted anything,” Kane-DeSoto-Gyon says, eyes squinting heroically, “but Kane—Gyon—wants you.”
I nearly burst out laughing.
Or screaming. I can’t tell.
“Cut,” Miles says, sounding delighted. “Beautiful. That’s the stuff. That’sheart. Let’s go again but sexier.”
I stare at him. “Sexier? We were bleeding. I had a collapsed lung.”
He pats my shoulder like I’m an emotional support animal. “Art, babe. This is art. The audience needs tofeelit.”
I think I black out for a second.
Between takes, I hole up in my not-room and try to rewrite lines on the sly. Deb catches me at it, raises one eyebrow, then hands me an old stylus. “Keep it subtle,” she murmurs. “Miles can’t read subtext anyway.”
Pepper’s in the green room with a rotating crew of bored assistants who think she’s adorable. Her inducer holds. Her eyes stay brown. Her temperature’s under control. But I check her every ten minutes anyway, heart pounding like I’m on a heist.
When I stop by for a break, she grins at me with jam on her face.
“I like it here,” she says. “They got pillows that make fart sounds.”
“High art,” I reply, and kiss her forehead.
By the end of the day, I feel like I’ve been stretched over a rack and asked to perform a musical number. Emotionally, physically, cosmically exhausted. And all I’ve done is say five lines, dodge Kane-DeSoto’s ego, and try not to scream every time someone says “creative liberties.”
But.
When I lie down that night, Pepper curled in the crook of my arm, I don’t feel hollow.
I feel scraped raw.
Like maybe, just maybe, there’s something worth salvaging in this wreckage.
Then I dream of Gyon.
He’s in a place I can’t reach. Sky above him. Blood on his knuckles. He says my name and I wake up with my throat tight and tears burning my eyes.
I touch Pepper’s hair. I stare at the ceiling.
And I try not to want anything.
I don't even waitfor the AD to call wrap. The second they yell “Cut,” I’m already halfway off the soundstage, my boots smacking loud on the painted cement floor, the edges of my costume snagging on a prop crate. Deb yells something after me—probably a reminder to sign out or return the Reaper-sim harness—but I don’t stop. I just keep moving.
The scene was trash.
