Page 131 of Stay Scared

Cade sees the share number. His hand closes around the back of my chair.

Owen stares at the server-room thumbnail.

Ash stands bare-faced beneath the projection light, blood drying against his cheek while strangers watch the ruins of the thing he built.

Rook has taken every private fracture of the night and arranged it for an audience: Cade’s worst moment, Owen’s archive, Ash’s Voice, my apartment, my body.

The moments where I chose any of them have been cut away.

The moments where they stopped are missing.

He has left only the pieces that make captivity look complete.

The attraction was supposed to trap us inside its walls.

Rook has ripped those walls open, and thousands of strangers are looking in.

He leans toward the camera and scratches his beak, catching the projection light.

Then he begins speaking to everyone watching.

Chapter 17

The viewer count keeps climbing.

Rook’s version of us fills the emergency screens inside the projection booth. Cade stalks me through the carnival maze in his skull mask, painted teeth flashing beneath dead ride signs, but the sequence cuts before he stops for Evan. Another screen shows his hand closed around my wrist in the memory house.

My three taps are gone.

Public comments race past too quickly to follow, though words like KIDNAPPING and PLANNED MURDER surface long enough to stick.

Owen kneels beneath the monitor bank with the utility light clenched between his teeth, his hands disappearing into a nest of cables behind the emergency receiver. Ash stands over him without his mask. Dried blood marks one side of his face, and the cut near his temple has started bleeding again.

Owen removes the light from his mouth. “The uplink is independent. I can replace Rook’s outgoing feed, but the relay is unstable. If I force the wrong transmission while his purge remains tied to the property systems, it could register as an emergency call.”

Ash looks toward the projection window. “Can we reach Mark safely?”

“Not yet.” Owen reconnects two leads, and the signal meter jumps. “I need all three of you inside projection until I stabilize this. If Mark moves, somebody has to be on the theater route immediately. If Evan’s beacon changes, Cade goes back to him. Nobody leaves until I tell you this relay will hold.”

The theater below remains mostly hidden from our angle. The ruined movie screen blocks Mark’s chair while the framework of the old fire curtain cuts across the stage.

Owen opens another monitor, bringing Mark into view through the stage camera. He is still bound and upright, one hand continuing to work beneath the restraint while Rook remains somewhere beyond the frame. A second indicator shows Evan’s medical beacon active and steady.

“The relay is taking as long as it takes,” Owen says before going back to the cables.

No countdown accompanies this delay. We stay because charging into Rook’s route blind could kill the people we are trying to reach.

Cade keeps moving. He crosses behind me, checks the trapdoor, then circles to the projection entrance. His injured side has begun bleeding through the dressing again, but he barely glances at it before turning toward the trapdoor once more.

“Stop pacing.”

“I’m checking the room.”

“You checked it twenty seconds ago.”

“Twenty seconds is plenty of time for another fucking wall to open.”

He starts toward the projection entrance again.