22. R
R
Levi gasped back into his body with a fork in his hand, halfway to his mouth with a piece of something dark on the tines — meat, over-sauced, just regular banquet food that had been sitting under a heat lamp too long. He set it down.
The lighting in the room was different, the bulbs filament-style and too dim, landing amber on every surface. The watercolor on the wall behind Jasper’s shoulder was crooked. The bar in the corner was smaller, the bottles rearranged. The wood paneling was darker, more rustic.
The scenario reset completely. Why?
The sounds were already in his ears. The respirator. The heart monitor. He could hear Ethan’s voice, far away, saying his name — Levi — the way it used to come from down a hallway, two syllables,the second one falling and drawn out.
Asher sat across the table, both hands flat on the linen, palms down, fingers splayed. There was an untouched wine glass beside his plate, and his face still wore the last expression Levi had seen on it: anger.
“Hi,” Asher said, almost gently.
“Hi,” Levi said.
The lounge was around them. Jasper at the bar. Maddie pouring wine. Owen in an armchair near the fire with a book open on his knee, already talking. Tyler at a window with his back to the room. Zoe and Elliot stood by the fire. None of them looked at the table.
I need to check for the open windows, then find the tape. We’ll start with the open windows… Levi started to stand.
“Don’t,” Asher snapped, keeping his voice low.
Levi’s hands were on the edge of the table, his weight shifting forward, and the word stopped him mid-motion. “The fog —”
“Sit down, Levi.”
He sat.
Asher watched him sit and waited until Levi’s weight was fully in the chair. “You’re already doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“The thing you do. You came thirty seconds ago and you’re already planning. The tape. The windows. Who goes where. I can see it on your face.” Asher’s hands curled into fists on the tablecloth.
“We know what happens if we don’t —”
“We know what happens if we do,” Asher hissed. “Every single god damn time Levi, you go to try and fix something and we die. I watch you die.”
“So we don’t go to the cellar this time. We seal the building and we keep everyone talking and we —”
“And Owen picks up a rifle and kills everyone.” Behind Asher’s shoulder, Owen was showing Jasper something in his book, his hands animated. “That’s what happened the time before. Owen picked up a rifle and shot me in the fucking head.”
Levi didn’t say anything. The fireplace was still going strong, now with wood instead of gas and glass, and the rifle still sat above the mantle. Maddie laughed at something across the room, the sound landing wrong against the conversation at the table.
“You keep treating this like a game, Levi,” Asher said, shaking his head. “You keep treating us like a game. That’s not right.”
“We are trapped in a fucking video game, Asher,” Levi snapped, his voice just a hair too loud, but he didn’t care. He was tired of this argument. He was tired of dying. He wanted to get out, and he wanted Asher. “We have to treat it like a game.”
“These are our lives.” Asher shook his head harder. “Mine and yours. We do everything together, but then you start treating it like a game and I keep having to watch you die…it’s not fun anymore. I don’t like it when other things kill you.”
“I’m trying to get us out —”
“There is no out!” Asher growled, banging his fist on the table. “There’s just this. Just us. Why can’t you be happy with just us?!”
“Because I know I can figure this out if you stop getting in my way!” Levi shot back. “I know this scenario. I know it, Asher. Ethan played a game like this —”
“Your brother is dead, Levi,” Asher growled, his eyes narrowing. “He’s been dead. Stop using your pointless guilt to run away from me.”
Levi felt like he had been filled with gasoline and someone threw a match down his throat. “Don’t talk about Ethan.”
“Why not? You talk about him constantly. You brought him up just now, as part of your excuse to avoid this,” Asher said.
His eyes fell to the table, the muscle in his jaw jumped as his fingers began turning the wine glass.
“I’m not dead Levi. I’m right here. I love you.
I want you to stop trying to run away and stay. ”
Maybe it was the fog still in his body, or the fact that Asher was weaponizing Ethan, or the echoes of the heart monitor in his head, but the quiet, sheepish look on Asher’s face just pissed Levi off more.
It sat inside him like acid, bubbling in his veins because everything he had done was so they could stay together.
Every bit of fear, the pain, the never ending cycle of feeling himself slip away and trying to claw it back even when Asher’s hands stopped him, was about ending the game so they could be together.
Going along hasn’t worked. Distracting him hasn’t worked. Fighting, and crying, and dying hasn’t fucking worked.
Fine.
“Then prove it’s worth it,” Levi said softly “Prove staying is worth it. Tell me something real about yourself.”
“What?”
“What did you want to be when you grew up?”
Asher’s face went blank. His hands were still flat on the table but his fingers stopped turning the wine glass.
“What did your mom look like? Tall? Short? What color were her eyes?”
“Levi —”
“Where did you go to school? What did you study? What was your best friend’s name?” Levi’s hands were off the table now, gripping the edge of his chair, his knuckles white. The questions were coming out faster than he could shape them.
“Stop —”
“You can’t answer.” He was on his feet. He didn’t remember standing.
His chair was behind him and every conversation in the lounge had stopped and he could feel the whole room watching — Jasper’s beer halfway to his mouth, Maddie’s hand on the wine bottle frozen.
“You can’t answer because there’s nothing to answer.
You don’t have a past. You don’t have a before.
You’re asking me to sit in a room forever with someone who can’t tell me his mother’s name. ”
“STOP.” Asher’s hand flew to his temples, his fingers pressing in. “It hurts when you — stop, Levi —”
“You want me to stop? Then be somebody worth staying for.” His own eyes were burning, the tears building, his voice shaking. “Be a person. Tell me one thing — one memory, one face, one name — that proves you existed before I walked into a campsite and you decided I was yours.”
“There is nothing else. Stop it, Levi. I’m warning you—”
“This game is designed around fear, Asher. What’s yours? Because I know all the fucked up monsters that are part machine are mine. Which one is yours? Space? Forests? Fancy fucking doors in basements?” Levi pressed. “Which one? Or are those mine too?”
“I DON’T KNOW.” Asher’s fingers were still at his temples, pressing hard enough that the skin was whitening under the pressure.
“I don’t know, Levi. There isn’t — I look and there isn’t — you’re asking me for something that isn’t THERE and every time you ask it does something inside my head that I can’t —”
“Because you’re not fucking real!” The words exploded out of Levi’s mouth and the room went silent.
I didn’t mean that. Why did I say that?
He watched the words cut through Asher the way a blade went through a body — the entry point, the damage, and the unsettling stillness that came after something vital had been hit.
Asher’s hands came down from his head, his mouth agape, and he reached for the wine glass, his fingers tightening around the bowl of it.
It shattered in his hand.
Then Asher was moving fast, around the table—two steps, three, his bloody hand leaving drops on the white cloth.
Levi didn’t step back. The spine he’d built across four scenarios held him where he was, feet planted, shoulders level, his chin up.
He watched Asher come around the table and he did not move.
Asher’s bloody hand closed on his jaw, his thumb on one side of Levi’s face and his fingers on the other, the grip tilting Levi’s head up and a piece of glass still embedded in Asher’s palm biting into his skin.
“Does this feel real, Levi?” Asher asked, his grip tightening.
“You’re hurting me,” Levi said, his heart hammering in his throat.
“Does it feel like nothing is hurting you?” Asher’s voice dropped to a whisper as he squeezed harder, leaning in, his mismatched eyes staring daggers through Levi. “Does it?”
“Get your hand off my face, Asher,” he gritted out through his teeth.
Asher’s other hand went to the back of Levi’s neck and the two grips together turned Levi’s body and slammed him face-down on the table in one motion.
Levi’s head cracked against a bread plate, air leaving his lungs as Asher wrenched an arm behind his back, the pain in his shoulder bright and immediate.
“Does this feel real, Levi?” Asher asked, pressing hard against him and whispering in his ear. “Or is it still nothing?”
“Asher, what the fuck man? Let him go!” Tyler shouted.
“Let me go!” Levi tried kicking behind him, to pull his arm free, but Asher yanked at his arm harder, straining the joint.
Asher’s grip on his hair tightened and Levi’s head slammed back down onto the table, the edge of the cracked plate catching his forehead; blood dripped from his eyebrow into his eye.
“Tell me you love me back,” Asher whispered in his ear. “Just…just tell me you love me.”
“Fuck you,” Levi wheezed.
“WHY?” Asher shouted in his ear. “I know you do. I know it. I can feel it. Why won’t you—why can’t you just say it back?”
“Hey — that’s enough. Let him go, we can talk about this,” Elliot said, his voice low and urgent.
Asher released Levi’s arm and grabbed a steak knife off the table, yanking Levi’s hair back as he pressed the blade to his throat. “Back the fuck up, both of you,” he warned. “Back up and sit down or I swear to god I will open his throat right here.”
“Man, just let him —” Jasper started.