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“He’s probably right. That this is part of the game.”

“Maybe.” The other Ava twitches, her hand going down to one of her legs. “Maybe. I might—I might be seeing a threat where there isn’t one.”

“It’s a pretty sick game,” Brandon says, frowning at the camp. “I don’t mean sick like cool. I mean sick like gross. I don’t like it. It’s not fun anymore.” He looks up, searching both Avas’ faces. “What should we do?”

“I need the money,” Ava blurts. “I really do.”

“We all need the fucking money,” the other Ava says, but it’s without venom.

“Look, maybe they did mislead us. Maybe it’s a meaner game than we thought it was. But what’s the alternative? You think Linda brought us in here to, what, murder us two by two?” It sounds ridiculous when Ava says it. It is ridiculous. Jaden is right. He has to be right. This is another twist in the game. Ava frowns, struck with a sudden thought. “You were all here at camp before we were.”

Brandon tilts his head, confused. The other Ava understands immediately. “You think we did this to freak you out. I wish. God, that’d be a great strategy.” She takes a few steps toward the darkness pressing in around them. “Could have been Christian or Ian, making a play.”

“Or Mack.” Ava shrugs defensively when the other Ava cuts a narrowed look at her. “Look, all I’m saying is, what she’s been through, she’s probably kind of messed up.”

“No one is looking,” LeGrand says, his voice soft, his watery eyes drifting somewhere along the ground. She thinks his eyes are a weak sort of blue, but in the orange light, none of them have color. Not even the sticky pool in the middle. Maybe it’s not darkest red turning to black. Maybe it’s purple, or blue, or—

Yeah. Maybe someone melted a whole cooler full of blood-scented Popsicles. Sure. Ava shakes her head, knowing what she’s seeing and smelling but still wanting to deny it, because how could it be that?

“What do you mean?” Brandon asks LeGrand.

“Out there.” LeGrand shrugs, his sloped shoulders making him look smaller than he is. “No one is looking for us.”

“Just because you weren’t found doesn’t mean no one is looking,” Ava says. “You probably got lucky; they had already gotten two people out for the day. That’s the pattern, right? Two a day. So if the two have already been found, you’re safe.”

“We’re still missing three.” The other Ava sits on a cot and hangs her head, rubbing the back of her neck.

Ava sits gingerly next to her, keeping vigil to see who the night returns to them. Wishing with sudden sharp longing that Jaden had gotten out today.



* * *



—

Beautiful Ava’s made a mistake. She can’t see Jaden behind them, peering out from the bathroom, eyes narrowing as he decides exactly who he’s going to trick into getting out the next day.

Brandon is scared. He’s not having fun anymore, not at all. He doesn’t even care about the money. If it wasn’t for his friends, he’d leave right now. But he doesn’t want to ditch his friends.

LeGrand is resigned. They’re being punished, hell is real and they’re in it, they’re going to die or they’re not. It doesn’t really matter, because, really, he’s been in a color-bleached, hopeless hell ever since he was banished.

And Ava stares into the darkness, darkness in her mind and her heart, smelling phantom smoke and charred flesh as she waits to see who comes back.





DAY FIVE


The spotlight is on now. Someone is calling her back, waiting for her.

Mack sits, knees up, arms around them. Her cart—bucket—whatever they call the part of a Ferris wheel that people climb into to circle in defiance of gravity—sways gently in the night breeze, and she could almost fall asleep. Curl up in the bottom with the dirt and debris and sleep forever.

Atrius’s arrows led her here, and they kept going, but she didn’t. She thinks he solved the maze. Whether that meant he got out, or got in, she doesn’t know. He’s gone.

She rubs the heavy silver of one of Rosiee’s rings, slipped onto her finger so she wouldn’t lose it. Gone.

Mack’s hungry, and she’s thirsty, and she’s tired. She doesn’t want to go back to camp, doesn’t want to see who’s not there, doesn’t want to think about what that might mean. It’s a game, yes. A game. A game run by people, and she understands perfectly well how monstrous people can be.

But she needs to know whether Ava is still here. Even if Mack chose to leave her. She has to know.

Mack climbs down and walks to the camp.

Ava is sitting on a cot, her face hollow, beautiful Ava sitting next to her. Brandon is cleaning up the table, which, judging from the mess, got knocked over. LeGrand is on another cot. There’s a dark pool in the middle of the cement that seems to exert a reverse magnetism. Everyone is pushed out away from it.

Mack doesn’t like what her heart does when she sees Ava. Or Brandon and LeGrand, to a lesser extent. Because she’s glad—god, she’s so glad—that they’re here. Which means it will hurt when they aren’t. And she can’t help them, can’t protect them, can’t do anything to keep them here.