Rat Race (Devil’s Playground #2)

22. Trix

Trix

Welcome, players, to Truth or Dare.

T ime always moved faster when it was the least convenient. Like a days somehow had a few hours less than I anticipated.

I ran into my room, locking the door behind me. Not that it would do my much good, the cheap stock door was hollow, the lock barely strong enough to hold up to a couple kicks. It’d be mere minutes until they were inside and forcing me to the ground. Still, the little action calmed me. There was a process to these things. An order.

I need to act fast.

My heart was pounding, making it difficult to concentrate. Beads of sweat dripped down the back of my neck and dampened the collar of my shirt, cooling steadily and leaving an unpleasant slick chilly feeling behind.

I took steady breaths, reminding myself that I knew what I was doing. I didn’t have to panic. I just had to do it.

But doing was the hardest part. I was a planner to my core. An over-analyzer. Better suited as the brainy computer loving side-kick than the sporty, go-getter hero.

And this ? It was the gamble of a fucking lifetime.

I rummaged through my dresser drawer, pulling out the repurposed altoid’s tin—covered in black duct tape and marked with a white paint marker with a skull and cross bones—and shoved it into my bra.

Was it totally necessary to make it aesthetic? No. Did I do it anyway? Yeah.

I’d been working on the damn thing for months, the least I could do was make it seem at least a little cool when I finally revealed it. Truth or Dare was a game as much as the others, and, if anything, it was even more focused on appearance.

My clothing was constricting, my breathing shallow as I fought to keep my cool. Turned out—much to my reluctant disapproval—that simply telling yourself to relax didn’t mean that your body would agree to.

I crossed the room to my desk, pulling out another small pack, which I put in my underwear. It was small enough that it would go unnoticed, even if they decided to strip me.

I just needed to be careful.

I got this. I’ve been over this a hundred times. No, a thousand. This shit was air tight. Foolproof.

A loud boom told me they’d already made it through the front door.

Showtime.

I pulled the top drawer open just slightly and left it there like a beacon to whomever would come search my room after I was gone. My laptop had already been wiped, but I made a show of smashing the screen anyway. Better they waste their time trying to get into it to find fuck all than actually determine what it was that I was trying to do.

And then I waited. The sound of thunderous footsteps coming up the stairs enough to drown out the blood rushing in my ears.

I counted the seconds in my head.

One.

Two.

Three.

Fou— BANG!

The door gave almost instantly. Not a surprise, but a bit of a bummer. I was hoping just for a little bit more time before the five men in black were filtering into my bedroom, hardly even glancing at the posters of scantily clad women lining my walls.

Click . The unmistakable noise of five loaded guns cocking as they were pointed at me should’ve been terrifying. Would’ve been, if I didn't know that the last thing they wanted to do was actually kill me.

Fuck, they came prepared.

Hands reached for me, masked faces blending together as I fought them, enough to seem like I was actually afraid. And, in part, I was . But not hard enough to warrant being knocked out.

I screamed, kicked and spat all the way downstairs and out of the empty house. Devoid of any furniture or personal items, save for my bedroom that I’d left as a sort of shrine.

Or maybe a serial killer’s murder room.

There was an unmarked van waiting for me, it’s sliding door swung wide into darkness.

Didn’t really matter who’d send these cunts anyway, they were either Devil’s Playground, Government or the Company.

If I was honest, it was the same monster in different clothes anyway.

Night had fallen, so there was no one out to watch as the men took me kicking and screaming out of my house. They could do what they wanted, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for them by going quietly. Not that it fucking mattered, the cowardly dickheads I called neighbors didn’t even have the guts to peek through their curtains.

I wanted them to. I wanted the whole world to see what they were doing. But that just wasn’t the neighborhood we lived in. Wasn’t the society we lived in. If anything, their eyes were probably glued to the screen to watch Hide n’ Seek.

The people around me were scared. Cowardly. They would never step in if they knew their lives were at risk. And for good reason, I guess. Most people weren’t into the idea of being forced into a murder game. Or prison.

Honestly, if I was given the choice, I didn’t know what I’d pick either.

Many of them vocally aired their disgust for the Games. But they were the same ones who watched it in their rooms at night when they thought no one knew. The glow of screens behind closed curtains told me that.

The men pushed me into the back of the van with so much force, I barely had a chance to hold my hands out to soften the blow. I tried to grab onto the opening, but they saw what I was doing and forced my hands to my side.

I’d expected the typical fabric or leather seats of a civilian vehicle, my back and hips aching as I was forced to sit on a cold, hard metal bench lining one side of the van, its twin sister against the opposite wall as hands forced me to stay put. Cold, metal snapped tightly around my wrists, the chain between them clipped to another that was bolted to the floor.

Fucking shit damn it.

With nowhere to go and no real chance of escape, I surveyed the people there, chest heaving with the effort to force air back into my lungs.

Turns out that screaming that long, while also fighting like hell was harder work than I thought.

Two helpers and one man off to the side. They were all wearing the same all-black outfits, like some type of wannabe SWAT team. Silver threading through the top of his rapidly thinning hair, a dinged up left ear that was missing a chunk from when it was grazed by a stray bullet in the maze— he was the obvious leader and a person I’d researched well.

Daimen Fox.

The other two were insignificant, bullet fodder on the off chance I’d decided to really try and fight my way out of this.

Daimen was an Architect for a while before he became an over compensated lapdog to the top of the top. He appeared to be as fit as his social media profiles boasted, but without the carefully selected filters and good lighting it was obvious that he was aging after so many years on the job. Wrinkles kissed the corners of his eyes, the dark circles under his eyes damn near purple.

He’d gotten complacent, thinking that some money and a nice title would save him from everything.

How fucking wrong he was. Cunt .

“Undress,” one of the helpers said.

“I have rights ?—”

“Not here, you don’t,” Daimen replied, his tone harsh. “You know what’s happening, don’t you?”

Yep, you’re taking me to partake in something I have no desire to be in.

Well, that was sort of a lie.

No, I didn’t want to play in the Games. But I needed to if I wanted to find my mom.

I knew after what she’d done that they’d come for me. It was the only logical next step. Didn’t make it any less annoying.

“Does your wife know what you’re doing tonight, James?” I asked one of the helpers. His eyes widened when he realized I knew his name. But that’s not all I knew. “You promised her you would quit. Begged her not to leave, even when you saw what it was doing to the kids. Yet you’re still here and Jenny has been, what? Kicked out of her fourth school, was it? Something about recreating Hide N’ Seek on the playground and bashing a kid’s skull in?—”

“Are you done playing?” Daimen asked in a pitiful attempt to regain my attention. “We really don’t have time for this.”

James remained quiet, his face turning red in uneven blotches. The truth was his wife did know what he was doing tonight and was quietly packing up the kids to go spend a nice long trip at her parents’ cabin up in some remote woodsy area this dickhead didn’t even know the name of.

Real bummer. Almost as much of a bummer as having to leave the house that’d become my temporary home. It wasn’t mine, exactly. But it wasn’t not mine either, if you gave a fuck about squatters rights.

“Aw, c’mon Damien. I hadn’t even gotten to Walter’s gambling addiction,” I said with an exaggerated pout, hooking my thumb towards him the best I could while cuffed to the floor. It wasn’t as interesting as James’s situation for sure, but Walter owed the wrong people way too much money, and they were considering holding his dog captive until he paid it back.

I might’ve thought Marley and Me was a drag, but it didn’t mean I was heartless.

Another bummer, really.

Besides, Walter was a total loner—not a shock given his horrifying internet search history—and didn’t have much besides his little tan pug.

“How is Tank by the way?” I asked him, almost cracking a smile at the way his jaw clenched.

Daimen raised an eyebrow at me. “You really think this will save you?”

“No, what I think is that it’s stupid as fuck to put me in the Games with what I know,” I answered, shifting on my seat in a futile attempt to try and get more comfortable.

For a second, Daimen looked like he might actually agree with me.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he warned.

“And you,” I said and slid across the bench so I was closer to him, my arms extended awkwardly with the chain. “When you go home to your wife, don’t forget to ask her if you’ve ever made her come as hard as I did.” His face twisted in anger and this time I didn’t bite my smile back. “What, you think those three-hour salon trips were really to do her hair? Three hours on a bob, Daimen. Really ?”

Sharon wasn’t really my type, but damn did that woman love to talk during her post orgasm cigarette.

There was a long moment of silence and I could practically hear the steam building up inside him.

“End this.”

The helpers lunged at me, taking their chance to bend me to their will.

But it was too late.

A loud boom burst from outside the van. The shock of it was so strong that it had the van turning on its side.

Expecting the impact, I braced myself for the turn and, as soon as I could, had the picks I’d stowed under my tongue out to pop the locks on the handcuffs. Seven seconds later, I was pushing the back doors open and scrambling outside.

An intense, red fire licked at the sky met by a cloud of ash and smoke. My temporary home in flames due to the explosive I’d hidden in my desk drawer. All I needed was someone just curious enough to open it.

Sucked to be them.

No doubt an explosion that powerful would’ve killed anyone unlucky enough to be inside.

I reveled in the image. Let myself feel the swell of pride from killing the bastards that’d taken the only person I loved.

But it wasn’t long until a body collided with mine and I was wrestled to the ground.

This time, they didn’t hesitate to knock me out.

By the time I came to again, my head was pounding. My mouth was dry, body threatening to sink down to the floor from my slumped seated position.

The world was.. Blurry. And not in the way I would’ve expected from a concussion.

Fucking assholes. They’d drugged me after they knocked me out.

A disadvantage, but nothing I couldn’t work with.

I blinked rapidly, trying to chase away the darkness that permeated the edges of my vision, but the involuntary fish-eye effect never left. Only when I heard shuffling next to me and I turned my head to chase it did I realize that the room we were in was pitch black.

To my side, I could make out some shadows. And then slowly, one by one, the masks of each contestant lit up. There were twenty of them in total.

When my mask finally turned on, bright green neon played at the side of my peripheral vision.

I shifted in my seat, stretching. They didn’t restrain me. They took the time to knock me out and drug me, but not restraining me meant they didn’t give two fucks about what I did to the other contestants.

Taking stock of my body, I felt around my arms and legs to see if anything was broken or sprained. I had some bumps and bruises, but as far as I could tell they hadn’t even bothered to strip me in the end, likely running behind due to the little surprise that I’d set up in my old room.

They hadn’t even thought to look in my bra or underwear, I could still feel the press of the metal containers against my skin, long since heated to body temperature.

A screen lit in front of the group, washing the room in sterile blue light.

Only then did I see just how many cameras were pinned on us, and right below the screen was the plexiglass that separated us and the VIPs who’d been invited to watch the opening.

The theme song began to play through the crackling speakers, accompanied by the sound of bodies shifting anxiously.

Fucking Devil's Playground thinking they can force me in here like some type of animal.

But that’s what they’d done for years, and no one could stop them. At least not yet. Not when they’d made so much money for the country that people were eating out of the palm of their dirty, bloody hands.

They could get away with anything .

Fuck, it wasn’t even that long ago that murder had been illegal in literally any way.

They changed that. Fucked that up for all of us. Made made this world a living hell in the name of a game.

“Welcome, players, to Truth or Dare,” a cheery, computer generated voice said as the screen cycled through all the contestants’ faces and information. “This is the last of the Games this year, so we are looking forward to an explosive show.”

That part was a jab at me, obviously. But it did make me smile.

Because, after all, while I might’ve been kidnapped and forced into the Game… it’d all been a part of my plan.

They came after me because I made them. They might’ve left me after they dealt with my mom, thinking I would be some naive little girl and move on with my life, too afraid to provoke them. Scurry away like a cockroach avoiding the kitchen light.

Fuck that.

I’d hacked into their computers and found out some of the vilest, dirtiest secrets I’d ever come across. Though, where they were keeping my mother was still out of my reach.

It was a risk putting me in the Games, but it was the only way they’d be legally able to kill me. Obviously, with power like theirs I could just disappear , but where was the fun in that? It simply wouldn’t do for a fourth generation Legacy to vanish without a trace.

They didn’t just want to kill me, they wanted to annihilate me. Destroy my family’s reputation.

But it didn’t matter.

Not only was I going to win Truth or Dare, but my entrance into the game would solidify the end of Devil's Playground forever.

The story doesn’t end here! Look forward to our next release: Truth or Dare to see what happens next!