Fear Games

10. Who's Next?

CINDER

When Harlin collapsed to the floor, many audible gasps were heard throughout the room. None of us could have expected a move like this. This new villain—this killer—was after all of us. They wanted us all to die, just like Harlin had.

"Is he...?" Kael asked, hiding his face from the sight.

"Dead?" Emerald said. She looked over at Harlin and put her hand over her mouth as if to keep from vomiting. Then, after she composed herself, she said, "Yes, I'm pretty sure he's dead."

"How could this even happen?" I asked the whole group. Everyone was still sitting on the floor, not that we could exactly move with our legs all chained to the wall. "How could Harlin just fall over and die?"

"There could be electricity charged up in these chains," Emerald said as she looked down at her ankle that was chained up. "There's some lights flashing on here. It had to have been an electric current of some kind."

"This is fucking crazy," Freddy, Kael's friend, said from across the room. "Who is that bitch? We need to figure out how to get out of here before they come back with a gun to shoot us all!"

"They're not going to shoot us," German said softly.

"And how do you know that?" Freddy demanded. "Take a look around you! Look where we are! They're going to kill us."

"If they were going to kill us, they'd have done it by now," German said.

"German's right," Emerald said. "This is a game. The Fear Games. There's a way to survive this."

"And how's that?" I asked. "If you haven't noticed, we're all chained up to the walls. We can't exactly go anywhere or try to escape. So how do you expect that we survive this?"

Obviously no one had an answer to that, because everyone fell silent. I looked all around the room at every single one of my friends and acquaintances, seeing the fear written all over their faces. I was pretty damn terrified too, but I didn't want to let that show. Someone needed to be strong here. Emerald was doing a good job so far, but she couldn't be the only strong one.

I noticed that Emerald kept glancing at the gun on the ground. Finally I had the nerve to ask her why she kept doing that. When she answered me, she said, "Because maybe we don't have to shoot to kill."

"Huh?" I said. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Maybe I had it wrong," Emerald said softly. "Maybe I didn't really have to kill anyone. Maybe all I had to do was shoot. If I had, Harlin could still..." Her voice trailed off and she sighed. "Dammit, I really screwed up."

"But they said it was time for you to choose who dies," Kael said. "That seems pretty clear to me that they wanted you to shoot to kill."

"Maybe," Emerald said. "Or maybe if I shot at one of you in a non-lethal place, that could have bought us some time."

"Look, we don't have time to think of hypotheticals," I said. "There's nothing you could have done, Em. Right now we just need to focus on how we're getting out of here." I stared up at the corner of the room closest to me and noticed a security camera. When I looked in each corner of the rectangular room, I noticed more cameras. "We're definitely being watched right now."

"This is such bullshit," Freddy said, yanking on his chain. "I want out of here. I don't want to die!"

"No one else is going to die," Emerald said. "We're going to find a way to get through this."

"And how do you expect to do that?" Freddy asked. "Have you taken a second to notice that we are absolutely fucked? We're not getting out of here."