14. Carey
Carey
A series of pings echoed through the hall, and everyone pulled out their phones. I grabbed mine and quickly scanned the new message from the Game Master.
Congratulations on passing the first game!
Right now, you probably all feel the need to relax and recuperate, so there are no more games until tonight. You have free rein of your quarters and can do whatever you want until dinner, which will be served in the drawing room at 5pm.
Lunch would usually be served at 12:30, but I think I can safely assume that none of you have much of an appetite after the shock of losing a player today.
If you need water, there are glass jugs and cups available in the cupboards in your rooms, and the tap water in the bathroom is perfectly safe to drink.
Thanks for playing!
“Well, at least we get some time off,” Rhys muttered, rubbing his jaw.
“Are we seriously not getting lunch?” Hudson said, upper lip curling. “That’s fucked up.”
Kiara glared at him. “You really want to eat right now? After what just happened in there?”
“It was fucked up, sure, but a man’s gotta eat,” he replied. “Besides, Evan wasn’t my friend. I barely knew the dude.”
“You’re disgusting,” Kiara hissed. With that, she stormed up the hall with Jasmine by her side.
The rest of us followed at a slower pace, not quite knowing what to do. There were books in our rooms, so we could spend the next few hours reading if we wanted, but I had a feeling most of us didn’t want to be alone right now. Not after the horror we’d just witnessed.
“Guys, I really don’t want to be alone right now,” Courteney said, echoing my thoughts. “Does anyone mind if I hang out with them?”
“Of course not,” Zach said, brushing a hand over her shoulder. “I don’t think any of us want to be alone right now.”
“Let’s go and hang out in the drawing room,” Maverick said, glancing at us over his shoulder. “We can talk about everything. Try to figure out what’s going on.”
“You guys can feel free to do that,” Rhys replied. “But I’m going back to my room to take a leak, and then I’m gonna explore again. There’s gotta be more stuff we missed earlier. I want to know exactly where all the cameras are, too.”
With that, he strode up the stairs, clearly not caring for any company. Maverick muttered something under his breath and reached for the drawing room door handle. “Fuck,” he said with a grimace, rattling the bronze fixture. “It’s locked now.”
“I guess it’ll open at five for dinner, like the text said,” I replied. “The locks in this place must be set up on an automated schedule.”
“Yeah, maybe,” April said, lifting a brow. “Or maybe the Game Master is actively controlling them from wherever he’s hiding.”
“Wherever it is, we’ll never find it,” Hudson said. “Not with all the fucking doors sealed off.”
“Where should we go for now?” Courteney asked, tilting her head.
Maverick nodded toward the staircase. “My room. It’s the closest.”
We all trudged up the stairs and headed into Maverick’s room, which was directly left of the landing.
Almost immediately, the group split into three smaller groups. Kiara and Jasmine huddled on the top right corner of the bed, and Maverick stood next to them, arms crossed over his chest as the three of them spoke in hushed tones. Hudson and Tate went to stand by the window, and I hung back near the desk with April, Brooke, Courteney, and Zach.
“So,” Zach said, leaning against the desk. “I won’t bother asking you guys if you’re okay, because I think I already know the answer.”
“No shit,” I murmured.
“Do any of you know what’s going on yet?” he asked.
April shook her head. “I’ve barely had time to think about it. I’m still in shock over…” She trailed off and shook her head before starting again. “I didn’t say this earlier, because there was already enough drama, but part of me honestly thought Tate and Evan could be right about this whole thing being a joke. At least… that’s what I hoped for.”
“Me too,” Brooke said, hugging her arms around herself. “But now we know it’s real. We can actually die here.”
“Yup.” Zach’s lips tightened. “It’s fucked up.”
“Beyond fucked up,” I said, shaking my head. “I just don’t get it. Why us? What did we do to deserve this?”
“Nothing,” April said. “We were just unlucky enough to get picked out of a crowd by a total psychopath.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Courteney said.
Zach’s forehead wrinkled. “Why?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and there’s a few things. Firstly, we’re all Babylon students, which makes me think the Game Master must be a fellow student. Or at least he’s being helped by a Babylon student. That makes me think we weren’t picked at random. This student selected the twelve of us for a reason. I just don’t know what it is.” Courteney paused and looked down at the floor. “Also, most of us seem to be in friend groups. There’s the four of you. Jasmine, Kiara, and Maverick are friends, and Hudson, Rhys, and Tate are friends with each other too. Then there’s me. I’m the odd one out, and I worry that makes me look suspicious. But I swear, I’m not the Game Master, and I’m not helping him either.” She swallowed thickly and looked back up at us. “I know I can’t prove it, but… I promise, it’s not me.”
April shook her head. “You’re not the odd one out. You and Zach are friends from… what is it? History class?”
“Yeah, exactly,” Zach chimed in. “Just because we don’t hang out every day doesn’t mean we aren’t friends.”
“Also,” Brooke said, raising a brow. “Tate isn’t actually friends with Hudson and Rhys. From what I’ve heard, he isn’t friends with anyone. His relationships are more… well, let’s just say they’re more transactional than others.”
“Like what Kiara was saying earlier?” I asked, tipping my head. “About the party favors?”
“Yup. People only hang out with him if he gives them stuff in return. So he doesn’t have any friends here. Also, Evan wasn’t really friends with anyone here either. So you’re not the odd one out at all, Courteney.”
Courteney breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Thanks,” she murmured. She took a deep breath and spoke up again. “There’s something else I’ve been thinking about. About the Game Master.”
“Yeah?”
“I know most of us ended up agreeing with Brooke’s theory about him being an outsider. But you know how I said I think he’s either a Babylon student or at least getting help from a Babylon student?”
Zach nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“If that’s true, I think it would make sense to have an insider in the group to report back to him. Like, stuff the mics and cameras might not pick up.”
“You could be right,” April said, nodding slowly. “One of us could be involved even if he or she isn’t the official Game Master.”
“I think so too,” I said, looking over at the window. Hudson was leaning close to Tate, eyes narrowed and head occasionally nodding. The two of them appeared to be deep in discussion, and when I looked at the group on the bed, I could see they were doing the same. I was willing to bet we were all discussing the exact same subject. After all, what else could anyone possibly want to talk about right now?
April leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Now that I’m really thinking about it, I might know who it could be,” she said. “The insider, I mean.”
“Really?”
She lifted a palm. “I don’t want to be a total bitch and point fingers like the others were doing earlier, but... well, it’s just something a little suspicious you guys should know about.”
“What is it?” I asked, leaning closer.
She sighed and scrubbed a hand over her face. “God, you’re all going to judge me so hard for the way I found out about this.”
“We won’t,” Brooke said. “Just say it. I hate being kept in suspense.”
“Okay, well, you know how Rhys has always acted like he’s one of us? Like, mega-rich?” April said. She glanced at me and gave me a sympathetic half-smile. “Sorry, Carey. I just mean—”
I lifted a palm. “No need to apologize. I get it.”
April went on. “He’s been lying to everyone for years. I don’t know if that necessarily means he’s helping the Game Master, or that he’s the Game Master himself, but it does show that he’s capable of deception. He’s also damn good at it.”
“Wait, he’s been lying about being rich?” I asked, cocking my head.
“Yup. He’s not.”
“How do you know?”
April sighed and looked at her feet. “Here’s the part where you judge me,” she said. She gnawed at the inside of her cheek for a few seconds before continuing. “A couple of years ago, when I was a sophomore and Abby was a freshman, we both started to worry about our grades in English. We thought Dad might be going harder on us because we’re his kids, and we were especially worried about some papers we’d recently handed in. So we decided to steal his office key and check our grades. It was stupid, I know. But we just wanted to see. That’s all. We weren’t cheating, or anything like that.”
“No judgement from me,” Zach said. “If my dad was a teacher at our school, you can bet your ass he’d mark me harder than the others. It would freak me out too.”
“Well, it turned out that he keeps all the essays stored in a locked filing cabinet, and we didn’t have the key for that, so we couldn’t even look at our grades,” April said. “But Abby noticed something on his desk.”
“Regarding Rhys, I presume,” I said, raising my brows.
“Yeah. It was a folder with a form on top about financial aid for a scholarship student. Every teacher who has one of these students in their class needs to sign off on them every semester to confirm that they’re keeping their grades up,” April said. “This particular form had Rhys’s name on it. As soon as I saw what it was, I put it down, because it made me feel weird to look at something that obviously isn’t any of my business. But Abby was always a major gossip hound. You guys remember, right?”
Brooke smiled faintly. “Yeah.”
“Well, anyway, she read the whole form, along with everything else in the folder, and she told me all about it after we left. Rhys is attending Babylon on a full scholarship. His parents’ occupations were written on the form. His mom is a librarian and his dad is in advertising. There’s nothing wrong with those jobs, obviously, but—”
“They don’t pay anywhere near enough to afford Babylon’s fees,” Zach finished for her.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t get it.” Courteney shook her head. “He’s always acted like he was super wealthy. Like, remember his birthday party last year?”
“I wasn’t invited, so no,” Brooke said, rolling her eyes.
“It was in an absolutely massive mansion. Like, twice as big as my place,” Courteney said. “He told everyone it was just his family’s beach house. The party was fully catered, too. I never would’ve expected something like that from a scholarship kid.”
Zach shrugged. “He probably saved up his allowance and rented an Airbnb for the night,” he said. “Just to keep up appearances.”
“But how can he hide it from his friends?” Courteney asked. shaking her head. “I can’t imagine Hudson hanging out with anyone he deems lesser than him. But they’re best friends.”
“Well, Babylon’s a boarding school,” April said. “Rhys probably lies and says his family lives really far away. Different state, maybe. So they can’t drive there to hang out on weekends.”
“Also, Hudson is really fucking stupid,” Zach added. “It’s probably not hard to trick him.”
“But he’s tricked everyone,” I said. “April’s right. It shows how capable he is of lying.”
Brooke frowned. “What was the scholarship for?” she asked.
“That’s the other suspicious thing,” April replied. “The scholarship is for physics, and Abby said there was a personal statement in the folder, written by Rhys when he first applied for it. Apparently, he really wants to study engineering when he goes to college.”
“So he’s a genius with a passion for engineering. Does that sound like someone we might know?” Zach said. “A certain Game Master, perhaps?”
“Like I said, I don’t want to point fingers, because I could be barking up the wrong tree,” April said hurriedly. “I’m not saying he’s the Game Master. I’m just saying, if anyone here is likely to be helping the Game Master… well, Rhys is looking really good for it right now.”
“Agreed.” I wrapped my arms around myself as an involuntary shiver wracked my body. “But I also get what you mean about not wanting to accuse anyone too fast. So maybe we should keep this to ourselves for now.”
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Brooke said. “If we say anything to the others, one of them could run off and tell Rhys, and then he’d probably make sure he hides things even better. If he’s guilty, that is.”
“Yup.” Zach’s lips tightened. “So we all agree? Keep this information a secret for now?”
The five of us nodded in unison. We all understood the reality of the situation—the Game Master wouldn’t want their identity revealed so early in the games, given that ten against one wouldn’t work in their favor during a fight. So, if Rhys was actually the Game Master, and he discovered that we had information that could jeopardize his position, he might do something to eliminate us just to keep himself safe.
None of us wanted to risk literal death over a theory, so all we could do for now was keep a close eye on him and see how things played out.
Another shiver ran through me, and a tingling sensation crept up my spine. Slowly, I turned my head and found myself locking eyes with Maverick from across the room. Heat instantly rushed to my cheeks, and I tore my gaze away.
“Oh my god.” Brooke straightened her shoulders and looked at each of us in turn with wide eyes. “I just thought of something. Carey, remember how you said you were worried about Hudson? That he might be planning something really bad to get back at you?”
“Yes.” My gaze flicked over to Hudson at the window, and my skin crawled with revulsion. “Why?”
“Hold on… what are you guys talking about?” Courteney asked, frowning.
Zach nudged her. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Here’s my new theory,” Brooke said. “Hudson is an idiot, as we all know, but he’s rich as fuck and also a total psychopath. His best friend Rhys is a total genius who has no money. Put them together, and you get—”
“A team capable of setting up this shit,” April finished for her in a grim tone, gesturing at our surroundings.
“Got it in one.”
I frowned. “So this could all be happening because of me?”
“I’m not blaming you,” Brooke said hurriedly. “It’s just a theory.”
“It’s okay, I didn’t think you were blaming me,” I said. “I just meant… I don’t get it. If Hudson wants to get back at me, it makes sense that he’d bring me here, along with my friends. But why would he bring the others? Like Evan, Tate, Kiara, and so on.”
Brooke twisted her lips in contemplation. “Hm. Good point.”
“Like she said, it’s just a theory,” April said. “It might not be right, but I think it’s the best idea any of us have had so far. So we should at least keep it in mind and be wary of Hudson and Rhys.”
“Don’t worry, I was always going to be wary of them,” I said with a wry half-smile.
“Hey, Carey!” Kiara waved at me from the bed. “Get over here!”
I looked at her with raised brows. Then I turned back to my friends. “Um… any idea why she’s calling me over?”
“Nope.” April shrugged. “But we might as well go and see.”
The five of us headed over to the bed.
“What’s up, Kiara?” I asked flatly, folding my arms.
She leaned back against the velvet bedhead. “A little birdie told me you’re some sort of coding whiz.”
“So what?” April snapped. “You think she can write a program to magically get us out of here?”
Kiara rolled her eyes. “No, obviously.” She returned her attention to me and sat up straight. “I was just wondering if you could do anything with the phones. Like get online, maybe?”
“I had a quick look earlier, and all the signals seem to be blocked,” I said. “But I can have a closer look now.”
I pulled my phone out and went through it, trying various new techniques and ideas as they occurred to me. Finally, after a last-ditch effort, I reluctantly shook my head and slipped my phone back in my pocket. “It’s not possible,” I said. “Whoever set these phones up has managed to block everything. The only thing that actually works is the intranet in this place.”
Kiara narrowed her eyes. “What’s that? Is that how they’re texting us?”
“Yeah, it’s like a local network thing.”
“Damn.” She sighed and leaned back. “Oh, well. It was worth a shot.”
Maverick’s eyes were on me again. “Did you guys figure out anything while you were chatting over there?” he asked, rubbing his jaw.
“No.” Zach shook his head. “We still have no clue why we’re here or who set it all up. You?”
“In the same boat. No fucking idea.”
Rhys burst into the room, snapping everyone’s attention to the doorway. “Guys!” he said. “I found something! Come and see.”
He turned and sprinted back out, and we all followed him to the far end of the hall. He was standing by the sealed-off window there.
“Something’s changed,” he said. “I looked at it earlier this morning, and it was totally sealed. But look at it now.”
I took a step closer, squinting. Rhys was right. The thick steel shutter was no longer covering the entire window. There was a gap at the bottom, which was allowing a crack of light to stream through.
“You think the Game Master did this while we were in the first game?” Zach asked.
Rhys shrugged. “I don’t know. But if we can find something small enough to slip in this crack, we might be able to pry the whole thing off.”
“I can’t think of anything that would work,” Maverick said, brows dipping in a slight frown. “But I guess we can look around. See if anything jumps out.”
“Um, guys? I might have something,” Jasmine said in a sheepish tone. She reached into the right pocket of her sweatpants and pulled out a butter knife. “I stole this from the table at breakfast earlier. I thought I might need to defend myself if one of you turned out to be the Game Master.”
“You were going to try to kill someone with a butter knife?” April said scornfully.
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “I said defend, not kill, and a butter knife is better than literally nothing, right?”
“I guess so,” April muttered. She looked at Maverick. “Can you use it?”
He nodded slowly. “I think so. There’s no way I can use it to pry off the entire steel shutter, but I can probably use it to make the crack bigger. Then we can use something else to pry the whole thing open. Something bigger and sturdier. Like a chair leg, maybe. Or maybe the metal rod from one of the towel racks in our bathrooms.”
“I’ll help,” Zach said.
Rhys and Tate also volunteered. With determined expressions etched on their faces, the four of them huddled around the narrow gap in the shutter, taking turns wedging the butter knife into the opening. I stood close by, heart racing with a mix of hope and anxiety as I watched their progress.
With each carefully calculated twist and push, the gap widened ever so slightly, allowing just a little more light to filter into the dim hall. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Maverick let out a triumphant grunt as the gap widened enough to fit the blade of the knife all the way in.
With renewed determination, the guys continued their painstaking work, inching closer to the goal of widening the gap enough to fit the towel rod from Zach’s bathroom. When it was finally big enough, Maverick wedged the thick metal rod inside and pressed on.
A few minutes later, the shutter gave way with a loud clang. Light flooded into the hall, illuminating the weary faces of the group.
“You did it!” I said, relief washing over me in waves.
The rest of the group clamored around the window, patting the four guys on the back and congratulating them on their effort.
“What can you see?” April asked, craning her neck. She was too short to see past Zach’s shoulders.
“There’s a balcony out here,” he said. “Wait… this could actually be a way out!”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not just a balcony. There’s a spiral staircase leading off the far side of it. I can’t see where it goes, but we have to check it out.”
“Even if it just goes up to the roof, that’s fine,” Kiara said. “We can stand up there and wave sheets from our beds until a passerby notices us.”
“Exactly.” Zach turned to Maverick. “Can you help me open this thing?”
Maverick nodded and picked up the butter knife again. He used it to break the lock, and then he wrenched the window open, grimacing as cold air rushed in. “Jesus,” he muttered. “It’s freezing out there.”
“Yeah, the weather’s been horrible lately,” I replied, peering out the window as he stepped back. I was greeted by a somber gray sky, whipped by gusts of wind that churned the dark waters of the nearby ocean into countless whitecaps.
“Who wants to go first?” Zach asked, raising his brows.
Maverick stepped forward again. “I’ll do it. Unless you want to.”
“All good.” Zach gave him a tight smile. “I’ll follow you.”
After the two guys made it out, they gestured for the rest of us to follow. We climbed out, one by one, and huddled together on the balcony, vigorously rubbing our arms to keep warm.
“Those steps look pretty dangerous,” Brooke said, warily eyeing the spiral staircase that led off the left side of the balcony.
“It should be fine as long as we’re careful,” Maverick said, peering upwards. “It looks like they lead to some sort of watchtower on the roof.”
April nodded. “That makes sense. The mansion has tons of towers and spires,” she said. “I remember thinking it looked like a total Gothic nightmare when I arrived.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” Kiara said. “It’s so fucking creepy.”
Zach set his jaw with grim determination. “Well… let’s go and see what we can find.”
We slowly made our way up the winding stairs. The stone steps were old and narrow, and they were also slick with droplets of seawater flung up by the wind, so we had to take them as slowly as possible.
Maverick made it to the top first, closely followed by Zach. “Oh, fuck,” he said. His deep voice almost disappeared in the roaring wind, but I could just make it out from my position as fifth in line. “No fucking way!”
“This can’t be happening!” Zach shouted at the same time.
With my heart pounding, I finally made it to the top of the staircase and stepped into a small watchtower, revealing a panorama that stretched as far as the eye could see. All around us, the dark waters of the ocean churned restlessly, smashing against jagged rocks and dirt along the crooked shoreline that surrounded the mansion we stood atop.
“We’re not at 4 Sutherland Drive,” April said breathlessly, grabbing my arm. Her face had gone completely white. “We’re on an island.”