My news gathering background kicked into gear.

Maybe I should have switched to a camera showing something more neutral, like the game board—or even cut the live feed. But until I had other instructions, I followed the most pertinent action.

And that was the guy everyone thought was a murderer, August.

Until, of course, Sy rushed the stage.

That was when my entertainment industry training won out over journalism.

I’m not proud, but that is clearly who I am. Cut straight to the charismatic man in the bright red wig and the green sequined dinner jacket.

The camera crew kept their frames tight, but still moved with a loose-jointed nimbleness to give full coverage of all the unexpected action that unfolded.

It all happened so quickly that I knew everyone of us in the studio—not just me—crackled with a surge of adrenaline. Then, when the two most interesting subjects to have graced the set had, as they say, “left the building,” we all suddenly found ourselves with nothing to focus on. And I mean, literally.

We had no villain. We had no hero.

This immediate and unexpected stall in the action became so much more apparent in the silence that followed.

That was when we needed Sy to begin filling the dead air with music.

I stabbed my thumb down on the override button for the applause sign.

The audience responded in Pavlovian fashion with noisy enthusiasm. I know they had been excited by the unexpected events, and finally I had given them the opportunity to express themselves.

I looked around the studio. I needed to come up with something to instruct the camera operators to focus on while running out the clock.

Forty-five seconds to the end of the show.

That was an eternity in the world of live TV.

I was about to have one of the camera operators tilt up to the game board, but I noticed that Door Number Two still gaped open, with the losing contestant, Helen, standing just inside, waiting for Michael to shut the door and send her on her way. Through the headsets, I told camera one to dolly in on Helen. I told camera two to follow on Michael, who was looking off-camera to Ida, trying to make sense of her energetic gestures. Michael, still in a panic, held up his hands, uncertain what Ida was trying to tell him.

“Just send them both through door two,” she shouted.

Michael did so. He grabbed the other contestant—Darlene—who waited in the center of the stage, confused, and pushed her, unwillingly, into that little room to stand beside Helen.

“But I’m Door Number One,” Darlene cried out. “I won!”

Michael slammed the door on the two women.

Ed and Valerie were really throwing themselves into their job getting the crowd cheering and up on their feet stamping loudly.

Michael pulled Saligia to the front of the stage. She stiffened and showed her teeth, looking like a cat who was about to be dunked in a bath, but she, too, had her professional training to fall back on. She rose up with her shoulders back and she and Michael bowed in unison as if the crowd were cheering them and the wonderful work they had just completed.

As the clock ticked over, precisely 7:30, I faded out the live video and audio feed.

Myra, holding her clipboard tight to her chest with both hands, shouted out: “Annnnnnd, we’re out.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Ida yelled. “What a mess!”

I took the steps three at a time down to the studio floor, crossed the stage, and flung open Door Number One.

It was empty.

“Careful,” Saligia said, pointing with a shaking finger.

I noticed wisps of blue smoke curling out and around the edges of the door. A cold draft wafted out of the interior. The same thing was happening around the edges of Door Number Two. I opened it up. It proved empty as well.

Michael looked from the doors to Ida.

“The portals, I think they’re busted,” he said to her. “Should I check the two downstairs?”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “The arrival portals will be dead, too. Massive overload. There’s the proof.” She pointed to the audience.

Everyone in the rows of tiered seating—some in chairs, others on their feet—flickered. That was the only word that seemed adequate. Their arms and legs seemed to be shuttering in and out of reality. Some lost their balance and fell to the floor. The moans and screams had the entire production crew standing and staring. Some recoiled in utter disbelief, others just shook their heads as if this was something not completely unexpected.

I took a step forward, and froze when I noticed that those parts of the contestants I thought were turning invisible were actually morphing back and forth from human appendages into something with no more definition than bread dough—rubbery, stubby. Soon it wasn’t just the arms and legs. But their heads and their torsos. Flickering. Changing.

I remembered what Nora and Raul had said about contestants when they left the upper floors turning into things that weren’t really human.

I looked over at Saligia. She had clamped her hands to the sides of her head and dropped into one of the contestant chairs.

“Oh, this is too horrible,” she moaned.

She closed her eyes. Her hands moved to cover her ears.

I couldn’t blame her. The screams shifted to a sort of collective burbling hiss. It sounded like steam pushing aside a loose-fitting lid on a pot of boiling broth.

As I moved toward them, thinking I had to try and do something, Valerie put a hand on my shoulder. She pointed to the people filing into the studio.

The clean-up crew had arrived. I called them that, because that was clearly what they came to do.

About a dozen young men and woman pushed through the double doors. They were all dressed in matching black dress pants, short sleeved white button shirts, and skinny red ties. They rather looked like Mormon missionaries, except they all wore the heavy black rubber gloves that I remembered from high school chemistry class. Each carried a zippered bag of the same black rubber. The thing was, those bags were clearly too small for people. Maybe you could cram a couple of agreeable beagles into one of them, but a person? Unlikely. But, again, the audience members were no longer people.

Valerie and Ed escorted all of us on the production team out into the stairwell. Saligia moaned, rose to her feet, and shambled along with us.

“Let them do their work,” Ed said.

What that work entailed, I had no idea. Valerie closed the doors to the studio.

“Where the hell did they come from?” I asked.

“Where else?” Myra said. “The fifth floor.”

“Where the Network hides all its secrets,” Raul added. “I guess they’ve been down there all this time, waiting just in case something like this happened.”

“This?” I asked. “But what the hell is this?”

From their expressions, I doubted neither Myra or Raul knew much more than me.

Whatever they were doing in there didn’t take long. In just a couple of minutes the doors opened and the smartly dressed men and women filed out, each gripping a black, bulging bag.

“While I don’t care for their outfits,” Raul said as we watched the clean-up crew hurry down the stairs, “it is nice to see a return to the tie tack.”

I looked closer as the last of them passed. His red tie sported a black clasp with the Network logo, the letter N in gold.

I stepped back into the studio with the rest of the team. It was empty. The contestants, all gone.

“Right,” Ida said, looking around. She raised her voice and it cut through all the activity. “All employees of the Network, that’s a wrap! No more show. Meet me at the train station in an hour. We’re pulling up stakes.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Canceled?” Raul asked Ida. “Just like that? On whose authority?”

“No contestants, no producer.” Ida shrugged. “No choice.”

“But our jobs?” Myra stepped up to Ida.

“Your contract isn’t with the Network, honey.” Ida stared Myra down. “It’s with Sy’s Silver and Brown Productions. And if you haven’t noticed, your beloved Mr. Silver and Brown has left the building. You could follow him through Door Number One, but I don’t think it goes anywhere anymore.”

“Protocol Delta?” Michael asked Ida.

She nodded. “It has already begun.” Then Ida looked at me. “Good job, sir. Best episode ever. Nice to go out with what promises to be record-breaking ratings.” She turned back to Michael. “So, get all red-flagged documentation out of Lydia’s office. And if you find her—alive, I mean—tell her the final train leaves on the dot at—” Ida checked her watch. “Eight-thirty.”

“I know the drill,” Michael said, rushing away.

I hadn’t given much thought to who worked for the Network and who worked for Sy. In this business it wasn’t supposed to matter. We all were working for the same goals.

Until the project ended, that was.

I watched Ed and Valerie follow Michael out the door. As well as two camera men, the sound woman, and the makeup team.

“That’s your Protocol Delta?” I asked Ida. “Bug out of town?”

“That’s right,” she said with what appeared to be more than a touch of satisfaction.

When the double doors fell shut behind her, all signs of the Network had been expediently and surgically removed.

I looked around at my remaining baffled and shellshocked colleagues. All, apparently, hired by the absent Silverio Moreno.

“So,” I said, scanning the studio. “Who knows where Sy and Nora went?”

“The same place as Rose and August,” Raul said with an exasperated groan. “Wherever that is.”

###

Leaving town seemed the right thing to do. And so, with few words exchanged, Saligia and I agreed to meet half an hour later at the train station.

First I needed to collect my belongings.

My hope was to get in and out of the Omega Hotel without drawing any attention to myself. Luckily no one was in the lobby.

I was tempted to sit down on my bed and take a breath. Clear my mind. Think things through. What had just happened? What were the implications? What in fact was my role in all this?

But overthinking never worked out too well with me. Besides, I didn’t have the luxury of time.

I managed to stuff everything into my rucksack in only a couple of minutes—shocked, but in a pleasing manner, by how little I had to call my own.

“I thought I might find you here,” said Fran.

I turned to see him leaning against the door.

“I was down at the bar. I saw the whole thing on TV.”

I’m not sure how Fran learned I got a job on Serpientes y Escaleras. Raul. maybe? He did seem to have his sources all over town. But, always a man of discretion, all he had said to me when he saw me in the Omega Hotel lobby on Saturday morning was: “I understand that the ASES has another man on the inside. Congratulations! We’ll talk more in-depth, later.”

“I’m kind of in a rush,” I said, closing the buckles on my bag.

“Is it true?” he asked with grave concern. “The show is over?”

“Yeah.”

“That will leave a hole in so many people’s lives.” He looked to the floor, shaking his head in disbelief. Then he turned to me with a grin. “Was that a kidnapping?”

“It was. Some mad man grabbed that woman—”

“Grabbed Rose, yes. Poor girl. But she’s resourceful.” Then Fran crossed his arms and smiled. “And you said all those shows were scripted.”

“Live TV can throw a curve ball every so often.”

I shouldered my bag.

“Silverio Moreno, he’s a brave man. Chasing down that fellow. And your friend, that girl. Shelvia, right? Quick thinking.”

“They are the impulsive types,” I said, waiting for Fran to step aside.

“I see you’re going after them,” Fran said. He stepped aside, hand on his heart.

“Something like that,” I muttered. I thanked him for everything and walked down the hallway.

“The hero departs!” Fran said after me. Of course, I was no hero. “Godspeed, Stranger!”

Good lord.

###

One thing the both of us, Saligia and I, had in common was punctuality. Eight-fifteen on the dot we both walked through the gate to the platform at the same time. I had my rucksack over my shoulder, she gripped a small canvas bag.

“Where should we go?” I asked her.

She barely acknowledged me as she began walking along the platform toward that weird magnetic train.

“Where everyone else is going,” she said over her shoulder.

I rushed to catch up.

“LA?” I asked. “Right? You think that’s where Sy is?”

“Lydia told me once that the portals send the contestants to some Network facility in Los Angeles.”

“Then that’s the plan.” I wish she would relax. She was way too on edge. It’d be better once we got on the train.

“The last time I tried to get a ticket, they were way overpriced,” I said. “But don’t worry, I have plenty of money.” And I had. I’d sold another couple of gold coins just in case of something like this.

“That’s not how it works,” she said with irritation.

I stopped. But she kept walking.

“Saligia.”

She stopped but kept her back to me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She turned around.

“The train is just for the Network.”

“You think Ida’s going to let you on this train?” I asked.

“Us. She going to let us on this train.”

“Is that so?”

“We don’t have time to do this, Morris.”

She turned and continued walking down the length of the train.

I followed her up to where Ida and Michael stood on the platform beside the only open door of the waiting train.

The dusk was gathering and the harsh glow of the sodium-vapor lights illuminating the platform glinted off the curved sides of the train, throwing an unhealthy jaundiced tinge all about.

Suddenly everything about this unplanned plan seemed wrong. I wanted to tell Saligia that she’d be better off without me. I was a jinx. Meteors and murderers. But she’d shut me down so fast. Even without psychic abilities, she’d know I didn’t believe that. There was also an argument that Sy could take care of himself. Hadn’t he bounced back time and again? As for Nora and Rose, those women hardly seemed the type to need rescuing. I knew what Saligia would say. She’d say she needed me. Of course, she only thought she needed me. She would find within her that inner resolve she needed. She’d done without me before. Then there was those warm and encouraging platitudes Fran had heaped upon me. That heroic and glowing narrative he painted of me girding my loins and flinging myself into the maelstrom to vanquish devils and dragons.

I found myself in such a familiar and chaotic place. That place where I dither, vacillate. I flounder at the most importune moments.

I tugged the shoulder straps to my rucksack until the slack was gone. It felt light and manageable. Everything I needed was stowed away. I cold go anywhere. Or, I could continue walking down that train platform. Allow myself to become ensnared by Saligia and Sy and all that baggage from my past. Our past.

“I’m thinking of heading in the other direction,” I told Saligia.

We had just come alongside Ida.

“What?” Saligia’s eyes widened in panic as she looked back at me.

“I believe I said Network employees only,” Ida said to us.

“But, there’s nothing here for us,” Saligia moaned at Ida as her hand clawed tighter upon my sleeve.

“That’s not my concern,” Ida told her.

Saligia was trying to focus her thoughts between me and Ida. I probably should have just walked away. Instead, I stepped forward. I don’t know what I was going to say, but apparently Michael took my action as a physical threat. He waved to a figure inside the door of the train, and one of the more beefy members of the clean-up crew stepped onto the platform and walked up to us.

I wondered if they had already stowed away the black rubber bags containing whatever those poor contestants had transformed into. Though, for all I knew, they just tossed them into a dumpster behind La Vida Tower.

Ida glanced over at the newcomer who cracked his knuckles and jutted out his jaw.

She just laughed.

“Oh, I don’t think force will be necessary. Not for the likes of these two.”

“Ida, please.” Saligia took a deep breath and steadied herself. “Look, if you check the records, you’ll see that I never had a contract with Sy. I was signed on to the Network before the show was created. I have as much right to be on that train as anyone else.”

I wondered where that left me. Two days working on Serpientes y Escaleras, I realized I had never signed a contract, spoken with the HR Department, nothing.

Ida’s lips tightened into what I think she considered a smile. She barely leaned forward, but something about her demeanor caused me and Saligia both to move back a step.

“Oh, I don’t have to check anything. I know all about your contract with the Network. But today’s idiocy happened because of you. No one else. It was you who was supposed to select August. We were all in agreement. You let us down. And you saw how things turned out. The absolutely worst possible outcome. So, you’ll understand when I explain that your contract has been terminated. And good riddance! Saligia Jones is too unstable to work for anyone. I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t bother using me as a future reference.”

Ida stepped onto the train. The muscular young man followed.

Michael managed a pained and pinched smile like he had forgotten to put on pants, and he, too, stepped into the train, leaving Saligia and me alone on the train platform.

Saligia turned to me. The hand not holding her bag fluttered about like a confused bird.

“Well?” she finally said, her lips gathering into a firm and questioning frown.

“Well, what?” I wasn’t sure what she expected me to do.

“I need some help.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said. “With plan B.”

“What’s plan B?”

“That’s why I need help. I don’t have one. But it does not involve heading in the other direction.”

“Plan B to LA?” I laughed. “I believe I can help you.”

Saligia followed me down the length of the train to the engine car. There was no one in sight. I twisted the lever on the low door into the engine compartment.

“In there?” she asked. “Your plan is for me to get in there?”

“It’s how I came to town. I made it fine. It’s roomier than it looks.”

She sighed and squeezed inside. I passed the canvas bag to her.

“Don’t get off at the first stop,” I said. “It’s a little town with nothing but a glacier.”

“And you’re going, what? That way?” Saligia pointed to the east.

“I think so.”

“Of course you are. It’s what you do.”

“What’s what I do?”

“You run.”

“Well,” I said nodding, “you’re not the first to notice that.”

“Sy wouldn’t give up on you,” she said.

She tried to meet my eyes, but I looked away.

Because she was right. He would.

“He’d cram himself inside an airless box like this,” she continued. “He’d steal a car, or walk across the country. He’d even try his best to fly to California in his Zeppelin.”

“His what?”

But it hardly mattered. I needed some distance from all this madness.

“Please,” she croaked “I need your help. Sy needs your help. Rose needs your help. And what about your friend, Nora?”

I had already turned from her and was walking away.

“Besides,” she continued, her voice rising, “when Ida said the Network was pulling up stakes, she meant everything. I don’t think there are going to be any more trains once this one heads out.”

I took a deep breath and stopped.

Oh, hell.

When I turned around, Saligia smiled and slid further into the compartment, making room for me. I walked back, hefted my bag into the opening, and climbed in. Fran would no doubt approve.

When I turned to shut the panel, I froze.

Well, that wasn’t good.

“Everything okay?” Saligia asked.

And I saw it again. La Via Tower flickered. It was there, then gone, and back again. It was really happening, I knew. Not just some strange effect caused by the final weak rays of the setting sun. Were the Changes returning? Or maybe those portals in the tower—the ones that shut down—had been holding everything together?

It felt like Santa Cruz Island all over again.

“It’s fine,” I told Saligia.

Before I snapped the panel closed, I saw large chunks of the city doing the same thing. Flickering.

Everything was losing stability.

I leaned back in relief when I heard the engine hum to life and felt the sudden acceleration.

We were on our way. To Los Angeles.

END OF BOOK ONE