“I can do something about that,” he says.
The swelling in his hands has gone down even more overnight, and he manages to get the cap off the water bottle. I sit up. The world pitches sideways, and I drop forward until I’m leaning on his shoulder, breathing through my mouth.
I want to tell him to drink first because he’s clearly in just as bad shape as I am, but the desert that used to be my mouth overrules my brain. I take three small sips, letting each one sit on my tongue before swallowing. He drinks the rest in measured gulps, then sets the empty bottle aside.
Great. So that’s the last of our water.
We eat both chocolate bars. We’re too hungry to hold out. Once, I forgot to eat breakfast before one of Rosie’s soccer games and was so dizzy that I couldn’t walk straight. Mom bought a chocolate bar from a vending machine and told me the sugarwould give my body the boost of energy it needed until we could get back home. I don’t know if there’s enough sugar in the world to supply my body with the energy it needs right now, but this is better than nothing.
I notice the toothbrush and toothpaste lying on the floor. I forgot the Game Master even gave us these. I reach for them.
“You trying to tell me something?” Nico asks, and I can hear his smile.
“It’s for me,” I say. “At this point, if the Game Master wanted to torture you, he could just have me breathe on you.”
I scrub my teeth way longer than I usually do. It feels good to do something normal.
Once I’m done, Nico plucks the toothbrush from my fingers and squeezes a line of toothpaste on it. He holds my eyes as he brushes his teeth, and the casualness makes it feel way more intimate than it has any right to be.
“You need fresh breath for anything specific?” I ask.
He angles away and spits on the floor, wiping the minty foam clinging to the edge of his mouth. “If I get lucky,” he says.
The room floods with light. Row after row of industrial fixtures that were invisible in the dark now blaze overhead. I throw my elbow over my face.
“Your fourth trial will begin momentarily,” the Game Master announces through the speakers, and I swear the volume is cranked up louder than before. “You have ten minutes to prepare.”
We already ate and brushed our teeth. What are we supposed to use the ten minutes for, writing our wills?
Please, for the love of all things holy, don’t let this next trial be the teeth thing.
I wipe tears away from my stinging eyes as they adjust to the sudden brightness, then turn to Nico. The bruising around his eyes has turned deep purple. His lips are so chapped they’vecracked, dried blood caught in the splits, and his eyes are too bright, almost too focused, like he’s running on nothing but adrenaline and sheer force of will.
Seeing him in real lighting after everything that happened in the dark feels like a drug. Creases appear at the corners of his eyes as he smiles, and I know I’m not alone in the feeling.
He fashions a sling out of his hoodie, binding my arm against my body so it’s not dangling. He rewraps the stump too, and even though he tells me not to look, I still do, and find my hand has swollen into a puffy shape. The missing tip of my exposed thumb is dusky and caked with blood.
I’m not the first person in the world to lose a body part. So many people have survived worse.
Nico presses his cheek against mine.
“I have a plan,” he mutters against my ear. “To lure him down here.”
“Lure him how?” I ask.
“The same way Howard and Louise did,” he says. “By refusing to hurt each other. Make Morrow come down to force the issue.”
His brain is working about ten steps ahead of mine.
“But that got their arms and legs cut off,” I say.
“Yes, but?—”
“I don’t want to get my arms and legs cut off,” I say.
“You won’t,” he says. “Because we’re going to set a trap.”
He explains his plan. It’s the equivalent of finding a waterlogged flare gun at Point Nemo, and I can think of about a million ways it could go wrong, but I’m so relieved to have any plan at all that I’d agree to ask the Game Master if we could perform an interpretive dance in exchange for our freedom if Nico suggested it.
