Monica Padilla surveys her surroundings, running her hand against obsidian-colored walls, her fingertips slick with oil. She sees flames roaring in the fireplace, ablaze not with logs, but with socks. A picture of a dog that does not exist sits on the mantle, beneath an array of necklaces hung up like hunting trophies. She searches the pantry, and sees only seeds. Everywhere she looks she sees wheels and wheels, spinning round and round, never stopping, never ceasing. Monica smiles, kicks back and relaxes, admiring the space. She’s inside the mind of Russell Hantz, and this is where she will live for the day. In the early going of Survivor: Samoa, Monica only attended Tribal Council twice. One of those sessions was more like group therapy, after Galu lost their leader, Russell Swan, in one of the most heart-stopping medical mishaps in the show’s history. Her tribe was finally brought to its knees by the season’s other Russell: Hantz, the owner of the brilliant brain Monica rents out for a few hours on Day 33, laughing at the idols on the wall, mocking the wheels, chewing on the seeds and spitting them out. At the merge, Russell and the other three members of his Foa Foa tribe used immunity idols and insecurities to send Galu to the guillotine, one head at a time. They eventually turned their attention to Monica, but the 25-year-old law school student would not go quietly. In her final hours, she approached Russell, and issued a terse warning: If he voted her out that night, Monica would convince the jury to vote against him at the Final Tribal Council. “Jaison told me you’re a multi-millionaire already,” she said, crouching no more than a foot or two away from Russell. “And I’m voting based on need. Who needs the money?” With that, and without the help of Pym Particles, Monica Padilla shrank down to the size of an ant, crawled inside of Russell Hantz’s ear, and spent the next several hours scratching at the walls of his skull. He was furious, paranoid, rattled — and, by his own admission, impressed. “Seeing what I’ve seen today, if I’d been on her tribe from the beginning, we would’ve been dangerous for sure,” he said about Monica later that night at Tribal Council. “She got me pissed off. If she played that hard this entire game, she’d be in charge.” Minutes later, Monica was voted out and evicted from Russell’s head. Years later, she resumes her million-dollar quest as one of the twenty players voted onto Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance, and you have to wonder if she’ll be able to ear worm her way into other people’s private thoughts. Was her final day in Samoa nothing more than an incredibly forceful day of Survivor, or was it a hint at what she’s capable of bringing in her second season? For her part, when we sit together at Ponderosa, Monica tells me that she learned a thing or two from playing with the Survivor who, in his own estimation, “played the best strategic game in history.” “I think Russell taught me to never turn off your head game,” she says. “Even while we were out there, Russell was constantly talking about the game, and talking about his alliances, and his position in the game. You could constantly see the wheels turning. That’s one thing. Never turn off the game in your head. Always keep playing out your moves, and never count yourself out. Always go out fighting. That’s what I did. I want to take that to a different level this time.” Already, the wheels are turning for Monica. She zaps me down to size and invites me inside her brain for a spell. ON THE NEXT PAGE: Mind the Map

There’s a big map inside Monica’s brain, and on it, you can see the faces of every single player on Second Chance. There are strings running from one person to the next. Every line means something else. From my view, the connections between the Second Chance contestants range from nonexistent to incredibly public to highly theoretical, with layers in between. There are players here in Cambodia who have never met one another — like Keith and Phoebe Peih-Gee — and then there are those who have played Survivor together already, like the foursome from Cagayan. Monica ties threads between those people. “They’re four strong, which is a strong alliance if they stick together,” she says. “But you also have Kass, who seems to be rather flippant, and then you have Woo and Spencer, who have some sort of conflict that exists there. So, you have those four. They’re dangerous individually and most dangerous together. You want to weaken that alliance.” Monica steps away from the Cagayan Four and shows me the lines between the old-school Survivors. She’s mapped out the people who played in the days before immunity idols and endless blindsides as a potential voting block. “They’re very loyal, but I think they’re going to end up sticking together,” she says. “You have to separate those, even though they were from different seasons. You have Varner and Kimmi from the same season. All those relationships exist.” Then there’s the theoretical, the players Monica feels she has to assume are connected already — people like Terry Deitz and Vytas Baskauskas, for example. Terry played with Vytas’ brother Aras, the winner of Survivor: Panama — Exile Island, many years ago, and it’s not lost on Monica that a bond could exist between them both. “You literally have to map it out in your head,” she says, “and see where they are, so you can cut the strings.” Sounds exhausting. Eventually, Monica arrives at her own place on the map. She enters Second Chance as the only player from Season 19, not to mention the only player who ever squared off against the humanoid typhoon known as Hantz the Stampede. She sees her solo status as an advantage. “At first I thought it was kind of scary,” she says, “but I really think it can work in my favor. I know some of these people — not many, just one or two in passing. Like Stephen Fishbach I’ve known. But I think it’s a matter of making sure that I seal the deal on day one or in the first couple of days with some strong alliances, and then I’ll be fine.” Monica maps the picture of herself between the old school and new school players, since her season took place at the tail-end of the middle era of Survivor. “I think I’m more new school than old school, but at least I’m in the middle to where I could argue for either or, based on who I’m speaking to,” she says. “I think it’s going to be a lot of two-faced statements: ‘I’m with the old school, I don’t like these new school players,’ or, ‘I’m with the new school, we reinvented the game.’ It’s a matter of who I’m talking to.” And then there’s the theoretical territory on the map — the area where people have to assume that certain players have connections with each other. Monica might be the only person from Samoa on Second Chance, but she’s not the only Second Chancer with a major Samoa connection: Ciera Eastin, hailing from Blood vs Water, is the daughter of Laura Morett, the Season 19 mama bear and challenge beast who was tightly aligned with Monica. Conventional wisdom would lead one to believe that Monica and Ciera have an instant bond through Laura. Monica knows this. “And that’s why I’m trying not to attach myself to Ciera at all.” What’s more, Monica tells me exactly what she has with Ciera right now — and her answer, to borrow a word and some emphasis from Erik Cardona, is nothing. “I’ve never even really met Ciera,” she says. “This is the first time I’ve ever met her personally. I played a really close game with her mom, but looking back at my game the first time, it ended up okay. I made it far, but had I gone to the end with Laura, that would have been a risky person to sit with in front of a jury.” Monica says that right now, she’s “not getting much of an energy from Ciera.” Two days from this moment, she and Ciera will be sitting together in the water of Bayon, along with the rest of the women on their tribe. Has the energy changed at this point? Is there a true connection between Monica and Ciera? I have no idea. But I do know that Monica is concerned about how one of the other women in the mango circle connects with an old foe from her past. ON THE FINAL PAGE: Keep Your Enemies Clouser