Ronan hadn’t expected any of that. He looked at Jane, caught somewhere between surprise and not quite believing it. His first read on her had been simple enough: a big name who looked down on someone like him. Now it seemed he’d had her wrong.
Jane felt him staring. She turned to him. "Don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t do that for you." She let it sit a second. "I did it because I’m not about to spend this whole shoot cleaning up that guy’s drama. Better he hears it now, to his face, so it actually sticks."
Ronan couldn’t argue with any of it. "Fair enough. Thank you anyway, though."
A little color rose in her face. "Forget it." She looked away.
Woody had caught the whole exchange. He found Albert’s eye and gave his brows a small conspiratorial lift, like the two of them had just seen the same thing. Albert grinned. Woody ruffled the kid’s hair, then turned to Ronan.
"Five years in the business, then," Woody said. "That’s a long stretch. Man learns a thing or two, knocking around that long."
Ronan huffed a wry laugh and scratched the back of his head. "Something like that."
Albert tilted his head at him. "So how come you’re not famous yet, sir? With all that talent?"
Ronan paused a beat. "Guess I just never got the shot back then that I’m getting now." It wasn’t really a lie. Five years ago he hadn’t had the [Immersion System]. Now he did. To everyone else at the table, though, the shot he meant was plain enough — the lead role sitting right in front of him.
The talk stayed easy after that, Albert warming to Ronan more by the minute. Before long the door opened and Henry and Jenny came back in.
Jenny had a couple of bags in her arms. "All right, we’re back. Got everything you put in for." She and Henry set it all out across the table, McDonald’s and Starbucks and whatever each of them had called out. A little wave of appreciation went around the cast.
As people sorted out their food, Henry looked up and came a head short. "Where’s Ian? He take off somewhere?"
The name put a small awkwardness over the table.
Woody cleared his throat. "Ah. Let’s just say he had to head out early. Something came up." He wasn’t about to lay it on Jane. She carried real weight on this project, enough that Ian hadn’t managed a word back before he left. Still, the way Woody left it hanging, Henry and Jenny could both tell there was more to the story.
Jenny read the quiet. "Something happened, didn’t it?"
No one jumped to answer, so Jane did. "It was me. I said some hard things to him, and he left."
That left Henry and Jenny without much to say. And there wasn’t a lot they could do about it either. Someone as central to the show as Jane could go off on a supporting player and the production would still land on her side. The only real cost was her image, how it might sit with the rest of them.
Ronan stepped in. "It’s on me, honestly. Ian was after me the whole read, and Jane only said something because—"
"You don’t need to explain." Jane didn’t look up from her coffee. "It’s fine."
Ronan had more he wanted to put on the record, but she plainly didn’t want it aired, so he let it drop.
Henry and Jenny traded a look. Between them they’d been in this business long enough to fill in the rest without being told. It had been plain from the read that Ian was jealous of Ronan. Jane had likely watched it build the whole way through and finally hit her limit. Put like that, there wasn’t really anyone to blame. The only real dent was to the read itself, which would have to carry on now without him.
More of the cast trickled in as the break ran down. Among them was a veteran named Charlie Ostrander, late fifties, silver-haired and heavyset, cast as the show’s villain, the one who surfaces at the end of episode two. And the way the rest of them had at first, Charlie gave Ronan no particular notice to start.
But once the read picked back up, Ronan’s acting caught Charlie the same way it had caught everyone else. The veteran sat there quietly floored, whether he cared to be or not. Jane, Woody, and Albert only watched. They were used to it by now.
Woody kept his eyes on Ronan. ’Can’t wait to see this once we’re actually shooting. I want to watch this kid work on a real set, cameras and all.’
And he wasn’t the only one. Across the table, Jane was thinking the same.
Two weeks had passed since the table read, and filming day had finally come.
Inside the soundstage at Seventh Pictures, a partial hull section sat mounted on a gimbal, rigged to pitch and roll. Rain towers stood overhead, a greenscreen sky behind them, dump tanks waiting at the base.
Ronan felt the excitement move through him. This was the real thing. A production this size, and he was in it as the male lead, not a body in the background this time.
It came with things he’d never had before. He had his own makeup artist now, doing his face for him, where before he’d always done it himself off in some corner. A costume designer had tailored his outfit to him personally, and had even taken a few of his suggestions, small touches to make it look truer to the period. What no one knew was that he hadn’t invented those touches at all. He’d taken every one of them straight from what he’d seen in the [Half-Immersion].
By the time all of it was done, Ronan stood atop the hull, soaked through. Elijah was meant to come up out of the water in this scene, so they’d left him properly wet. Across the stage he could see Jane, her own assistant blotting the sweat off her before stepping clear of the set.
Henry came over to them. "You good, Jane? Anything not sitting right?"
Jane gave him a short answer, said she was fine. His eyes went to Ronan. "Ronan, if you need anything, if something feels off, don’t be shy about calling for a cut. All right?"
Ronan met his eye. "You got it, director."
And with that, the filming began.
The moment it did, the [Full-Immersion] that had stayed locked to him all this time finally came open.
It hit him like a wave. Everything arrived at once, the stage and the cold and the air and the sounds at the edge of his hearing, and under all of it the sheer weight of being Elijah, pressing in until there was barely room for anything else.
’Where am I? I remember the water taking me, the ship hauling me up—’
That was when it caught up with him. He’d gone too far in. He wasn’t playing Elijah. He was Elijah.
There were memories in him that weren’t his: the sea closing over his head, and before that a battlefield, the soldier’s life Elijah had lived. They sat in his head as plain as anything he’d done himself.
And that, he understood now, was why the system had kept this locked until the cameras rolled. It was too much to walk into cold. The [Half-Immersion] had been getting him ready for it the whole time, easing him into Elijah’s skin, his senses, the shape of him, a little at a time. Go straight to [Full-Immersion] with none of that behind him, and he had the feeling he’d have lost himself in it completely. Ronan would have gone under in Elijah and never come back up.
A chill went through him at the thought. The system was a gift. It was also, he was starting to see, a frightening one.
Terrifying or not, it worked, and it worked completely. He wore Elijah now, down to the eyes, the set of him as he rose to his feet, the whole air he gave off. Nothing of plain, everyday Ronan showed through anymore.
The change landed on the room the instant he moved and spoke. Cast and crew both felt it. Something cold went through the soundstage.
Jane had the worst of it, or the best. She was right across from him, trading lines, close enough to catch every part of it: the way he shivered, real and involuntary, from the cold water on him; the way his eyes and his whole expression seemed to shift into someone else’s. It shook her.
’Is this really that same green kid?’ Her heart gave a hard knock. ’I thought the real filming was my chance to take him. And he can slip into a character like this? At this level?’
She was an actress who lived for the competition of a scene, for going head to head on set. And already, before they were far into it, she felt something close to defeat.