Chapter 39 #2
I return to my spot, clenching and unclenching my fingers and toes.
One time, Dad told Rosie and me about a winter training exercise he did in Alaska, talking all about how he’d rub his hands together every few minutes, stomp his feet, wiggle his toes, anything to keep blood flowing.
That entire winter, I was wiggling my hands in my mittens when waiting for the school bus or playing in the snow so that I could prove I could be like Dad.
Closing my eyes, I pretend I am Dad sitting in the snow somewhere in Alaska, as the minutes pass by. I don’t know how long Nico is out. Could be minutes. Could be an hour. I’m opening the chocolate bar to have one square when he comes back to consciousness.
His body jerks against the chains, metal clanking as he tries to pull his arms down.
His eyes are wide and unfocused as he thrashes, and his toes scrabble for purchase on the floor.
His upper body swivels, taking in his surroundings with the frantic energy of someone waking up from a nightmare.
Only in this case, he’s waking up in a nightmare.
His eyes find mine, and his expression darkens. Then he looks down.
His face goes through about five different emotions in the span of two seconds, landing somewhere between furious and baffled. He tries to move his arms, but they’re still cuffed on either side of him, and the blanket is tied too tightly for him to shrug it off.
“What the hell is this?” he hisses.
“Is that a serious question?” I ask, and then do a melodramatic gasp. “Oh my God, is this your first time seeing a blanket?”
He squirms at the blanket with his shoulders, but it doesn’t budge. “Take it off.”
“Nope.” I slide a square of chocolate into my mouth, and sugar explodes over my tongue, so strong after hours of no food that all words flee my brain.
His jaw clenches so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t chip a tooth. “Eden, if you don’t take this off me right now, I swear to God—”
“You swear to God what? You’ll kill me?” I rest my head back against the column, trying to let his words wash over me. “I’d like to see you try from up there.”
He glares at me with the intensity of someone who’s imagining my death, and honestly? It’s kind of impressive how threatening he can look while wearing a blanket cape. The fury radiating off him is palpable enough that I should be more scared than I am, but I’m too tired and cold to care.
I notice his hands. The tips of his fingers have become a dusky purple. What if he loses circulation? Once the others get here, I’m sure they’ll know how to reverse whatever happened to him, but normal Nico will have lasting injuries from hanging like this, while I just sat here.
I can’t release him. I can’t talk about anything I don’t want the Game Master to overhear. I can do nothing other than be useless and watch him.
The occasional rattle of chains breaks the silence. I try hard not to sleep since this isn’t a place I want to let my guard down, but the cold has other ideas. My eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds each, and no matter how many times I snap myself awake, they keep sliding closed.
I go in and out of dreams that feel more real than my normal ones.
There’s plastic over my face, but instead of Stanley Daniels peering down at me to see if I’ve stopped breathing, it’s Nico.
His green eyes watch me through the clear film with that same predatory look from earlier.
I try to scream. The plastic seals to my mouth.
The crackling of the speaker pulls me out of the dream.
“Your second trial will commence shortly.”
I push myself up, leaning on the column as spots flood into my vision. My muscles have stiffened from sleeping on the hard floor. It’s impossible to tell if it’s been six hours or twenty-four.
Nico’s already looking at me from across the room. His skin has taken on a grayish pallor that makes him look like a fresh corpse, and his hands are hanging at unnatural angles from wrists that are raw and bleeding where the cuffs cut in.
I try to be gentle when I work the rope free from the cleat. Every second he’s up there is another second of agony. His boots go flush on the floor. I reach forward to steady him, but he jerks away so hard he stumbles.
I hold my hands up. He stays on his knees, head bowed. He doesn’t make a sound, but I still catch the sharp intake of breath through his nose as his only sign of pain. Good Lord, he’s stubborn.
“Did you sleep well?” I ask.
His head lifts, and his eyes look less angry, exhaustion in its place. “Oh yeah. Like a baby.”
I wasn’t expecting a joke, so it takes a couple of seconds to register as such in my head. The man in front of me doesn’t feel like the version of Nico that was enjoying carving me up with a scalpel. Could the hours hanging from the pole have made him go back to his normal self?
“I can never tell if you’re joking or being serious,” I say.
His Cupid’s bow twitches. “Oh my God, is this your first time hearing sarcasm?”
I let out a laugh that sounds more like a hiccup. “Maybe it would be easier to tell it was sarcasm if you didn’t deliver every joke like you’re informing someone their dog died.”
“My delivery is what makes me funny,” he says.
“No,” I say. “It makes you confusing.”
“You think I’m confusing?” he asks.
I nod. “Very.”
He looks as if there are words trapped behind his teeth that he’s fighting not to say. But maybe I’m slipping into old habits and reading too much into it because of how desperate I am for it to be true.
The speakers hiss to life again, and I jump.
“You’ll find the key to Subject One’s restraints behind the loose brick in the northeast corner,” the Game Master says.
How am I supposed to know where the northeast corner is? What kind of stupid directions are those?
The Game Master must enjoy putting people in situations that make them seem stupid when they’re not, so that he can look like a genius in comparison. He must be really insecure. I blow out a long sigh.
I walk slowly along the perimeter of the room, running my hands over the bricks. Most of them sit flush, but eventually I find one that juts out enough to catch my fingertip. I work it loose, and the brick comes away easily. Behind it sits a small hollow holding a key.
My hand pauses halfway to the opening. Could this be part of the trials?
If I reach in there, will some mechanism trigger, and I’ll lose my hand?
The old Morrow wouldn’t booby-trap this.
He was always trying to prove a point, not cruel for cruelty’s sake, and a random trap wouldn’t prove anything.
But there’s no telling what this escalating version of Morrow would do.
I use the tip of the water bottle to scrape the key out. It tumbles to the floor with a ping.
“Glad to see you’re taking precautions,” Nico grumbles.
I flip him off without turning around.
I crouch in front of Nico with the key. I unlock his left cuff, and he cradles his wrist close to his body as I undo the other. His hands look alien now, all puffy and discolored. His fingers have swollen enough that his tattoos are warped, and when his right hand is free, his shoulders curl.
“Can you move your fingers at all?” I ask.
He tries to make a fist. He manages to partially close his trembling fingers, but they won’t hold, like his body forgot how to grip.
Shit.
I can’t help him with his hands, but I can do one thing to help him.
“Will you please drink some water?” I ask, unscrewing the top from the water bottle before holding it out.
He watches me for a long second, then reaches for the bottle I’m holding out. Crow’s feet form around his eyes as he braces the bottle in both hands, mostly using his palms, and his arms tremble as he brings it to his lips. He takes a couple of sips before holding it back out to me.
I cap the bottle. He pushes himself up to standing.
I force my hands to stay where they are instead of reaching out to steady him because I don’t think he’d like that very much.
He closes his eyes like he’s fighting off waves of dizziness through stubborn determination.
Hours suspended from his wrists, and now he’s supposed to compete against me in whatever hell the Game Master has planned for us next?
A mechanical crunching sound echoes through the room. Metal grinding against metal with the weight of something big moving, and a door cracks open on the far end of the room. Red light spills through the thin gap, and my stomach drops to somewhere around my ankles.
Looks like it’s time for trial two.
Nico and I head toward the door. He takes a break at each column, bracing against it for stability.
He pauses at the door. I try to ready myself, rolling my shoulders back and flexing my hands to get blood flowing, but I don’t even know how to prepare myself for something like this.
He raises his eyebrows at me like he’s asking if I’m ready, not unlike how he did before we entered the old factory when looking for Donny.
I get a pang of pain in my chest at the memory, but I nod, and he pushes the door open to reveal a narrow hallway.
Emergency lighting strips line the walls, casting everything in an eerie red glow exactly like the one in the building where we found Donny, but it’s what’s on the floor that makes my blood run cold.
A carpet of broken glass.