But still they crawled around, searching, while the crew filmed from every angle. While Lenny asked how it felt to be so wrong. Whether they had let the others down. They filmed James cursing, and Ashley crying, on top of the mountain in a swirling wind, with lakes and forests spreading endless all around them. A panorama, a killer shot, until all they could do was start the long journey back.

The descent was hard, the slopes crumbly with scree, and the pair was shivering. Their feet bled at the edges, where their sandals didn’t protect them. And all for a worthless trick.

“He set us up,” said James. “He’d never been up there. He just thought it would make for good footage. Like we’re fucking puppets. And he made us look like fools.”

Kyle leaned forward, his mouth slightly open. Ashley drew lines in the dirt with her fingers. Mara wondered how she felt.

“Ashley?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Ashley. “I suppose.” Then she seemed to realize that it wasn’t a question. She pushed her fingers deeper in the dirt.

Lenny’s trick seemed predictable, in retrospect, and Mara was surprised she had not realized it before. Strawberries bloomed early, but not this early, and not on the colder slopes. But the survivors would grow weaker with time, steadily and soon, and in the next days or weeks the promise of berries might not be enough to lure weary bodies up a mountain. If Lenny wanted footage from the mountaintop, he’d been clever to get it now.

“We could have gotten really hurt,” James said. “You should have seen how steep it was. Parts of it. They probably wanted us to fall.” His voice rose. “Then they could say, ‘Wow, what a shame. What a shame the danger they put themselves in.’ I could have broken my leg, or my fucking neck, and they’d stand there and film it, and everyone would think it was because of my own fucking idea.”

Eventually he seemed to calm down enough to stop talking, or maybe his anger surpassed the capacity of his words. Mara thought he was overreacting. You see a mountain, and you climb it—that’s nobody else’s fault. Even if they told you to. You’re the one who climbed.

Each time Mara woke that night—many times; the air was cold, and something kept tickling her leg—James stared wide-eyed into the darkness. Just like the night before. And in the morning, when the crew returned, he picked up where he had left off. Like he’d been waiting, or spent the night choosing his words.

“Hey, Lenny,” he said. “Lenny. Lenny. I was just wondering. I’ve been sitting here wondering, what do you think of the ethics of this whole thing?”

Lenny tucked a strand of hair into his visor. “The what?”

“The ethics.” James steadied his voice. “You say this is a survival show. But this stuff we’re doing, it’s not survival. You take our time and our energy with stunts and photo shoots, and we could be spending that time hunting. Or gathering firewood. Or taking a fucking nap. So I’m thinking, if you want us to be survivors, let us make our own decisions. If you want us to be actors, feed us. If I’m exhausted today, and it hurts to walk, it’s not because of my skills or my instincts. It’s because you set me up to fail. But I’m the one with the consequences. I’m the one who goes another day without eating. I’m the one who looks like a fool in front of the whole fucking world.”