Then my air cuts off.
A sharp discomfort seizes my windpipe. Blood pumps in my ears, a roar that drowns out everything except the pounding of my own heart. My vision tunnels until all I can see is Nico’s face, red, the tendons bulging in his neck like ropes pulled tight. His eyes are open, but he’s not here. He’s somewhere else I can’t follow. I squeeze my eyes as hard as I can and force my body to go limp. Nico screams, his arms shaking against my throat.
Then his hands fly away from me. I crumple to the floor, my spine bending at a sharp angle as my head cracks against the tile.
The urge to breathe normally is so strong. Every cell in my body screams at me to gasp, gulp down air, take these huge sobbing breaths to get rid of the burning feeling in my lungs, but the tape is still covering my mouth, and dead girls don’t gasp for air.
Nico’s boot presses into my shoulder and rolls me onto my side so my face is turned away from the Game Master. I take the tiniest sip of air through my nose, so small and controlled thatmy chest barely moves. The tile is cold against my cheek, gritty with dust and I don’t want to know what else.
The Game Master’s footsteps pad closer. A shadow falls across my eyelids.Please don’t step on me.
The Game Master crouches beside me. I can feel his presence like a cold weight pressing against my skin, making me need to run, but dead girls don’t run. His fingers press against my throat.
No.
He can’t check my pulse. Stanley Daniels never checked. That’s the only reason I got away with it.
His fingers probe my neck hard. My heart is pounding like an elephant is stomping on my chest, but maybe the cold and blood loss are masking it?
I remember that thing Griffin said:Entities will make a ninety-year-old woman they’re possessing punch through a brick wall. They don’t care if she breaks every bone in her hand.Entities go numb when possessing people. It’s why they escalate, because they need to do more while dead to feel the same things they did while alive.
Could the Game Master be too numb to feel my pulse?
He withdraws his hand. Goosebumps break over my skin as he does a breathy sort of moan.
What does that mean? Does that mean he bought it?
My lungs are screaming for air, but I keep still, letting only the tiniest sips of oxygen through my nose.
“Subject One is the winner,” the Game Master says, and something clatters on the ground. “I trust you know where to find the key.”
CHAPTER 50
In most trials, Morrow kept his word: the winner lived, the loser’s throat was slit. But when subjects defied his predictions, their resistance made him furious enough to kill them both.
—Case notes inside Alan Morrow’s file, written by Donald Dellman
Heavy footsteps retreat until I can’t hear them anymore. Why is the Game Master walking away?
Nico rolls me onto my back. He grips my jumpsuit, unzipping enough to expose my stomach. I want to hiss from the cold and ask what he’s doing—why is the Game Master walking away?—but then something warm drips onto me.
What?
Warm and weighty liquid runs across my abdomen in sticky trails, pooling in the hollow of my belly button.
Blood.
I listen to Nico’s labored breathing as the coppery stench of blood clogs my nose. There’s so much on me. I don’t even want to know where all that blood is coming from. There are too many places to choose from. Nico gently rolls me so I’m lying on my side, pointed toward the ground.
“Can you hear me?” he whispers into my ear.
I squeeze my eyes tighter.
“There’s a camera in here,” he mumbles.
There’s a camera inhere?
I catch up to what Nico is doing. If it took the Game Master twenty-three seconds to get down to our original room, it should take him at least that long to get back to his viewing room from here, since we ran a long way from our original room. Nico only has minutes at most to make it look like he carved a key out of me. He must’ve turned me onto my side so the camera can’t see me. I want to yank his beautiful brain out of his skull and give it a smooch.
