The Danger Game by Ian Bull

Author:Ian Bull [Bull, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-27T23:00:00+00:00

Friday, March 15, 7:00 a.m. (CET)

Min, Elliot, and Ismael work their monitors while Douglas paces behind them. We’ve been up all night. The boys are in their nerd zone, living on Red Bull and getting up only to pee. I’m bored, but Douglas is energized like he’s playing online poker or running a drone assault in Pakistan.

His smartphone vibrates, and he holds it up. “Peter Heyman is texting that episode four is ready for download. Min, please check your inbox and upload it to The Danger Game site. We can all watch together at the same time as our fans.”

Min taps on his keyboard, and the monitor, recessed into the mahogany cabinet above their monitors, emerges and turns on.

Episode four is decent, but not great. The mixture of new material and scenes from the classics feels fake. Julia and Steven do a decent job with Taming of the Shrew, but I wouldn’t pay for it. They’ve rendered them into a Renaissance garden, and Steven Quintana in Shakespearean costume looks stupid. Julia Travers, as usual, pulls it all off. Heyman stopped Quintana’s blinking, thank God, and Travers is behaving.

The computer animation drops away, and Julia and Steven are in the green room, pacing the floor between scenes. Julia Travers yells up at the cameras in the rafters.

Heyman yells down. “People like your mouth.”

“Maybe people want to watch me fight more than watch me suffer,” she responds.

“I don’t.”

“That’s because I beat you once before. And I will again.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You shoot everything we do. I dare you to put what I just said in the next episode. If you don’t, it will be proof that I do scare you.”

“I’m already scared.”

My gut drops. When this footage came in, I reminded Douglas of his promise not to use any ad-libbing in the episode. He not only used it, he’s making it a centerpiece, with rapid cutting and camera moves. But, I don’t dare complain. He already has suspicions about me, both from The Rescue Game, and from my using Walter as a resource.

The rest of the episode is good. Then the finale comes. It’s color-corrected with a fantastic soundtrack. Julia snips off Steven’s left pinky finger with garden shears, which is horrible but oh, so watchable, like watching a car crash happen next to you on the freeway. With drums pounding, five of Heyman’s tribe members descend to cauterize Quintana’s blood-spurting hand with an electric cattle prod. Julia somehow stabs one with the garden shears, then both Steven and Julia kick and punch their attackers until five more tribe members descend and shock them into submission.

The music crescendos over the scene fading to black, and we hear Steven’s voice: “The Danger Game. You write the script.”

Then Julia’s voice comes next: “We perform…or we die.”

Everyone stares at the black screen, frozen, as the music fades away.

Douglas turns the monitor off and the boys come back to life.

“That was crazier than a snuff film on the Dark Web,” Min says.

“It was sick. And I mean sick-sick, not good-sick,” Elliot says.

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