I think Kevin will end up killing Lucie. But I’m not going to say it.
“What do you mean, which one will come back?” Priya asks, frowning at Theo.
“Come on, Priya. Kevin has been gone a while, and now they call someone else in,” he says. He sounds annoyed that she’s even asking, but Priya doesn’t think like those monsters. She doesn’t see the opportunities they have and what they could do with them.
I envy her that. I constantly think about how they could make things worse for us.
Priya shakes her head. “No.”
“Oh my God!” Hazel gasps, finally catching on to what we’re talking about. “They’re both going to room zero!”
That’s what it looks like. Maybe Kevin really has been waiting in there this whole time.
Priya turns from us, dipping her chin. “You’re wrong.”
Possibly, but we never get the best-case scenario here.
What is happening with Kevin? Is he still alive? Where has he been? Did they open the front door for him, too, and he failed the test? There are too many possibilities and none of them are nice. He hasn’t managed to get away, or the cops would have raided this place by now.
“I can’t lose either of them,” Priya confesses. “Lucie was the first girl in here in a while. We bonded even though we’re nothing alike. And Kevin…”
“I know,” I say. “Priya, remember, we don’t know for sure yet. Okay? We’re just speculating.”
“Because there’s a reason to!” she cries, spinning back around to face me. “You think that’s what’s happened. Why else would Kevin still be out there somewhere? They were waiting to see who they wanted to go into that hell with him!”
My stomach sinks. Now she is thinking like them, and it’s all our fault.
I hold my hands up as the vein in her neck protrudes. “Priya, calm down. Let’s not freak out when we don’t know. Okay? They could have him for another reason. Nothing they do makes sense. Let’s not try to think like them; we’re nothing like Caleb, Matt, and Owen.”
Sucking in a breath, she takes my hands and grips tight as if she’s about to hit the floor.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“One of them might die. They might be fighting right now and…”
“No, Priya, don’t think like that. Let’s all keep our heads. I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”
“Everything is falling apart,” Hazel comments.
Snapping my head in her direction, I give her the look. The look that she often receives from me when she opens her mouth before thinking. It happens a lot; most of the time it’s inappropriately funny. However right now, it’s just plain unhelpful.
But I can’t deny that she’s right. We haven’t been here long, but already things have changed, shifted. There’s a heightened nervous energy, all of us trying to outthink them, to look ahead and see what new hell they can inflict upon us before they do. Like if we’re prepared, we can somehow stop it, as if it would be better if we knew what was coming.
You never ask the fortune-teller when you’re going to die.
I can feel it, in the way the others look at each other, at the joy in their voices when our captors call us, the taunting tone that they revel in.
Something is coming. Every moment in here is building up like a pressure cooker, and I don’t know when it’s going to explode. I only know that an explosion is inevitable.
“Nothing is falling apart,” Theo says. “I’m making a snack. Everyone just sit down and chill the hell out.”
Priya and I sit on the sofa, and Hazel perches on the arm of the sofa. She looks ready to run if needed.
“Is it okay if I leave the TV on? I’ll turn it off if it shows something awful, like we all agreed. But in case…” I ask. They might show us more. Not that I want to see what Lucie and Kevin are going through, but I do want to know if they’re okay. I want to know if Kevin is still alive.
The throbbing in my head begins to intensify. I wish I had some painkillers.
“I think we should leave it on,” Priya replies, wringing her hands. “Piper?”
I lean back against the sofa and face her. “Yeah?”
“Do you think I will see Kevin again?”
If he’s in that room with Lucie, I do. If Lucie is in room five, I fear that Kevin is already gone. They want to murder. They’ve had over a year of watching people, and now they’re starting to get hungry for the kill. They could easily have started with Kevin.
“I really hope so,” I reply, not wanting to lie.
Nothing is certain in here, and with each passing day, I can feel the negativity seeping into my pores.
I hate it. I’m positive. I always have been. Even in our dead-end town, I see the bright side. But it’s difficult to see a bright side when you’re surrounded by darkness.
“Do you think when Kevin or Lucie comes back in…if…we should try rushing the door?” she whispers. Her lips barely move, trying to conceal her words in case they can lip-read.
Hazel leans closer.
“I don’t know,” I reply in a whisper, so we’re not overheard. “We’ll only be through one door. There are four more locked doors before we’re out. I don’t know if we’ll have the collective strength to get through them all quickly enough before they catch up with us.”
Priya’s shoulders slump as she moves closer. “There have to be windows.”
“Wait, you’re right. There is a window along the wall that faces the woods. I saw it when Theo and I were out there. It was near the back, probably somewhere along the waiting room. They must have built a wall in front of the window.”
“So if we knock that wall down, we can get out the window?” Hazel asks.
Well, she just made that sound easy.
“In theory,” Theo says quietly, crouching down in front of me and Priya. “But it depends on the wall. If it’s just a stud wall, plasterboarded, we could be through it in minutes.”
I helped my dad move a wall that separated our kitchen and dining room a couple years ago; it was super-easy to do. But we had tools, and there were no psychos watching and waiting.
“Maybe. Did you get a look at the window? I didn’t see bars or if it was boarded up, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t. I only remember the location and the green window frame around it, but not if there was any glass,” I say, keeping my voice quiet.
For all we know, it could be bricked up.
But if we’re going to consider something this dangerous, we need to do a little recon first. We need to find out if that wall has just been built out with a bit of wood and plasterboard. That means one of us needs to go to a torture room soon, so we can get into the waiting room.
I don’t think there will be any volunteers, and I have a suspicion Hazel and Priya wouldn’t know what to do to figure out what the wall is made of.
“I didn’t notice a window at all,” Theo confesses.
Oh great, we’re going solely on my word, then. What if I didn’t see what I thought I did? No, I know what I saw.
“There is definitely a window. Or there definitely was, at least.”
Theo shakes his head. “They would have blocked it up, surely? They need to keep us in; they wouldn’t have a means of escape only barricaded with a bit of plasterboard.”
I lean in a little closer, so we’re huddled together. We can’t afford for Caleb and his friends to hear this. “Yeah, but we were never supposed to see that side of the building. They’re getting cockier. This could be the mistake.”
I’m getting my hopes up. Like, through the roof. Psychopaths usually make mistakes when they get complacent. They think they’re invincible, and then they overlook something huge.
They let us see the exit.
Priya gasps and grips my hand. Her eyes are wide and fixed on the screen, which flicked back on. Lucie is in room five, strapped to a bed.
Caleb stands over her, holding a towel. By his feet is a bucket of water.
He looks up, straight into the camera, and grins.