Page 83 of They're Watching You

He stares at me, concern in his black eyes. Why are his eyes so black? And then I remember. The poison. Gavin mentioned disorientation and confusion. On the floor, Remington handles the boxes, which are still intact. I squat down as he unhinges the lid to the first one, revealing a mass of jigsaw puzzle pieces with a single card on top.

“Solve to reveal the location of the final game piece,” I read aloud, tossing the card aside. “So…we just have to solve a puzzle?” That seems easy enough. I scoot away from Remington so our pieces don’t get mixed up, and dump the contents of my box onto the shiny tile. The pieces display an array of dots that join together in an impressionistic version of a leaf here, a branch there, maybe? But there’s something off about the colors.

It hits me as Remington groans. The pieces, the dots—they’re all shades of green and red.

“They all look the same,” he snarls, slamming a fist down onto his pile. The pieces fly in every direction.

He’s right. It’s basically a color blindness test cut up into tiny bits. This is what Gavin meant by giving me a surefire way to win. If I wanted to, I could solve my puzzle, find my game piece, and take the antidote while Remington continued to stare at his pile until time ran out. Guilt bites at the back of my brain. He could’ve kept the advantage for himself. But I was too much of a coward. “Stay calm,” I tell him. The water from my soaked jeans pools and bleeds around me, but I’ve already connected three border pieces that possibly make up the edge of a pond. “We only have to finish one.”

He moves to peer over my shoulder, his wet hair dripping onto my pile. “What can I do to help?”

“Let me think,” I say.

He backs up, pacing the room as I gather the rest of the forest green pieces into one pile and the reds and oranges into another. The harsh lines of the red family resemble some sort of building, possibly the location of the second half of the key.

But a few minutes later, I have the dark green area half-finished, and a small series of blue dots emerges in the center. The number4.

“What does this number mean?” I ask, still working on finishing up the treescape. Once it’s done, I have the number2.

“The cards,” Remington says suddenly, thrusting his in front of me. “The back is a coordinate map of the school.”

“And it will lead us directly to the other halves of our keys.” But I heard the way my own words just slurred together.

Panic throbs in my head, in my hands, threatening to take over. I inhale, letting the breath trickle out slowly. I’m so close. I dig through the red pieces, lifting a burnt orange shade and clicking it in place. The number7. I continue sifting and sorting until the likeness of the academy boathouse materializes, along with a lime-hued number6. One more coordinate to go.

The sound of glass clinks over in the supply cabinet. “Hey,” Remington says. “Dr. Yamashiro has a bunch of herbs in here.Valeriana officinalis. Some of this stuff looks like plants in the headmistress’s garden. Let me—” He cuts off, and when I peek, he’s moved to one of the student computers. “Here. Google says this plant can be used as a mild sedative. But this other one,Eschscholzia californica, that’s a poppy. As in opium? Wait, no, wrong species. But this one does have medicinal properties, like to help with depression and insomnia. Do you think Dr. Yamashiro keeps more of the antidote somewhere in here?”

“Doubt it,” I murmur, trying to focus.

“Well, I’m going to look.” He starts rifling and banging around, the noise competing with my own scattered thoughts.

The last are blue-green shades, which I’m assuming to be Guffman’s Pond behind the boathouse. I try the first one, but it’s not a fit. After a quick shuffle, I have the right side of what could either be a3or an8, which means I need at least one more bit of the pond. “Toss me a pen,” I call to Remington just as I find the piece, a teal shade with the lighter blue wing of a duck on the top and some of the left side of the8on the bottom.

I turn to see that Remington has successfully broken into Dr. Yamashiro’s filing cabinet. Papers are scattered about the floor and the desk. The pen lands beside me, and I scribble down427and68on the side of the card with the map, then trace the latitude and longitude with my finger. “Looks like the game piece is somewhere on the boathouse dock. Let’s go.”

I’m already on my feet, but Remington remains hunched over a page on the desk. “Atropa divinus. These are his test trial notes for the antidote.” I hear it in his voice now too, the way the words lull and drag, blending and twisting together. “Forty-one rats died. Subject forty-two was treated with activated charcoal, which slowed the toxin’s effects, but ultimately, the subject couldn’t be saved. Then on the final batch, called AAD43, the rat lived.”

“One rat survived? He didn’t repeat the trial?”

“It’s better than no rats, I guess.” He digs through another drawer. “They must’ve created more than one dose of the stuff. The question is where did they put the rest?”

“Remington,” I say, bouncing on my toes in the doorway. “We have to hurry.”

“I know.” But he doesn’t stop his mad search. He knocks a few vials to the floor, and loose herbs drift down to the floor. “But we don’t even know the keys will be together. I didn’t finish my puzzle.”

The thought jabs at the back of my jaw like a stray chicken bone. “They were together in the last challenge.”

“But what if the Gamemaster wants to make sure we separate this time? What if my puzzle leads to different coordinates?”

I glance down at his scattered pieces and throw a hand into the air. “Even if that were true, we don’t have time to solve another puzzle.”

When Remington looks at me, I swear, his head just lifts right off his neck and floats over to the window.

“Maren?” the floating head asks me, drifting closer now. “Maren?”

I can’t answer it. Instead, I try desperately to swat it away.

“Maren!” Remington’s arms are around me before I can fight him off. He holds me for a minute. “Maren,” he whispers into my ear. I glance up at him, finding his head right in place where it usually is. “There’s only one antidote. You should go. The poison is affecting you faster. I still have time to look for this AAD43.”

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