The Fracture

The door closed behind Anna with a soft click that felt like a cell locking.
For a long moment, no one moved. They sat in those five chairs, staring at the empty platform where Anna had been, listening to the hum of cameras recording their every breath.
Then Aaron exploded.
"This is insane!" He shot to his feet, pacing like a caged animal. "We can't actually be considering this. We can't—she's asking us to destroy our lives!"
"She's asking us to tell the truth," Kyle said quietly.
"The truth?" Aaron whirled on him. "The truth is that we were seventeen years old! Kids who made a stupid mistake! That's not worth throwing away everything we've built!"
"Everything we built on her suffering," Paige pointed out. Her voice was calm, clinical, but Riley could see her hands trembling in her lap.
"That's not fair—"
"Isn't it?" Paige looked up at Aaron. "Kyle got into Northwestern on a journalism scholarship. The same scholarship committee that praised his 'commitment to truth in reporting'—the article he wrote calling Anna a liar. You think he would have gotten that without Harrison's recommendation letter?"
Kyle flinched but didn't argue.
"And you, Aaron. You became student body president after the Anna situation. Made you look like a strong leader who protected the school's reputation. That went on your college applications. Your law school applications. Everything you have now started with that moment."
"What about you?" Aaron shot back. "You're a doctor now. You think that happened in a vacuum? You used Anna's medical records to build your peer counseling resume!"
"I know," Paige said, her voice cracking for the first time. "I know exactly what I did. That's why I'm saying—maybe we deserve this."
"Deserve to die?" Aaron's voice pitched higher. "You think we deserve to die?"
"I think we deserve consequences," Paige corrected. "For once in ten years."
Riley listened to them argue, feeling detached, like she was watching a play. Her mind kept circling back to Anna's face. The way her mouth struggled to form words. The permanent damage written in every drooped muscle, every careful movement.
"We should confess," Nicole said suddenly. She'd been silent until now, curled up in her chair like she was trying to disappear. "We should just... do what she wants."
"Are you insane?" Aaron stared at her. "Do you understand what that means? I'd be disbarred. Kyle would lose his job. Riley would lose her sponsors, her followers, everything. Paige could lose her medical license. And you—you work with kids, Nicole. You counsel them. What do you think happens when parents find out what you did?"
"What I deserve," Nicole whispered. "What we all deserve."
"Stop saying that!" Aaron's face was red now. "We don't deserve this! We were kids!"
"So was Anna," Riley heard herself say.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"We keep saying we were kids," Riley continued, her voice sounding distant even to her own ears. "Like that excuses it. But Anna was a kid too. A kid who asked for help and got destroyed instead."
"That doesn't mean we have to destroy ourselves now," Aaron insisted.
"Doesn't it?" Riley stood, facing him. "I've spent ten years building a brand, Aaron. Do you know what it's based on? Authenticity. Being real. Being honest. That's literally what I sell to my followers. And it's all a lie. Because the most real, most honest thing about me is that I'm a coward who destroyed someone's life to protect myself."
"So what?" Aaron threw his hands up. "You want to confess? Go ahead. But don't drag the rest of us down with you."
"We're already down," Kyle said. He was staring at the cameras. "We've been down for ten years. We just pretended we weren't."
Aaron looked around at them, something like panic crossing his face. "You're all seriously considering this? Letting some brain-damaged girl ruin our lives because of something that happened a decade ago?"
The room went dead silent.
"Did you really just say that?" Paige's voice was ice.
Aaron seemed to realize what he'd said. "I didn't mean—I just meant—"
"You meant exactly what you said," Kyle interrupted. "That's how you see her. Brain-damaged. Less than. Someone whose pain doesn't matter as much as your career."
"That's not—"
"It is," Riley said. She felt something shifting inside her, some weight she'd been carrying finally breaking loose. "That's exactly how we all saw her back then. Like she didn't matter. Like her truth was less important than our comfort."
"I'm not doing this," Aaron said flatly. "I'm not confessing to anything. And whoever the insider is—" he looked around at them, "—you better reveal yourself right now because we need to figure out how to get out of here."
Silence.
"Come on!" Aaron's voice cracked. "One of you drugged us. Brought us here. Helped set this up. Who was it?"
Riley studied the others. Kyle met her gaze steadily. Paige looked away. Nicole was crying again, but that didn't mean anything—Nicole had been crying since Room Three.
"Maybe it doesn't matter," Riley said.
"Doesn't matter?" Aaron stared at her. "Of course it matters! They betrayed us!"
"Did they?" Riley asked. "Or did they just... do what we should have done ten years ago? Face what we did?"
"By kidnapping us? By threatening to kill us?"
"We threatened to kill Anna," Riley said quietly. "Not with pills or knives. But with rumors and lies and isolation. We just did it slowly. Over six months. Until she wanted to die."
"That's different—"
"Is it?"
Aaron looked around desperately, searching for support. He found none.
"Fine," he said finally. "You all want to throw your lives away? Go ahead. But I'm finding a way out of here."
He stalked toward the door Anna had exited through. It was locked.
He tried the entrance they'd come through. Also locked.
"There has to be another way," he muttered, examining the walls, looking for seams, weaknesses, anything.
The others watched him in silence.
Riley walked to one of the cameras and sat down in front of it. The red recording light blinked steadily.
"What are you doing?" Paige asked.
"Testing something." Riley looked directly into the lens. "Anna, if you're watching—I want to talk about what happened. Really talk. Not a forced confession. Just... a conversation. You and me. Would you do that?"
Nothing happened.
"Anna?" Riley tried again. "Please?"
The speaker crackled to life. "No," Anna's voice said. "No conversations. No negotiations. Confess or... die. Those are... the only options."
"But—"
The speaker cut off.
Riley slumped in the chair. It had been a long shot anyway.
Kyle moved to sit beside her, facing another camera. "If we're going to do this," he said, "we should do it together. All at once. Not let Aaron hold out and then..."
He didn't finish the sentence, but Riley understood. If even one of them refused, they all died.
"Aaron," Paige called out. He was still examining the walls, looking increasingly frantic. "Aaron, stop. There's no way out."
"There has to be—"
"There isn't." Paige's voice was firm. "We're locked in. We have less than ten hours. And at the end of those ten hours, if we haven't confessed, we die. Those are the facts."
"So you're just giving up?" Aaron turned to face them. "Just accepting this?"
"I'm accepting reality," Paige said. "Something we should have done ten years ago."
"What about you, Nicole?" Aaron looked at her desperately. "You've been quiet. You're the insider, aren't you? You have to be. You were Anna's best friend. You feel the most guilt. It makes sense—"
"It's not me," Nicole said, but her voice wavered.
"Prove it."
"I can't. But it's not me."
Aaron's laugh was slightly hysterical. "So we're just supposed to trust each other? When we know one of us has been lying this whole time?"
"Maybe trust isn't the point," Kyle said. "Maybe the point is accepting that we're all guilty. Whether someone helped Anna or not—we're all guilty of what happened to her."
The countdown clock on the wall ticked down: 09:23:47.
Nine hours and twenty-three minutes to decide.
Riley thought about her followers. The brand deals. The perfect Instagram life she'd curated. All of it built on a foundation of forgetting.
She thought about Anna, struggling to speak, to move, to exist in a body that no longer worked right.
She thought about the rumor she'd started. The first domino that had toppled all the others.
"I'll do it," she said suddenly. "I'll confess. On camera. Everything."
"Riley—" Paige started.
"No, I mean it. I'll go first. Maybe if I do, the rest of you will..."
She didn't finish. Didn't know how to finish.
Aaron was shaking his head. "You're making a mistake. We still have time. We can find a way out. We can—"
"Can what?" Riley asked. "Force Anna to let us go? She's been planning this for who knows how long. You really think she didn't account for us trying to escape?"
"The insider could help us," Aaron insisted. "Whoever they are, they have access. They know how things work. They could—"
"Could what?" Paige interrupted. "Betray Anna? After helping her this far? Why would they?"
"Because they're one of us!" Aaron's voice was desperate now. "They're going to die too if we don't figure this out!"
"Unless their confession was already recorded," Kyle said slowly. "Anna said the insider would get clemency. Maybe they already made their confession. Maybe they're not in danger at all."
The implication hung in the air.
One of them was safe. One of them had already saved themselves by betraying the others.
"Who?" Aaron demanded. "Who would do that?"
Riley looked at each of them in turn.
Kyle, who'd always been the moral one, the journalist committed to truth.
Paige, who'd spent ten years as a doctor, taking an oath to do no harm after causing so much.
Nicole, consumed by guilt, barely functioning under the weight of it.
Or could it be Aaron himself, making a show of resistance to hide his complicity?
Or even Riley, her memory more fractured than the others?
"It doesn't matter," she said finally. "Whoever it is, they made their choice. Now we have to make ours."
She turned to face the camera fully.
"I'm Riley Chen," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "Ten years ago, when I was seventeen, I destroyed a girl's life. Her name was Anna Morrison, and she came to me for help. Instead of helping her, I started a rumor that—"
"Stop!" Aaron lunged forward, trying to cover the camera. "Don't do this! Once you say it, you can't take it back!"
Riley pushed his hand away. "I know. That's the point."
"You're insane. You're all insane."
"Maybe," Riley agreed. "Or maybe we're finally sane for the first time in ten years."
She looked back at the camera, ready to continue.
But before she could speak, the lights went out.
Complete darkness.
And in that darkness, someone screamed.
---
**End of Chapter 7**