ログインMICHAEL'S POV"No speaking, no sounds. Just hand signals only."The guard read the rule from the card and stepped back while the door to the game floor opened. Sarah and I walked in together.The floor was a grid—twenty rooms connected by corridors, each room with a locked door requiring a sequence to open. The sequences were visible on panels beside each door but required two people to activate simultaneously from different positions. Impossible alone, but designed entirely for pairs.The guard's voice came through the speaker above us: "Two hours…find the exit."Then silence.Sarah looked at me, and I looked at her.I moved toward the first door, she followed, and the game began.I had known who Sarah Henderson really was three years before the wedding.I thought about that while my hands worked the first panel sequence. I had commissioned Lucien's full dossier from a contact buried deep inside Interpol, a man who owed me a debt he had been servicing for eleven years in small, caref
SARAH'S POV"From this point forward, all games will be played in pairs."SARAH HENDERSON, paired with MICHAEL VAN LEER.We walked toward each other from opposite sides of the room. The hall parted around us slightly, and we stopped three feet apart.He looked at me... I looked at him.Neither of us spoke for a moment.At the same time, pairs were forming around us, some relieved, some visibly calculating what their pairing meant for their survival odds. We stood in the middle of all of it in our own separate silence."We should establish ground rules," he broke the already overwhelming silence."Survive," I cut in. "That is the only rule."He held my gaze, a lightning moved behind his eyes that I could not immediately categorize. I would not call it amusement or the usual satisfaction he usually wore when he felt he had an advantage. At this point, his emotion was more neutral and more serious than either of those things"Simple enough," he agreed.The game horn sounded before either
CLAUDIA'S POV"Let me explain how this works."I stood and walked around the desk slowly, taking my time, letting Sarah sit with the weight of what I had just asked her to do. You know something about fear I've learned so far? Fear needed space to develop properly. Rush it, and it becomes anger. Give it room, and it becomes compliance.I had learned that a long time ago.It's more like a mantra to me now. "You go back to the games," I continued. "You behave exactly as you have been behaving. You survive, you fight, you do everything that has made you remarkable to watch." I stopped in front of her chair. "And in between, you work on Michael.""Work on him?" Sarah repeated flatly. “You call killing Michael working on him? She continued with a smirk. "You are a beautiful woman who has already had this man completely obsessed with you for years." I crouched to her eye level. "I am not asking you to do anything you have not already done. I am simply asking you to do it with an outcome i
SARAH'S POV"It is nice to see you again, Sarah."I was in a chair with my wrists tied behind me and two guards standing on either side with weapons pointed at my head, and the room was small, clean and looked nothing like a game chamber. It looked like an office, with a desk, a screen, and bookshelves with huge books."Who are you?" I asked.The figure stood across the desk from me and reached up with both hands. The mask came off slowly. Then set down on the desk with a soft, deliberate sound.Claudia Hart looked at me with a measuring expression I had seen a thousand times across a thousand rooms in Michael's mansion, perfectly presented, without a hair displaced. The only thing wrong with her was the thin scar across her throat, faint but visible. I could not speak.She crossed the room and slapped me across the face.The crack of it in the small office was sharp and clean."You bitch!” she groaned, her voice dropping the composure for exactly one second before she rebuilt it. "Y
ALVIN'S POVI went to meet Tom and Michael at the dinner table. Tom looked up immediately. "What happened?""They took her. Controller and four guards came into the room and took her." I looked at Michael. "For the deadliest game… The one the hall voted her into."Michael set down his fork. He leaned back in his chair with ease, as if he'd been preparing to say something he'd been holding back, and now was the time he'd decided to release it. "Controller is my brother," he broke the silence. "Khalid Van Leer. He built this building... He runs the network, and when I found out he had brought Sarah here without telling me, I was furious." He paused. "And then I thought about it, I decided to come in myself, to play and to watch her suffer through this place in real time."The table went very quiet."You came here to watch her suffer?" Tom expressed it with anger written all over his face. "I had no intention of letting her die... There is a difference."I had his collar before the la
SARAH'S POV"Welcome to the deadliest game in the Trial House."The voice came from above me. I was standing on a narrow platform, maybe six feet wide, suspended over a cave that opened below like a mouth... The drop was at least forty feet. The water at the bottom was dark and moving, but not in the usual way water moves. Something was in it.I looked down and counted three, four, five shapes cutting through the surface, circling with the patient efficiency of things that did not need to hurry because nothing in the water was faster than them.Sharks in a tank below, and I was standing on a platform above them with a rope in front of me that looked like it belonged on a child's playground.Controller stood on a raised platform to my right, mask in place, guards flanking both sides."The rules are simple," Controller announced. "Cross the water using the rope… There will be obstacles during the crossing, including wind, projectiles, and distractions. Whatever you do, do not fall. My
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
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
MICHAEL'S POV"Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful."I leaned back in my leather chair, watching the chaos unfold across twelve different screens. Camera 7 showed the car crash in perfect high definition. Camera 9 captured Garrett's pathetic attempts to fight his brother. Camera 3 gave me a close up of







