Hill had landed in the same place as Jenny, and he didn’t need to say it out loud to know it: after a read like that, neither of them was letting this kid walk out of the building unsigned.
He was already running the next steps in his head — how fast they could get a contract in front of him, who they’d have to clear it with, how soon they could lock it before anyone else got a look at the kid — when Felix cut across him. Felix had twisted around in his chair, and he wasn’t looking at either of them. He was staring at Ronan.
"Mr. Hill, Ms. Lee — hold on." Felix was already half up. "Look at Ronan. Something’s wrong with him, like right now."
They turned.
"He’s not moving. He’s not moving at all." Felix’s voice climbed. "It’s like he actually went and died out there."
Jenny was up in an instant. "Henry, come on — we need to get over there and check on him."
Hill nodded, and the two of them crossed the room to Ronan’s side.
Jenny went down beside him and felt for a pulse, and the color slid out of her face. "Oh, god. Henry, it’s barely there." She kept two fingers pressed under his jaw. "I’ve done enough first-aid training to know what a normal one feels like — and this isn’t it. A pulse this weak, this faint, that’s usually somebody who’s passed out. Fainted clean away."
Felix crouched down next to them. "But how? How’s that even possible? All the guy did was run a scene. You’re telling me somebody can faint dead away off a fifteen-minute read?"
Hill looked the kid over, closer now. "There’s only one thing I’ve ever seen do this to an actor," he said. "He goes so far into the part that his head quits treating it like pretend. The pain, the fear, the dying — he’s not playing at it anymore, he’s living it, and the body takes it like the real thing. Push a person that far into it, and the shock alone is enough to knock him out cold."
That put a chill through Felix. "Yeah — I know what you mean. That’s your method actors, and half those guys aren’t right in the head to start with, you know that." He shook his head. "But this kid? Come on, Director. He walked in off the waiting list looking like every other name on that list. Method guys don’t just flip it on — it takes them weeks to climb inside a character. Months, some of them. There’s no way somebody does it cold, first time through, standing in a casting room."
Jenny had been quiet, listening, still crouched at Ronan’s side. "That’s exactly what I’m telling you," she said. "He’s not every other name on the list. A kid who can go that deep, that fast, cold — that’s the kind of talent that shows up once and turns the whole industry on its head."
"Yeah." Hill’s eyes lit up. "We didn’t just find ourselves an actor today. We struck gold."
Then he caught himself, and the excitement gave way to something more practical. "Hang on, though — first things first. Is he actually okay? You think we ought to get him to a hospital?"
Jenny checked him over again, then eased him onto his side, settling him into a steadier position on the floor. "No — I think he’s alright. His breathing’s already coming back. It’s steadying out. Give him a minute and he’ll come around on his own."
Hill let out a breath, and beside him Felix did the same.
And it was right then, still down on the floor beside him, that Jenny said it. "Henry. I want this kid for the male lead. For «Castaway in Time»."
Hill and Felix both stared at her.
"I’m right there with you," Hill said. "Been thinking it since he hit the floor. He’s got every last thing that part needs — and then some."
"Bu-but, Director—" Felix looked between them. "The lead’s already been decided, though, hasn’t it? The producer settled on his guy himself."
That settled a weight over the room.
Hill and Jenny both knew exactly what it meant, and neither of them liked it. Mark was the producer, and «Castaway in Time» was his show top to bottom. He’d been the one to bring it to NBS and talk the network into a full twelve-episode order, and a network only commits like that when it trusts the man behind it.
That trust was the whole thing: it meant Mark’s word ran the production. His casting calls weren’t suggestions somebody could argue him out of; they were final. Going after the male lead meant going straight at the one man the network listened to more than anyone.
Then Jenny’s eyes went to the little audition cam still running on its tripod in the corner, and she found the angle. "So we don’t argue it with him. We show him." She looked back at Hill. "That camera caught the whole read, right? Start to finish? We put it in front of Mark and let it do the talking for us."
Hill nodded. "Every second of it. That’s exactly what I’m gonna do."
While the three of them were still talking it over, Ronan wasn’t in the room to hear a word of it.
He was somewhere else. Somewhere with no walls, no floor, nothing under his feet at all. It stretched out dark and endless in every direction, scattered with more stars than he could ever have counted, like he’d been dropped down into the middle of open space.
"...Where am I?" His voice came out small and went nowhere.
The fear caught up with him fast. "D-don’t tell me I died."
He looked down at himself and his stomach dropped. He could see straight through his own hands, straight through all of him, faint and thin, like he was barely there at all. His eyes started to sting, and he was half a second from losing it when something caught his eye.
A panel of light hung in the dark in front of him, the same kind as before.
[Consciousness space | deep layer.]
[Cause of entry: severe physical damage sustained. | Source: Method Grade C scenario.]
[Function: recovery. Damage is repaired here before you return.]
[Recovery in progress...]
Ronan read it twice. ’Recovery? So that Immersion System, that thing, pulled me in here to patch me up? Which means I’m... not actually dead?’
The relief hit him all at once. His legs would have gone out from under him if there’d been a floor to drop onto. Then, right behind the relief, came the complaint.
"Damn it." He dragged a see-through hand down his face. "Why do I have to feel every last bit of the pain in there? I really thought that was it. Thought I’d actually died. Worst pain of my life, and not one part of it was even real."