Page 141 of Stay Scared

Comments race beside the feed:

KIDNAPPING / PLANNED MURDER / CALL THE POLICE

Someone posts an old clip from my channel beside the broadcast. Another viewer recognizes the ruined Carnival of Joy sign from archival photographs. A map appears with the property entrance circled.

Cade moves toward the emergency monitor. “Turn that shit off.”

Owen keeps one hand inside the relay cabinet. “The screens are receiving the stream. They aren’t transmitting it.”

“Then find what the hell is.”

“I am.”

Cade grips the console as Rook cuts back to the memory house. The replica bar fills the screen. Cade stands over me, my face turned away. Audio from another argument has been layered underneath until he sounds as though he entered Crimson Night intending to keep me there.

The color leaves his face. “He filmed the storage room.”

Owen looks toward the projection walls. “You disabled the camera you knew existed.”

I follow his line of sight. A black screw above the film shelves catches a pinprick of light.

Owen crosses the booth, tears the hidden camera from the plaster, and rips a wire out behind it. The device cracks beneath his boot. The broadcast keeps playing.

Rook’s voice settles over the edited footage. “Salem Sterling entered Crimson Night after receiving a private invitation from the attraction’s owners. She believed she had been hired to review an exclusive experience.”

His narration is measured enough to sound official.

“What she did not know was that the experience had already been designed around her by men who had followed her for months.”

A photograph of Cade and me from before the breakup replaces the footage. Owen appears next across the street from Halden Coffee, followed by Ash. The glowing black mask fills the final frame.

Rook barely has to fabricate anything. He only has to decide what the audience never sees.

Ash steps closer to the monitors. “He is anchoring the edit in material the audience can verify.”

Cade looks at him.

“Owen’s archive exists,” Ash says. “Final Girl Protocol exists. The waiver exists.”

“The stop signal exists too.”

“It does not exist in his version.”

Cade turns toward me. “We’re getting you out.”

“The perimeter is still attached to the purge.”

“He could be full of shit.”

“And Mark dies if you gamble wrong.”

His hands clench. “I care more about you breathing tomorrow than whether strangers think I’m a fucking monster.”

“That still doesn’t make the decision yours.”

“It shouldn’t have to be.”

The words land between us. Cade hears them too. His shoulders tighten, and he steps backward before I have to make him.