Chapter 50
In most trials, Morrow kept his word: the winner lived, the loser’s throat was slit. But when subjects defied his predictions, their resistance made him furious enough to kill them both.
—Case notes inside Alan Morrow’s file, written by Donald Dellman
Heavy footsteps retreat until I can’t hear them anymore. Why is the Game Master walking away?
Nico rolls me onto my back. He grips my jumpsuit, unzipping enough to expose my stomach. I want to hiss from the cold and ask what he’s doing—why is the Game Master walking away?—but then something warm drips onto me.
What?
Warm and weighty liquid runs across my abdomen in sticky trails, pooling in the hollow of my belly button.
Blood.
I listen to Nico’s labored breathing as the coppery stench of blood clogs my nose. There’s so much on me. I don’t even want to know where all that blood is coming from. There are too many places to choose from. Nico gently rolls me so I’m lying on my side, pointed toward the ground.
“Can you hear me?” he whispers into my ear.
I squeeze my eyes tighter.
“There’s a camera in here,” he mumbles.
There’s a camera in here?
I catch up to what Nico is doing. If it took the Game Master twenty-three seconds to get down to our original room, it should take him at least that long to get back to his viewing room from here, since we ran a long way from our original room.
Nico only has minutes at most to make it look like he carved a key out of me.
He must’ve turned me onto my side so the camera can’t see me.
I want to yank his beautiful brain out of his skull and give it a smooch.
“I suspect they’re all over the building,” Nico whispers. “I’m going to find the door and come back for you.”
Can he find the right door before the Game Master comes back to throw me in a dumpster somewhere?
Nico groans as he stands. I wait for his footsteps to retreat. Instead, I hear a dull thud.
And silence.
Each second draws a harder pound from my heart. Is he okay? Did he pass out? I press my stump against the ground, just enough to ground me so I don’t blow this whole thing.
The silence stretches on forever. I can’t hear him breathing.
Or moving. My brain fills in all sorts of pictures about where he could be or what he could be doing.
I see his head cracked open and bleeding on the tile.
His empty eyes staring up at nothing. The Game Master, back sooner than expected and standing over his body right now, realizing we played him.
I want to open my eyes, but my face is angled into the tile and I can’t risk it.
Every second that passes without sound from Nico feels like an eternity. Time becomes stretchy, pulling like taffy and condensing the second I try and fail to hear him.
How long until I should check on him? What if he’s dying right next to me, bleeding out, and I do absolutely nothing?
The Game Master’s going to come back. He put Greg and Rafael in the dumpsters when Rafael was still alive. He’ll do the same to us.
Sure enough, heavy footfalls eventually come into the room. They stop. A low chuckle echoes off the tile.
“Should’ve given in from the start,” the Game Master mutters.
I focus on the cold tile on my cheek. The taste of blood in my mouth. Anything except his words and what they could mean.
Rough hands grab me and fling me over a shoulder. My arms dangle. The sudden change of angle sends blood flooding into the tourniquet, and the only word I force through my brain is limp limp limp.
The pain is information. I pretend I’m floating above my body, pretend I can watch the Game Master carrying me like a bag of dog food, pretend I am a bag of dog food. I doubt I’d feel much then.
Cold air hits my face.
After days in that tomb, it smells better than anything I’ve ever smelled, like snow and salt. Even the exhaust smells sweet. I’m airborne for a second before landing hard on vinyl.
He leaves. More time passes before he comes back, and something hits the trunk with enough force to make the car rock. An arm flops across my chest. Nico.
Is he breathing? I can’t tell. There’s too much weight pressing down on me to check. His arm is warm, which has to be a good sign, right?
The trunk slams.
I pry one eye open, but it makes no difference.
The darkness is so complete I could be staring at the inside of my own skull.
I want so badly to check on Nico, but if the Game Master opens the trunk again and sees I’m not exactly where he left me, I don’t think he’d shrug it off the way suspicious humans do in Toy Story.
I shift against Nico, just a tiny movement, hoping that if he’s faking unconsciousness, he’ll give me a sign. All I get is silence.
The engine turns over. Just as I think it might be safe to pull myself out from under Nico, the car starts moving, and Nico’s body settles over mine.
All his muscles have become dead weight, trapping me and crushing my ribs until each breath is an active effort.
I’m getting sick of not being able to breathe.
We go over a bunch of speed humps—either that, or the Game Master is worse at driving than checking his victims are actually dead. Each bump brings momentary relief before Nico’s weight presses back over me.
There’s a definite turn. I start counting as soon as the car picks up speed, and the ride becomes smooth and straight. It’s hard to keep track of the seconds accurately when I’m being crushed and bounced, but using the full Mississippi like I’m back in elementary school helps me focus.
I try to count every pause and turn we make, and it works for a while until I hear the rumbling of semi-trucks, and the wheels start this constant hum. The highway vibrates the numbers out of my head, and I forget everything but the seconds.
The drive is the longest of my entire life.
Nico’s arm slides across my throat. I panic for a second, but I can still pull enough air in.
I’ve reached three thousand seven hundred and eighty-four when the car stops. We lurch with the car, and Nico’s limp body rolls back, freeing my chest. It’s not even a little bit relieving.
The trunk opens, and harsh light burns against the back of my eyelids. The Game Master drags me out from under Nico. My head lolls at what I hope is a convincingly lifeless angle.
I hear the groan of hinges, and the smell hits me immediately, of metal and rust and organic matter that stings my nostrils. He drops me onto a bed of garbage bags. Something sharp digs into my back, and it takes every ounce of self-control I possess not to arch away.
Seconds later, Nico lands on top of me, partially across my upper thighs. I grit my teeth hard.
The dumpster lid crashes closed. A car door slams. An engine turns over.
I don’t bother counting to make sure he’s gone. I’m scared he’ll be standing there waiting again, no matter how long I count. I don’t want to forget the long number bouncing around in my head, anyway. The silence creeps on, broken only by the distant rumble of traffic.
I rip the duct tape off my mouth. My skin burns.
“Nico?” I croak out.
Nothing.
My fingers fumble across his face until I find his nose. I press my palm just below his nostrils and wait, seconds ticking by before I feel the faintest whisper of air against my skin.
I drop my head against the column of his throat, giving myself just one second to feel relief before pulling myself together. Alive doesn’t mean okay.
He must have passed out from blood loss.
Exhaustion. Infection. I could do that, too.
Everything feels far away and numb. The idea of moving again seems impossible.
All I want to do is close my eyes and let the cold creep in.
Let someone else find us. It would be so easy to stay here with him in the dark, our bodies pressed together until we both fade out like the end of a song.
A sob gurgles out of me as my feet find the bottom of the dumpster. I drag myself out from under him. Nico slides off me with a soft thud.
I fumble until my fingers find the edge of the lid, and I push. It barely budges.
Could the Game Master still be out there, waiting for the team to find us so he can watch? If he is, and he sees me climb out of the dumpster… I push down hard on the thought.
Nico could die if I wait for someone to find us. I don’t have a choice.
I grit my teeth and scream, pushing as hard as I can and throwing my shoulder into it. The lid gives way with a groan. Freezing air rushes in, and I stick my head up just far enough to peer out.
We’re in some kind of industrial park, at the edge of a parking lot that’s broken up with hulking shapes—machinery parked for the night. A curved driveway leads to a main road, and across it, there’s the glow of a gas station or truck stop.
I climb over the edge of the dumpster, and the lid bangs shut behind me. The second my boots touch gravel, I collapse, making a strained mumbling sound as my knees hit the ground.
The first step nearly drops me. Pain is information. Bite through the bag. Never give up. I call on every single lesson Dad ever had the chance to teach me, every way he showed me how to keep going when everything in me wanted to stop. I beg for the strength I need to make him proud.
The gas station parking lot materializes around me like a mirage. There’s a guy pumping gas into a semi, baseball cap pulled low over his face. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t approach a strange man in an isolated location if you paid me, but nothing about this is normal.
Baseball Cap glances up, and I watch his expression shift from bored to concerned to borderline terrified in three seconds. “Jesus Christ, girl, are you okay?”
“Can I use your phone?” I rasp, and I want to cry at how much the words hurt. “To call 911.”
He holds out a flip phone, tensing so much he probably thinks I’ll sprout fangs and go for his jugular.
I want to hug him. Or fall to my knees and kiss his boots, but I take the phone with hands that shake so much I almost drop it.
I memorized Donny’s number before going into the field, but right now my brain feels like someone put it in a blender with some rusty nails.
Is his area code 732 or 723? What if nobody is watching his phone?
Pick up pick up pick up, please, for the love of all that’s holy just—
“Hello?”
Zoey’s voice is a golden light coming through the other end of the phone. I’m overwhelmed with emotion, but I swallow it back. I keep my eyes on Baseball Cap as I talk. “I got lost in the woods for four days, and I need someone to get me.”
“Eden?” I hear a clatter on the other end of the line. “What are you talking about? Where are you?”
I squint at the neon sign buzzing overhead, trying to decode the letters through vision that keeps going in and out of focus. “Pete’s Gas… route…” The numbers blur together like I’m trying to read underwater.
There’s the sound of frantic typing before she tells me I’m ten minutes from the house. Only ten minutes. That asshole dumped us in our own backyard. Probably because he wanted the troupe to find our bodies.
I’m about to hang up so Baseball Cap can have his phone back when I remember something else.
“Wait, Zo—” I didn’t mean to use Nico’s nickname for her. My voice sort of fizzled out. I don’t know how to say what I need to say discreetly, so I shuffle a couple of steps away from Baseball Cap and turn so he can’t hear. “I need something. Don’t tell anyone. Please.”
I think she might have hung up on me until I hear thumping and faint shouting on her end, then: “What do you need?”
She’s patient as I struggle to get the words up and out through my burning throat.
“I know where to get one,” she says. I hear the van door slam down the line. “I’ll bring it with me. We’re coming. Stay put… Ede.”
Baseball Cap insists on staying with me until 911 arrives.
I don’t know what he’ll do when ghost hunters show up instead.
We sit together in silence on a bench, and I try not to think of Nico’s shallow breaths.
I get an urgent burning feeling crawling under my skin, like I need to ditch this guy before the team gets here, but knowing he cares enough about a stranger to sit with me until help arrives brings me comfort.
I’ve spent so much time around the worst people this world has to offer.
It’s easy to believe all people are bad.
I need this reminder that most people are good.
I’m still sitting with Baseball Cap when the van comes tearing into the parking lot. The back doors burst open before it fully stops.
“Ma’am, we got a call about an injured person?” DJ’s out first, and she’s wearing a navy paramedic jacket with reflective strips on the sleeves. She crouches in front of me, splitting into two before smashing back into one. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Griffin appears beside her wearing an identical jacket. He glances at Baseball Cap, giving him a quick nod. “We’ll take it from here, sir. Thank you for waiting with her.”
Baseball Cap’s eyes linger on the unmarked van, but he goes back toward his truck.
“Can you walk?” DJ asks me, but she’s already signaling to Benji, who hops out with a backboard.
“Nico,” I rasp, gripping the armrest of the bench as I stand. “In dumpster.”
Griffin and DJ sprint up the hill toward the dumpster with more urgency than real paramedics. My knees buckle, and Benji catches me as I tip forward into him. He helps me into the van. Zoey drives us over there.
She tells Benji to take the backboard to the dumpster. Once he’s gone, Zoey climbs through the van to sit with me and hands me a bottle of water with the cap off. I guzzle it down.
“Pace yourself,” Zoey says, fiddling with a small foil tray. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
She pops the pill out and hands it to me. She watches me take it with a sip of the water. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, especially when she lays her hand on mine for a split second.
She stays with me while I cling to the window, watching Griffin and DJ haul themselves up and over the dumpster’s edge.
They emerge, Nico suspended between them with his arms over their shoulders, his head lolling forward.
There’s blood everywhere. On his face. On his clothes.
But his chest is moving. Up and down. He’s alive. We made it out, and he’s alive.
Only when they’re loading him into the van does my brain give me permission to collapse.