Rat Race (Devil’s Playground #2)

14. Aubrey

Aubrey

I’ll see you on the outside.

I fucking knew that bitch was up to something!

Should’ve trusted my gut and killed her as soon as I’d seen that stupid water bottle touch her lips. Thirsty? As if. I’d watched enough K-dramas in my day to know an indirect kiss when I saw one.

Fucking. Bullshit.

I’d tried to warn Cam, tried to tell them that she was a no-good snake, but damn, they just did not want to believe that Ella was someone trying to actively harm them. The annoying bitch played off the ditzy bimbo shtick even better than I did.

And now this.

I heard it before I saw it. The freeze in the surrounding air. The intake of breath from Cam. Fuck, I could even taste their rage.

My eyes were still glued to the silvery blade pressed against Cam’s back as they stood locked in place beside their should-be friend. This entire time, she had been sneakily waiting for her chance to take us down.

And now she has it.

Maybe she had enough of us almost dying and wanted to end things herself. People do crazy things for money.

I didn’t know what she wanted the prize money for, or why she entered the Games. But she was the weakest type of Runner.

Yet the most conniving.

I should’ve killed her when I had the chance, I thought savagely, taking a chance at another small step forward—anything that would get me closer to them. In range to actually help.

Not that I was sure how I was going to do that, exactly. But I needed to think of something. I had never before felt panic the way I did when Cam was threatened.

I’ve always been the person that got things done. Everything was always under my control. I was able to do anything. Be anything. And I never even had to think about it.

But her taking Cam away washed every ounce of confidence I had from me.

The urge to act was so strong it overpowered me in a way I never expected.

My feet froze in place as Ella reached into the wall, panic killing my voice in my throat.

A trap?! What kind of coward uses a trap to kill somebody instead of doing it themselves?

There was a low, grumbling rumble, the floor under my feet quaking and making the water from the shallow pool lap against the stony edge. Shaking hard enough that I lost my balance, stumbling forward and having to catch myself on my hands, scraping them on the rough ground.

The world slowed down around me as my panic became horror. She wasn't trying to kill Cam with a trap at all.

She was separating us.

The walls all around us began to move and change, cracking in half before burrowing up into the ceiling. To my right and left, where there were once dead ends, long hallways opened, offering a view into new areas—and revealing Runners whose faces matched my own confusion and horror as they attempted to dodge walls and new obstacles.

The thoughts came in quick succession.

The maze is resetting.

If we aren’t careful, she’ll crush us.

Fuck, I didn’t realize anyone had managed to catch up.

I pushed myself back up, using the force to propel myself forward toward the grate as the metal bars began to move toward the ceiling again, blocking me from entering the hall. My body made contact with the solid grate, cursing loudly as I reached an arm through the bars.

The coldness and pain from the earlier rooms hit me like a truck. It stifled my movements. Had my hands shaking.

Cam was so close, Ella at their back with the tip of the knife poised upwards, the pair of them watching as I struggled to get the stupid grate to move. Not that any of the rattling I was doing did any fucking good.

“Aubrey, babygirl, it’s okay,” Cam said tightly, taking in a sharp breath as the knife pricked in deeper. “I’ll see you on the outside.”

Their face was pinched, anxious, but their voice? All luxuriously calm. Even in a situation like this, they were looking out for others—for me.

Why ?

I’d expected to see the sharp-nosed little fuckhead beside them smiling, gloating that she’d managed to pull one over on us. But the rat wasn't smiling. If anything, she looked worried—maybe even a bit fearful.

Good, I thought savagely. She fucking should be .

I was going to tear her fucking head off.

Starting by ripping out those ugly, ratty extensions she was trying to pass off as her own hair. There was a reason I wouldn’t let the half-cracked stylists they’d hired touch me.

“If you hurt them,” I called to Ella, making her pale, blotchy face lose even more color. “I’ll make sure you wish you’d never been born!”

She gasped softly, tongue snaking out to lick her lips anxiously. It was nice to know my threats still had some weight despite me looking like a drowned rat. Like Ella was panicking even though she was the one with the upper hand.

The girl who was taking Cam away from me .

Running in my heavy, clunky platforms was a sport in and of itself, but nothing was going to stop me from going after that bitch. Nobody touched what belonged to me.

“You bitch! You think I'll stop when you’re dead?!”

The words that were racing through my head were spilling from my lips before I could stop them.

“I’ll cut that pretty hair off! Slit your throat! Smash your head in! You’re parents won’t even recgonize the mush of bone and flesh they drop at their doorstep!”

My anger and bloodthirst were renewed, all of the venom and spite I’d reserved for Natalie finding a new target in Ella. I saw images of her violent death flashing across my mind over and over again. Oh, what I wouldn’t have given in that moment for my bat to crush her useless, conniving skull in.

Cam watched with wide eyes, the reality of their situation finally dawning on them—that their bestie was going to kill them. And there was nothing that either of us could do about it.

The rest of the hallway was sealed with a stone wall, cutting off my view of Cam, and I jerked into motion, my boots pounding against the concrete beneath my feet as I threw myself into the closest tunnel, trying to follow it to get as close to them as I could.

My heart was racing in my chest, the adrenaline pumping straight into my veins—but that wasn’t the only thing pushing me forward. Forcing me to ignore the aches and pains of the drop or the discomfort of my blistered heels.

Excitement licked through me, accompanied by its favorite companion— rage.

Excitement because I’d finally be able to kill her. This time I knew Cam wouldn’t try and stop me. Not now that they’d seen her for exactly what she was—a dirty, scheming rat. A fucked-up leech with no shot of winning the Games on her own that’d attached herself to a much bigger, more effective predator.

And rage… It made my eyes prick with bitter, overly salinized tears. How fucking dare she try to kill them? Cam’s life was mine — they were mine —and I liked them exactly the way they were, thank you very much.

And then there was something else… Something hard to identify. An emotion that had me sick to my stomach and my heart aching.

It hurt. Knowing that they could be in real trouble.

I hadn’t known them for long but in the time I did, they burrowed themselves inside me. Akin to a parasite. They changed my thoughts. Twisting them until they were all about them. Until I longed to always be next to them. Until I felt real fear and panic at the loss of their presence.

The ground jerked under me, slowing my progress as I slipped. My eyes fell to the stones where they’d cracked, shooting across the space between me and the next corridor.

I screamed in frustration, jumping up onto the rapidly rising bit of stone, only to realize that the ceiling was also beginning to descend. I needed to move fast if I wanted to avoid being crushed to death.

“Aubrey!” Cam’s anxious voice cut through the buzzing in my ears as I scrambled over the stonework, barely rolling over the lip and onto the other side before the two pieces connected with an angry grinding noise that let me know I was very nearly just made into an extremely good-looking pancake.

I righted myself, brushing some pebbles from my scratched-up knee, just in time to watch another set of walls begin to close.

Fear.

Cam was on the other side of the descending walls, and at the rate they were moving… I wouldn’t make it.

All thoughts of killing the rat left my mind. Killing can wait, I need to get to her.

I jerked into motion, but I was too slow.

The walls slammed together, and the last thing I saw was Cam’s shocked face as Ella approached them from behind, the knife clutched in her trembling hand.

I slammed my fist on the wall once, twice, a third time, and hard enough to draw blood.

“Cam! I’m coming! Cam !”

I could hear something from the other side, but it was no use. The stone was too thick to hear anything substantial over my own panicked breathing.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

I’d been so close!

But I wasn’t alone. The wall closing had produced a T in the road, and my head swiveled to meet the eyes of a pair of surprised feminine Runners, looking just as lost as I felt.

I cursed under my breath and decided to go right down the long hallway, away from the two. The last thing I needed was to get into a fight with no weapon in hand. It was the best I could do, taking the next left to try and circle the box that held the single most important person in my life.

I’d just have to hope that when I found my way in, I wouldn’t be too late.

Hang on, cowboy. I’m coming.