Real Meds

The tray of food sat on the bolted-down table like a challenge.

Soft food. Mashed carrots, lukewarm chicken puree, and a small cup of lime-flavored gelatin. It was the diet of a toddler or a hospice patient.

"Eat up, Merritt," the man in the charcoal sweater said. His voice was a perfect mimic of the husband I had lived with for three years. "You need the nutrients. We have a long night ahead."

I looked at the photograph. The four identical boys. The charred house. The red trucks.

"Who are you?" I rasped. My voice felt like it was being dragged over gravel.

"I’m the one who didn't let the fire finish the job," he whispered.

He reached out, his hand steady, and picked up a small white paper cup. It was filled with a bright pink liquid.

"Dr. Aris calls this the 'restorative blend.' It’s much more effective than sugar."

"I won't take it."

"Merritt, don't be difficult. You've already admitted to faking your compliance. We can't have you disruptive during the hearing. The board needs to see you... tranquil."

He stepped closer. The sandalwood scent was so thick it felt suffocating, a sensory anchor in a world that was rapidly losing its edges.

"Open up."

I bit my lip, tasting copper. I looked at the door. It was heavy, windowless, and locked from the outside by a man who shared his face with three other potential monsters.

He didn't wait for my consent.

He squeezed my jaw, his thumb pressing into the nerve near my ear. It was a professional hold. Precise. Painful.

My mouth opened instinctively.

He poured the pink liquid down my throat.

"Swallow."

I tried to spit it back, but he covered my mouth and nose. My lungs burned. The panic was a cold claw in my chest.

I swallowed.

He let go, stepping back and wiping his hand on a silk handkerchief.

"There. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

I slumped back against the wall. The effect was almost instantaneous.

It wasn't like the sedative Aris had used earlier. That had been a blunt instrument. This was a fog. A thick, grey mist that started at my feet and began to climb.

The white walls of the room began to vibrate. Not just the hum of the lights, but a rhythmic, pulsing motion.

"Gavin?" I whispered. Or maybe I just thought I whispered it. My tongue felt like a dry sponge.

"Gavin is busy," the man said. His face was blurring, the features sliding together like wet paint. "He's making sure Toby doesn't have any more... accidents."

I looked at the television screen. The man in the hoodie—Gavin?—was still in the van. He was holding a phone.

He looked at the camera.

*"Season five is going to be spectacular, Merritt,"* his voice crackled through the room's intercom. *"Total immersion. No more scripts. Just raw survival."*

I tried to stand, but my legs were water. I slid down the side of the bed, my fingers scratching uselessly at the linoleum.

"What... what is season five?"

The man in the charcoal sweater knelt in front of me. He looked perfectly focused, the only sharp thing in a world that was turning into a smear of light and shadow.

"The Lodge," he said. "The one you thought was a retreat. It’s actually a soundstage. A very large, very isolated soundstage."

He touched my cheek. His fingers felt like ice.

"The trust fund payout was just the pilot, Merritt. The real money is in the syndication. People pay millions to watch a woman who thinks she's a ghost try to find her way home."

I felt my eyes rolling back. The fog had reached my neck.

"Elena," I breathed.

"Elena is our best performer," he said. "She's been 'missing' for three seasons now. The ratings spike every time she leaves a note for one of you."

*One of you.*

The third wife. The mannequin in the wall. The girl in the storage unit.

We weren't victims. We were recurring characters.

I felt a sudden, sharp sting in my neck.

He had a second syringe.

"Time to go to sleep, Merritt. When you wake up, the Vivarium will be a memory. You'll be in the woods. And the game will truly begin."

The room went black.

Not just dark. Empty.

I was drifting in a sensory deprivation tank. I couldn't feel my hands. I couldn't feel the floor.

I was a ghost.

Maybe Graham was right. Maybe I had died in that linen closet when I was twelve, and everything since then had just been a very long, very expensive simulation.

I felt a jolt.

Movement.

The sound of tires on gravel.

I was in a vehicle. The van.

I tried to open my eyes, but the lids were glued shut.

I heard a voice. A woman's voice.

"Is she under?"

"Deep," a man replied. Gavin? Graham? The third one? "The titration was perfect."

"What about the other one? The Replacement?"

"Sarah is being processed. She'll be the primary antagonist for the first arc. The 'jealous twin' trope always performs well with the 25-plus demographic."

I felt a cold breeze on my skin.

They were opening the doors.

I was lifted. Carried.

The smell of pine needles and damp earth hit me. Sylvan Hills.

No. Not Sylvan Hills.

The air was different here. Thinner. Colder.

I was laid down on a hard surface. Stone, maybe.

"Check the locket," the woman said.

"It's gone," the man replied. "I took it during intake."

"And the SD card?"

"Incinerated."

I felt a weight being placed around my neck. A cold, metallic circle.

*Click.*

It felt like a collar.

"Signal is strong," the woman said. "Feed is live. We have 14 million viewers waiting."

I heard the sound of footsteps retreating.

A car door slamming.

An engine starting, then fading into the distance.

Silence.

A heavy, absolute silence that was more terrifying than any scream.

I fought the fog. I pushed against the weight in my brain, trying to find a crack of light.

I managed to open one eye.

I was lying on a flat rock.

The sun was gone. The sky was a bruised purple, stars beginning to prick through the canopy of massive, ancient trees.

I wasn't in Northlake. I wasn't in the Vivarium.

I was in the middle of a forest I didn't recognize.

I tried to sit up. My head spun, a wave of nausea nearly making me black out again.

I reached up to my throat.

My fingers touched the metal.

It wasn't a locket.

It was a sleek, black band. No clasp. No visible way to remove it.

And in the center, a small, red light was blinking.

*Blink. Blink-blink.*

The same pattern.

I looked around the clearing.

Twenty feet away, propped against a tree, was a mirror.

A full-length mirror, identical to the one in my bedroom closet.

I crawled toward it, my hands stinging as they scraped over dry needles and sharp stones.

I reached the glass.

I looked at my reflection.

I was wearing the white silk dress. It was torn, stained with dirt and the blood from my hand.

My face was pale. My eyes were wild.

But I wasn't looking at myself.

I was looking at the person standing behind me in the reflection.

A woman in a red dress.

Elena.

She wasn't a ghost. She wasn't a recording.

She was holding a red metal truck, and her throat was a jagged landscape of scar tissue.

She raised a finger to her lips.

*Shhh.*

Then she pointed to the ground at my feet.

There was a shovel.

And a small wooden stake with a nameplate attached to it.

I leaned in, my breath fogging the mirror, and read the name engraved in the brass.

*Merritt Coe. Plot 4B.*

A speaker hidden in the trees crackled to life.

It was Graham’s voice. The one I had loved. The one that had promised to protect me.

*"The sun is going down, Merritt. You have exactly sixty minutes to find the key to your collar before the perimeter fence goes live."*

I looked at Elena.

She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the camera lens hidden in the knot of a nearby tree.

*"And remember,"* the voice whispered, sounding like it was right inside my ear. *"The audience hates a boring ending."*

I grabbed the shovel.

I looked at the mirrors.

I looked at the dirt.

And then I saw the first droplet of red liquid fall from the sky, staining the white silk of my dress.

It wasn't rain.

It was paint.

The same red paint Gavin had used on the tripwire.

I looked up, and through the branches, I saw a dozen drones hovering above the clearing, each one equipped with a high-definition camera and a payload of red fluid.

The forest began to hum.

A high-frequency vibration that made my teeth ache and my vision blur.

Elena gripped my arm. Her strength was surprising, her fingers digging into my skin.

"Don't... dig," she rasped.

Her voice was a ruined thing, a hollow echo of the woman in the emails.

"Why?" I asked.

She pointed to the mirror.

In the reflection, the ground where I was standing wasn't dirt.

It was glass.

A thin sheet of safety glass, suspended over a dark, deep pit.

And at the bottom of the pit, I saw the glint of something silver.

My locket.

The one holding the recording.

The one that could end the show.

I looked at the shovel, then at the mirror, and finally at the blinking red light on my neck as the first drone began its descent.