By dawn, Aria Lane had officially broken the internet.
Every newsfeed, gossip vlog, and meme account was looping her now-iconic "zombie punch."
A three-second clip of her flipping the attacker midair had racked up thirty million views before breakfast.
The hashtags trended globally:
#ApocalypseQueen
#AriaLaneUnbothered
#FragileWho
Even the morning talk shows couldn't stop talking.
A commentator laughed over a slowed-down replay.
> "She's like John Wick in lip gloss. Who is this woman?"
Another replied, "She's the PR miracle of the decade. Or a lawsuit waiting to happen."
---
Meanwhile, inside the contestant camp, Aria ignored the noise and dunked a biscuit into instant coffee.
Her teammates stared like she'd committed war crimes.
"You slept through the night?" Bianca asked, incredulous.
"Why wouldn't I?" Aria replied. "The zombies are unionized. They don't work off-hours."
The influencer boy choked on his oatmeal. "You joke after what happened last night?"
Aria gave him a sympathetic look. "You'll live longer if you eat faster."
The drone hovering above captured everything, of course — every smirk, every unbothered sip of her coffee.
> 💬 "I want her chill level."
💬 "This is survival ASMR."
💬 "If she dies, the show dies."
---
At the production HQ, the director hadn't slept either.
The numbers were too good — ratings at an all-time high, sponsors begging for ad slots.
But every success came with a problem.
One of the "actors" was still missing.
And last night's footage had gaps — minutes of corrupted data right after Aria's fight.
"What do we do about the missing man?" the producer whispered.
"Say he's on medical leave," the director said tightly. "No one tells the contestants. And keep her camera active. She's our gold mine now."
He leaned closer to the live feed where Aria sat calmly by the fire, poking a stick into the embers like she owned the apocalypse.
"She's not normal," he muttered. "Find out who trained her."
---
That afternoon, the crew handed each contestant a small data tablet — a digital "logbook" where fans could send comments during rest periods.
It was meant to boost engagement.
Aria powered hers on lazily, scrolling through messages.
Most were ridiculous —
> "Marry me or at least punch me."
"Queen of Chaos, my therapist hates you."
"Can you teach self-defense on TikTok?"
But one message stood out.
It looked ordinary — until she noticed the pattern in the punctuation.
Dots. Spaces. A rhythm she hadn't seen in years.
Morse code.
Her eyes narrowed. She translated it silently, line by line.
> A-01. Surveillance compromised. Not all drones belong to production.
Trust no one wearing red. Transmission ends.
Her thumb froze above the screen.
Red — like the vest the new camera tech had been wearing this morning.
Someone inside production was running a parallel operation.
And someone else was trying to warn her.
She exhaled slowly, closing the tablet. "Well," she said to no one in particular, "that's inconvenient."
---
That evening's challenge was "The Ferris Wheel Run."
Contestants had to climb the half-broken structure and trigger a flare at the top before fake zombies "overran" the area.
To the audience, it was thrilling television.
To Aria, it was a trap with excellent visibility.
Halfway up, she caught movement below — not actors this time, but crew. Two men in maintenance uniforms walking in formation, scanning equipment.
One wore a red vest.
"Smile for the camera," she whispered, pretending to pose.
The drone zoomed in, catching the curve of her smirk against the blood-orange sky.
> 💬 "She's literally glowing up there."
💬 "Not the Ferris Queen!"
💬 "Girl's unkillable."
At the top, she triggered the flare, letting sparks explode like a firework over the park.
For the audience, it was a perfect cinematic moment.
For Aria, it was cover.
She slipped a tiny transmitter — scavenged from the stolen communicator — into the Ferris Wheel's metal frame.
If the agency was watching, she'd just given them something to track.
She climbed back down casually, pretending to struggle for show. The crowd in the live chat lost its collective mind over her grin mid-descent.
> 💬 "She's flirting with gravity."
💬 "Imagine dying and her being your last view."
---
Back in camp, the production team gathered around monitors, ecstatic.
"Her flare scene hit seventy million live viewers!" a staffer shouted.
The director nearly wept. "She's keeping this entire show alive."
None of them noticed the anomaly — the new drone that had joined the others, feeding footage to an encrypted secondary channel.
---
Later, after lights-out, Aria lay awake in her tent, the faint hum of drones in the distance.
She stared at the stars through the torn canvas roof, her mind calculating again.
Whoever was behind this operation was powerful enough to hijack media, stage a global show, and hide real agents among the crew.
And if they'd gone this far to lure her out… they already knew she was alive.
She smiled faintly. "Good," she whispered. "Saves me the trouble of hiding."
Outside, one of the drones paused over her tent — just for a moment — before silently veering off toward the Ferris Wheel.
Her flare transmitter blinked once.
Connection made.
Someone, somewhere, had just received her signal.