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Chapter 1
DAHLIA
This made no sense. I’d found myself in a dream. A nightmare was more accurate. With a sigh bordering on a sob, I ran my fingers through the fake grass beneath me. The plastic, plantlike blades dug into my knees through my sweatpants.
It had looked so real, vibrant, and welcoming. It had been freedom, or at least I’d thought it was.
"What’s happening?" Bri shouted, her voice fragile, ready to crack.
With a glance, I took in the mansion that, until a few moments ago, had been our prison with pale yellow paint and navy accents around the boarded-up windows. Hell, there was even a goddamned porch swing hanging on the front porch. The fucking thing looked quaint and unassuming. No one, not a single person on earth, would believe the awful things that had happened inside that building.
Payton bumped into me, almost sending me sprawling on the fake grass. He wandered in circles, clutching his head as he stared at massive metal walls that rose up and surrounded us.
"How can it be this big? How is this possible?" He muttered the same two questions over and over, more to himself than to any of us.
They were good questions. The mansion itself was huge. The biggest house I’d ever been in with tons of space, at least two dozen rooms, some of which I still hadn’t seen the inside of. Yet this thing around us was easily the largest structure I’d ever been in. The metallic roof sat a hundred feet above us, easily forty or fifty feet beyond the roof of the mansion. The walls vanished behind the fake shrubbery and trees, but it had to be at least twice as wide and three times as long. Two huge support beams descending from the roof. The beams vanished behind the roof of the house, obviously attached to the ground at the rear of the building.
Drake grabbed one of the branches on a fake tree and yanked it hard. The limb tore off in his hand, snapping off from the trunk.
"Plastic," he announced. "A bit of wood too. Leaves are silk or something. The shit’s realistic as hell."
"Okay, sure," Liam said. "It’s fake, but we got out. Right? I mean, we aren’t getting shocked. That has to mean we escaped, doesn’t it? We need to find an exit and then we’re home free."
Drake glanced in my direction. He set his mouth in a thin line and shook his head. Sam’s plan was still in effect. We’d thought we’d broken it, destroyed his game, and shattered his dollhouse. Little had we known, our captor was far more terrifying and resourceful than we’d thought.
"Maybe Liam’s right," Elise said. "Let’s look around. Maybe there’s a garage door or vent access. Something we can use to get out?"
"Worth a shot," Drake said, but his heart wasn’t in it.
"All right. Let’s stay close though," I said with a grunt as I stood.
"Are you my boss?" Bri snapped at me. "I’ll go with who the fuck I want to."
"Chill," Elise said. "We’re all stressed. Do you really want to wander off alone? Who the fuck knows what you might find in here?"
Bri spun in a circle, arms out, gesturing at everything. "It’s full of goddamned potted plants, Elise. That’s what’s in here. Can’t you see that? Sam was fucking with us the whole time. We aren’t getting out."
"Shut up," Drake said. He didn’t yell or snap at her. Instead, it was calm, almost quiet, but firm. It was enough to get Bri to clamp her mouth shut. "We explore the perimeter. Elise is right. We need to look for some way to escape. We need to hurry before Sam does something to punish us."
The group, myself included, went deadly silent at his words. We’d all seen what Sam was capable of when it came to punishment. This was far more serious than talking out of turn, refusing to do a job, or even directly disobeying Sam. We’d broken out of the house. We’d attempted to run away and escape his control. If there was one thing I’d learned about the sick fuck who ran this place, control was everything to him. The punishment would be severe, to say the least. In all honesty, I doubted we’d survive whatever he planned for us.
"Hurry. Let’s see what we can find," Drake said.
The group fell in line, following him. I positioned myself near him, wanting nothing more than to have his quiet confidence rub off on me. Drake led us through the thick fake foliage to the exterior wall. The number of fake plants was almost mind-boggling. Sam had done all he could to ensure the outside looked as real as possible. Had he known we’d get glimpses from time to time? Even with the windows boarded up and painted black?
Drake pressed his hand to the metal wall. "Hot. Must be daytime outside. Sun’s beating down on the metal, heating it up."
"So?" Bri asked. "Who the hell cares about that?"
"Because," Payton said. "It means that beyond this wall is the actual outside. We won’t be stuck in another building like a damned Russian nesting doll."
"A what?" Bri asked, frowning at him.
"Never mind," Payton muttered, shaking his head wearily.
The fear of Sam’s reprisals spurred us to move faster. Bri, Elise, and Liam hurried ahead of Payton, Drake, and me. They stayed within view, checking the ground for hatches or maintenance accesses. We ran our hands along the wall as we went, looking for seams or doors. It was darker than I wanted it to be. A large row of fluorescent lights hung high up on the roof, but the light wasn’t bright enough to illuminate everything beneath the faux canopy of trees and bushes. The shadows and dim light made the search more difficult than it should have been.
A few minutes into our search, Elise screamed out in surprise. "A door. I found a door."
