Blinking against a beam of sunlight cutting across the room, Elena opened her eyes.
A dull, rhythmic ache pounded behind her forehead. Her mouth tasted like dry dust and old copper. She tried to swallow, but her throat felt tight. Slowly, her vision focused on the ceiling above her. The paint was a soft cream color, centered around a large, unfamiliar crystal chandelier.
Where am I?
She tried to sit up, but her limbs felt weighed down by sand. As she shifted her weight, the white blanket slipped down her chest, exposing her bare skin to the cold air of the room. She looked down.
She was completely naked.
Her breath hitched. A sudden, sharp spike of adrenaline flooded her veins, overriding the grogginess. Gripping the edges of the blanket, she yanked it tightly up to her chin. Her eyes darted wildly across the large bedroom, searching for Elias, but the room was empty.
Pushing herself off the mattress, Elena wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Her bare feet hit the freezing hardwood floor. She looked around the room again and slowly recognized the expensive furniture and the modern paintings on the walls.
This was Angelina's house.
In the corner of the room, there was a pile of clothes discarded next to a plush reading chair. Elena hurried over and picked up her emerald green silk dress. The fabric was deeply wrinkled, and the left shoulder strap hung by a single torn thread. Near the bottom hem, thick patches of dried, dark brown mud stiffened the silk.
She dropped the ruined dress on the chair. Beside it there was a neatly folded pile of clothes—an oversized white t-shirt and gray sweatpants. She pulled them on quickly, her hands shaking so badly she struggled with the waistband.
Walking into the attached bathroom, she turned on the faucet and splashed freezing water over her face. She gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, waiting for her racing heartbeat to slow. But when she finally looked up into the mirror, her body went entirely rigid.
Right on the side of her neck, just beneath her jawline, sat a dark red circle. The edges were bruised a deep, sickening purple.
It was like a love bite.
Elena stared at her reflection, her stomach twisting into a tight knot. A fragmented, blurry image surfaced in her mind: a young man in late 20s, smiling at her in a crowded room.
Backing away from the mirror, she turned and hurried out of the bedroom. She needed to know what happened last night.
The wide wooden staircase creaked slightly under her weight as she ran down. Reaching the ground floor, she followed the faint sound of movement toward the kitchen.
Riley stood leaning against the kitchen island, wrapped in a silk robe. She was massaging her temples with one hand and holding a tall glass of red coloured juice in the other. A piece of dry toast untouched on a plate nearby. Riley looked terrible—her hair was messy, and dark circles shadowed her eyes—but she managed a weak smile when Elena walked in.
"Well, look who survived," Riley groaned, taking a slow sip of juice. "Morning."
Elena stopped in the doorway, wrapping her arms tightly across her stomach. "Riley, what happened last night? And Angelina where is she?"
Riley raised an eyebrow, setting her glass down on the marble counter. "Are you joking? You really don't remember anything? Not even the part of the night you clearly enjoyed the most?"
"No, honestly i am not able to..."
"We went to the clubhouse," Riley explained, leaning her back against the counter. "We danced, we drank way too much champagne, and then we tried whatever that new party pill was that Sarah's husband brought. After that, some handsome guy came over to our table. He started flirting with you. A lot."
Elena shook her head frantically. "I remember a man asking me to dance. But after that... it's just a blank space."
Riley let out a dry, rasping laugh. "After that, you brought him back here. The two of you disappeared upstairs into the guest room for the rest of the night."
The blood drained entirely from Elena's face. Her skin turned ice cold. "No. I would never do that. I am married. I would never cheat on Elias."
Riley pointed a lazy finger directly at Elena's neck. "Your neck tells a completely different story, Elena."
Elena's hand flew up, covering the dark red bruise. Her mind spun, desperately searching for a rational explanation. "Where is he? And where are Angelina and Jessica?"
Riley waved her hand dismissively, wincing as the movement worsened her headache. "They bailed. Angelina, Jessica, your guy... half the party, honestly. Whatever was in those pills made everyone completely lose their minds. Angelina texted me at three in the morning saying they chartered a private jet to Las Vegas to keep the party going. She just left us here to clean up her kitchen and lock the doors."
Elena stared at Sarah and Riley. The explanation was perfectly logical. Party drugs caused blackouts and erratic behavior. It explained the missing people. It explained the Vegas trip.
But her body felt wrong. Her muscles ached with a deep, physical exhaustion that didn't match a hangover. Her nervous system felt frayed, as if she had spent the entire night running for her life.
"I need to clean my dress," Elena said abruptly, turning on her heel before Riley could say another word.
Returning to the bathroom, she dropped the ruined dress into the white porcelain basin and cranked the cold water handle.
Grabbing a heavy bar of soap, she pressed it directly into the stiff, dark stains at the bottom of the silk scrubbing it viciously. The water running off the dress turned a cloudy, muddy brown.
Slowly, the color of the water began to shift. The muddy brown thinned into a pale, sickly pink. Then, as it pooled heavily around the silver drain, the texture changed. The liquid thickened into a bright, vibrant crimson.
Elena's hands froze. She stared down into the sink. The red liquid flowed endlessly, thick and unnaturally warm against her skin. It coated her shaking fingers, slipping deep under her fingernails. The sharp, metallic smell of raw copper and rotting meat suddenly flooded the small bathroom.
A high-pitched screeching sound tore through her eardrums. It did not just echo in the room; it vibrated directly inside her teeth. It sounded like an animal being butchered alive.
Elena gasped and stumbled backward. As she moved, the reality of the bathroom fractured.
The pristine white tiles vanished. In a single, violent instant, the walls were drenched in fresh, slick blood. It dripped heavily from the ceiling grout and sprayed across the vanity mirror in thick, wet arcs.
Her skull split open with a blinding, searing agony. She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the bloody walls, but the darkness in her mind was immediately ripped apart by a vivid, terrifying flash of light.
She saw a jagged, glowing purple portal swirling violently in the center of the air. She was suddenly standing inside Chloe's bedroom. The deafening screeches multiplied. She saw the gray, leathery skin of the monsters. She saw blood spraying across pristine white walls.
The pain inside her brain increased as the chemical wipe violently attacked the surfacing memory. She dropped the dress. Half of the silk fabric slapped into the bloody water in the basin, while the other half hung limply over the edge, dripping red droplets onto the floor.
Gripping the sides of her head as if trying to physically hold her skull together, Elena collapsed to her knees on the cold, slick tile and let out a raw, deafening scream.
Hundreds of miles away, beneath layers of concrete and steel, a large monitor blinked a rapid, warning red.
The underground bunker was freezing cold, filled with the low, constant hum of massive server towers. An operator in a dark gray uniform leaned closer to his glowing screen. A digital graph displaying Elena Thorne's neural data was fluctuating violently.
Stability: 98%... 85%... 95%... 82%.
The operator pressed a blinking button on his console. "Sir, I need you at station four."
A senior officer stepped up behind the desk seconds later, keeping his hands clasped firmly behind his back. His cold eyes locked onto the jagged spikes of the data graph.
"Check her history," the senior officer ordered, his tone entirely flat. "See if she is a repeat."
The operator's fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, pulling up a secondary file. "Yes, sir. She was wiped just a few days ago during the Monday night breach. This is her second time fighting the chemical."
The senior officer nodded slowly. "Transfer her vitals to Grid 2."
Turning on his heel, the officer started walking toward the heavy metal doors at the back of the room.
The operator hesitated, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "Sir, are you sure? There are a few other scenarios that cause neural drops this severe. It could be an active breach, or a physical—"
"It is experience," the senior officer interrupted, not even pausing his stride. "If it were from any of those other scenarios, we would not be sitting in this bunker watching her vitals drop. We would already be on the ground dealing with the chaos. She is just a repeat victim fighting the chemical."
The heavy metal doors hissed shut behind him. The operator turned his attention back to the screen.
The bathroom door in Angelina's house slammed open.
Riley and Sarah rushed inside, their faces pale. They found Elena kneeling on the floor, gripping her hair and sobbing hysterically.
"Elena!" Riley shouted, dropping to her knees and grabbing Elena firmly by the shoulders. Sarah reached down, grabbing Elena's arms to help lift her off the tiles.
The instant their hands clamped down on her skin, the chemical embedded deep inside Elena's brain reacted.
Like a heavy iron door slamming shut, the memory was violently forced back down into the dark corners of her mind. The blinding panic evaporated instantly. The splitting pain in her skull stopped. Her erratic breathing leveled out into a slow, steady rhythm.
She stood up, brushing off her sweatpants, feeling eerily, terrifyingly normal.
In the bunker, the operator watched the red warning lights switch back to a calm, steady green. The numbers stopped fluctuating, climbing steadily before settling into a quiet reading.
Stability: 93%.
The operator logged the incident and closed the file.
"What happened?" Sarah asked, her chest heaving as she stared at the green dress hanging out of the sink.
Elena blinked. She looked at Riley, then down at the basin. The water was not bright red. It was just slightly cloudy from the mud. There were no screeching sounds echoing in the room. There was no purple portal.
"I was hearing things," Elena said. Her voice sounded perfectly, artificially calm. "I was seeing things in the water."
Riley let out a long sigh and patted Elena on the back. "It might just be the late triggers of whatever we took last night. I told you, those pills make people act crazy. You are just having a bad comedown. Go home, drink some water, and rest. Sarah and I will finish cleaning up here."
Elena nodded obediently. She grabbed a plastic trash bag from the cabinet, shoved the wet, ruined dress inside, and walked out of the house.
When she arrived home, the house was quiet. She walked into the living room and sat rigidly on the edge of the couch. Her mind felt completely blank, yet a heavy, rotting sense of guilt sat squarely in her stomach. She could not stop thinking about the young man. The thought of sleeping with someone else made her feel physically sick, but the alternative—that her mind was breaking—was too terrifying to confront.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Leo walked down, dressed in a clean t-shirt and jeans. He stopped when he saw his mother sitting in the dark, staring blankly at the powered-off television screen.
"Mom?" Leo asked, taking a hesitant step forward. "Are you okay?"
Elena did not respond. She did not even blink.
Leo walked closer, but decided not to push the issue. He was too focused on his own schedule. "I am going out with Marcus and Toby," he said, grabbing his keys. "College starts on Monday. We are going to celebrate. I will be back later."
Elena offered a slow, mechanical nod.
Leo left, and Elena spent the rest of the day sitting in the exact same spot. That night, she lay in her bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, trapped in a loop of guilt and confusion.
The next day brought no relief. She simply paced across the living room rug, overthinking every single detail Riley had told her.
Late in the afternoon, the front door unlocked. Leo walked inside and stopped in the entryway. He watched his mother pacing with dark, bruised circles forming under her eyes. He knew immediately that something was wrong with her.
He dropped his bag, walked directly to the center of the living room, and stood in her path.
"Mom, stop," Leo caught her by the shoulders. "What is happening with you?"
Elena froze. She looked up at her son, desperately trying to force her laminated, perfect smile back onto her face.
"Nothing is wrong, Leo," she lied smoothly. "I am just tired from the party."
"Don't lie to me, Mom" Leo said, his voice dropping into a serious, demanding tone. "You have been acting strange all day. You did not even make coffee this morning. That is not you."
Elena opened her mouth. She wanted to tell him everything was fine. But the memory of the young man flashed in her mind, and the words caught in her throat.
Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over her eyelashes before she could stop them.
She started to cry. She made no sound. Her shoulders simply shook as the tears streamed rapidly down her cheeks.
Leo stepped forward without hesitation. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a tight, protective hug. Elena buried her face in his shoulder, weeping silently. She could not find the words to tell her son she had betrayed his father.
They stood in the center of the living room for a long time. Eventually, the silent crying drained the last remaining reserves of energy from Elena's body. Pulling away slowly, she laid down on the living room sofa and closed her swollen eyes. Within minutes, her breathing deepened into sleep.
Leo watched her quietly. He walked to the hall closet, pulling out a soft throw blanket and a clean pillow. Gently lifting her head, he slid the pillow underneath and draped the blanket over her shoulders. He patted her arm for a few moments, ensuring she was settled, before turning off the living room lights and retreating upstairs.
The next morning, the air outside was cool and crisp.
Elena woke up early. Getting off the sofa, she changed into her workout clothes and walked out onto the front lawn.
She began to exercise, moving through her routine. She stretched her arms, focusing entirely on regulating her breathing. But as she moved, her mind continuously drifted back to the party. She kept unconsciously reaching up to touch the bruised skin on her neck.
She remembered Miranda's suggestion to deny the job offer from Belmont College, insisting the chaotic environment would not suit her.
But as Elena looked at her empty, silent house, she realized she desperately needed the job. She needed constant distraction. If she stayed home, she would drown in her own thoughts.
Walking back inside, she picked up her phone from the kitchen counter and dialed the number for the chairman of Belmont College.
The line rang twice before a man answered.
"This is Elena Thorne," she said. Her voice was completely steady, the weakness from yesterday locked firmly away. "I have decided to accept your offer. I will be there tomorrow morning when classes start."