The sky is still bruised when I pull onto the lot.
The studio gates glow under sickly orange streetlights, the guard booth window a square of harsh fluorescence. I sip lukewarm coffee from a drive-thru cup, tongue coated in burnt bitterness, and watch my reflection in the windshield: blotchy from too-little sleep, hair in a low knot, eyes already lined like I sat through makeup. My phone buzzes in the cup holder—calendar reminder: CALL TIME 5:00 A.M. – STAGE 14—like I could forget.
I roll down my window for the guard. He squints at his tablet, then at me, then at the car’s interior like he’s checking for stowaways.
“Name?” he asks. His breath smells faintly of mint gum over stale coffee.
“Nora Hayes,” I say. I add, because habit is a second skin, “Lead on Second Chances.”
“Right,” he says, tapping. “ID?”
I pass it over. While he scans it, I glance past him. Another guard I don’t recognize leans against the wall by the gate, bulkier, wearing an earpiece I’ve never seen on lot security before. His jacket doesn’t match the studio-issue windbreakers. Off-duty cop, maybe. Behind him, the tops of the soundstages loom, big dark boxes against the paling sky.
The gate buzzes open. “You’re cleared,” the guard says. “Park’s in the usual place, Ms. Hayes. Just—” He hesitates, then adds, “Make sure you check in with stage security before you go to hair and makeup. New protocol today.”
My neck prickles. “New for everyone?”
“For today,” he repeats, non-answer. “Have a good shoot.”
The boom barrier rises. I drive in, the asphalt damp from a midnight sprinkle that never turned into real rain. The LA hills are just starting to gray, but the lot lights keep everything flat and bright, no shadows soft enough to hide in.
I park near Stage 14 and step out into air that smells like wet pavement and diesel. The metal handle of my bag bites cold into my palm. I can feel the folded confession inside, a dense rectangle over my heart.
A folding table with clipboards blocks the entrance to the stage. A printed sign reads: STAGE 14 CHECK-IN – ID REQUIRED. Two security guards stand behind it, plus a third in a suit who definitely isn’t from our usual team. His jaw is clean-shaven, his tie too perfect for 4:52 a.m.
“Morning,” I say, setting my coffee down so my hand doesn’t shake. “You’re really committed to making this feel like an airport.”
The suited one smiles without warmth. “Ms. Hayes. Thanks for coming early.” He flips a clipboard toward me. The sign-in sheet lists names, call times, and badge colors. There’s a new column at the end, handwritten: CLEARED / RESTRICTED. My name is highlighted in yellow, a neat check mark in the CLEARED box.
Next to mine, I catch other names: PARK, ELLE – STUNT / SAFETY – CLEARED. And in a different pen: HART, QUINN – PRESS – CLEARED W/ ESCORT.
I swallow. “What’s with the extra columns?” I ask lightly.
“Just maximizing safety,” the suited guard says. His gaze skims my face, my bag. “Studio wants tighter control with press on set and all the, uh, chatter online.”
Marcus’s language, hand-me-down. Maximize safety. Control the narrative. Chatter.
I sign my name, the pen slick against my fingers. Another guard waves a handheld scanner along my bag like I might be smuggling explosives in with my lip balm and breath mints.
“You guys want me to empty my pockets too?” I ask.
“You’re good,” he says, then taps my lanyard. “But keep this visible today. If anyone asks you to move for safety, you move, okay?”
I nod. I’m supposed to be the one lighting myself on fire, metaphorically; instead I feel like I’ve already been staged as a liability.
As they let me pass, I glance over my shoulder. Across the service road, near the shadow of another stage, Marcus stands with the head of lot security. Their heads incline together, silhouettes tight with intent. Marcus’s suit looks sharper than usual, navy wool catching the first hint of sun. He doesn’t look over, but something in his posture reads coiled.
My pulse kicks. The last time he used “safety” this much, Rhea’s harness failed.
Inside Stage 14, the temperature drops ten degrees. The AC hum is constant, the refrigerated breath of the soundstage rolling over my bare arms. Fake smoke hangs in a thin layer near the rafters, faintly sweet and chemical. The mill set dominates the space now, full build: towering brick walls, rusted stairs, catwalks and platforms, the illusion so complete my throat dries.
Craft services has already laid out donuts, their glaze sweating under plastic, and a tray of green juice in little compostable cups. A PA calls out “Morning!” from behind a stack of pelican cases. Their voice echoes against the high ceiling, getting swallowed by the cables and lights.
I head to makeup first, letting them paint on my weary eyes and soot-shadowed cheekbones. The chair smells like hairspray and skin. By the time they’re done with me and wardrobe zips me into my stunt-friendly costume—thick fabrics, fire-retardant lining—I’ve built a thin barrier of professionalism over the sick twist in my stomach.
On my way back to the stage, a flash of orange catches my eye at the entrance: visitor lanyards.
Quinn stands just beyond the check-in table, clutching a small camera rig and wearing a headset that looks slightly too big for her. A laminated pass hangs on her chest: PRESS – BEHIND THE SCENES – RESTRICTED ACCESS. Her eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them, taking everything in at once.
A frazzled PA with a tablet—Callie, from production—stands inches from Quinn, talking fast.
“You can get B-roll of hair and makeup, cast walking through, general atmosphere,” Callie says. “No filming the monitors, no audio on any private conversations, nothing up on the catwalks, nothing behind the mill walls. If you want to film stunts, we’ll tell you when and from where.”
Quinn nods, fingers white on the grip of her camera. “Got it. No monitors, no private conversations, no death-defying balcony shots.”
“I’m serious,” Callie says. “Legal signed off on this with, like, seventeen caveats. If you point that lens somewhere we haven’t cleared, I get yelled at, not you.”
“I don’t want anyone yelled at,” Quinn says. Her voice has that bright podcast energy, but her shoulders sit high, close to her ears. “I’m just here to observe.”
I walk over before I can talk myself out of it.
“Hey,” I say.
Quinn’s head snaps around. For half a second her face goes bare, all the parasocial layers stripped away. I could be anyone to her in that moment: an old friend, a crime scene, both.
“Hi,” she breathes. “You’re—wow.” Her eyes flick over the costume, the fake grime on my cheek, the way the mill looms over my shoulder. “You look like you’ve already been through it.”
“Give us three hours,” I say. “We’ll make it worse.”
The joke lands with a tinny clatter between us.
Callie checks her watch. “We’re walking the safety talk in five,” she says to me. “Then we go straight into blocking for the first fire beat. They want you there.”
“I’ll be there,” I say.
Quinn’s gaze drops to my bag. “You got my file last night?”
My throat tightens around the memory of her intro, of her promising to name her own exploitation. “I did.”
“And?” she asks.
“And we’re all out of easy choices,” I say quietly.
Her jaw works. For a second, I think she might reach for my arm or for the camera; she does neither. “Stay where the cameras can see you,” she murmurs. “If something goes bad, I’ll make sure—” She cuts herself off, glancing at Callie, at the security guard hovering just inside the doors. “Never mind. Just… good luck.”
“You too,” I say, because she’s walking into this fire with us, even if she doesn’t know all the scripts.
Callie hustles her away toward a taped-off zone marked PRESS BOX. It’s basically a pen of yellow gaff tape and rolling carts, well away from any exits.
That hum in my blood gets louder.
On set, the first AD claps his hands. “Alright, people, safety meeting!” he yells. “Everybody working the fire sequence, gather up. That means talent, stunts, grips, lighting, SFX, background for the first shot—let’s go, let’s go.”
We form a half-circle near the base of the main staircase. Standing this close, the set hits me with a double exposure: my hometown mill’s damp chill overlaying the refrigerated air, the smell of river rot ghosting beneath fake smoke and plywood.
Lila steps forward with a clipboard and a hard shell tablet. She’s in dark cargo pants and a fitted black tee, hair braided back, headset looped around her neck. She looks efficient enough to cut steel with her gaze.
“Morning,” she says. Her voice carries without yelling. “I’m Elle, stunt and safety coordination. You’ve all heard me before, but I’m going to repeat myself, because I like everyone’s bones intact. Fire SFX is working with cold lines only for the first six takes. No real flame until we sign off. You don’t run hero unless your mark is dry. You don’t improvise panic, you hit the path we rehearsed. If you feel unsafe, you call it.”
She looks at me on that last line, just for a flicker.
The SFX supervisor steps up, runs through the technicals. Flame bars here and here, gas shutoff valves there, extinguishers at each exit. He gestures to them; I follow his hand.
Only… I count.
Exit A: clear, an open doorway framed by a chain-hoist rig and a coil of hoses. There’s an extinguisher on a stand, right where the plan showed.
Exit B, though—the one on the far side, which we marked as the secondary escape route in case of chaos— has three fake oil drums stacked beside it, plus a half-pallet of wooden crates marked TEXTILES. The taped arrow on the floor that used to lead straight to the door now zigzags around them.
My grip tightens on the rolled-up safety diagram tucked into my script. I know this set like I know the scar patterns on my own memories. Those crates weren’t there yesterday.
“What about those?” I ask, nodding toward the stack. My voice sounds flatter than I intend. “Exit B was supposed to stay clear.”
The SFX guy glances over. “Props said they’d strike them before we go hot,” he says. “We’re not rolling real fire for a while.”
“Yeah, but if we rehearse panic with them there, that’s the path people will remember,” I say. “And if something goes wrong with ‘cold lines’—”
“We’re in control,” the first AD cuts in, which is the lie this whole industry is built on. “We’re thirty minutes behind already, folks. Props, make a note to move that stack before we turn on any flame. For now, everyone just clock it. Alright?”
There are nods, half-hearted. Time is money; safety is theoretically priceless but billed by the hour.
I catch Lila’s eye. She frowns, the tiniest furrow between her brows.
“That’s not our layout,” she says quietly to me when the AD turns away. “I signed off on a clear lane.”
“So who changed it?” I murmur.
“Not me,” she says. Her gaze flicks up to the catwalks, then to the cluster of producers by the monitors. Marcus is there, arms folded, watching us with the intensity of someone trying to will the day into a different shape.
A PA shouts for background to find their first marks. The crowd disperses. Lila steps closer.
“Stay on the path we walked yesterday,” she says under her breath. “Even if props tell you to adjust for the shot.”
“You changed the plan,” I remind her. Our late-night call, her refusal to spell out every contingency. “Remember? You didn’t tell me all of it.”
Something darker flashes through her eyes. “And you let Marcus keep his own secrets,” she replies. “Welcome to mutually assured distrust.”
She pulls her headset up and back on, shutting herself behind the thin membrane of work mode. I’m left with the taste of metal in my mouth, a phantom of the mill’s wet rails coating my tongue.
We break to our starting positions for the first non-fire blocking. Quinn stands in her taped zone, filming wide shots of the crew moving like ants across the set. A security guard leans near her, not watching the set but watching her, his gaze more on the camera than the cables under his feet.
I climb halfway up the main staircase, boots ringing against the grates. The rail is cold and slightly tacky from a layer of painted-on rust. I remember the real rail under teenage hands slick with river spray.
From this vantage point, I can see everything lined up: Quinn behind her tape, Marcus by the monitors, Lila under the catwalk with her tablet, the AD with his headset, the SFX team hovering near flame bars that look too close to the foam scenery for comfort. One of the exits has a coiled cable ramp lying across it, untaped, begging to trip someone.
“Can we tape that down?” I call to no one in particular, pointing with my script.
A grip jogs over with gaff tape, kneels, starts working. “Thanks, Nora,” he says. “Didn’t want to eat it mid-panic, so appreciate you.”
Little things. Little fixes. Against a system built on “close enough.”
The first AD raises his bullhorn. “Alright!” he shouts. “This is just camera rehearsal, folks. No fire, no smoke cues, no stunts. Let’s walk it like it’s real anyway so we don’t waste takes later. And remember, we’ve got behind-the-scenes rolling, so try not to look dead inside.”
A ripple of tired laughter. I find my mark halfway up the stairs, a strip of florescent tape under my boot. My heart thuds in my ears, loud enough to drown out the AC.
Somewhere in my bag down on the floor, folded paper waits. Somewhere in the cloud, Lila’s files wait to drop. Somewhere in a laptop at the loft, Quinn’s intro waits to frame us.
The set waits too, smug in its manufactured decay.
I wrap my hand around the rail and glance at the nearest exit again. The crates still sit there, a neat barricade dressed up as scenery. I tell myself to remember: if something goes wrong, don’t go for Exit B. Don’t follow the tape on the floor. Don’t trust anything that was changed without my consent.
“Picture’s up!” the AD calls. “Rolling rehearsal!”
I inhale, lungs filling with cold air and the faint sweetness of fake smoke, and brace myself—not just for the scene we planned, but for whatever unscripted disaster is pacing just out of frame, waiting for its cue.