The test subjects, technically prisoners of the state, are volunteers for the project aiming to reduce their sentence time.

Steve asks him to choose which one of them to give Darkenfloxx, a drug that induces intense fear and psychological pain.

The next day, Steve brings Jeff into the observation room and tells him that the "higher ups" have decided that the younger of the two women, Heather, must be injected with a dose, though it will only last 5 minutes.

Jeff reluctantly agrees, and to his horror, Heather commits suicide while on the Darkenfloxx after she damages her MobiPak, the device that administers the drugs.

Jeff forces Steve to open the door of the main entrance to free Lizzy and then tries to order him to hand over the pocket knife.

Steve resists the order (as complying would be killing the project, "the only thing he has ever loved"), and instead takes his phone and enables all four vials of Darkenfloxx in Lizzy's MobiPak, causing her to behave hysterically and attempt suicide.

Mark and the police are now approaching the island as Steve escapes on his floatplane, but he joyously crashes into a mountain as he is now high off of his damaged MobiPak.

"Escape from Spiderhead" was first published in The New Yorker in 2010, and in author George Saunders's collection of short stories Tenth of December in 2013.

A film adaptation was announced in February 2019 with Joseph Kosinski set to direct from a screenplay written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

The website's consensus reads: "Spiderhead's top-shelf cast and well-written source material are almost enough to compensate for its frequent failure to live up to its potential.

[13] Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave it 2 out of 4 stars, writing that "it starts with promise", but is "pseudo-heady sci-fi stuff that treats its most intriguing elements like an afterthought.