The Fox studios lot had its name on the front in letters big enough to see from the bus stop. Reese stared at it for a moment. Then he started looking for a way in
The gate was ahead. A guard booth with just one guy at the booth sitting on the chair holding a Clipboard.
Reese watched him for a moment.
The guard was talking to a delivery driver, head turned, pen moving across the clipboard. at the moment a plan began forming in his mind.
"Now," Reese muttered as soon as he saw the opporitunity and he began moving.
He did not run however, that was the mistake people made, running attracted too much attention so he walked as if he had purpose. Like he had somewhere specific to be, which technically he did.
He was through the gate before the guard finished signing as he walked past the delivery truck and grabbed onto the side of it.
The driver of the truck did not notice and began to drive forwards with Reese in tow.
Soon The driver stopped at a sound set.
Meanwhile Reese got off and ran away.
Li quickly floated beside him, yellow.
"Warehouse 12," it muttered as he began moving trying to navigate the lot.
Reese pulled out the map, looked at it, looked at the lot. A grid of buildings stretched out they were however un-numbered.
He silently folded the map and kept it back into his pocket as he began wandering trying to find a person to ask directions.
The lot was busy in the way that places are busy when everyone is moving with purpose and nobody is looking at anyone else. Crew members carried equipment past him. A golf cart hummed by. A woman with a headset and a coffee walked so fast she created her own winds.
Nobody looked at Reese.
He tried to ask for directions, but he was completely ghosted so he walked.
The first warehouse he passed had its side door propped open. Reese slowed without thinking.
Inside, a courtroom set. Lawyers mid-scene, a judge at the bench, camera rolling.
He watched for three seconds. Something about the way the lead actor kept glancing left, not at the witness, at something off-camera, made the whole thing feel slightly wrong.
He moved on before he could say anything about it. .
The second warehouse was louder. Even from outside he could hear it, something mechanical, something big. He found a window at shoulder height and looked in.
A massive set. Period costume, A battle scene being choreographed in slow motion, actors with costumes and weapons a director on a raised platform gesturing at sight lines.
It looked expensive in the way that things look expensive when you've grown up not being able to afford anything Reese watched a man in armour trip over a cable and get helped up by three different assistants simultaneously.
"That's not the one," Li said unnecessarily.
"I know."
He kept walking.
Warehouse 8 had a craft services table outside. Reese's pace slowed.
"No," Li said.
"I'm just looking."
"We are not here for the food."
Reese looked at the spread, decent but not exceptional, the kind of table that said the production had budget for catering but nobody had told the caterer what the food was actually for. The sandwiches were wrong for the time of day.
"Warehouse 12," Li repeated feeling a little impatient.
Reese kept walking.
He found it at the far end of the lot, tucked behind a sound stage and a parking structure, the kind of location that said whoever booked it had gotten a discount.
A small sign beside the door: SEARCHLIGHT — POST. Below it, a unit number. 12.
The door was closed. No window at this one.
Reese stood in front of it.
From inside, nothing. No sound of filming. No mechanical noise. Just the low hum of an air conditioning unit doing its job.
He put his hand on the door handle.
He thought about a hundred million dollars. He thought, briefly, about the couch money, the piggy bank, the hour and forty minutes on a bus that smelled like cleaning product.
He thought about Lois telling him his whole life that he was capable of more than he showed, in the specific tone she used when she was angry enough to mean it as a compliment.
Finally he opened the door.
The room inside was dark except for a projection screen at the far end. A film was playing. A yellow VW bus moving through desert. A family inside it, not quite talking to each other, not exactly not.
At the back of the room, five or six people sat in folding chairs. One of them had a notepad. One of them had a coffee. None of them noticed the door open.
Reese slipped inside and stood against the wall.
On screen, the family's van rolled on. The desert was enormous behind them and Reese watched.
Li floated beside him, silent.