Light fills the room.
I take a breath. Theo’s eyes meet mine, and he raises an eyebrow.
I shrug, telling him that I don’t have an idea, either. Beyond wanting to mess with us, I don’t know why they’re doing any of this.
“What was that? Do you think they’re doing something to the building?” Priya asks.
“Maybe,” I reply. I suppose it’s better to think they turned off the lighting for some electrical work that needed to be done than to admit they’re just trying to keep us on edge. “Looks like it’s done now, though.” I smile through the lie.
Whatever they’re doing, it hasn’t even started. Unless…
“What if that was a power failure? Did anyone notice if the microwave turned off?” I whisper, my voice barely audible.
“What difference does that make?” Hazel snaps.
Really? Could she be that obtuse?
Theo smirks, his eyes now losing all of their earlier tension. Voice low, he says, “The doors.”
I nod. “The locks are controlled centrally. Electronically. In the event of a power failure, will the doors be unlocked?”
“Do you think so?” Kevin whispers.
“I don’t know if they would just stay locked or if it would trip something, but the next time the lights go out, we need to try that door.”
Theo nods eagerly, the renewed hope my idea has given him unlocking his bunched shoulders. “Nice one, Piper.”
Maybe it’s a dead end, and maybe they turned the lights off. Maybe a generator kicks in when the electricity cuts to prevent the building from losing power. But maybe it’s a chance.
I want it so badly, I can taste it. When I think of escape, I can smell corn growing in fields around town, and I feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. It’s June now, still summer. My parents will be taking some time off soon, the same as every year. We don’t go anywhere because they don’t have much spare cash, but we do have a staycation, doing something fun each day like trips to the beach, a theme park, or a museum.
But they won’t be doing any of that now. They’ll be spending every second looking for me.
Hazel folds her arms. Her lips are pursed the way they are when she’s silently protesting something. It was the same look she had in school when the principal tried to implement a uniform like the private schools in the area, or when her parents told her they wouldn’t allow her to go to my house if she hadn’t finished her homework.
She doesn’t think the doors will be unlocked, but she’s not going to say it in case it works.
Theo picks up on the negativity and frowns at her. It’s so hard to be around people who have already given up.
“Everyone eat up,” Theo says gruffly.
He’s had enough, too. Theo and I are more alike than the others.
What’s the point in fighting so hard to free people who already think we’re dead?
The rest of the meal is silent, and no one wants to stay up after dinner, so we get ready for bed early. When I climb into my top bunk, I let myself cry through the creepy bedtime music played through the metallic speakers.
16
I wake up after a rough night’s sleep with a renewed determination. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Hazel has checked out and how Lucie doesn’t seem to believe there is any hope. I don’t believe there is, either, and last night I was getting closer to falling apart.
But at least I still have fight in me. Theo has his again, too. Hazel and Lucie are done. Kevin and Priya aren’t proactive, but at least they’re trying to be positive. At one point during the night, I got so frustrated I almost woke them up to yell.
I’m glad I kept myself in check, though, because that would have added to their hopelessness.
There’s no chance of me going back to sleep, so I get out of bed and tiptoe past the others. Hazel is still sleeping peacefully on the bunk below mine. I don’t know how she can sleep after deciding that she’s going to die in here. I certainly wouldn’t be able to.
So much damn negativity!
I grit my teeth, pulse racing with irritation at the situation. She’s my best friend, and she’s usually so tough. No one breaks Hazel. Or they didn’t used to.
“Piper,” Theo whispers as I get to the door.
I turn my head. “Yeah?”
“I’m getting up, too.” He slips out of bed and follows.
I close the door behind us and head to the kettle. I need coffee. A really big hit of caffeine to cheer me up. When someone is moping around and scowling, I find it super-hard to be near them. Even when my sister died and my world fell apart, I still strived to get out of bed and live my life.
This place is too small to step on eggshells because someone is in a bad mood.
I stop in my tracks on the way to the little kitchen area.
The door to the hallway to hell is open.
Open.
We didn’t leave it open last night, and as far as I know, no one was up in the night. Has it been unlocked since the lights went out yesterday?
No, it couldn’t have been. Even if the door was unlocked, it can’t open by itself.
I step closer, my heart rate quickening. Did Caleb, Owen, and Matt come in here? Do they do that? The thought of them watching all the time is bad enough, but knowing they could have been here, so physically close, makes my stomach churn.
“Theo,” I call.
“What’s up?” he asks. I hear him step closer.
“Did you leave the door open when you came back in? Did you hear it lock?”
“What the…? No, it was definitely closed and locked.” He shuffles closer to me, his arm touching mine as he looks around the room.
They must have come in during the night.
“Why would they come in here? Everything we need, food, toiletries, and all that stuff gets left in the hallway to hell,” he mutters.
Okay, I really hope they can’t hear because he just mentioned our nickname for that hallway loudly.
“And why leave the door open? They wanted us to know they were here. Why?” I ask the questions, but I don’t expect him to have the answers. We can speculate, but the only people who truly know are the crazy trio.
Theo shakes his head. “The mind games are evolving.”
“The rooms aren’t enough for them anymore,” I whisper. They’re not content to just watch and send us to be tortured; they want more interaction. They want even more control and to have us constantly on edge.
He draws in a deep breath through his nose and puts his hand on the small of my back. “It’s okay. We can still do this, Piper.”
I nod numbly. It’s one thing to be sent to those rooms, I know what’s going to happen there, but to never be sure what could happen while I’m asleep? How will I get any rest at all?
At the moment, I’m barely getting four hours of sleep at night. My parents would be shocked to know that I rise with the sun. Not that I see the sun much through the one tiny frosted-glass window above us that is half covered in leaves and moss.
“Hey,” he says, stepping in front of me and holding my upper arms in his strong hands. “Don’t do this to me or yourself. No second-guessing yourself. We had a pact, remember?”
“Yeah.” My spine straightens with determination. “I’m here. Should we go in there?”
He looks over his shoulder at the open door. “I don’t know…”
“What do you think is going on?”
“Maybe it’s just a food drop-off,” he says, but we both know it’s not.
“We have to go, Theo. I’m not going to be scared of an open door!”
I pull back out of Theo’s grip and walk toward the doorway. He follows like I knew he would; he’d never let me go alone.
We stop by the threshold, and I look around the corner. Gasping, I step into the hallway. �
��Theo, it’s open!” The door on the other side is wide open, too.
What’s going on?
“Is this some sort of test?” he muses.
“Probably, but we’ll never know if we don’t see how far we can get.”
He grabs my hand, stopping me from getting farther than two steps. “You sound like you’ve lost it, Piper.”
“Yeah, well, that seems to be the theme around here. Maybe to survive this prison you need to be a little off-kilter.”
His eyebrows pull together. “I think you should have some coffee before you do anything. Clearly you need the caffeine to get your brain going.”
I tilt my head to the side and fold my arms. “Are you coming or not?”
Groaning, he looks to the ceiling and closes his eyes. That’s a yes.
“Fine, but if this goes wrong, it’s your fault.”
I shrug. It’s not like it can get much worse.
Theo walks ahead and extends his arm to his side, making sure I stay behind him. I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t need protecting.
Still, I’m not about to make a big deal about it right now. We have more pressing issues.
We enter the clothes room and my nerves ignite. The next door is open, too.
“Something isn’t right,” he mumbles. “You know this is a trap, right?” he adds as we take small steps closer to the next door.
“Yep,” I reply.
“Do you want to go back? I’ll do this alone,” he offers, slipping his hand in mine.
I grip tight. “I’m going.”
“Thought you’d say that. So stubborn.”
We walk through the clothes room into the place where we were told all about this little house of horrors. Black and white squares dance over the TV screen. They’ve left that on, but it seems about as accidental as leaving the doors open.
They’re trying to ratchet up our fear.
It’s working. My heart pounds, but I keep my face emotionless. They’ll be watching this for sure.
Theo and I move farther into the room and head for the next open door. We’re almost back to the long corridor. What if the door to their man cave is open? That’s the only thing stopping us now. Their room has large windows; we have escape options there. It’ll be so much easier to get out.
“Theo?” I whisper as we approach the door. “Should we have woken the others?”
“Whatever they have planned here isn’t going to be fun or easy, Piper.”
“But what if that’s the test? What if they want to see if the first people awake, always you and me, will go and leave the others behind?”
He stops near the threshold. “This isn’t our escape, Piper.”
I lower my voice again. “They’re obviously not letting us go, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”
His dark brown eyes look conflicted. He wants to share my optimism, but he doesn’t believe it could be this easy.
I don’t think it will be this easy, either.
I turn away and walk along the corridor. The door at the end is open.
Rooms zero to five are on either side of us. My skin prickles with heat as I recall what I’ve endured in room two. I breathe heavier, trying to inflate my lungs to stop my body from curling up when faced with the memories.
I hate this corridor. It holds nothing but pain and despair.
“Piper, look!” Theo says. I whip my head around just in time to see him run past.
My feet move faster, rushing to him as he runs through the door into their game room. “The front door is open!” he shouts back.
“Theo, wait!” I call, pushing myself as fast as him, straight for fresh air.
This is too easy!
The soles of my feet thud against the hardwood floor as I dash past their pool table and arcade games. Theo doesn’t wait even for a second; he launches himself through the open door, and he’s out.
I hesitate, slowing for a second, but then I’m outside. The thick, dry air is unforgiving, clawing at my throat with every breath.
“We’re out,” he says, his dark eyes wide.
“I can’t believe it. But we need to get the others.” I look around. “Where are those guys? Why have they let us go? This isn’t the end, Theo.”
The front door slams behind us. Theo and I jump and turn around. I grip his arm as we watch Owen smiling from behind the glass window in the door.
“No,” I whisper. The others are still trapped in there.
Owen’s grin widens, and he mouths run.
17
We make it to the back of the building, where the woods are thicker and the trees will hide us.
They’ve let us go. Why have they let us go? They haven’t.
Of course, they haven’t!
The realization slams me in the face.
“It’s a trap,” I say, digging my fingers into Theo’s arm as I plant my feet. Owen is the only one of them I saw. He told us to run, but he won’t let us get away. Somewhere Caleb and Matt are waiting.
Theo’s black eyebrows knit together in the middle. “Who cares? We need to try!” He yanks his arm from my grip.
“We can’t do this, and we can’t leave the others in there!”
“What choice do we have, Piper?”
I turn my head, my body following suit as I do a one-eighty to check the surroundings. Trees line the yard, the building nestled nicely in the middle. Matt and Caleb are somewhere in those woods, waiting.
This is just one more part of the game.
There is something square on the metal siding of the building. A window? It’s too far away to see properly, but it could be a window. Where is it? Looks like it’s down at our end of the building, but we certainly don’t have any accessible windows.
“We have to go back in,” I tell him. The door is locked, so through the window, maybe. They won’t expect that. But we don’t know where it leads or if it even opens.
He grips my upper arms, his chocolate eyes pleading with me to listen to him. “If we get away, we can get help for the others.”
The world whizzes past as I spin around. “We’re not going to get away. Can’t you see that?”
“We’ll split up.”
Worst idea ever. “It’s still one-on-one. They want to hunt us, Theo. You know they’ll kill us before we get to the road.”
He still has hold of me, but I manage to swing my arms around his and place them on his strong shoulders. He’s a lot taller than me, but then most people are. “I want to run, too, believe me, I do, but we have to be smarter than them. They want us to run, so we can’t run.”
“But we may never get a chance like this again, Piper.” Gripping my arms tighter, he bends his head so we’re on the same level. “Come with me. We can take them on together. We can do this.”
“This isn’t a chance to escape,” I whisper, my eyes filling with tears at the impossibility here. “They want us to run. They want to hunt, and all we’d be doing by taking off now is giving them what they want.”
“We’ll be smart about it.”
“You don’t think they haven’t considered all the options here? If we escape, they’re going to prison.” I blink away tears before they have the chance to fall. “Theo,” I say fiercely. “We will die today if we run.”
“We could die if they put us in room zero.”
Can’t say he’s wrong, but I don’t want to invite death.
“Please, Theo. I want us to go back inside, but if you run, I have to as well.”
I let go of him.
He blows out a long breath through his full lips. “Piper, you’re putting a lot on me right now.” Dropping his hands from around my arms, he steps away, giving me some distance.
“Please, come with me.”
“You want to walk back inside that hell?”
He closes his eyes, his posture collapsing in defeat. “Fine.”
“Come on. Let’s try the front door,” I say, turning around.
Theo’s footsteps trudge behind me heavily. He wants to go back in there about as much as I do, but although he understands what’s happening, what they plan to do, he still wants the chance.
He’s only heading back to hell because of me.
My stomach turns to ice as we round the building and head to the front door.
I haven’t seen any other doors yet, but we’ve only seen three of the four sides.
“Theo,” I whisper as movement in the woods catches my eye.
“Keep walking, Piper,” he murmurs, nudging me toward the door. Suddenly he’s eager to get back inside.
Caleb steps out from between two trees. He’s about ten yards away. His head is tilted to the side, sleek styled hair not moving an inch under the gel.
He lifts an arm and points a sword toward me and Theo with a wide, toothy smile on his face. The blade reflects a small slice of sun peeking through the leaves above. He has a sword!
We have to get back inside—right now. We back up, moving slowly toward the front of the building, and I grip Theo’s hand. Theo looks over his shoulder. “It’s open again,” he mutters.
Owen closed the door when we left. Where is he now, and why did he leave it open? Because this is what we’re supposed to do. They want us to run, but to survive, we have to go back in.
“Go!” Theo snaps, shoving me through the door. “This is not how you die.”
We stumble into the game room. I thought this place was so cool when I first stepped into it. I was impressed with what they’d done here, imagined myself hanging out with Caleb more.
My face heats with stupidity. How naive to believe he was genuine and actually liked me.
I stop, and my breath catches in my throat. Owen is standing tall, holding open the door to the corridor of hell. In his other hand is a gun, and the barrel is pointing at my head.
I gulp.
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