Chapter 7
Brooke
Dead.
Dead?
No.
The word detonates in my skull, relentless and brutal, stripping everything. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t stop. My lungs fight for air, but nothing moves right. My thoughts scatter like broken glass.
Seth is gone?
Knox’s hand clamps around my arm before I can get a full breath. I don’t even register the pain, just the rush of panic swallowing me whole. A sound escapes my mouth, wrecked and desperate.
No. No. No.
This can’t be happening. He can’t be gone. Seth can’t be—
Knox yanks me forward. My body folds, overtaken by grief so violent it shatters my control. Sobs tear out of me in waves.
“Move,” Knox snaps, dragging me when I can’t keep up.
Tears blur everything. My head spins. The corpse Elliot left on the grass lies behind us. But all I can see is Seth bleeding, lifeless.
“No—no—no—” I choke on the words as they break apart in my mouth. They aren’t even words anymore, just sound.
Behind me, Sophie exhales sharply. “Pathetic.”
Asher lets out a quiet laugh.
My legs stop working entirely. Knox doesn’t pause. He just yanks harder, my feet scraping against the ground. My wrist throbs from how hard he grips me, but I barely notice. All I can feel is the nothingness growing inside me, swallowing everything in its path.
He’s not dead.
He can’t be.
The sobs rip out of me louder now.
Sophie’s footsteps accelerate. Then—
CRACK.
Her hand slams across my face, snapping my head sideways with enough force to blur my vision.
“Enough,” she barks. “Get up!”
I drop again, chest heaving, body trembling from the inside out.
My vision swims, but the words don’t stop screaming in my head.
He’s gone.
Seth is gone.
Knox drags me up again, this time managing to get me mostly upright. My legs barely support me, my body a shaking wreck. I can’t stop crying. I can’t ground myself. I am outside of it now, half-watching, half-dissolving.
He wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t.
But the voices keep replaying it, until everything inside me shorts out. The numbness sets in like ice beneath my skin.
My world has been reduced to a single word.
Dead.
Knox hauls me across the yard toward the house, Asher walking behind like he is herding something beneath him. Sophie brings up the rear, her face bored, like none of it touches her at all.
Inside, the Manor is silent and freezing. The lights in the hallway flicker overhead. Knox drags me down a narrow passage and through a side door I haven’t noticed before. The room inside is bare. Concrete floors, a drain in the center. No furniture. No windows. A space built for pain.
Asher shuts the door. Knox shoves me into the center.
My sobs fade into tremors. My skin burns where Sophie hit me. My throat tastes like blood and bile. I stand there shaking, breath shallow and erratic, the word still burning behind my eyes.
Dead.
Sophie steps forward, hands clasped calmly in front of her.
“You dumb bitch. Do you understand what you just did?”
I stay silent, breathing erratically.
Sophie smiles without warmth. “You fucked up, really bad.”
“He gave me the gun, what the fuck did you think I’d do?” I snap, voice trembling from leftover sobs.
“Well, you could’ve made the correct choice. Instead, you decided to be a disobedient brat.”
I back away a step. Knox and Asher don’t move, they just watch, bored and curious, like this is entertainment.
Sophie takes one slow breath. “He told you the rules and you’ve already broken two.”
“If you’re going to kill me just fucking do it,” I say, even though fear and heartbreak are tightening every muscle I have left. “I’m not afraid of you.”
She tilts her head. “We’ll see about that.”
Her hand moves faster than my eyes can track. Her fist cracks across my face so hard my vision goes white. The sound echoes across the concrete. My head snaps sideways, and I stumble, catching myself on my hands. Pain lights through my jaw. I stand back up.
Sophie’s brows lift.
I swing at her. Just raw, wild momentum tied to grief and rage and disbelief. My fist connects hard with her cheekbone. She staggers half a step.
Knox lets out a low whistle. Asher grins. Sophie touches her cheek with her fingertips. A smear of red appears. Her expression shifts—still calm, but colder, almost offended.
She doesn’t wait. She lunges, grabbing the front of my dress, slamming me against the wall. Air bursts out of my lungs. I claw at her arm, trying to wrench free, but she shoves her knee into my stomach. Pain curls me forward.
I swing again. I catch her in the ribs this time. Her breath hitches. She snarls. She grabs my hair and yanks me upright, slamming the back of my head into the wall.
“Stop fighting bitch,” Sophie grunts.
“Go fuck yourself bitch,” I choke.
She twists me away from the wall and shoves me toward the center of the room. I hit the ground hard, but I kick out, catching her shin.
She grabs my right arm and wrenches it behind my back without warning.
For a second, I don’t feel anything except the weight of it all—
Seth is dead, Seth is dead, Seth is dead—echoing louder than breath or thought. The floor beneath me feels detached. My body is a shell, nothing registers.
Then the angle changes.
The burning pain slices through the numbness like a blade. My shoulder jolts forward on instinct, but Knox steps in, planting a boot beside my knees, blocking any chance of movement. He is a wall. I barely notice. My brain is still stuck in the loop.
He can’t be gone.
He wouldn’t leave me.
He wouldn’t.
Sophie leans in, her breath disturbingly calm against my neck while mine stutters out in choked bursts.
“You think you’re strong?” she whispers. “Let me show you what strength actually looks like.”
She yanks my arm higher, forcing it toward an angle it was never meant to reach.
My grief-flooded mind doesn’t catch up in time. Something inside my wrist strains. Then it gives out.
Pain shoots up my forearm—white-hot and immediate.
“Don’t,” I gasp, the word crashing into a sob. “Please don’t—”
She twists.
SNAP.
The sound comes first, sickening and sharp. Then the scream rips out of me, too loud to hold in. My vision shatters into white. The pain tears straight through my wrist and blooms into my chest, my throat, my skull. I collapse forward onto my knees, curling around the broken joint instinctively.
The world swims in and out, doubled and warped. Every pulse feels like glass grinding through bone.
Somewhere off to the side, Knox mutters, “Ouch,” like it is a joke.
But my wrist is broken. I know it. I can feel the shape of it, wrong, twisted, useless. Sophie has shattered it like she is snapping a twig.
Asher shakes his head like he is disappointed.
But their voices feel far away, muffled under the roar in my skull:
He’s dead. He’s dead. Dead. Dead. DEAD—
Sophie stands over me, breathing evenly, wiping her palms on her pants.
“When you break the rules, I break bones.”
Everything sounds underwater. My heart is breaking in a rhythm I can’t stop. My breath shakes out in shallow, panicked bursts. My body trembles around a grief too large to fit inside my ribs.
Seth is dead. Grant confirmed it.
No.
No, he’s too strong.
He promised he wouldn’t leave me. He promised.
Sophie crouches, face level with mine.
“You point another weapon at Elliot, and I’ll break more than your wrist.”
I try to glare at her, but my vision blurs, edges pulsing, pain and grief crashing into each other until I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.
She stands and turns to Knox and Asher like she's bored with the whole performance. “Take her downstairs, she’s done being a guest.”
Something inside me cracks.
“No,” I whisper, voice trembling. “Please—John said—”
“I don’t give a fuck what John said,” Knox cuts in. “You broke the rules. You’re not a guest anymore.”
He grabs me under the arm and yanks me upright.
My broken wrist dangles, useless and screaming with pain. I sob as white-hot agony lances through my entire arm. My legs give out, but Knox doesn’t pause. He drags me forward like I'm just deadweight.
Seth is dead.
He can’t be dead.
But what if he was? What if I felt it the second that shot rang out? What if the last time I saw him in the ballroom was it?
Asher opens a door at the end of the hall. The air changes immediately, it is colder, damp. A narrow staircase leads into the dark, and every step down makes it harder to breathe. My mind drifts in and out, tumbling between grief and panic, like drowning in slow motion.
The basement door slams shut behind me. The sound echoes like a vault locking.
Three figures turn to face me from the shadows.
The first is a man in his thirties. He stands with effort, like every movement hurts. Bruises shadow his jaw and collarbone, and his eyes look dead behind the exhaustion.
Beside him, on a cot pressed against the wall, sits a woman with tangled blond hair, wrapped in a threadbare blanket. Her arms hug her torso like she is trying to stay inside her own body. She doesn’t speak.
Further down the room, in the far corner, two bodies are curled up together on a thin mattress. A guy and a girl. The guy has one arm wrapped around the girl protectively, his chin tucked over her head, her face hidden in his chest.
The man steps toward me. “They broke it?” he asks, nodding toward my arm.
“Yeah,” I choke out. My voice barely works.
“They like doing that.” He doesn’t sound surprised. “I’m Miles.”
I nod, dizzy. “Brooke.”
He gestures toward the younger pair in the corner. “That’s Jared and his girl Emma.”
Jared shifts slightly, his eyes cracking open at the sound of his name. He doesn’t speak, just tightens his hold around Emma, who doesn’t stir.
Miles glances toward the woman on the cot nearby. “This is Sarah.”
Sarah gives a small nod. Her face is sunken, her knuckles scabbed.
I try to respond, but the words catch in my throat. I stumble, and Miles crouches beside me.
“Sit before you pass out.”
I slide down the wall and collapse onto the freezing concrete. The cold hits instantly, slicing through my legs and spine. My wrist burns in time with my pulse.
Miles watches me. “What did you do?”
“I… I tried to shoot Elliot.”
Sarah doesn’t react. Her gaze stays forward, blank.
Miles flinches. “Jesus,” he mutters.
I glance around. “Do you… do you all know what this place is? Are you part of them?”
Miles frowns. “Part of what?”
“The Collective,” I say. The name feels like poison in my mouth. “The people running this.”
Sarah lets out a brittle, almost-laugh. “What the fuck is that?”
“We were abducted and then we just woke up here,” Miles adds.
“They treat us like animals,” Sarah says quietly. “Like prey to hunt.”
I hold my wrist, trying to keep the shaking at bay.
“A physician will come,” Miles confirms.
“For this?” I lift my broken wrist, the motion making me suck in a breath.
“Yes.”
I stare at him, confusion clawing through the pain. “Why bother fixing it if they’re just going to keep torturing me?”
“Because it’s not about killing you. Not yet. They patch us up so they can break us more,” Sarah adds.
Miles nods. “You’re no fun to them if you can’t move.”
My stomach turns. My lungs feel too small. My fingers go numb.
Seth isn’t here. No one to ground me. No one to talk me down.
Sarah curls deeper into herself and looks down at the floor again.
Miles is quiet for a moment, then says, “They want us ready.”
“For what?” My voice barely sounds like mine.
He looks at me, eyes flat. “The games.”
A scream echoes through the vents above.
Miles doesn’t flinch. “They’re warming up.”
My voice shakes. “Warming up for what?”
He doesn’t look away. “For whatever part of the show we’re in today.”
My chest rises too fast. I can’t slow it. I can’t steady it.
Seth’s voice cuts through the panic. The memory of it:
Slow it down, baby. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Look at one thing in the room. I’ve got you.
I squeeze my eyes shut. One breath in. One breath out. It hurts. It doesn’t fix anything. But it keeps me from falling apart completely.
“I’m not dying here,” I whisper, even though it comes out broken.
Miles’s expression softens.
“Good,” he murmurs. “You’ll need that.”
Another scream echoes, louder this time.
No one reacts.
They are used to it. They are dead inside in a way I refuse to be. I wrap my good arm tighter around my ribs.
Seth.
Please don’t be dead.
Please don’t leave me.
Because if The Collective wants to break me, they haven’t met the part of me that refuses to give up.
The part Seth sharpened.
The part Seth loves.
The part of me that will make them pay.