The Death's Game

20. Game of Fear

The light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a room with hundreds of old monitors. The light falling from them blinded Percy, who had to squint to see anything. As soon as she took a step into the room she tripped over a cable. She would have almost fallen to the floor if not for Ryder, who upheld her.

"Thanks," she muttered.

"Watch your feet, there are cables everywhere here."

She feared she would have to walk the entire room without seeing anything, but suddenly the light from all the monitors changed from blindingly bright to the muffled flicker of broken receivers, and the room plunged into unpleasant blue lumen.

This gave her a chance to get a better look at the room. The receivers actually turned out to be medical apparatus, whose gentle flickering resembled the sound of someone's life being sustained. For some unknown reason, the sounds gave Percy a headache.

"I must come back. I can't leave them."

Respirators were all over the place. They lied shattered on the floor, stacked on crooked tables, hung on the dirty grey walls, hanging from the cracked ceiling. Some of them were broken, and some looked as if someone smashed them with a baseball bat. Regardless of whether they worked or not, all of them had cables sticking out of them, stretched across the floor, walls, and ceiling like a terrifying structure. Even though the room was spacious, Percy felt claustrophobic because of the cables making it look like a giant spider who was about to swallow her whole in its webs.

"What, the heavens, is that?" asked Percy, trying to make sense out of this creepy, surely not hospital-like place.

"Not the heavens, for sure," replied Ryder, while Percy walked over to one of the respirators, curious about its appearance. Out of all things that could've been placed in this rooms, why there was a medical apparatus? Is being in a hospital really that horrific?

Taking for consideration state and prices of healthcare, maybe it's really hell for some people, she thought.

Percy leaned over to one of the respirators, staring at its screen, when suddenly all the receivers began broadcasting something like a movie without sound. Percy abruptly moved away, noticing that a different projection had started on each screen.

"What is that?" she asked with her eyes getting bigger and bigger as she watched the screen.

Millie appeared on the monitor. She had pink highlights in her blonde hair, which suggested that she was the Millie of that year. She was enjoying herself at the club, dancing among the people, and with a smile lit up by the spotlights on her face. After a short while, she pulled her phone out of her pockets, wrinkling her brow at the message she had received. A message whose contents Percy could not see. Whatever it said, it made Millie start pushing her way between the crowd of people, trying to get to the back exit of the club.

Millie stepped out into the gloomy night, through a back club door leading to a creepy alley that was illuminated only by a flickering streetlamp and light moonlight. This place did not remind Percy of any place she knew. She has been to clubs, but not the one she just saw Millie in.

"Percy?" Millie asked in the night, walking away from the club door.

She looked around the alley, trying to spot her friend in the darkness, but no one answered her.

"That's not funny!" she squealed when something hit the metal dumpster behind her. Whoever she was about to meet in that alley, it certainly wasn't Percy. She would never try to scare her friend like that. She didn't quite understand why, but something in her gave her the feeling that it was dangerous to play like that.