Emilia can’t breathe. She can’t process anything. All that is registering is the horror in Ryan’s eyes. The fury pulsating through her. And the gun in her hand.
After all this time, after everything that has happened, this is the man who killed her sister. There’s no denying it, no believing his lies. Her fingers grip the barrel, her knuckles flashing white. She always wondered how she would react if she ever came face-to-face with him, but now that she is here, she is unable to feel anything. All her emotions are mutating into each other, rage transforming into hopelessness, then into sadness, anger, pity.
The man comes back through the door and Emilia inhales sharply at the sight of what’s in his other hand. A camcorder. The videos of the other victims, the shaky hand-held footage, rushes through her mind. Their terrified voices, the gun emerging in front of the camera. The other person’s desperate pleas. They weren’t begging for the other person to be saved. They were begging not to have to kill someone.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she cries. ‘Why didn’t you just give the evidence you have against him to the police? He could have been in prison! My family and I could have had justice!’
The woman’s eyes come alive with anger. ‘You should know more than anyone why we do this, Emilia,’ she shouts. ‘The monster who took our daughter did it without thinking twice. Just like your Sophie. And the police did nothing. They did nothing!’
‘They must have done something –’
‘They arrested that boy, sure, but then they let him go. They set him free! Not enough evidence. And we were meant to simply get on with our lives? No. No! It should have been us who killed him –’
‘Quiet –’ the man mutters, glaring at her sideways.
‘He shouldn’t have been able to do it himself!’
‘Quiet!’
The man’s shout bounces around the room, his booming voice silencing them all, the only sound the low buzz of the countdown above them, and their frantic breathlessness.
‘Right – the next part has some rules too,’ he continues. ‘Three, to be precise.’ He snaps his fingers in front of Emilia’s face and she jumps. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Rules,’ she repeats, nodding.
‘Number one: you have sixty seconds. If you use a bullet and it doesn’t work, we’ll reload the gun for you. One bullet at a time. Don’t think that aiming elsewhere or trying to kill one of us instead will get you anywhere.’
The woman laughs through closed lips. ‘Hayley James tried that. Didn’t work out too well for her.’
‘Was it you who killed Hayley?’ Emilia whispers.
‘She couldn’t bring herself to do it. She couldn’t kill Luca, even after everything he had become. She aimed up at the ceiling. And after we reloaded the gun, she just kept saying “no, no, no” the man says, mockingly. ‘So after the timer ran out, we had to follow through. She had been told the rules.’
‘Luca was found dead – that was you. Wasn’t it?’
‘He tried to attack us,’ the man says bluntly. ‘That brings us to rule number two. If you do not kill Ryan by the time the sixty seconds is up, we’ll kill you instead. Set him free. If Luca had stayed calm, we would have let him go. But he tried to hurt us.’
‘You’ll let Ryan go?’
‘Yup,’ he says casually.
Emilia coughs, her mind racing.
‘Why was Luca hidden? Everyone else has been left in plain sight, but you hid him –’
‘Hayley was the one who deserved to be found. She didn’t follow through, so she couldn’t be trusted to live. But she deserved to be found. Luca didn’t. It was sheer luck that someone discovered him.’
Emilia’s throat stings. ‘Why did you release Hayley’s confession and not his?’ she growls. ‘After killing her, you had to humiliate her as well?’
The man laughs maniacally. ‘You saw yourself how helpful it was for Luca to be missing, Emilia. Almost everyone believed that it was him who had murdered Hayley. And even after the confessions continued, people still believed it was him. Even the police. There are rules for you – there aren’t rules for us. And as long as you follow our rules, you have nothing to worry about. And I think you will. Most humans have a very strong sense of self-preservation when it comes down to it.’
Emilia’s head is pounding, her temples held in a vice. She drops her chin forward, her neck rolling. If she just passed out now, would they kill her?
‘And rule number three. If you say anything once we’re filming during the countdown to try to make people aware of what’s going on here – we will kill you. And it wouldn’t help you. We’d just edit it out. Got it?’
She heaves, but all that comes out is bile, splashing messily on to the concrete at her feet. She presses her hand to her mouth, fingers splayed. ‘Please don’t do this,’ she whimpers.
‘You’ll feel better for it, Emilia,’ the woman says, as she grips her shoulders and ushers her closer to Ryan. She tries to resist but the woman presses the barrel of the gun into her spine. ‘And do it quickly. Waiting for the last ten seconds won’t make it any easier.’ She steps forward, her body pressed against Emilia’s back, her mouth close to her ear. ‘Do it for your sister.’
The loud tone blares out and Emilia gasps, craning over her shoulder.
The countdown.
The numbers.
She wheels back around and Ryan is staring at her, pleading silently. He is so close to her now – just feet away. If she was to stretch up her arm, the gun would be within inches of his face. And the man is standing just off to his side, the camera pointed like an arrow at a target.
She can’t do this. She’ll have to live with it forever. The knowledge that someone is no longer here because of her.
00:41
She needs to say something.
But she can’t. They’ll kill her.
But if she refuses to shoot, they’ll kill her anyway.
‘This is wrong,’ she cries.
The gun presses against her and she lets out a startled cry. It’s no longer at the base of her spine. It’s aiming at the back of her head.
00:21
She can’t do this. She closes her eyes, tears continuing to fall down her face and on to the floor. If she kills him – will she have a life worth living?