He stepped out of his room, then peeked around the door. The main door leading into the long hallway was open. It was dark out there, too—darker than it had been last night. He walked into the hall and glanced in both directions. Small emergency lights cast pale semicircles of red that didn’t even reach the floor—anything could be hiding in the shadows.

What’s going on? he thought.

He started walking to the right, sliding the tips of his fingers along the wall. He heard a faint buzzing from the lights; the air smelled like plastic and computer machinery. He’d only made it a hundred steps or so when a shadow formed ahead of him, the figure of a person leaning against the wall.

“Who’s there?” Tick asked.

“It’s me,” a female voice whispered. Mistress Jane.

Surprisingly, Tick felt a wave of relief splash over him. “What are you doing? What are we supposed to do?”

Jane pushed herself away from the wall and walked toward Tick, stopping beneath one of the emergency lights. It cast an eerie red glow on her black hair and down her face, creased with angled shadows under her eyes and nose and mouth. Tick pushed away the thought that she looked like she was covered in blood.

“What are we supposed to do?” she repeated. “We’re supposed to kill each other.”

Tick felt a chill at the simplicity of the statement, but he knew she was right. “That’s it? He’s just going to wait around until we follow his orders and fight to the death?”

“Looks like it,” Jane said. She held out a piece of paper. “This was taped to the front of both of our doors—looks like you missed yours.”

Tick took the note from her; the paper had an odd roughness to it. Jane tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear, staring at the floor. Tick’s gaze lingered on her for a second—and he thought for the first time that she was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. He snapped his eyes away, focusing on the note in his hands.

She’s evil, Tick, he told himself. Evil people aren’t supposed to be pretty.

He could barely see the paper so he held it up closer to the light. To his surprise, he saw it wasn’t paper at all, but rather an extremely thin piece of plastic. Electronic, glowing green letters scrawled across its face one by one, just like someone typing a message on a computer screen:

There are no instructions. No rules. Nothing is forbidden. When only one of you remains, please walk to the end of the hallway outside your dormitory. Go to the right. You have until noon, or you both die.

“We have three hours,” Jane said when Tick looked up from the note.

~