Page 31 of The Dirty Version

Stacy raised her own chin. “Sometimes they do. Especially when you abandon me for five weeks and I get so lonely, I let an MMA stunt team book our room.”

“You’re renting out our office?” Caleb bugged his eyes.

“Not for money, Caleb! Calm down. It’s just guys from upstairs. They let me sit in on drills. It’s networking, some might say.” Stacy smiled in challenge. “You’re not the only one who can collaborate.”

Tash charmed at their dynamic, respect and fondness trafficking across the line.

“Now, Tash.” Stacy got up to slide a wall panel closed, dampening the grunts. “Caleb had asked me for meditation—but if you have time, I also have another idea. There’s a pranayama breathing pattern called kapala bhati , or skull-shine breath. Have you ever done it? Caleb said you’re into yoga.”

Tash had to wonder how else she’d been described. “I am. But I’ve never done that.”

“I’ll teach you—I use it all the time on-set.

” Stacy rolled her shoulders and folded her legs into lotus.

She sat tall. “You seal your mouth and focus on the exhale, pulsing breath out through your nose.” She put fingers on the lowest point of her sternum to demonstrate.

“It engages the power of the diaphragm to sweep away unhelpful thoughts. Maybe we’ll do that first.”

Tash nodded eagerly. “Sounds great.” She had to say it loudly as the fight-club volume grew.

Caleb smirked and leaned into the laptop facetiously. “Wow! This is so Zen. I hope those guys are still there when I get back.”

Stacy smirked with equal sarcasm as her form broke. “Weren’t you heading out? You have, like, seven calls tomorrow—I saw the Braverman agenda. You have a whole new slavery sequence to write.”

The MMA barking became a full-blown ruckus, and Stacy held a finger to her ear. She muted her feed, gesturing at the camera. She got up again, striding out of the frame.

Tash turned to Caleb in confusion, certain she’d misheard. “What slavery?”

“Prelim notes on Episode Nine’s script changed.” Caleb reported this like happy news. “Story Edit is in favor of removing any elements of sexual violence and treating Noab’s capture as if she’s being sold into bondage.”

He was talking about The Colony ’s catastrophic third-act twist—when Hewett’s surviving crew against-all-odds finds their way to the island to retrieve him but demand Noab as payment for his passage home.

In an ultimate act of betrayal, Hewett agrees to their terms. He turns his back on Noab and stands tall at his ship’s helm as she’s outnumbered by his men, who drag her down the beach by her hair, violence feeding their sick zeal.

Until the Mother Beast tastes Noab’s blood in the water—but doesn’t come after Noab.

In an act of instinctive female solidarity and vengeance, the Mother Beast rises to murder Hewett’s men.

Noab escapes, spared but forever broken.

She watches Hewett sail away, having traded her for his own security.

“What?” Tash deflated. “Since when? That makes no sense.”

Caleb’s expression faltered. He glanced to the laptop, muting their feed, too. “It just happened today.”

Tash tensed. “And you didn’t tell me?”

He furrowed. “It’s preliminary notes. We just closed Episode Five.

We’ll get the final direction for Nine in a day or so.

” He scooted closer, pushing a throw pillow out of the way.

“And it does make sense. Hewett’s men can still attack Noab on the beach, but they can do it because they want to sell her to the slave trade—”

She stiffened further. “What slave trade?”

Caleb shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is there doesn’t have to be any hint of sexual assault.

They can march her out into the water, she can refuse to get on the boat, she can goad one of the men into slapping her with his rifle, which makes her mouth bleed.

She spits into the water, summoning the Mother Beast.”

Tash shook her head. “But we need the threat of sexual violence. Hewett’s men have to be brutal—it’s what the Lore warned Noab about.

” She diagrammed it for him: “If the men don’t fulfill every terrible expectation the Lore instilled in Noab, she won’t be justified when she kills the baby.

They can’t be gentle pirates, Caleb. They have to be a nightmare. ”

Tash’s nightmare. Which was why she’d assumed Caleb would understand. Hewett’s men stood in for a swerve of fate Tash by luck had avoided; they were an echo of someone she’d told Caleb about, who’d psychotically ordered another drink after he pulled her hair.

Caleb continued to look baffled. “But you hated the assault in Transtempora —”

“Because it was gratuitous,” she finished his sentence. “It’s not like I want ours to be on-screen. But Episode Nine needs disgusting male depravity. The threat has to be visceral.”

“Wait.” He balked, holding up his hands. “The threat has to be visceral but not on-screen?”

“Yes.”

“Tash, we talked about this when we started.” Caleb exhaled. “You can’t have it both ways. Film is visual. What we don’t show doesn’t happen. If you put the assault off-screen, it’s not part of the story.”

“And if you put the assault on-screen ,” she countered, “it becomes a spectacle. It becomes somebody’s turn-on. It becomes clickbait and entertainment. Which is not acceptable to me.”

Caleb nodded. “Exactly. That’s why capturing her for slavery could be better.”

“No!” Tash winched up from the floor. “It’s not awful enough.

The audience has to feel the horror, or else they won’t be with her, later on the cliff.

Killing the baby won’t seem justified by her experience.

” She sensed a snag in her rebuttal. She jumped to its conclusion, the suspicion that had dogged her all along: “Unless this is just another gateway to making us have to change the ending.”

“That is not what this is.” Caleb tightened at the accusation. “Among other things, this is Noab getting the chance to very explicitly save herself.”

“At the expense of showing how rotten men are.”

Caleb’s comeback was stifled by Stacy’s return to the frame.

She unmuted, ambient spa music now in her background instead of grunts. “Sorry about that. Where were we?”

Caleb unmuted, too. “One sec, Stace.” He pressed mute again and angled the laptop away. “How about we table this until there’s time to talk about it properly?”

Tash recognized him in this role—the glue between all parties, always the voice of reason.

“Like I said, the notes are just preliminary. We can’t start working until after the Big Gun retrospective anyway.” Caleb reached for Tash’s hand. “Trust, right? I don’t want to fight with you. We’re on the same side.”

But Tash worried she was maybe in his blind spot, far across an impasse; that the place she found herself was somewhere Caleb couldn’t recognize.