Chapter 29
When I opened my eyes again, the cabin was almost completely dark.
For a few disoriented seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was or why my shoulders ached so badly. Then I felt the rough bite of rope against my wrists, along with the fabric cinched tightly across my mouth.
At some point, exhaustion must have dragged me under despite everything, and while I slept, Rhys had gagged me and tied me to the bed again.
I jerked instinctively against the restraints, but the ropes barely moved. One wrist had been fastened to the headboard while the other was secured to the heavy wooden frame beneath the mattress. My ankles had been tied too, leaving me almost completely immobilized.
I turned my head, trying to ease the stiffness in my neck, and that was when I noticed the tablet. It sat propped against one of the pillows beside me, its black screen reflecting faint strips of moonlight leaking through the curtains.
I stared at it, confused. Why would Rhys leave it there? It didn’t seem like an accident, given the purposeful positioning, but I was tied up, so I couldn’t exactly use it for anything, could I?
And speaking of Rhys… where was he?
I turned my attention to the tablet again. The screen was still dark, but now that I was looking properly, I realized it wasn’t powered off. A tiny blue light was glowing faintly at the edge of it.
A cold unease crept through me.
Suddenly the tablet speakers crackled with static, and I jolted so hard the bedframe rattled beneath me.
The screen flickered before flooding with grainy green night vision footage. Trees. Dirt. The edge of a cabin sliding past the frame as the person with the camera moved quickly through the dark.
He moved between two cabins, and for a few seconds I saw his gloved hand entering the frame.
“Hi, Alissa,” he said in a low voice. “I hope you’re awake. It’d be a real shame if you missed this.”
Of course. Rhys had attached a fucking GoPro camera to himself so I could get a virtual front-row seat to whatever twisted shit he’d planned on doing next.
I had no idea how he’d done it, because all the networks around the camp were being jammed, so none of us had been able to get a signal through since the first night. But somehow, he’d still found a way to stream live footage.
I could only guess that being the heir to the country’s largest telecommunications empire came with certain advantages, including the knowledge and resources to build his own private network when he needed one.
A distant sound suddenly echoed through the woods ahead of him, right on the edge of the campgrounds.
It was a woman screaming.
“Please!” Grace’s voice tore through the darkness, raw with panic. “Anyone, please! I’m out here!”
Every muscle in my body locked.
No.
Grace was dead… wasn’t she?
She cried out again. “Please help me! I’m hurt!”
Rhys continued to move silently, sticking to the shadows as he headed toward the assembly hall.
Another scream suddenly tore through the night.
“Help!”
My breathing turned shallow and uneven behind the gag as I realized it sounded exactly like me. Not just close. Not slightly distorted. One hundred percent me.
Understanding hit a second later. Rhys could’ve recorded everyone at camp. Conversations around campfires or meals, or even during activities. More than enough for AI voice cloning.
Now he was playing manufactured audio files through speakers to lure the others out of the assembly hall.
“Please!” my own voice cried from somewhere outside. “Somebody help me!”
The camera kept moving. Every so often the feed would shake slightly as Rhys ducked beneath branches or changed direction, but otherwise his movements were unnervingly controlled.
Soon, he was standing behind a thick tree only a few yards from the assembly hall, giving him a perfect view of the main doors.
“Help!” my voice screamed. “Anyone!”
The camera tilted slightly as Rhys peered around the tree again, and I caught sight of at least a dozen figures pouring down the wooden steps of the hall in confusion, flashlight beams jerking wildly across the campgrounds.
“What the fuck was that?”
“It was Alissa!”
“I heard Grace too!”
“I knew it! He didn’t get all of them last night!”
Another scream echoed from somewhere closer to the lake. It was Sutton’s voice this time. “Someone help! Please! I can’t move!”
Chaos instantly broke out among the main group. Everyone started shouting over one another.
“Did that come from the lake?”
“No, don’t run off! We can’t split up!”
“They sound hurt! Or trapped! We have to help!”
Rhys stayed perfectly still in the shadows while panic spread through the group. Through the microphone, I could hear his slow, steady breathing.
Then my voice rang out again. “I’m here!”
Half the group whipped toward the sound instinctively.
“It came from over there!”
“No it didn’t! It was near the woods!”
A second later, Grace’s voice erupted from somewhere near the cabins. “Help me! I can’t walk!”
The crowd fractured immediately, and small groups of three or four began peeling away from the assembly hall despite others yelling not to separate. Fear and adrenaline were overriding common sense.
It was horrifyingly effective.
Rhys moved again, slipping silently between trees and buildings while people rushed past only yards away from him. At one point Jasmine hurried directly across the camera’s field of view with Jesse, Wren, and Tamsin behind her, flashlight clutched tightly in trembling hands.
“Alissa!” she shouted into the darkness. “Where are you?”
Rhys was standing less than ten feet away from her behind the side wall of a cabin, but she never saw him. None of them did.
Another recording suddenly played from somewhere near the trails.
“He’s coming this way!” my voice screamed. “Don’t let him take me! Please!”
Jasmine’s group immediately changed direction and ran toward it.
A quiet laugh escaped Rhys. He was guiding everyone. Herding them all around Blackpine exactly where he wanted them while staying completely invisible in the confusion.
The frantic screams kept shifting.
Sometimes it was Grace.
Sometimes Sutton.
Sometimes me.
Always terrified, always begging for help.
The panic outside escalated every time the voices moved again, and the fragmented groups kept second-guessing themselves, running in circles between the woods, the lake path, and the cabins.
Rhys crouched beside one of the darkened buildings near the edge of camp, watching everything unfold through the trees. Then the camera shifted slightly as three figures sprinted past the far side of the building.
Zach. Noura. Maren.
The last remaining Legacies.
They were moving fast, flashlights bouncing wildly across the ground as Grace’s voice rang out from somewhere ahead of them.
“Please! I can’t walk properly!”
“Grace!” Maren shouted breathlessly. “Where are you?”
“She sounded close!” Noura yelled back. “I think she’s around here!”
The three of them rounded the building corner in a blur of flashlight beams and ragged breathing.
Maren vanished first. One second she was there, her light jittering wildly across the dirt, and the next she was yanked violently backward into darkness. Her flashlight hit the ground and spun uselessly as a wet choking sound cut through the night.
Noura screamed and wheeled toward the noise, and Rhys stepped out of the shadows. His arm flashed once, and Noura’s scream ended in a horrible gargle as a knife plunged into her throat, spraying blood across the side of the building.
Zach froze.
For half a second he just stood there staring at Noura, his face blank with disbelief. Then instinct finally took over, and he turned and ran. “I don’t think so, man,” Rhys said calmly, already moving after him.
The feed suddenly cut to black.
My heart hammered violently against my ribs as my mind’s eye filled with awful images. Zach pinned to a wall with a harpoon. Zach’s neck gushing blood as a knife tore through it. Zach dangling from a tree, limbs hacked off.
The tablet screen stayed black.
I lay there in the dark, listening to the wind outside, and waited. About five minutes later, the cabin door finally creaked open.
Rhys stepped inside, and in the darkness I could only make out the broad shape of him. He moved to the bed and reached down, working through the knots at my wrists and then the gag with the same efficiency as always.
“I worked out a new plan,” he said, straightening up. “To solve our problem.”
I blinked. “What?”
He reached down, tenderly rubbing his thumb across my jaw. “This is your chance to prove that I can trust you enough to let you go.”
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t answer that. Just turned toward the open door and stepped back outside. There was a dull, dragging sound for a minute, and then something heavy hit the cabin floor.
I leaned over and squinted into the dark.
It was Zach. He was on his side, wrists bound behind him, a strip of cloth tied across his mouth. His eyes were closed, but his chest was moving.
He was alive.