Blood on the Canvas, Gold on the Screen

Chapter 7: The Phantom in the Armani Mindset

The afternoon sun blazed over the bustling boulevard of Hollywood, casting long, stark shadows against the pristine brick facade of the Record Plant. Inside the legendary studio complex, air-conditioning hummed quietly, masking the high-stakes corporate tension humming just beneath the surface of Room 777.

For the past ten minutes, Room 777 had been a pressure cooker.

Mariah Carey sat on a high stool inside the glass-walled vocal booth, her arms crossed tightly over her silk blouse, staring blankly at the lyric sheet on the music stand. Outside the glass, her primary vocal producer, a frantic man named Walter with thinning hair and sweat-drenched collar, paced back and forth behind the massive mixing console, gesticulating wildly.

"Mariah, please, you’re killing me here!" Walter yelled through the talkback mic, his voice crackling with desperation. "Tommy called twice from the Sony building. He said if this track isn’t laid down by five o’clock using the approved arrangement, he’s pulling the budget for the entire second half of the album! Do you want to explain to the shareholders why your next single sounds like an underground R&B jam instead of a radio hit?"

Mariah didn’t flinch. She adjusted her headphones, her honey-colored eyes flashing with a cold, unyielding defiance. The memory of the cassette tape—of Alex’s smooth, effortless vocals delivering that revolutionary bridge—was still ringing fresh in her mind. She wasn’t going back to corporate pop. Not anymore.

"Tell Tommy he can talk to the wall," Mariah replied over the studio monitors, her voice calm, sweet, and absolutely freezing. "I’m taking a thirty-minute vocal rest. My throat is dry. If you try to force me onto this mic before then, I’ll walk out of the building right now."

Walter groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Thirty minutes... fine. Thirty minutes. But then we record it his way, or we’re both out of a job."

While Walter paced himself into an early ulcer, a few floors down, the security protocols of the Record Plant were about to face an existential threat that no metal detector or guest log could possibly anticipate.

Just outside the heavy glass front doors of the Record Plant, Alex Turner stood on the sidewalk, hands comfortably buried in his pockets.

He had just spent twenty System Points to upgrade his [Acting] from Level 1 (Cardboard Cutout) straight to Level 5 (Oscar-Winning Mastery). It wasn’t just about changing facial expressions or memorizing lines; it was a profound psychological restructuring of his entire persona. At Level 5, an actor could alter their physical posture, manipulate their vocal resonance, project an invisible aura of untouchable authority, and completely rewrite how reality perceived them.

Alex closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, letting the system data wash over his nervous system.

When he opened them, the sleepy, casual slacker look had vanished entirely. His shoulders squared, his spine straightened into an unyielding, military-grade posture, and his obsidian eyes sharpened with a terrifying, icy brilliance. He didn’t look like a broke college kid anymore. Without changing a single item of clothing—still wearing the faded white t-shirt, the worn-out jeans, and the beat-up Converse—he suddenly radiated the suffocating, absolute presence of a billionaire venture capitalist who owned the building and everyone inside it.

He walked up to the glass sliding doors of the Record Plant.

The security guard stationed at the front desk—a burly former cop named Frank—looked up as the doors parted. Frank’s eyes locked onto Alex.

Instantly, the guard’s brain short-circuited.

Frank didn’t see a kid in a t-shirt. Under the combined influence of [Acting: Level 5] and the passive [Aura of Tranquility], Frank’s subconscious mind aggressively filled in the blanks: This is an ultra-high-net-worth stakeholder. A silent partner. Someone whose mere displeasure could result in Frank being fired before lunch.

Alex didn’t break stride. He didn’t pull out an ID. He didn’t even slow down.

"Afternoon," Alex said, his voice dropping into a rich, resonant, perfectly modulated baritone that carried an absolute command of space.

"G-good afternoon, sir," Frank stammered instinctively, half-rising from his chair and pressing the security override button on his desk to unlock the heavy interior turnstile.

Alex glided past the front desk like he owned the paved earth beneath it. He didn’t look back, didn’t hesitate, and walked straight toward the private elevator bank reserved exclusively for platinum artists and studio executives.

A second security guard standing near the elevator stepped forward, frowning. "Excuse me, sir, do you have a—"

Alex turned his head slightly, fixing the guard with a cold, piercing, yet utterly relaxed stare. He raised a single finger to his lips in a gentle gesture of silence, his expression conveying a polite message: You are interrupting something very expensive.

The guard choked on his words, swallowed hard, and instinctively stepped back, holding the elevator door open with a trembling hand.

"Thank you," Alex murmured smoothly, stepping into the elevator.

As the polished brass doors slid shut, separating him from the lobby, Alex let out a soft chuckle, letting his posture drop back into its natural, lazy slouch as the Acting skill receded to a resting state.

"Acting Level 5," Alex whispered to himself, watching the floor numbers light up above the door. "Better than a backstage pass."

Up on the seventh floor, the atmosphere outside Room 777 was thick with cigar smoke and corporate anxiety. Two of Sony Music’s junior legal aides were leaning against the wall, arguing quietly about contracts, while Walter continued his frantic pacing inside the control room.

The private elevator pinged softly at the end of the carpeted hallway.

The doors slid open, and out stepped a young man in a faded white t-shirt and jeans.

One of the legal aides stopped talking mid-sentence. He blinked, staring at Alex as the kid strolled down the hall with his hands in his pockets, humming an off-key tune.

"Hey! Stop right there!" the legal aide barked, stepping forward. "This entire floor is under a strict security lockdown for Sony Music. Unauthorized personnel aren’t even allowed on this level. Who let you up here?"

Alex stopped, turning his head slowly. He looked at the aide with an expression of mild, profound pity, as if he were looking at a stray dog trying to solve a calculus equation.

Using just a fraction of his Level 5 Acting presence, Alex fixed the man with a cool, aristocratic gaze.

"Are you shouting in a professional recording facility?" Alex asked softly, his voice carrying an icy, terrifying weight that made the aide’s throat go completely dry. "Or are you simply incapable of reading the room?"

The legal aide opened his mouth, but no words came out. His knees felt suddenly weak. The sheer, suffocating authority rolling off the kid in the t-shirt made him feel like an ant standing in front of a freight train.

Before the aide could recover, Alex smoothly bypassed him, walked straight to the heavy soundproofed door of Room 777, pushed it open, and stepped inside.

Inside the control room, Walter spun around from the mixing console, his face red with fury.

"I told you people, I am on a thirty-minute break! No calls, no executives, no—" Walter stopped dead.

He stared at Alex. The terrifying part wasn’t that the kid was wearing casual clothes. The terrifying part was how completely, unnaturally calm he looked standing in the middle of a multi-million-dollar corporate war zone.

Inside the glass vocal booth, Mariah Carey, who had been sitting with her eyes closed, suddenly snapped her head up.

Through the glass panel, her honey-colored eyes widened into dinner plates.

He’s here.

Alex didn’t look at Walter. He didn’t look at the mixing console. He simply walked past the expensive outboard gear, looked through the glass window at Mariah, and gave her a small, reassuring nod, raising two fingers in a casual salute.

"Who the hell are you?!" Walter finally exploded, lunging away from the console, his voice cracking with panic. "Security! Get this kid out of here before—"

"Quiet down, Walter," Alex said, cutting across the producer’s screech with a voice so smooth and relaxed it practically forced the man’s vocal cords to shut down.

Alex reached into his pocket, pulled out the cassette tape he had brought with him—a duplicate copy of the track he recorded at Basement Studios—and dropped it onto the center of the massive mixing board with a soft clack.

"You’re wasting good magnetic tape trying to force a masterpiece into a pop-mold," Alex said, leaning casually against the console, his obsidian eyes locking onto Walter’s terrified gaze. "Tell the studio manager that the rules have changed. We’re doing it the right way today."

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