“Off the Rails” is episode three of season one of Kiss Me First.
In the previous episode, “Make It Stop”, Leila had discovered that Calumny had killed himself, with Adrian’s help. The latter said he gave Calumny what he needed and that he found peace, and that he always keeps his promises, and put Leila into a simulation one of her most treasured memories, of her and her mother on the beach when she was young. Leila had admitted to Tess that she killed her mother, although she didn’t mention how this was probably her mother’s idea and desire. Tess is also staying with Leila and Jonty.
The episode opens, briefly, in March 2005 and the launch event for Azana Planet by Ruth Palmer, and about how good it is and how it changes and adapts to the users. Ruth Palmer turns up in a news article later in the episode, which perhaps have relevance, although what is not known.
In the present, Tess is seeing her therapist, telling him that she threw away the lithium he prescribed. She asks for more, but the therapist doesn’t believe that Tess is necessarily telling the truth, as he has claimed to have thrown drugs away before. This time she is telling the truth. Her therapist wants to admit Tess as in inpatient so that he can monitor her drug use, but she doesn’t want to.
In Red Pill, Tippy tells Leila that Mania/Tess tried to kill herself previously, and that Adrian is spending a lot of time with Denier, the youngest of the Red Pill members. Leila is able to re-enter the scene that Adrian made for her, and the latter is with Denier. Adrian tells Leila that Calumny won’t be coming back. Adrian appears to be hinting at something. Tess is definitely behaving erratically and Leila is concerned. Denier lives in a children’s home on the Isle of Sheppey and definitely seems to have a very bad home life. Leila is worried that Adrian is after him next.
To try and find out more about Adrian, Leila turns to her old maths teacher who was in the cafe in the previous episode (something seems up with him). She wants help hacking Azana, but her old teacher says that Azana was designed so that it couldn’t be hacked (if only it were that easy).
Leila is behaving more confidently and takes more effort to stop Tess from seeing her, married, boyfriend Connor. Leila doesn’t trust Adrian and something seems off about him – is he actually a ‘real boy’?