Lights Out

After a mass shooting fills the ER with victims, Josh² watches Aly¹ stumble through the hospital on security cameras he's hacked. He drives to the parking garage, breaks into her car, turns on the seat heater, and waits in the driver's seat wearing his mask.

She spots him through the windshield and approaches armed with mace. He places a loaded gun and a knife on the passenger seat and raises his empty hands. Exhausted beyond reason, she gets in. He packed trail mix and apple slices.

On the snow-blanketed drive home, she slides the knife up his shirt and takes him into her mouth — then accidentally impales his hand on the blade when he comes. She stitches the wound at her dining table without anesthesia, apologizing between every needle puncture.

Josh² prepares for Aly's¹ visit by hiding every recognizable item from his videos, donning fingerless gloves to conceal both his tattoos and her stitches, and killing the thermostat to justify the layers.

He opens the door, and her pupils dilate — she finds him attractive, which makes him simultaneously elated and jealous of himself. He runs a fake hacking program while she texts the Faceless Man's² burner phone beside him. His auto-reply software responds instantly, seeming to clear him.

They play Would You Rather for an hour, making each other choke on coffee with increasingly deranged hypotheticals. Despite his theatrics, Aly's¹ gut screams this man is her masked stalker. She buys a GPS tracking device on the way to her shift, planning to slip it into his bag at the next opportunity.

Aly¹ has plugged his hidden camera back in deliberately — bait for the man she suspects is Josh.² She's on her bed with a vibrator when the door opens and a voice too deep and distorted to be natural orders her not to stop. He edges her with her own toy for an agonizing stretch, denying her orgasm repeatedly, working her to the brink and pulling her back every time she nears release.

She sobs, curses, begs. When he finally lets her come, the orgasm tears through her hard enough that she loses consciousness. She wakes to him cleaning her off with a warm towel, murmuring that she was perfect. He stays. He cooks breakfast — badly — the eggs full of shell, the bacon raw in the middle. She doesn't tell him it's terrible.

While Josh² makes breakfast, Aly¹ creeps to his backpack and slips a GPS tracker into the front pocket. He catches the entire maneuver on the bedroom camera. Driving home later, he palms the device and executes a series of precise turns through the city's grid-patterned streets, spelling out three letters on her tracking app: L-O-L. He drops the tracker on the asphalt and drives away.

Aly¹ watches the trace materialize on her laptop and screams his name — Josh² — at the camera before ripping it from the wall. She's certain now. He knows she knows. But he's already swapped his sweatshirt for one from Tyler's³ dirty laundry, so when her lab tech friend runs DNA from the hair she plucked off him, it won't match the blood from his stitches.

Brad Bluhm⁶ arrives in the ER — a wealthy rapist whose family's lawyers secured his release without arrest. Aly¹ treats him, and his eyes carry the same dead-alive quality she's seen in convicted killers. He taunts her, claiming his victim should have been grateful for his attention, then grabs for her arm.

She steps close and dares him to try again. He fakes distress and screams for help, getting her written up by HR. Hours later, a car accident victim arrives — a woman in her fifties with dark hair and olive skin, impaled by metal.

The sight paralyzes Aly.¹ She was sixteen, learning manual transmission, when she hit the gas instead of the brake and sent them into an intersection. A pipe pierced her mother's chest. Josh² arrives unmasked and holds her while she speaks the story aloud for the first time.

Josh's² phone alarm blares in the darkness of Aly's¹ bedroom: someone is at her back door, and the security camera has been covered. He grabs a gun from her dresser, crashes his mouth against hers in what becomes their first real kiss, and orders her to stay in the bedroom.

She doesn't. He opens the back door and cold-cocks the intruder with a single punch. They pull off the balaclava and find Brad Bluhm.⁶ His backpack contains zip ties, rope, chloroform, a serrated knife, bleach, rags, and trash bags — a complete kill kit.

Aly¹ stomps on Brad's⁶ groin and cracks one of his ribs before Josh² restrains her. They bind Brad⁶ with his own rope, gag him, blindfold him, and dose him with his own chloroform. The original plan: dump him alive at his latest victim's family farm.

An hour into the drive through snow-covered farmland, Aly¹ unzips the snowboard bag to check on Brad.⁶ She places her fingers on his neck and turns to Josh:² Brad⁶ is dead. Josh² had duct-taped over both his mouth and nose without realizing.

He pulls over and vomits in the roadside bushes while Aly¹ steadies herself with dark humor, remarking that the death was anticlimactic for such a monster. They cannot leave a corpse at the farm — a dead body raises questions a bound, living rapist does not.

Aly¹ tells Josh² about her uncle Nico,⁵ an estranged mob cleaner her late father instructed her to contact only in dire emergency. They redirect the car toward the city. In the trunk, Brad's⁶ body stiffens. Between them, gallows humor holds the panic at arm's length.

Aly's uncle,⁵ a compact man in a flannel bathrobe, is furious they brought a corpse to his doorstep while federal agents may be watching. Within minutes, his four sons scramble downstairs. The youngest, Greg,¹² drives Aly's¹ car back to the city with the body while Josh² stays behind to explain everything to Nico.⁵

The mob's professional cleaners take Brad's⁶ remains to an undisclosed location — Nico⁵ insists no one else know where. Aly's¹ car gets deep-cleaned at a mob-owned auto body shop. Brad's⁶ vehicle is located near Aly's¹ neighborhood and sent to a chop shop. The cost for all this: mandatory monthly family dinners. Aly¹ and Josh² are now bound to organized crime by a debt built on a dead rapist and a roll of duct tape.

Aly's¹ phone rings at Josh's² apartment. Her lab tech friend Veronica¹⁰ dug deeper than a simple match — the blood from Josh's² stitches shares fifty percent of its genetic markers with the Ken Doll Killer, one of the country's most infamous serial murderers. Aly's¹ vision blurs.

She nearly bolts. Tyler³ finds her ashen at the kitchen island and fills in the gaps: Josh's² father abused him as a child, and a corrupt psychologist convinced the boy he needed antipsychotics to prevent becoming his dad.

Tyler³ has screened every person he's brought home for years, shielding Josh² from true crime fans who might recognize the face he inherited. Josh² has never hurt anyone, Tyler³ insists — the surveillance, the obsession, those are the scars of a childhood without safety. By the time Josh² walks through the door, Aly¹ has made her choice.

In the shower together, Josh² tells Aly¹ about finding a body in his father's car trunk at age six, about the smell of decomposition that defined his childhood.

She washes his hair and offers a reframing that shifts something deep inside him: he dresses like a serial killer but does the opposite of what his father did — where his dad brought suffering, Josh² brings pleasure. He isn't mimicking his father; he's rewriting the script. Josh² asks if she looks at him and sees his dad. She says she only sees her boyfriend.

They make love without the mask for the first time, pressed against the shower wall, raw and urgent and terrifyingly honest. He asks her to be his girlfriend while still trembling from the encounter. She says yes. He plans to mark the day in his calendar.

Josh² joins a mob crew disguised as utility workers to break into Brad's⁶ house and erase any digital trace of Aly¹ from his hard drive. In the basement, two decomposing bodies lie buried under mounds of cat litter. The crew aborts — too much forensic risk — but Josh² stays alone to finish wiping the browser history that could link Aly¹ to Brad.⁶

Brad's⁶ parents arrive and try to unlock the study door. Josh² pinches the lock from inside with slippery, gloved fingers while his progress bar crawls toward completion.

When it finishes, he escapes through a second-story window and crashes through a wooden pergola, bouncing off crossbeams to the patio below. Aly,¹ who defied orders to stay in the van, helps him to his feet. As they flee, Josh² smashes a chair through Brad's⁶ French doors, triggering the house alarm — giving police the legal pretext to enter without a warrant.

Josh² and Aly¹ claw up a snowy hillside as sirens wail behind them. They flatten against the ground just below the crest, and a searchlight carves through the trees above their heads. Junior's⁷ getaway SUV sits hidden in the woods nearby, its engine killed seconds before the beam passes.

Aly¹ and Josh² hold hands in the stillness, both trembling. When the patrol moves on, Josh² carries Aly¹ the remaining distance because her toes have gone numb from hours in soaked boots. They reach the car hypothermic and alive.

In the weeks that follow, the investigation unfolds as needed: Brad's⁶ basement victims are identified, his crimes exposed, and a mob-orchestrated trail of debit card transactions leads police to believe he fled to Canada. The Bluhm family's decades of cover-ups crumble into public view.

Weeks later, Josh² and Aly¹ attend mandatory dinner at Nico's⁵ villa. Aly¹ spars with her uncle through cocktails while Josh² studies the family with the trained eye of someone who grew up around a predator. Afterward, Nico⁵ corners Josh² at the front door and threatens him.

Josh² laughs, reveals he recorded their entire conversation about the coverup on his phone, and demonstrates his ability to crash the house's electrical system with a single tap. If Nico⁵ moves against either of them, Josh² will dismantle the organization from the inside.

Nico⁵ grudgingly shakes his hand. The balance settles into mutual deterrence. Over the months that follow, insider reports confirm the investigation has moved on. Josh² tells Aly¹ he loves her. She says she already knew — he'd been murmuring it in his sleep for a week.