I manage to nap for an hour, but my rumbling stomach wakes me up. Priya has laid out a plate of sandwiches and chips. My head is killing me, pain radiating down to my shoulders.
“How long was I in that room?” I ask.
Everything is so loud, it hammers my head.
“I think around an hour,” Priya replies softly.
I haven’t told them where I’ve been, but they know. From the second I shushed Hazel when I got in here, they knew where I’d been…because they’ve been in there, too. Except for Hazel, but someone probably filled her in since she’s not asking me a thousand questions.
We finish eating the rest of lunch in silence, and Theo avoids all interaction with me. Lucie, Priya, and Hazel know something isn’t right. I don’t miss the many exchanged looks they keep giving each other.
I clear away the plates, my eyes meeting the tiny window above us. It’s bright, so I think it’s somewhere around midday.
Kevin has been gone a long time.
That doesn’t mean anything. A lot of the rooms take longer.
If he’s being deprived of sleep, he could be gone for days.
He’ll be back soon, and he’ll be fine.
He’s not sleeping well; it’s beginning to really get to him, a voice argues in my head.
“Piper?” Priya’s hand flashes past my face, making me blink.
“Huh?”
She takes a plate out of my hand and puts it in the sink. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry, I totally spaced there.” Part of me is still back in that room, and the other part is just trying to recover as quickly as possible.
The headache is still there, but food helped, and it’s bearable.
“I’m worried about Kevin,” she admits. “But the last few days, he’s withdrawn and been quiet and pretty defeated.”
“We’ll make sure he’s okay when he gets back, get him to open up so we can help,” I tell her.
She turns the tap and fills the sink with soapy water. “Yes, he’s not good at talking about his own feelings, but he needs to.”
I help Priya wash up and then we join Theo, Hazel, and Lucie on the sofas.
That’s how we spend the rest of the evening, watching DVDs, volume down low.
No sign of Kevin and no music yet.
Theo is still very mad at me over our missed chance of escape this morning. Deep down, I hope he understands we never would have gotten away. They would have killed us if we got close. I think they wanted to hunt us and then bring us back here to prove they can do what they want, that they have ultimate control.
But we didn’t give them the satisfaction. It was a win for us, even though being back in this hell doesn’t seem like much of a win at all.
I try to make eye contact with Theo. We are the only ones around the kitchen table since Lucie, Hazel and Priya are still watching DVDs.
“Theo, I’m sorry.”
He lifts his eyes to me, and from the lowered angle of his chin it looks like he’s glaring. He may well be. “Let’s not talk about it, Piper. It’s done.”
“I don’t want you to stay mad at me. We both know coming back was our only choice.”
“We’ll never know, will we?” The bitter edge to his voice makes me flinch.
He’s not usually this cold.
Dropping my half-eaten slice of bread on the plate, I lean my arms on the table. “Look, I understand why you’re angry, but you can’t honestly believe that we had a chance out there. You know what they stand to lose if we’d escaped.”
“They would never let that happen, Piper. I know that.”
“What’s going on?” Hazel demands, scowling at me and Theo. “Why are you two whispering? And Theo looks like he wants to kill you, Piper. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m totally over the tension, so spill.”
Priya and Lucie’s eyes slide toward us, waiting for a reply. Maybe everyone has noticed how off Theo is with me. We’re usually the chattiest ones, especially with each other, so of course the others were going to pick up on the rising tension.
“You want to tell them, Piper, or shall I?”
I shrug. “I don’t mind. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I’m not saying you have.”
“Doesn’t sound like that to me. Even though you just claimed you understand.”
“Hey!” Hazel snaps. “Tell us what’s happened!”
Theo blows out a long breath that whistles between his teeth. “This morning, the door was open. And not just the waiting room door. Piper and I ran to see what was going on. We thought maybe we’d find a way out.”
“Did you?” Priya asks, leaning forward on the seat.
Theo shakes his head. “No, but we did find all of the doors open. We ran outside, and there was no one there. We were going to come and find you guys, but when we turned around, Owen was inside. He closed the door and mouthed for us to run.”
“We couldn’t, though. It was a trap. Caleb and Matt were nowhere to be seen, and we suspected they were waiting somewhere in the woods for us,” I add.
Theo’s jaw hardens. “I wanted to try anyway. I thought if we managed to get away, we could get help for all of us. This nightmare could be over.”
Lucie, Priya, and Hazel stare with their mouths parted, each of them with the same look of disbelief.
“You left?” Hazel whispers, her eyes on me.
“No, I didn’t. We went as far as we could. I wouldn’t have left you behind, Haze. Not any of you.”
Lucie folds her arms. “How do you know you wouldn’t have made it? Maybe that was our chance and you two blew it! You didn’t even wake us up and let us decide for ourselves.” She stands quickly. “How could you take that choice away from us?”
“Because it wasn’t a choice,” I say, rising to my feet. Her anger is understandable, but I won’t be intimidated. “If they allowed us to get away, they would be sent to prison. They probably got bored and wanted to try killing for themselves rather than forcing us to do it.” The thought sends a jolt down my spine.
Could they evolve to that?
“Still not your decision to make. I would rather die running than in that room!” Lucie shouts.
I wince as her words rub like broken glass against my skin. “Lucie, I’m sorry, but when we get out of here, we need to make sure we get out alive. This wasn’t it. Before we run, we have to at least have a one percent chance. Them letting us go is them controlling it.”
Much to my surprise, Hazel comes to my defense. Her eyebrows are still tucked together showing her disapproval, though. “Piper is right. I might not agree with how they went about it, no one has the right to make decisions like that for the whole group, but if we all ran, we all would be dead today.”
“Yeah, Lucie,” Priya says. “Think about what our captors have at stake here—they’re well known and loved, their families constantly donate to charity, they work hard to make improvements to our town, all while doing whatever they want here, feeding whatever darkness is deep inside them. Do you think they would give that up willingly?”
“That’s not the damn point, Priya! That was my only chance to decide how I die, and they took it from me. One of you is going to kill me, and I would have much rather it be one of them!” she screams, pointing to me and Theo as her face reddens.
“Lucie, calm down,” Priya coos. “We can talk about this rationally.”
“No, we can’t! Theo and Piper have no respect for us. They’re trying to take on the role of leaders, being the strong ones with all the ideas, making choices they have no right making! You’ve been here two minutes, Piper, and you think you can boss me around, make decisions for me, and do whatever the hell you like!”
“I don’t think that! Will you chill out and look at this rationally? You know what Theo and I did was right. We’re trying to give us all the chance to leave here alive. Isn’t that what you want?”
“What makes you more qualified to decide how that happens?” she snaps.
“Logic. It’s clear for anyone who gives it more than a nanosecond of thought. If we run when they leave the doors open, we die.”
A low growl rattles in her throat. With balled hands, she lunges. Priya catches her around the waist with her arm before Lucie gets close. But I tighten my muscles, ready to defend myself.
“Get off me!” Lucie shouts, thrashing under Priya’s grip.
The speaker crackles. Over the noise Lucie is making, we all hear that dreaded sound that makes my skin break out in goose bumps.
“Lucie to the waiting room,” Caleb orders.
Lucie’s face falls, her jaw getting longer. They witnessed the whole thing, of course, and now she’s going to be punished.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be back here soon.”
She turns, keeping her head down and shuffles slowly toward the waiting room door.
Oh God, what are they going to do to her? Will they punish her more than the torture rooms do already? Their plan could still be to have me face Kevin in room zero.
The door clicks shut behind Lucie. It’s now locked. She’s on her own.
Above us, the speaker crackles, then, “Priya, turn on the TV.”
“What?” Hazel asks. “Have they ever told anyone to do that before?”
Theo shakes his head, his suspicious eyes on the TV already. “No point. It only plays DVDs.”
Priya does as she’s told.
The four of us gasp in unison as the hallway to hell flicks on the screen. Lucie is there, walking slowly, prolonging this part as much as she can. Going in there is inevitable.
“Which one is she going in?” Hazel mutters to herself as much as anyone else.
I don’t want to speak the words and jinx anything in case I’m right, but all I can think is that Kevin is also out there somewhere, in those rooms over and over maybe, and they need two people for room zero.
Lucie is much smaller than Kevin, both in height and weight. She’s petite and skinny, where he’s built like a rugby player.
I move closer to the screen, following Priya, Hazel, and Theo as they also go in for a better look. “Will they show inside the room, too, do you think?” I ask, my stomach turning at the thought.
“I don’t know. I hope not,” Priya replies.
“We all agree that we turn the thing off if they try to?” Theo says. “No matter what punishment would come, we agree that we can’t allow them to do that, right?”
“Agreed,” I say.
Hazel nods, and Priya says, “Absolutely.”
It’s one thing for them to watch it, but to force us to see a friend being hurt like that—that’s horrific. I would hate the thought of someone else watching me in there, seeing me at my most vulnerable.
Lucie braces her hand against the wall in the slightly grainy picture on the screen. She must be so scared right now, anticipating which room she’s being sent to. At the moment, she’s not in the right frame of mind. She’s angry and thinks she was robbed of a chance to escape. I don’t know what that means for her; if she’ll be more or less able to handle what’s about to be thrown at her.
Come on, Lucie.
“Where is she going?” Hazel whispers.
I feel Lucie’s fear. Earlier this morning, I experienced it.
God, this day needs to end.
She’s halfway down the corridor now. The room on the end at the left is room zero. Please don’t be open. From the high angle of the camera and the poor picture quality, it’s impossible to tell which door has been left open an inch.
No one else has picked up on the room zero possibility yet…or, like me, they’re too scared to say it aloud.
Lucie shuffles farther down. She’s almost at the end; she’s going into either room five or room zero.
My heart stutters as she takes another step forward.
The screen goes black.
“What!” I snap.
“No! Lucie!” Priya shouts. “Oh my God, why would they do that?”
She turns to me like I have the capability to answer her question.
“They’re evil,” Theo says. “That’s all there is to it. Which one of them do you think will come back?”