In the doorway, Nico has managed to push himself up onto his hands and knees, blood dripping from his mouth onto the floor.
The Game Master walks toward him.
“NICO!” I scream, thrashing against the ropes. “GET UP! GET UP AND RUN!”
He sways.
“You disappoint me,” the Game Master says, snatching up the loose pipe that I had dropped. “I expected more fight from someone with your reputation.”
Nico glares up at him, eyes burning with a fury that would probably incinerate a normal person on the spot. “Go to hell.”
The Game Master brings the pipe down on Nico’s side.
The crunch when it connects with Nico’s ribs sounds like someone snapping a chicken bone. I try to scream. Barely any sound escapes.
The Game Master doesn’t give Nico any time to recover. He slams the handle across Nico’s back. A terrifying sound rips from Nico’s throat. His arms give out, and he collapses.
I sob, pulling against the ropes, but it’s like I’m not even here.
“I can see your true nature under there.” The Game Master smashes the pipe into Nico’s shoulder. “Waiting for me to break it out.”
Nico tries to push himself up, gets maybe halfway before he crashes back to the tile.
“You know what the beautiful thing is?” The Game Master crouches next to Nico. “This can all stop. Right now. All you have to do is walk over there and do what you’ve wanted to do to her all along.”
Nico’s head lifts, his eyes finding mine through the blood streaming down his face.
The Game Master grinds the curved end of the pole into Nico’s ribs. Nico screams so loud that I do, too.
“You can end this right now.” The Game Master twists the pole deeper, and I can practically hear the bone fragments grinding together. “The girl would die fast.”
Nico’s eyes roll back in his head, and for a terrifying second, I think he’s going to pass out, but he manages to focus on me again. The Game Master drives his boot into Nico’s side. Nico folds under the blow. I fight against the ropes, crying through gritted teeth as my severed hand pinches in between loops of rope, but all it does is lift my feet off the ground. I try to wrench my arm free, but each movement is agony, and the rope has me trapped.
The fibers dig into my chest until I can’t tell if the burning is from lack of oxygen or the rope restricting my ribcage.
I’ve already lost too much to men like this. Spent too many years being the girl who survived while everyone else died. I don’t care what I have to do. Nico is not dying today.
The world goes into slow motion, like someone just cranked the frame rate down to half speed. I can see every drop of blood that falls from Nico’s mouth. Every labored rise and fall of his chest. The Game Master will keep beating him until there’snothing left but meat and broken bones, and I’m going to hang here and watch every second of it. Just like I watched my family die.
Unless we do my plan.
I know how to play dead. I’ve done it before.
I catch Nico’s eyes and pour everything I can’t say into that look. The Game Master raises the pole over Nico’s head, and I know, with the kind of bone-deep certainty that only comes from having watched people you love die, that Nico won’t survive a blow like that to the head.
Please, I mouth at him, my tears mixing with blood and spilling into my mouth.PLEASE.
I can see the moment when he understands. He shakes his head.
I nod again.
There’s so much pain in his eyes that I can barely stand to look at him, but underneath it, something else clicks into place. His jaw sets, muscles going rigid as he forces himself into whatever headspace he needs to be in to do this.
“You’re right.” The words come out of Nico’s mouth so quietly I almost don’t hear them.
The Game Master pauses. He looks genuinely surprised. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re right,” Nico grunts out. “I like her, but I’ll like her more once she’s dead.”
