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The screams have stopped, but with a shock of frightening awareness, I now know why they exist. “No. Grayson, please. You can’t do this to me.”
“I’ve done nothing to you but reveal the truth. But I am forcing you to finally choose, to stop the lies, London. I can’t tell you how badly I want you to do just that.”
“I won’t play this game.” I throw the knife down, emphasizing my point.
“So you’re going to go back to your world and…what? Confess your misconduct? Lose your license and possibly even serve prison time?”
No. I refuse to suffer the way the filth beneath me does. I shake the thought away.
“I didn’t think so.” He picks up the knife and places it in my grasp once again. “So choose. After everything we’ve uncovered, everything you now know. Do you think you’re above taking a life?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s find out.”
He turns toward the darkness. “You have until morning to decide. Free yourself of the string, run the maze, and make your choice. You can either set our victim free through rehabilitation, or you can end his life.”
Oh, God.
“Begin.”
28
Trap
London
What does it mean to be liberated?
During my career as a professional psychologist, I’ve counseled many patients, each one mentally shackled in one way or another, chained and bound by limitations. Even the most disturbed personalities who believed themselves to be free were governed by a crippling psychosis.
Take away our matter, and we exist only in thought.
We are all thoughts born of character. Each new moment, each new direction we take and journey we venture is first given birth by thought. This thought here, this is my transformation.
I’m being christened by darkness.
I’ve stared into the reflection of myself and glimpsed the unvarnished truth. Undistorted by the image our mind creates. When faced with that candidness, you can either accept or fracture.
No one can survive the absolute destruction of one’s mind. We’re not tempered glass, we’re delicate shards, and I’m cracking.
Have I used my skills to warp the minds of six men? Have I been the murder weapon in their deaths? Or has Grayson shattered my mind?
Which reality is true?
My bare feet pound the earth as I race toward the edge of the woods. Grayson’s house stands tall and ominous against the night sky, its twinkling lights a refracted halo in the crisp air. I use the sparse light to guide me to the fence. I’m almost there.
Static erupts, crackling against the dark. “Touching the fence will end the game too soon, love. You don’t want to do that.”
I pant, my chest tight, as I stare up at the razor wire. I can hear the buzz of electricity humming along the woven metal fencing. Bastard. I look around, desperate for another escape.
“There’s only one way out,” Grayson’s disembodied voice says. “And that’s in.”
The mouth of the garden maze lays before me, surrounded by high walls of vegetation.
“This is madness,” I whisper to myself. “What if I refuse?” I shout. “What if I sit right here all night?”
The chirring of crickets is my only answer. “Shit.” I bury my head in my hands, taking searing breaths, bone-weary. The ache in my back feels as if I’ve cracked in two—the lower half of my body a web of pain.
