Fear Games

8. Trapped, Trouble, Terror

EMERALD

My eyes fluttered open and I yawned, half-expecting to wake up in my bed. Everything that had happened before was just a dream. As I took a look around me, I realized that I was not in my bed, and instead, I was lying on a cold, hard metal floor with my back against a wall. When I looked across the room, my heart stopped for a moment.

Shit.

Cinder was lying on the floor, completely sprawled out. Next to her was her brother Kael, who was also still unconscious. Both of them had one of their legs chained to the hall behind them, and it wasn't until that moment that I looked down and noticed that I was chained as well. Next to Kael was his girlfriend, Arya. Next to Cinder was Colton. A million thoughts started racing through my mind. Why did this happen? Who would do something like this? What did this mean? Why would someone kidnap us? But wasn't it obvious? Someone wanted to restart the Fear Games, and the were doing a good job of making sure I was scared.

Next to me on my right was Kael's friend Harlin. On the left was Freddy. On the other side of Freddy was German. Everyone was still knocked out except for me.

That wasn't going to last long.

"Guys!" I said loudly, trying to get someone else awake so that I wasn't the only one experiencing this horror. We were all too far apart from each other to reach one another, so I couldn't shake Freddy or Harlin awake. All I could use was my voice. I decided to try yelling across the room for my best friend. "Cinder! Cinder, please wake up!"

"Could you please stop yelling?" The voice wasn't coming from Cinder. It was from Harlin, right next to me. I looked over to see he was rubbing his head as he said, "God, I have a headache. What the hell's going on here?" He took one look around the room and asked, "Where are we?"

"I have no idea," I said. "We need to wake everyone up."

"Why? So they can experience this hell, too?" Harlin said. "I don't know if waking them up is the best idea. We're just going to make everyone panic."

"Because we have reason to panic!" I exclaimed. "We've been kidnapped. Whoever did this wants to hurt us. I just know it. The Fear Games aren't starting soon. They're already here. Do you understand that?"

The sheer terror on Harlin's face told me he hadn't thought of that until I made the comment. "So we're going to die?"

"Not if we can help it," I said. "That's why we need to wake everyone up!" I said the last bit loudly in hopes of getting everyone's attention. Everyone seemed to be knocked out a lot harder than Harlin and me.

"What even happened?" Harlin asked. "Last I remember, we were having our meeting. Then this van came..."

"They threw some bombs at us," I said. "All I remember is that the bombs exploded and this black smoke rose up and knocked us all out."

"Ugh," a voice said from across the room. It was Colton, who was finally coming to. He looked around the room, then his eyes fell on me and he said, "What the hell's this?"

"The Fear Games," I said. "They've started. We've been taken by someone. Someone who clearly wants to hurt us. Harlin and I have been talking about it."

"Are you serious?" Colton asked. He pulled at the chain on his leg and sighed. "There's no way out of here is there?"

"Doesn't look like it," Harlin said. "And look. These chains are electronic. Even if we broke out of them, it'd likely alert whoever took us that we broke out of them."

He was right. As I looked at the bracelet around my ankle, I saw several blinking buttons, and I didn't understand what any of them were for. Part of me probably didn't want to know.