#MurderTrending

Dee stays alert all night. Few people besides Kimmi and her dad know that Dee’s real name is Dolores Hernandez. Kimmi was 14 years old when she kidnapped Dee. When she was caught, she was committed to 10 years at the Western Sierra State Mental Hospital. She should still be there. Dee suffered from trauma after the abduction. One day, Dee’s dad abruptly moved them to another city, changed their identities, and warned Dee to never contact her old friends or divulge her real name.

The Postman could be Kimmi’s dad. The Postman offered to help the president cut down on violent crime, and the government gave the Postman control over part of the prison system. Dee wonders if the Postman enjoys the ratings, power, control, or fame from running Alcatraz 2.0 and the app. If Kimmi’s dad is the Postman, and a serial killer, Alcatraz 2.0 allows him to kill with impunity. Dee realizes she needs to trust Nyles with the secret of her abduction.

Mara visits for breakfast, even though Dee is hesitant to put her—and the others—in danger by associating with Dee. Mara was falsely accused of murdering a high school teacher. Dee asks how Mara knows information about the Painiac Molly Mauler. Mara declares her data is real and that she knows all the killers’ identities and their kill sites on the island.

Mara studied the habits, styles, accents, dialects, and personas of the Painiacs before she was convicted. Dee thinks this is creepy, but the information could be helpful. Mara reminds Dee of her sister. The double doorbell tone interrupts them.

On the TV screen, Dee sees Nyles and Griselda in a warehouse, bound, gagged, and hanging from the ceiling by their wrists. Dee feels panicky because Nyles should be safe since his case was on appeal.

A voice that is not the Postman’s addresses Cinderella Survivor specifically. The voice announces that the Hardy Girls want to play with Nyles and Griselda. The Hardy Girls executioners adopt characters of famous female duos. Two women, both dressed in blue dresses and white masks, roll a large glass tank with an attached hose underneath Nyles and Griselda. The two fall into the tank as water begins to fill it. The Hardy Girls attach a clear lid and padlock it shut. The voice tells Cinderella Survivor she has twenty minutes to save her friends.

Dee recognizes that Nyles and Griselda have become her friends and knows she must save them. Ethan bursts into the house, startling Mara. Dee feels helpless until Mara volunteers that the Hardy Girls have killed before at an old naval prison. Mara fearfully agrees to lead Dee and Ethan to the site. Water continues to rise in the tank holding Nyles and Griselda.

Ethan changes into camo cargo pants and face paint for their mission. He is excited to be in a real-life action movie and quotes lines from ’80s Arnold Schwarzenegger films that Dee does not recognize. Mara directs them to a short building surrounded by a tall fence. She waits in the street and suggests that Dee and Ethan try entering through a backdoor.

They enter a lobby with a dusty counter and some lockers. The building looks abandoned but has modern, functioning cameras. Dee knows it is a trap, and Ethan exuberantly agrees. Ethan grabs a fire extinguisher to use as a weapon and finds an old stapler for Dee. The Trazbet.com site offers betting odds on the number of minutes until Dee and Ethan die.

Ethan and Dee enter a carpeted hallway decorated with floral wallpaper. Cameras click on and the Hardy Girls appear. They are dressed as the Grady Girls from The Shining. The girls adapt a line from the film and urge Dee to play with them “forever and ever and ever” (175). Four motorized remote-controlled Big Wheels round a corner and rocket toward Dee and Ethan. One crashes into the wall and explodes. Dee and Ethan race back down the hallway and jump over the counter as another Big Wheel explodes. The third Big Wheel detonates the counter. They pass through a metal door and enter an identical hallway. The Hardy Girls are there, holding axes, and another Big Wheel approaches.

Ethan sprays fire retardant on the girls and the cameras. One of the sisters attacks Ethan with an axe, which sticks in the extinguisher. Ethan slips on the foam, and the second girl attacks him. Dee slides to his rescue, knocking her over. The other sister attacks Dee, but Ethan picks her up and throws her down the hall into the path of the last oncoming Big Wheel, which explodes and blows the Hardy Girl into pieces. The second sister has vanished.

The countdown clock is almost at zero. Ethan grabs the axe out of the extinguisher, and they rush through double doors into the room with the almost full water tank. Nyles and Griselda tread water at the top. Ethan hacks at the tank with the axe, slowly making small cracks in the glass, while Dee examines the hose. Nyles swims down and points behind her just as the remaining Hardy Girl swings at Dee with an axe. She misses Dee and hits the hose. Water goes everywhere and the tank starts to drain. The Hardy Girl gloats over the massive spikes she will receive, raising the axe to strike again, and Mara hits her from behind with the extinguisher, breaking her neck.

Nyles and Griselda emerge from the tank. Griselda denies the exuberant Ethan’s request for a kiss. Nyles appreciates how Mara used the “scientific method” to find them. He thanks Ethan and hugs Dee, who says they would do the same for her, though Dee has some doubts. User comments name the friends #DeathRowBreakfastClub or #DRBC. The Griff is suspicious: There were no deliveries at the bodega and no Postman-edited replay of the Hardy Girls’ executions.

The group returns to the gym for Ethan to change and Nyles and Griselda to get dry clothing. Ethan hyperbolically recaps their rescue. Dee worries that Nyles thinks his near-death is her fault. Mara explains she got involved because she thought they might need her. The unedited Hardy Girls video earns 100 million spikes and #DRBC trends in the comments. One commenter puts the faces of Dee, Griselda, Ethan, Nyles, and Mara over the faces of the actors on The Breakfast Club movie poster. Dee is grumpy to be cast as the princess character. Ethan is the jock, Mara is the loner, Griselda is the hot, disrespectful one—who is male in the film—and Nyles is the nerd. Nyles takes exception to this stereotype. Dee knows they are now all targets for the Painiacs.

Hungry, they visit the bodega which, strangely, is closed. They go to I Scream and see that their video has hit 200 million spikes. Commenters question what is happening on Alcatraz 2.0 and whether rules are being broken. Some notice that cameras are dead, which the Griff asserts is because the Postman does not want them to know what is going on. Another wonders why Nyles’s diplomatic immunity did not protect him. Dee is stunned by a comment from her dead sister’s account advising that Kimmi was released and that someone is “working on it” (196). The comment is signed “—p.”

Dee flashes back to the white room and Kimmi pressuring her to be her sister. Kimmi enters the room for the first time. She wears jeans and has a “sharp and hawkish” face. She menacingly asks if Dee wants her to think that Dee does not like her. Dee agrees to be her sister. Kimmi wants to play pretend, alludes to having a brother, and braids Dee’s hair painfully tight. When Kimmi leaves, she makes Dee turn around so that Dee will not see her exit.

Dee is shaken by the comment from p., which she knows by the signature was made by her dad. Dee is overwhelmed that her dad believes in her innocence. Nyles asks for a milkshake so they can talk under the cover of the blender noise. Dee still does not want to tell them about Kimmi and lies that her dad got a message that her case is being appealed. Griselda runs out of ice, and they notice suddenly how empty Alcatraz 2.0 feels. There are no inmates at the shop, and deliveries have stopped. Other businesses on Main Street are closed. Dee wants to search the Barracks and find out what is happening. Griselda worries the guards could liquidate them all, but Dee wants to go out fighting. They agree to search the island.

As they walk to the Barracks, Dee notices that the crow cameras are functional but are not tracking them. Steve, a library worker, lives in the first house. He does not answer the door, which, surprisingly, is unlocked. The first floor is empty. The TV replays their adventure with the Hardy Girls. As they go upstairs, Dee feels “the presence of death” as she did when she discovered Monica’s body (206). Steve, his skin purple-colored, is dead in bed. A search of the Barracks reveals all the other inmates are dead. Their bodies are unmarked. Mara wonders why none of the deaths were on camera: All the cameras in the homes were dark. Mara speculates the Postman killed the old inmates to replace them with new ones, but Nyles counters that there is plenty of room on the island for more inmates. Dee believes the Postman used Dee and her friends to divert users’ attention while the Postman killed everyone else. Nyles thinks that the dead inmates were gassed. Their deaths happened while each of the friends was in their own house, so they could have been gassed as well, meaning the Postman wants them alive.