My sense of reality, everything I thought I knew about Brightwood Pines was blurring into nonsensical colors and shapes I was desperately trying to blink away.

The sound piercing my skull, the love-child of a dentist drill and a car alarm, was not helping.

Alarms, my foggy mind whispered to me.

People were coming. Whoever had taken Annalise and turned her into a shell of herself was coming for us. This realisation gave me enough incentive to move. One step, then two. I was backing away, my tooth still throbbing in time with the alarms cutting into my skull. The screens were still flickering in front of us, the so-called wall-people, our apparent audience. But how long had they been watching us? And why exactly were they watching us?

“Elle.”

Kaz’s voice was like ocean waves drowned out by the alarms. At first it was sort of whimsical, like I was dreaming. But his voice didn’t stay a murmur. As if he too was slowly unravelling, Kaz’s voice grew progressively more hysterical.

“Elle!”

The boy stood by my side, his wide eyes still glued to the screen. It now displayed a younger version of him covered in the blood of his classmate, a grin splitting his lips apart. I think that was what had broken me—not the wall-people still staring down at us, a muted collection of faces who were watching our every move. It was the possibility that, Like Kaz, I had a version of myself I didn't didn't know of. My finger went to my mouth again to scope out the wobbly tooth. But every time I touched it, electroshocks ran though my body, threatening to send me to my knees.

Despite my foggy thoughts, I had to get several things straight inside my brain before I broke down. Not because of my mother’s death, or the reveal of my town having hundreds and thousands of eyes on it—no. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the thing inside my tooth was behind my unravelling.

“That... that’s not me," Kaz finally said in a shaky voice, though he didn’t sound sure.

His finger prodded gingerly at his mouth, slipping between his lips, presumably wobbling his teeth.

It was normal to kill in Brightwood. It was legal, after all. However, I had quickly come to realise Kaz was a rare case. Unlike everyone else, he had not been driven to murder by the Urge. Instead, he'd been driven by emotions our parents and elders had told us weren't real. He was scared of the knife Annalise had threatened him with, and scared of death. Just like me. So why did I feel like I was looking at a completely different person on the monitor?

Brightwood residents usually expressed joy when killing, but what I saw on the screen was different. It was too… clean. A younger version of Kaz had been in this place, where Annalise's head had been screwed with. But who was he exactly? And why didn't his memories match with his past self?

The Kaz on the screen terrified me, his eyes a whole new blend of darkness, purged of humanity. I had seen his face when he killed previously, but this was a whole new level, an inhuman glimmer twisting his expression. I wanted to know what his younger self had meant by fans. Followers. Was he in some kind of cult?

I jumped when the monitor flicked back on, displaying Kaz once again. This time he wasn’t moving, his glinting eyes looking directly at the camera. If I looked closer, I could see an intense red staining his fingernails and the collar of his white shirt.

“Hey!” The real Kaz's cry snapped me out of it, and he grasped my arm, pulling me to face him. I blinked, struggling to make sense of what was going on. The town I had known my whole life was coming apart by the seams, and this building was at the centre of it.

All at once, the alarms were back, screaming in symphony with Annalise’s cries. The girl was still rocking back and forth, screaming about the wall-people, who stared down at her in amusement. Kaz was nose to nose with me, his sharp exhalations of breath tickling my cheeks, wide eyes illuminated in the dull, red glow. Before he could open his mouth or offer an explanation to what we had seen on the monitors, I shook my head.

“Hit me," I gritted out. “You need to knock my back tooth out.” And when he started to protest, I shoved him away. In the back of my mind, I wondered where the owners of this place were. If the alarms were going off, where were they? Was this their entertainment too?

“I don’t care who you are,” I spat at him, gesturing wildly to my mouth. That was a lie. I did care who he was. I had known him since I was a little kid. Sure, we had only said maybe five words to each other, and the majority of them were me awkwardly rejecting his prom invitation, but I thought I knew him. Knowing there was a different him in a world that wasn’t Brightwood was sending my brain into meltdown. “I just need you to knock my tooth out."

Kaz made a face. “Fuck. Are you sure? Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, getting the fuck out of here?”

“They would be here by now,” I muttered. “They’re watching us.”

Kaz shot a panicked look at the wall-people. His gaze strayed towards his younger self still flickering on the monitor.

“That…is definitely unnerving,” he said under his breath. “So, what, these freaks are watching us and you want me to one-punch you in the face?” He mimed swinging his fist awkwardly. "Are you sure about this?"

“Don’t trust him,” Annalise mumbled into her lap. “You can’t trust him, Elle. He’s one of them. He’s part of the seasons."

“What?”

Annalise lifted her head from her knees." He's a Peeker, " she sobbed. "He's always been a Peeker!"

Kaz let out a frustrated groan, twisting around to face her. “I told you! I’m not a—whatever the fuck you call it! I’m not a Peeker, okay? You’re insane!” he sputtered out a laugh. “Do you seriously fucking think we’re going to believe a word that comes out of your mouth when you’re clearly out of your mind? That wasn’t me! That was a mimic of me, or a twin, which I AM NOT FALLING FOR, BY THE WAY! ”

This time he was the crazy one yelling at the ceiling, and for a fraction of a second, Annalise looked delighted he, too, was coming apart like her. Kaz pointed at her accusingly. "Annalise Duval, I am SO sorry for not believing you when you've clearly been lobotomised…" He drifted off when the girl struggled to interrupt him, before bursting into tears.

"Stop!" She shrieked, slamming her hands over her ears. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

His expression softened. “I didn’t… mean that,” Kaz shot me a helpless look before starting towards her. But Annalise let out a cry, shuffling back.

“Alright.” He held up his hands. “I’m not coming near you. Scout’s honor. But you need to trust me.” He lowered his voice into a murmur. “I’m not one of them, Annalise. You don’t have to be scared of me, okay? We’ve known each other since we were kids, remember? Dude. Annalise. You know me. We're in the same class."

She cocked her head, and for the first time, I saw clarity in her eyes.

“I always saw you,” she whispered. “When they brought me here to… to mess with my head,” Annalise stuck two fingers in her temple pretending to blow out her brains. “You were always there.” She narrowed her eyes, her lips curling into a scowl. “Peeking.”

Annalise crawled back on her hands and knees, a feral fright taking over her expression. Her eyes met mine. “He’s not like the other Peekers, though. He’s a special one.”

Kaz’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t answer her. Instead, he raised his hand in an awkward fist. “So, you just want me to hit you? Should I count down, or—"

“Just do it!”

I wasn’t expecting him to hit me straight away. I was about to yell at him again when his fist swung towards my face. It was a clumsy hit, but the pain exploding in the back of my mouth and head was like a fire had been ignited inside me. Fuck.

Just like back at home when I had bitten into the apple, reality started to contort in front of me. The room splintered into blurs of confusing light and color—and laughter once again slammed into my skull. Like it had always been there. I wondered as my thoughts spun around and round, if I was part of the laughing. Maybe that was my true reality.

All at once, my senses became detached. I could no longer smell the stink of my own body odor clinging to me, or taste the blood pooling between my lips. Even the floor was coming apart around me, and I was… sinking. I was falling. Deep, deep, down. I was half-aware of Kaz’s shadow looming over me, warm hands grasping my shoulders.

“Elle? Fuck, did I hit you too hard?”

Kaz’s voice sounded wrong, fading in and out. The room with the red light was cracking apart, making way for grey skies above me.

The memory wasn’t mine. It couldn’t have been mine. I didn’t recognise the busy street I was on, and there were buildings I had never seen before. Something wet spotted my forehead. Then it was dampening my hair. It was in front of me, drenching my face. I was running, splashing through puddles. Rain.

But I didn’t know rain. Mom told me it never rained in Brightwood, so why were these girl’s memories inside my head?

Ahead of her was a radiant light getting closer and closer, and blinking through blurry vision, she forced her legs into a run. The girl was out of breath, before her trembling hands found a door handle and stepped into a warm, golden glow. Somewhere crowded, somewhere I didn’t recognise.

“Elle! Hey, are you okay? They’re coming! So, we need to like, get out of here right now. Like RIGHT now!”

Kaz’s yelling was barely a whisper in my brain.

“Elle, we need to get out of here! I can’t… Annalise! Annalise, you need to help me carry her!”

Pushing away reality, I focused on the flash, which was a grey, confusing blur. But better than nothing.

Around the girl were shadows, blurry faces and silhouettes dancing between tables and chairs, as well as an aroma filling her nose. Coffee. The smell of crushed coffee beans, and freshly baked cookies. She pulled something out of the soaked pocket of her jeans– a strange rectangular device— and peered at the bright screen. It was like a smaller version of the ones displaying the wall people, or our television at home.

Then the memory…glitched. Like my brain was trying to shove my own life down my throat. I could feel its desperation to suffocate whatever those flashes were. The bustling shadows and the smell of coffee, a stranger splashing through puddles. I saw my younger self, my mother handing me a loaded gun. The men who were shot dead in front of me when I was eight. The memories slammed into me like a wave of ice cold water, and I was aware of something… dislodging.

I could feel it in the back of my mouth as reality blossomed into fruition. All I could hear was screaming. Kaz and Annalise. Thundering footsteps. I felt rough arms wrap around my waist and yank me to unsteady feet, but I was still lost in someone else’s memories. Something was resisting reality and it was strong, plunging me back into flashes of my life. But between these flashed were razor sharp glimpses of bloody hands that weren’t mine. Blood diffusing with water, and a cry that was not mine. Except I felt her agony as she tightened her fingers around something sharp slicing into her flesh. I felt the release of pain, and shuddering breaths, her body slumping, the sensation of warm water coming over her face.

Something warm and wet ran down my face, and I was suddenly aware of being dragged back. Violently. I opened my eyes. My head was spinning and my body felt strange, like I was floating. I was back in the room full of wall-people. Kaz was on his knees with his arms pinned behind his back, and Annalise was struggling in a scowling woman’s arms.

He was yelling something, though his words weren’t making sense in my head.

Instead, I felt my tooth. It was loose, and I could flick it back and forth with my tongue. I didn’t get to though. Before I could try and force the tooth out myself, which would only require some serious digging, a sharp prick sliced into the back of my neck—and I was falling.

I stopped thinking for a while, though the flashes didn’t stop. With my tooth being loose, they only grew stronger.

This time the girl wasn’t in the rain. She was sitting among the shadows and blurry faces, her hands wrapped around a styrofoam cup. Always a caramel macchiato, with two shots of expresso and extra cream. Her gaze flicked from the window, where she had been watching a stray raindrop slide down the glass pane, to the rectangular device sitting in front of her.

The screen flashed. 8:35pm. The girl took a sip from the cup, revelling in the taste of coffee running down her throat. The asshole was late.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind the door opened, a light melody playing in time with it, and a blurry face slumped in front of her. All I could make out were damp curls sticking out from a hood, and a face with no real features. The figure was more ghost than human, a person reduced to a shadow in my mind. Unlike the girl, or at least the memory I couldn’t remember, the mysterious person had a skip to their step. She had watched them in the rain outside, practically leaping over puddles, jumping into them for fun. And yet the closer they came, their shadow becoming less of a pooling silhouette and more of a person, her gut twisted and turned.

Instantly, they reached across the table to shake her hand, and she backed away, her gut twisting. The girl’s voice—no, my voice—rang out in the memory, and I felt myself recoil. “How did you get my number?”

I should have known. I mean, it was obvious. But it didn’t make sense how I could exist in two worlds.

The blurry face laughed. It was a throw-your-head-back laugh which caused memory-me to stiffen up, my grip on the coffee tightening.

Their voice was a disembodied mumble when they leaned across the table. “Oh, we’re playing that game are we?”

“Answer my question.”

The blurry face cocked their head, leaning their fist on their chin. “Why do you think I’m here, [BLANK]?”

There it was.

The sound of it sent my thoughts into a whirlwind, even if that too was buried deep, deep down. Like blurry face and their voice, the name was nothing. It meant nothing. But I could tell by the way blurry face said it, and how I reacted, it was mine.

I had another name in this other world where rain fell from the sky, and coffee was familiar to me.

Before I could see more, once again the memory was coming apart—and in the back of my mind, I could sense a foreign presence in my mouth, a narrow finger jabbing at my back incisors. Stars flashed in front of my eyes, agony writhing in my head, exploding across my face. The memory faded away, the smell of coffee and the blurry figure who was glitching, their face almost recognisable, but hidden by the very presence struggling to reattach my tooth once again. When I came to, I was only half awake. The world was spinning, and I was under bright, intense light shining down on me.

I couldn’t move. My body was numb. Something warm ran down my chin. There was a masked figure looming over me. He bent over, stuck two fingers in my mouth, and pried it open before I could bite back.

“Don’t worry, Elle.” The figure pulled back their mask and shot me a flashy smile.

“We’re going to get you fixed up.”

The sound of a drill rose me from fruition, and when I managed to turn my head, the figure held an odd machine between his fingers. It looked like a dentist drill. I knew what one looked like. I had two fillings when I was twelve after eating too much candy. The machine in the man’s hands however, looked like it did more than fillings. I managed to shriek when the bed reclined lower, but the figure’s eyes were only amused. Just like the wall-people.

“You have a broken tooth,” He murmured, inserting a clamp-like device which held my mouth open. It stabbed into my gums and fresh blood ran down my throat. I was wide-awake when he started drilling. First, at the back of my mouth, and then he… moved.

No longer looming over me, his shadow was instead behind me. He was still drilling, and I couldn’t feel pain, just the vague sensation of something sharp stabbing into the back of my head. With the screeching sound of the drill pulverising both my teeth and my skull, the flashes I had managed to grasp onto were slowly being drained away, like he was picking them apart with his bare hands.

The aroma of coffee I thought I knew was suddenly nothing but a vague memory, the rain damp in my hair and falling in front of my eyes, soaking my face when I tilted my head back… was nothing more than a vivid dream.

The drilling stopped after a while, and half-awake, I knew there was holes in me where they shouldn’t be. There was blood sliding down the back of my neck, and gushing from my mouth, and all I could do was stare at the light above me and pray the trauma of having my body picked apart while I was wide awake would be enough to knock me out. I did sleep, though whatever they were pumping into me either wasn’t working, or I was rejecting it.

I woke up three times—and all three of those times, I had met eyes with slightly frantic ones peering down at me.

For a long while, drifting in the dark, I was nobody.

I wanted to know who she was.

The girl who…drank coffee, and splashed through puddles.

Who know exactly what the rain felt like.

To my disdain, when I tried to pry into those flashes I had managed to find, there was nothing. Just lingering pieces.

When I tried to move my tooth with my tongue, it was stubbornly stuck. I tried again and again, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t dislodge the stupid thing. Growing bored, and with my body unresponsive, I counted the ceiling tiles. Then when I was bored of counting, I closed my eyes and tried to force the memories back into fruition. But they were gone. Like they never existed in the first place. All I had was the vague idea of coffee and rain. There was something stuck into my arm- and it stung.

An IV drip.

Whatever they had put inside it was doing a good job of keeping me foggy minded.

A voice pierced the silence after a while.

I knew who it was. Through feathered vision, I could see her tangled golden hair tied into pigtails. No longer wearing the wedding dress, Annalise’s odd choice of clothing had been replaced by a pale-blue gown which hung off of her. The girl was bent over me, her hair tickling my face.

I could feel her warm breath, but I couldn’t respond. “Elle?” Her voice was like waves crashing onto the shore, drifting in and out. At some points I was sure she was there, but others she was fading away. In my drug-drunk brain, I wondered if she was a ghost. Maybe whoever controlled Brightwood had killed her. I could see she was struggling with my restraints, her fingernails slicing into my skin.

Okay, maybe not a ghost.

Annalise’s shaking hands combed through my matted hair, and I got a flash— a painful flash— of a hand stroking my face sending electroshocks though me. My body jerked on impulse, and it came again, an overwhelming sense of fear twisting me into knots. I could feel a stranger's hand stroking my cheek, rough fingers grazing my lips before delving into the back of my mouth.

I blinked, and the flash was gone. But I could still feel phantom fingers forcing their way into my mouth until I was choking on the stink of pool cleaner.

Annalise didn’t seem to notice my reaction, her expression crumpling. “Please. I don’t want to be alone.”

Sniffling, the girl leaned over my face, and something wet hit my forehead.

Rain?

“Elle. I don’t want you to be turned into a Peeker. That’s what they do here,” she whimpered. “They turn us into Peekers.”

I only had to squint to see the band-aid over the girl’s nose seeping red. Looking closer at her, Annalise was bleeding too.

Which meant she had torn out her IV. I’m not sure how long she stayed. It could have been seconds or hours. I watched her float in and out of my vision, a confusing blur of blue and gold occasionally tugging at the velcro straps pinning me down, before attempting to yank me off the bed herself. I could see the girl’s desperation in the way she moved, clawing out her hair and shaking me, her movements more and more frenzied. Before she was screaming.

Her cry sliced through me like a banshee wail. “This is where they turned me… crazy,” Annalise was pacing my bed, scratching at her own face. Her voice swam in and out of my brain at the mercy of the IV. When three orderlies came running in to grab and drag the girl away, I could do nothing but move my finger slightly. Then my toe. I don’t know if it was the drugs, or maybe I was dreaming—but when I was conscious enough to sit up and prop myself up on my pillows, still blinking through brain fog, Annalise came back.

This time, she didn’t scream or cry out, only standing in front of me with the sanest expression I had ever seen on her face. I noticed there was no blood, and her hair looked neater like it had been brushed. This time Annalise wore jeans and a t-shirt.

She was smiling, before lifting a finger and pressing it to her lips in a shushing motion.

There was something in her hand, a rectangular device which perfectly melded into her palm pointing directly at me.

“Annalise?”

My voice sounded strange, like it was more memory than real. It could have been hours after I saw her, or I saw a drug-induced hallucination. But when I was finally sitting up with enough energy to shimmy out of my restraints and tug out my IV, I knew I had to find her. I could feel her blood still staining my forehead and cheek, dry and flaky when I swiped at it.

Before I could think about the repercussions of diving out of bed after some significant dental surgery, I threw my legs over the side of the bed and jumped off which immediately sent me off balance.

The room I was in smelled of lavender mixed with pool cleaner which twisted my gut. I knew the smell, but it was a lot stronger in my memory—more of a suffocating, intoxicating poison filling my mouth. Shaking my head of the thought, I left the room, finding myself on a clinical white hallway. I pressed my hand over my nose and mouth. The smell was making me feel dizzy. I had barely taken two steps before a sudden cry froze me in place, and I found myself torn over saving myself and going on the hunt for Annalise, or answering the gut-lurching shriek echoing down the hallway which was definitely Kaz Issacs.

Part of me knew the boy was not to be trusted, considering what was on the monitor's in the room with the wall-people. However, my legs kept moving, my body forcing me into a stumbling run. Kaz was right at the end of the hall, his screams getting progressively more hysterical the closer I got to the door. It was open, with enough room to stick my head through the gap.

Kaz was in a similar situation to me, strapped down to a hospital bed which was reclined under a bright light shining in his face.

His eyes were wide with fright, bloody gauze sticking from his mouth. Wriggling against the restraints, the boy was crying. I had never seen him cry, or even look upset.

Kaz always had this permanent look of amusement on his face in class. So, seeing him clearly in agony, fighting against orderlies trying to hold him down, was jarring. It had taken strapping his arms, his torso, and his head to the bed to keep him down-- and somehow, Kaz was still managing to get the upper hand. I expected the masked people standing over him to look pissed, but to my surprise, the group of them looked... worried.

I caught looks exchanged between them, with one of them holding the same device used to drill into my mouth. I could see why they were worried. Kaz was sweating.

Bad.

The blue gown replacing his clothes was practically glued to him, his skin glistening under fluorescent light. It wasn't just that.

He looked younger, more vulnerable, dark brown curls hanging in wet clumps against his forehead, half-lidded eyes clouded, like something had been injected into his pupils. Kaz himself didn't seem to notice his state. When one of them dared edge towards him, a shot in their hands, the boy sprang back against the pillows, curling his lips like an animal. “If you touch me with that thing, I swear to fucking god, you’re dead. I will fucking kill you. Do you hear me?”

He must have had gusto in his tone because the figure backed away, nodding feebly. “Sir, to complete the procedure we must put you under anesthesia."

“What?” Kaz blinked rapidly, and when he was caught off guard, a needle was stuck inside his arm and quickly attached to an IV.

His eyes widened when he realised, and he tugged it like a child, his mouth opening and closing. “Get this out of me,” he whispered. “Please.” Kaz’s cry went from an animalistic growl to a feeble whimper. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“The implant has been destroyed, young man. It can see pieces of it in your saliva. There is no need to put on an act."

The figure leaned over Kaz. “Unless you are being serious. I know you are prone to playing pranks, both on your fellow town’s people and classmates. However, I think you’re sincere. Which means somehow you have been poisoned by your own tooth.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “You mean… Elle was right? There was something in her tooth?”

“Correct. We briefed you on the implant multiple times, and you have legally consented to its use, as well as shown enthusiasm. We are worried about you. Your personality has suffered quite a shift and it is in our best interest to help you.”

“No.” Kaz whispered. “You did something to me. You’re talking about what I saw on the screen, right? That wasn’t me… it wasn’t me, I swear!”

The man sighed, stroking his fingers up and down a scalpel. Kaz’s eyes followed his movements feverishly.

“It is no secret that you have been reacting differently with this tooth inserted. You have not produced enough kills in line with your agreement with us. In fact, you have not killed since you were fifteen years old. That was two years ago. What we have been hoping for was a slow burn with you building up an anticipation to go on a rampage across town has left us severely disappointed.” The man clucked his tongue. “We do worry about you. Your fans worry about you. Kaz Issacs is currently on the top of the poll to be removed from Darkroom, and what exactly does that say for your rep, hm? Where was the spark you had when you murdered your family? That is the Kaz we want. That is why we accepted you to participate in this project.”

Annalise’s voice echoed in my mind.

Peeker, I thought dizzily.

Kaz spat at him, and I caught a singular globule of saliva hitting his face. “I have no idea what you're talking about! I didn’t kill my family! I killed Jessa Pollux in ninth grade!”

“That makes more sense,” the man sighed. “Mr Delacroix, it appears our theories are correct. You have been poisoned by your implant which has caused you to mentally regress to your temporary self before you started killing. Yes, we liked him initially. You showed a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Perfect to hook in viewers. We have a steady viewer base logging onto Darkroom every day to watch Brightwood. Your fans included. And what they want is to watch you rip the town apart. What we have seen, however, is pathetic. You had the opportunity to slice Annalise Duval’s throat and you failed.”

Something cold slithered down my spine, and from the look on my classmate’s face he had exactly the same reaction.

Kaz let out a guttural cry. “What are you talking about?!"

“Well, to put it simply, Mr Delacroix—"

The boy lunged forward, or tried to, the restraints yanking him back. “Stop calling me that!” He wrenched at the restraints, attempting to pull one hand from tough velcro to yank out the IV. But the masked figures weren’t listening to him, and just like they had with me, began to prepare steel instruments despite the boy’s vocal death threats. When screaming and threatening didn’t work, he tried to attack with his feet, which were quickly pinned down with the rest of his struggling body.

“What you need to understand, sir,” one of the figures spoke as he grabbed hold of Kaz’s struggling arm, inserting a second needle, “Is that you are dying. If this faulty tooth continues to send agreed upon signals to your brain which triggers the so-called Urge, it will kill you. And to add to that, since young people are apparently medical professionals these days, it won’t even need a signal. Activated, it is already dangerous.”

He softened his tone when Kaz stopped struggling, his body going limp as the drugs started to kick in. The figure held the drill in front of Kaz’s flickering eyes struggling to stay open, his mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out. “You told us you were okay, that the implant was not hurting you—and you lied.” His voice grew firm, like a father.

Less like a parent, however, when Kaz was completely under, his arm going limp against his stomach, the man let out a groan, turning to his colleagues.

“These fucking influencers expect to be paid when they can’t even follow a simple instruction and kill as many town’s people as possible.” He inserted the metal clamp forcing the boy’s mouth wide open. When the procedure started, I couldn’t look away. The drilling noise started, and I cringed at the sound of teeth grinding against tiny blades.

“Ah.” The man said. “In the process of removing the faulty tooth and implant, I can see it is badly damaged. In fact, I am surprised the boy has not been experiencing serious side effects. I’m glad we caught it early.”

He straightened up, showing his colleagues something pinched between his thumb and index. “See. It is singed on three corners. It looks like a faulty tooth. My general observation without full examination, was that we were sending too many signals and overwhelming it."

Another figure nodded grimly. “That would explain the behavioural differences. It must have been agony, and the poor kid wouldn’t have realised once regression had taken hold,” she took a breath. “Jesus. Mr Delacroix must have been so scared.”

“Indeed.” The main surgeon, still holding the tooth nodded. He turned back to Kaz.

“I will interpolate a new implant. This one should not have problems, and the boy should revert to his original state. Kaz Issacs is valuable to Brightwood, and our efforts in creating content people will consume,” he murmured, tugging off blood stained gloves and reapplying new ones. “If men, women, even the youngest of children are watching killing being broadcasted every day, they are not doing it themselves. Say what you want about human nature, it has been statistically proven we kill less when consuming the real thing.”

The doctor picked up a scalpel this time, and then the drill. “And of course Darkroom influencers bring the views.”

He poked the boy in the cheek with the butt of the drill. “Especially this kid. If he malfunctions again, put him in the Red Room and release a statement claiming he… I don’t know, he’s taking a break from Darkroom. I’m sure his fans will do some killing of their own and upload it in protest which will bring us a spike in views. After months in the Red Room, he’ll be good as new. Our influencers were born there, after all. They, unfortunately, are behind our success."

The man continued to speak, more to himself than his colleagues, as he clattered around in Kaz’s mouth, grabbing plastic tubes and odd looking devices. One of his colleagues, a female this time, turned to the door. I ducked out of view, before risking another peek. “Right. And for now?”

The man was drilling again, using a tube to suck up saliva and blood dribbling from the boy’s mouth. “Mmm. For now, we place him back inside the town without activating the implant, and have him undergo some significant changes to programming which I will be doing when I have finished replacing the broken tooth.”

He lifted his head, his eyes darkening. “Viewers do not want to see what they saw today, a pathetic child with no backbone following around the resident crazy girl. Darkroom’s influencers were made to revel in their own unravelling. People want monsters. Murder. They want severed body parts and brains leaking on the sidewalk. Kaz has been too soft.”

He emphasised his words by stabbing his scalpel into the kid’s mouth. I had to fight back a cry when his body jolted. “He was of course poisoned by a broken implant which has now been rectified.” He got to work once more, mumbling the rest. “Make him stand out again. Send him on a massacre or have him kill an entire family or two.”

He lifted his head and removed his mask, flashing perfect pearly whites.

“We’ve known this kid for years, Phoebe. I doubt he needs an electroshock rattling his brain to tell him to kill. Darkroom is our inhumane answer to regulating the human race. If there are killings in Brightwood, there are less killings in the real world.”

Before the woman could reply, I was already backing away and catapulting myself into a run. I had to get out. No. My thoughts were feverish. I had to find Annalise.

I found her two floors down, out of breath, and losing hope that I would. It was the laughing which led me to her. I heard it like it was singing to me, sending my thoughts into fog. In Brightwood, the laughter had sounded normal enough, if not a little unhinged. But now I was at the root of where it came from, now I was seeing what I had been hearing for so long... I realised the laughing was pained. Agony.

The room was small, full of town's people. There was a screen on the wall displaying various places in our town. My house, the church, the school, and the scrapyard. Men and women, and teens I recognised were sitting on wooden chairs. Mrs Jenson was among them, but she didn't look like my neighbor anymore.

Her skin was almost completely gone, flesh peeling from a skeletal mouth wide open in a horrific laugh rattling her body. Mrs Jenson's eyes were open, staring forwards at an oblivion only she could see. The town's people around her were in various states of decay, and yet they kept laughing and laughing and laughing until I had to press my hand over my ears to block them out. Their newest addition was at the very back-- and when I saw her, my heart dropped into my stomach. The girl was giggling at the screen, her eyes empty-- emptier than they had ever been.

Annalise's lips were stretched into a cartoon-like smile, and when I slapped her across the face, when I shook her, screaming at her to wake up, she didn't move. Her body was like a mannequin.

When I grasped her hand, her skin was wet. Slimy. With every laugh, I noticed beads of sharp red slipping from her nose and mouth.

This was what I had heard in my bedroom when my reality had faltered. It was the noise which had attracted me to the forest. I was hearing the sounds of town's people laughing themselves to death. And when death came, somehow they didn't stop. They kept going until their skin was rotting away, a laugh trapped inside a corpse. I tripped over three separate bodies trying to get to Annalise, and they were nothing but shredded flesh.

With Annalise, she was only giggling, occasionally sputtering out hysterics, spewing bloody saliva. But soon it would be wracking her body. Grasping onto the girl's shoulders, like clinging onto her would snap her out of it, I knelt in front of Annalise Duval and promised I would be back.

Then I left her.

I left her in a room which smelled like rot and decay which I was desensitised to.

Bodies that barely fazed me.

The last door on the long winding hallway was surely the way out. But when I was pulling it open, a hand was on my shoulder, yanking me back. I twisted around, ready to slam my fists into their face, but the shadow blossoming under harsh red light suddenly bathing the corridor wasn't a guard or another person in white ready to drag me back inside the room with the machines. It was Kaz.

Well, it was mostly Kaz.

"Hey, sup, Elle!”

The first thing I noticed was his inability to stand up straight, as well as the gaping wound in his arm where he too had torn out his IV.

Kaz’s voice sounded off kilter-- and he himself was swaying from side-to-side struggling to get a proper grasp of my shoulders. He was out of breath, one finger pressed into a piece of gauze hanging out of his mouth. Still startlingly pale, and just out of surgery, Kaz was holding the old implant in. His lips were split into a bloody grin, rivulets of red beading down his chin. I had no idea how he was standing, or coherently talking, because the last I had seen him, the boy was practically brain-dead.

“You’re…”

“It’s not my blood," He slurred. "I don't know whose blood it is! I just woke up, and bam! I'm covered in it!"

Kaz shook his head, trying to focus on me. Whatever was in his system, he was fighting it. "Also, no time. No time… nooo time…" He kept repeating himself, reminding me of Annalise in the earlier days. "If we’re...if we're going to knock your tooth out we’re doing it now! Like, right now. Before I bleed out. But you need to promise me,” He shook me, his fingernails cutting into my gown. "You can't let them take mine out, Elle." his expression darkened, and I glimpsed coherency. Before he snickered. "Also. I'm like, reallllllyyyyyy high on anesthesia right now, so we we gotta do this like nowwww. I just gotta aim for the mouth, right?"

Whatever was in his tooth was killing him, I remembered the doctor saying. I had to get it out at some point.

But I had to lie to him.

“I promise."

“Good!” His mental state must have masked my real expression. With one hand desperately holding the old implant inside his mouth, he swung his fist, the knuckles perfectly impacting my jaw. I don’t know how he did it being hopped up on wacky drugs, but somehow his hit sent me crumpling to the floor. This time I felt it dislodging, a writhing thing twitching in my mouth. Kaz realised his mistake, dropping to his knees when my vision blurred out of focus. "Elle, the walls are moving. Now's not the time for sleep! Stay with me—- shit!”

“Mr Delacroix, once again, please stay where you are. This for the good of your health!”

I was aware of Kaz dragging me, Brightwood mixing with another world slipping back into my mind, but once again I was caught inside an explosion of agony contorting my thoughts into a nonsensical blur. Memories came over me. But this time they were pure clarity. I was inside a coffee shop on a bustling street in the late evening. Starbucks. The name hit me.

The feathered reality of Brightwood had split apart, catapulting me back into the real world. With no confusing filter over the memory, I could see groups of people, college kids and teenage girls gulping down coffee and typing on laptops. The sight of it was overwhelming. I had a brother. Nick. I had a mother, and a father. My own whisper echoed, and this time I could hear myself perfectly, my voice trembling.

"How did you get my number?"

I was still nameless, but a whole other life was unravelling before my eyes. A life I had left behind for a town in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the outside world, with its macabre rules. The foggy blur over the memory was gone, revealing two years ago, my younger self, and the identity of the blurry face sitting in front of me, a smirking fifteen year old boy leaning on his fist, dark eyes completely hollowed out. He held that same rectangular device– a cellphone– pointing the camera at me.

Kaz.