Page 123 of Wicked Little Nightmare

"You see anything?" I whispered to Kyle, my eyes narrowing as I surveyed the underbrush.

"Not yet," he murmured back. "But we're getting close. I can feel it."

I nodded, pointing to a tree. “Look at the marks. Those are fresh.”

He stopped and looked at me, surprised I knew how to track.

“Yeah. I track humans for fun, deer wasn’t that hard to study online and get the basics. Never had a daddy to teach me how to hunt, but the tube is just as good.” I winked.

The silence stretched between us, broken only by the soft crunch of leaves under our boots. Kyle's voice cut through the quiet.

"You know, Cam, there's something I never told Sarah about Chimera," he said, his eyes still scanning the forest. "About the fighting. They had this room... called it the Pit."

My grip on the rifle tightened involuntarily. "Yeah? What kinda fucked up shit went down there?"

Kyle's laugh was humorless. "The kind that makes you question everything. They'd pit us against each other. Crowds would watch. Money was exchanged. Sometimes to the death. It just depended on how much the organizer liked you as to whether or not it was your head on the chopping block. We were trained for brutal efficiency. At least there weren’t any kids down there, not when I was there in any case, but my time there changed me in ways the military hadn’t. After killing someone with your own hands, for no reason, something inside you just snaps."

I felt my jaw clench, memories of my own violent past bubbling to the surface. I half wondered if he was talking about the fighting ring I’d joined for a while after I got out of juvie. "Sounds like a real fucking party," I muttered, trying to keep my voice light despite the darkness creeping in.

"Oh, it was a blast," he replied, his sarcasm biting. "Nothing like watching your friends tear each other apart to really build character."

I swallowed hard, fighting back the flood of images threatening to overwhelm me. Kids with blank eyes and bloodied fists. The sickening crunch of bone. The metallic taste of victory as I stood above them, blood dripping off me and splashing onto the floor while they ushered in the next, bigger target.

Yeah, I knew what Kyle was talking about. From my first experience with Tommy, to the hell that was playing out behind my eyelids, I knew all about things like The Pit, even if his experience hadn’t been my own.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Shit, I wish he’d never brought me out here. I wish we’d never gone to that fucking baby lab. Then I could just live in the fantasy that Lakey and I had just been two kids, abused by the foster system. But now, I can piece together the timelines that had been black holes. Times when wewere taken from our beds in the dark of night and thrust back into those rooms, side by side.

My hand clenched painfully around the barrel and just as I was about to unleash a guttural scream, I saw it. A flash of movement in the distance, the graceful silhouette of a deer against the trees.

"There," I whispered, all thoughts of the past vanishing in an instant. "Two o'clock."

Kyle froze, his eyes locking onto our target. In that moment, nothing else existed but the hunt. The thrill of the chase, the simplicity of predator and prey. It was a savage kind of peace, and I embraced it wholeheartedly.

As we crept forward, I felt a grin spread across my face.This, right here, was all that mattered. The past could go fuck itself. For now, I was alive, and I was hunting.

Forty-Two: Lakey

The flickering shadows danced on the walls like broken puppets as I sat in the chair, listening to Sarah count down, my eyes squeezed shut. My heart was doing a fucking tap dance in my chest. What twisted shit was I about to uncover in the cobweb-filled attic of my mind?

"Take a deep breath, Lakey," Sarah's voice floated through the darkness. "Let yourself relax."

Easy for her to say. She wasn't the one about to go spelunking in the cave of repressed trauma.But I did as she said, inhaling slowly. The musty smell of dust and dirt filled my nostrils. God, they should do something better with this place. It could be so much better. Or at least use a fucking duster. I felt like sneezing.

"Now, I want you to visualize a peaceful place," Sarah continued, her words taking on a hypnotic rhythm. "Somewhere you feel safe and calm."

I almost laughed. Safe? Calm? Those concepts were as foreign to me as empathy. But I played along, conjuring up an image of Cam's arms around me, his heartbeat steady against my back. It was the closest thing to peace I'd ever known.

As Sarah's soothing voice droned on, I felt myself sinking deeper into the couch. The room around me began to blur and fade, like watercolors running together. My body felt heavy, my mind light. I was floating in a sea of nothing and everything.

"You're doing great, Lakey," Sarah's voice seemed to come from far away now. "I want you to go back. Back to your earliest memories..."

A shiver ran through me. This was it. The moment of truth. What fucked up horrors was I about to relive? Part of me was terrified, but another part — the dark, twisted part that reveled in chaos — was eager to see what lay beneath the surface of my fractured psyche.

As I drifted deeper into the recesses of my mind, one thought echoed: whatever I found there, Cam would be waiting for me on the other side. And that was enough to make me brave the storm.

In a flash, the warmth of Sarah's office vanished. I was hit with a blast of cold air that made my skin prickle. The soft armchair morphed into hard metal beneath me, and the gentle lamplight gave way to harsh fluorescents that burned my retinas even through closed eyelids. I was laying down, my arms restrained at my side, my feet tied down.

I opened my eyes, squinting against the glare. White. Everything was fucking white. Walls, floor, ceiling - all gleaming like fresh snow. The air reeked of disinfectant, burning my nostrils. In the distance, I could hear the low hum of machinery, a constant drone that set my teeth on edge. I know this place. It’s the place where they ran tests on me when I was little. Where I learned that fucked up mantra.

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