Page 195 of Stay Scared

Cade looks at me instead of the knife and waits.

I reach the end of the corridor and pull open a hanging fabric door leading toward the red room.

The camera inside is dead, so Owen loses me immediately. A screen beside the doorway holds his last frame of my body caught halfway through the opening with one hand extended into blackness.

Owen’s voice continues through the monitor.

“Salem entered the service corridor.”

Mark speaks beside him. “Can you move the feed?”

“There’s no live camera until the red-room approach.”

“Use the gallery.”

A pause follows before Owen answers.

“I was told to stay here.”

Rook looks toward the screen. “You lost her.”

Owen answers through the broadcast. “She chose the blind route.”

“You could hide her.”

“She told me to keep the feed live.”

“You’re broadcasting her fear.”

“She told me to watch.”

Rook steps through the fabric door and lets it fall closed behind him.

Cade stays outside while I keep moving through darkness.

The red room is close enough now that I no longer need the wall to tell me where I am. Footsteps follow at an unhurried pace.

Rook has entered the service corridor.

“You keep trusting them.”

I reach the steel service door and pull it inward, revealing a narrow access room, then the red-room approach.

An emergency screen above the next doorway flickers to life.

Owen has found me again.

My face fills the monitor beneath flat white light. My hair is damp around my forehead, blood shines across one palm where the scrape reopened, and every rough inhale shows.

Owen sees all of it.

His hand starts toward a control, but Mark catches his wrist before he reaches it. The gesture appears in the corner feed.

Owen looks at him.

Mark releases him. “She told you.”

“I heard her.”