The Management

Chapter 8

 We finished dinner in silence. We all have full plates, with meat, vegetables, potatoes, fruit, and a collection of sweet items. It's the meal you would make by combining my and both of my siblings' food, then transforming it with a magic wand. Most of us don't finish it, but a few do. I notice Salem scraping her fork across the rim of her ceramic plate, making a noise that runs a chill down my spine. She sees me cringe and looks up at me. I smile and sit next to her.

"Hey."

I notice her eyes are slightly bloodshot like a few tears slipped down her cheeks without anyone noticing.

"You okay? Besides the obvious?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't sleep. All night, all I could hear was Elizabeth."

I raise an eyebrow. "Hear Elizabeth doing what?"

She groans. "I don't exactly know, and I don't want to. All I know is the sounds were Elizabeth, and they were coming from Archer's room."

"And? Oh. You like him?" I asked. Crushes and relationships have been discouraged for as long as I can remember. No one cares who you like, girl, guy, whatever. That doesn't matter. Love doesn't really exist anymore. Sex is for reproducing and the government pairs the best genetic matches to provide the next generation. But things happen; crushes, secret relationships. What Salem is suggesting seems unlikely though, especially from those two.

"Well... I don't know what to say. I'm assuming you don't want to ask him about it." She looks horrified until she realizes I'm joking. She rolls her eyes, surprisingly looking actually annoyed. I realize this may have been the wrong time for jokes.

I sit on the opposite side of the room, not wanting to continue Salem and I's conversation. I sit instead next to Jasper. I notice something strange as I look around at everyone's clothes. Everyone's in a different color-Salem, yellow, Jasper, red, Jason, pink.. And while I had on a lavender, long-sleeved formal dress and Elizabeth sported a similar pale blue gown, today, 3/4 sleeves and slightly darker colors seem to be more in fashion. The day outfits are much less formal, too. Who gets these outfits in our rooms? What about the locks on the doors that I'm sure we all used last night? Can someone bypass those?

The clothes seem to possess some kind of disturbing irony- our clothes get darker, and this game does too.

Why the hell does my brain sound like an Edgar Allen Poe novel? I need to shut up.

The opportunity for my brain to do just that comes when all eight of us have sat down. As the last person sits on their chair, some kind of pulley pushes a 360-degree screen in the middle of the table up, and a video starts playing with Ellianci providing us with a voiceover.

In the grim reality of 'The Shattering Games,' our eight contestants—Kaylee, Kendall, Elizabeth, Salem, Jasper, Jack, Jason, and Archer—have just faced the initial rules and spent their first night in the foreboding Shattering House.

Shots of us entering our rooms and solving the brief puzzles play and we look at each other. I can tell some of us had no idea there were cameras in our rooms.

As they lay in their unfamiliar surroundings, the anticipation looms for what lies ahead. The Shattering House holds its secrets tightly, waiting to reveal the challenges that will test their intelligence and bravery.

No alliances have been forged yet, and the contestants are isolated, their minds swirling with uncertainty about the trials that await them.

The camera shows us waking up. Jack changing comes up and after he takes off his shirt, he flips off the camera. A few of us chuckle.

Today, as the first rays of dawn break, 'The Shattering Games' will truly begin. The house awaits, filled with puzzles, mysteries, and echoes of their shared, haunting past.

Stay tuned as our contestants embark on this unpredictable journey. In 'The Shattering Games,' alliances will form, betrayals will unfold, and the pursuit of redemption will clash with the shadows of guilt.

"That was a bit overdramatic," Kendall says, breaking the silence with a laugh. "Come on... that didn't scare any of you, did it?"

"Not really, but why the hell did they put that clip of Jack in there? That was creepy as shit. I didn't even know there were cameras in our rooms." Archer looked embarrassed as he admitted that.

No one said anything. We ate in silence until I decided to speak up.

"We have this house to ourselves. Mostly, anyway. We only have 3 days to solve this, and we need to get started, or we'll all end up "

"Wait a second," Jasper interrupts. "How do we know one of us is the killer?"

"Ellianci said so, remember?"

"He's not exactly the most trustworthy guy. Like, I know for a fact it wasn't me."

"Me either."

"Nope."

"I don't kill people."

"Neither do I.

"Of course not."

"It's not me."

"I would never do anything like that," I said. "And we're back to where we started."

"Exactly," I continued. "That's why we need to start figuring this crap out, like Jasper said. Let's find somewhere else to go. I'm sure they're expecting a scene change right about now." We all get up and leave, and all three guys, and Elizabeth, flip the cameras off again. Kendall bumps into me lightly.

"Hey," she says. My heart starts racing, and I want to slap myself. I can have a normal conversation with an attractive person. I don't have to make this weird.

"Hey."

"So where should we hold these meetings? I was thinking daily, but that would only be three and I'm not sure if that's enough to solve this escape room of a house." Her big green eyes stared down at me.

"I haven't seen many of the rooms yet... I'm not sure. Somewhere mysterious, probably? Makes for a good show."

"That sounds good. And you're totally right; the better of a show we give them, the more they'll help us. I don't think the puzzles are automatic, I'm pretty sure they control them."

"What makes you say that?" I ask, intrigued.

"We can talk about that later. But for now, here." She pulls a piece of thick paper out from under her shirt and shows it to me. It's a map of all three floors of the Shattering House, and upon further inspection, I see that it's not paper at all, but a thin sheet of glass with a screen. The ground floor is shaded gray with a lock, like a level on a game before it's unlocked. But the top and middle floors are colored. All of our rooms were mapped out, with a sitting room and access to a staircase on the top floor. The bottom and top floors were slightly bigger than the first two. The middle floor had about six or seven rooms, all individually with a lock, except for the dining room. Kendall taps on a few of the blocked rooms, and a pop-up comes up, reading the same for each one. Enter this room to unlock it.

"So, I guess we have some exploring to do," she says with a sly smile. I go to respond but I find myself staring at her for a few seconds too long. She stands two or three inches taller than me but seemed even taller last night with her four-inch heels. She was incredibly smart, too. I had seen her levels for her EduPulse curriculum at school. She was hundreds of levels higher than everyone else. Too many factors reminded me that I've had a crush on her for years.

Jack's boisterous voice ripped me back to reality. "Here's the first room."

"Allow me," I said, stepping in front of him and pulling on the metal handle to open the heavy wood door. A huge library filled with dozens of shelves with hundreds of books and tables and cases with ridiculously complicated machinery.

"Damn," Kendall said. "This is going to take a while."