Author's notes: Apparently ffn hates links, or hates my links in particular, because it won't even let me PM them to people. So if anyone wanted those spoilers and couldn't see them, let me know i a comment and I'll just copy and paste them to you. ANYWAY. Moving right along: here's the next update. It will probably raise more questions than it answers, but at least the supernatural angle is starting to poke through...

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Sunday morning I woke early, showered and dressed, and dashed off to the main building to meet up with the rest of my subgroup.

I didn't waste time looking for Rosalee and Emmett. I assumed they were off being in charge of their own subgroups, and anyway, I couldn't think of a productive line of questioning at this hour.

It was eight in the morning when I breezed through the front doors; Authenticity had done what years of school and university hadn't, and got me in the habit of starting my days early. That was kind of cult-y, now that I thought about it. They'd reprogrammed me into being a morning person without my even noticing it.

It felt like the first day back after a vacation, even though we'd only taken half of a day off. Everyone was milling around in the hallway, chattering at the tops of their lungs. I smiled and waved at people, and eventually found myself standing with Jessica and Angela.

"Today's the day!" Angela said brightly, looking pale. I narrowed my eyes in confusion. Great, what was going on now? Had I missed something?

"Has Mike said anything to you?" Jessica demanded. "I mean...do you know if you have any offers?"

Offers. Oh, right. This was the day when all the newbies were supposed to be getting the Marriage Talk-only as far as I could tell they didn't need the talk, if they were already well-informed enough to know about offers being made on them and so forth. Never underestimate the speed of gossip when compared with official schedules.

"No," I assured Jessica. "Mike hasn't said a word to me. I, uh, I heard there's an offer on the table for me, but it isn't from Mike."

They squealed and began to speculate happily on who it could be and whether he was in our subgroup. I tuned them out completely, and spent the rest of our time in the hall fretting about what I was going to say to Edward tomorrow. I'd forgotten all about calling Jacob last night. I was going to have to find time to do it today.

Alice waved to catch our attention, and we strolled into Media Room Five just ahead of the breakfast trays. I whispered my thanks to the unknown Authenticity person who brought my food, dropped my bag at my feet, and waited happily to see what we'd be doing. Alice was handing out photocopies, and I accepted mine and started reading it over absently.

My eyes bugged out. It was a mishmash of clips and quotations from various articles about General Hospital, the soap opera. Apparently years and years ago there'd been a rape storyline (actually, I think I'd heard about that before). The rapist character was supposed to have a very temporary storyline, and get killed off. But according to this, fan reaction had been so overwhelmingly in favour of pairing off the rapist and his victim that they'd been written into being a couple on the show.

Holy crap, that was fucked up.

I shook my head. Where was Alice going with this? She was standing next to the television, and gradually the room fell silent.

"Thanks," she said. "Now, what you're about to watch is fairly controversial, but I want you to hold off judging until you've seen it all. This is, basically, a fan-created compilation showing all the scenes featuring Luke and Laura, starting back when the rape storyline took place, and continuing up to the point when they were married. This is going to eat up our whole day, and we'll probably rewatch it later in the week, so we won't have a lot of time for discussion for a while. But I just want to warn you up front: this can be disturbing, and previous groups have sometimes reported problems stemming from this material. Everyone here is staying in the compound now, which is good."

She paused, and smiled at me. "I want to remind you that you can always talk to more senior members if you need to, and of course, each building has members of my family living on the ground floor. We're there for you, if any reality crossovers occur-or even if you just have nightmares."

She started the show before I could ask what a reality crossover was; I jotted the phrase into my notebook for later, and within minutes I was being completely sucked into a soap opera storyline.

When we paused to stretch our legs and return our dishes to the kitchen, my head was spinning. The show was kitchy and outdated, and I found some lines and scenes completely unbelievable because of that. Laura fighting with her husband over whether or not she was allowed to work at a bar was both hilarious and infuriating. Had the 70s really been that bad?

But at the same time, I had felt myself reluctantly getting drawn into this ludicrous world.

Then we'd reached the rape scene, and I had felt frozen with terror ever since, as though my blood had turned to ice water.

It wasn't that it was terribly graphic or anything.

It was just that the scene was a perfect mirror of my dream. The stupid "disco" where the rape took place, the music, the way he'd pulled her into his arms and demanded she dance with him: it was exactly like my dream.

How the hell was that even possible?