Chapter 1
Jake sits in his dimly lit living room, bathed in the ghostly glow of his laptop screen. The harsh glare reflects off his tired eyes, casting shadows that seem to mock him. The sound of his own voice echoes through the room, twisted and distorted by the media’s relentless scrutiny. He’s drowning in a sea of accusations, the waves of criticism crashing relentlessly against the fragile walls of his carefully constructed reality. The headlines scream betrayal, the reporters’ voices sharp and unforgiving as they dissect his deception. Jake sits amidst the storm, the eye of the hurricane that he himself has summoned.
The air in the room is heavy with the acrid scent of burning bridges. Each word flung at him is like a stone hurled through the fragile glass of his reputation. He can almost feel the shards of his online persona splintering, cutting into the facade he’s spent years building. Jake’s fingers twitch involuntarily, reaching for the phone that buzzes incessantly with notifications bearing witness to his downfall. He hesitates, the screen a mirror reflecting the harsh truth he’s been avoiding.
The once alluring glow of his fame now casts a sickly pallor over his features. His eyes, tired from sleepless nights spent crafting lies, dart around the room seeking “They’re tearing it apart,” Jake mutters to himself, his fingers drumming anxiously on the arm of the couch. Each word of criticism feels like a dagger aimed straight at his carefully constructed facade. He can almost taste the bitterness of their accusations, sour and metallic on his tongue.
As the video plays on, he watches the scenes he meticulously staged unravel before his eyes. The flickering lights, the creaking floorboards, the shadowy figures lurking in the corners—all exposed as nothing more than smoke and mirrors. A facade he’d built to maintain his online persona, now crumbling around him.
The room flooded with light. Chris set a fast food bag on the table and stood there a moment, taking in the glow of the paused video on Jake’s laptop. “I told you this one was going too far,” Jake said, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “This is going to kill our careers.” The smell of French fries filled the silence between them. Chris unwrapped his burger with the slow deliberateness of someone choosing his next words carefully. “Maybe that’s not the worst thing.” Jake’s hand moved to the laptop and closed it. “We come back strong. That’s all.”
“Jake.” Chris took a long pull from his cola and set it down on the table. He pushed the burger across without looking up. “You’re like a brother to me. You know that.” He picked up a fry and put it down again. “You’ve watched this happen to other people. You know how it usually ends.” The burger sat untouched between them. “The apology video is done. What are we actually talking about doing here?”
Jake dragged both hands back through his hair and held them there. “If we find the right location—somewhere actually undocumented, actually turns out to be credible—we come back from this.” He watched Chris’s face. “You told me yourself you love doing this.” Chris looked down at the untouched burger between them. “I do,” he said. “That’s not what I’m saying.” Jake pulled the laptop back open. A notification had appeared at the top of the screen, bright against the dark.
Jake took his laptop into his bedroom and flopped onto his unmade bed, the sheets still tangled from last night. The red notification pulsed softly in the upper right corner of his screen like a tiny, persistent wound. He guided the cursor over it with a trembling hand and clicked. An email from a sponsor offering an all-expenses-paid trip to a former psychiatric hospital slated for demolition. A video file was attached. He hit play.
Grainy security footage showed a long hallway, its green linoleum floor scuffed and littered with debris, walls stained with what looked like water damage. Halfway down, a heavy metal door swung inward slowly, as if pushed by an unseen hand. Jake leaned closer, squinting. For just a frame or two, a pale, indistinct face appeared in the narrowing gap behind the door—then it was gone. It didn’t pull back or retreat; it simply dissolved into the darkness.
He typed his reply before he had fully decided to. He closed the laptop and sat with it on his chest in the dark for a moment, listening to Chris moving around in the other room. Then he opened the door. Chris was on the couch, a burger wrapper balled up on the table, scrolling through his phone with his shoes off. “What if we just filmed something low-stakes?” Jake said. “Road trip, whatever. Nothing goes up. We—get back to why we started doing this.” Chris didn’t look up from his phone right away. When he did, his expression was unreadable.
“How are we going to afford something like that?” Chris asked. Jake turned the laptop around to face him. Chris leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and read. His expression didn’t change much, but he reached out and scrolled down once. “All expenses paid,” Jake said. Chris sat back. The shoes he’d kicked off were still on the floor in front of him. He looked at them for a moment, then reached down and picked up his camera from beside the couch. He turned it over in his hands. “Alright,” he said. “We could use a getaway.”
Jake went back to his room and dragged his duffel out from the top shelf of the closet. He tossed it onto the bed and stood over it for a moment. Through the wall he could hear Chris setting his camera down on the counter, the familiar two-note sound of it. He started packing—extra batteries, the wide-angle lens, the portable recorder. He had not mentioned the video file. He told himself Chris would see it eventually.
