Phil had talked them up to the rooftop bar after dinner because a bachelor party needed altitude velvet rope, bottles with French names, a view that made you feel like you’d conquered the whole glittering valley below.
Doug looked half-asleep already.
Stu was doing his responsible-dentist routine, checking his watch every five minutes.
Alan had the satchel on the bar like it was a member of the wedding party.
Holden was nursing a beer he’d barely touched.
Phil leaned in.
“You’re not drinking.”
“I’m drinking.”
“You’ve had three sips in an hour. That’s not drinking. That’s hydrating with extra steps.”
Holden shrugged.
“I pace myself.”
“This is Vegas. Nobody paces in Vegas.” Phil flagged the bartender.
“Six shots. The good stuff. We’re toasting.”
“Phil” Doug started.
“It’s your bachelor party, buddy. One toast. Then you can go to bed like an adult.”
The bartender lined up six shot glasses and poured amber liquid that probably cost more than it should.
Alan leaned forward, eyes bright.
“Can I do the toast?”
“Alan, no”
“I practiced.”
Phil sighed.
Alan’s toasts tended to go places.
But the guy had been so happy about the Wolfpack thing, and it was Doug’s night, and what the hell.
“Fine. Keep it short.”
Alan stood.
He cleared his throat like he was addressing the UN.
“To the Wolfpack,” Alan said.
“We’re brothers now. Real brothers. Not like the fake kind. And Doug’s getting married, which is very brave, and we’re all here to make sure he has the best night. The BEST night. Because that’s what Wolfpacks do.”
He raised his glass.
The others raised theirs.
Phil glanced at Holden shot glass raised, untouched.
“To Doug,” Phil said, because someone had to actually name the groom.
They drank.
Phil felt the burn, clean and immediate, and then a second feeling under it something chemical and wrong, the back-of-the-throat taste of a powder that didn’t belong.
He opened his mouth and the question evaporated.
His tongue felt thick.
Across the circle, Stu blinked.
“Did that taste”
“Smooth,” Alan said, smiling.
“The guy said it was the good stuff. I got it from Doug.”
Doug frowned.
“What?”
“The other Doug. At the thing. He said it was ecstasy.”
The world tilted.
The lights below smeared into long ribbons.
He tried to form a sentence tried to ask what the hell Alan had just said but his mouth had stopped taking requests.
Beside him, Stu made a sound like a dog that had been stepped on.
“Oh,” Doug said, very quietly.
“Oh no.”
Alan was still smiling.
“We’re gonna have the BEST night.”
Phil’s knees unlocked.
The rooftop was moving, or he was moving, or the whole city had come untethered and started drifting.
He reached for Holden, because Holden was right there and Holden was
Still upright.
Phil blinked.
Holden had gone very still, the shot glass empty in his hand, his face unreadable.
Not panic.
Not nothing.
The gap in between.
His gaze swept Alan, the glasses, Phil and his mouth moved.
“Okay,” Holden said.
His voice sounded far away.
“Okay. Everybody sit.”
“I don’t feel good,” Stu said.
“Sit down. Now.”
Phil sat.
The chair found him more than he found it.
The rooftop spun once, hard, and stopped spinning because Phil had stopped being able to tell the difference between moving and still.
Holden was talking.
Phil could hear the shape of it calm, directive, the same voice he’d used in the car when he’d said he’d get Doug to the wedding but the words had turned to static.
He tried to focus.
Tried to hold onto the thought that something was wrong, that Alan had said a name, that the taste in his mouth was a thing he should recognize.
The last thing Phil saw clearly was Holden’s hand on Doug’s shoulder, steadying him, and Holden’s eyes doing that thing they did reading the room like a tide chart, tracking a current Phil couldn’t feel.
And then the thought arrived, slow and certain, sinking through the chemical haze:
Holden’s still standing.
He barely drank.
He knew.
He always knows.
The rooftop dissolved.
Holden felt the dose land like weather a pressure at the base of his skull, a pull toward the dark he recognized from the film’s opening and from every blackout story he’d reconstructed in his other life.
The Sober Anchor pushed back.
The gift wasn’t a wall.
It was a tether.
It kept him on this side of the erasure, kept the room from vanishing entirely, but it didn’t stop the world from tilting.
Alan’s play, too predictable as sunrise once you’d seen the movie.
Holden had taken the shot because refusing it would have asked a question he couldn’t answer, swallowed just enough to sell it, and dumped the rest when Phil turned to yell at the bartender.
It hadn’t been enough.
The dose was strong.
Alan’s dealer Black Doug, the one who’d sold him roofies labeled as party favors had mixed a cocktail that could drop a man twice Holden’s size.
What Holden had swallowed was a fraction of what the others had taken, but a fraction of a disaster was still a disaster.
His vision grayed at the edges.
The sound went strange muffled and sharp at once, like he was hearing the rooftop through a wall.
Doug started sliding off the chair.
Holden caught him by the collar, hauled him back.
Stu was making a noise that would’ve been funny if it wasn’t terrifying.
Alan was giggling.
Phil had gone slack, his eyes unfocused, his mouth open like he’d forgotten what words were for.
Hands moved before decisions did.
Doug upright.
Stu propped against the bar.
Phil’s arm over his shoulder, dead weight and cologne.
The bartender was asking a question.
Holden fed him two hundreds and a lie about a long day and steered the Wolfpack toward the elevator.
The Anchor thinned.
Around him, the villa materialized.
No memory of the walk just the door swinging open, the key warm in his fist, the room smelling like new carpet and the faint animal musk of a night that hadn’t finished happening.
Bodies distributed like furniture.
Doug onto the couch, Stu folded into a bed, and Phil collapsed in the other room without being asked.
Alan wandered into the bathroom, still smiling, and mumbled about a surprise before the door closed.
Holden sat on the floor.
The Anchor was holding, but only just.
He could feel the hours stretching ahead, the space where his memory should be recording and wasn’t, the gift burning down to its wick to keep him tethered to a night that was trying very hard to erase him.
All of this had played on a screen in 2026, every beat familiar, and he’d walked into the night believing he could steer it.
Steering hadn’t been the problem.
Surviving had.
The last thing he thought, before the dose pulled him under and the Anchor frayed to a thread, was that he’d promised Doug.
And the night was just getting started.
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Read more chapters for free at unwrittenrealm.com
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TL;DR —
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.