Shawn is shot dead in the street while Will and Tony wait out the gunfire nearby.

Will's mother weeps through the night after Shawn's death, while Will refuses to cry per The Rules.

Will discovers a gun hidden in Shawn's middle dresser drawer.

Will decides to kill Riggs, the Dark Suns gang member he believes shot Shawn.

Will sneaks past his sleeping mother and presses the elevator button to go down to the lobby.

Buck's ghost appears in the elevator, revealing he is Shawn's dead mentor and has come to check on his gun.

Buck taunts Will repeatedly, insisting Will does not have what it takes to follow The Rules.

Dani's ghost boards the elevator at floor six and asks Will, "What if you miss?"

Uncle Mark's ghost grabs Will in a sudden headlock as he boards the elevator.

Uncle Mark forces Will to visualize every step of killing Riggs, refusing to let him stop at the gunshot.

Will's father Mikey boards the elevator and wraps Will in a long-awaited hug.

Mikey takes the gun from Will's waistband and holds it to Will's head to show him what facing sudden death feels like.

Frick boards the elevator and Buck identifies him as the man who murdered Buck.

Shawn's ghost boards at the second floor and openly weeps, breaking The Rules he taught Will.

The elevator doors open at the lobby and Shawn looks back at Will, asking "You coming?"

Will Holloman's brother Shawn is shot dead in the street, sending Will into a grief he cannot express through tears. Forbidden from crying by The Rules, Will finds Shawn's hidden gun and decides to kill the man he holds responsible for Shawn's death. He slips into the elevator and begins his descent — but a series of ghosts force him to confront the violence he is about to commit. Shawn's mentor Buck questions his toughness, childhood friend Dani asks what happens if he misses, and Uncle Mark refuses to let him stop imagining the consequences. Will's father Mikey holds a gun to his head to show him what it feels like to be on the wrong end of revenge. When Shawn's own ghost appears and openly weeps, the elevator reaches the lobby and the novel closes on an unanswered question.

The headline events of Will's elevator ride toward revenge.

Police question neighbors after Shawn's shooting, but gunshots have made everyone "deaf and blind."

A white chalk outline on the pavement is all that remains after Shawn's body is removed from the street.

Will sits in their shared bedroom, remembering Shawn's playful headlocks that always felt like hugs.

Will learns Shawn was shot while carrying medicated soap for his mother's eczema from a store on Riggs's block.

Will wakes the morning after Shawn's death, loads the gun into his waistband, and tiptoes past his sleeping mother.

Buck tells Will he instructed Shawn to hide the gun somewhere Will would never find it.

Will gradually recognizes the adult woman in the elevator as his childhood crush, Dani.

After Dani's death, Shawn teaches Will Rule No. 1 — no crying — while Will stands in the shower wanting to destroy something.

Uncle Mark reveals he started selling drugs to replace a video camera that had been stolen from him.

Uncle Mark insists the cycle of violence has no stopping point, saying "It's never the end."

Mikey confesses he was too paralyzed by grief over Mark's death to function as a father or husband.

Mikey admits he shot Gee, an innocent flunky, instead of the man who actually killed Mark.

Buck tells the story of Frick shooting him in the stomach during a gang initiation robbery.

Will learns that Shawn killed Frick in revenge, using the missing bullet from the gun Will now carries.

Shawn's ghost boards the elevator but refuses to speak or answer any of Will's desperate questions.

The aftermath of Shawn's shooting reveals a neighborhood where silence is law and cooperation with police is unthinkable, leaving only a chalk outline where a young man died. Will processes his grief surrounded by his brother's belongings and memories before arming himself and slipping away the next morning. In the elevator, the ghosts slowly unpack the history of the gun Will carries — how Buck hid it from Will, how Dani's death first taught Will to suppress his emotions, and how Uncle Mark's decision to sell drugs set a fatal chain of events in motion. Mikey's confession that he killed an innocent man during his own act of revenge shows Will the devastating cost of blind vigilante justice. The full account of how Shawn came to kill Frick — and how the same logic now drives Will — reveals a cycle Will is on the verge of repeating.

The supporting moments that shape Will's world and his elevator visitors.

Leticia, Shawn's girlfriend, screams over his fallen body in the street, hoping her voice might keep him alive.

Will stares at the night sky hoping the moon will comfort him, but concludes that nothing is ever new where he lives.

Will notices the anagram SCARE = CARES on his bedroom wall while sitting alone with his grief.

Riggs bragged to Shawn about joining the Dark Suns and warned him to stay off the block where the soap store is.

Buck reveals he was the original owner of the gun and the one who gave it to Shawn.

Dani eerily tells Will "But I do know you, Will" before he has recognized who she is.

Will recalls Dani dying on the playground while Shawn threw his body over both of them to shield them from bullets.

Uncle Mark reveals that his filmmaking hobby was the reason Will's parents ever met each other.

Will admits to his father "I don't know what to do" — his first honest moment of vulnerability in the elevator.

Mikey describes assuming the man on the corner "had to be" Mark's killer, directly mirroring Will's own logic about Riggs.

Mikey reveals he was shot dead at a payphone shortly after the killing, leaving Will fatherless at age three.

Mikey and Uncle Mark look at Will with hollow eyes caught between guilt and grief after telling their story.

Tony, Will's best friend, told Shawn who killed Buck, which set Shawn on his own path of revenge.

Everyone in the elevator laughs as Buck and Frick treat their mutual story of murder as a dark joke.

Will says "I thought you said no crying, Shawn" as his brother weeps openly and without shame in the elevator.

From the moment Leticia screams over Shawn's body, a series of quiet turning points begin to unravel the certainty behind Will's plan. Backstory revelations — Riggs's warning to Shawn, Buck's original ownership of the gun, the way Mark's filmmaking connected Will's parents — show how deeply violence and love are interwoven in this family's history. Dani's eerie recognition of Will, and Will's memory of watching her die, force him to confront the unintended harm that bullets cause to innocent bystanders. His father Mikey's confession exposes the same reckless logic Will is now using, and Mikey's death at a payphone shortly after his act of revenge shows Will exactly what his future could look like. The hollow guilt Mikey and Mark share, and the elevator's dark laughter at a chain of killings, reveal the senseless momentum of The Rules. When Shawn finally weeps openly, he breaks everything Will has built his grief around and offers a different kind of answer.