Luna Park's Arc

Chapter 7 of 14

By dawn of day three, the pipeline scout's message sat on Luna's phone in two short lines. Show me the rehearsal space by noon, or the slot goes back in the pool. The rival's coordinate post had reached the scout's feed overnight. The cave entrance was burned. Luna could not bring the scout there now without confirming the rival was right about everything else. She sat on the crate behind the cave mouth and watched her breath fog the screen. The slot token in her jacket felt like a piece of glass she was carrying in a closed fist. She walked out past the burned tent frame and found the old wooden platform the supply runner had pointed out on day one. Snow sat on the planks in uneven mounds. Two boards had split through the middle. It had been a busking stage once, long before the pipeline pulled performers indoors. No camera had filmed here in years. That was the point. There was no footage of her rehearsing here because no one rehearsed here at all. The empty stage was the shape of her problem. Her proof was supposed to live somewhere, and it lived nowhere a scout could verify. Beside the path stood the scout's frost-veiled pillar, the notch column where pipeline runners cut a mark for every credibility check a performer passed. Her column held one notch from the audition. The rival's column, two paths over, held four. Luna pulled the slot token from her pocket and set it on the planks. Then she pulled out the small hourglass the scout had given her at the audition, the frozen sand suspended mid-fall in its glass. The scout had said the sand would drop when her window closed. The cascade had begun to thaw in her palm; gold grains slid a quarter inch and stopped. She had maybe an hour. She made the call fast. She would not defend the cave footage. She would replace it. She messaged the scout one line: Come to the old wood stage at noon. I will dance the full song, live, in front of you, no cuts. Then she dragged the split boards flat, kicked the snow clear, and tied her sister's scarf to the front post as a marker. If the scout came, the proof would be her body in real time. If the scout did not come, the slot was already gone. The scout came. Luna danced Butter end to end on the broken planks, breath ragged at the bridge, feet sure through the last eight counts. The scout watched without a phone in hand. When Luna finished, the scout walked to the frost pillar and cut a second notch into her column with a short blade. The slot token stayed in Luna's pocket. The hourglass sand finished its fall and settled. Then the scout said one thing before leaving: the showcase lineup posts tomorrow, and the rival had been added to it last night.