Page 161 of Deviant

“They must have done something to force her to do it. They must have.”

“I want to be there for Lucy. I do. But I can’t stop thinking about my own game in a couple of days with Andy,” Harper admits nervously. “What if one of us dies? I don’t think I could bear it if something happened to Andy. I know I couldn’t.”

I pull her into a hug and hold her tight.

“Today is the only certainty we have. Don’t waste whatever time you have with Andy worrying about such things. It will only serve to steal the happiness you two have found in each other.The Scourgehas taken too much from us as it is. Don’t let it take that too.”

Harper holds onto me and sighs.

“You’re a good friend. I wish we had spent more time together back in the day.”

“Me too, Harper. Me too.”

We only pull away from our hug when we hear Lucy’s door open.

“I’m ready,” Lucy announces, her expression void of all emotion.

“Okay. Let’s go get us some grub!” Harper squeals a bit too excitedly while discreetly wiping the tears off her face.

We walk down the staircase and into the dining hall, everyone already seated at the table. I square my shoulders as I walk over to sit on the empty chair between Abbie and Elias.

“Good morning,” I greet, only to gain a good morning back from Abbie, Elias too preoccupied with staring at his empty plate to even look at me.

“Lucy, we didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Abbie says, giving her a confused smile.

Lucy doesn’t respond as she sits, looking like her body is here, but her mind is not. Five and Seven begin to fill our plates, doing their dutiful taste test as we all continue to throw glances over at Lucy, morbid curiosity getting the better of us.

We must not be discreet enough because Lucy lifts her head and stares back at us.

“Just ask,” she finally says, waving Five away when she offers to taste her food.

Of course, the only one who is callous enough to ask the question we’re all thinking is Mackenzie.

“What happened in that room?” she asks, placing her clasped hands under her chin, giving Lucy her undivided attention.

“Lucas died,” Lucy replies, her tone sounding just as lifeless as her boyfriend.

“We know that, but how?” Mackenzie insists.

I have half a mind to scold Mackenzie for being so callous, but I don’t since I’m just as curious as she is to learn what happened in that room.

“They wanted us to play a game,” she starts. “The first one to lie would die.”

“Holy shit,” Andy blurts, getting a good elbow to the gut from Harper with his outburst. “Sorry.”

The table goes silent as we wait for Lucy to continue.

“When we walked in the room, we noticed three things. That the room was so white it almost hurt to look at it, that there were two chairs at the center of the room, and lastly that there were two ropes hanging from the ceiling just above the chairs. Before we could make heads or tails out of the situation, we were told to stand on top of the chairs, and once that was done, they demanded we wrap the ropes tightly around our necks. When Lucas saw me hesitating, he said that everything would be okay, as long as we followed their orders. So, I did. But the minute I wrapped that rope around my neck, I heard some kind of lever turn on, and suddenly, I felt something pull the rope up in such a way, that I was basically on the tips of my toes the entire time,” she says unfeelingly, almost as if she didn’t live the horrid ordeal and was merely an outside spectator to all of it instead. “That’s when the watches started to beep,” she continues. “Since I was too preoccupied with keeping my balance, Lucas was the only one who read the text. He said that we had to ask each other five questions, and if anyone lied, they would be the ones to die.”

My heart races at the similarities between Lucas’s and Lucy’s game, to the one that Elias and I played. He must be thinking the same thing by the way he’s white-knuckling the knife in his hand.

“I thought it was going to be easy.” She scoffs like she should have known better. “All we had to do was ask questions the other could answer truthfully. How hard could it be?” She begins to draw circles on the tablecloth with her finger. “But this white room must have triggered something in Lucas. I know it did. It made him recall that first white room in the east wing that wewent to, on our first night here. The one with all those awful ugly words. But there was one word there in particular that Lucas couldn’t shake off… couldn’t allow himself to forget. So he asked me. And out of fear for my own life, I answered him.”

Everyone around the table hangs on her every word as she continues to run her finger on the tablecloth in circles.

“He didn’t like my answer. I knew he wouldn’t. That’s why I had kept it from him all this time.”

“What did he ask you?” The words come out of my mouth before I can stop myself.

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