EMERALD
Standing in front of me was a man that I never thought I would meet in my lifetime. In fact, my mother, along with Eden Walker, thought that he was most likely dead. But nope. Josh Mitchell, one of the only remaining Fear Games survivors, was here before me in this dark dungeon where I was trapped. I had so many questions. There were millions of different things that I could ask. But I found myself saying the first thing that popped into my head:
"What the actual fuck are you doing here?" It wasn't exactly tasteful, but considering I was being held captive against my will, just saw one of Kael's friend's heads just get blown off, and had a bullet lodged in my ankle, I didn't care if I said the word fuck. And I was pretty sure that he wouldn't either.
Josh knelt down before his, his dark hair showing little grey spots in patches. His facial hair was grown out a bit, but it was definitely kept up with. He didn't look like a complete homeless person. When he smiled at me, everything in my stomach immediately started churning like butter.
His voice was raspy as he said, "Emerald, you look so much like your mother. She was always one badass bitch."
"Thanks, but that doesn't really answer my question," I said, seething at the pain from my ankle. I closed my eyes, trying to wish this all away, but when I reopened them, I realized I was still in hell.
Figured.
"I'm here because I am trying to save you all," Josh Mitchell said as he stood up. He walked to the other side of the room, which I couldn't see too clearly because the room was so damn dark. Still, he continued talking. "The killer wants to play this as a Game. This isn't just a typical serial murderer. This person, they..." His voice trailed off, and for a second I thought he'd left the room. Then he finished, saying, "There's something wrong with them. I don't just mean psychologically. There's much more going on here than even I realize. I'm still trying to put the pieces together myself."
"Okay, all this vagueness is seriously just pissing me off," I said, still holding Colton's white shirt (which wasn't so much anymore) to the bleeding wound.
When Josh came back in through the shadows, he was holding a mug, which I assumed held some kind of beverage. He knelt back down in front of me and handed me the cup. "Drink this. You'll feel better."
I raised an eyebrow. "How do I know this isn't going to kill me?" The mug felt warm in my hands, and I had to admit that I was considering drinking it. I was dying of thirst to the point where I didn't care what it was.
"If I was going to kill you, it would be a lot more fun than just giving you poison in tea," Josh said. He sat criss-crossed in front of me, clasped his hands together, and smiled again.
"Can you stop doing that?"
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Doing what?"
"Smiling. Like we're friends or something. Just because you knew my Mom and auntie twenty years ago, does not automatically make you my friend. It barely makes you an acquaintance. In fact, at this particular moment, I'm thinking you're more of an enemy."
"Drink the tea your enemy just gave you," Josh said softly. It was hard to even be mad at him because he gave such a peaceful presence. But there was something I couldn't quite figure out about him. And it was making me uneasy.
"So, this is a game," I said, taking a sip of the tea. Mmmm, seemed like it was chamomile. Yum. "How do we win it?"
"Well, with a game, there's always rules," Josh said. "With this Game, the Player hasn't exactly been fair because they haven't made the rules explicitly clear yet. Except that you need to try and survive."
"I thought that was the goal, not a rule."
He shrugged. "Semantics, I guess."
"Well," I said, "with that, I have two questions for you that I hope you can answer for me before I die in this shit hole."
"I'll answer whatever I can," Josh said.
I nodded, knowing he likely wouldn't answer either one, but figured it was worth a shot. "First of all, how the hell do we get out of here? How do we survive this? It doesn't seem like the...Player...has given us much of a fighting chance."
Josh was silent for a moment as he stared at the ground, not meeting my eyes. I knew I'd brought up a good point, and he obviously knew it, too. Finally, he said, "You're right, the Players this time haven't exactly been fair. The head honcho is trying to figure that out."
"And that brings me to my next question," I said as I took another big gulp of my tea. "I know you know the answer to this, so don't pretend that you don't. But, please tell me. Who is actually running all of this?"
Josh actually let out of a laugh. He said, "Emerald, you're a smart girl. I can see that. You get that from Rachel. But even if I did tell you who this person is, you wouldn't believe me."
That was an annoying answer. "So you're not going to tell me." I didn't phrase it as a question.
Josh shook his head. "If I told you who was running this Game, I'd be dead in an instant. And I can't help any of you if my guts are on the outside of my body."
That was quite the image, one that made me feel immediately nauseous. "You say I wouldn't believe you. Why not?"
The man smiled at me softly, reached out and grabbed my hand, then said, "Sleep tight, angel."
"Sleep tight? Why—?" Before I even had a chance to ask anything else, my head hit the floor and everything went black.
CINDER
The room was eerily silent as everyone let the metallic smell of Freddy's blood waft into our noses. I was trying to keep from gagging, but seeing a dead body was something I never hoped I'd see, especially one as graphic as this. Pieces of his head were blown all throughout the room, and I was pretty sure that my brother Kael was crying softly.
I closed my eyes, trying to think of a way that we could get out of here. Instead, my mind wandered to the past.
Rachel, my mom, Kael, Emerald, Echo, and me went to Tahoe one time this most recent summer for a special day. Our moms said that it was because we needed to forget the stress that was going on in our lives—which I believed at the time was key word for Mom's pending divorce with Dad.
On this particular sunny day, Emerald and I were dressed in bikinis and Kael was wearing a bathing suit with a t-shirt on. Mom was wearing some kind of sundress, and Rachel was also wearing a bikini—and damn, she looked good for being in her forties. Our moms were carrying bags of towels and Kael was carrying the cooler, while Emerald and I were talking about some useless thing that clearly wasn't even important, because I no longer remembered what it was.
When we approached the water, my baby sister Echo ran off into the water, and Kael followed her with his t-shirt still on. He was never exactly comfortable with his scrawny little body. Emerald and I decided to stay and help lay out the towels.
"This day's absolutely gorgeous," Mom said as she put down her yellow towel into the sand.
"Isn't it?" Rachel said as she put down her orange, red, and yellow abstract towel. "Don't you just wish that we could be here forever?"
"It is really nice," I said as stretched out my purple towel and took a seat. "I'm not sure that I could handle living here, though."
"Why not?" Rachel asked. "Could you imagine having this in your backyard? I'd come out here every single night and meditate. It'd be perfect."
"You would want to do that, Mom," Emerald said as she sat on her towel and took out the cut up watermelon pieces we had in the cooler. "But I agree, it would be incredible to just be here all the time."
"What makes you so against living here?" Mom asked me as she took a sip from her water bottle.
I shrugged. "I don't know. It's such a big tourist destination, I think I'd want something more secluded."
When I came back to the room, opening my eyes, I hoped that everything had been a dream, but it wasn't. I was still trapped with my friends—although my best friend had been separated from us—and Freddy was still dead. Looking back on that memory of Tahoe, I wished I could take back what I said. If only I could be in Tahoe now, forever.
Colton's voice finally broke through the emptiness. "We have to do something to get out of here."
"And what exactly do you propose that we do?" Arya, sitting next to her boyfriend (also my brother) Kael, asked. "We're pretty much trapped. The only way out would be if they let us out."
"Yeah, like that would happen," I muttered, staring at the ground. It was all I could do to not look at Freddy's lifeless body anymore. "I think it's time we just admit our fate. We're all going to die."
"Don't say that!" my little brother shouted from the spot next to me. I could hear the pain and agony in his voice. "We have to get out of here. We have to escape. We have to see Mom again. We have to..." His voice trailed off as he started to cry.
"Kael's right," Colton said. "We can't just admit defeat."
"Then what should we do?" I asked, looking over Colton. As much as I was interested in being with him romantically, that just didn't seem like a possibility anymore. It felt like things were over before they could even begin. Was this karma for trying to steal him away from Emerald?
Colton obviously didn't have an answer for that, because he just remained quiet. He was a strong person. I knew that much about him. But if he didn't know what to do, out of all of us, then it was time to say what we were all thinking.
"We're all fucked," I muttered, staring back at the ground.
No one in the room bothered to disagree.
KAEL
I hated to admit how absolutely terrified I was. Even crying in a room full of other people who were seemingly keeping themselves together, I was embarrassed. But there was another part of me that knew there was no point in feeling like that, because there were plenty of people who would cry and have anxiety in this situation. Everyone else in the room was likely just numb.
Time seemed to pass indefinitely, and there was no way of knowing exactly how many minutes or hours had gone by. All we knew was that we were stuck, but no one wanted to speak. We all just kept to our own thoughts, trying to avoid anymore argumentative conversations.
It could have been hours for all I knew when the automatic door to the room opened up. All of our heads popped up, expecting a masked person to walk through the door at any time. One second went by, then another, then another, then another, and then another. I was pretty sure a whole minute passed when we realized no one was coming inside.
My sister, Cinder, was the first to speak. "Um...is someone coming in?"
"They're probably just fucking with us," Colton said. Then he shouted, "We're already terrified! There's nothing else you could do to make this any worse!"
I wasn't completely sure that was an accurate statement, but I didn't question it. Instead, I said, "Maybe they're having technical difficulties or something?"
My friend German said something for the first time in a while. "I doubt that. This place seems too advanced for that. There's a reason that door's open."
"If they're not coming in, then...what's it open for?" Arya asked as she glanced over at me, as if I was supposed to have the answer.
I shrugged. "I have no idea."
As if on cue, my ankle suddenly felt a million times lighter than it had seconds ago. When I looked down, I realized that the cuff that was attached to my ankle had be released. I was free.
Glancing around the room, I saw the others looking down at their ankles, too. We all seemed to be just as stunned as the other. Why the hell would this killer let us go?
"So, what?" Colton said. "They're just letting us go?"
"I don't know," Cinder said, looking back over at the door. "Something doesn't sit right with me about this. It can't be this easy. There's no way they're just going to let us walk out of here alive. Not after everything."
"I don't know about you, but I'll take my chances," Arya said, standing up off the floor. She started to walk over to the door, then looked back at me. "Baby, are you coming?"
"Arya, I'm not sure we should leave," I said, my stomach doing somersaults. "This feels like another trap."
"Even so, wouldn't you rather take the risk than sit here and do completely nothing and die anyway?" Arya asked.
She had a good point and I knew it. My eyes fell on my sister and I said, "Maybe we should go. Maybe this is our chance."
"Kael, you can't seriously think this is a good idea," Cinder said.
"Honestly," Colton said in agreement with her. "Trust me, man, this isn't good."
"We're going to die if we sit here anyway," I said, mirroring what my girlfriend already did. "At least this time we have a fighting chance. If we're not chained up, we can fight them. There's more of us than there are them."
"We have no idea how many of them there are," Cinder said. "Sure, there's just the leader and Harlin that we know of, but there could be more. What if they attack us?"
Arya chimed in saying, "This is a Game, right? If it is, we have to play. We can't just sit around like ducks. We have to get off our asses and do something. My dads will be devastated if I never make it home and they know it's because I never fought for my life."
That must have triggered something in my sister's head, because next thing I knew she was standing up and said, "You know what? You're right. These killers want a Game. We'll give them a Game."
"But Cinder—" Colton started.
"No," she replied. "I'm taking my brother and his girlfriend and I'm getting the hell out of here. You and German can sit here all you want, but the three of us are getting out."
Colton must have decided that he didn't want to be alone with just German, because he stood up too and said, "Okay, let's do this."
I stood up myself, then looked over at my other living friend. I said, "German, are you in?"
They sighed. "I guess I have to be. I don't want to be left here all by myself."
"So, it's settled," Cinder said, staring at the open door. "We're getting out of here."
"Out of this room," I said, "but we don't know what's on the other side. We don't even know where we are."
Cinder reached out, took my hand, and squeezed. "Then I guess we're about to find out, aren't we?"
Without another hesitation, as a group, we walked through the open door, not knowing what we'd find on the other side. All we could hope is that it would be our freedom.
***
Are you excited that Fear Games is back for a brand new season? I can't wait to share all the new twists and surprises with you? Let me know what you think in the comments! Please make sure to vote if you love it! See you all with a new episode coming soon!