Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Five.
"I'm going to fuck every hole you have until you forget your own name."
Six.
"Until the only word left in that pretty head is Master."
Seven.
My breathing is ragged now, each inhale catching in my throat like a sob. The blindfold presses against my closed eyes. The darkness is absolute. The voice is everything.
"Until you understand that you were made to be mine."
Eight.
I stop.
The air feels different here. Heavier. The bamboo walls must be close on either side—I can sense them even without seeing, the way the sound of my own breathing changes in the enclosed space.
"Good girl."
The praise hits my clit like a physical touch.
"But before you can become mine, you must prove yourself worthy."
Worthy.
The word echoes through four years of shame and longing and desperate late-night writing sessions. The word I gave to Helix. The word I made Lyra earn through blood, and come, and terror.
My whole body is trembling.
"Ready, little slut?"
I nod, even though he can't see me. Even though maybe he can. Even though I don't know anything anymore except that I want this.
I need this.
The silence stretches for one heartbeat. Two.
Then he screams it:
"RUN, LITTLE SLUT! FIFTEEN STRIDES!"
A growl explodes through the earbuds—guttural, inhuman, close—and I'm running before my brain catches up to my legs, counting strides through the darkness, heart slamming against my ribs, the monster's snarl chasing me through my skull.
I run.
Not the clumsy, terrified scramble I expected—something else. Something that feels like flying through darkness, my feet finding the powdery earth with impossible certainty.
My brain is counting, but my body already knows. Already remembers.
The walls brush my shoulders—I feel them, the rough bamboo catching briefly on my skin as I squeeze through. Exactly how I wrote it. Exactly how Lyra did it.
"Ten strides left, little slut."
His voice fills my skull, but I'm already adjusting my trajectory. Already angling left for the gentle curve that leads to the second corridor.
He replicated it.
He fucking replicated it.
Every measurement. Every turn. Every goddamn stride count from a story I wrote.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
The growling in my ears shifts. Hungrier. Wetter. Snarling like it wants to eat me.
Ten.
Something sharp catches my hip just as the masked man's voice yells, "Five strides right!"
I gasp—a high, startled sound that doesn't feel like it belongs to me—and my stride falters. The sting is immediate, bright, real. Not theatrical. Not pretend.
Blood. I can feel it. A thin line of warmth sliding down my thigh.
It cut me.
A claw. An actual fucking claw.
Of course it cut you, Scarletta. This is Max Fear Factor. This is the real deal. This is—
Thirteen.
Shit! I was supposed to turn!
I just keep running, desperately trying to map the maze in my head as, again, something snags my skin!
My thigh this time. I scream, it hurts!
What the fuck!
The first capture doesn't happen until—
I slip on something—mud! Why is it muddy? There's no mud! A moment later, I'm on the ground, face first. Dirt in my teeth.
The snarling in my ears is so loud, the fall so unexpected, the pain in my hip so real—I… I can't do this!
I rip the blindfold off, and find… nothing.
Nothing behind me. Nothing in front of me.
It's just me in this mud and… I look down.
My brain stutters for a moment. Because there's something wrong with it. Something very, very wrong with it.
It looks like… blood.
I look at my hip, my thigh—blood is flowing out. It's trickling down both sides of my leg.
But… it's a trickle and the blood underneath me is… a puddle.
Slowly, I turn my head.
And I scream…
Because on the ground, in his own puddle of blood, is the face of the blonde attendant, blue eyes open, his body… no where to be found.
I scream—a raw, throat-tearing sound that echoes through the maze—and in the exact same heartbeat, I register movement behind me. Too close. Too fast.
Before I can even think to scramble away, thick fingers tangle violently in my hair, yanking hard enough that white spots burst across my vision. The pain is instant and electric, radiating from my scalp down my spine.
Then I'm being dragged.
I'm hauled backward like a sack, my heels scraping uselessly against the earth as whoever has me pulls me down the narrow path. My fingers claw at the ground, trying to find purchase, trying to stop this, but there's nothing to grab onto except slick mud and the rough edge of bamboo that tears at my palms.
"This isn't how it happens!" I scream, my voice cracking with hysteria. The words tear out of me, desperate, pleading. "This isn't how it goes! Red!" I shriek it like a prayer, like an incantation that might somehow undo whatever nightmare I've stumbled into. "Red, red, red!"
My captor's response is immediate and brutal—a bare foot slams into my ribs, knocking the air from my lungs in a painful whoosh. The impact sends me rolling sideways into the mud, and for a second all I can do is gasp like a fish on land, trying to remember how to breathe.