Adapt

Phoebe's dream sequences intensify as the experimental construct designed to treat her anxiety spirals beyond its intended parameters. Within the hypnosis-guided narrative of her subconscious, she encounters figures who blur the line between threat and temptation. The dream architecture becomes increasingly invasive, with Phoebe's resistance fracturing as the psychological boundaries between fear and desire collapse. What began as therapeutic intervention now manifests as something far darker: systematic conditioning that exploits her vulnerabilities rather than healing them.

Phoebe's dream cycles continue to escalate. Each session produces deeper immersion in scenarios where her anxiety has morphed into compulsion. The observation team watches her biometric data with growing alarm. Dr. Tessa Finn insists the process still serves the subject's interests, arguing that intensive exposure requires time to produce measurable outcomes. Dr. Meg Aerin and Dr. June Lowell voice increasing skepticism, noting that Phoebe's responses suggest not healing but deeper entrenchment in compulsive patterns. Z remains cryptically supportive of Tessa's methods while privately suggesting the results exceed expectations.

In Phoebe's final dream cycle, her subconscious has now constructed an environment where she actively solicits the very violations she initially sought to escape. The dream's architectural logic has rewired her sense of agency, transforming resistance into willing participation. Monitoring equipment records the neurological signs of genuine arousal intertwined with the original trauma markers, creating an impossible-to-interpret feedback loop. When she wakes, Phoebe articulates desires that horrify her waking consciousness, revealing the profound dissociation the treatment has induced.

The observation team confronts the implications of their work. Z delivers a brutal assessment: whatever Phoebe becomes after waking, her subconscious will retain the imprint of what happened in the dream chamber. Tessa's defensive arguments collapse under scrutiny. The team acknowledges, with clinical detachment, that the construct succeeded perfectly at creating a subject fully compliant with their research agenda, though the cost to Phoebe as a person remains unspoken and undeniable.

Tessa's confession letter, submitted to the institute's adjudicating committee, provides the devastating conclusion. She acknowledges her failure in supervising a project that had crossed every professional boundary. Her admission extends beyond scientific misconduct to personal exploitation: she watched the feeds obsessively, used institute equipment to simulate Phoebe's conditioning on herself, and gradually abandoned any pretense of therapeutic intent. She catalogs the erosion of her own professional judgment as her investment in Phoebe's descent became increasingly voyeuristic. Despite full acknowledgment of her culpability, Tessa's letter concludes with a desperate plea to remain at the Sitri Center in any capacity, even the most demeaning. Adapt ends with her confession that the institute itself has become her own inescapable dream.