“Your third trial will now begin,” the Game Master announces. “You will take turns using the weapon provided on your opponent. The first subject to successfully remove a body part from the other will be declared the winner. You have ten minutes. You may begin.”
The timer on the wall lights up.
The building falls silent except for the distant metal creaking and my own ragged breathing. I can’t move. The axe has me paralyzed.
“Eden,” Nico says. “We need to move.”
“What?” The word comes out strangled.
“To the axe,” he says blandly, as if disconnected from the meaning.
I grip the neckline of my sweatshirt as a rush of clammy heat rises up my neck.
“Is this part of your plan?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “We just have to do the trial.”
“Do you evenhavea plan?”
“The team will come,” he says, but he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as me. “We have to survive until they find us.”
I lean toward him, dropping my voice into a whisper. “What if we don’t do the trial and wait for him to come down here? You said these cameras are old school. He probably can’t watch the feed when he’s away from his control room. As soon as he leaves, we’ll have twenty-three seconds to move to the door and ambush him.”
Nico shakes his head. “We have no way of knowing when he’ll leave the control room. Plus, I can barely stand.”
I want to argue, but it’s hard to argue that. “Do you haveanyideas?”
“I have one,” he says, his eyes steeled. “You kill me.”
The words make me recoil, like he slapped me across the face. “That’s not happening.”
He looks surprised, which is insane. Did he actually think I’d go for that?
“Okay,” he says. “Then we have to do the trial, or he’ll kill us both.”
The timer keeps counting down.9:07.9:06.
I don’t blame him for not having a plan. How could I? Nico’s not some superhero. He’s just a guy who’s bleeding and exhausted, and I’ve been expecting him to magically save us both.
But I’m so scared.
I push myself up. Nico stands too, his legs buckling with the effort as he grips the pole to steady himself. We lean on each other, my shoulder wedged under his arm while his hand rests on my shoulder for balance. It’s slow going, both of us limping and gasping with every step like the world’s most pathetic three-legged race. It feels like I’m walking over coals, but the pain is distant, muted by the sheer horror of what I’m about to do.
The axe is huge. One of those mauls with the long handles made for splitting logs. The blade is mottled and dark metal, but the edge is sharpened.
I curl my hands around the handle, and flakes of plastic peel off the rough wood and stick to my clammy skin. I’m so tired I can barely lift the axe, and resort to dragging it across the floor, the head scraping like sparks might fly out. Nico’s on his knees.
He spreads his fingers flat against the floor, palm down.
“Do it,” he says, nodding toward his hand. “Cut it off.”
“Your whole hand?”
“If you want to.” He curls his little finger on the ground. The swelling has gone down enough for him to move it. “But I was thinking my pinky.”
“I’m not cutting off your finger,” I say.
“We don’t have time to debate this.”
