Date 6: Interlude

Natalia and Chloe walked into the party and tried to project confidence they didn’t have.

Most of the “guests” had been fenced off from the contestants, but after the dinosaur fight Laurel had invited the cheer squad inside like she owned the hotel. The room they entered looked less like a suite and more like a backstage lounge someone had tried to make comforting with soft light and poorer decisions.

Laurel was sprawled on a bed with a girl covered in insects. The girl was secured in a titanium frame that kept her respirator aligned. A skull rested on Laurel’s belly like a pet. Soft music played from speakers tucked into the bedframe.

At a desk across the room, three more "cheerleaders" had arranged **** with the seriousness of a ritual.

A girl who almost looked normal stood facing the wall, nearly motionless.

Nearby, a fishbowl had been detached from a larger harness: a clear sphere with a brain floating inside, connected to a small speaker and a few dangling cables like jewelry.

Something that Natalia thought looked like a xenomorph and Chloe thought was a tyranid poured **** into a port on the side of the fishbowl. The port snapped shut with a neat, final click.

Chloe swallowed and decided to start with the thing that had a mouth.

“Um, hi,” she said to the tyranid. “I heard you’re Sally?”

“Yeah.” The alien turned to them. Four arms, black chitin, no visible eyes, and a long tail. Half her body had been painted in pastels, like someone had tried to make her less alarming by adding colors you used for nursery walls.

“No need to introduce yourselves,” Sally said. “I’ve been watching Ari’s clusterfuck of a season as it airs.”

Natalia **** a polite nod. “So you’re a fan?”

Sally hissed. It was brief, but the room went sharper around it.

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Oh.” Natalia nodded, relieved. “Good.”

“So,” the fishbowl said through its speaker, voice quiet and worn, “you gonna make a break for it while the host is busy?”

Chloe flinched. “Um… that seems dangerous.”

“Do you think staying here is safe?” the fishbowl asked, and it sounded—unfairly—sad.

Natalia’s voice softened before she could stop it. “No.”

She looked between the speaker and the pastel monster.

“Are you offering to help us?”

“Not the way you think,” Sally said, “but yes.”

She gestured with one arm, as if indicating the whole ridiculous room.

“There are no good options for bolting. The Haunted Castle and the sweetheart with my name would want to take you in, but they don’t have the power to keep you safe. And the Davis season is of questionable ontology.”

Chloe blinked. “Um… okay.”

Then, too quickly, too defensively: “I don’t want to leave anyway.”

Sally’s posture changed—something like amusement, something like recognition.

“Oh fuck,” Sally said, laughing. “You’re Ali’s little mole, aren’t you? I forgot about that subplot.”

Natalia’s head snapped toward Chloe. “What?”

“Alan’s grandmother didn’t send him in without backup,” Sally said breezily. “Chloe’s known this was coming since she was, what, ten?” Sally’s laugh clicked into something meaner. “Right?”

“No,” Chloe said, blushing furiously. “I was fifteen when I made her tell me.”

“Oh yeah,” Sally drawled. “‘Made.’ You totally weren’t given exactly enough to keep pushing, right?”

Sally tossed a small glass bottle of **** down her throat. Somehow it didn’t spill. Somehow it didn’t look like it hurt.

Natalia stared at Chloe like she was seeing her for the first time.

Chloe’s voice went small. “What else could she have done? It was always going to be someone.”

“It could’ve been me,” the fishbowl said softly. “I don’t think Ariadne even got close to approval for her casting pitch. ‘Too much monster, not enough girl.’ But yeah.”

A pause.

“You’ve got guts, Chloe.”

“Thank you,” Chloe said automatically, and then—grasping for a normal social foothold—looked at the sphere.

“Vivian,” Chloe said. “You’re Ariadne’s aunt, right?”

The fishbowl speaker crackled once.

“I’m a little younger than her,” Vivian said, “but yes. Professor Rat and Doctor Sharknado adopted me.”

Natalia’s face did something complicated—compassion colliding with the fact that compassion was visible here.

“How could they do this to you?” she asked.

Then she immediately regretted it, as if she could feel audience approval draining in real time.

Vivian’s speaker clicked.

“That’s an interesting question,” Vivian said. “They had a shark embryo in a pressure vessel, and my mother started tinkering with my development. My father made the machines. They both taught me some magic.”

A faint pause, almost a sigh.

“Do you think I should have been turned into a human girl,” Vivian asked, “or a talking shark in the ocean?”

Natalia tried to pivot without lying.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just— you look like a child who was terribly injured. I know that’s not what happened, but it’s hard to process.”

“Nah,” Sally said, laughing. “You’ve got it right. Viv’s a floating war crime.”

“You’re one to talk, bitch,” Vivian replied, and somehow the insult sounded affectionate.

Chloe cut in quickly, voice tight.

“You said you’d help us.”

Sally’s head angled toward her. If Sally had eyes, it would’ve been a stare.

“I did,” she said. “Trust the snake.”

Chloe looked genuinely lost. “What?”

“She’s right,” the nearly-normal girl said.

She turned from the wall.

C-130.

Her eyes met Chloe’s.

There was no expression. No threat in her posture. Nothing dramatic. And Chloe’s body still went tense, dread rising like her instincts had smelled something before her mind could translate it.

“Also,” Vivian said, and a small machine arm—part of the harness she’d detached from—extended and placed something into Natalia’s hand.

A small plastic bottle.

“Take these,” Vivian said.

Natalia looked down. The label read ONE A DAY.

Inside were very small pink pills.

“What are they?” Natalia asked.

“A mix of things,” Vivian said, voice suddenly tired. “It’s to your advantage to take them before you learn what they do.”

A beat.

“Trust me.”

Natalia’s fingers tightened around the bottle.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Vivian.”

C-130 never stopped looking at Chloe.

“Oh,” C-130 said, flat and calm, “something for you.”

Chloe didn’t move.

Natalia watched, helpless, as C-130 closed the gap and kissed Chloe on the lips.

It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t violent either.

It was clinical.

Chloe squirmed, disgust and fear fighting in her body. C-130 held the kiss long enough to make it unignorable, then released her and returned to staring at the wall as if nothing had happened.

Chloe left the room without a word.

Sally clapped her hands once, satisfied.

“I think our work here is done,” she declared.

Natalia stood very still, bottle of pills in her hand, trying to decide what she was allowed to feel.

Sally’s voice softened just a fraction—not kindness, exactly. A pragmatic warning.

“Natalia,” Sally said, “you should get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a challenge and a transformation vote.”

She shrugged, pastel paint catching the light.

“You never know what that will bring.”