“You were scared for me?” he finally asks.
Is that really so hard for him to believe? “Of course I was scared for you,” I say. “I don’t want you to die.”
As I say the words, I know it’s more than that. If he dies, and the Game Master lets me go, I’d never get out of here. Not really. My mind would remain trapped in this building, just like it’s still trapped with that plastic bag over my head. Nico would become another person I wasn’t good enough to save.
“You were scared for me,” he says again, but the way he says it is different. Almost reverent.
“I was scared for you,” I confirm.
He drags himself closer to me until his knees bracket my sides, and he surrounds me. I’m so surprised by the contact, by thehug. His being this close to me is more overwhelming than the pain.
He angles his head toward my ear, speaking so quietly that I feel the words more than hear them.
“I’m trying to figure out our next move,” he mumbles. “Things are about to get a lot worse for us.”
The words float past me. I have to chase them down, try to make them mean something through the static of pain filling my head. “Why?”
The pause drags out.
“Why, Nico?”
“I’m going to tell you,” he says. “Give me a second to put my words together.”
I try, but each second crawls by like an hour. My whole arm feels like it has been dipped in acid, and the agony strips away any filter I ever had.
“Can you just spit it out?” I ask. “Tell me what you’re thinking. You don’t have to choose your words with me.”
“Do you remember at the beginning, how Morrow kept talking about how he designed the trials to try to get me to break?” he asks.
I nod, my hair rubbing against his.
“Morrow started this thinking he could push me hard enough to become Billy again,” Nico says. “He wasn’t testing you. You were just the tool to break me with.”
The pain is making it hard for me to use my brain, but his meaning begins to form in my mind. “So, when I cut off my hand for you, he realized how much I care about you?”
“Exactly.” His hand tightens fractionally on my hand. “The Game Master thinks he has the perfect subjects for both a true nature trialanda love trial.”
The words land like stones in water, sending ripples through everything I thought I understood about what’s happening here.
“I don’t know what he’ll do now that he thinks he has a love trial on his hands,” Nico continues. “But he’ll escalate. Now he thinks he has something real to break, so the next trial will be… bad.”
“Compared to all the super great ones we’ve had so far?” I ask.
A fresh pulse of pain lances up my arm. Even though the Game Master cut power to the lightbulb, the camera’s red light still blinks at us. I wish I could reach through and rip out all the Game Master’s stolen teeth.
“I don’t think the team will find us in time,” Nico whispers into the bubble of space between us. “We can’t count on rescue. It’s just us. There’s going to be a trial we can’t both walk away from, and when that happens, you end it. You kill me, and you get out.”
“I’m not having this conversation again?—”
“It’s the only way,” he says. “He can break every bone in my body, but I’ll die before laying a hand on you.”
I’m shaking now. I don’t know if it’s from blood loss or shock or the weight of what he’s saying.
“You’re a good person,” I whisper.
He says nothing. His face is inches from mine. Not being able to see him does nothing to diminish the pull I feel. It’s like the whole room has tilted, pushing me into him. I’m sliding past pain, past common sense, past everything to be closer to him.
“I’m not that good,” he finally says.
