Page 55

Chrysalis

When the next scene opens, everything is entirely silent and still.

Marsh is now standing in the hallway of a deserted, aging municipal building. She waits, taking in the low ceilings, the muted beige walls. The flecked tile on the floor has lost its sheen. It’s quiet because it’s late evening, after hours, but even so, the place still seems even smaller and shabbier than she remembers. Perhaps it’s because she’s older now. Or because of everything she’s seen and done as part of All This and More . But she doesn’t mind. Smallness and quiet are exactly why she came here. A place away from everything. No wild scenarios, no over-the-top adventures, no Chrysalis, no Talia, no millions of viewers, even no Ren or Harper. A place where she can hide for just a minute.

A place where she can think .

In the gentle dark, Marsh closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

Just then, a single sound, a soft crack, breaks the silence.

What was that?

She’s not waiting to find out. She spins around and begins to sprint, terrified. Her shoes slap down the hall like thunderclaps. In response, another set of shoes answers from the direction of the original sound, heading for her, and she screams.

“Marsh! Wait! It’s me!” Lev calls at last.

“Lev,” Marsh gasps. She’s so relieved, she nearly collapses. “Thank goodness.”

Lev emerges from the dark of the hallway, where Marsh is now crouched on her hands and knees as she waits for her panic to subside.

“Sorry,” he says. “After the earthquake, I ended up... I don’t know where. I had to build a tunnel through the code.” He points into the blackness behind him, at who knows what.

“It’s okay,” Marsh says. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Lev helps her to her feet.

“Back at RealTV’s offices,” he starts. “You said that Ezra is running the Bubble for this season.”

Marsh nods. “I saw him on the outside, just before my first episode started. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But since the midseason spe cial, he’s been using back doors to communicate with me.” She looks at Lev. “He’s been trying to find you, ever since the second season was canceled. I think he got himself hired for season three because he was suspicious that something strange was going on.”

Lev looks shell-shocked. He has questions about Ezra and the Bubble, probably a million of them, but Marsh can tell that he knows she probably wouldn’t be able to answer even one. She’s the star of the show, not a physicist.

“Is he with us now?” he finally asks.

Marsh waits for a moment, but the air in front of her stays silent.

“No,” she says. “But he saw you, before the earthquake. He knows you’re here. I’m sure he’s trying to reach us right now.”

“He’ll find a way,” Lev replies. “I know it.”

Marsh hopes it’s true. Even if the Bubble’s security filters have cut Ezra off again, he’s always managed to sneak through. She’s sure he will again.

Lev takes a steadying breath and looks around. “So, where are we, exactly?”

“Court,” Marsh says. She looks at the fluorescent lighting, the cheap plastic waiting chairs. “The south tower of the Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix, to be exact.”

Lev studies the setting thoughtfully.

“I’ve seen this place before, in some of your recap bonus footage,” he says.

Marsh smiles.

“Jo and I had a judicial internship here in law school,” she replies. “Before I dropped out.”

“Ah,” Lev muses. “We’re here because you think Chrysalis is hiding within your biggest regret.”

Marsh nods. “Somewhere I’d never want to face.”

She turns and motions for Lev to follow her down the hall.

“This way,” she says.

He falls in beside her, and their shoes echo softly as they walk. As they pass the elevators, a cluster of pixels fizzles on the wall beside them, but Lev crushes them into the paint with a glare.

“I remember being so excited, and so intimidated, on our first day,” Marsh continues . “We both were. I thought that if I said one wrong thing, or made one mistake, they’d throw me out or something.”

“I felt the same way on my first day at Sharp Labs,” Lev confesses. “Ezra was very confident, he liked to charm others, and I was the quiet one. My style was to keep my head down and do the work.”

They pass a clerk heading the other way. During their intern days, it wasn’t uncommon for Marsh and Jo to see others working late, but that’s not what makes her do a double take. It’s because the clerk looks suspiciously like Bryn, Talia’s hairstylist from season one. The same tall build, the same dark curls.

Lev frowns subtly when she looks at him. They both quicken their pace.

“There was this one afternoon,” she continues, her tone low. “They were going to renovate the judges’ chambers, and all of the interns had to stay late to pack up the files and computers. One of the guys found Judge Lippincott’s stash of booze.”

“You drank it?” Lev asks.

“I didn’t, of course,” Marsh answers. “But Jo did. By the time the sun was down, they were all tipsy.”

Marsh stops them in front of the biggest courtroom on the floor, and Lev arches an inquisitive brow.

“Then someone brought up the dare.”

Although it’s later in the evening than when they arrived, the hallway has slowly become even busier, somehow. At the far end of the hall, Alexis is standing with unnerving stillness beside season one’s HR director, Linnea. Alexis is dressed in a judge’s black robes, and Linnea in a court officer’s uniform, but even though they’re facing each other, their eyes never leave Marsh. Outside the adjacent courtroom, the music composer who came up with All This and More ’s famous tune, a man with a buzzed head and quirky glasses named Rafael, is now sitting on one of the benches with a phone to his ear—but the screen is dark, and there’s no one on the other end of the line.

“Get inside,” Lev says softly but urgently. “Now.”

Marsh moves as quickly as she can without appearing to scramble. Still, when she pulls the door open, Alexis and Linnea turn toward her, their shoulders swiveling at the same time, their heads tilting to the same curious angle.

“Marsh,” Lev warns.

From the bench, Rafael begins to stand.

Marsh slams the door shut and locks it.

As the silence settles again, she and Lev sigh and lean against the door.

It’s strange to be here again. After she dropped out of law school, she never came back to the courthouse—not even to watch Jo argue her first case. She said it was because Harper was too little to leave with a babysitter, but that was just an excuse. The longer she waited, the more forbidding this place became. It had grown in her mind into a fortress, a remote tower with no rope, no ladder, no way to climb. Now, Marsh can see that it’s not a hallowed temple, not a closed palace. It’s just a modest, slightly drab municipal office. There are scuffs on the baseboards and flecks of paint missing on the walls. The air-conditioning rattles ineffectually.

At last, her eyes drift to the first row of wooden pews.

“The dare was to etch our initials into the underside of the front pew,” Marsh finally says, pointing. “Someone swore it was a tradition, that there were a hundred sets of initials hidden there. Another said it was good luck. That if we did it, we’d pass the bar and become lawyers.”

Lev studies the pew, then looks back at her.

“I was too afraid of getting in trouble.” Marsh sighs. “I didn’t even look underneath to see if it was true. Over the years, I’ve always thought this was the instant I started to lose my way. That if I could go back and do this part over again, my life would have turned out right.”

“A character-defining backstory moment,” Lev says, with a wink. “Great for ratings. Talia would be proud of you.”

Marsh snorts. “Where did she end up, after the earthquake?”

“I don’t know.” He points his chin at the door, to indicate the others in the hall. “But wherever she is, she’s probably on her way here.”

Marsh nods. Her expression grows serious, and she takes a breath to steel herself.

“This will just take a second.”

Even with the subpar air-conditioning, the floor is surprisingly cold against her knees as she bends down. There’s not much room, but after an awkward shimmy, Marsh manages to get her head and shoulders beneath the flat underside of the first pew.

Sure enough, the interns were right. The initials are there. Everyone from the semester she served, plus scattered clusters of dozens more. Jo’s signature calligraphic J, twice as big as everyone else’s and clumsier than usual since she’d been using a pocketknife and not a fountain pen, is right above her nose.

Even though Marsh didn’t end up scratching her own mark with the rest of them that night, there’s still a little space next to Jo, as if waiting for her.

“Do you have something sharp? A knife or paper clip, maybe?” she asks Lev.

He squats down. “A pen,” he offers apologetically.

“That’ll have to work.”

She uncaps it and presses the tip to the wood until it makes a little dent. Slowly, she drags her hand back and forth, digging the first tiny line. She blows a little curl of splinter away, and grips the pen tighter.

As she finishes her initials, a thump beside her head makes her flinch, then smile.

She scoots out and sits up. Then she reaches back underneath the pew—and pulls out her lawyer’s briefcase. The one that Dylan surprised her with, countless times, and the one that’s followed her from episode to episode, refusing to give up on her.

Her hands run over the cool leather, the edge stitching, the square handle.

It’s here.

She lost it, both in her real life and in the Bubble, but now she’s found it again.

Somewhere, a clock chimes, noting the late hour.

“Marsh,” Lev urges. “We have to hurry. Even though you’ve escaped for a moment, Hong Kong was your ninth episode. The next one will be the finale.”

Marsh checks her watch.

There are only thirty minutes left until this one ends.

“So, this is really it, then?” she asks.

“I’m afraid so.”

Marsh takes a deep breath.

“I still have time,” she tells herself.

Time to quash Chrysalis and save her season. Time to make everything perfect.

Finally, she pops the clasps and opens it to reveal a Sharp Purple–colored folder.

“A client file?” Lev asks.

“Yes,” Marsh says. “From Mendoza-Montalvo and Hall. It’s mine—for the bid I just won in Hong Kong.”

The title across the top says: Sharp Incorporated.

Lev frowns. “But Sharp doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Right. Because it folded during season two,” Marsh agrees. She turns to him. “And you said, based on what you could find in Sharp Entertainment’s database fragments, that Chrysalis started in season two.”

She taps the folder.

“Whatever happened to Sharp back then, I think it was because of Chrysalis.”

The silence in the room hangs heavy as she and Lev consider her theory.

“Only one way to find out,” he replies at last. “Ready?”

Marsh shakes her head. “Here goes nothing.”

And she opens the folder.

“It’s not just a client. It’s a case,” she confirms as she sees the formatting, the legalese.

Her eyes widen.

“It’s my case.”

It’s true. All of the quick scribbles are all in her handwriting, somehow.

She reads as fast as she can.

“It’s a lawsuit,” she says when she realizes it. “The plaintiff is... Claire Sharp herself.”

Claire Sharp, billionaire owner of Sharp Labs, the original discoverer of quantum bubbling technology, and Sharp Entertainment, the original creator of All This and More .

“But you didn’t film a case scene in this episode,” Lev says.

“Because the case is old,” Marsh says as she skims. “The hearings all took place during season two.”

She pauses suddenly.

If the suit is from season two, and it was Marsh’s case...

Marsh was a lawyer before?

But that’s impossible.

Wouldn’t she remember?

“What else?” Lev asks.

“You’re...” Marsh looks up. “You’re named, too, as an expert witness. You don’t remember, either?”

He shakes his head tensely. “What did I say?”

“Well, it looks like the suit was for damages to the show,” Marsh relays as she reads. “You were brought in because we were alleging that the season two contestant tampered with the Bubble, and that caused it to become too unstable. So unstable... that it collapsed.”

“Collapsed?” Lev cries, shocked. “No, no, no, that can’t—” He paces away, then lurches back. “Collapsed? With everyone still inside?!”

Marsh nods, looking pale.

“Everyone got stuck here, with no way out,” she says. “Until my season started.”

She covers her mouth, aghast.

It’s true. The crew of season two have been trapped inside the Bubble this whole time.

That would explain why RealTV needed a whole new team for season three, why there was no one from the original crew anywhere to help with the transition, and why they’re all here now.

The silence lingers as she and Lev try to absorb this terrible revelation.

“I can’t believe it,” Marsh murmurs. She’s trying to count everyone she’s discovered so far, but there are too many to keep track. “Alexis, Julie, Rafael, Linnea, Bryn...”

“And me,” Lev says, sick with wonder. “I’ve been in the Bubble... this whole time?”

Everyone from the old Sharp crew, imprisoned here and their memories wiped, all so they couldn’t warn RealTV what had happened in season two before it launched her season—

Marsh puts the paper down suddenly.

“Lev.”

She can hardly say it.

If Marsh was the lawyer for Claire Sharp’s case, then it stands to reason that she also was in the Bubble during season two, somehow.

Which means that she also has been stuck in here with them?

“And you too,” Lev says gravely.

Marsh reels, light-headed.

How?

How could she not know?

As she nearly topples, Lev catches her arm and steadies her.

“I’m sorry, Marsh.”

She looks at him. “I don’t understand.”

What did happen in that season, that would be worth all this to hide?

Who would go this far?

Lev holds out the folder to her.

“Keep reading,” he urges. “You have to do it. All I can see is a blank page.”

Slowly, Marsh takes it from him.

Just as she looks down at the paper, a sharp, grating tone rings out across the empty office.

“The finale!” Lev says. “Hurry!”

Her eyes wide with terror, Marsh flips straight to the last sheet in the stack as fast as she can.

There, on the last page, is the answer to all of her questions. Why Chrysalis has been desperately inserting itself into her paths, in whatever form it takes. Why it’s tried to influence her choices, no matter how she tried to avoid or thwart it. And why it’s grown only more insistent the closer to the finale Marsh draws, before her chance to change her life forever is complete.

“Lev,” Marsh says weakly.

She can hardly breathe.

The mysterious season two contestant...

was Ren.

She looks up in horror just as the episode goes black.

To begin the season finale: Go to We’ll Be Right Back, Folks!