In alarm, she dropped what she’d been looking at.
By the time we’d reached for our guns, more figures moved out behind us.
They’d been there the whole time. Waiting.
68. Evie
BILE BURNED MY THROAT.
Beside me, Yolanda stopped her broken song and began screaming.
The thing before us was a nightmare vision.
A wide, carved pillar of rock ran from the floor and up through to the underside of the rock ceiling. Huge glass panels were set into the pillar, all the way around—some kind of massive, upright, cylindrical tank filled with water. A rusting metal cage that seemed to me as large and tall as a mansion filled the tank. What was inside the cage squeezed the air from my lungs. Layers and layers and layers of bodies. Skeletal and crumbling at the bottom and in all stages of decomposition to the top layer, where the bodies were fresh.
The macabre scene was medieval and like the mass-extermination graves of modern war all at once.
I could see some faces that were turned my way in the top layer.
Greta. She was never taken to the mainland.
Andre. He’d lost after the very first challenge and would have been among the first to discover the horror of our fate.
Saul. The police hadn’t returned him to his family. Whoever had come to the monastery that day were part of this—they were Saviours.
My body shivered relentlessly. I was suddenly deathly cold.
Kara had mentioned the missing participants floating.
Now I knew.
I was in the final six. I was going to be sitting here watching the others get tortured by the Saviours and then see their discarded bodies float down through the water.
Knowing I will be joining them.
69. Constance
THE SAVIOURS MOVED IN AROUND JENNIFER and me. Terror washed through me, making me lose control of my bladder. Men on either side of me kept a grip on my arms so tight it dug into my bones. They searched our bodies, taking away our guns and knives.
Jennifer and I were forced down the stairs and then into a hidden passage. We were being taken to the level immediately below the floor with the cameras and two-way mirrors, into the dead centre of the monastery.
A door stood in front of us. A door with a keypad and a screen with the image of a handprint. Whatever was behind this door, I understood immediately that it was something terrible.
My heart pounded so hard it hurt.
One of the man tapped in a code and then pressed his hand to the screen.
The door opened.
Ahead, two hundred or more of the Saviours stood on the rock floor of a cavern in a wide semi-circle.
I trembled and stalled at the sight of so many of them at once. A collection of monsters. One of the men pressed the point of a knife into the back of my neck, forcing me to move again.
I saw now that the Saviours were gathered around an enormous, gaping hole in the rock floor.
High, man-made walls surrounded the cavern in a hexagonal shape—the walls of the strange rooms that I looked down into from the floor above. One of the walls was made of glass—an aquarium with fish swimming in it.
Faces turned to us in shock and confusion.
Pale blue light rippled on their faces. There had to be water in that hole in the ground. Their eyes quickly turned hard and glittering, devoid of human emotion.
My bottom lip quivered as I caught Jennifer’s eye.
Her eyes seemed to say, sorry, I told you what you were up against, but you didn’t listen. She looked so much calmer than I felt. I knew she’d been preparing for this for a long time.
My life was about to end. Here and now. As was Kara’s, and I hadn’t even gotten the chance to see her. Neither of us would leave this island. Nothing of us would be left in this world—a cold, tight thought.
Last-minute regrets churned inside me. All the things I’d done or hadn’t done. Thoughts whipped through my mind.
I hadn’t spoken to my parents and sisters in a long time. Years might go by before they’d even notice Kara and I had vanished. I should have made more of an effort when Kara was small. I shouldn’t have isolated her and myself from them. Then I saw Otto’s face. Why didn’t I do more to help him get better? Instead, I’d been part and parcel of the maelstrom. I pictured James and the house I’d left behind. Would my husband finally show his feelings for me when he realised I was missing, too? I’d never know.
“Brother Sage!” one of our captors called. “We found these two in the viewing room.”
Four people in dark robes stared at us from beneath their hoods. Two women and two men.
One of the four—a man—gestured for us to be brought over to him.