ログインCONTROLLER'S POV"Four hundred are still breathing."I muttered to myself, I was my own audience, just me, the screens and the numbers, the way it always was up here. I preferred it that way; people introduced variables while screens only showed the truth.I leaned back in my chair and looked at the wall of monitors in front of me. Twenty-four feeds covering every corridor, every game chamber, every inch of the main hall. Four hundred players moving through the building like cells through a bloodstream, forming clusters, breaking apart, reforming. It was beautiful to watch from this distance. I had been watching it for four years, and it never stopped being beautiful.My name before this room was Khalid. Khalid Van Leer. Son of Marcus Van Leer, brother of Michael Van Leer, I died at twelve years old, according to every document that mattered. My father had been thorough as always with the death certificate, the funeral records, the gravestone in the family plot that I had never visit
ALVIN'S POV"Find the mechanism."I uttered it silently because the room was filling and the sound of my own voice was the only thing keeping my head from going somewhere it could not afford to go right now.The water was already at my ankles, and it felt cold. That coldness that skips one's skin and goes straight to the bone underneath. The chamber was identical to the last one, with concrete walls, a single overhead light, and drain channels along the base that were already sealed. Different combinations this time with different ceiling mechanisms, but the same principle.I started on the left wall.My hands moved automatically while the rest of me went where it always went in these rooms. Somewhere quiet and honest that I did not allow myself access to outside of them.I thought about what I had said to Sarah at door nine.I had not planned to say it. I had been telling myself since the mansion that what I felt in that room was irrelevant and manageable and something I could carry
SARAH'S POV"Time."The single word came through the speakers while the doors unlocked simultaneously—a mechanical sound, clean and final, like a verdict being delivered.I pushed my door open and stepped into the corridor, dripping from head to foot.Game Two had been a flooding chamber with a combination lock built into the ceiling. You had to tread water long enough to reach it, hold your breath long enough to work the combination, and solve a sequence that changed every thirty seconds. After three failed attempts, the drain was permanently sealed. I got it on the second try, with water at my chin and my lungs screaming.I stood in the corridor and breathed.Alvin came out of his door two seconds after me. He was wet too, his black jumpsuit clinging, his jaw set in a way that said he had just survived a risky exercise and wasn't going to say anything about it. His eyes found me immediately and moved across my face in a quick, assessing sweep before he looked away.Not a long look,
DAVINA'S POVHe was there, standing at the door in his expensive jacket with his phone already in his hand and his mind already somewhere else entirely. I told him to be careful like a devoted woman who was terrified of losing him.The door clicked shut.I remember when I was lying in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling, and Michael was in the chair beside me, one ankle crossed over his knee, scrolling through his phone, and I looked at his face in profile, and I remembered everything.The mansion, the twins, and months of watching, waiting, and positioning myself carefully inside Michael's world, learning his rhythms, making myself indispensable in the small, invisible ways possible. I remembered being good at it. I remembered being proud of how good I was at it.I remembered the baby…. my baby. I was rushed to the hospital. Michael's hand was over mine, warm and firm, telling me to stay strong. I opened my eyes, softened my face. I let a small, confused sound come out of my throa
MICHAEL'S POV"Stay."Davina's voice was soft like dew. And before I knew it, her hand found my arm in the pale morning light filtering through the suite's curtains, not demanding or performing any drama. Simply warm, and I'd noticed this was the same way she had been every morning for the past three weeks without variation or agenda."I have calls," I responded."You always have calls.” She sat up, the sheet pooling around her. She looked at me with those clear, trusting eyes that had been looking at me the same way since she woke up in that hospital bed. She found a stranger holding her hand and decided he was someone she could trust. "Five minutes, I repeat, just five."I sat back down.The thing about Davina is that she never pushed, demanded, manipulated, or positioned herself for an angle.She existed in whatever space I gave her and made that space feel like something it had no business feeling like.Peace. That was the word that kept arriving uninvited. Three weeks of this wo
TOM'S POV"Find the mechanism, always find the mechanism."I said it out loud to no one because there was no one in the room with me, and because Vera used to say it every time we entered a new game chamber. Her voice in my memory was so clear it almost sounded as if she were standing behind me.She was not standing behind me, though; she was dead.I kept moving.The room was small, grey and already wet. Water pushed through the floor channels in thin, steady streams. The overhead light was dim and yellow… four walls and one door sealed behind me. No windows.I started on the left wall.The puzzle chambers in the Trial House were never random. That was something I learned during my first cycle, over three months of surviving rooms exactly like this one. Controller built each one with a specific logic and a specific solution, and the solution was always hidden in the details most people panicked about, and panic had killed more players in Game Two than the water ever did.I did not pan
GARRETT’S POV "Please! remember, he's your grandson.""He's Subject G-2. And he's the future of my research." She walked toward a surgical table in the corner. "More explicitly… he was, and now he's just data to be preserved."She was going to kill him, right in front of me. I struggled against the
GARRETT’S POV"Hello, my beautiful boy. My perfect Subject G."Patricia’s voice echoed through the underground lab. I pressed James closer to my chest, his small body shivering against mine.We were trapped. Enhanced soldiers blocked every exit. Patricia stood in the center of the room, smiling lik
FRIEDA’S POV“We’re approaching the coordinates now."Commander Hayes's voice passed through the helicopter headset. I pressed my face against the window, watching the landscape change from gray ocean to green countryside.My hands shook as I gripped Patricia's files. I'd been reading them for the e
FRIEDA’S POV I wiped my face roughly with my sleeve. No more crying, no more being the victim.I'd spent so long being controlled, being told what to do, being moved around like a chess piece. I'd forgotten what it felt like to make a real choice.But I have one now.I could cooperate with the auth







