Chương 50: Book Two - PROLOGUE: A MOMENT OF SILENCE, PLEASE

Anti-piracy note: If you are reading this on any platform other than Royal Road or Amazon, this has been pirated/STOLEN. If the author who wrote it has any name other than ShawnD or ShawnDePasquale, it is STOLEN. Please report this book if you are reading it ANYWHERE other than Royal Road. I appreciate your help fighting piracy. PROLOGUE: A Moment of Silence, Please The man who had taken to calling himself 'The King' looked over his blueprints one last time, confident in his plans.

He turned to the burgundy-skinned imp in the freshly ironed button-down beside him.

"Well?" He was still uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice, but proud of himself for committing to the pronoun change. There would be no slip-ups once Zone Two began.

"Well, what?" The imp responded, his voice still his scariest feature. It wasn't the lack of emotion that unsettled the King, for he himself occasionally forgot to emote properly when communicating with others. No, what the King feared about the demon's voice was the physical reaction it elicited from him. An otherworldly undercurrent of noise accompanied each word. It made the King's head throb.

"Any final notes? Changes? Is this what he wants?" The demon's jaundiced eyes flicked toward the high ceiling.

"You're asking the wrong question, Iris."

"The King," he corrected.

"Oh, right. I keep forgetting you're going full Method." The King ignored the dig, growing frustrated with the circular shape of the conversation.

"If I'm wrong, what's the right question, Vexikor?"

"The correct question is: how much Fear will it harvest?" Vexikor tapped the blueprints, his extra-long finger tracing the outline of the first room.

"Are you sure that's how you want to begin? You know this Zone isn't only about her, right?"

"I've got other rooms for the Rejects and Recycled," the King said more defensively than he wanted to sound. He understood Nora wasn't the only target of the Harvest in this Zone, but Maltheris had chosen to keep him… entangled with Nora's Run. That had to mean something, right?

"The Boss put you in charge for a reason," the short creature reassured him.

"And he does not explain his designs to Emissaries like me." Vexikor stepped off the red wooden stool he needed to see over the edge of the drafting table. At floor level, he had to look three feet up at the King, but Vexikor's voice scratched through the air like faulty brakes in the rain. Despite their size difference, the King still felt at a disadvantage and ultimately feared the imp... for now. One day, he would be strong enough to fear nothing.

"You're overthinking," the demon said.

"The opportunity you got here—putting an Adversary in charge of designing a zone—is rare. Only one other time that I know of."

"What happened then?"

"Maltheris was displeased with the yield, and the Adversary in charge was boiled alive, stripped of his flesh, and consumed in a grand feast." Vexikor thought for a moment, then chuckled to himself.

"And then the Demon Lords used his ribs to clean their teeth." The King had more questions, but Vexikor's short temper and especially low tolerance for anything outside the bounds of the rules of The Grindhouse gave him pause. Even when the King focused only on the game, his handler only wanted to discuss the King's "Purpose" within it. To the King, "purpose" was just a grandiose name for game objectives. There was nothing grand about The Grindhouse; it was a place of pain, desperation, and grief.

Exactly where I belong, he thought. Playing the bouncy blonde cheerleader had been especially suffocating due to the inherent cruelty of that body's physical appearance. The King now understood that Maltheris had designed the whole Summer character explicitly to hurt her— Iris —him.

"For what it's worth, I'm happy you got a second chance at killing the Final Girl," Vexikor said.

"Second? Your crappy lake monsters failed to kill her. Not me."

"Lake Mothers," the imp corrected.

"And I won't have you badmouth them. Meredith and Cathy are delightfully charming ladies." The King's chiseled jaw clenched tight. Killing Nora had never been his objective. He didn't like that a part of him wished it had been.

"Even the Boss noticed." Vexikor paused, letting the weight of that settle.

"What?"

"The part where you choked."

"Killing her wasn't one of my objectives."

"You had a clean shot and hesitated." The imp's voice bounced off the corrugated metal walls of the warehouse. The King checked his fingernails for dirt. The truth was that Summer had hesitated in killing Nora on that dark shore. She had looked into the eyes of the Final Girl and seen no terror, no begging for her life, no satisfying internal collapse. Nora regarded Summer the way you'd look at a puzzle you needed to solve. That bothered the King more than he wanted to admit.

"Your overall execution was more than adequate," Vexikor said, producing his notebook from the back pocket of his black, tuxedo-style dress pants. Combined with the black vest he always wore, the King thought he looked more like a guy dressed for a board meeting than a demonic entity running a sadistic torture game.

"Starting an affair with the brother of the dead girl just to turn him into your personal attack dog was an impressively efficient strategy. I'd imagine the creativity you showed in Zone One bought you this opportunity." The King didn't reply. He didn't need validation from his demonic captors. The only thing he did need from them he would take when the time was right. That said, the imp wasn't wrong about the results of Zone One. Manipulating Sameer hadn't been hard, not once she found his trigger.

It only took the lightest pressure to tip the scales in his brain from grieving his dead sister to killing for revenge. The sister was the skeleton key that unlocked Sameer, getting him to do anything she wanted. Well, that and fucking his brains out. Pathetic boy, the King thought.

"The boyfriend's death was another standout moment," Vexikor continued, flipping a page.

"Shooting his face off generated a substantial fear spike from the rest. Nobody saw that coming. Us included." The King's lip twitched upward. Almost a smile. Vexikor checked his notes.

"The monologue was an especially nice touch. For what it's worth, humiliation immediately before execution consistently outperforms most other Fear triggers. You got lucky, or you're better at this than you let on." The King swallowed the praise, and a warm dark pride bloomed in his gut. Far below it, a distant fragment of the woman he used to be shrieked in horror at her actions, desperate to escape this new meat suit. What Vexikor said was true, though.

Every venomous word Summer spewed on that shore was plagiarized from another life, before the Grindhouse. The jabs about Evan's drinking, pathetic fumbling, and his tiny dick were lifted from arguments the King had rehearsed in her— in his— head about a different man in a dead world. Evan was a convenient stand-in, close enough to absorb a bullet meant for someone else. Watching the kid's face disappear in a cloud of red triggered a near-orgasmic rush of dopamine, a biological high masqueraded as catharsis.

The problem was that the feeling only lasted three seconds before the endless, pre-apocalypse emptiness rushed back in. It always did. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"My point is that you're way more capable than you give yourself credit for," the demon said, pivoting back to the topic at hand.

"The designs are in place. The Harvest is all that matters. Run the maze. Break the girl, but don't make it personal."

'Don't make it personal' as if there were any other way to make it. Eight hours of work had gone into this basement, every trap and choice built with Nora Price's name behind it, and if that wasn't personal, nothing in this godforsaken place was. He knew exactly what he was chasing, going after her, and he'd chase it right up until the moment it slipped away again. Just like with Hope. The name bubbled up like sludge; with it came the nauseating memory of the cheerleader's body.

Her face and blonde hair had been a targeted attack, mirroring a woman Iris spent years hating. The King ruthlessly crushed the thought. To ground himself, he opened the Vitals app on his LifeLine device, grateful for something else to look at. HEALTH: 100% FEAR: 15% LUCIDITY: 85% STAMINA: 15/15 FOCUS: 15 RESOLVE: 20 A fifteen percent Fear rating in a completely safe room was unacceptable. The threat wasn't the Final girl or danger of failure.

The system was tracking his internal reaction to the memories, registering the spiral over Hope as a numerical weakness. But the other data brought him some comfort. His resolve, stamina, and focus had all jumped five points at the end of Zone One. And he quickly understood the system's Resolve stat was currently acting as a chemical wall, actively making it easier for him to block out Hope and stop thinking of himself as Iris. He saw no point in noting that to Vexikor.

Setting the LifeLine on the table, the King checked his reflection in a dented steel panel. He wasn't bad-looking, but the shaved head was ugly, and it made him look mean, which he supposed was the point. He liked the heavy jaw and dangerous eyes, though. It was a face that made people cross the street. Before the Grindhouse, a middle-aged woman had never wielded that much power over a stranger. The gray Carhartt work shirt stretched across his broad chest.

Over that, a dark leather apron hung from his neck and tied at the waist, covering him from chest to shin. Loops sewn along the right side held tools: a steel hook and a rusted bone saw. He flexed his thick, unfamiliar arms, watching dense tissue bunch immediately beneath the skin, his biceps swelling as deep, carved grooves appeared along his forearms. This body actually helps me feel stronger, Iris thought, her voice laced with disgust but sounding faint in his head.

It was sick to enjoy the violation; finding comfort in a cage Maltheris had built for her felt like the ultimate betrayal, but the truth was she loved power more than she hated the demon. The King looked down at the white scuff marks on his steel-toed boots. They had clearly been worn by someone else, but it was best not to think about who that poor person might have been. Probably just another Damned like me.

He pushed the thought away, taking in the drafting table where Vexikor had left the severed boar's head beside the blueprints. The King picked it up with both hands. It was a real, rotting skull, complete with tusks, that reeked as foul as one would imagine. A dark cloth lined the interior to make it wearable, with a metallic voice modulator wired into the jaw.

The King hated the absurdity of it, but more so, he despised the humiliating, try-hard aesthetic Maltheris thrust upon him, even if he understood the purpose behind the theatricality. He set the pig head aside, grabbed his LifeLine, and opened the Skills app. The King quickly scrolled past his unlocked abilities from Zone One: Puppeteer (to manipulate NPCs), In-Between Survivalist II (a Pain Tolerance buff), and Cold Read (the ability to assess a target's Fear, Lucidity, and loyalty status).

All fine tools, but the slasher setting was over. He was far more interested in the new skills the system had added for the labyrinth. PANDEMONIUM PRODUCER (Passive) Effect: Bonus to environmental conditions, including traps, ritual sacrifices, and spatial arrangements that trigger escalating Fear in targets." You set the stage for a massacre. A promising start." A twinge of regret jabbed the pit of his stomach at having missed the mayhem left in Summer's wake.

Underneath the regret sat something far worse: sickness. Not the physical kind; his constitution for violence was as rock-solid as his abs. This was an Iris problem, the sick, sinking guilt of a woman still clinging to some scrap of humanity she wasn't sure she deserved anymore. Sick for killing Hope, before any of this even started. Sicker for what she'd done to Evan, even knowing he wasn't really "Evan" at all. Sickest of all for the ritual she'd started and the pile of dead kids it left behind.

The only reason it hadn't paralyzed her was the armor they'd given her to wear. Summer had been like camouflage, hiding Iris so completely that even Iris couldn't feel herself underneath it. And now she was the King. Nothing could get through him, not even guilt, because he was built to be a wall. She shoved it all back down, the way she always did, and let the King scroll to the next entry. PUSSY CONTROL (Passive) Effect: Reduces the Loyalty and Resolve of an NPC.

Extends the window before the target becomes aware of manipulation." The deadliest weapons are the ones that think killing is their choice." The King almost laughed at the name. Almost. There were two ways to read it. It was either a pointed reference to the worst moment of Iris's old life, a sadistic little wink to the tumor of guilt growing around her heart. The thought made even the King's skin crawl. Or it was another piece of stolen pop culture.

Maltheris consumed human history through billions of brain-burrowing larvae and regurgitated it to terrify the masses. The mad demon lord had already built an entire town out of nostalgia-bait movie references, right down to the final bosses ripped from a franchise with enough sequels that one took place in outer space. So maybe the skill was simply a reference to the Prince song. Iris did love Prince. The King chose to believe that. It was easier to focus on the work.

Vexikor glanced at the blueprints, jotting something in his notebook.

"You're sure this approach will generate sufficient Harvest numbers?"

"Sure as anything else I've done with zero actual information on how any of this works," the King said. He opened the HARVEST app on his LifeLine. The word sat at the top of the screen in a thin, scratchy font, and below it were three lines with room for more in the space underneath. He held it out.

"Seventy-four percent. You want to explain how the metric works, then maybe I can do better next time."

"The number represents the total fear generated in Zone One directly attributable to your actions: your murders, the manipulations, the ritual, and the Lake Mother massacre. Even shooting the boyfriend's face off. It all counts toward your personal score."

"What made up the other twenty-six percent?"

"Everything else. All the Maltheris-designed elements of the zone, like the school lockdown, for example." It was the most information he'd been able to pull out of Vexikor yet. The King knew his best play was to keep scoring small wins, stay useful, and ask questions later. He looked at the number again. Summer had been responsible for three-quarters of the fear Zone One had produced. It made him wonder what other "Adversaries" like him, in other Runs, had achieved.

"Most Adversaries contribute around thirty to fifty percent per zone," Vexikor offered, appearing to read the King's thoughts. He tapped the screen with one extra-long finger.

"Keep numbers like that and the Boss's little promise stops being a joke. Thirteen zones, highest yield of any Adversary in any Run, and you get the one wish. Anything you want." The truth was that the King didn't give a shit about Vexikor, Maltheris, or their disgusting Harvest. He was never going to be a pawn for anyone else ever again; a decision Iris made before the world ended, that held true even more so now. Playing the game was just the price of the wish.

"This will be more efficient than just strapping them to a table and pulling out their toenails." The King cracked his neck, a move he'd seen tough guys do in movies.

"It's all built around her moral compass. The fear of having to choose who experiences the torture will wreck her more than a spike of physical pain ever could."

"Won't she choose to sacrifice herself every time? As she did in Zone One."

"Try to keep up." He traced a line on the blueprint.

"Nora thinks she's noble, which makes her predictable. What I've built will catch her every time she tries to play hero. The doll is her emotional support toy. Watching her choose pain will drive a wedge between them, slowly isolating her." Vexikor jotted something down in his notebook.

"And the awakened NPCs?"

"Isabel's still in mourning." The King could practically taste her name in his mouth.

"All that unprocessed grief is a live wire just waiting to spark."

"And the other one?" The King frowned.

"Other one?"

"Oh, right. We pulled you out before the finale. There was another NPC…" Vexikor checked his notes.

"…Liam." The King said nothing. Liam had been background furniture in Zone One, if that. Isabel, he had planned around. Everything had been built for three people, and now there were four.

"Did I throw a wrench in the plans?" The imp's smirk was insufferable. The King shook his head.

"An extra party member doesn't change my design."

"Might bolster your yield numbers if handled correctly," Vexikor said, tapping his finger against his own LifeLine without looking up.

"I'm sending you something." The King's LifeLine buzzed as a new PROFILES app appeared on the home screen. The app contained personal details on everyone in Nora's party: photos, stats, fear baselines, loyalty numbers. Everything the system had on all four of them. He felt like he already knew Nora, Tre, and Isabel, though more time studying them wouldn't hurt. Liam's, however, was like opening a door to an unexplored room. He needed time to dissect Liam's profile, so it would have to wait.

Zone Two was about to begin…