Page 73 of Stay Scared

The hallway outside the abandoned theater appears under weak work lights. Performers in red coats move through the lobby in orderly lines. Some carry equipment cases. Others help people who look dazed but upright. They are not running. Nobody is fighting.

It looks like an evacuation. An evacuation Ash never ordered.

No timestamp appears.

Owen steps closer to the screen. “That feed could be another loop.”

The beaked mask turns toward him across every monitor.

“You should know better than anyone.”

Owen’s hand stops halfway to the console. The mask faces him directly.

“You taught the house how to watch. I only taught it what to do with what it saw.”

Another feed opens, and the abandoned theater fills the central monitor.

Rows of damaged seats face a stage beneath torn curtains. An old movie screen hangs behind it, split by a vertical tear. Someone sits in the center aisle.

My stomach drops before the camera moves close enough to show his face.

Mark.

His wrists are bound to the arms of a metal chair. Black fabric covers his mouth, and one side of his face is bruised. He is awake, and his eyes find the camera.

“Mark, can you hear us?”

He jerks against the restraints, and the chair legs scrape across the floor.

Cade moves toward the door, but Ash catches the front of his vest.

“Stay here.”

“He’s got Mark.”

“He wants us separated.”

“Then come with me.”

“We do not know whether the route he showed us is real.”

Cade removes Ash’s hand from his vest while Owen opens the theater map. Every corridor leading there glows green.

Too green. Too convenient.

“Every route to the theater turned green at the same time,” Owen says. “That is bait.”

“Mark’s still sitting at the end of it.”

“The feed may not be live.”

Cade turns toward him. “Don’t say that while she can fucking see him.”

His hand closes around my upper arm.

Three men react to the same problem three different ways. Cade wants to move. Owen wants to verify. Ash wants control before either of them does something Rook expects.

Then all three begin doing exactly that anyway.