Page 84 of They're Watching You

I turn to face him, and he bends down until our cheeks brush. “Where are you supposed to look? The cameras are all over campus. They’ll know if you stop playing by their rules.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m hoping it’s in here somewhere. And if not, maybe everyone will be so focused on the cameras along Gavin’s finale course, they won’t think to look for me until it’s too late.”

Tears sting now. “If you don’t find it,” I whisper, “wait for me in the place where we first…” I push up onto my tiptoes and press my lips to his. A reminder. His poison-dark eyes meet mine and flicker with understanding. The bushes behind my dorm, where we first kissed. One of the many places I questioned his loyalty. A gush of sadness fills me. “I’ll find you. I’ll get you help.”

“I will. Now hurry up.” He nudges me toward the door, but I turn, kissing him again. I shut my eyes as our lips meet, and it brings back that first kiss, and before that, the memory of the hidden liquor closet where I first felt that magnetic tug. Where I first wanted his lips on mine.

A thought snags my breath, and I pull away. “The liquor closet,” I whisper. “Remember, on the top shelf above the booze, there were a bunch of weird medicines.”

“You’re right,” he says, and I think I catch a glimmer of hope in his midnight-black eyes.

“But Paul said there’s a camera inside. Be careful.”

He nods, turning back to the desk, and I race out of the building, scrambling down the staircase. The moon casts a milky rinse of light over the athletic fields and the plum orchard beyond it. I weave through until I reach the wooden planks of the boathouse dock on Guffman’s Pond. Producing the flashlight, I shine it over the boards, pilings, and a couple of motorboats floating in the water. At the end of the dock, I hop down into one of the boats, feeling around beneath the seats. It turns up nothing, and when I try to climb back onto the dock, the high-pitched sound of some sort of siren creature calls to me from the black sea. My heart rams into my ribs.

You heard nothing.Nothing’s there.

I lower into the next one, swaying as the boat rocks with my momentum. My light flits over the bottom of the shell. I bend to check every nook and cranny. When I spot a tackle box beneath the last seat, my hopes soar.

Inside is a rolled note. I unfurl it to find the bronze barrel of a key attached to the bit. Then I dig into my pocket to retrieve the ornamental half, wobbling as the boat sways. The seat is damp, but I lower onto it, screwing the two halves of the key together. Relief spirals through me.

But a moment later, it coils back down with nauseating speed. Because inside this already-rocking boat, my legs are starting to feel wobbly, like they’re made of gelatin.

I heft myself back onto the dock, scraping my palms on the splintery planks and dragging my useless legs up behind me. Once on solid ground, I shake out my legs and stretch the note open beneath the flashlight. TAKE YOUR KEY TO THE PLACE WHERE THE DEAD BECOME IMMORTAL, TO THE PLACE WHERE WE WATCH.

The catacombs. But it doesn’t provide a specific location. I’d need fifteenhoursto search that place. Or another coordinate.

And the back of this note is blank.

Breath suddenly shallow, I force my feet to move toward the place where this all started, the ghastly dungeon below the earth.

The place where, if I make it in time, I’ll be cured.

I only hope Remington is having luck finding his own cure.

Thirty-Three

The stillness of the antechamber sucks my breath away, using it a moment later to play a silent tune that makes my neck hair stand on end.

It’s empty. No hooded figures huddled around waiting for me. They really must be lounging around somewhere, watching the show.

Finding my feet again, I stride through the passageway to the next chamber, the only direction you can possibly go until the fork ahead.

After that, I have no idea where to go. I take the staircase down like we did the night we searched for Jordan, running over the note in my head. This is “where the dead become immortal,” right? As in they live on because they’re buried in a fancy sarcophagus? And “where we watch” must refer to wherever the society has a screen set up, streaming the feed of Remington and me bumbling over campus like blind rabbits.

But I pass through the next chamber and my gaze skims the etchings of the teeth-bared charioteer. Suddenly, I know exactly where to go.

Where we watch. The Gamemaster isn’t referring to “we” as the society; he’s referring to “we” as the gods. Sitting on high. The massive eyeballs looking over the tiny humans as they shed one another’s blood.

The fresco. The one I saw painted above that horrid bone table on the night Jordan played princess.

My steps accelerate as I retrace the path Remington and I took that night. Adrenaline buzzes in my ears—in my entire body. My awareness of the space is suddenly heightened, my mind its own map. When I hit a fork in the tunnels, I make a sharp right, and my heart pushes into my throat.

A hooded figure blocks my path. One with red devil eyes. Panic swells in my throat. I can’t breathe. The figure races toward me, draped in black, like Death approaching.

But I blink. And it’s gone. The corridor is clear. It was another hallucination.

Struggling to suck in a full breath, I stumble, bracing myself against the wall. My nerves prickle as spindly, hairy legs crawl over my hand. I shriek and shake off the thing, which skitters across the floor. My entire body quivers, and I have no way of knowing if that spider was real or just another figment of my poison-rotted mind.

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