“That’s the variable. That’s the only difference,” he mutters to himself. “I have to recreate the first session.”

A sense akin to dread crawls over me, a million hairy spider legs walking over my skin. My flesh is tight and hot at the thought of experiencing that torture again. “Alex.” I try to get his attention, but he’s absorbed in his work. “Alex—”

With a jolt, he looks up from the screen. “We’re wasting time,” he says. “The anesthesia affects the molecular structure of the compound. The only way to achieve breakthrough is to recreate the first treatment. But this time, at a higher level.”

I’m weak and exhausted and damn near broken—but I can’t just give in, give up. I get to my feet and lift my chin, ready for when Alex comes for me with what fight I have left.

He stops far enough away that I can’t touch him. He removes his glasses, placing them on the cart, then takes me in curiously. I’m wearing the same clothes I had on the day before. I plan to wear them again tomorrow. I’ve stopped caring to wash my hair, and it’s a snarled mess with grown out dark roots. But he’s looking at me like he sees none of it. Not the dark circles under my eyes. Not the pallor of my skin.

No, to Alex—right here in this moment of maddening discovery—I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

I’m his answer.

And when he moves toward me, I lash out with all the fight that my body can muster.

In the end, it’s not enough. I’m subdued and dragged to that gurney where he injects me with his cocktail brain drug, and my heart careens against my chest as I see those paddles coming closer.

“Everything in nature has a defense mechanism,” he says, a crazed gleam in his eyes. “You’re strong, Blakely. Stubborn. The most resilient subject. Your mind refuses to crack. But even the strongest defense mechanism can be broken. Just have to find your weakness.”

I try to push myself below consciousness, to some distant place far away from him and this hell. But when the current comes, I feel every electrifying pulse. My body is a lightning rod for pain.

I hear music. Cords plucked in a frenzy, bows scraped across strings at an earsplitting decimal. An agonizing symphony of torture, and Alex the conductor.

A scream claws past the guard in my mouth, and it doesn’t stop until my throat flames raw. Alex dials the voltage up until my body can no longer withstand the torment, and mercifully, this psychotic level of hell goes black.

Tiny pinholes of light bathe an endless expanse above.

I’m weightless. Bodiless. There’s no pain, no memory. Only the knowledge of existence, and the cool sensation of touch. Dark puffs move across what I now realize is the night sky, and the serenity is smashed.

For a brief moment, I thought I was dead.

I curl my fingers toward my palms and hear a distinct splash.

I’m suspended in water. Then the feel of his arms beneath me comes into my awareness. I stare at the stars to shut out the reality that I’m still here, locked in Alex’s realm of torture and madness. I want the river to swallow me.

Nyctophobia is the fear of night. I learned that from Alex, who is full of trivia when it comes to the brain and phobias. My mind is spinning with useless thoughts.

“Who could fear the night?” I suppose I say this out loud, because suddenly Alex’s face materializes from above.

“More than ten percent of adults have a fear of the dark,” he says. His face is shadowed. He’s a dark silhouette against the cobalt sky.

I look into his eyes—that are brilliant despite the absence of light—and then turn my head away. Water covers my ear, and I appreciate that it muffles half my hearing.

“When you didn’t wake up, I thought the water would help revive you.”

He’s searching for approval, or some kind of acceptance from me. I can hear it in the frail tone of his voice, that irritating need for forgiveness.

He’s like some sinister version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and this is his Jekyll side, trying to mitigate the damage.

The more awake I become, the more I feel that damage. My muscles are weak and tender, my head throbs as sharp pain ricochets around my skull. I remove my hand from the water to touch my temple. The skin there is rough. Scorched, I think. From over four hundred volts of electricity.

“I have a cream to treat the burn,” he says, as I move out of his grasp, my feet searching for the riverbed.

I remember him applying that electrode jelly shit to my temples before he ruthlessly clamped the paddles to my head. It didn’t work then, and I don’t care about the scars now.

“How do you feel?”

The same. Only tired, and bruised, and submerged in a thick layer of indifference. I want to sink beneath the water and never come up. But as the tiny pricks of light project a glow over the rocks, I can see the shadow on the wall. How this all works. Suddenly, the answer is illuminated by the faintest stars.

It’s faded and hard to grasp—but it’s there, the solution, buried just below the gauze shrouding my thoughts.

I bury my face in my wet hands, clearing some of the fog.

Alex would never fall for a ploy so basic. But really, if I fail, I’ll have lost nothing. It’s a chance—and that’s a reason to try.

“I feel strange,” I say, as I wade through the water. I notice where the trickling is stemming from, and look up at a cascade of water sheeting over a jutted crag in the rock face.

“Strange how?” Alex probes. “Immediate side effects should wear off within a day.”

My gaze stays on the waterfall. “I don’t know, just strange. My chest feels heavy, but it’s not in a terrible way. I want to go into the waterfall. It’s so beautiful and serene.”

“Blakely, you’re worrying me. Maybe I should take you back—”

I push through the water toward him and grasp his face between both hands. I stare up, making my eyes wide, my lips trembling from the cold and onslaught of emotion. And before I say what’s right on the edge, I hear Mrs. Fisher’s voice in my head.

Cruelty is a disease, Lauraleigh. It will fester inside you like cancer.

This may be the cruelest thing I’ll ever do, but Alex has earned my cruelty.

“If I could rip your throat out right now, I would. I would carve out your jugular and watch your blood stain the water, and I would feel….nothing.”

Alex swallows, his throat works hard, his gaze unwavering. “Then what’s stopping you?”

I crush my body to his and run my fingers through his damp hair. The spray off the waterfall makes the droplets look like the stars in the dark sky. I lick my lips slowly, tasting the river water, and his eyes fall to my mouth.

“What you did to me…what you’ve been doing to me…” I trail off. “No one has ever done such things. No one would ever dare hurt me the way you have. No one would, because no one cares about me that much to try to help—” My voice cracks, and I glance down at the ripples of water barely separating us.

His hands are clamped to my shoulders, holding me at bay. When I look up at him, his brow is furrowed as he studies my expression. I wonder if he can discern the lie there—if I have a tell that he’s already labeled in his journal.

“We should go back to the lab.” He looks past me. “Run tests. Get updated scans.”

I smile at that. “I said you were the rabbit.”

His fingers press into my skin. “I don’t understand—”

“Did you ever realize how Alice never stopped…couldn’t stop chasing the rabbit? It was a compulsion. Even though that world was crazy and frightening, she kept chasing. You’re not the rabbit, Alex. You’re Alice. Chasing your compulsion to some deranged Wonderland.”

His hands drag over my shoulders and slowly travel up to clasp my face between his palms. His mouth parts as hunger sparks in his eyes. The air charges around us. “You’re my Wonderland.”