September 24, 2026
Hatfield Aerodrome, Hertfordshire, UK
The fog at Hatfield sat on the runway like a physical weight, heavy, damp, and smelling of aviation fuel and wet wool.
It was 05:00 hours. Call time.
On a normal film set, this hour was a chaotic symphony of walkie-talkie chatter, production assistants sprinting with trays of latte macchiatos, and agents arguing over trailer temperatures. It was usually a time of ego management.
Today, it was silent.
Daniel Miller stood by the video village tent, a mug of black coffee warming his hands against the English chill. Next to him, Dante Ferretti, the production designer, was checking the paint on a prop crate.
"They are late?" Dante whispered, checking his watch.
"No," Daniel said, his eyes fixed on the treeline where the barracks had been constructed. "They're marching."
Out of the mist, a rhythmic sound emerged.
Thud-crunch. Thud-crunch. Thud-crunch.
It wasn't the disorganized shuffle of actors walking to set. It was the cadence of a platoon.
A column of men materialized from the fog. They moved as a single organism. They were dressed in M42 paratrooper jump suits, burdened with heavy equipment harnesses, reserve chutes, and weapons cases. Their faces were smeared with grease and dirt that hadn't been applied by a makeup artist that morning—it was the accumulated grime of ten days in the mud.
There was no chatting. No joking about craft services. No checking phones.
At the front, David Schwimmer walked alone. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow. He didn't look back at the men behind him. He carried the isolation of Captain Sobel like a heavy pack.
Behind him, Damian Lewis marched with a quiet, focused intensity. As Michael Fassbender stumbled slightly on a patch of uneven tarmac, Lewis didn't break stride; he simply reached out a hand, grabbed Fassbender's harness, and steadied him without a word.
The crew—seasoned grip and electrics who had worked on everything from Star Wars to Iron Man—stopped what they were doing. They watched in silence.
"Jesus," the First AD whispered. "They look like they want to kill someone."
"They do," Daniel murmured. "Me."
The boot camp had done its job. It had stripped away the actor's vanity. It had replaced the desire for screen time with the desire for sleep. They weren't thinking about their angles. They were thinking about gravity.
"All right," Daniel said, setting his coffee down. "Let's put them in the tin can."
---
Soundstage 1 was dominated by a massive hydraulic gimbal. Mounted on top of it was the fuselage of a C-47 Dakota transport plane.
The interior was cramped, smelling of stale sweat, rubber, and the lingering scent of vomit—some of it fake, sprayed by the props department for effect, some of it real from the previous day's rehearsals.
The actors filed in. There were no marks on the floor. There was no room for marks. They crammed onto the metal benches, knees knocking against knees.
Captain Dale Dye stood by the open door. He checked every man's static line. He checked every helmet strap. He wasn't playing a character; he was ensuring safety, but his presence kept the actors locked in the mindset.
"Action," Daniel said from the monitor.
He didn't yell it. He just said it.
The gimbal operator slammed the joystick forward.
The C-47 lurched violently.
Simultaneously, the massive banks of speakers surrounding the fuselage roared to life. The sound wasn't mixed; it was raw volume. The drone of twin engines. The terrifying CRACK-THUMP of flak exploding outside.
Inside the fuselage, the lights flickered.
Daniel watched the monitors.
He saw Frank John Hughes (Guarnere) gripping his reserve chute so hard his knuckles were white. He saw Scott Grimes (Malarkey) closing his eyes, his lips moving in a silent prayer.
And he saw Schwimmer.
Sobel sat near the cockpit door. The script called for him to look terrified but trying to hide it. Schwimmer wasn't acting. The gimbal was throwing them around with enough force to bruise bone. The noise was disorienting. Schwimmer looked small. He looked overwhelmed.
But the men... the men were looking at Damian Lewis.
Lewis caught eyes with Ron Livingston (Nixon). He nodded. A tiny, imperceptible nod. I'm here. We're here.
Daniel let it run.
Usually, a take lasted thirty seconds. A minute.
Daniel let it roll for three minutes. Four.
The actors were sweating. The physical toll of holding onto the vibrating metal frame was real. The nausea was real.
Then, the cue light by the door turned red.
"STAND UP!" Lewis screamed over the roar of the engines.
The men moved. It wasn't the clumsy shuffle of extras. It was a violent, synchronized explosion of movement.
"HOOK UP!"
Clack-clack-clack-clack.
The sound of twenty static line hooks snapping onto the anchor cable echoed like a machine gun.
"CHECK EQUIPMENT!"
They slammed their hands onto the packs of the men in front of them. The intimacy of it—checking the life-saving gear of another man—wasn't faked. They knew each other's sweat. They knew each other's limits.
"SOUND OFF FOR EQUIPMENT CHECK!"
"10 OKAY!"
"9 OKAY!"
"8 OKAY!"
The shout moved down the line. It was primal.
The light turned green.
"GO! GO! GO!"
They threw themselves out the door into the padded landing mats below.
"Cut," Daniel said.
The noise died. The gimbal stopped.
Nobody cheered. Nobody laughed.
The actors climbed out of the foam pit, dragging their gear, breathing hard. They looked shell-shocked.
Daniel walked over to them. He didn't offer praise. He didn't say "Great work, guys."
He just looked at Damian Lewis.
"Reset," Daniel said. "We go again. This time, more fear on the face, less in the hands."
Lewis nodded, wiping grease from his forehead. "Yes, sir. Reset!" he barked to the platoon.
As they marched back to the gimbal, Daniel felt a knot loosen in his chest. They weren't pretending anymore. They were Easy Company.
---
Five thousand miles away, in the air-conditioned sanctuary of Burbank, Elena Palmer was building an army of a different kind.
She sat in her office at Miller Studios, her desk buried under a mountain of manila folders.
For more than a year, Elena had been the gatekeeper. She had filtered calls, managed schedules, and kept the chaos of Daniel's life from consuming him. Some people called her cold.
They were wrong. She wasn't cold; she was protective. She had seen what happened to young directors in this town. They burned out. They got eaten. She had made it her mission to ensure Daniel Miller survived his own genius.
But today, her role had shifted.
Daniel's email had been specific: "I can't tell all the stories, Elena. I need people who can. Find the ones Hollywood threw away."
She checked the time. 2:00 PM.
"Send him in," Elena said into her intercom.
The door opened. A young Asian man walked in. He looked nervous. He was wearing a faded t-shirt and jeans.
James Wan.
In this timeline, James was a footnote. He had directed a micro-budget indie five years ago that went nowhere, and since then, he had been editing wedding videos to pay rent.
"Hi," James said, sitting on the edge of the chair. "Thanks for seeing me. I... I have a pitch about a haunted doll—"
"We've seen your reel, James," Elena said, cutting him off gently. She opened a folder. "You have a distinct visual style. You understand tension. But the doll script... it needs work."
James's shoulders slumped. "Right. Okay. I understand."
"However," Elena continued, pulling a thick script document from the pile. "Daniel has been working on a treatment. We have a team of writers downstairs who fleshed it out, but it needs a director who understands grime. Who understands traps."
She slid the script across the desk.
The title page read: SAW.
"It's a low budget," Elena explained. "Two men in a bathroom. A dead body. A saw. It's psychological. It's visceral. Daniel thinks you're the only one who can shoot it."
James picked up the script. He read the first page. His eyes widened. He read the second.
"This is... twisted," James whispered. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I can shoot this. I can make this look like a nightmare."
"Budget is one million," Elena said. "You get final cut. You get points on the backend. But you answer to Daniel."
"Where do I sign?" James asked, reaching for a pen.
Elena smiled. One down.
An hour later, the next candidate walked in.
Zack Snyder.
He was wearing a vest and had a visual portfolio tucked under his arm. He looked frustrated. He had spent the morning at Warner Bros, where an executive had told him his style was "too comic book" for serious drama.
"Mr. Snyder," Elena greeted him. "I love the car commercial you did last year. The slow motion was exquisite."
"Thanks," Zack sighed. "If only I could get a studio to let me shoot a movie like that."
"We don't want you to shoot a movie like a commercial," Elena said. "We want you to shoot a graphic novel."
She pulled out a large, leather-bound book. It wasn't a script. It was a visual bible Daniel had compiled, based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller.
300.
"Daniel wants to film this," Elena said. "Green screen. heavy contrast. He wants every frame to look like a painting. He says you're the only guy in town who understands speed-ramping as an emotional tool, not just a gimmick."
Zack opened the book. He looked at the splash page of Leonidas kicking the Persian messenger.
"He wants it to look exactly like this?" Zack asked.
"Exactly," Elena said. "The studio has the technology. We have the VFX team from Star Wars and Iron man. We just need the eye."
Zack looked up. He looked like a man who had just been handed the keys to a Ferrari after driving a minivan for a decade.
"I'm in. Of course."
By 5:00 PM, Elena had signed three directors and four writers.
Downstairs, in the newly expanded "Bullpen," a team of writers—hired from obscurity—were already working. They weren't writing random ideas. They were working from "The Miller Bible"—a collection of plot summaries and character arcs Daniel had written down for them to adapt.
Project: Breaking Bad.
Project: The Conjuring.
Project: John Wick.
Elena looked at the board. They were building a factory. A machine that would turn Daniel's memories into a cultural empire.
She picked up the phone to call London.
"Hey, Boss," she said when Daniel answered. "I got them. Wan is locked for Saw. Snyder is prepping 300. And I found the writer for the chemistry teacher show. Vince Gilligan. He was crying in the lobby."
"Good work, Elena," Daniel's voice crackled over the satellite line. "Take care of them. Give them whatever they need. No studio notes. Just let them cook."
"Will do," Elena said. "Go catch some Nazis."
She hung up. She felt a strange sense of pride at the foreseeable future of Miller Studios. She wasn't just a PA anymore. She felt like the General of the home front.
---
Back in Hatfield, the sun had gone down, but the work hadn't stopped.
The field was illuminated by massive floodlights aimed at the sky, diffusing the light to mimic moonlight through cloud cover.
They were shooting the landing.
The ground was a mess of mud, tangled parachute cords, and pyrotechnic charges rigged to simulate mortar impacts.
Daniel stood in the mud, wearing waders.
"Okay, this is the wide shot!" Daniel shouted through a megaphone. "Malarkey landing in the field. Guarnere coming in hot. Remember, you are heavy! You hit the ground, you roll, you shed the chute, you find a weapon. You are alone!"
Scott Grimes (Malarkey) was harnessed to a wire rig that would drop him the last ten feet.
"Action!"
The wire team released the tension.
Grimes dropped. He hit the wet clay hard.
He was supposed to do a standard Parachute Landing Fall—feet, calf, thigh, butt, shoulder.
But the mud was slicker than they anticipated.
Grimes's right boot caught a root hidden in the clay.
Snap.
It wasn't a loud sound, but Daniel heard it. He saw Grimes's face contort in a mask of agony. The actor crumpled, clutching his ankle.
"Cut!" Daniel yelled, already moving. "Medic! Get the medic in here!"
He reached Grimes before the crew did.
Grimes was breathing through his teeth, his face pale, sweat mixing with the fake camouflage paint.
"Don't touch it," Daniel ordered, kneeling in the mud. "Scott, talk to me."
"I'm fine," Grimes wheezed. "I'm good."
"You're not good," Daniel said, looking at the angle of the boot. "That's a sprain at best. Maybe a fracture."
He turned to the AD. "That's a wrap for tonight. Get the car around."
"No!" Grimes grabbed Daniel's arm. His grip was surprisingly strong.
"Scott, don't be an idiot," Daniel said, his voice dropping to a gentle, frantic whisper. "We have insurance. We can shoot around you for a few days."
"It's the night drop," Grimes gritted out. "If we stop now, we lose the light. We lose the rain. The guys... the guys are pumped."
He looked around. The other actors—Lewis, McDonough, Hughes—were gathering around, looking concerned. But they were also shivering. They had been in the rain for hours.
"Malarkey lands in the field," Grimes whispered. "He's confused. He's hurt. He limps to the rendezvous."
He looked Daniel in the eye.
"Let me limp, Boss. Please. If I go to the hospital now, I break the spell. I can do it."
Daniel looked at the swelling ankle. He looked at the determination in Grimes's eyes. It was the same look he had seen in Robert Downey Jr. when the suit pinched him. The desire to finish the mission.
Daniel looked at the medic, who was hovering.
"Tape it," Daniel ordered. "Tight. Give him an ice pack for five minutes. Then we roll."
"Sir, I advise against—" the medic started.
"Tape it!" Daniel barked. Then he looked at Grimes. "One take, Scott. You land (off camera), you cut yourself loose, you limp to the tree line. If you fall, I'm carrying you off myself."
"Deal," Grimes grinned through the pain.
Ten minutes later.
"Action!"
Grimes lay in the mud. He struggled with his harness. He wasn't acting the struggle; he was fighting the pain. He freed himself. He grabbed his Thompson submachine gun.
He stood up. His leg buckled. He let out a grunt of pain that the boom mic picked up perfectly.
He didn't stop. He hobbled, dragging his leg, eyes darting around in terror, looking for his brothers.
"Flash!" someone whispered from the darkness (the challenge code).
"Thunder!" Grimes rasped back, collapsing against a prop tree.
"Cut!" Daniel yelled. "Get him! Now!"
The crew swarmed. They lifted Grimes onto a stretcher.
As they carried him past the monitor tent, the rest of the cast—Easy Company—let out a breath they had been holding.
They just watched him go, nodding. A silent acknowledgment. He had taken the hit. He had done the job.
Daniel watched the ambulance lights fade into the English fog.
He rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted. He was cold.
But as he looked at the playback—the raw, ugly reality of a man in pain trying to survive—he knew.
They weren't making a TV show. They were making a memorial. Even if this show did not work, it'd always have a special place in Daniel's heart.
"Currahee," Daniel whispered to the empty field.
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A/N: Read ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/AmaanS