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I know.

“He was...” I look back again. “Tall.”

She waits. “That’s it?”

“Tall is a personality trait.”

“No, it’s not.”

“For men, sometimes.”

She grabs my arm. “Come on. We have like twenty minutes left.”

We take off again. This time together.

We get chased twice. Hide behind a fake cemetery. Nearly run straight into a scarecrow actor who scares the absolute shit out of both of us.

At some point, Mariah loses a shoe and nearly takes out three people trying to find it. Then she loses me, finds me again, and somewhere in all the chaos, the strange masked man slips completely from my mind.

Until the lights change. The red glow bleeding through the corn vanishes without warning, plunging the maze into darkness. Not complete darkness. Moonlight still spills between the stalks, just enough to make out the paths and shapes moving through them. But every theatrical light shuts off at once.

A second later, the music dies with them and the speakers go silent.

For one suspended beat, the entire maze seems to hold its breath. Then hundreds of people erupt around us, laughing and screaming as whistles cut through the dark.

Someone farther ahead shouts, “FINAL FIVE!”

Mariah grabs my hand.

“What happens now?”

“No fucking clue.”

Then the drums begin.

One.

Two.

Three.

Silence.

My smile falters. Something about the sound… I don’t know. It settles strangely in my chest.

One.

Two.

Three.

Silence.

The maze erupts around us as everyone takes off running again, the last few minutes of the Hunt sending a fresh surge of adrenaline through the crowd. Reapers tear through the rows with new urgency, chasing runners into the corn as the steady beat of the drums follow us through the dark.

One.

Two.