Page 40 of The Player
Two minutes on the clock and my heart was beating double time, feeling helpless as I stood there, waiting for her to find a needle in a fucking haystack.
She moved to the last wall, scanning it, but she wasn’t getting anywhere.
“We’re running out of time,” I urged, the clock now down to one minute thirty.
“Try the ceiling,” I called out, and when she came to the edge of the wall with no letter to show for it, she pointed the black light to the ceiling, and there, shining back at us, was the letter ‘R’.
“R…. is a dis…” My brain didn’t work as fast as hers, and when she shouted out from her corner of the room, “Revenge is a dish best served cold!” Lights flooded back into the room and the rack Fraser was shackled to snapped hard, pulling his arms from their sockets and leaving his legs hanging limply. The noose around his neck tugged upwards, making his already purple face swell and bulge.
“We did it,” I gasped, turning to face Bee.
And then all hell broke loose as the containers above us burst open.
ChapterSeventeen
WILL
Igasped as ice-cold liquid cascaded from the ceiling, drenching us both in red, and for a split second, my worst fears came to life. Blind panic gripped my soul as my body froze. Then, when my adrenaline took hold, and I saw her standing there with her eyes wide, her screams echoing off the walls, I snapped.
She thought it was acid.
That fucker had played with us, and now she was stuck in her worst nightmare, terror ripping her from this room and taking her to whatever hell her mind was now stuck in.
“Bee, you’re okay!” I shouted, stalking over to her, grabbing her shoulders to shake her and bring her back to me. “It’s not acid. We’re not hurt.”
She gasped, the red liquid trickling through her hair, down her face, into her eyes and mouth as she frantically wiped it away. And as my words slowly penetrated through the fog of fear in her brain, she stared straight at me, unable to speak, but her eyes telling me how utterly terrified she was.
“It’s just corn starch,” I told her, using my finger to swipe through the gunk on my face and put it in my mouth. “You know, like they used for the pigs’ blood in Carrie, and in Scream. You’re okay,” I repeated, pulling her to me and wrapping my arms around her.
She panted, breathless as I held her in my arms.
“He’s a fucking animal,” I seethed. “And I’m telling you right now, we are never going to fail. He doesn’t want us to. He wants us to kill these people and let him watch it all like the sick fuck he is. He might be playing his sick torture games with these men, but he’s playing with us too. Playing mind games. Trying to fuck with us, and we can’t let him. Do you hear me, Bee?” I pulled back, keeping my arms around her but staring her straight in the eyes. “We can’t let him win. We have to stay strong and show him these psychological mind games won’t work on us.” I pressed my sticky, gunge-soaked forehead to hers and whispered, “You’re a Masters. Don’t ever forget that. You could walk through hell and come out the other side with a smile on your face. You’re strong. You’ve got this.”
She nodded, and as she leaned into me, I put my arm around her shoulder to lead her out of that room. Seconds ago, I’d wanted to stay in there. Wait for him to come out of the shadows and face me. He was a coward, and I wanted to prove it, have a showdown with him to end all of this. He couldn’t hide from me forever. But after seeing her standing there, looking so utterly frightened, terrified to the point of shaking, screaming, unable to hear me through her own cries, I had to leave. Get her as far away from this hellhole as I could.
She was all that mattered.
He could fuck with me all he wanted; I was used to this shit. But she was different. She wasn’t as hardened as I was. She was special. Mine to protect. And I wouldn’t fail at that job, not even if it killed me in the process.
I steered her to the doorway and out into the corridor. This time, she didn’t argue when I gave her support, held her up and walked her back to our room. She didn’t do anything other than take deep breaths to try and calm herself down and put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, that’s all you can do, and tonight, that was enough.
Once we stepped back into our room, the door behind us slid shut. On the bed were two piles of clothes: one for her and one for me, toothbrushes and toothpaste, a washcloth and two towels, shampoo and soap.
He was evil, but he’d given us some grace and left things for us to clean up. I despised him and everything he’d done, but he still wanted us alive. That much was certain. Every cloud and all that.
“How are we… supposed to… clean this… shit with… bottled water?” she said, shivering and stumbling over her words.
I let go of her and stalked over to the toilet area to discover that the room had changed in our absence. He’d opened up a part of it to let us access a huge waterfall shower with a drain beneath it. No shower curtain or door, just the shower head with a lever to switch the water on and tiles around it.
“Come on,” I said, picking it all up off the mattress. “We need to get this shit off us. The sooner we’re clean, the better you’ll feel.”
I dropped the towels on the floor, away from the shower so they wouldn’t get wet. Then I reached forward, twisting the lever to turn the shower on. I held my hand under the flow to test the temperature, and it took a little while, but eventually, hot water cascaded through.
Bryony stood at the edge of the room, her arms wrapped around herself as she tried to stop shivering, staring at me like she didn’t know what to do next. I’d never seen her like this before, and I didn’t like it. I hated what he’d done to her.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I told her, but she didn’t respond.
I left most of the stuff on the shower floor, took both of the toothbrushes and put paste on them, then wet them under the water. I began brushing my teeth as I walked slowly over to where she stood, passing the other toothbrush to her, and then taking her hand in mine to lead her to the water. She started to brush too, and I muttered through my mouthful, “We’re both alive. We can have a warm shower and brush our teeth. Life is good. Well, not good, but it’s not as bad as some of the players stuck here.”
