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Drake and I rushed toward the sound of her voice; Payton followed behind slower. After Drake pushed aside a heavy fake dogwood, the other group came into view. A little flutter of excitement trickled through me, almost tingling. The door was a garage door, built into the side of the structure. There was nothing special about it. It looked exactly like what you’d see on a garage out in the real world.
"Can you open it?" Drake asked as we joined them at the door.
"It’s too heavy," Bri said.
Liam nodded and kicked the door. "Yeah, we tried, but the fucking thing weighs a ton."
Drake squatted down, took hold of the handle at the bottom, and lifted. His face immediately went red with exertion, veins bulging on his muscular arms and across his neck. With his lips peeled back, he grunted as he strained harder to move the door. His knuckles had turned white from the pressure on his hand when he finally released it.
"Damn," he gasped. "These are heavy, but not that heavy." He pointed up at the top of the door. "That spring is supposed to assist with lifting if there’s no motor. It’s locked from the outside. Has to be."
"So we’re still fucked," Bri said, standing off to the side, hugging herself.
Drake shrugged helplessly. "Possibly."
The honesty wasn’t comforting. "Let’s keep looking. Maybe there’s something Sam forgot to lock up. He can’t have thought of everything."
We never got the chance to learn if my words were true. Before anyone else could respond to my plea, an ear splitting alarm erupted from the house. The cacophony was so intense I clamped my hands to my ears. Whoop-whoop-whoop. The sound continued over and over.
"What does it mean?" Payton screamed over the noise.
As an answer, our bracelets buzzed. The six of us, all flinched in surprise. No. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be free. The unfairness almost made me want to cry. A message appeared on the device:
Return to the house.
The others, seeing the order, turned to head back to our prison. Drake took my hand, ready to lead me away along with the rest of them. I yanked my fingers from him.
"We can’t," I screamed, raising my voice to be heard above the alarm. "I won’t go. We have to get out of here."
Drake grabbed my hand again and pulled me close. "There’s nothing more we can do. All he’ll do is shock you until you can’t even stand. He’ll knock you out and drag your ass back there anyway. Is that what you want?"
Another buzz jolted through my arm, this time it was painful. I gasped and glanced at it. There was no additional message. All that was on the screen were numbers. A countdown:
29…28…27…26…
What happened when it got to zero? There was only one answer. Punishment. I didn’t believe for a second that it would be as easy as a jolt either. The numbers clicked away ominously. The other four had already broken into a run and headed back to the house.
As little as I wanted to obey, there was no time to do anything else. If I didn’t move my ass, I was dead, and I hadn’t survived everything this far to die because of something this dumb.
Drake tugged at my arm again, and this time I followed. Even without looking at the device, the countdown bore down on me, an almost suffocating weight as we ran. We crashed out of the fake forest and back into the front yard. I gave the device one more glance as we sprinted toward the porch:
12…11…10…
Taking my eyes off the ground to check the time was stupid. No sooner had I seen the countdown than my feet got tangled together. I fell, and skidded painfully on the fake grass. Drake, thinking I was right behind him, kept going, sprinting to the front door.
Payton, already inside, screamed and pointed at me. "Drake, help Dahlia."
Scrambling to my feet, I watched Drake lurch to a stop and turn. He was mere feet from safety, but when he saw me out there, struggling to get up, He didn’t hesitate, he ran back to me, put his arms beneath my shoulders and dragged me to the porch.
"Two seconds," Elise shouted. "Hurry."
Drake basically threw me into the house, heaving me with his arms and twisting to toss me further with his hip. I yelped and tumbled into the foyer like a bundle of sticks, rolling and coming to rest beside the shattered remnants of the wall we’d destroyed earlier. Drake leaped through the door as it slammed shut. I gasped at the violence with which the door closed. Like a stone slab falling into place on an ancient tomb, I had no doubt the thing would have cut his leg in half if he’d been a moment slower. The entire room shuddered with the impact.
With the door closed and locked the ear splitting siren blessedly stopped, but the silence that followed was almost more uncomfortable. All I could hear were the gasps, sobs, and curses of the others.
"We’re dead. We are fucking dead," Bri muttered to herself. She sat, back against the wall, hugging her knees.
"We don’t know that," Liam said. "Punished, sure, but maybe not dead."
