Watchers

Chapter 36: It's your lucky day

"Come on," Daniel says to Sasha. "First step, get into the Elimination Room. Next step, figure out how to get out of the room."

He goes around the table and takes up where he left off during the elimination, feeling and tapping on the walls in the hopes that a secret passage will make itself known. Sasha can't move from the door, though.

"Erica, can you hear me?" she asks, sliding down to the floor. "Everything's going to be okay. We're going to get out of here and find help, and then we'll come back for you. Just hang in there a little longer."

"She's not listening," Francie says through the door, and now that she's on the other side of an inch of dense wood, Sasha can hear that her tone isn't menacing. It's desperate. "You won't get out of here alive."

"Don't listen to her," Daniel growls from the opposite wall. "She's one of them."

"I'm not," Francie says. "Not really."

"Are you the spy or aren't you?" Sasha asks.

"I am," she says. "But it doesn't mean what you think. I do things that the producers can't because they're not in the house all the time, and in return they let me... they let me win. They offered me a way out of here, and the money. I couldn't refuse, Sasha."

Her voice sounds watery with emotion and Sasha puts her hand on the door.

"She's lying to you," Daniel snaps. He's tapping all up and down one corner of the wall, inspecting it with intense interest as he calls over his shoulder, "She's trying to get us to come out so she doesn't get in trouble."

"It's too late for that," Francie says. "This door won't open again until they want it to. I tried to tell you but you wouldn't listen."

"You were chasing us," Daniel says, coming over to help Sasha back to her feet.

"I wasn't," Francie pleads. "I was trying to stop you from making a mistake."

"We'll see about that," Daniel says, taking Sasha's hand. "I found the door."

"You did?" Sasha asks, feeling hopeful for the first time in weeks.

"Don't," Francie begs. "You'll get killed."

Sasha brushes Daniel off for a moment, putting her mouth near the seam of the door so her voice will be clearer as she says, "Francie, look out for Erica. Take care of her - she's fragile."

"Look out for yourselves," Francie says, and Sasha hears the rustling of fabric as she scoops Erica off the floor and guides her away from the door.

Then Sasha turns to Daniel and asks, "You really found the door?"

"See for yourself," Daniel answers.

She follows him to the far corner, where there's an almost imperceptible seam in the drywall where the walls meet. There's another one cleverly disguised at the edge of the cabinetry, and Sasha begins to imagine herself outside of these four walls for the first time since they arrived.

"You did it," she says, smiling gratefully at Daniel.

It takes longer than she expected to get the door open. First he tries kicking it, and the sound that it makes does, indeed, imply that there's a hollow space behind it. But the hinges are on the wrong side and the door doesn't budge.

Then he pries it with his knife. He gets just enough leverage to slide the blade between the seams of the door, popping the latch from the back.

As the door swings open, Sasha is so excited that she nearly forgets that their journey isn't done yet. She throws her arms around Daniel's neck and kisses his cheek.

He doesn't return this affection, and after a moment she turns her head and notices why. On the other side of the door is an industrial elevator car waiting for them. It looks like something that would make an awful lot of noise and be pretty hard to miss suddenly springing into action in the middle of the night, but it's their only option.

"Damn," Daniel says, looking at a pair of round buttons on the wall. "I don't know how to operate something like this, and by the time I figure it out, they'll be waiting for us by the dozens down there."

"It's your lucky day," Sasha says. "I used to work in a factory. Let's get out of here."