The Revenge by Tijan

I had fought back at round one.

I had been drugged at round two.

I had been paralyzed, then hysterical, at round three.

This was round four, and I was somewhat finding myself wanting to vote with the secret twin. It was time to end this, and Calhoun dead was a viable option. There’d be no more rounds after this.

Then I got into the system and booted up all the security feeds. “I’m in!”

Hoda! I recognized her coding from school. She had a distinct style.

The floor rocked under my feet, and I looked, belatedly, if we really were in an earthquake. No. Nothing was falling off the walls. That was me, having everything swept out from under me.

Hoda must’ve been holding back, or learning hard over these last few months. I never knew what side she was, not really. Now I knew, I guess.

“We can go there.” Kash pointed to a screen.

Chase grunted. “The next one.”

They both looked.

Kash growled, “No.”

Chase growled back, “Yes.”

“The third one.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

They were both silent, both studying the cameras.

Chase gave in. “Fine. That sixth one.”

No clue what he was relenting to.

A sigh from Kash. “Fine.”

No clue about that, either.

“Good.” Both nodded together and looked at me.

“What?” said Kash.

“I have no idea what you guys just said to each other.”

Kash bit out a curse at the same time that Chase hid a grin, looking away. They moved around me. Kash took my arm, dragging me with him. They both reached for a gun and began filling shoulder holsters that I’d not seen them put on.

“Babe.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “What?”

Kash was taking me to the back bedroom, grabbing the computer and handing it to me. “You know that time we had a conversation where I needed you to trust me? That you might not want to do what I needed you to do, but you just needed to do it anyways?”

“No.”

We were in the bedroom. He was leading me to my closet. “Well, we just did.” He swept the hanging clothes aside, ones that I’d left behind, then opened one of the drawers and touched a button. The back wall swung in, and my mouth was hanging open.

“What is that?”

He pushed me inside, hitting a light switch.

I was in a room. It wasn’t a big room, but it was a room. There was a chair. Blankets. A caddy of water and those bars that could be eaten as a whole meal. In the corner was a bucket with a heavy blanket over it.

Ew. I didn’t want to think why there was a bucket, but I knew. Some things you don’t want to know and you just know. That bucket was one of those things.

“This room is an escape room.”

I grunted. “No shit.”

“The door is bulletproof. Once I close this, the edges will reseal. No one will know it’s here.”

Oh.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I tried putting on the brakes, but I was already in.

Kash pointed to a panel. “If we die, you can get out of here with those buttons.”

“What? Die?”

He bent, his mouth finding mine, but before I could swoon, he was gone. “I love you.” Then the door was pulled shut behind him.

“Kash!” I was there, pounding on it. I reached for the handle—there was no handle. Why wasn’t there a handle? I could hear him slide the clothes in front of it again, and then … was that footsteps I was hearing? I moved to the other wall. What was on that side?

Eyeing the room, I was wondering whether, if worse came to worst, could I dig myself out through the walls. Okay. That was a bit dramatic for me, so I opened the panel and pored over all the buttons. They were labeled. I could call the front desk, the Chesapeake, 911, or I could unarm the door. The door was armed? Then the bottom button was “Exit.”

Okay.

That whole eerie calm feeling I’d been having before? Vanished. Evaporated. It was gonzo and I was panicking.

Calm, Bailey. Calm.

I went to my deep-breathing techniques. I was not claustrophobic, even though this was a tiny room with no windows. I turned around. There was a screen!

And a remote under it.

Now I was talking.

I grabbed it, turning on the screen. Oh, hell yeah. There were cables in the corner. I hurried over, plugging the computer in to the larger screen and I was in business. A small desk and chair were in the corner, but I wheeled the chair over, pulling the desk right afterward. And sitting down, I was now in my own personal computer headquarters room.

I could watch and help this way.

Or so I was telling myself, but the truth is that I didn’t do much.

I did sit. And I did watch. And I mostly marveled at how Kash and his brother seemed to work seamlessly together.

They were magnificent.

Both moving with precision, going fast. It was as if they had grown up together, as if they had been trained together. One went low, the other went high. One went right, the other went left. And it wasn’t that one moved and the other followed. They moved at the same time.

They were almost a perfect mirror of each other.

“Bailey?”

I jumped, screaming. That voice came from … I whirled. Where?

“Bailey!”

The feeds.