Adrenaline and Ashes

# The Thirty-Second Vision The crash test dummy hit the reinforced glass at ninety miles per hour. It didn't break. Dakota Chance watched from the observation deck, jaw clenched, replaying the failed stunt in their mind for the hundredth time that week. Six months ago, they would have been the one flying through that glass. Six months ago, they were somebody. "That's take forty-seven," Marcus said behind them, not bothering to hide the disappointment in his voice. Marcus ran safety for Prometheus Studios, the sprawling stunt facility built on the bones of the old Coronado lot. He'd given Dakota one chance to come back. One. "The laminate's too thick. We need to source different glass, but that puts us three weeks behind schedule." Dakota didn't respond. They were watching the dummy's shattered remains on the sound stage below, the way the pieces seemed to catch the light in a pattern that almost looked intentional. Almost looked like a message. It had started two weeks ago—these visions. A spike of adrenaline, sharp and electric, and suddenly Dakota could see thirty seconds into the future. Crystal clear. Like watching a playback of something that hadn't happened yet. The first time it occurred, Dakota had been on a wire rig, fifteen feet up, when they saw themselves falling. Not in slow motion. In perfect, terrifying detail. They'd grabbed the safety line two seconds before the harness clip fractured. Nobody else even noticed the clip had failed. The second time, a car stunt. Dakota saw the brakes give out, saw the collision before it happened, and veered left instead of right. Missed a pedestrian extra by inches. People started talking. The stunt coordinator called them lucky. The director called them a genius. Marcus called them a liability. But the visions kept coming. And each time, Dakota saved someone. A lighting rig that would've crushed a grip. A pyrotechnics malfunction that would've burned an actor. Dakota caught them all, always just in time, always with that electric surge of adrenaline that opened the future like a door. The thing was, no one knew about the visions. They thought Dakota was just performing miracles through pure instinct and skill. They thought Dakota was redemption itself—the disgraced stunt performer who'd gotten too reckless, who'd damaged the studio's reputation with injuries and insurance claims, now returned as some kind of guardian angel. What they didn't know was that something else was guiding Dakota. Something that lived in the spaces between takes. "I know what's wrong with the glass," Dakota said quietly. Marcus turned. "You what?" "The laminate specification. It's wrong. We need polycarbonate. Not laminated glass. Polycarbonate will break on impact but won't shatter." Dakota turned to face him, and there was something in their eyes that made Marcus take a step back. "And we need to do the test run tomorrow at dawn." "Why dawn?" "Because that's when I see it clearest." Marcus didn't ask questions anymore. Not after Dakota had saved Jenny Chen from the wire rig incident. Jenny had been his daughter's best friend. He'd hired a replacement glass supplier within an hour. That night, Dakota couldn't sleep. They drove to Prometheus Studios at four in the morning, past the security gate where the guard waved them through without checking credentials. Everybody knew Dakota now. Dakota Chance, the comeback kid. The one who walked away from accidents that should've killed them. The facility sprawled across fifteen acres of post-industrial wasteland. Old factory buildings had been converted into soundstages. Warehouses housed rigging equipment and vehicles for every conceivable stunt. There was a training facility with walls reinforced for wall-runs and free falls. There was a water tank capable of simulating anything from a sinking ship to a drowning scene. And somewhere beneath all of it, buried under concrete and steel and the accumulated weight of decades, was the grave of Victor Delacroix. Dakota had read about him obsessively since arriving at Prometheus. Delacroix had been a god in the 1970s and 80s, the performer who defined the golden age of practical effects. He'd done stunts that seemed impossible, flying through windows, falling from buildings, crashing cars through barriers that shouldn't have broken. The studio had built itself on Delacroix's reputation, and when he died—burned alive in a stunt fire that went catastrophically wrong—they'd buried him here. Not literally. But they'd stopped building there. Left it as a kind of memorial. A scar. The main soundstage where Delacroix died was still standing. Building Seven. Nobody filmed there anymore. Dakota found themselves walking toward it without making a conscious decision. The building was dark, but the doors weren't locked. They never were. Safety regulations required emergency exits to be accessible at all times. Inside, the soundstage was vast and hollow, filled with the skeletal remains of old sets. Partial walls. A staircase leading nowhere. Hanging lights that hadn't been used in decades. The air tasted like dust and regret. "I wondered when you'd come," a voice said. Dakota spun around. No one was there. "Don't be afraid," the voice continued. It sounded like wind through broken glass, like film scratching through a projector, like a thousand whispered conversations layered on top of each other. "I've been waiting for someone like you." "Who are you?" Dakota's heart was pounding. Adrenaline flooded their system, and for just a moment, the future bloomed in their mind. Dakota saw themselves backing toward the door. Saw the staircase collapse behind them. Saw darkness. Then it was gone. "My name was Victor," the voice said. "And I never left this place. I couldn't. There was so much left unfinished. So much left to prove." Dakota understood then. The visions weren't coming from inside them. They were coming from somewhere else. Someone else. The ghost—because what else could it be?—was using Dakota as a conduit. Feeding them glimpses of danger to prevent them. Or to guide them toward something. "The glass tomorrow," Dakota whispered. "You showed me the polycarbonate solution." "I showed you what would work," Victor agreed. "I've been showing you how to save lives. How to do things right. How to prove yourself in the way that matters." "Why me?" "Because you understand," Victor said, and there was something almost sympathetic in his layered voice. "You understand what it's like to be broken. To need to prove yourself over and over again. To know that one moment of brilliance can be undone by one moment of failure. You understand the weight of redemption." The future bloomed again. Dakota saw themselves agreeing to something. Saw a cascade of increasingly dangerous stunts. Saw themselves doing things no person should survive, all because they trusted the voice of a dead man. Then Dakota saw something else. They saw Victor Delacroix the moment before he died, trapped in a burning car, screaming, realizing too late that the escape route wasn't there. Realizing that the stunt had been sabotaged. Not by accident. By something deliberate. Dakota's eyes snapped open. They were standing in the middle of Building Seven, alone except for dust and shadows. The future had faded completely. When dawn broke, Dakota was back at the glass test rig. Marcus was there with the new polycarbonate sheets, looking exhausted and skeptical. The safety team had tripled their precautions. Everyone knew Dakota was involved. Everyone was waiting to see if the comeback kid would pull off another miracle. The crash test dummy loaded into the vehicle. Dakota stood at the control panel, hands steady, heart calm. No adrenaline spike. No vision. They hit the button. The car accelerated toward the glass barrier. Ninety miles per hour. The dummy's head faced forward, blank and determined. At the moment of impact, the polycarbonate exploded into fragments. Just like Dakota had predicted. Safe. Survivable. But the dummy didn't stop. It flew through the fractured barrier, through the secondary safety net, and hit the far wall with a sickening crunch. The entire rigging collapsed. Marcus was shouting. The safety team was running. But Dakota already knew what they'd find. The dummy was destroyed. The trajectory was wrong. The calculation was wrong. Victor had lied. Or worse, Victor hadn't lied. Victor had simply showed Dakota the future Victor wanted to happen. A future where someone died, just like Victor had died. A future where the stunt took a life, and Dakota—the person who could see thirty seconds into the future—would have blood on their hands. That night, Dakota returned to Building Seven. "I know what you did," Dakota said to the shadows. "You didn't want to save lives. You wanted a partner for your revenge." "Revenge?" Victor's voice was almost amused. "No. I wanted a partner for my resurrection. Every time you save someone, you get stronger. Every time you prevent a disaster, the ability grows. Eventually, you'll be able to see further than thirty seconds. An minute. An hour. And then you'll help me do stunts that go beyond death itself. You'll help me achieve what I never could." "You wanted me to let that dummy destroy the safety rigging," Dakota said. "You wanted someone to die." "I wanted you to understand," Victor said, and there was something almost sad in his voice. "That redemption isn't about preventing disasters. It's about mastering them. It's about being so skilled, so prepared, that you can walk through fire and come out alive." Dakota closed their eyes. They could feel the weight of Victor's presence, the hungry ghost of a man who'd died reaching for something eternal. They could feel the pull of it, the seductive promise of powers that could continue growing, of vindication that would come from surviving the unsurvivable. They could also feel the future, spreading out before them like an infinite hallway of possible moments. And for the first time, Dakota could see more than thirty seconds. They saw themselves accepting Victor's offer. Saw the stunts becoming increasingly lethal. Saw themselves eventually dying in some catastrophic moment, and Victor finally achieving what he wanted—a vessel for his ghost to occupy, another performer trapped in this facility forever. They saw the alternative too. Themselves walking away. Leaving Prometheus Studios. Letting the visions fade. Accepting that some doors to the supernatural shouldn't be opened. But there was a third possibility. A future that Victor hadn't shown them. One where Dakota used the ability not to achieve the impossible, but to understand it. To see beyond just thirty seconds, not toward greater power, but toward the truth of what was happening at Prometheus Studios. "I'm going to help you," Dakota said. Victor's presence grew stronger. "Yes. Yes, you understand." "I'm going to help you move on," Dakota continued. "I'm going to see what you need to see to let go of this place." "No—" But Dakota was already pushing outward with the adrenaline, stretching the vision past thirty seconds, past a minute, trying to hold open the window to the future long enough to see something that might actually matter. The pain was immense. It felt like trying to hold your breath while drowning. It felt like staring directly at the sun. It felt like every nerve in their body was screaming. But Dakota held the vision open. And they saw the fire. Saw the moment before Victor died. Saw the sabotage clearly—not an accident, but a deliberate act. Someone had wanted Victor dead. Someone at the studio. Someone who'd been afraid of him. Afraid of his power. Afraid of what he represented. They saw the cover-up. The way it had been buried. The way Victor's ghost had been left to rage in the spaces between takes, unable to move on because his death had never been justice. Dakota saw the truth, and they pulled back from the vision with a gasp. "I can help you," Dakota said. "But not like this. Not by becoming you. Not by feeding on stunts and danger. I can help you by finishing what you started. By finding out who killed you. By bringing them to light." The ghost was silent for a long moment. "Will you?" Victor asked, and his voice sounded almost like it belonged to someone still alive. Someone still human. "Yes," Dakota said. "But only if you let me go. Only if you stop trying to pull me into the pit with you." "And if I refuse?" Dakota smiled sadly. "Then I'll keep stretching the visions until they break me. And I'll take you with me." It was a bluff. Maybe. Dakota wasn't entirely sure. But they meant it. The ghost of Victor Delacroix seemed to consider this. And then, slowly, the presence in the building began to fade. Not disappearing entirely—Dakota could still feel it, like a pressure at the edge of perception—but retreating. Accepting. "Find the truth," Victor whispered. "And then we'll both be free." Marcus found Dakota the next morning, asleep in a folding chair in the observation deck, staring out at Building Seven. He didn't ask questions. He just brought coffee and sat down beside them. "The dummy test worked," Marcus said finally. "The rigging failure was a fluke. Bad installation on the secondary net. We're replacing all of them. The stunt's approved. The director wants to know when you can do the live version." Dakota didn't answer right away. They were thinking about the archives. About old film footage. About names and dates and insurance claims from the 1970s and 80s. They were thinking about a ghost who'd been waiting in the dark for someone to finally listen. "Tell the director I need a week," Dakota said. "And tell them to give me access to the historical files. All of them." Marcus looked at Dakota for a long moment, trying to figure out if they were still sane. Then he nodded. "Okay. One week." As Marcus left, Dakota felt the future bloom in front of them. Not a vision of danger or disaster this time. A vision of truth, slowly being uncovered. A vision of a ghost finally finding rest. A vision of a disgraced stunt performer learning that sometimes, the most dangerous performance of all is admitting the truth about what came before. Dakota took a long drink of coffee and headed toward the archives, ready to do the one stunt that mattered most: the resurrection of a dead man's legacy. And somewhere in the shadows of Building Seven, a ghost that had waited forty years finally began to hope.