BLOODSHOT . . . piper mclean

24.

EDEN NEARLY HAD a headache looking around. The central section of Aeolus's fortress was as big as a cathedral, with a soaring domed roof covered in silver. Television equipment floated randomly through the air — cameras, spotlights, set pieces, potted plants. And there was no floor. Fire Boy almost fell into the chasm before Muscle Boy pulled him back. Eden looked down it with memories of way back when she was eleven. That shit was easy back then.

"Holy—" Fire Boy gulped. "Hey, Mellie. A little warning next time!"

An enormous circular pit plunged into the heart of the mountain. It was probably half a mile deep, honeycombed with caves. Some of the tunnels probably led straight outside. Eden remembered seeing winds blast out of them when they'd been on Pikes Peak. Other caves were sealed with some glistening material like glass or wax. The whole cavern bustled with harpies, aurai, and paper airplanes, but for someone who couldn't fly, like herself, it would be a very long, very fatal fall.

"Oh, my," Mellie gasped. "I'm so sorry." She unclipped a walkie-talkie from somewhere inside her robes and spoke into it: "Hello, sets? Is that Nuggets? Hi, Nuggets. Could we get a floor in the main studio, please? Yes, a solid one. Thanks."

A few seconds later, an army of harpies rose from the pit — three dozen or so demon chicken ladies, all carrying squares of various building material. They went to work hammering and gluing — and using large quantities of duct tape, which didn't reassure Eden. She felt sick. In no time there was a makeshift floor snaking out over the chasm. It was made of plywood, marble blocks, carpet squares, wedges of grass sod — just about anything.

"That can't be safe," Perfect Jason said.

"Oh, it is!" Mellie assured him. "The harpies are very good."

Easy for her to say. She just drifted across without touching the floor, but Perfect Jason apparently decided he had the best chance at surviving, since he could fly, so he stepped out first. The fucking dick. Amazingly, the floor held.

Kaleidoscope gripped his hand and followed him. "If I fall, you're catching me."

"Uh, sure." Perfect Jason said, obviously red.

Fire Boy stepped out next. "You're catching me, too, Superman. But I ain't holding your hand."

Eden snorted. "You're such a loser," she said, tentatively walking out. She hated it here.

Mellie led them toward the middle of the chamber, where a loose sphere of flat-panel video screens floated around a kind of control center. A man hovered inside, checking monitors and reading paper airplane messages.

The man paid them no attention as Mellie brought them forward. She pushed a forty-two-inch Sony out of their way and led them into the control area.

Fire Boy whistled. "I got to get a room like this."

Eden agreed. The floating screens showed all sorts of television programs. Some she recognized — news broadcasts, mostly — but some programs looked a little strange, but fun: gladiators fighting, demigods battling monsters. Maybe they were movies, but they looked more like reality shows.

At the far end of the sphere was a silky blue backdrop like a cinema screen, with cameras and studio lights floating around it.

The man in the center was talking into an earpiece phone. He had a remote control in each hand and was pointing them at various screens, seemingly at random.

He wore a business suit that looked like the sky — blue mostly, but dappled with clouds that changed and darkened and moved across the fabric. He looked like he was in his sixties, with a shock of white hair, but he had a ton of stage makeup on, and that smooth plastic-surgery look to his face, so he appeared not really young, not really old, just wrong — like a Ken doll someone had halfway melted in a microwave, which was something Eden totally would've done as a child, if she'd had a childhood. His eyes darted back and forth from screen to screen, like he was trying to absorb everything at once. He muttered things into his phone, and his mouth kept twitching. He was either amused, or crazy, or both.