The backstage area of the Crypto.com Arena was a swirling vortex of high-octane panic. It was opening night of the "Unity" World Tour. Twenty thousand screaming fans were currently filling the arena, their cheers vibrating through the concrete floor of the dressing room. Bass from the opening act was rattling the mirrors.
Dave stood in front of the glass, wearing a sleeveless, custom leather vest that showed off his bandaged shoulder. Jamal, the head choreographer, was frantically throwing hands in his face.
"Remember, Chris! On the beat drop for Under the Influence, you slide left, hit the Philly Shiver, then the lift takes you down into the stage infrastructure! Do not step early, or you'll drop twenty feet into the darkness! You got it?!"
"Slide left, don't die. Got it, Jamal," Dave said, his voice shaking. His Dave-brain was doing complex calculus just trying to remember how to walk in time to a metronome, let alone perform a two-hour stadium set.
The door slammed open, and Hood walked in. His face wasn't its usual calm, stoic mask. He looked pale, his hand hovering dangerously close to his waistband. He didn't say a word to Jamal; he just grabbed Dave by his good shoulder and pulled him into a private bathroom, locking the door behind them.
"Hood, what's wrong? I'm on in ten minutes," Dave said, his heart hammering. "Did the LAPD leak the Rossi thing?"
"Worse," Hood whispered, leaning in close. "Rossi's lieutenant—a psycho named Marcus—just sent a video to my burner phone. He knows Rossi got busted at your house. He thinks you ratted."
Dave felt his stomach drop. "Okay... so he's going to sue me?"
"He's not a lawyer, Chris. He's an explosives expert," Hood said, pulling up a video on his phone. The footage was dark, showing the massive, complex steel rigging directly beneath the center-stage trapdoor—the exact place Dave was supposed to slide onto during the beat drop. Attached to the main support beam was a military-grade C4 block with a digital timer ticking down. "He planted a device during the afternoon tech-crew load-in. He said if you don't stop the show and wire fifty million to an offshore account before the final song, he blows the stage with you and twenty thousand fans on it."
Dave stared at the ticking numbers on the screen. 01:45:12. Less than two hours.
"Can't we just call the cops? Vance is on our side!" Dave hissed.
"If the cops swarm the building, Marcus hits the remote trigger from the parking lot and everyone dies," Hood said. "We have to find him, and we have to find the receiver before you hit that final mark. But Chris... the promoters said if you cancel the show tonight without a medical emergency, the insurance defaults and you owe two hundred million. The label will ruin you."
Dave looked at himself in the mirror. He was David Burd, a guy who used to get stage fright at open-mic nights in Philadelphia. Now he was piloting Chris Brown's body, facing a cartel bomb, a stadium full of screaming teenagers, and a two-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit.
Strangely, the "weirdness" didn't kick in. The adrenaline from the Rossi sting was still humming in his blood. He'd just taken down a cartel boss with a honey trap. He wasn't going to let some lieutenant blow up his new empire.
"Hood," Dave said, his voice dropping into a hard, steady register. "How long is the setlist?"
"Ninety minutes."
"The timer has an hour and forty-five," Dave said, a dark, manic grin spreading across his face. "That means I have exactly fifteen minutes after the final encore to find this guy before the stage turns into a firework. We don't cancel the show. We give them the best goddamn performance of Chris Brown's life, and your team searches the perimeter. If I'm going down, I'm going down in a cloud of pyro."
Hood stared at him, a slow, respectful nod spreading across his face. "You really did change after that crash, Boss. Let's go to work."
The stadium lights cut to black. The crowd's roar was a physical force, a wall of sound that nearly knocked Dave off his feet as he stood on the hydraulic lift beneath the stage.
Three... two... one...
The lift shot upward. The blinding white stage lights hit him, and twenty thousand people erupted into pure mania. The bassline of his opening track dropped, booming through the massive speakers.
Dave didn't think. He let the Chris-body take over. The muscle memory from twenty years of rehearsals kicked in like a programmed computer. His feet moved in perfect sync, his hips locked into the rhythm, and when he opened his mouth, the flawless, honey-thick vocals cut through the stadium air.
He was dancing like a god, hitting every transition, but every time he looked down at the stage floor, he pictured the C4 block ticking away right beneath his feet. During the chorus, he caught sight of Lytrell in the VIP section, singing along, completely oblivious to the fact that she was sitting on a powder keg.
I have to win this, Dave thought, sweating through his leather vest as he executed a flawless backflip that made the front row shriek. I am not dying as a cover artist.
The concert was a blur of sweat, screaming fans, and sheer terror. By the time he reached the final song—Forever—the crowd was in a state of religious euphoria. Dave hit the final high note, the stadium pyro exploding in a massive shower of sparks behind him, and the crowd went absolutely dark with cheers.
He bowed, waving to the fans, and the hydraulic lift lowered him back down into the smoky, concrete underbelly of the stage.
The moment the stage line cleared his eyes, Dave checked his watch.
00:14:02. Fourteen minutes left.
Hood was waiting for him at the bottom of the lift, his gun already drawn. "We found the signal vector, Chris. It's coming from the production truck in the underground loading dock. Marcus is inside. He has the remote detonator."
Dave ripped off his headset, his eyes wild with a mixture of performance high and survival instinct. "Let's go find this asshole."