Page 86 of Wicked Games

I narrowed my eyes. “She said she didn’t.”

“She must’ve accidentally pressed the button when she grabbed her throat,” Maverick said. “Fuck, what a horrible way to go.”

I kept staring at Courteney’s lifeless body as Zach sobbed over her. The metallic scent of her blood was lingering in the air, making nausea rise in my throat. “She said she didn’t touch the button,” I said in a low voice, head slowly shaking. “Accidentally or not.”

“Maybe she just didn’t realize she touched it,” Maverick replied.

“Yeah. Maybe,” I muttered. “Or maybe I was right the other day.”

Brooke’s gaze snapped to mine. “About some of the games being rigged against us?”

“Yeah. Maybe we only play so the Game Master can watch us suffer. Not because there’s actually any chance of survival.”

“We can’t think like that,” Maverick said gruffly. “We have to believe there’s a way out of this place.”

He stepped past several skittering spiders and knelt to place a hand on Zach’s shoulder. “Sorry, man. We have to go. Only eight minutes left.”

Zach refused to move, so Maverick hauled him to his feet and dragged him away from Courteney’s body. He shouted and struggled the whole way, but I didn’t intervene. It was for the best.

The next room was a cramped space with red lighting, like a photographer’s dark room. The floor was littered with bullets, and a black rifle sat in a glass display case on one of the walls. The walls were lined with photos of April. Some were taken from a distance, showing her lifeless body splayed on the enormous chessboard, while others were closeups of her abdomen, gray sweatshirt lifted to reveal a gaping gunshot wound. As awful asthe wound was to look at, the worst photo was a closeup of her face, pale with blue lips and dried blood that had trickled down from one corner of her mouth.

“You were all too late. You could’ve helped me. It’s your fault I’m gone,” her voice said over a tinny speaker. “All your fault. All your fault. All your fault.”

I set my jaw and clamped my hands over my ears to drown out the awful chant. Maverick squeezed my shoulder. “Remember, it’s not real. Just deep-fake bullshit,” he murmured. “It wasn’t your fault she died.”

I swallowed the hard lump in my throat and nodded. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, voice quavering as I spotted April’s torn, bloodied sweatshirt crumpled on the floor beside another array of bullets.

The final few rooms were similar to the first ones—shadowy spaces filled with bones, skulls, teeth, and blood, accompanied by creepy whispers and the occasional bloodcurdling scream.

I steeled my jaw and tried my best to ignore the gore around me, along with the sharp pains in my chest that had appeared after seeing all the awful reminders of Evan, Tate, Rhys, Kiara, and April’s demises. Finally, we reached a door with the words ‘THE END’ daubed on it in dark red paint.

“Congratulations!” the Game Master’s voice boomed out. “You made it with four minutes to spare, and only one of you lost your head, so to speak.”

“Fuck you!” Zach screamed, shaking his fist at the speaker. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Please proceed to the drawing room for morning tea. There are no more games until tomorrow, so you can relax for the rest of the day. The arrows on the floor beyond this door will guide you back to the main hall,” the Game Master droned on. “Thanks for playing!”

“I’m so fucking sick of hearing that shit,” Jasmine muttered as we stepped through the exit. “As if we’rechoosingto play.”

For once, I agreed with her.

We headed back to the drawing room in somber silence. Courteney’s death was weighing heavily on our shoulders. Half of the original players were dead now, and the rest of us had no idea what lay in store for us beyond more games, more torment, and more terror.

We had to do something to figure out the truth behind this place, but how? Maverick and I had already tried to explore every available space the other night, and we hadn’t turned up a single clue about the Game Master’s identity, let alone any possible means of escape.

I lost myself in my thoughts as I sat in the drawing room, reflecting on my time in this awful place. The games. The messages. The perpetual fear. The seeming lack of motive. By the time my tea had gone cold, I’d realized that something was bothering me about the Seven Minutes in Hell game. However, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It seemed to be gnawing at the very edges of my brain, and every time I tried to grasp the thought, it slipped away.

“Does anyone else think there was something weird about that last game?” I asked, looking up at the others.

“Like what?” Jasmine asked, wrinkling her nose.

“I don’t know. I just keep getting this weird feeling about it. Like… something wasn’t right.”

“It’s because it wasn’t really a game,” Zach said in a ragged murmur. “It was anexperience, like the Game Master said at the start.”

I frowned. He was right, but that wasn’t the thing that was bothering me. If I could just figure out what it was, then this annoying itch in my brain would go away.

Once the Game Master announced via text that the drawing room was closing for cleaning, I spent several hours talking to Maverick, Brooke, Zach, and surprisingly, Jasmine. We sat in Maverick’s room and shared every thought we had over our situation and every suspicion we’d ever had over the Game Master’s identity, but in the end, we all turned out to be in the exact same boat. Utterly clueless and no closer to a solution.

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