Chapter 265 - 265: 265 | Orlando's Show (1)

<🎧 Song Recommendation: Beast & Peace by Mohbad>

...

I Just Might Be Dreaming didn't need a smoother transition. It didn't need an extra drum fill, or a soft synth riser, or a gradual fade.

It needed empty air.

Von placed his thumb against the low E-string.

In his head, the verse floated through the fog, rising higher and higher and then, right when the listener expected the chorus to explode, absolute silence.

Two full beats of nothingness.

And then, out of the dark...

~Thump.~

Von plucked the string before open8 his eyes, staring at his fingers on the fretboard as a slow smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"That's it," Von murmured. "That's the bridge."

Before he could play the next bar though, a hurried knock came against the door.

The knock came again before the door opened up. Alex entered inside the booth with his Stratocaster gig bag hanging off one shoulder, an in-ear monitor over his neck.

Conor was right behind him, spinning a pair of drumsticks between his fingers.

"David is waving us down," Alex said, gesturing down the corridor. "Audio patched the stage snakes and the desk is live. We've got twenty minutes to check lines before the local union crew goes on their lunch break."

Alex's eyes dropped to the four-string bass hanging against Von's chest. His eyebrows twitched upward.

"Wait. Since when do you play bass?"

"Since about ten minutes ago," Von said, unplugging the patch cable from the small practice amp. He slipped the strap over his head, holding the instrument by its neck. "Grab your gear. I want to test the low end on the arena speakers."

Conor grinned, pushing off the doorframe. "Is this that track you've been keeping locked in your vault? The one from Toronto?"

"Yeah," Von said with a faint smirk. "Let's see if the room can handle it."

They walked down the wide concrete tunnel and stepped out onto the main floor of the Amway Center.

The stage looked completely different from Miami. The overhead tracks and lines were gone, replaced by tiered rows of black projection scrims hanging from the catwalks.

Along the perimeter of the circular center deck, chiller ducts were already routed into place to feed low-lying dry ice.

Conor jumped up onto his drum riser, tapping his toms in sequence before giving the kick pedal two heavy thumps.

🥁 Thud. Thud. 🥁

Alex plugged his pedalboard into the stage box, dialing in a clean tone drenched in chorus and delay.

Von stepped up to the center mic stand, plugged the bass into the primary DI line, and tapped his in-ear pack.

"Gus," Von called out toward the front-of-house mixing desk. "Take the subs down to thirty-five hertz. Give me full bottom end on the stage line."

From the soundboard, Gus gave a quick thumbs-up. "Board is live, Von. Send it."

Von looked over his shoulder at Alex and Conor.

"The verse is slow and airy," Von said. "Alex, keep that guitar chord cold, just a delayed chop on the off-beats. Conor, soft rimshots only. When the pre-chorus ends on the line 'be dreaming', we cut everything."

Alex looked up from his fretboard. "Everything?"

"Yep, complete dead air," Von nodded. "Two full beats of pure silence. On beat three, I take the bassline alone for four bars. Then on bar five, Conor drops the kick like a sledgehammer, you then come in with the heavy distortion, and we tear the room in half."

Conor twirled a drumstick, his grin widening. "Say less."

Conor counted them in with four sharp clicks of his sticks.

Alex struck the first chord, a spacious, reverb-drenched chop that drifted through the empty arena. Conor settled into a lazy, understated pocket.

Von adjusted his grip on the bass neck, leaning into the talkback mic to test the vocal pocket over the rhythm:

🎸♪

Seats are filled up, people cheering

Yeah, it's true

...

Be dreaming

🎸♪

Conor clamped his hand over the snare. Alex slapped his palm flat against the guitar strings.

Silence.

The entire bowl dropped dead quiet for two hollow counts.

Then Von's thumb struck the low E-string.

A menacing sub-bass groove rolled out of the lower cabinets, rattling the empty seats with a deep vibration.

On bar five, Conor's right foot slammed down onto the kick pedal.

The drums hit again and at the soundboard, Gus stopped adjusting the faders, his mouth hanging slightly open in admiration.

Von let the final note sustain into a warm hum before letting go of the strings.

"Bro," Conor breathed from behind the kit, letting out a wild laugh. "That drop is disgusting. People are going to lose their minds."

"It works," Alex agreed, nodding with a sharp grin.

"Good," Von said, unclipping the bass and handing it to a waiting stagehand. "Don't run it again. Let's keep it fresh for tonight."

***

By five o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, downtown Orlando had turned into a zoo.

Church Street was completely shut down by police barricades. Even though doors wouldn't open for hours, thousands of fans who hadn't managed to secure arena tickets had gathered outside anyway, filling the surrounding sidewalks and outdoor plazas.

"I'm telling you, he's dropping from the roof again," a guy in a vintage Magic jersey insisted, adjusting his sunglasses as the line crept forward five feet. "My brother was at Kaseya on Friday. Von shredded an electric solo forty feet above the floor. You think he's gonna come to Orlando and just stand by a mic stand?"

"There aren't any aerial cables hung," the girl next to him countered, pointing up toward the arena's massive overhang. "My roommate's uncle works venue rigging, he noticed."

"Then what is he doing? Walking on water?"

A few yards down the plaza, a commotion broke out near the outdoor terrace.

A college kid who had driven four hours down from Jacksonville was waving a thick envelope of twenties at a pair of teenagers walking toward the turnstiles.

"Six hundred cash!" the kid shouted, pointing directly at the girl's feet. "Six hundred right now! Size eight, aqua dolphins! I'll take them off you right here on the sidewalk!"

"Back off, bro!" the girl laughed, tucking her feet behind her friend. "I stood outside in Miami for four hours to get these Exo Boots. You couldn't buy these off me for a thousand!"

Von had made the deliberate call not to drop any new apparel pieces in Orlando, choosing to let the fashion line breathe after opening weekend.

Instead of hurting the hype, the scarcity sent demand through the roof. Hundreds of fans who hadn't managed to secure concert tickets had flown into Orlando anyway, desperately circling the perimeter just to hunt down resellers or absorb whatever leaked through the loading dock doors.

Down in the corridors of the Amway Center, the operational gears were grinding at full speed.

David was stationed near dock four, arguing with the venue security chief over crowd spillover.

Two overzealous local kids had already been caught trying to slip past loading bay three with forged laminates, and local police were requesting extra barricades along South Street before the evening rush hour.

"Tell them the perimeter holds where it is," David barked into his radio, checking off freight manifests. "Nobody touches the inner dock without production badges. We have fourteen tractor-trailers to pack the second this show ends."

Down the hall in the visiting team's locker room, the pre-show focus had set in.

Max was dressed in his black utility vest, running footwork drills on the navy carpet alongside Kiana's dancers.

He paused every few minutes to rub his calves, muttering under his breath about the 44-degree ice tub he had stupidly plunged into that morning.

"Still got all ten toes, Max?" Conor called out from the corner, laughing as he finished taping his wrists with black athletic grip.

"My legal team is looking into arena liabilities," Max grumbled, adjusting his chest-mounted smartphone gimbal. "If my footwork is slightly less majestic tonight, it's David's fault."

"Your footwork has never been majestic," Alex deadpanned from a leather bench, running clean fingerpicking scales on his Stratocaster.

Near the mouth of the tunnel leading to the arena floor, Tobias Grant stood with Von, running through the stage cues one last time.

"Remember," Tobias said, tapping the floor plan on his tablet. "No flying tonight means the crowd's eyes won't be drawn up. Every single pair of eyes is going to be locked straight ahead on the deck. The shadow switch on the scrims has a three-second window. If you miss your mark before the projection cuts, they'll see the illusion."

"I won't miss it," Von said evenly.

Emily walked up to them holding the final production rundown folder.

"All eighteen thousand tickets are scanned, the house is packed as expected. Go kill it."

Von nodded with a grin, turning toward the tunnel mouth.