Page 59 of Stay Scared

“Watching Owen keep his eyes where I put them.”

Ash waits before answering.

I step closer. He gives me no space and takes none either.

“You hated it.”

“I hated knowing he had months of you I never saw.”

“Because he watched.”

“Because he knows you from it.”

I move close enough that the front of his shirt nearly brushes my jacket. “He knows because he watched me without asking.”

“I understand the distinction.”

“And you built your protocol from what he brought you.”

“I did.”

“You wanted to see what I looked like when the audience disappeared.”

Ash keeps his eyes on mine.

“Owen already had.”

His hand flexes once at his side.

I leave him there and return to the monitor.

Owen glances between us before enlarging the source directory.

One folder sits inside the cloned system.

FINAL GIRL: 01.

Prerecorded loops appear as thumbnails for the queue, the red room, Cade’s memory house, the carnival maze, and the ride-tunnel rehearsal. More folders carry section names I haven’t reached yet.

Someone prepared enough false footage to replace the rest of the night.

I lean closer to the screen. “Could this have been built from inside your company?”

Owen’s hands stop over the keyboard. “Someone with my architecture could build it.”

I glance toward Ash. He is still close enough that turning puts us nearly shoulder to shoulder.

“What about either of you?”

Owen answers before Ash can. “Ash can operate what I build. He can’t reproduce this.”

Ash looks toward him. “That was unnecessarily insulting.”

“You don’t write code.”

“I understand the system.”

“You understand the outcome you want from the system.”