John explains that his group’s leader, Stu, sent Dani and Colette to the basement to retrieve phones from dead staff, then went to the mezzanine himself, leaving John alone with no one to verify his version of events. He produces a first aid kit he found at a bar; Billie informs him of two new bodies, visibly rattling him. The group briefly debates whether Stu or Campbell is responsible, but Wes cuts the speculation short and insists they focus on finding a way out. Laurie suggests she and Jamie reconstruct the club’s floor plan from memory, as both spent considerable time there when it operated as Cravin’.

Working around the dead coat check attendant, Jamie retrieves paper while Laurie sketches. Jamie outlines the rest of the survival rules: stay hidden longer than instinct says, always carry a weapon, avoid dark spaces, never separate, watch your back, and don’t run upstairs. Annoyed, Billie calls the rules worthless. Laurie sharply defends Jamie’s expertise. Billie retreats to a booth with Jennifer while Laurie and Jamie finish their sketch. Jamie adds a hidden corridor she recalls from a past visit.

With John’s help, the group refines the map. Jamie notes that Dani and Colette still haven’t returned from the basement, and Wes volunteers to check on them. Laurie stops Jamie from accompanying him, unwilling to be left alone or go back downstairs. Billie volunteers instead, reasoning that women in hiding will be less alarmed by another woman. While preparations are made, Jamie nervously braids rubber bands from the desk. Laurie reassures her not to downplay her expertise, and Jamie privately anticipates the typical second-act progression: escalating kills, direct confrontation with the killer, further group fracture, and more deaths.

Before Wes leaves, Jamie ties her braided elastic into a wristlet that secures his chair-leg weapon to his wrist, preventing him from dropping it: a common fatal error in slasher films. Wes calls her incredible, then begins to apologize for how their date ended before Curtis was killed. Jamie gives Wes the map, and he counts silently to three before descending the stairs. John apologizes to Jamie for not stopping his group from splitting up and promises to act more boldly.

On the mezzanine, Jamie, Laurie, John, and Jennifer settle into booths with a view of both staircases. Jennifer raises questions about the killer’s identity and the rose petals. A scraping sound from a nearby corridor prompts John to investigate alone before Jamie can stop him. As he leaves, “he says over his shoulder, ‘I’ll be right back’” (122)—a phrase Jamie recognizes as a death sentence in slasher films.

Ten minutes pass with no sign of John. Jamie tells Laurie and Jennifer she will check on him and return in five minutes. Deeper in the corridor, a distinct thudding and wet sound leads her down an unfamiliar hallway. She finds the killer at the far end, driving a blade repeatedly into one of the evening’s male daters. As she gasps, the killer pauses and turns. He wears a hot-pink ski mask with a zipper where his mouth should be and heart-shaped eyeholes. The moment she registers the hearts, her immobility breaks—she drops her bottle and shoes and runs.

Jamie sprints back, yelling for Laurie and Jennifer to run. In the chaos, Laurie’s broken bottle accidentally slices open Jamie’s bicep. They bypass the stairs and run deeper into the VIP section, ducking into an empty private room and hiding behind the bar. The killer enters the doorway. Jamie notices drops of her own blood leading directly to their position. Above Laurie, a martini glass that they disturbed when they hid begins to teeter on the edge of the bar as the killer circles the room at an unhurried pace.

Jamie thrusts her hand out and catches the glass silently. The killer re-clips the velvet rope across the entrance and leaves. Following her own rule, Jamie waits well past the point where it feels safe before standing. She finds something new on a table: a crimson rose in a silver ice bucket beside a folded card bearing a misquoted Taylor Swift lyric in handwriting she recognizes from one of the daters’ name tags, confirming the killer is one of the evening’s men. Jamie concludes that the murders are a twisted romantic gesture aimed at someone the killer met tonight, and that the target is likely one of the three women now in the room. The group arms themselves with corkscrews and heads back toward the stairs, where Wes and Billie return from the basement. Wes has fresh bloodstains on his shirt and is now holding a blood-tipped knife.

Alarmed by the knife, Jamie steps back. Wes raises his hands and stays on the stairs. Dani appears behind him, tearful: She says she and Colette split up in the basement, but Colette never came back. Wes explains that when they found Dani hidden, she panicked and stabbed him with a bottle, causing only a minor wound. Downstairs, he found no exits, phones, or usable tools, and he retrieved the knife from the dead host’s body. More critically, he discovered that the emergency exit lights had been removed and every security camera coated in spray paint, confirming the attack was arranged in advance.

With Laurie’s approval, Wes tends to Jamie’s arm wound in a booth. Jamie describes the mezzanine encounter, and Jennifer shows the others the rose and card. Quietly, Jamie tells Wes that the killer—whom she privately names Heart Eyes—wears a pink mask with heart-shaped eyeholes, then shares her developing theory that the killings are secondary to some larger aim. Wes puts it plainly: To the killer, tonight is not a slasher—it is a romance.

Jamie and Wes agree the situation resembles a grotesque romantic scenario from the killer’s perspective. Wes connects the events to an earlier string of murders, suggesting the killer has been eliminating women who fail to match his ideal while searching for the right one. Jamie explains the Final Girl concept and expands the theory: The killer may want a woman who is simultaneously a Final Girl and a rom-com Leading Lady.

While treating a minor cut on Wes’s collarbone, Jamie gets a brief view of a tattoo and feels a pull of attraction. Billie demands that the group identify which woman is the killer’s target. Wes notices something on the dance floor below: Colette’s intestines have been arranged into a large heart, with Jamie’s name spelled out in cursive inside it. Laurie vomits. Billie looks at Jamie and says she must have made quite an impression.

The revelation that she is the killer’s target horrifies Jamie. Billie immediately refuses to stay near her and walks off alone. Jamie suggests the others follow suit and distance themselves from her for their safety, but Laurie refuses, arguing that every death so far has occurred when people were separated from Jamie—making her, counterintuitively, the group’s best protection. Jennifer and Dani agree to stay.

Wes produces two match cards retrieved from the basement, and the group works through each male dater as a suspect: Stu clashed openly with Jamie; Ari, Jason, and Michael left little impression; Lee was visibly interested in a different woman; John is still unaccounted for; Wes has a verified alibi; and Campbell had no real interaction with Jamie but disappeared suspiciously. Wes raises the possibility that the killer developed his fixation on sight alone, before any conversation. The discussion is interrupted when John appears on the dance floor below, disheveled but alive.

Wes confronts an out-of-breath John when he reaches the mezzanine. John explains he found an unmapped staircase and became disoriented. When he heard Jamie scream, he panicked. Jennifer comforts him. When he spots the intestines displayed on the dance floor and pieces together the name, he turns to Jamie in shock. When Laurie announces she urgently needs the bathroom, the group heads for the first-floor bathrooms John had located earlier.

John, Dani, and Jennifer enter first while Jamie, Laurie, and Wes stand guard in the hall. A dark figure flickers past the far end of the hallway. Laurie thinks it may be Billie. Against Jamie’s protests, Wes decides to follow, arguing they may need to bend the slasher movie rules to prevent more deaths. He counts down from three alongside Jamie and heads into the corridor.