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MAVERICK

“Where are they?” asked Maverick, looking at the trees through which Tavo and Angeline had disappeared. He tried to manifest their return, imagining Angeline’s smile, Tavo’s serious frown. Hector didn’t answer.

Outside, Petra’s men stayed stock-still, unmoved, apparently with no intention of leaving their posts to take cover, even as the rain bore down. The sky was the color of dread, darkening, foreboding, and the wind pushed around the trailer. Still, the men stood sentry against the gloom, black-clad, straight-backed. On Maverick’s phone, the huge swath of red weather was swallowing the island.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The rain slithered down the window in rivulets, blurring his vision outside. He had a thought then, resting his head against the glass. End it. Let the men take him. Let the company fold. Burn it all to the ground and see what rose from the ashes.

But it was too late for all of that.

The last moment to cancel had been when Alex confronted him in the parking lot of the hotel.

Maverick, we need to talk. Like now.

Looking back at it now, he saw the conversation for what it truly had been. His old friend was offering him a lifeline, a way out of the mess he’d made. But in the moment, he had felt like an animal in a trap.

Alex. Fuck. I’m so sorry.

Hector was silent in the chair, staring at his phone. “Hector, it wasn’t a rhetorical question,” he snapped. “Where are they? Are they on their way back?”

“Uh,” Hector said, “we have a problem.”

The rain beat a tempo on the roof in fits and starts, sounding like some giant was throwing great handfuls of pebbles at the metal intermittently.

“What now?”

“They’re gone,” said Hector. “They’ve turned off their locations.”

Maverick moved over to his friend. Hector’s hand was shaking as he held up the screen to show him the PopMap. Their icons were shaded gray. Location unavailable.

“Why would they do that?”

Hector just shook his head, rubbed hard at his stubbled chin with one hand.

“Mav?” he said. His tone had gone serious, his gaze direct. “You have to tell me, man. We’ve been friends forever, right? What the fuck is going on?”

Maverick was searching for something to say, some way to explain the absolute shitshow they’d found themselves in, when his phone rang. It rang and rang. Caller Unknown. He didn’t want to answer it.

“I’ve made some mistakes,” Maverick said to Hector, who had wide eyes on him. Hector, who always looked out for him and everyone. They made fun of him, but they needed him to take care of them. Because they didn’t take care of themselves. “Big ones.”

Where did it start?

The fail always had a discernible starting point.

He’d determined this back when he’d taken his first big wipeout, all those hours he’d spent laid up. In that case, it had started the night before the jump. He’d been up too late on Red World , so he wasn’t rested. Instead, he’d chugged three energy drinks in the morning, which left him jumpy and vaguely sick. That morning he knew conditions weren’t right, but he went ahead with it anyway. Because he wasn’t focused, he hadn’t inspected the bike. If he had, he’d have seen that the wheel needed tightening. But maybe it started even long before that. That terrible need he had to please, to perform, to be watched, to be praised. Maybe that was the starting point that led to every crushing wipeout.

What was the starting point for this mess? Maybe it was the same. Maybe all the fails started at that original desire. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t stop fucking around. Why he lost his temper. Why he took bigger and bigger risks. And the money. Money and all the things it could buy was a kind of salve.

The phone kept ringing and ringing. FaceTime. Caller Unknown.

“Answer it,” said Hector, urgent.

But Maverick was frozen. That feeling he got when something was about to go really wrong was a siren.

Finally, Hector reached over, took the phone from his hand, and answered.

His face was cast in the blue light of the screen. “Oh, God,” Hector said, putting a hand to his mouth.

Maverick snatched the phone back from him.

He could barely process what he was seeing. On the screen, an unconscious Angeline was tied to a chair, a trail of blood coming from her mouth down her white tank top.

“Ange,” he yelled. “Ange!”

All his nerve endings vibrated; he wanted to crawl through the phone and rescue her. What happened? What was happening?

Then a face in a black mask with jagged white stitching for a mouth and two big gleaming buttons for eyes like a horror-movie rag doll filled the screen.

“I have another hider for you, Maverick,” it said. “You know, I thought she’d be tougher, would have put up more of a fight.”

The voice sounded strange and mechanical. Maverick tried to look in the background to see where they were, but all he saw was graffiti-covered concrete wall. The light, wherever they were, was low. He squinted into the background. They had to be close.

“Don’t you fucking hurt her,” he said through clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare. She has nothing to do with anything.”

The rag doll shook its head, the movement exaggerated and slow. It shook a gloved finger at Mav.

“That’s just another lie. I saw what you all did. I recorded you.”

Maverick thought back to carrying Alex across the lawn, to the form he’d seen at the hotel. Had someone been there? Had someone seen what they did? Bile rose in the back of his throat.

“You never stop lying, do you?” it asked.

Was it a man? A woman? He couldn’t tell. But there was something familiar there. Maverick kept staring. Hector still had his hand over his mouth and was backing away from the phone, almost comically afraid.

“Where’s Tavo?” asked Maverick. “What have you done with him?”

A light, mechanical laugh. “You’re on your own now, Mav. None of your team to help you. No one to enable you, to laugh at your jokes, to reflect back a self you want to see. Just Hector, who we all know is as useless as a kitten.”

Mav retreated to the control room, started operating from the box inside his head. A weird calm came over him, even as Hector started to cry. Mav watched as his friend sank his head into his hands, whimpering. He really was such a baby. He wasn’t going to be any help at all. The rag doll was right: he needed Tavo. They were the rough-and-ready team. Where was he?

“What do you want?” he asked the dollface. Because everyone wanted something, right?

“ There he is,” the doll said. “There’s the cold, calculating Maverick we all know and love. Just curious, have you ever experienced a true feeling?”

The fog of fear dissipated, and a mental clarity settled.

Play the game. Save Ange. Save Extreme. Get the payout.

He leaned in close to the camera, made his voice low. He stared, too, at the graffiti on the wall. He’d seen it before. Where? “What,” he spat. “Do. You. Want. ”

The dollface moved in, too, taking up the whole screen. The voice became a hiss of menace. “I want you to pay , Maverick. I want you to answer for every lie you’ve told, every dime you’ve stolen, every person you’ve used or hurt, every person who hurt themselves trying to be like you. I want you to have nothing left. No love. No money. No adoring fans. I want everyone to see you for what you are.”

The rage coming across the line was sizzling, unhinged. Was it one of the Moms Against Mav? In his experience, only moms could muster that much rage.

“And how does hurting the people I love accomplish that ?” he asked.

“You don’t need to worry about my agenda, Mav. All you need to know is that this game belongs to me now. You’re just a player. Wow. Look at all these views. I’m live, Maverick. I have my followers, too.”

“Who are you?” he asked. It was right there. Something familiar.

Hector seemed to come to life again, moved over to his com puter, and started clicking. The rain on the roof was a chaotic drumbeat.

“You know me, don’t you?” said the rag doll. “I’ve had a lot of names.”

“MavIsALiar.”

That mechanical laughter again.

“That’s right. And my followers don’t want money or prizes. They don’t want thrills. In a world where the worst men run free, creating the most damage, they just want to see someone get what they deserve.”

“You’re hurting an innocent woman,” said Maverick. “What does that make you ?”

Maverick heard the echo of his own voice. He walked over behind Hector and saw his own face on the screen there, too.

MavIsALiar was live on WeWatch.

Thousands of people were watching, the comment stream a chaos of mean emojis and jeers. He watched, stunned at the level of vitriol and hatred that scrolled by—all the flames and devil faces. And wasn’t there also that secret thrill? Because even when people hated you, they were still focused on you, watching.

“What are the rules? What is the prize?” he asked.

“I admire your focus. The rules? There are no rules, because men like you ignore them anyway. The prize? Angeline lives.”

Panic was a distant siren, something he felt but managed to push down, away.

“What do I do?”

“It’s hide and seek, Maverick. If you can find Angeline, and you admit live all the things you’ve done wrong, she goes free.”

He’d been playing games since he was a kid. It was a thing he could do, something he understood. Except this time the stakes were his future and the only person he’d ever cared about. And he had the feeling that the whole thing was rigged. No matter how well he played, he was going to lose.

“Don’t hurt my friends.” He didn’t love the sound of his echoing voice—whiny, desperate.

“You don’t have any friends, Mav. You have employees. You have an audience. That’s not the same thing.”

Hector looked back at him, eyes strangely sad. Maverick could see on the screen that Hector was sharing the broadcast on the Extreme WeWatch channel, as well. Yes, that was right. Use it to get the most views possible. The game would go on.

“What about the other hiders?” Maverick asked.

He looked out the blurry window. Those men were still waiting, eyes on the trailer. The tension, the ruin, the high-energy vibration sizzled. Fear was a drug; it could be like rocket fuel.

The rag doll face filled the screen. Then it went black.

Then the power went out.