Page 70 of Middlegame

“Because I’m not the one who decided this had to happen, but I’m the one who gets to decide how it happens,” says Erin. “I’m very good at what I do. I can make this as easy or as hard as you want it to be. I can chase you through this building all night long, I can give you your own personal horror movie, and I can cut you down with your hand on the doorknob and freedom only inches away. I can take you apart one centimeter at a time. Or I can pierce your heart so fast and so clean that you barely feel it when you stop. It’s your choice. If you tell me what I need to know, then you’re choosing wisely.”

Smita’s phone is only a few feet away, on top of the binder that holds most of her research. Her eyes dart toward it despite her efforts to remain outwardly calm.

Erin follows Smita’s gaze and shakes her head. “You still don’t get it,” she says. “I guess that’s okay. It’s not like I’m saying things plainly. That’s how you know I don’t want to do this. I can order a hamburger in eight seconds, but it takes me an hour to decide I’m going to make mashed cauliflower. If you want your phone, you can have it.”

Smita looks at her suspiciously. Erin nods.

“Please,” she says. “I can tell you don’t understand the situation. This will help. Get your phone.”

It’s like something has snapped, some dark compulsion that was forbidding her to move or defend herself. Smita lunges for the plastic rectangle of her phone, feeling relief wash through her as she snatches it off the counter. This is safety. This is rescue. This is—

This is the sudden, crushing realization that she has no service. But that can’t be right. She always has service in the lab; has joked with the chemistry majors, who work two floors down, that they should have gone into genetics to be closer to the cell tower. This is where other students come when they want to make a phone call. And still she has no service; still the little bars that should be gleaming solid and strong are hollow lines, forbidding her contact with the outside world.

“The Hand of Glory has a lot of different uses. Funny thing: which one you’ll get is determined by how the Hand was made, and what order you light the candles. Some people use them for invisibility, or to open all barriers before them. Others use them to lock the doors. You could smash the window and scream so loud you hurt yourself, and no one would hear you. You’re a ghost, Smita. As far as the world outside this room is concerned, you may as well already be dead.” Erin moves her hand, and there’s a knife, long and sharp and matte black, the kind of blade that has no purpose in this world past killing.

Smita looks at the knife and cannot breathe. The air stops in her throat; her lungs are cold weights in her chest. This is her end, right in front of her, swallowing the light.

“This is where you start deciding how you’ll die,” says Erin. “Where’s the research?”

There’s still a chance. Erin—who was supposed to be her friend, not the instrument of her destruction—has a knife, but this is Smita’s lab, and it’s Smita’s life on the line. The phone may be dead, but she is not. Not yet. So she flings her phone at Erin as hard as she can, not looking to see if it hits its mark before she turns on her heel and sprints for the door, running as fast as terror and adrenaline will carry her.

The phone bounces harmlessly off Erin’s shoulder, falling to the floor. She sighs as she watches Smita go.

“I hoped this would be easier,” she says. Knife still in her dominant hand, she picks up the Hand of Glory and pursues.

Smita has never been much for horror movies. They’ve always seemed like a waste of both time and fear: in the end, the monster will be defeated, the survivors will walk into the sunrise, and the only catharsis will be the knowledge of the inevitable sequel. Here and now, she finds herself wishing she’d paid more attention to that endless stream of virginal heroines and rubber monsters. Horror movies are not a substitute for experience, but at least they might have told her where she could be safe.

The elevator at the end of the hall is a tempting trap. Once inside, she’d have no chance of getting away: all Erin would need to do is descend to the next floor and wait. The stairs are safer; the stairs will let her see what’s coming. So she hits the door to the stairwell without slowing, slamming it open and stumbling on the first step. She almost falls before catching herself on the rail and beginning to descend, as fast as she can, down into the building.

It’s late enough that the floor below her should be empty, but the chemistry students are always here: the chemistry students would live in the Annex if they could. They have a shower in their lab, which almost makes up for the lack of cellphone service, and they’re experts when it comes to cooking hot food in sterile glassware without poisoning themselves. (They keep a separate set of beakers and dishes for culinary purposes, and regularly upset visitors by eating out of them.) She should be able to find at least one person there who can help her.

As she runs, she hears footsteps behind her. They aren’t hurried; they don’t need to be.

The stairwell door is always unlocked this late at night. She bursts out into a hall identical to the one she just left, still running. There’s a lab door ahead of her. It’s open, and she can hear voices coming from inside. Smita finds speed where she would have sworn none existed, racing down the hall and grabbing the doorframe of the lab, hanging there, shuddering and panting, taking a moment to catch her breath and remember how to form words.

There are three chemistry students inside. Two of them are seated, eating pizza out of the box; the third is making margaritas in one of the lab blenders. None of them turns to look at her.

Smita pulls in a vast, sucking breath, and wheezes, “Please help me.”

Not one of them stops what they are doing to turn around. The pizza-eaters keep eating, one laughing as the other draws a line of melted cheese from her lip all the way to the box. The margarita-maker continues to mix, calling something unintelligible to the others.

“Please!” Smita’s voice is a shout this time; it echoes in the confines of the lab, inescapable, impossible to overlook.

And not one of them turns around.

A hand lands on her shoulder, squeezing until she feels her clavicle bend under the pressure. Like the chemistry students she still watches with helpless, hopeless eyes, Smita does not turn around.

Erin’s lips brush her ear as she says, in a conversational tone, “I warned you. I told you that you were already a ghost. You could have stayed upstairs, and never realized how much I meant that. Now you get to make a choice.”

“Please let me go,” Smita whispers.

“It’s too late for that. It’s far, far too late for that. But if I kill you here, they’ll see the blood. I can’t sterilize their whole lab while they’re in it, not even with the Hand of Glory protecting me. If I kill you here, I have to kill them too. Do you want that?”

Yes, thinks Smita fiercely, looking at the chemistry majors as they laugh, flicking pizza toppings at each other, unaware that the laws of science are being violated only feet away. What’s happening is impossible. But she feels Erin’s fingers grinding on her shoulder, and she knows no amount of denial will change the reality of her situation. She’s going to die here. All that’s left to her is to remember how to die with dignity.

Dignity means not condemning three innocent bystanders simply because she can’t stand the idea that they will continue after she has stopped. “Please don’t hurt them,” she says.

“Good girl,” says Erin. “Let’s go back to your lab. We can take the elevator this time. You must be tired.”