The fire gel is colder than I expect.
I flinch when the stunt tech smooths it along my hairline, a clear, slick line that smells faintly medicinal, like aloe and an electrical fire had a baby. The AC in Stage 14 hums overhead, fighting the heat from the work lights, but my neck still prickles under the weight of the fire-retardant jacket.
“You’re good, Nora,” the tech says. “Level One coverage. We’re nowhere near a full burn.”
“You say that like I know what Level One means,” I answer.
He laughs and pats my shoulder. “Means you get dramatic lighting and a mild sweat. That’s it.”
I smile because everyone is watching, because a guest actor stands ten feet away doing nervous wrist circles, because crew members glance up from coils of hose and racks of fake charred curtains to see if Nora Hayes is going to be Difficult About Safety. I tip my head back to let him finish the gel, eyes tracing the grid of catwalks, cables, and dangling metal above me.
Up there, the sandbags live. I try not to think about ropes cut clean through.
“You signed off with the coordinator already, right?” the first AD calls from near the monitors. Clipboards flap at his side like extra limbs.
“Yeah,” I call back. “We’re good.”
The stunt coordinator, a compact woman in a black polo and cargo pants, lifts her hand in confirmation. “Two gas lines only,” she reminds the AD. “Pilot lights locked. Flame bars go to three-foot mark, then we kill it. Exits left and right remain clear.”
I repeat it silently with her. Three-foot mark. Clear exits. Kill it.
The set looks different today. Our suburban kitchen has been dressed for disaster: curtains pre-scored to catch flames in a controlled pattern, fake soot smeared above the stove, a thin haze of chemical smoke already hanging in the air. My nose wrinkles at the sharp, plasticky scent. Underneath, I catch the sugary ghost of craft-service donuts from earlier, my stomach doing a little flip.
“You sure you’re okay doing it yourself?” the showrunner asks, sliding up beside me with his trademark concern face on. “We can always throw it to Rhea for the wide.”
Rhea, my stunt double, lifts two fingers in a mock salute from the edge of the set. She already wears the full gel, hair braided tight, heavier jacket zipped to her chin.
“I’m fine,” I say. “We said we wanted more authenticity, right? Let’s get some authentic sweat.”
He grins, tension easing. “That’s my Emmy nominee.”
My jaw tightens. I tug the jacket zipper all the way up so he can’t see anything in my throat twitch.
The guest actor, Jordan, steps closer, holding their script pages like a talisman. “So we’re just… running through, yeah? I grab the kid, you grab me, everybody exits heroically.”
“Heroically and on their marks,” the AD confirms. “We’re rehearsing with low flame first, then we boost for the real thing. No gas until I call it. Everyone clear on exits?”
A chorus of “Clear” rises from around the stage. Grips, camera ops, a couple of extras parked out of frame, all nodding, all trusting that the invisible systems someone else checked will keep their skin intact.
I swallow, tasting metal. Not the mill’s cold railing metal, I tell myself. Just nerves and LA tap water.
“You got this,” Rhea says under her breath as she passes me. “You bail if you hate it, I get hazard pay. Win-win.”
“You’re terrible,” I tell her, and my laugh comes out a touch too sharp.
She bumps my shoulder, then moves to stand by the coordinator, already mentally mapping routes out of the fire that hasn’t started yet. She trusts the system. I pretend I do.
I tell myself that this time the only thing on fire will be my performance.
On “action,” the world shrinks to tape marks and timing.
“Smoke up,” the coordinator calls, and the fog machines cough out heavier clouds. The chemical smell claws down my throat. I grab the fake diaper bag from the counter, sling it over my shoulder, and step into the kitchen, hitting my first mark right on the strip of neon tape.
“Gas one,” she says. A soft whoomph answers from the left as the first line of flame licks to life along the floor, controlled and neat, like orange teeth rising from a steel jaw.
Heat washes my shins. My eyes sting.
“Mom!” the kid actor yells from his mark near the hallway, small voice pitched to the rafters.
“Jordan!” I shout, because that’s the line, because in this show Jordan plays my best friend and terrible co-parent or whatever marketing wrote in the press notes.
Jordan barrels into frame, scooping the kid up. I grab Jordan’s arm, fingers digging into fire-retardant fabric, and we head toward the designated exit, a door dressed as the back stoop of our fictional house.
“Gas two,” the coordinator calls.
The second line of flame ignites in front of us, a taller wall that’s supposed to stop at the yellow-painted line on the floor. I know that line; I watched them lay it down during blocking. Safety boundary: three feet high, four feet away, camera angle making it look worse than it is.
The fire ignores the mark.
It leaps higher, heat slamming into my face like an open oven times ten. The sound changes from controlled hiss to a roar that eats the oxygen in my ears. My exposed hair crackles at the ends. Jordan staggers, clutching the kid tighter.
“Cut!” the director yells.
I don’t hear the rest of his sentence. The flames surge again, leaning toward us, orange and white and licking the top of the fake doorway. A piece of scorched curtain drops, landing right on the taped line, catching and flaring up like someone threw lighter fluid on it.
The back exit vanishes behind a sheet of fire.
“Back, back!” the stunt coordinator shouts.
I turn, dragging Jordan with me. The kid buries his face in Jordan’s shoulder, tiny fists clutching fabric. Behind us, the hallway set funneled with smoke leads to the other exit, the one the AD promised would stay clear.
“Other door!” I cough. My voice feels shredded, lungs scraping.
We run.
The second exit is worse.
Someone has rolled a small cart too close, and the heat has warped one of the foam “wood” beams, causing it to sag into the doorway. Blackened fabric sways, glowing at the edges. The stunt fire on that side was never supposed to be active, but bright tongues now lick along the wall.
“Door’s blocked!” a grip yells through the din.
My chest tightens, air thinning. Sweat slicks my spine. The gel on my hairline turns tacky under my fingers when I touch it, checking, stupidly, if I’m actually burning.
“Kill gas! Kill gas!” the coordinator yells toward the control panel.
Nothing happens.
The flames keep feeding, taller now, the roar swallowing the director’s frantic “Cut, cut, cut!” Heat squeezes my eyeballs. I squint, tears boiling. The kid sobs, high and repetitive.
“This isn’t shutting down!” someone shouts by the monitor village.
Jordan tries to hand the kid to me. “Take him, take him, I’ll—”
“No,” I rasp, shaking my head. “We stay together.”
I can’t go back to a world where someone falls away from me and I walk out alone.
“Get them out!” the showrunner screams. His voice cracks, but it’s distant, big-room distant, like I’m underwater.
Fire alarms finally kick on, their shrill whine stabbing through the roar. Red strobes pulse against the smoke, the flashing light turning the set into a stuttering slideshow of orange and gray and white faces.
A shape barrels toward us through the haze—a grip with a fire blanket and a respirator hanging crooked around his neck.
“Follow me!” he yells. “Right now. Low!”
We drop into a crouch. The world reduces to knees, elbows, and the gritty concrete under my palms as we crab-crawl after him, the kid clinging koala-tight to Jordan’s chest. The heat presses on my back, a hot hand pushing me forward. I taste plastic and something coppery on my tongue.
The grip reaches the side wall, near a steel door that leads to the loading bay. I know that door; I walked through it in bright sun this morning, coffee in hand, talking about rewrites.
Now, a thin curtain of flame has arched over part of it, licking the metal frame.
“Move!” he barks, slapping a panel on the wall with his free hand. I hear a mechanical clunk somewhere above us, a different tone than the alarms. The flames hesitate, then shudder down, shrinking like someone pinched their fuel line.
The grip shoves the door open with his shoulder. Daylight knifes into my eyes, white and vindictive. Cool, real air rushes in, shoving the smoke back.
We spill out onto the concrete drive, coughing and gasping. I end up on my hands and knees, palms scraping against gritty dust and old oil stains, chest heaving like I’ve run up the mill stairs again at sixteen.
The kid wails. Jordan hacks up a string of saliva and laughter.
“That was not low flame,” Jordan says hoarsely. “Jesus.”
Medics swarm us with bottled water and oxygen masks. One presses a cold can against my palm; condensation slicks my fingers, a shock after the heat. Someone touches my hair, checking for damage.
“Ends are a little singed,” the medic says. “You got lucky.”
Lucky.
I lift my head.
Inside the loading bay, the stage looks like a war zone: smoke drifting in ragged clouds, red lights still strobing, crew running in overlapping paths. The fire bars flicker off one by one. Sprinklers that should have doused everything from the start drip lazily, too late to matter.
“Gas should’ve cut on first call,” the stunt coordinator snaps at someone by the wall. “What the hell happened at the control panel?”
“We hit stop,” a pyro tech insists, voice shaking. “It didn’t respond. I had to run manual.”
The grip who led us out leans against the wall, catching his breath. His hair curls damply against his forehead. He stares at the control panel like it personally insulted his mother.
“Manual where?” I croak, standing up on unsteady legs. “What did you hit?”
He jerks his thumb toward the interior of the loading bay. “Emergency shutoff by the bay door. The one tied to the gas main. That’s why it took a second. The panel wasn’t doing anything.”
“There’s another emergency stop by the kitchen entrance,” I say.
The words come out before I decide to speak.
He frowns. “What? No, that one’s—”
“Malfunctioning,” the AD cuts in smoothly, already in triage PR mode. “Sorry, Nora, that button’s tagged out. That’s why we did the safety briefing. Everyone’s fine, though. That’s what counts. Let’s, uh, give pyro a minute to reset.”
I look at the AD’s smile and see the hospital conference room from years ago, the mill, the papers sliding across the table. Equipment failure. Damp stairs.
My hands start to shake for real.
“I’m going to change,” I say. “I smell like barbecue.”
No one stops me. They’re busy apologizing to Jordan, checking the kid for smoke inhalation, assuring the showrunner that everything will play as an incredible behind-the-scenes feature about dedication and realism.
I walk back into the stage through the far side, the cooler, less smoky corridor where background actors scroll their phones and crew guard racks of wardrobe. The AC hums here, overcorrecting. My skin feels too tight, like it shrank in the heat and now the cold air is testing the seams.
The kitchen set looks smaller without flame, a blackened funhouse. The scorched curtain droops off its rod, edges still glowing faintly. Water drips from a sprinkler head, tiny metallic plinks in a charred sink.
The emergency stop button by the kitchen entrance sits where I remember it: a chest-high panel with a big red mushroom cap. Right now, I can’t imagine a more beautiful piece of design.
Except I almost didn’t see it.
Someone has covered the button with layers of gray gaffer tape and a folded piece of cardboard. The cardboard hangs like a limp tongue, the words “DO NOT USE – OUT OF ORDER” scrawled in black Sharpie.
My heart stutters.
I step closer. The tape edges are still clean, not fuzzed out with dust. When I press my fingertip to the corner of one strip, adhesive clings stringy and fresh. Under the cardboard, the red button’s edge peeks through, bright and unmarred.
“You tagged this out?” I call to no one in particular.
A electric tech pokes his head around a fake wall. “Tagged what?”
I jab a thumb toward the panel. “This.”
He walks over, wiping his hands on his jeans. He reads the cardboard, then peels it back, revealing the untouched button. His brows knit.
“I didn’t put that on,” he says. “We tested this last week for the smoke drill. It was fine.”
“Then who taped over the emergency stop?” I ask.
My voice is calm. Too calm.
He shakes his head, uneasy. “Maybe pyro. Maybe safety. I don’t know. I can check—”
“You told everyone the panel wasn’t responding,” I cut in, looking at the burnt edge of the curtain, the shriveled yellow tape on the floor where the flames should have stopped. “Maybe that’s because the fastest way to hit stop was literally wrapped in tape.”
I picture the grip sprinting for the bay door, those extra seconds where the flames kept feeding, licking toward my face. I smell the mill’s damp metal under the chemical smoke, my fingers slipping on a bloody rail, the anonymous DM asking if I remember what I did.
This isn’t a glitch. This is a hand on the system, the way a shove is a hand on a body.
The tech blows out a breath. “Look, I’ll report it. They’ll do a safety review. We’ll probably get another memo and two more meetings. You know how it goes.”
I do. I know exactly how it goes.
That’s the problem.
I tear the tape the rest of the way off, the sound loud in the quiet kitchen. The cardboard flutters to the wet floor and darkens where the water touches it.
“Start with this,” I say, shoving the sticky strips into the tech’s hand. “And tell them if they send me another memo instead of an investigator, I cancel every fire scene until they do.”
“Nora,” he protests. “You don’t want to be that person.”
“I already am that person,” I say.
My palms itch. I picture Quinn’s mysterious voice memo, whoever they are, talking about blood on a railing, about being told a girl fell when they watched her body move in a way that said someone pushed.
I stare at the clean red button, exposed again, waiting for a hand that picks safety over schedule.
“Somebody wanted those extra seconds,” I whisper.
The tech shifts, uncomfortable. “You think this was on purpose?”
I feel the singed ends of my hair between my fingers, the brittle little crackle when I rub them together.
“I think,” I say, meeting his eyes, “we’re way past accidents.”
The alarms in the main stage shut off with a final, echoing beep, leaving a ringing in my ears. In the sudden quiet, one thought cuts through clean and sharp:
If I keep letting them call this bad luck, the next headline will be about a tragedy no one saw coming—except me.