Ronan still couldn’t get over how real it had become once the figures began to move—the pirate especially, solid and close enough to touch. But he had no time to dwell on it. Right now, he was Thomas, and there was a fight in front of him.
Something dragged at his hip. He looked down: a cutlass, sheathed in a worn leather scabbard. The rest of him had changed as well—coarse shirt, salt-stiff coat, heavy boots, none of it his own.
The system had dressed him for the part, down to the blade at his side.
He drew the cutlass and let it fall to the deck. "Then I’ll not draw mine either—"
"I beg you, Thomas — do not do this!"
The cry stopped him. He turned toward it.
It was Rose, straining forward, the fear plain in her eyes — and an arm was clamped across her, holding her back. The man behind it Ronan knew at once for the series’ male lead. Elijah.
’Her voice,’ Ronanmarveled. ’Even her beautiful voice felt so real, so warm and alive.’
He glanced across the deck and understood why. Felix had read Rose’s lines too, in that same flat casting-room voice, and here on the ship the words had gone into her — she was moving now, breathing, frightened.
’So that’s how it works...’ Whoever a real voice read for came alive; the rest only went through the shapes of it. They still moved, still made their noise, but there was nothing behind it — bodies running a routine, no one home behind the eyes.
He looked to Elijah and found the same: the male lead himself, an arm barred across Rose, his face as vacant as an extra hitting a mark, because no one was reading him a single line.
No time to sit with it. He had a scene to play.
He stepped out into the clear of the deck, where the captain waited on him, rolling his shoulders.
"Thomas, no — do not!"
Rose wrenched free of Elijah’s arm and came at him, catching at his sleeve, his hand.
And it caught him again, because he felt it — her fingers closing on his, warm and real, no different from any hand he’d ever held. ’No way. I can feel her? It lets me feel them?’
Not the world alone, then. The people too. He could touch this thing, and it touched him back.
Rose pressed against him, and it was hard to hold his footing with her so close. She wore Jane Kingsley’s face — and Jane was someone he’d quietly carried a thing for, for years. He held steady all the same. Thomas had his line.
"Rose. Do not waste your fear on me." One corner of his mouth lifted. "A brute like that one? I can hold him."
Her eyes filled. When she spoke, it barely carried over the wind. "No. I’ll not do it, Thomas — I will not. You would lay down your life so I might steal away in the dark? How am I to bear that? I cannot stand by and watch you fall for my sake."
And there it was — the thing he’d never once reached on a soundstage. It moved in him on its own, no reaching for it. With Rose right here, close enough to feel, being Thomas took no effort at all.
He wasn’t reciting a man any longer. The feeling wasn’t on the page; it rose in him where he stood, and somewhere in it he stopped being Ronan playing a part and was only Thomas.
His look softened before he knew it. He drew her in. "Do this for me, Rose. I beg you."
Her fist knotted in his shirt. "But—"
He pulled her closer, put his lips to her ear, and said it low. "I love you, Rose."
Her eyes went wide — that he would say it now, of all the moments.
But before she could answer, he set his hands to her shoulders and pushed her back from him. "Live. Live, for my sake."
Elijah was already there to take her, drawing her away through the din of the crew — away from the captain, away from Thomas. The distraction was theirs now, and they would use it.
Ronan watched her go, one last look. What sat on his face wasn’t all playacting. Some of it was the pull he felt for her, and under that, heavier, the pain.
From across the room, all Hill, Jenny, and Felix could see was a young man holding empty air as if it were a woman, murmuring to no one, his face breaking with something that had no business looking that real.
They couldn’t see what Ronan saw. They couldn’t stand on his deck or feel his sea.
But they could feel the thing coming off him — the grief, the tenderness — and their own minds filled in the rest, sketching the woman, the parting, the weight of it.
Jenny felt her heart speeding up as she watched him work. ’I didn’t expect him to be this good. He’s got it exactly, the way I always pictured Thomas saying goodbye to Rose. And that look on his face is giving me goosebumps.’
She kept watching, barely breathing. ’The audition’s a long way from over, though. But if he plays the tragic scene as well as this? Then he’s got the role, right here and now.’
Hill was landing in the same place. An actor like this, walking in cold to read for a twelve-episode limited series — you didn’t see that twice in a year.
Then the captain’s voice cut across the deck and dragged the whole scene forward.
"Done pining after the girl, boy?" The captain rolled his neck. "Put up your fists, then, and give us a show."
Ronan’s eyes went hard. He fixed them on the pirate captain. "You’re awfully keen to be knocked flat." And he raised his fists.
The captain came at him swinging. Ronan slipped it.
Somewhere in the motion, he caught it — his body was faster than it had any right to be, sharper and surer than his own had ever been. The [Immersion System] was doing more than he’d figured.
It hadn’t only built this world and dropped him inside it; here, in what he took to calling the «Immersion Zone», it had made him Thomas through and through — not his head alone, but every part of him. His hands found angles he’d never thrown, and his feet already knew where to be.
He ducked the next swing and drove a fist into the captain’s ribs.
But good as he suddenly was, the man across from him was better. The captain read him, waited, and buried a punch in his stomach.
"Ugh—" The breath went out of Ronan in a rush, and the pain was real, no illusion softening it. Before he could recover, a second blow caught him across the eye.
"Ack—!"
His head snapped sideways. His vision went white at the edges, the eye already hot and stinging.
’I knew the hits would land — I can feel these people, so their fists are real too. But nobody warned me it’d hurt like this.’
He hadn’t braced for it, not really. He stayed on his feet and kept swinging anyway, but it was plain enough now: he was outmatched. Cold sweat beaded along his forehead. Every trade left him worse off than the last.
Watching him take it, watching him stagger, the three of them felt their own stomachs tighten — because none of it looked staged.
Felix couldn’t keep still. He edged closer to the director, eyes glued to Ronan. "Mr. Hill, he’s okay, right? He’s not actually hurting himself out there, is he?"
Hill wasn’t sure himself. He’d caught the way the kid’s head snapped back a second ago, like something had really connected. But he kept his voice easy. "Relax, he’s fine. He’s just buried so deep in it he’s throwing himself around like the beating’s real." He shook his head, and something like respect crept in. "This kid’s the real deal, though. Not what I expected when he walked in."
Jenny nodded, slow, her eyes never leaving him. "It’s working, too. I could swear he’s actually feeling every one of those hits."
What neither of them knew was that it had stopped being acting a while ago. Ronan was taking real hits, real damage — and through the worst of it, a pane of clear light kept surfacing in front of him, marking each blow as it landed —
[Blow endured: stomach. | Pain Resistance +1 (stomach)]
[Blow endured: head. | Pain Resistance +1 (head)]