MasukSARAH'S POVI screamed.He dropped straight down, collapsing on my legs as I knelt over Garrett. Dead before he hit the floor. The gun clattered out of his hand and spun across the tile.I scrambled back, pushing his weight off me, my hands slipping in something wet and dark."Get up." A voice. Low, male, urgent. "All three of you, now."I looked up.A man stood over us in the strobing dark. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His face was badly scarred down the left side, with deep grooves that caught the light every time the bulb flashed on. He held a gun in each hand, and his eyes were moving constantly, scanning the room in every direction like a machine running a threat assessment.He was not looking at us like prey."Follow me, or you’ll die here.” Alvin looked at me. I looked at Garrett on the floor, his hand clamped over his leg, blood soaking through his fingers.Two shots cracked the air directly to our left. A figure screamed and went silent."Moving," Alvin said.He hauled
SARAH'S POV"The first game begins now."Controller's voice filled the hall like a bomb, making everyone in the room go rigid at once.He stood on the platform above us, mask fixed, hands clasped, completely unhurried. A large number of people staring up at him with the kind of silence that comes right before something terrible."The game is called Takeout," he mentioned. "The rules are simple. You have ten minutes to kill as many players as possible. For every player you eliminate, you receive five of their lives to carry into future rounds." He tilted his head slightly. "Protect yourself or don't….That is entirely up to you."Nobody moved."Guards."The doors above the platform opened. Crates dropped from the ceiling on thick cables and hit the floor with a sound like cannon fire, splitting open on impact. Guns, knives, batons, and rope spilled out across the black tile in every direction.Controller stepped back through the door behind him.The lights went out.One dim bulb remain
MICHAEL'S POV"Brother."The voice erupted behind me, it looked familiar and deep. I turned.Khalid Van Leer stood at the entrance of the cemetery path, tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a dark coat. He was older by six years and it showed in the lines around his eyes, but those eyes were the same as mine—sharp and calculating. He walked toward me with his arms open and before I could count A-Z, he’d already pulled me into a hug. And it wasn't the stiff, transactional kind our father trained us. I mean, a real one. Firm and held.I stood still for a second, not knowing what to do with it."Easy," Khalid said against my shoulder. "Easy, Michael. It is done."I let myself breathe.He pulled back and held my face in both hands the way a real family does when he is checking whether you are actually still standing or just pretending. His thumbs pressed lightly against my jaw."You look terrible," he muttered. "I just buried my fiancée.""You murdered your fiancée," he corrected, his
MICHAEL'S POV"Rest well, Elena."I raised the bottle in the direction of her headstone and took a long, slow sip. The brandy burned its way down and settled warm in my chest. The evening breeze moved through the cemetery and tugged at my black coat, and I let it. I'm now a mourning widower, a grief-stricken groom. I had the clothes for it, as well as the sunglasses, and I even had the posture for it, shoulders dropped just enough, head slightly bowed.Appearance matters, always. I thought about the divorce papers I had signed some time ago. I added a neat signature in black ink and slid it into an envelope, sending it directly to Sarah. I imagined her opening it and the look on her face when she understood that I was done with her, not because she escaped, not because she won, but because I chose to let her go.That was the part that would eat her alive.She would never know if she was free or just on a longer leash.I smiled at that and kept walking.Single, divorced, and mourni
SARAH’S POVI looked at Garrett. He straightened up slowly, his face destroyed but his eyes steady. He looked at me. Then, at Alvin, who turned around from the wall. Nobody said a word.Nobody needed to.Two guards came through the door carrying contracts and black folded jumpsuits. They set them down on the cots without making eye contact with any of us.I picked up the pen.My hand was shaking… I signed. Garrett signed. Alvin last. The guards collected our contracts and then collected everything else, including our phones. Every last thing that connected us to who we had been an hour ago.They handed us the jumpsuits. Black with no markings.I changed without speaking. Garrett changed without looking at anything. Alvin pulled the zip up on his jacket and stared at the door like he was deciding whether to walk through it or die against it.The door opened."Move," one of the guards said.We moved.The corridor outside was long and white and completely silent, and as they led us for
SARAH'S POV"Rise and shine, little rats."The voice struck me like a storm before my eyes even opened. I snapped awake.Only for me to find myself under a white ceiling and blinding fluorescent light. The smell of bleach soaked into the concrete. My body was on a cot bolted to a wall, and my wrists ached from where the zip ties had been. The drug still sat heavy in my blood, making the edges of the room swim.I turned my head.Garrett was on the cot to my left, already sitting up, eyes scanning the room with the fast, desperate focus of a man who knows he is in danger before he knows where it is coming from. Alvin was on my right, jaw locked, feet already on the floor.And standing at the open door was a man wearing a black, smooth mask, fitted tight against his face like a second skin. It covered everything, forehead to jaw, and the eyes behind it were pale and completely still. He was huge across the chest, dressed in black, and he stood with his hands clasped behind his back lik
PATRICIA MOORE’S POV"Subject shows promising response to the new dosage. Memory fragmentation increasing as predicted."I spoke into my recorder, watching Frieda's brain scan flicker across the monitor. Beautiful. The hippocampus was lighting up exactly where I needed it to. The drug was working it
FRIEDA’S POV"Do you see that?"Javier Hart stood at the window, his voice crawled from his lips tightly. I couldn't tell if it was as a result of shock or fear. I walked to the glass, my legs still weak from whatever they'd drugged me with. And from afar, miles away across the water, a massive fi
SERENA’S POV"Help! Somebody help me!"My voice ran through the concrete walls like a spark of electricity, swallowed by the withdrawal of power. It happened automatically, uninspired by footsteps, or voices. Just the horrible quiet of being completely alone.My head pounded like someone was intenti
FRIEDA’S POVMy head pounded as if someone were hammering nails into my skull. Everything hurt. "Where am I?" I tried to sit up, but the room spun violently. "What happened?""Oh, so now you're awake? Perfect timing!" Serena stood in the corner, arms crossed, glaring at me with pure hatred.I blink







