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The men text about how Ashley is participating not to prove a point to Jocelyn, but because she’s incredibly competitive.

At the laser tag event in the forest behind Royce’s estate, the men personally tested all equipment to ensure safety. Teams were randomly assigned with Ashley and Carly overseeing the process; Ashley ended up opposing all four men. Ashley and Carly are on the same team, with Carly’s boyfriend Ed on the green team alongside Nate and Royce.

Ashley successfully takes out a purple team player. Returning to find Carly, she overhears her friend having a sexual encounter with Ed in the woods. Ashley continues alone, reassuring herself that Jocelyn remains imprisoned at Clearview.

While catching her breath, a masked figure without a vest or gun appears. The figure removes its mask, revealing Jocelyn’s face and taunting Ashley. Terrified, Ashley falls into a bush; when she recovers, the figure has vanished. She convinces herself it was a paranoid hallucination. However, she soon encounters another robed figure without equipment. Panicked, she runs as the figure seems to move impossibly fast, appearing ahead of her repeatedly. Finally, someone tackles her to the ground, laughing. It is Royce, who says he thought they were playing a chase game. Overwhelmed, Ashley bursts into tears.

Ashley receives a supportive text from her mother, who mentions she and Max are with Ashley’s dad. 

Ashley sobs in Royce’s arms as he apologizes, explaining he called out to her multiple times, thinking she knew it was him. When Royce mentions he thought it was a consensual chase scenario, the situation turns sexual.

They begin having sex while wearing their masks and robes. Royce asks permission to film the encounter with his phone, and Ashley agrees. A second masked, likely Carter, man joins them and has sex with her as well. Two more men, who she assumes are Heath and Nate, also find them and join.

After all five are done having sex, Royce kisses her and tells her he loves her. Feeling herself about to pass out from the intensity, Ashley is picked up by Nate. She feels safe in his arms.

Abigail texts Ashley with a warning that Ashley should’ve watched her back and there will be consequences.

Heath carries Ashley piggyback to the house, where Carly greets them and reveals the Blue team won the laser tag game. After Ashley showers alone, Heath returns with alarming news: Nate is missing. The laser tag equipment and Nate’s phone were found abandoned at the forest’s edge.

Ashley checks her phone and finds the text from Abigail. Heath summons Royce and Carter. Royce calls his Uncle Henry on speakerphone, who reveals devastating news: Jocelyn escaped Clearview during a level-three prison riot that day, along with six other inmates.

Ashley receives another text from an unknown number. Carter reads it but refuses to share the content. When Ashley demands to see it, she discovers Jocelyn is offering a trade: Ashley for Nate. The men adamantly refuse to consider it, but Ashley insists it is not their decision to make. Heath asks how Nate would feel if she died to save him. Ashley replies that he would be alive, and that is all that matters. She locks herself in the bathroom and texts Jocelyn, agreeing to the trade.

Jocelyn sends two taunting texts to Max, revealing she knows he faked his death in a plane crash and threatening that Ashley will soon be dead. 

Nate wakes bound to a chair in his childhood home, which Jocelyn secretly purchased through a shell corporation. She claims her actions are revolutionary science to change governmental control. Nate calls her delusional, insisting it is revenge over the divorce, but Jocelyn maintains she is conducting groundbreaking experiments.

Jocelyn reveals Nate is bait. She records a video showing a bomb beneath his chair and sends it to Ashley, threatening to detonate if anyone accompanies her. While Jocelyn is gone, Nate desperately works to free his wrists, causing them to bleed.

Ashley arrives alone. After assessing the bomb, she smiles and whispers a code word, “Breach,” into her hoodie cuff. Jocelyn snaps her fingers in Ashley’s face, activating a deep hypnotic suggestion. As gunshots sound outside, Jocelyn barricades the door and explains she has been conditioning Ashley for weeks, especially at Mallard Psychiatric Hospital.

Jocelyn hands Ashley a gun and orders her to shoot herself in the head. Ashley obeys without resistance, raising the gun to her temple. Jocelyn stops her, concluding the stakes are too low. She then orders Ashley to shoot Nate. This time, Ashley visibly fights the command, her hand shaking as she slowly aims at Nate. Jocelyn gloats that Ashley’s resistance proves her experiment’s success.

Resigned to his fate, Nate tells Ashley he loves her and calls her Layne. Recognition flickers in Ashley’s eyes at the name. Moments later, the gun fires—but Ashley has shot Jocelyn instead of Nate. As reinforcements breach the door, Nate frees himself, takes the gun, and pulls her into his arms. Ashley sobs that she almost killed him, then tells him she loves him too.

Carter texts Ashley to describe how much he loves her.

Sixteen hours after the shooting, Royce receives a call from his father: Jocelyn survived surgery but is in a coma. Nate is sickened by the news, fearing she will wake up. Exhausted, Ashley goes to bed with Carly sitting watch. She has nightmares, but Nate joins her and provides comfort. Over the next two weeks, Max and Carina return home, and Ashley and Nate stay with them for several days before returning to their apartment.

Two weeks after the shooting, they learn Jocelyn is awake and stable enough for transfer. The next day, Ashley, Nate, and Max visit her at Orpington Psychiatric Detention Center. They find Jocelyn in a wheelchair with no recognition in her eyes, acting childlike. She is obsessed with feeding imaginary ducks in an empty pond. Max explains that her CT scan shows irreparable brain damage; doctors believe she will never remember her former life, though she will be closely monitored.

As they are leaving the detention center, Ashley asks Max about Abigail. Max reveals that Mallard Psychiatric Hospital burned down in a suspicious electrical fire the night after Jocelyn’s attack. Only staff bodies were found; all patients escaped or were moved, and all records were destroyed.

After arriving home, Ashley receives a text from Abigail containing a selfie. The photo shows a lucid Abigail in a guard uniform at Orpington, posing behind the catatonic Jocelyn. Abigail’s message states she will watch over Jocelyn to keep them safe and advises Ashley to seek therapy.

Royce’s mother Katie texts Ashley to thank her, saying she’s proud to call Ashley family.

Two years later, the group vacations in Mauritius. While Nate performs oral sex on her, Ashley watches the video from the laser tag night. After, they rush to a private airstrip for a surprise activity Ashley planned to celebrate her and Royce’s recent graduation: skydiving. Carter is terrified despite having completed certification training in a wind tunnel, which allows them all to jump independently rather than in tandem with instructors.

Ashley reflects on recent updates: Jocelyn remains catatonic under Abigail’s watch at Orpington, and Royce’s mother Katie was released from prison a year earlier after serving twenty-five years—she had been one of Jocelyn’s first victims. The group has been regularly seeing their therapist, Dr. Amina, in both individual and group sessions.

The five of them link hands in the plane and jump together. Free-falling above the turquoise Mauritius ocean, Ashley reflects that they are hurtling toward their future, leaving their trauma behind. She muses that, in a strange way, confronting mortality together has brought them profound happiness, even as she hopes Jocelyn remains haunted by imaginary ducks for the rest of her days.