After their intense quickie and bath, they left the hotel room with Maya’s finalized prop list and a determination to get everything sorted before the golden sunrise window closed on them.

The shopping turned out to be a project in itself.

Starfall Isle’s commercial district, tucked between the resort complex and the main creative zones, was built to accommodate exactly this kind of need.

Productions and tourist groups descended on the island regularly enough that specialty rental outfitters, costume suppliers, and equipment shops had clustered together in a strip that could, if you knew what you were looking for, outfit a small film crew in a single afternoon.

Maya moved through it with the focused efficiency of a director who had already visualized every frame and was now simply acquiring the physical components of that vision.

She knew exactly what she wanted, exactly why she wanted it, and exactly which compromise was acceptable when the first option wasn’t available.

Her costume came together first, a slim-fit turtleneck in matte black, fitted cargo trousers with structured side pockets, a half-face mask that covered the nose and mouth without obscuring the eyes, tactical goggles with a dark tint, and thin black gloves.

She laid each item on the counter with the satisfaction of someone assembling puzzle pieces that were clicking into place correctly.

[Reference image of Maya wearing this outfit.]

Meanwhile, Stan reached for his wallet.

"I’ve got mine," Maya said, not looking up from the gloves she was examining.

"I know you do."

"Then put that away, you don’t have to pay everytime."

"No."

Maya looked up. Stan was already handing his card to the shop assistant with the unhurried certainty of a man who had already decided and was not interested in reopening the discussion.

She pressed her lips together.

"Stan."

"Next item," he said pleasantly. He didn’t use his rebate on this purchase. He knew there would probably be opportunities for far bigger rebates later, and wasting one of his two weekly chances on something that barely cost five thousand dollars simply didn’t make sense.

Meanwhile, Maya stared at him for a long, frustrated moment.

This was the thing about Stan Harrison that she found simultaneously touching and maddening, when he decided to spend money on someone, the decision was final and his resistance to counter-argument was absolute.

She’d tried reasoning, she’d tried deflecting, she’d tried simply being faster to the register. Nothing worked.

He outlasted every approach with the patient, immovable calm of a man for whom the expenditure was so insignificant that her protests genuinely confused him.

She could take care of herself. She always had. She had her own money, her own income, her own resources, heck, she’s a Zimmerman and was in no way poor...

She didn’t need him to buy her things, and the fact that he did it anyway, without ceremony, without making her feel obligated, without attaching any expectation to it, was the part she didn’t know what to do with.

It made her feel something. Something warm and slightly terrifying that she kept filing under deal with this later and retrieving every time he did it again.

"You’re impossible," she said.

"I’ve been told." He turned to the assistant. "We’ll also need the full kit for a support character, charcoal suit, dark tie, Oxford shoes, single earpiece."

"For Zack?" Maya said.

"Yes,"

"Okay then..."

Stan bought it, Maya closed her mouth, shook her head slowly, and returned to the list.

Stan’s own kit came together efficiently, a fitted black long-sleeve, tactical trousers with side pockets that matched Maya’s in style if not cut, a full-face motorcycle helmet in matte black, dark gloves, and a prop bulletproof vest that looked, under the right lighting and camera angle, convincingly functional.

[Reference image of Stan wearing this outfit.]

"Try it on," Maya said, holding the vest up against his chest and tilting her head assessingly. "The shoulders need to sit right or it’ll read as costume rather than equipment."

Stan shrugged it on over the long-sleeve he was wearing.

Maya stepped back, studied the silhouette for a moment, then stepped forward and adjusted the shoulder straps with the brisk, professional focus of a director making final costume adjustments, which was exactly what she was.

"Better," she said. "The proportions work."

"Good."

"You look Am...." She stopped herself.

"I look?"

Maya turned back to the list. "Functional. Yes you look functional. That’s what matters for the scene."

Stan’s expression remained neutral, he was trying hard to stop himself from bursting out in laughter...

They acquired the remaining items methodically, prop firearms that photographed realistically but were obviously inert on inspection, earpieces for both Stan and Maya to enable realistic in-scene communication while also perfecting the visual aesthetic, and a wheeled suitcase that could convincingly imply a laptop and extraction equipment inside.

Smoke grenades from the theatrical supply section. Prop tear gas canisters. Fitted mob equipment, dark tactical clothing in varying sizes for Zack’s recruited extras.

The superbike rentals took longest. The island’s rental outfit had a fleet of matching bikes available for production use, dark, low-profile machines that had been used in actual Star Entertainment shoots and carried themselves with the visual authority of equipment that had appeared on screens before.

They loaded everything into the vehicles and transported it to the location.

By the time the logistics were fully settled, the sunrise was gone.

Maya stood at the cliff-walk overlook with her hands on her hips and her script rolled beneath one arm, staring east at a sky that had already shifted from gold into the clear, flat blue of midmorning. After a long moment, she did the arithmetic in her head.

"We missed it," Stan said.

"Yeah we missed Golden Sunrise," she confirmed with a sigh, but then her expression changed. "But on second thought, Golden sunset works better."

Stan looked at her.

"Thematically," she continued, already rearranging the visual logic of the sequence in her mind, "the whole scene is about escape under pressure. Extraction before exposure. That reads more naturally at dusk than at dawn. Dawn feels like a beginning. Dusk feels tense. Final, that’s the vibe we need." She gestured toward the cliffs. "And the golden-hour sunset light from the west will hit the rock face completely differently. Honestly..."

She narrowed her eyes at the location with the focused concentration of someone who had spent three years studying cinematography.

"It might actually be better. More dramatic. Longer shadows."

"Then we use sunset," Stan said.

"Yes."

She turned back to him, and there was a brightness in her expression that hadn’t existed a minute earlier. She was excited upon realizing an obstacle had accidentally improved the project.

"Which means," she added, "we suddenly have the entire afternoon free to do something else."

"What’s that? Practicing the flyboard for the flyboard scene?"