Chapter 43
Shock will kill you slower than a gunshot wound, but it’s equally deadly.
—Everything You Need to Know About Emergency Medicine (When You Can’t Go to the ER) by Benjamin Ashford
My eyes open to darkness. I blink hard, once, twice, but nothing changes.
Am I dead? The idea should scare me more than it does, but mostly I feel confused. Shouldn’t there be a tunnel? Mom and Dad and Rosie waiting?
A groan escapes my lips.
“Eden?” Nico says. His voice has lost that steady control he usually has. “Eden, can you hear me?”
“Nico?”
“I’m here.” Hands tighten on my shoulders, and then he’s holding me. One of his arms supports my shoulders, and my head rests on his thigh.
“The Game Master turned off the lights,” he says. “You were out a couple minutes.”
I move to grab hold of him with both hands because I need to know he’s real, but pain detonates in my left hand like a bomb. It drags a strangled cry from my throat, then another, each pulse wringing more noise from deep inside me.
“I know it hurts,” Nico says, and he slides a hand around to the back of my head. “I’m here. I got you.”
I grip my wrist instinctively, but my fingers hit something rigid and tightly wrapped around my forearm. A belt.
My abs engage to sit up, but I stay glued to the floor.
Nico’s arm becomes a solid wall behind my back, taking most of my weight as he eases me upright.
Once I’m sitting up, Nico wraps both of his hands around my stump, his hands engulfing what’s left of mine.
The pain reduces the world to nothing but the singular overwhelming point on my hand.
He swallows audibly, and this time he manages his full count before he says: “What the hell were you thinking?”
“It’s only some fingers.” My tongue feels too big for my mouth. “I never use them for anything, anyway.”
He doesn’t laugh.
“At least it’s not my dominant hand,” I say. “I still have my thumb, so it could have been a lot worse.”
His breath comes down against my forehead. Not being able to see makes everything feel closer, like the room has shrunk around us and the only thing that still exists are his hands clamped around the pain.
“Why would you do this?” he whispers.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I manage. “One of us had to do the trial, and I didn’t want it to be you. I was scared for you, okay?”
Each second lengthens.
“You were scared for me?” he finally asks.
Is that really so hard for him to believe? “Of course I was scared for you,” I say. “I don’t want you to die.”
As I say the words, I know it’s more than that.
If he dies, and the Game Master lets me go, I’d never get out of here.
Not really. My mind would remain trapped in this building, just like it’s still trapped with that plastic bag over my head.
Nico would become another person I wasn’t good enough to save.
“You were scared for me,” he says again, but the way he says it is different. Almost reverent.
“I was scared for you,” I confirm.
He drags himself closer to me until his knees bracket my sides, and he surrounds me. I’m so surprised by the contact, by the hug. His being this close to me is more overwhelming than the pain.
He angles his head toward my ear, speaking so quietly that I feel the words more than hear them.
“I’m trying to figure out our next move,” he mumbles. “Things are about to get a lot worse for us.”
The words float past me. I have to chase them down, try to make them mean something through the static of pain filling my head. “Why?”
The pause drags out.
“Why, Nico?”
“I’m going to tell you,” he says. “Give me a second to put my words together.”
I try, but each second crawls by like an hour. My whole arm feels like it has been dipped in acid, and the agony strips away any filter I ever had.
“Can you just spit it out?” I ask. “Tell me what you’re thinking. You don’t have to choose your words with me.”
“Do you remember at the beginning, how Morrow kept talking about how he designed the trials to try to get me to break?” he asks.
I nod, my hair rubbing against his.
“Morrow started this thinking he could push me hard enough to become Billy again,” Nico says. “He wasn’t testing you. You were just the tool to break me with.”
The pain is making it hard for me to use my brain, but his meaning begins to form in my mind. “So, when I cut off my hand for you, he realized how much I care about you?”
“Exactly.” His hand tightens fractionally on my hand. “The Game Master thinks he has the perfect subjects for both a true nature trial and a love trial.”
The words land like stones in water, sending ripples through everything I thought I understood about what’s happening here.
“I don’t know what he’ll do now that he thinks he has a love trial on his hands,” Nico continues. “But he’ll escalate. Now he thinks he has something real to break, so the next trial will be… bad.”
“Compared to all the super great ones we’ve had so far?” I ask.
A fresh pulse of pain lances up my arm. Even though the Game Master cut power to the lightbulb, the camera’s red light still blinks at us. I wish I could reach through and rip out all the Game Master’s stolen teeth.
“I don’t think the team will find us in time,” Nico whispers into the bubble of space between us. “We can’t count on rescue. It’s just us. There’s going to be a trial we can’t both walk away from, and when that happens, you end it. You kill me, and you get out.”
“I’m not having this conversation again—”
“It’s the only way,” he says. “He can break every bone in my body, but I’ll die before laying a hand on you.”
I’m shaking now. I don’t know if it’s from blood loss or shock or the weight of what he’s saying.
“You’re a good person,” I whisper.
He says nothing. His face is inches from mine. Not being able to see him does nothing to diminish the pull I feel. It’s like the whole room has tilted, pushing me into him. I’m sliding past pain, past common sense, past everything to be closer to him.
“I’m not that good,” he finally says.
“You’re protecting me because you’re my team leader,” I say, desperately grasping for logic or some explanation that makes sense. “You’d do the same thing for any of the others.”
He presses his face against the side of my head, his lips skimming my temple so gently that goosebumps chase one another down my neck.
“Eden,” he breathes.
I have never heard my name sound so much like a confession.
Like a secret that’s escaped from a part of him so deep, he can only whisper it in the dark.
He’s so close to me, but I still can’t see any part of him.
We might as well be at the bottom of the ocean.
Nothing but him and me, and this moment suspended between us like a held note.
“I don’t understand,” I say, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it pulse in my ears. “You barely know me.”
He pulls in a long breath. “Are you okay to keep the pressure on yourself?”
“Where are you going?” I ask, knitting my hand into the front of his jacket.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, gentle but wavering. He pries my fingers from the leather. “I’m going to stay right here, but I… need to not be touching you. When I say all this.”
He drags himself away from me, and the loss of warmth is jarring. A dense cold presses into the space he just occupied. My teeth start to chatter.
“I’m going to tell you everything.” His voice is still close, but he feels so far away.
The only thing stopping me from crawling through the shadows to find him is how serious he sounds.
“I have to start from the beginning, or none of this will make sense. Please don’t say anything until I’m done.
If I stop, I might not be able to start again. ”
I’ve never wanted to hear something so much in my entire life.
“I apologize in advance for any pauses,” he says. His voice is all that exists in the world. “I know it’s annoying how I choose every word, but this is important.”
I nod, then remember he can’t see me. “Okay.”