Chapter 36 : Red Light

Chapter 36: Chapter 36 : Red Light

Number 117 was a sophomore from one of the frats, the one who’d come off the line hardest. When the pelican swung around, the top half of him stopped. His right foot didn’t. It kept sliding forward across the grass, maybe the length of a fist.

The volunteer assigned to his group didn’t say a word. She just raised the big water gun in her hands.

Psssht.

A stream of red hit him square in the chest. It bloomed across the green tracksuit, dark, almost black-red, and ran down the front of him. The rooftop camera caught every inch of it.

"I stopped!" 117 spun around. "I totally stopped!"

The volunteer didn’t argue. She just pointed at the sideline, where a little monitor stood wired to one of the HDV cameras. The tape rolled back three seconds and played in slow motion. The pelican had already turned. His right heel was still carving a line through the grass.

The bleachers howled. 117 threw both hands up at the sky, swore at it, and walked himself off the field, dripping red.

Over the fifty-yard line, the man in the Sony polo pulled a banded stack out of the aluminum case, stepped up onto the boom lift’s platform, and dropped it into the clear box. It landed on top of the first stack, and the box swung a little on its line.

Two thousand.

That did more than any explanation could have. For the first time, the bleachers understood how the money worked, and something new got into the noise they were making. The ninety-nine still on the field understood it too. Every time somebody left, the box over their heads got heavier.

In the command tent, Ethan sat in front of the Bravia wall with a headset mic on. When he breathed, the speakers out on the field breathed with him.

The wall had twenty-four screens. The one dead center was the Z1U on the gym roof, shooting the whole field from above, ninety-nine green dots scattered between the white lines. The one in the bottom left sat on the finish line, low, at the height of the giant pelican’s eyes. From there, a hundred people came running straight at the lens and then froze all at once.

Noah sat beside him at the switcher with both hands hovering over a row of buttons. A week ago he hadn’t known what a switcher looked like. Now he didn’t need to look down.

"Hold the finish-line camera," Ethan said, thumb on the mute switch. "Save it for when somebody gets inside the twenty."

"I know," Noah said. "You’ve told me three times."

Ethan let go of the mute. "Green light!"

This time nobody sprinted. Ninety-nine people shuffled forward in short, careful steps, every one of them leaving room to stop.

Ethan waited three seconds. Five. Seven. Out on the field, people started opening up their strides.

"Red—"

Ninety-nine people slammed on the brakes. The pelican hadn’t moved.

"—light!"

Kevin hit the switch only then. There was half a second between the brakes and the pelican turning, and in that half second three people decided the danger was over and lost their balance.

Psssht. Psssht. Psssht.

The bleachers lost it. The one they lost it hardest over was Mac.

Mac had frozen mid-stride. Left foot planted, right leg up in the air, both arms out, two hundred-plus pounds balanced on one foot and wobbling. His lav mic carried him straight into the speakers.

"I am a tree. I am a tree. Trees don’t move. Trees—don’t—"

Somebody in the bleachers yelled TREE, and a second later the whole stadium had picked it up. TREE! TREE! TREE!

His volunteer walked over and bent down to check the foot. The ankle was shaking. The sole hadn’t left the grass. She straightened up and shook her head.

Still in.

In the tent, Noah already had Mac full screen. His shoulders were shaking with laughter, but his hands on the buttons were rock steady.

At the other end of the tent, Maya sat straight-backed in front of a laptop. In the corner of her screen was a number: how many people were watching the stream right now.

It had been twelve thousand at the start. Twenty-one thousand when 117 took the red. When Mac turned into a tree, it passed forty thousand.

The chat was scrolling faster than anyone could read.

TREE TREE TREE

wait every red = another stack in the box?? thats brutal

did anyone see pink shoes girl move. she 100% moved

lmao this looks like a security camera from 1997 and i cant close it

Fifty thousand.

Fifty-two.

The picture froze.

The player on the laptop turned into a little circle that wouldn’t stop spinning. Maya’s fingers flew over the trackpad, and she muttered a string of something under her breath that Ethan couldn’t follow. It might have been commands. It might have been swearing.

Ryan Cho was already out of the tent with his phone to his ear. "—yes, we’re over. I don’t care what the contract says, open it up right now—"

The picture came back thirty seconds later. A minute after that, it froze again.

"I’m sorry." Maya didn’t look up. "That’s on me. I should’ve set up the encoder to—"

"Look at the chat," Ethan said.

Maya stopped and looked.

F5 F5 F5

stop refreshing youre killing the server (im also refreshing)

someone whos THERE pls type what’s happening

IS TREE STILL ALIVE

In the minute the picture was frozen, nobody left. They refreshed. They begged anyone who was there to tell them what was happening. A few people started narrating for everybody else, in text. 088 moved. Pink shoes still in. Tree still in.

Ethan’s eyes went back to the viewer count. The picture was frozen, and the number was still climbing. Those were people waiting in line to get in.

That was the thing about live. A finished video would still be there tomorrow. This moment wouldn’t. So they’d rather sit in front of a spinning circle hitting F5 than leave.

In a few years, somebody was going to build a whole company on exactly this. A crowd of people watching another crowd play.

When that thought came to him, something passed through Ethan’s eyes, there and gone, that nobody in the tent could have put a name to.

"Just get it back up," he told Maya. "They’ll wait."

Maya gave him one quick look and went back to her keyboard.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the green tracksuits turned red one after another.

One guy sneezed the instant the light went red. One girl stood still so long her knees gave out and she sank to the grass on her own. One pair of partners had been running side by side when her shoelace came undone, and he bent to grab it without thinking. They took the red together. She smacked him all the way to the sideline, and he laughed the whole time she did it.

Sierra stayed in the top thirty the whole way. She didn’t move fast, but every step landed solid, and when she froze, not even her ponytail swung. Dylan was five yards to her left. Every time they froze, he wanted to turn his head and look at her, and he didn’t dare.

The box filled one stack at a time. By the twentieth, the bottom layer was full, and the new ones had to go on top of the old. When the players froze now, their eyes kept drifting up toward it.

The first one inside the twenty was 218.

Ethan tapped one finger on the desk. Noah didn’t need him to say it. He’d already cut to the low camera on the finish line.

On screen, Sierra walked straight at the lens, one step at a time. Behind her, sixty or seventy green figures spread out across the field, every one of them facing the same way.

Red light. She froze square to the lens, chin up a little.

Nobody in the tent said anything. Ryan Cho had come back in at some point and was standing behind Ethan.

"That frame," he said quietly. "I want that on a billboard for the holidays."

When the clock ran out, the volunteers at the finish line counted sixty-nine.

The last one in was a tall, skinny guy, number 603. With one second left on the clock he threw himself across the line, his toes just catching the paint, and slid two yards on the grass. The bleachers screamed themselves hoarse.

Over by the finish line, Kevin looked up and glanced across half the field toward the command tent. Ethan’s face gave away nothing.

Everyone who hadn’t made it was out. The last stack dropped into the box. Thirty-one thousand.

That didn’t add up. Thirty-one thousand meant thirty out and seventy left. Ethan counted the finish line again on the rooftop shot. Sixty-nine.

At the finish line, a volunteer raised her hand. Lying next to her was Mac, who’d hopped the whole last stretch tree-style, collapsed across the line, and was now flat on the grass, wheezing and laughing, his tracksuit still spotless green. She’d counted him as part of the scenery.

Seventy.

In the corner of Maya’s screen, the number read sixty-one thousand. She looked up.

"They’re still trying to get in."

"Then let’s give them a reason to keep trying." Ethan pulled the headset mic to his mouth and let go of the mute.

"Seventy left. Everybody back to the central lawn." He paused. "You’ve got fifteen minutes to hide."