Nico remains perfectly still.
“I killed Donald Dellman to extract you from your house.” With the casual way the Game Master is talking, I can picture him kicking back in his chair, examining his nails. “I never would have guessed the old man could still be hunting me after all these years.”
Nico flinches.
“I never intended to test Donald. He had no one he loved—well, perhaps you, Nicholas, but I didn’t want to dignify him with a chance to go free. I must say, I was so excited when you, Eden, paid me a visit with that boy. My next pairdeliveredto me, can you imagine that? I was sure you cared for each other, but when I had the chance to observe the two ofyou, I had it all wrong. You might think you care for her, Nicholas, but I wonder how long it will take to bring the Boy Next Door right back where he started.”
“Nico?” I ask again.
He still doesn’t respond, but now his shoulders are rigid, locked in place like every muscle in his body is coiled tight.
“Nicholas will be Subject One,” the Game Master continues. “Eden, you will be Subject Two. Each trial will have a winner and a loser. Do you see this contraption I made?”
I glance around, and my eyes land on a steel pole standing around eight or ten feet tall, welded to a crossbeam at the top and forming a T.
“As punishment, the loser of each trial will be strung up on that pole until the start of the next trial.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Trust me, you don’t want to be the loser.”
I claw through my mind for anything from the Game Master’s case files, but there’s nothing there that will help me now. He’s escalating. He has to, if he wants to feel the same effect.
A digital timer turns on against the back wall, the numbers glowing red in the darkness:5:00.
“In front of the pole, you’ll find a table with instruments,” the Game Master continues, his voice dripping with anticipation. “You have five minutes to draw as much blood from your opponent as you can. The person who draws more blood from the other wins. You may begin.”
The timer counts down with a tiny beep that sounds way too cheerful for what’s happening.
4:59
4:58
This isn’t real. Thiscan’tbe real. Except the timer is ticking down and Nico’s still sitting there with his back to me, and yes, it is real, and it is fucking happening.
I know how these trials go. I need to get up.
“Nico?” I ask again, but he doesn’t answer, just sits there facing away from me with that hood still over his head.
What is hedoing? I circle his chair until I’m standing in front of him, not knowing what to do or what to say. What if the Game Master had to do more than smash Nico’s face to subdue him?
Images of what I could find under that hood flood into my head, each one worse than the last. Nico missing teeth. Nico, with unfocused eyes, not remembering where he is because of a head injury.
The longer he’s silent, the more scared I become. “Nico, what happened?”
His hands move to the hood. He pulls it off slowly and drops it beside his chair. Blood mats his black hair together. When he lifts his head, I cup a hand over my mouth.
The gash on his forehead is still bleeding, trailing down his cheek like crimson tears, and it’s one of many small cuts on his face. His skin is pale, almost gray in the harsh bulb, making the blood stand out like he’s wearing war paint. But his eyes make my stomach drop straight through the floor. It’s like every wall he’s ever built between himself and the world got reinforced with steel, and whatever humanity was behind them has been locked away somewhere I can’t reach.
He’s looking at me the way a panther would look at a baby gazelle. The exact same way he looked at me that first dinner at the house, when he reminded me of Stanley Daniels.
He smiles.
“Eden,” he says. “I’ll give you ten seconds to run.”
CHAPTER 38
“I gave them two minutes to run. Long enough for them to think they had a chance. It was more fun if they thought they had a chance.”
—Interview with Billy Lundby, conducted and transcribed by Alexander Wyman, 2021
I back away from him. “What are you doing?”
