Page 74 of House of Cards

“Don’t disappoint me, kitten,” he says as the door to the Labyrinth swings open. “I’ll be watching.”

Zoey

My lungs are screaming at me to stop. My heart pounding against my backbone like the cops at the door with a fucking warrant.

Thirty seconds isn’t enough of a head start when you’re running through a dimly lit maze with Mary Jane straps digging into your ankles. I almost ripped them off so I could run faster, but things keep crunching under my soles, and it’s too dark for me to see what I’m standing on.

For all I know, Smith and his psycho boss sprinkled thumb tacks and shards of glass around to slow me down.

I skid around another corner, lose my balance, and almost fall. My hand slaps against the wall to steady myself, but I don’t pause more than a second before I push off, darting down yet another identical corridor.

This maze is enormous. I’ve been running for minutes and I’m ninety percent sure I haven’t been down the same hallway twice. Except the few times I hit a dead end and had to trace my way back a yard or two, of course. The walls are paneled in the same dark wood as the hallway outside, but stretches of mirrors distort and multiply the surrounding maze. Every time I glimpsemyself in one of them, flushed face, wild eyes, that ridiculous beer maid costume, fresh panic surges through me.

Behind me, footsteps echo.

So close. Sofuckingclose.

And getting closer.

I veer around another sharp turn, nearly colliding with a wall.

Another dead end.

I spin around, hurriedly backtracking, heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.

…Keep running. Don’t let him catch you…

Smith’s words loop in my head as I run, a panicked mantra that keeps my feet moving despite my body begging for rest. I haven’t found an exit. For all I know, there aren’t any.

The corridor opens unexpectedly into a large space.

I stumble to a halt, bent double as I try to catch my breath, but my head still tilted up as I waste no time assessing whatever fucked up hidey-hole I’m in now.

“What the fuck?”

This isn’t the first weird room I’ve come across.

The first was the doctor’s office. An intimate, mirror-lined room with a solitary gynecological chair in the center, stirrups raised and waiting. It reeked of disinfectant and surgical gloves. As I scampered through it with the hair on the nape of my neck lifting, I swear I saw a flash of a white doctor’s coat hanging from a hat stand.

Then a classroom. Fake windows with mirrors instead of glass that reflect the massive teacher’s desk, a chair bolted to the floor in front of it. The restraints, I thought, were an unnecessarily evil touch, as was the chalkboard with row upon row of white scratches keeping a tally on the punishment meted inside.

But by far the creepiest—until now—was the pink room with its fourposter bed, and an army of plushies standing guard against the headboard. There was an oversized teddy bear in one corner that looked like it had seen shit.

But this?

My blood turns to ice as I straighten.

I’m in a huge, circular room with five doorways branching off like spokes on a wheel, its walls and ceiling covered in mirrors reflecting…

Mannequins? Really?

There are dozens of them, all female figures, all in various states of undress, all posed in positions of submission or flight. Those that have heads have no features—just a smooth, egg-shaped blob. Some are cracked, dented, or have gaping holes in them like they’ve been used for target practice.

They’re wearing evening gowns, lingerie, or slutty costumes like mine. Wenches, school girls, nurses. A few are naked except for the strips of black leather around their throats.

Collars, just like mine.

The mirrors lining the walls multiply the mannequins into an army, surrounding me from all sides. Way too many of those blank faces are turned toward me, somehow watching me without eyes.

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