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Remington, Bianca, and six other students emerge in a square opening with only a single exit on the other side. In between the exit and my lass is a murky obstacle that looks like an oil slick. I can’t tell from here what it is, but from the way people are waving their hands in front of their noses, I gather it stinks.
“Professor Vaughn, what is that?”
I glance quickly behind myself to see who the fuck is talking. Seems I’ve completely forgotten the broken boy Bianca gave her free pass to. Terrible idea if you ask me because he already looks like he’s crawling onto his deathbed. Something awful must have happened to him in the scavenger hunt.
Professor Vaughn just shakes his head, lips pulled into a grimace. I can’t decide if he’s not answering because he’s being a fucking asshole and won’t tell us or if maybe he doesn’t know and refuses to make us aware that he’s been left in the dark. Suddenly, a bell tolls loudly, echoing around the arena so violently that my chest thrums with the vibration of it.
“We have our first winner!” Principal Windsor announces happily from the loudspeakers. “Each time the bell chimes indicates someone has defeated the maze, meaning we have one more victorious student. It also means there is one less place in the winner’s circle for those who remain in the maze. The Gallery is voting on which twelve they believe will survive. They’re also voting to reward those who defeat the maze with something…very special.”
Principal Windsor laughs maliciously before his voice cuts out. I don’t like the way he emphasized ‘very special’. It was sinister, as if the “special something” will be anything but. My eyes fixate on the screens, at Remi and Bianca’s linked hands as they stare at the liquid, trying to decide what to do. The bell tolls again and a sense of urgency tugs at me.
One boy steps forward and dips the toe of his shoe into the liquid. He must find the liquid safe because he bends his knees, then leaps into the air. Inch by inch, his body enters the muck and disappears, until all that remains of him is one hand grasping at the air as his body sinks. The remaining students scream, clutching their faces in shock as the muck releases bubbles where the boy sank—likely his last breath of air.
On another screen, two boys are climbing over a series of ropes dangling precariously over a pit filled with snapping crocodiles who look hungry for their next meal. In the second, a group of students stumbles around blindly, choking and gagging on a thick, smoky gas that has tears leaking from behind their closed eyes and snot running down their faces as they search for an exit.
Back in the section where a student just drowned in the stagnant, fetid liquid, a girl retreats, turning to run from the way she came. Just as she comes to an opening, a huge barricade with metal bars rises from the ground, blocking the exit and all of the others forcing the students to either defeat the obstacle or die trying.
There’s no way out.
“Use the damned map!” Ben calls pulling at his hair. He stands and paces up and down the row of empty seats, his eyes never leaving the screens.
“The map, Remi!” I roar, cupping my hands in a futile hope that my words will carry to her, though I doubt she can hear me above the screams and cries of the students around her.
The bell chimes for a third time and a weight sinks in my gut. Only nine more spots left and a horde of students still fighting for them.
Nine.
The odds of her claiming one are growing slimmer by the second.
Professor Vaughn doesn’t speak, but his agitation is evident as he pushes off from his seat. A drop of sweat rolls down his face, proving his anxiety about watching this—maybe he doesn’t have the amount of pull I previously thought. I shake that thought from my head, but refuse to feel bad for him.
That cocksucker chained me up, stripped me down, and lashed the tip of my dick with his whip. Not to mention, the smug asshole touched Remington’s body while she was strung up and helpless while forcingmylittle pain slut to come all over his fingers. And then he gloated about it! He tried to fucking claim her before we ever had a chance at Remi, but the tables have turned.
He can fucking drown in his worry for all I care.
I watch Remi pull Bianca into a corner before pulling the map from her shoe. She points excitedly and whispers something into Bianca’s ear, but she wasn’t discreet enough. A group of three boys notices the girls and approaches them. One of them, a tall but skinny guy with dreadlocks, pulls something from his waistband.
“No!” I shout as he whips behind Bianca and grabs a fistful of her hair with one hand and places a blade against her neck with the other.
Remington glares at him while shaking her head, the map trembling in her hand as she raises her arms up in submission. One of the boys, shorter with a horrible case of acne, grins and stands in front of her. He grips her chin, and my insides twist in anger. The beast within me claws to life the moment he touches what isn’t his.
Mine—Remington is mine.
Internally, I vow if the asshole is lucky enough to survive the maze, I’m going to kill him my fucking self for daring to lay a finger on my girl, but he doesn’t just touch her chin. As the first boy chicken wings Bianca’s arms behind her back, Zit Face seizes the knife. His lips move, but I can’t make out his words as he places the blade against Remington’s cheek and drags the metal down her neck to her chest, leaving a crimson trail in its wake.
“He’s fucking cutting her!” Ben growls as tears leak from Remi’s bright blue eyes.
The bastard doesn’t stop there, though, but continues to cut down the front of Remi’s body, slicing through the material of her shirt between her tits and revealing the swell of her breasts.
I feel like I might explode. A fury like I’ve never felt grows molten within me, every inch of my skin on fire, my eyes burning, teeth gnashing at the helplessness I feel watching the vile scene unfurl before me. This is what it feels like to be burned at the stake, but I gladly welcome the blaze—it’ll fuel my revenge.
For the fourth time, the bell rings and Zit Face’s eyes widen as if he suddenly remembers that his life is on the line. He snatches the map from Remi’s hand, still raised frozen in the air, and I watch as the fear on her face morphs into fury.
The minute the asshole turns his back on her to look at the map, Remi reacts, leaping vertically into the air and kicking the idiot in the back with a ninja move that surprises me as much as it turns me on. Both of her feet connect with his lower back with such velocity that the boy stumbles right into the muck. The knife flies from his hand, lost in the dark swamp.
The fucker doesn’t sink, though, somehow rolling onto his back and stretching his limbs wide so he almost floats along the top. Another student—a rather ambitious girl—uses this opportunity and runs forward, using Zit Face as a human bridge. Planting her foot square in the center of his chest, she leaps across but doesn’t quite make it. She slams down in an awkward belly flop just a foot from the edge of the other side.
That’s when something slithers across the stygian surface, and a scaled tail rises from the depths like a kraken’s tentacle searching for the next ship to sink. It winds itself around Zit Face as a scream launches from his lungs. The thick length of whatever haunts the murky depths of the pool coils tighter and tighter around the boy’s chest, crushing him to death.
