Chương 18: The Colombian Necktie

Sameer sank to the floor beside me, coated in soot, arms and neck streaked with tender, fresh burns that turned pink under the red emergency lights.

"I'm glad you guys aren't dead," he said, then hacked up what sounded to me like half a lung, and sagged against the wall.

"Big same," Isabel replied. She moved toward him reflexively, hand smoothing his hair back from his sweaty forehead; the tenderness of it made warmth in my chest swell for reasons I couldn't name. His breathing shallowed, tears welled in his brown eyes.

"I heard him…"

"Austin?" Isabel asked. Sameer nodded.

"Screaming… the door was so hot… I couldn't… couldn't—" His face crumpled, as heavy sobs shook his thin frame.

"It's not your fault," Isabel said, still running a hand over his hair.

"It's not your fault." The way she repeated it, as if the universe would obey. I'd heard that exact cadence many times before, from my own mouth. Sitting on the edge of Mom's bed when she cried about what a burden she was to me. I'd repeat those exact words in the same way. Isabel pulled Sameer into a tight embrace, pressing his head into her shoulder. As she shook, the tremors puffed the soot on his shirt up into tiny clouds.

I didn't know how to move or what to do with my hands; the swelling in my chest grew, yet it was pleasantly warm, even as it constricted my lungs. Dude, Tre on the Mindbleed. Take your Salve! You look fucked up. My stats flashed in the upper left corner of my vision; the Bleeding status was still active, and my health was falling due to the 6-inch gash in my left shoulder. And I ruined Dad's jacket. The leather was split along the shoulder seam, the edges curled and dark with blood.

The cut was ragged, leaving the lining underneath equally shredded. Pulling the Healing Salve out of my inventory, I swallowed my guilt about the jacket alongside the sour-apple goop I'd squeezed into my mouth. The familiar tug of skin weaving itself closed barely registered, as I obsessed over the god damn jacket. The Salve wasn't meant to fix fabric, and it didn't. I wondered if there was a combination of items out there that could.

"It's okay," Tre attempted to reassure me.

"I'll craft something to fix it." Like he can read my mind. I blinked back a few tears, tightly nodding a silent thanks. My muscles were punctured tires, adrenaline leaking out as we sat in that hallway. I wanted to stay there forever. Isabel was the first to move, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She stood up and recomposed herself in the span of a single inhale.

"We gotta get to Austin," she said, moving to the next override panel. Tre jammed the pry bar in and opened the panel. Hands shaking so hard she nearly dropped the crank, Isabel tried to rotate it, but it was just as stubborn as the previous door. Tre put his small hands beside Isabel's on the crank, straining to turn it faster. Sameer and I watched the gap widen, our breath held so tight it ached. The moment the door was raised enough to crawl under, I ducked through, bracing for the worst.

But what I saw instead stole the air from my lungs. The corridor was... pristine. And smelled of Pine-Sol. Apparently, the world's greatest school janitor had shined the linoleum where soot had just covered it, and there wasn't so much as a hint of lingering smoke. The black scorch marks previously creeping up the walls were gone, and the walls were now freshly painted, the kind of white you see in model homes.

The only real evidence that there had been any danger at all was the red glow the emergency lights cast over the freshly cleaned room. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Behind me, Sameer shimmied under the gap.

"What the fuck...?" Isabel crawled in behind Sameer. When she finally processed what she was seeing, her voice carved its way out of her throat.

"Where's the fire damage?" It was an excellent question, and I thought I knew the answer, but I didn't want to say it out loud. Tre and I had seen Plaxx snap his fingers and reset a room mid-sentence. The environment— and our bodies —inside the Grindhouse were wet clay in his hands. If the host could do it, the creator sure as hell could too. Maltheris built this entire town from… scratch? Our memories? It was unclear.

But I was certain resetting a hallway, even this entire school, was nothing more than putting fresh sheets on the bed for him. Because this hallway had been burning. Only minutes ago. I saw it with my own eyes, but the hallway before me turned my eyes into liars. Sorta. Because as easily as I could look at the hall, I could close my eyes and recall every trauma of that naked classroom, especially the way the game arranged that scene specifically for me to witness.

"Austin?" I called. My voice bounced off the walls, echoing down the hall, but no reply ever came. A dark smear, about twenty feet down the hall, wet enough to glisten under the red glow. Blood.

"Look." I pointed down the hall. We moved toward the stain, as it slowly revealed itself to be a longer, broken trail. Instinctively, we all slowed down, sharing an understanding that whatever was at the end of this blood trail wasn't going to be something we wanted to find.

"Austin?" Sameer whispered, voice thick with dread. The first streak had been about the size of a palm print, but the longer we followed the trail, the wider the drag mark appeared, the kind made by something being pulled along the ground, hemorrhaging blood. The continuous streak eventually hugged the right wall, smearing up about six inches where a body or limb had bumped against the baseboard. Isabel breathed heavily. Sameer had stopped crying; he followed us at a funeral procession's pace.

The blood trail curved left at the end of the hallway, rounding the corner toward the boys' locker room. I stopped at the corner and pressed my back against the wall. Tre and Isabel stacked up behind me, without being told. We were getting good at this. I peered around the edge. The locker room door was wide open, and the trail disappeared inside where the emergency lighting turned it almost obsidian.

"Austin?" Sameer mumbled. Then suddenly he sprinted ahead, screaming." Austin!" Isabel tried to grab his arm.

"Sameer, wait—" He ripped free of her grip and dashed into the locker room. I hesitated, unsure if we should run blindly into the dark with a killer on the loose, but Isabel didn't get the memo and took off after Sameer.

"Son of a bitch." I ran in. The locker room was pretty dark. Emergency lighting inside was barely enough to paint the rows of metal lockers in crimson shadows. The pungent odor of sweat, mildew, industrial cleaner, and coppery blood made me gag. The blood trail continued across the tile floor, past benches, around a corner toward the showers. Water was running, a steady patter against— Austin slumped on the tile floor, a mound beneath the uncaring drip of a leaky shower head.

The smiley face on his Nirvana shirt gaped at me, now drenched in blood. A gaping horizontal slash across his neck, edges ragged, looked like someone had sawed it open with a dull blade. Austin's tongue had been threaded through the wound, pulled down to dangle against his sternum. His jaw hung slack, but the flesh on his face had already begun to tighten, taking on a glossy, waxed fruit sheen. The boy in the Nirvana shirt— Austin —had been meticulously, grotesquely arranged. Behind me, Sameer was screaming.

"It's my fault," he cried, burying his face in Isabel's shoulder.

"I heard him… I couldn't… oh god, it's my fault." Isabel hugged him back, her face ashen, tough-girl façade momentarily abandoned. She just held him, her eyes squeezed shut, whispering, "No, no, it's not..." The LifeLine vibrated insistently against my leg, but I couldn't look away from Austin's glassy stare. He died afraid and abandoned. He was dead because I hadn't kept him safe. Sameer's crying behind me started to warble as all sounds folded into a single tone. Nora. It's not your fault. But Tre was wrong.

It was my fault. My bad call led to this. I'd kept Tre alive, and Isabel, Sameer too, and yet, I had no idea what I was doing. I'd gotten lucky, over and over, and eventually luck runs out. Austin paid the price. The next bad call could end with Tre on the floor, or Isabel gutted in some dark hallway.

WARNING: FEAR REACHING CRITICAL My vitals forced themselves into view, bars filling the edges of my sight: FEAR: 91% (Critical) LUCIDITY: 9% (Collapsed) The numbers changed in real time, my Fear climbing to 94% as my lucidity fell to 6%, and as they shifted, so did the world around me. The shower water became static. Everything blurred; the pulsing of the lights synced with the pulsating ache in my temples. Sameer's cries were suddenly miles away.

W̸A̸R̸N̸I̸N̸G̸: ̸ ̸C̸R̸I̸T̸I̸C̸A̸L̸ ̸F̸E̸A̸R̸ Austin's bloody face stretched into streaks of red and white as my Fear bar flashed 100%. Isabel screamed my name. STATUS APPLIED: UNCONSCIOUS Everything went black.