I wake to the sound of banging. What the…?
Sitting, I look around the room, disoriented, as my eyes haven’t quite caught up with my brain yet.
“What the hell is going on?” Theo asks, leaping out of bed.
I look around the room, scanning each bed. “Where is Lucie?” I ask, gripping the quilt and shoving it off. I swing my body around and scurry down the ladder.
Theo and I bolt out of the bedroom at the same time, Hazel and Priya just starting to get out of bed to follow.
“Lucie!” I shout.
My heart drops when I see the waiting room door open. Lucie is escaping! How did she manage that? Did they leave it open?
No, it definitely locked behind us. Didn’t it? Was this a mistake? Too caught up in the high of a double torture that they forgot to lock up? Not that we would get far—the place is like a fortress.
I stumble toward the hallway, slamming my hand on the edge of the door frame as I lose my footing. “Lucie!”
Her hair is wild as she thrashes at the wall, hammering a plastic knife into the plasterboard. She has already made about a dozen deep slashes, dust covering the floor.
“What’s wrong with you?” Theo shouts, grabbing her wrist.
“Get off!” Lucie yanks her arm out of Theo’s grip, the knife thudding to the ground. “I can’t stay here another second. I can’t…I can’t…” She takes a deep, ragged breath that rattles and sounds like her lungs have been punctured. Her eyes are wide as saucers and flick wildly between me and Theo.
I watch the two of them in horror. What can we do about this? How can we clean this up enough so it’s not noticeable on their screens? It’s too early. They might come here before they go to the charity event in the afternoon. They might be watching this.
“What were you thinking?” I snap. “You’ve ruined everything!”
“You did that!” she shouts, pointing at me and glaring. “I could be free by now. Room five might never have happened if you and Theo had let me run!”
“Enough!” Priya orders, her voice carrying through the hallway like a foghorn. “We need to figure out what to do now.”
“We keep going,” Lucie snarls.
“How did you get in here?”
“I woke up in the middle of a nightmare. I couldn’t breathe. I ran to the door and it opened. I’m not going to pass up a chance like this. If you help me, we’ll be out of here faster.”
I shake my head. “What’s the time?” I ask, dread lining my stomach.
“It looks like sunrise,” Hazel replies. “They’ll probably be here soon.”
“God. We have to go through with this now,” I say. There’s no way the slices in the plasterboard will go unnoticed, and we don’t have anything to vacuum up the dust on the carpet.
They will notice, and we’ll get punished.
We have to go.
The speaker above us crackles, and ice slides down my spine. They’re watching.
“Lucie, Lucie, Lucie,” Caleb sings. “You’ve been a very naughty girl.”
Lucie turns slowly, terror filling her eyes. “No,” she whispers.
He chuckles, and the horrible sound makes a shudder rock my body. “Piper, Theo, Priya, and Hazel, back to bed.”
Will they kill her now? She was trying to escape, after all.
Theo backs up, pulling me with him. I let him because there is no other option. My eyes stay with Lucie as she braces herself against the wall. Theo moves me back enough for the door to close.
Lucie’s heart-wrenching sob is the last thing I hear before the door clicks locked.