Samantha’s eyes lock onto the camera.
She knows what is coming.
“I love you, Seth,” she whispers, her voice barely holding together. “I’ll always love y—”
The gunshot explodes through the speakers.
Her head snaps sideways, and blood sprays across the screen in a violent burst that paints the frame red before her body drops out of view. The camera shakes, then falls and hits the floor with a jarring crack.
The image tilts.
All that remains in view is the hardwood and a smear of blood spreading slowly outward.
The feed doesn't cut.
Grant’s shoes step into frame. He crouches, picks up the camera, and his face fills the screen again. His expression is calm, and he watches me like I am part of the experiment.
“Now you know I’m not fucking around.”
He tilts his head slightly.
“You and Brooke are next.”
The screen goes black.
The room stays frozen.
The remote slips from my hand and hits the floor, the plastic cracking against the hardwood as the sound echoes too loud in the silence.
No one moves.
No one speaks.
I stare at the dark screen as if it might change if I keep looking, as if she will come back, as if this could still be undone.
My hands feel numb. My chest feels hollow.
Something in my body starts to shut down. My fingers go still, my jaw locks tight, and my breathing turns shallow, like it can't fully come in. The room dulls around me, sounds fading, vision narrowing until all I can see is the empty screen. I can't swallow. I can't blink. I can't move. My body just… stops.
I manage to force one word out.
“Mom.”
Chapter 57
Brooke
My body doesn't know what to do with what just happened.
I want to scream, to sob until my throat shreds itself, to grab something heavy and throw it hard enough to break, but none of that comes out, because it all stays locked inside my chest, burning and building with nowhere to go.
Seth doesn't move.
The television still glows across the room, the image frozen on a smear of red that has no right to exist outside of a nightmare, yet it fills the space, like it has not just carried the last seconds of his mother’s life into this room while we stand there and watch it happen.
His eyes are open, but he's gone, not looking at anything in front of him, not tracking movement, not reacting, because they stay fixed somewhere past all of us, somewhere I can't reach no matter how hard I try.
“Oh God,” I whisper, and then I am already moving before the sound has fully left my mouth.
