Chapter 37: Codename: Blackheart Chapter Thirty-Seven

I’ve just finished putting on a clean lycra suit when I start to hear a strange, low hissing sound. I look around and notice some kind of gas being pumped into my room. I let out a deep sigh and scrub my hands down my covered face. Really? I mean, really? Well, I’m not about to pass out and give myself a concussion when I hit the floor, so I climb on the bed and lie down. If they want me unconscious then I’m doing so on a comfortable surface. I cough as I begin to breathe in the gas that leaves a terrible taste in my mouth like I just ate something that’s gone rancid. As I continue to cough, my head starts spinning, and my limbs begin to feel foreign to me. I close my eyes and let the drug do what it has to do and soon enough, I feel myself drifting off.

***

As my senses become alert, I feel a horrendous pounding in my skull and every muscle in my body is aching like I just got hit by a truck. You know, I can live with the symptoms of a hangover if I at least got to enjoy the perks of being drunk. So… waking up with a hangover when I never even got wasted is just offensive.

I can feel that I’m lying on something soft, and as I finally open my eyes, it takes me a minute to adjust to my new surroundings. I slowly sit up, looking down at the black sofa beneath me. I look around and now realise that I’m in a fully furnished house… okay, so this is different. I only now notice the other competitors here with me. Some standing, some sitting, some still very unconscious and one who looks like he’s trying to open the front door. There are no lights on; I’m going to assume someone has tried that already and found they don’t work.

I reach out and feel the wall behind the couch. It feels like normal plaster, but I bet if we broke through it we’d find something like concrete or steal on the other side. We were drugged so we wouldn’t know how we got here, in order to make it harder to figure out how to get out. The fact we’re all in here together makes me feel like I’ve just woken up inside a giant trap.

“Oh, good, the champion has finally woken up,” I hear Whiro’s sarcastic and grating voice sound out. So, he’s the one trying to open the door. Yeah, good luck with that.

“You expect an apology because my body metabolises noxious gases differently to you?” I say sardonically.

I lean back and put my feet on the coffee table, attempting to get comfortable despite the pounding in my skull. I decide to use this time to do a quick head count. There are eighteen of us in here. That means four people were either killed or scrubbed out yesterday for failing round one.

“Since you’re so good at all of this, how about you… I don’t know, help?” he says indignantly.

“And deprive you of the chance to show everyone how capable you are? I could never,” I say saccharinely.

“Fucking bitch,” he mutters. I quietly snigger.

As the rest of the competitors finally wake up, more people start wandering around looking for a way out, but I’m watching them all carefully. It’s very likely this room is full of traps designed to kill us, so I’m not going to be the first one to walk into them. Let them do it, and then I’ll know what to avoid. Whiro is still working on the door as I continue carefully examining every aspect of this room for anything out of the ordinary. While it looks like a normal living room, it has that showroom feel. Like I’m sitting in a display in a furniture shop.

“Competitors, welcome to Round Two, the escape challenge,” comes Hexton’s voice, echoing all over the house. “The objective is quite simple. Escape this cosy house we’ve placed you in. You have one hour to make it out. Those still left inside when the timer runs out will find this home become their tomb. Best of luck, and may the games begin!”

Suddenly, the TV on the wall displays a timer with red digital numbers which immediately start counting down from sixty minutes. Everyone is looking at one another as a sense of panic fills the air like a bad smell. Great, so it’s like an escape room, only no puzzles to solve.

“Maybe try breaking the door down,” says Kislota.

“I already tried that, the door is reinforced,” says Mortsafe dismissively.

I look out towards the foyer as Whiro continues to work on that stupid doorknob, and as I continue to examine that room, I notice the chandelier is unusually close to the entrance. No architect would put a chandelier directly over an entrance unless they did it for a reason. I lean forward, trying to examine the chandelier closer without leaving my seat. I notice something glinting in the light fixtures reflecting the small source of light coming through the window, which is odd because lightbulbs don’t cast a glint. I try to focus in this poorly lit room when it finally hits me; the chandelier doesn’t have any lightbulbs at all. Instead of lightbulbs, the fixtures have been replaced with knives. Very sharp-looking knives.

I sit back and do the calculation. If that were to fall, whoever was standing by the door would be turned into a kebab.

“You know, Whiro, I probably wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say casually.

“As if I’m stupid enough to listen to you,” he scoffs just as he gives the doorknob a heave, causing it to pull right out from the door. But the knob is attached to some kind of chord. “What the fuck?” Whiro says in confusion as the sound of spring mechanisms can be heard going off at the same time the chandelier drops. Whiro narrowly dives out of the way but lets out a cry of pain as one of the knives impales him right through the calf while the other knives become embedded in the floorboards.

“You sure showed me,” I say sarcastically while I smirk behind my mask. Dumbass.

“Get this fucking thing off me!” he screams.

To my surprise, two competitors come over and help rip up the chandelier, and I sigh in satisfaction as I listen to Whiro scream once again when the knife is ripped from his calf. He should have found a way to leave that in. Now he runs the risk of dying from blood loss, or he’ll just pass out and leave himself defenceless and someone will use that opportunity to get him out of the way. Either way, he’s made several dumb decisions and I’m just sitting here enjoying every single one of them.

As Whiro tends to his wound, the sound of thunder and rain begins, and we can see flashes of lightning out the window. There’s no way they’d put us in an actual house. It has to be artificial. I get up and walk over to examine the window, thinking maybe it’s made of the same polymer as the windows in our suites. Just as I place my hands along the ridge of the window where you’d turn the lock to slide it up, I feel something sharp slice across my palms sending stinging pain radiating through my palms.

I jump back and bite my lips together to stop myself from crying out. I focus on taking slow, deep breaths as I look down and see tears in the fabric covering my hands and blood pouring from long gashes in my palms. Fuck, those are deep! I try to make a fist, but it’s proving to be a struggle. Just fucking great. I look back at the window and can now see on either side of the lock are two, very sharp razor blades stained in my blood. Rookie fucking mistake, I should have examined the window with more caution.

Aside from finding another trap, I did learn the windows are made out of something similar to a two-way mirror or tinted windows. I can just make out my reflection in the glass, but I can’t see through it, yet I can see the light of this supposed lightning flashing inside.

Iolaire walks up to me, “Find anything?” she quietly asks.

“Razor blades,” I deadpan.

I focus on pushing away thoughts of pain as I tear some of the fabric from the curtains around the window and use them to make bandages. I bite back the pain as I tie the fabric tight around each palm to slow down the bleeding. My hands are throbbing and stinging like fuck, but I try not to think about it. Mind over matter. Pay it no mind because it doesn’t matter. If I need my hands for anything, they’ve now just become my weakness, and I can’t afford weaknesses right now.

“You’re hurt,” Iolaire points out, her usual joyful demeanour now apathetic.

“I’ll live,” I say curtly.

“You should be more careful,” she says in a robotic voice.

I look around and lower my voice to a whisper, “And you need to snap the fuck out of it. You did what you had to do, now get your shit together or you’re dead,” I snap.

“Maybe I want to be dead,” she says with no emotion in her voice whatsoever. I don’t even see life in her eyes. She’s basically a walking corpse already.

“You want to be dead, then fine, but don’t drag me down with you,” I say unperturbed as I push past her. In theory, we could get out of here faster if we worked together, only that would be too helpful and convenient. The Tournament wants us at each other’s throats. It’s more entertaining that way. Last time I saw competitors working together, I watched each of them drown to death. So yeah, happy to work on my own.

“Oh my god, there’s a phone!” exclaims Selbstmord in her thick German accent.

“You think they’d put us in here with a functioning landline? Who are you going to call?” says Mamba in annoyance.

“Ghostbusters,” I joke as a few competitors snigger.

“At least I’m trying something, I don’t see you doing anything,” Selbstmord snaps indignantly. She places the phone receiver to her ear and instantly something spurts through the mouthpiece directly into her face. She drops the phone and begins to cough, “That’s disgusting,” she says between coughs, but quickly the coughing starts getting worse. Within seconds she’s dropping to her knees and clawing at her head-covering and as she manages to get it off, we all step back in unison when we see the blood gushing from her nose and the foam building in her mouth. Another noxious gas. Oh, who could have possibly foreseen that? Besides anyone with a functioning brain.

Her body collapses on the ground and begins to seize uncontrollably as we all make a quick exit from the room, leaving her to die. As everyone rushes from the living room to the dining room, I move a little slower than the others, purposefully making sure I’m the last to leave the room. I close the sliding double doors behind me hoping whatever Selbstmord got a dose of doesn’t spread to the rest of us. The others, however, are in such a rush to flee they run right through the foyer and straight into the dining room, not stopping to assess the room before they rush in.

I lean against the double doors and my head snaps up when I hear the sound of something cutting through the air at high speed. Three of the competitors are now standing still as statues in the dining room, but there’s something very unnatural about the way they’re posed.

“Are you going to move or just fucking stand there?” Whiro snaps in exasperation as he limps over, shoving one of them.

The moment he shoves the competitor, we watch in horror as his body collapses into several pieces, as do the competitors beside him. Their body pieces hit the floor like dominos, their bowels and other internal organs spilling out onto the hardwood floor followed by a gush of blood as it drains from their bodies. A couple people scream in horror while another throws up into their mask.  This is exactly why I make sure I’m not the first to walk into a room.