The Wheel

70. Sam

Silence. An absolute silence. No breathing. No crying. No screaming. It's either too quiet in this room or too loud.

Chris' furious gaze is directed at me: it's like there is an invisible chain, hanging on his neck that stops him from shredding me to pieces. What's really holding him back? For a moment he looks at my feet: yeah, he's waiting for the screen to go back up again so that he would take the gun. There are Emma and Veronica next to him: these two have no chance of holding him when his 'invisible chains' break.

Mike is standing behind me – he moves toward me to defend me.

"Mr. High, go back to your place!" Ayama demanded.

Mike couldn't help growling and hitting the wall.

"We can work something out," I started talking to Chris. "What was in the video doesn't mean anything. We all changed after we'd spun the wheel. I don't want to kill you, I swear!"

The crazy man laughed angrily, not averting his gaze from mine.

"In the video everybody said what they meant," he replied, grinning. "Except I said I was a happy person, while you were complaining about your problems and how special you all are! And Veronica. The wheel didn't change your mind about killing me."

Chris continued laughing angrily: he went nuts; he knew everybody wanted him dead. I take a breath and hear the screens diverging overhead and the gun falls down. Having taken a breath, I understand what's going on and catch the deadly weapon.

"Aaaaaah!" this psycho screams.

Chris ran to my side, I lost my balance and the gun fell on the floor.

"I deserve to live!" he yelled. "You don't!"

"Chris, stop!" Emma screamed pleadingly. "Stop!"
"Someone's life is going to stop in a second!" the psycho yelled, strangling me.

I try to reach the gun, but don't succeed. Mike runs to get Chris off me, but gets hit in the neck.

"Don't come closer!" he shouted.

The guys try to attack him, but Chris hits me in the face, takes the gun and presses himself to the wall. The pain made me feel dizzy.

"Get two meters away from me!" he started threatening with the gun. "You set it all up to humiliate me! You envied me! Yeah, that's right, you chipped in and built this room!"

"Chris, it's not true," Emma said. "We would never do that!"
"Shut your mouth, you 'dissolute innocent nun'! Shut up all of you!"

Chris pointed the gun at me and I felt cold all over my body.

"You, Sam, equipped the room," he declared, "you know something about information security, seal laptops' cameras and so on: you only use secured messengers to talk to us, you don't like social networks. Are you good at technologies, like Mike? You sometimes talk about new iPhones, upgrades of operating systems and other stuff. I guess the two of you decided what kind of TV screens would fit here the most!"

Then Chris pointed the gun at Kate.

"You didn't make much effort to pretend you loved me," he said angrily to his now ex-girlfriend, or the lover, to be exact, "I gave you money for shopping, we went to the fanciest restaurants... and that's how you thank me? You're such a bitch!"

Kate looked at him indifferently, and Chris' gun was now pointed at David.

"Someone said in the video that he wanted to be an architect! It means this someone knows a thing or two about construction, am I right?"