Page 142 of Stay Scared

The broadcast changes to my apartment. A dark figure moves through the kitchen doorway while I sit at my desk, unaware that someone else is inside. The timestamp matches one of the anonymous messages. A few viewers notice the angle could never have come from Owen’s street surveillance. Most keep shouting in the comments.

A siren enters the broadcast.

I assume Rook added it until Owen leans toward the audio meter. “That siren is live.”

The theater camera turns toward a broken window. Blue lights move across the road beyond Crimson Night.

Ash grabs the paper map from the desk. “The county road is less than five minutes from the perimeter.”

Cade looks toward the projection corridor. “If police breach, you take the first opening we can make.”

“I’m not leaving alone.”

Owen glances toward the old archive passage.

I catch it. “You can forget whatever hiding place you just calculated.”

“I was calculating whether I could put you somewhere Rook could not locate.”

“Same cage with better intentions.”

Owen looks back at the relay.

Ash reaches toward the server diagram. “We could destroy the storage source he is drawing from.”

“You really think the man who spent months installing backup systems forgot to duplicate his files?”

Ash leaves his hand above the paper for a second before lowering it.

The three of them are spread around me. Cade is closest to the door, already measuring the fastest route out. Owen has one hand buried inside the relay because circuitry is the only enemy in the room he can physically control. Ash stands over a map of a property that no longer obeys him. Rook knows what every one of them does when frightened. I am done letting him choose the next move for us.

“Everybody stop.”

Cade looks at me first. Owen leaves his hands inside the cabinet without moving them. Ash straightens.

“Every time he touches one of you, you give him the reaction he planned for.”

Nobody argues.

The sirens grow louder on the theater feed. Rook steps beneath the torn movie screen with Mark still tied behind him. “First responders have reached the outer road. They have been told an armed abduction is taking place inside Crimson Night.”

Cade angles toward the door again but stays put.

“They have also been told that the owners are dangerous and that Salem may be acting under coercion.”

The broadcast freezes on the faint marks the belt left around my wrists. Cade looks away.

Rook moves beside Mark. “By the time law enforcement crosses the perimeter, Final Girl Protocol will have reached its natural conclusion.”

The countdown changes to 01:00:00.

Cade swears.

Owen moves closer to the screen. “He shortened the countdown.”

“He wants the final sequence completed before police reach the property,” Ash says.

The public already believes Rook’s story. If I stay silent, he gets to finish writing me.