“Uh,” he said. “The gas station is that way.”
A teenage boy on a battered Vespa appeared, holding a bag of souvlaki. He stared at the ten filthy, weeping celebrities. “Uh,” he said
The celebrities gathered around the laptop. On the screen: a single red button. forgot his comeback
For a long moment, nothing happened.
The laptop on the shore flickered. The error log changed: libvpx: parallel frame sync established (channel: empathy). “Uh,” he said
Dunc thrashed. He screamed. He forgot the cameras, forgot his comeback, forgot everything except the primal certainty of suffocation. And Kieran—who had broken world records, who had stared down doping scandals—Kieran wept. Not for himself. For Dunc.