Rat Race (Devil’s Playground #2)

15. Cam

Cam

What if she’s telling the truth?

W ith Aubrey safely out of the way, I turned my attention back to Ella.

The walls closed around us to form a box, the opening that'd been created closin’ as quickly as it'd been made. No way out, and with a girl crazier than a bed bug with a knife at my back, I knew I only had one chance at this.

One chance to win. One chance to make it out alive.

One chance to make the Church proud. To make me proud. If I succeed in this I’d finally prove im not a failure. That I can live up to my family name.

I turned, lungin’ for the knife in Ella's hand. She lashed out with the blade, laying a heavy slash to my forearm that was absolutely going to fuck up one of my favorite tattoos.

Fucking cunt.

But a little scratch wasn't gonna deter me. I caught her arm, stalling another pass and more damage, strikin’ her wrist against the stone wall. The knife clattered to the floor as she gasped, her look of determination cracking into fear as my booted foot went over the weapon, dragging it closer to me.

Ella shook off my grip, divin’ for the weapon, but I was too fast, bending to pick it up fluidly, the tip of the weapon instantly pressed to her jugular as I crowded her back against the wall.

She thought she was going up against a rookie.

As if I hadn’t spent my entire fuckin’ life preparing for this. As if my family wasn’t known as big player killers every time they stepped foot onto the island.

Her breaths came in panicky pants, desperate tears forming in her eyes.

A test , my mind warned. She looked pitiful. She looked scared.

It looked real enough to make my heart twist.

But I knew better now. I knew I had to end this.

“P-please! I wasn't going to actually kill you! You've gotta know that! Cam, I trust you. You trust me. We're a team!”

“Is that right?” I teased, the events of the last few hours rolling through my mind like tumbleweeds in the desert. The picture painting itself in waves of fury, like a late summer sunset—blood red. "Because the way I see it, you've been getting fat as a tick on my hard work, waiting for a moment to get rid of me so you could get to the end. Let me believe you were loyal so I’d help your worthless ass."

“C-Cam, no!” she begged, her voice cracking on a sob. “Please, please! You don't understand!”

Like hell I don’t understand. This place is my whole fuckin’ life!

“Please spare me the fuckin’ waterworks, darlin'. You signed up. You chose to be here just like I did. I don’t care what your reason?—”

“I didn't sign up!" Ella shouted, fat tears rolling down her splotchy, red face. "I didn't choose this! Why would anyone choose this hell?”

Is she joking?

Devil's Playground got away with many things. Murder being the biggest. And all because people gave their consent. They signed up for their own murder and for it to be televised. All for the chance of winning big at the end.

I reared back with a laugh. “Ella, ain’t no use in lyin’ to me. Of course you signed up. I reckon you’re regrettin’ it now that it’s gotten ugly. But you signed on the dotted line like everyone else.”

“Cam, I swear, I didn’t. I never wanted to be here. I fucked up, but I wouldn’t ever choose to be here.”

Now, wasn’t that a likely story? Preying on my sensibility, my natural lenience.

I almost felt proud, and I knew Ma would love it. She always did favor social strategy over just plain killin’.

But it was a bunch of poppycock. It was a core element of the Games, the most basic rule. We all made the call to be here. Signed up with your own pen to the paper. Read the contracts. Knew what we were gettin' into. Fame, fortune, and death. Whatever the outcome—it was our choice.

It was always the player's choice.

“C’mon, you gotta be able to come up with a better lie than that, Ella. This is just really fuckin’ sad.”

“I'm not lying!” she insisted, her dark eyes meeting mine angrily. “Why the fuck would I sign up to be hunted like an animal?”

“Well, technically, you didn’t,” I corrected in a drawl. “That’d be Hide N’ Seek. You signed up to run a maze. Just so happens?—”

“I didn't sign up!” she screamed, her tears dripping from her chin.

I pressed the tip of the blade against her jugular.

It’d be so fuckin’ easy to kill her right now. Take her life for makin’ a fool outta me.

Make a show of it , Pa crooned lovingly in my ear.

But I wasn’t no PKer. I wouldn’t do it. And there was just something about the way she mentioned fucking up that had me pausing.

It’s a test, my mind reminded me. But even so, it would be a disservice for me to not at least try and see how far this test would go.

“Alright, yeah, let’s pretend I believe you. If you didn't sign up, how is it that you managed to get through the door? You had to sign the contracts. Go through the physical. The prep tent.”

Her eyes narrowed at me.

“I’m a felon,” she spat. “My options were to either rot in prison or try and change my circumstances."

Prison? For some reason, Ella didn’t seem like much of a criminal to me. Sure, she might have been trying to plot my murder the entire time, but that was inside the game. Outside the walls of Devil’s Playground?

I couldn’t quite make heads or tails of it.

"That doesn't make any fucking sense, Ella," I admitted.

"I got caught, okay? B and E, not supposed to be a big deal, skateboarding with my friends, but the school they were building wasn't done on the second level and we didn't know that security guard was there and?—"

"What did they charge you with?"

I didn’t want to waste precious time. Each moment I stood there with Ella was another moment keeping me away from the finish line.

And another minute separated from Aubrey.

"Manslaughter."

Okay, maybe that made more sense.

"Fitting," I said bitterly. "Given you're a PKer too."

“Not yet,” she said breathlessly, her eyes darting from mine to the knife pressed against her throat. "But I’ll do whatever I fucking have to to get out of here.”

“You’re unbelievable,” I muttered.

“And you're no better,” she spat out, her voice raising with a twinge of desperation added to it. “What's the difference between dying here at your hands or in a fucking cell? At least down here I had a chance to try and earn my freedom."

"Stop lying!" I shouted, pullin’ the knife back a little so I could slam her into the wall, knocking the air clear out of her lungs.

I am better! Even if the darkness wanted me to end it all, I wouldn’t be like them.

Ella spluttered and coughed, nearly doubling over if it wasn't for the threat of the blade keeping her upright. "I'm not lying!" she said yet again. "This shit is fucked up. I don't want to hurt anyone. I didn't even want to hurt you!"

Pain like a migraine was starting to make the vision in my left eye spotty, Pa's voice in my head getting louder—more insistent.

Kill her, go on. Make a show of it, Camilla, he sneered, that pulsing pressure making it hard to focus.

It would be so easy. So fuckin' easy.

As quick as snapping her neck. I wouldn't even need to use the knife. She says she was in prison for manslaughter, but her body didn’t show any of the hardness someone in prison should have. It would take mere seconds, and her life would be slippin’ from her cold, dead fingers.

But that wouldn't be making a show of it. Naw, she needed to suffer.

Ella'd betrayed me after all. She was going to hurt me. Probably would hurt Aubrey as well. Even after all the time it took me to help her through the maze… none of it mattered.

Not to her.

Not to me.

Betrayal meant punishment. It meant getting even. It meant showing the world that I wasn’t one to play with. But a tiny, oddly muffled voice whispered, What if she's tellin' the truth?

I reckoned that if Ella hadn't signed up to play the Devil's Playground willingly… that changed everything. It was one thing if we were all on the same playing field, so to speak, chosen for ourselves to be here knowing the risk that we'd never walk back out.

If Ella was telling the truth and she'd been forced to sign up… Only the good Lord was able to judge her for what she did in order to survive. Now, that didn't exempt her from consequences . She'd still tried to make a fool out of me. Threatened Aubrey.

Naw, now that was something I couldn't just forgive… or forget.

That deserved a bit of penance.

"Alright," I said slowly, watching relief flood her features. "I won't kill you."

Feeble, half-trembling words of gratitude spilled from her lips between sobs as I pulled the knife away. The girl relaxed, a big mistake on her part. It left her open to my attack.

Without warning, I kicked her leg out toward me, making her catch her balance with it outstretched. I reared back, stomping down on her shin with all the strength I had, snapping the frail bones with a sickening crunch.

Ella screamed, falling to the ground, clutching her destroyed leg.

I brought my tracker close to my face, ready to scroll through the comments and take suggestions on how I should punish her. But I was met with something I’d never seen before.

In the top corner, where my view count should have been… there was a big red zero.

What the actual ? —

I didn’t know it was possible for me to get angrier until that moment. Heat rushed over me, flushing my face and entire body. It had my head spinning and my muscles seizing.

They shut my stream off. This wasn’t the first time it happened in Devil’s Playground. They did it whenever it suited them.

But it was the first time it ever happened to a Weston.

Not only had she tried to kill me, but because of her, my views were zero! The whole world would miss out on what it meant to punish those who'd wronged me. I would never get my redemption.

Maybe you should kill her because of that, a voice whispered. An even better punishment.

But the other nagging voice was back. The one that told me the Architects wouldn’t have shut off my views if they wanted the world to see what was happening.

They didn’t want them to know.

I pushed all those thoughts to the back, not willing to go down the rabbit hole they threatened to take me.

Regardless, she still needs to learn her lesson.

I leaned down close to her face, my lip curled in anger. "Now we're even, darlin'. Play hard. Win, win."