My brain is counting, but my body already knows. Already remembers.
The walls brush my shoulders—Ifeelthem, the rough bamboo catching briefly on my skin as I squeeze through. Exactly how I wrote it. Exactly how Lyra did it.
"Ten strides left, little slut."
His voice fills my skull, but I'm already adjusting my trajectory. Already angling left for the gentle curve that leads to the second corridor.
He replicated it.
He fuckingreplicatedit.
Every measurement. Every turn. Every goddamn stride count from a story I wrote.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
The growling in my ears shifts. Hungrier. Wetter. Snarling like it wants to eat me.
Ten.
Something sharp catches my hip just as the masked man's voice yells, "Five strides right!"
I gasp—a high, startled sound that doesn't feel like it belongs to me—and my stride falters. The sting is immediate, bright, real. Not theatrical. Not pretend.
Blood. I can feel it. A thin line of warmth sliding down my thigh.
It cut me.
A claw. An actual fucking claw.
Of course it cut you, Scarletta. This is Max Fear Factor. This is the real deal. This is?—
Thirteen.
Shit! I was supposed to turn!
I just keep running, desperately trying to map the maze in my head as, again, something snags my skin!
My thigh this time. I scream, ithurts!
What the fuck!
The first capture doesn't happen until?—
I slip on something—mud! Why is it muddy? There's no mud! A moment later, I'm on the ground, face first. Dirt in my teeth.
The snarling in my ears is so loud, the fall so unexpected, the pain in my hip so real—I…I can't do this!
I rip the blindfold off, and find…nothing.
Nothing behind me. Nothing in front of me.
It's just me in this mud and… I look down.
My brain stutters for a moment. Because there's something wrong with it. Something very, verywrongwith it.
It looks like… blood.
I look at my hip, my thigh—blood is flowing out. It's trickling down both sides of my leg.
