Would Isla have lied? Probably.
“Good,” Adrienne said. “Then I have an idea for our next vote.”
“You do?” Valerie asked, frowning. That was news to her. They’d just come back from the last Sending. Any thoughts of the next one were still very much in limbo.
“Niko and Amy,” Adrienne said without looking at her.
Wait, what?
But Valerie didn’t get a chance to question Adrienne’s decision because Isla then glanced toward Sienna and for the first time since Isla entered this game, she looked more like herself. “Done.”
Chapter Sixteen
Adrienne was getting a little impatient. Actually, that was a lie. She felt like a woman forty weeks pregnant, swollen and exhausted, and begging her OB-GYN for an induction.
It had been three days since Adrienne and Valerie had spotted Isla and Sienna sneaking about with that secret advantage, and nothing had gone according to plan. At least not her plan.
Hallie had gone home at the last Sending because Isla had deemed it the smartest move for the collective. “Everyone loves a hero,” she’d said. “The sooner we get the firefighter out the better... blah blah blah.” Adrienne had no idea what else she had said because Adrienne had sulked off to the beach to exfoliate the betrayal from her skin.
What none of them had predicted was Stevie quitting the very next day because of an infected cut on the sole of her foot she’d picked up scrambling over rocks during a swim. Adrienne had caught a glimpse of the oozing, blister-like sore and nearly fainted.
But Stevie’s game didn’t affect her. She was a floater after all, someone the viewers would only remember for wearing chunky Doc Martens on a sweltering hot Greek island. Not like Niko’s did. Adrienne needed Niko gone, and she needed that advantage flushed out of the game. There was always the slim chance that Isla and Sienna would stab them in the back.
“Welcome, contestants!” Vivian’s voice boomed from the beach.
On any other day, Adrienne would’ve appreciated Vivian’s sand-colored Miu Miu gabardine shirt-jacket that she had paired perfectly with high-waisted poplin shorts and a pair of buttery tan leather loafers. But the moment Adrienne stepped onto the beach, a hideous gut-wrenching feeling twirled in her stomach.
Out past the shoreline, bopping gently in the surf were eight parallel wooden frames fitted with flat, low-slung timber grates, suspended by mechanical winches.
The Downward Press.
The infamous challenge that had completely dissolved Kingsley White—a fitness influencer who was nearly as famous as Kayla Itsines—into a sobbing mess. By the third drop, when the wooden slats had pressed flush against her nose, Kingsley had suffered a panic attack. Adrienne, who had watched the episode from her Upper East Side penthouse, could still vividly remember how the safety divers had dragged Kingsley’s thrashing body back onto the beach. She’d been so genuinely traumatized by that scene that she’d canceled her reservation at Carbone that night, unable to even think about swallowing the spicy rigatoni.
And now she was about to live it.
“I can’t believe they brought it back,” Niko muttered under her breath.
“Brought what back?” Tamera asked, looking confused.
“Didn’t you watch Season Six?” Amy asked her, frowning behind her glasses. “It’s literally the most talked about—”
Vivian cut her off. “I can see that most of you recognize the challenge,” she said, smiling. Then she gestured toward the open water. “For the first time since Season Six, we’re bringing back the Downward Press.” She paused long enough for goosebumps to cover every inch of Adrienne’s body. “The rules are simple. Each of you will swim out to a lane, slip under the flat timbergrates, and float on your backs. Every ten minutes, the grates will be lowered a few inches, moving closer to the water.”
Adrienne swallowed so hard her throat hurt. Two years ago, she’d gone snorkeling in Mauritius with a heavily congested nose and felt so claustrophobic it was like swimming in a coffin. She imagined this challenge would be a hundred times worse than that.
“Today you won’t just be competing against each other,” Vivian went on. “You’ll be fighting your own minds. This challenge is made to break you... but only if you let it.”
Adrienne didn’t want to be broken. The opposite, in fact. She wanted to be wrapped in a silk robe at the Aman Spa, with someone massaging her lavender-scented feet while an aesthetician applied a chilled hyaluronic eye mask to her face. It didn’t matter that just a few days ago she’d won the spa reward; Adrienne pampered herself thrice weekly. She wanted a crisp, ridiculously expensive glass of Sancerre handed to her on a silver platter. She wanted to teleport straight to the finish line and to the reward without being waterboarded. She wanted something in this game to come easily for once. Was that too much to ask for?
“And to make things even harder, you won’t be competing for a reward. Instead, the bottom two pairs will be at risk of going home tonight.”
No! That was the exact opposite of what Adrienne needed.
What? There were shocked gasps all around, with Adrienne’s being the loudest. All that pain for nothing? And worse than nothing... the chance of being sent home. If there was ever a moment when Adrienne regretted enteringOutlast Her, this would be it.
“Alright, everyone!” Vivian called. If she had even an ounce of sympathy for them, she didn’t show it. She just clapped her hands together and shouted, “Take your spots!”
Reluctantly, she waded toward the water. Adrienne had to literally convince her feet to move. Beside her, Valerie walked with her shoulders hunched to her ears. Was she as terrified as Adrienne was? Did the thought of water rushing over her face for an indefinite amount of time feel as scary as coming eye to eye with a shark?
