The audition room at the Mayne Theater was on the fifth floor of a building on Sunset Boulevard that in the nineties had been a recording studio and now rented spaces by the hour to independent productions. The walls still had the original acoustic insulation, dark gray panels that absorbed sound and made any voice feel more intimate than it actually was.

  John Thorne had chosen it for that reason.

  He was seated at the center of a long table with an open notebook in front of him and a coffee that had been cooling for twenty minutes to his right. To his left, Raymond Chu, the producer. Forty-five years old, suit without a tie, the contained energy of someone who has spent three weeks with the budget in his head. To his right, Sara Molina, the screenwriter. Thirty-four, hair tied back, a copy of the script marked with three different colors that John had tried to skim and had given up on.

  "How many confirmed?" Raymond asked.

  "12 agencies responded." Sara didn't lift her eyes from the script. "The big ones sent between 2 and 4 candidates each."

  "Gerzh?"

  "Three."

  John wrote something in the notebook. He had been writing things down since 12:40 without any of them being particularly important. It was a filming habit he hadn't managed to turn off off-set.

  "Nervous?" Raymond asked.

  "No."

  "Lie."

  John put the pen down.

  "It's the first time I'm doing something like this. I have the right to be a little nervous."

  "You've been directing for 22 years."

  "Commercial films. This is different."

  Raymond picked up his coffee. His was still steaming, because Raymond was the kind of person who drank things when it was time to drink them.

  "What worries me isn't the series." John looked at the back wall, where they had placed a chair and a spotlight. "What worries me is that I don't know if I know how to see what I need to see. In commercial films I know exactly what I'm looking for. Here…"

  "Here you're looking for truth," Sara said, without taking her eyes off the script.

  "That's very vague."

  "Yes."

  She turned a page.

  "That's why it's hard."

  Raymond looked at his watch.

  "The first one's at 1:00."

  There was a knock on the door.

  ---

  The first was named Derek Sousa. Twenty-eight, mid-level Valley agency, proper bearing and the prepared smile of someone who has been going to auditions for years and has learned exactly what face to put on when walking through a door.

  John greeted him. Raymond confirmed the name on the list. Sara nodded.

  "Free performance," John said. "Whatever you want. You have 2 minutes."

  Derek nodded. He positioned himself under the spotlight. Breathed.

  He chose a betrayal scene. A man discovering that his partner has defrauded him.

  "All this time."

  The voice came out controlled, the body tense in the correct places.

  "All this time working together, covering your back, and you…"

  He turned. Calculated pause.

  "Do you know what hurts the most? That you didn't even have the courage to tell me to my face."

  His eyes searched for the imaginary counterpart with the rehearsed intensity of someone who knows he must look there. His jaw tightened at the precise moment. His breathing cut off just before the final line.

  "Don't ever call me again."

  When he finished, the three of them were taking notes.

  The three leaned toward the table.

  "Works as an extra." John looked at Raymond. "Where was he from?"

  Raymond checked the list.

  "CAA. Says here he's new."

  "The level's dropped lately."

  "Don't say that, it's bad luck." Raymond closed the folder. "Besides, CAA's growing. It's close to the level of the big four."

  "True. Well, he's the first. Let's keep hope."

  "The subordinate role," Sara said. "No lines."

  "Agreed."

  "Agreed."

  They stood. John approached Derek.

  "Thank you very much. You may go. We'll call you tonight."

  Derek left. The door closed.

  John tapped his fingers on the notebook. The next didn't come in until ten minutes later, and the following ones didn't leave anything either. One was too young for any weighty role. Another had presence but spent it entirely in the first twenty seconds.

  They had gone through 4 auditions when Sara placed the script on the table.

  "Viktor doesn't show up."

  "Viktor is a 3-scene role," Raymond said.

  "2 minutes of screen time at most," John added.

  "Exactly." Sara looked at both of them. "3 scenes. 2 minutes. That means that in those 2 minutes he has to do what Dimitri can't do in 60 minutes. It's a minor role, but important."

  John didn't respond. He knew she was right. It was the kind of character that either works completely or doesn't exist at all. There was no middle ground for a man who appears three times and has to leave the viewer with the feeling that those scenes are a key turning point.

  "Next," Raymond said.

  ---

  The fifth of the afternoon was named Kein Adler.

  Raymond confirmed it before he entered, a name on the Gerzh list, no visible history in the database beyond a recent contract.

  The door opened.

  John watched him walk in and wrote something down without knowing exactly what. Approximately twenty-four years old. Tall. Nothing that stood out immediately, neither the imposing physique of candidates who came prepared to impress nor the energy of those who compensated with attitude. He simply entered, stopped under the spotlight, and waited.

  "Kein Adler," Raymond said, confirming.

  "Yes."

  "Free performance. 2 minutes."

  Kein looked at the floor for a few seconds. He seemed to be deciding what to perform.

  Then he looked up.

  What changed was not immediate or dramatic. It was gradual, like the drop in temperature when a cloud covers the sun. Something in the room grew heavier without anyone moving. Kein's posture didn't visibly change. Neither did his expression. But something in his eyes settled in a way John couldn't name in that moment.

  When he spoke, it wasn't Kein.

  "Tonight."

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The voice was the same. The tone was not.

  "Tonight everything changes. Not because I want it to… because it has to."

  A pause. He turned slightly, as if someone stood to his right that the three of them couldn't see.

  "You've spent years building something that actually belongs to me. I allowed it. I gave you the space, the time, the illusion that you were the architect."

  He faced forward again.

  "You were not the architect."

  His hands moved slowly, with the precision of someone who has calculated every centimeter, toward an imaginary point in front of him.

  "The poison is already in the cup. I put it there. This morning, before you woke up, while you ate what your cook prepared under my instructions."

  A smile without warmth.

  "Don't worry about the pain. It will be brief. And when you're finished, the kingdom will remain standing."

  He remained still.

  "As it always should have been."

  Silence.

  John hadn't written anything in the notebook. He hadn't realized until the silence brought him back to the room.

  Raymond had his coffee halfway between the table and his mouth, frozen there.

  Sara was looking at Kein with the expression of someone seeing something she hadn't expected and didn't yet know how to classify.

  Kein waited, with the same neutrality with which he had entered.

  "Thank you," John said. "One moment."

  The three leaned toward the center of the table.

  "Where did he get that?" Raymond whispered.

  "I don't know." John kept his voice low. "But he spoke like someone who has had that conversation before. Not like someone who imagined it."

  "That gave me chills!" Raymond said it without embarrassment. "Literally. He even looked like he's actually planned a murder."

  Sara hadn't said anything. John looked at her.

  "Sara?"

  She was still looking at Kein, who waited on the other side of the room with his arms at his sides and the patience of someone who isn't in a hurry for anything.

  "It's Viktor," she said.

  She didn't say it as a suggestion.

  John looked at Raymond. Raymond nodded.

  John took the fragmented script, the pages of Viktor's 3 scenes, and stood up.

  Kein took the pages.

  He read them for a few seconds. John watched him from the table. There was no visible anxiety in the way he read them, none of the usual gestures of an actor memorizing in panic. He flipped through them once, then returned to the beginning and read them again more slowly.

  John checked his watch.

  'Did he already memorize them?! It hasn't even been 2 minutes.'

  Kein placed the pages on the floor.

  "Ready?" John asked, uncertain.

  "Yes."

  John pointed to the space under the spotlight.

  "Scene 2. Dimitri is present. Viktor shows him how to handle a subordinate who failed. Improvise the other two, we'll imagine them."

  Kein nodded.

  He positioned himself.

  One second of stillness.

  When he spoke, the temperature in the room dropped another degree.

  "Look at him carefully."

  A pause. His eyes shifted slightly toward a point on the left, an imaginary Dimitri.

  "See how his shoulders are. Slumped. Do you see? A man who knows he made a mistake carries them like that before you say a single word. Your father noticed it in 2 seconds."

  He turned to the imaginary subordinate.

  "Lift your head."

  The silence that followed had weight.

  "I told you to lift your head."

  The voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. It was the tone of someone for whom disobedience is simply additional information about what will happen next.

  "Good."

  Viktor walked slowly around the imaginary point.

  "Your father never shouted at moments like this. The one who shouts is nervous. The one who is nervous is afraid. And the one who is afraid…"

  He stopped behind the point.

  "Has already lost."

  A hand extended. Slowly. Holding something heavy.

  What followed lasted 4 seconds and wasn't spectacular violence. It was the surgical demonstration of someone who knows exactly how much force is required and doesn't use a gram more. When Viktor stepped away, he returned to where Dimitri stood.

  "Like this."

  He said it without emphasis.

  "Not because you want him to suffer. Because he needs to understand that consequences are real. If he doesn't understand it here, he'll understand it on the street. And on the street you won't be there to control him."

  He remained still.

  John let 3 seconds pass before speaking.

  "Thank you. That's all."

  Kein nodded. He picked up the pages from the floor and placed them on the nearest chair.

  He left.

  The door closed.

  The three remained silent for a moment that no one wanted to cut too soon.

  "The movements are broad," Raymond finally said. "The hand when he circles around, too theatrical for camera. And there was a moment where the gaze shifted half a second before the line ended."

  "Yes." John wrote something. "Theater errors. They can be corrected."

  "The poison scene was theatrical too." Raymond frowned. "Is he a stage actor?"

  "It was Claudius." Sara had reopened the script but wasn't reading it. "King Claudius from Hamlet. The scene before the murder of the brother."

  John looked at her.

  "You knew it?"

  "No. I recognized it while he was doing it."

  A pause.

  "He adapted the text. Made it colder, more calculated. Removed the guilt and left only the logic." She closed the script. "That's not in Shakespeare. He added that. It's intelligent. He adapted it into something more criminal."

  Raymond tapped his fingers on the table.

  "Viktor?"

  "Viktor," the other two confirmed at the same time.

  John looked at the chair where Kein had left the pages.

  There was something in the way that boy waited. No anxiety. No energy of someone who wants the role. Just the stillness of someone who has already decided what he's going to do and is waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. He was young, but he didn't seem like it.

  He wrote the name in the notebook.

  Kein Adler. Viktor.

  "Next," he said.