Logline:
Kate Blair, 24, and three psychology students are given an unconventional final exam. Their controversial professor developed a way to bring traditionally unreachable patients forward to share their secrets. The study is double-blind ensuring the safety of all. From the outset, something is wrong: the patients know too much. the professor is found dead, and more killings follow. They learn the most powerful secrets under investigation are their own
Synopsis:
Kate (24) twitches in a dream, the same nightmare she’s had for years, she is stalked, blindfolded and chased. She wakes hearing the same threat, warm breath in her ear.
Kate Blair knows about mind games. As a student of Psychology studying in one of the top graduate programs in the country, she might even become a major player in the field, if she can survive her final exam. Because this year, the final is deadly.
Only four students are going to take the test, most didn’t make it through the hell that their professor, Bellathe terms as “minimum requirements.” The bond between the students is tight. Kate has been dating fellow student Jess for over a year, she’s known Eli all her life, and Rafe is like a sister.
The test changes all of that. It seems innocent at the start, each student is paired with an anonymous patient over the Internet. Bellathe constructed the test to bring dangerous minds out of hiding and into therapy in a safe, secure environment. Bad idea. What he unleashes is an untraceable killer, an almost omniscient opponent who strikes at any time, seemingly knowing every move of each of the students.
Bellathe is the first to die, and because of his questionable practice of sleeping with students, the first suspect is Rafe, his current extracurricular lover. The evidence is corroborated by the fact that the murder took place during a break in the test when Rafe was nowhere to be found. All of the students had the opportunity, add to that the sexual nature of the body when it was found (no details please,) and it seems very likely that it was a crime of passion.
There is a lot of passion to spare among the students, Jess is really Bellathe’s son (the product of another student teacher affair) Eli would do anything for Kate, and Kate has powerful reasons to want Bellathe quiet for eternity.
Kate begins getting strange messages on her doorstep. Eli starts talking to the police about a fifteen-year-old crime that Kate was right in the middle of. Jess deduces that two of the patients in the final test were logged in through university accounts, they were on campus. Notes from the final test disappear, but the students reconstruct information.
Bellathe had tricked them all with his crafting of the test. He himself was one of the patients feeding the students their own secrets and lies. When Kate, Jess, and Eli find out the truth about their pasts, their closeness falls apart.
Kate’s sanity begins to crumble when she finds the murder weapon in a locker registered to her. Voices follow her everywhere, she trusts no one. She falls into a trap. Someone close to her set the trip arm long ago, and now declares complete victory. And Kate will lose unless she can finally see the face of the person in the dream that holds her back, unless she can find the strength kill again.
