Contestant 1 - Evelyn Cross

Evelyn Cross was halfway through telling a defense minister that his plan was both foolish and wasteful when a thought floated up from the far end of the table:

She’s prettier in person than I expected.

She did not react. She never reacted.

The minister kept speaking, hands spread over a glass display full of casualty projections. To his left, an aide worried about reelection optics. Across from him, a uniformed woman with a spotless collar was mentally revising evacuation numbers downward to make the report look less damning. At the windows, rain needled against the darkened skyline of Hesper City, turning the thirtieth-floor conference room into a mirrored box full of different kinds of fear.

Evelyn sat at the head of the table in a charcoal suit with her platinum blonde hair pinned back in a way that suggested effort but was easy to upkeep. She had one hand folded over the other on the polished surface with feigned patience.

“Minister,” she said, “you are still speaking as though delay and caution are the same thing. They are not.”

He stiffened. “With respect, Cross Dynamics is not the government.”

“No,” Evelyn said. “If it were, at least one person in this room would be fired.”

That shut him up.

Around the table, irritation flared, then curdled into the careful silence people adopted when they remembered who she was.

Not just Cross Dynamics’ founder and chief executive. Not just one of the wealthiest women in the world. No. More importantly than any of that, she was Evelyn Cross.

The most powerful telepath and empath in recorded Empowered history, if the public rankings were to be believed. One of the few heroines senior enough that younger teams still stood up a little straighter when she entered a room. Beautiful, cold, impossible to flatter, and very nearly impossible to lie to.

She could feel the minister searching for a safer approach.

“Then what would you recommend?”

Not surrender, exactly. A small deference instead.

Evelyn turned her gaze to the display. Red sectors. Danger zones. Alter sightings increasing along two lines. Three probable breaches within the month unless someone very lucky or very powerful changed the shape of the board.

No one in the room was that powerful, not even her.

“Pull civilian traffic from the western freight lanes tonight,” she said. “Reinforce the public shelters here before dawn. Deploy one of our c-rank squads to this line.”

She reached for her tablet.

The conference room vanished.

No flicker. No warning pressure. No ethereal ripple to warn her of Empowered action. One breath she was caught between glowing screens and silver rain. The next she was standing upright in an open white chamber beneath a painted sky.

Evelyn went still.

Very still.

The men at the table, the city, the rain, the ache behind her eyes from six hours of negotiations—all of it had been replaced by polished stone, warm light, and impossibly clean windows, and one man standing several yards away in dark sturdy clothing.

He was young with dark-hair and broad shoulders. He wore sturdy civilian clothes, the kind her shelters distributed for free. The young man’s surface thoughts were there, jagged and fast and human with alarm. No detectable power signature though, but there was something strange about the shape of his thoughts. As if her senses kept sliding off some old scar or trauma he refused to acknowledge.

Beside him stood a woman in immaculate academic black.

She was much worse.

Evelyn reached out instinctively with the part of herself that had touched minds since puberty and never once found privacy to be anything but temporary.

The woman’s mind was an impossible gulf. Evelyn felt like she was suddenly in the middle of a vast and dark ocean with angry shadows moving in the depths.

Evelyn withdrew at once, face unreadable and choked her fear away without letting it reach her face.

“Well,” she said coolly, “that is new.”

The woman in black smiled.

“Contestant One,” she said, turning with poise and directing their attention to the screen. “Evelyn Cross.”

Gold light spilled across one wall. Letters unfurled in elegant script.

CONTESTANT ONE: EVELYN CROSS

AGE: 38

STATUS: ACTIVE

VICTORY POINTS: 0

Verena Sable paced once before the display, hands lightly folded.

“For our audience,” she said, in a tone now subtly brighter, “Miss Cross requires little introduction. Founder and chief executive of Cross Dynamics. Peak-level telepathic and empathic expression, among the highest ever documented. Strategic planner. Publicly admired. Privately difficult. Excellent crisis temperament. Severe standards. Minimal tolerance for mediocrity.”

Her smile sharpened.

“Projected to assume informal leadership among contestants within the first seventy-two hours unless meaningfully disrupted.”

Evelyn’s gaze did not leave her.

“Do you enjoy hearing yourself summarize people,” she asked.

“Only when I’ve done the reading.”

Van, to his credit, looked as unsettled by the process as she felt. He glanced from the glowing display to Evelyn and back again, as though trying to decide whether apologizing would be appropriate.

He decided not to. Evelyn looked like she didn’t value empty gestures.

Evelyn followed the line of his thoughts and took him in properly now.

Young, yes, but not soft. Not from wealth or safety then. His thoughts were disordered but not arrogant. Too frightened to be pretending.

He looked like a hostage.

“You pulled me out of a cabinet-level security meeting,” Evelyn said to Verena. “That suggests spectacular confidence.”

“We have found,” Verena replied, “that urgency improves adaptation.”

“Have you.” Evelyn glanced once at the windows, the sky, the layout of the room. Measuring for exits that probably did not exist. Anyone with enough power to transport her here wouldn't leave an open door. “And here I thought **** usually came with more rope.”

Van barked a short laugh before he could stop himself.

Both women looked at him.

He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“No, you aren’t,” Evelyn said.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Good, she thought. At least he didn’t try to be funny.

Verena seemed faintly pleased by all of this, which was in itself instructive.

Evelyn stepped closer to the young man. Tension ran through him like a live wire.

“You’re Van,” she said.

It was not a question. She had seen the wall display.

“Yes.”

“Do you know why you are here?”

“No.”

“Does that sign identify you as the master?”

His jaw tightened. “Apparently, but I have no idea why.”

She could sense his brittle honesty and decided to file him under “inconvenient” until after she got her feet under her.

Evelyn looked back to Verena. “Eight contestants, your sign said.”

“Yes.”

“And I presume you expect me to help calm the room when the next seven arrive.”

Verena tilted her head. “Of course not, that wouldn’t make for engaging TV.”

Evelyn hated that answer.

She thought of the ministerial table. Of the red sectors on the map. Of the long private certainty she had carried for months now: the war was being lost despite all efforts. They couldn’t afford anything to happen to her.

Then she thought, If this is real, I need information before the others arrive.

“Very well,” she said.

Van stared. “Very well?”

She did not bother looking at him. “Panic is a poor opening move.”

“For you, maybe,” he shuffled in place, “I’m gonna panic a little bit if you don’t mind.”

Verena’s bell chimed softly from nowhere and everywhere at once.

A second light bloomed on the golden wall.

CONTESTANT INTAKE: TWO

Verena smiled toward the door.

“Excellent,” she said. “You’ve set the tone beautifully.”

Evelyn folded her arms.

Van exhaled once through his nose, like a man bracing for weather.

And somewhere beyond the opening doors, another stolen life was arriving.

Straw poll to choose art style moving forward.

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