“Tomorrow’s stars will be drawn from the exceptional amongst us. They are the individuals who can adapt, thrive, and win under any circumstances, no matter what the odds are. They are survivors.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“No traditional cable or television channel will ever air this show. No traditional studio will ever make the decision whether to censor any part of it. But I promise you this: each of your amazing performances, your struggles, your victories will be seen by more people than you ever dreamed possible. As I said, our distribution channel is direct, and our business model is equally nontraditional. We plan to make a lower-fidelity, partial version of our product available for free. How? By uploading it to file-sharing sites, video hubs, peer-to-peer networks, and dozens of other free high-traffic channels.
“Our audience will spread it like wildfire because the content is so utterly compelling. Have we not created the ultimate viral video?
“And we will also make the full-length, high-fidelity version—the director’s cut, if you will—available for a fee. A
substantial
fee, I assure you. High enough to cover the extra security precautions that we must take for payment collection, to ensure anonymity both for the customer and for ourselves. But the demand is there, my friends. And where there is paying demand, innovators like Vita Brevis will arise to satisfy it.”
Camilla felt the bile rise in her throat. This was a sick and cynical nightmare, but in its own horrifying way, it was inevitable, too, wasn’t it? Sooner or later, in the brave new world of the Internet, someone was bound to try an experiment like this.
And she herself had been selected for it because she was a freak, a sideshow act—all because of a terrible childhood tragedy that she could do nothing to change. The person she had fought for twenty three years to become—the person she thought she
was
—didn’t matter.
Julian had chosen Camilla because she was a monster.
Her hands rose to cover her ears, but she forced them down to her sides, fighting against crushing despair. She wanted to find a quiet corner away from everyone, curl into a ball, and escape into nothingness.
This wasn’t what she was. What had happened to her could have happened to anyone. The horrible things she remembered from so long ago were impossible. They were the disturbed nightmares of a traumatized child. She simply remembered them
wrong
.
Julian rose, and the camera followed him as he walked a few steps to stop in front of the massive bale of currency. He picked up a packet of bills and fanned through it with his thumb.
“I assure you that your generous prizes represent only a tiny investment for us. Especially compared to what Vita Brevis stands to
earn
in this venture. But there will be other compensations for you as well. We acknowledge that this is an entirely new entertainment model. You are its very first stars, a bright constellation that will light the way for all those who follow. Consequently, we place no restrictions upon you. You will have full rights to exploit and benefit from your experience here in any way you please.”
He bowed, courtly and sincere.
“We are deeply indebted and grateful to you all. But there is one among you to whom I owe especial thanks—one without whom this would have been impossible.”
Camilla’s eyes widened. Julian was talking to his spy now.
On the monitor, he placed a hand on the center of his chest.
“I will name no names, but you know who you are. As we discussed beforehand, you will be joining me in a different capacity after the show. Your future with Vita Brevis is assured.”
The despair redoubled. Someone—probably someone in the room right now—had betrayed them for the promise of an illegal career with Julian. That person was equally to blame for the deaths of Lauren, Heather, Travis, and perhaps also Jacob and JT.
Was it Brent? Maybe. Julian could be using the drugs to manipulate him.
Veronica? A truly terrifying possibility.
Mason? Very plausible, even though she was sure he hadn’t chained the scientists’ boat.
Or was it Travis? The two-way-isolation rule meant that Julian was talking into a blank screen again. Double blind. He might not even know that Travis was dead.
Juan? She glanced at him. Oh god, maybe.
Jordan, who had now isolated herself from the rest of them? It fit so well.
What about JT?
Camilla was driving herself crazy thinking about it. It could be any of them.
Julian clapped his hands together sharply, startling her.
“Now, all of you, rest well and prepare. The final challenge lies ahead—a most dangerous game indeed. It will push each of you to the limits of your abilities. The previous challenges, much like the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy upon which they were modeled, have laid the foundation and prepared you well for this final one. Tomorrow we reach the top of Maslow’s pyramid. But tonight we will relax and entertain ourselves with two more contestant profiles. Enjoy them, and I look forward to meeting all of you in person tomorrow.”
Their host faded from the screen.
The faces all around Camilla were a blur. She braced herself, terrified of seeing her own childhood face staring back at her from the monitor.
Instead, an image of a sprawling city nestled at the base of lush, rain forest-covered mountains bathed the room in a greenish glow.
The voiceover continued in Julian’s narrator voice, so familiar from the earlier profiles of Brent and Veronica, so hateful to Camilla’s ears.
“Roberto Martín Antonio y Gabriel topped Colombia’s power structure in the 1990s. A major exporter of luxury agricultural goods, he collaborated with his closest competitors to establish fair pricing for their product worldwide, building an impressive business empire and amassing vast wealth. But family was Roberto’s true legacy. His eldest son, César Juan Antonio y Gabriel, grew up among Bogotá’s aristocratic elite.”
A picture of a young man, maybe 18 or 19 years old, appeared on the screen, and Camilla gasped.
Wearing a tailored white silk shirt and designer sunglasses, he stood with arms crossed in front of a silver cigarette boat docked in front of a multistory waterfront villa. The contoured twin-headlight fairing of a racing-style motorcycle was visible in the villa’s open garage, alongside an exotic yellow sports car—a Ferrari or Lamborghini. The young man’s face was different—his features a little less sharp, less handsome—but the bored-lifeguard posture was unmistakable.
She was looking at a younger Juan.
“Groomed to take over the multibillion-dollar business empire, it soon became clear that César would have to navigate far rougher business waters than his father had. Times were changing. The economic interference of a Northern Hemisphere superpower was making the business climate far more competitive than in his father’s heyday.”
Juan had said he grew up on the streets. Hardly.
Camilla’s eyes flicked back and forth between the aristocratic young man on the screen and the wetsuit-clad Juan—her child-rescuing motorcyclist—now leaning against the wall in the same slacker pose. His face was far more striking now, the nose and cheekbones more angular, the jawline sharper. Plastic surgery?
Unlike in the photograph, there was no arrogance in Juan’s expression now. She read resignation in his dark eyes, in the slump of his shoulders. She was shocked to find that Julian’s revelations didn’t change her opinion of Juan—she still believed in him.
“Perhaps young César Juan was unprepared to step into his father’s shoes, but Roberto Martín’s tragic death during a business negotiation left the family little choice. César was expected to assume the reins of the empire. Instead, he disappeared. His family—and his father’s business competitors as well—all searched in vain for the young man. No trace of him was ever found. He was assumed to be a victim of a kidnapping gone wrong—a common enough fear among Bogotá’s wealthy. Shortly thereafter, competition in the agricultural sector intensified. Things went rapidly downhill for the Antonio y Gabriel family.”
Sadness filled Juan’s eyes as images flashed past on the screen. A burning Mercedes riddled with bullet holes. The luxury villa, strung with police tape, with half its facade blackened by fire. A sprawled shape lying in the street, covered by a bloodstained sheet, surrounded by uniformed officials.
“César’s younger brother, Álvaro, attempted to hold things together in the face of a deteriorating business climate but could not. Soon the Antonio y Gabriel business empire was no more. Tragic accidents claimed the lives of César’s mother and younger sister. Álvaro fled Colombia. But he never gave up the search for his older brother.”
Juan put his hands on his hips and stared at the ground. His lack of defiance—his quiet, dignified sorrow—pierced Camilla’s heart.
A small island, postcard familiar, appeared on the screen. Pleasure boats floated in the harbor, lined up in pleasing arcs on the cobalt blue water. White hotels and restaurants dotted the green hills that climbed from the harbor to the wooded hillsides above.
“Álvaro eventually found his brother on Santa Catalina Island in California. César was living under a different name, working as an independent dive-charter captain. Álvaro chartered his brother’s boat for a surprise reunion, but any reconciliation between the two was brief. César was rescued from the sea by the Coast Guard, a victim of multiple gunshot wounds. Álvaro was never found.”
Camilla’s eyes stung.
“Not my brother’s keeper, Juan?”
She had actually said that to him. If only she had known… His all-black outfits made sense to her now: he was a man in perpetual mourning. Juan would not let himself forget.
Like her, he, too, had lost his entire family. Fleeing a toxic legacy, he’d had to reinvent himself. They were so much alike, the two of them: both survivors, both refusing to let their past define who they were.
“Juan, look at me,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m so sorry.”
Head down, Juan walked across the room and out into the downpour.
J
ordan sat alone on the steps. The monitor on the wall glowed. The cavernous central room of the Victorian house felt empty around her, though not as empty as she felt inside. Learning the truth about Juan, what he really was, had hurt her more than she had thought possible. Not his family background—she didn’t care about that. What hurt was what the profile said about
him
. What she had already found out for herself.
What Juan was really like.
She wished she had never come, never met him. She wanted to go home.
A deep voice rumbled from the dark hallway that led deeper into the building.
“Fuck me.” It sounded darkly amused. “An honest-to-God no-shit Colombian drug lord.”
A pair of glowing green circles emerged at head height from the darkness of the hallway, followed by a muscular body. JT’s face and arms were striped with camouflage paint. His teeth glowed white as he pushed the night-vision goggles onto his forehead.
“You sure know how to pick ‘em, girl. But at least now we know where they got the money. The kind of money we saw on the ship. The kind of money it would take to put this thing together. The kind of money we all found just lying around during the scavenger hunt.”
A bundle of hundred-dollar bills slapped the floor by Jordan’s feet.
“
This
kind of money,” JT said. “Drug money.”
Jordan ignored him.
Catalina Island faded from the monitor screen, and Julian’s voice returned, rising in pitch and volume.
“And now, folks, we come to perhaps the most interesting contestant of all, and by far the favorite of the home crowd to win the grand prize. She’s smart, she’s sassy, and she’s popular with her peers. But under that drop-dead gorgeous exterior beats the heart of a true competitor—a true survivor.”
She would not let anyone—JT, cameras, Julian,
anyone
—see a reaction on her face. She kept it expressionless as she pushed herself upright, balancing on her good foot and using the speargun as a crutch.
On-screen, a picture appeared. She could see herself, hair in a bun, muscles taut, standing on the balance beam with the concentrated expression her gymnastics coach always called her gold-medal face. She remembered that picture: the state semifinals. She had won it all to qualify for the finals.
Putting a bored expression on her face now, Jordan turned her back on the monitor and headed up the steps.
Behind her, she could hear Julian’s voice, campy with canned excitement.
“Yes, folks, you guessed right! We’re talking about… Jordan… Vaughan!”
C
amilla listened with a heavy heart to Julian’s breathless delivery. She listened for a clue, a hint, an explanation for why Jordan had shut all of them out—now even Juan, too.
“Jordan grew up in Woodside, California, on her parents’ country estate. She attended exclusive private schools and had the very best tutors. Her parents prepared her well for life. From an early age, she excelled, competing in swimming, ice skating, debate, horseback riding, skiing, math, tae kwon do, and lacrosse. Elected class president in her senior year of high school, Jordan was also an all-state gymnast and soccer team captain. Academically and socially, she dominated. A straight-A student, she graduated as class valedictorian and was also voted homecoming queen by her peers—easily the most popular girl in her school.”
A montage of still photos accompanied Julian’s words. Jordan in riding boots, sitting on a horse, concentration in her eyes. Jordan churning through the water in swim cap and goggles, shoulders lifted in a butterfly stroke. Jordan onstage in a stunning dress, accepting an award of some kind, her broad, friendly can-you-believe-it smile—the one that Camilla missed seeing—sharing her joy with the audience.
“Jordan was accepted to prestigious Stanford University, where she continued to excel, earning her undergraduate degree in English, summa cum laude, and a master’s in communications, also summa cum laude.”