“You will,” Priya replies. “When someone is coming at you to kill you… Trust me, you’ll do whatever you have to survive.”

“Have you three ever been in room zero?” I ask Theo, Kevin, and Lucie.

Lucie and Kevin shake their heads. Theo takes a breath. “Once.”

He’s been in here two months and been in room zero once. Less time for Priya.

I want to ask Theo who else was in room zero with him. Would I recognize the name from the long list of missing kids? It’s definitely gotten worse in the last eighteen months. Is that when Caleb and his friends decided to play this game?

“Are you okay?” I ask Theo. Taking someone’s life, even if it is in self-defense, has to make an impact on who you are, your psyche. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to do that. My only experience with death is my sister, but I had no hand in that. I know what it’s like for death to strip everything good from your life and leave you hollow and broken on the floor.

He tenses, muscles bunching along his forearms as if he’s in shock. Like no one has asked him that before. “I’m fine,” he says, but his ashen skin tells me otherwise.

I’d never be the same again if I committed murder. I know that.

“What happens in the other rooms?” Hazel asks. “I need to know what we’re up against.”

It’s the first spark I’ve seen in Hazel since we got here. Is she finally ready to fight alongside me?

Theo threads his fingers together, leaning his arms on his knees. “There are six rooms off the hallway to hell, like I said. We just explained what happens in the final one, room zero. The other five are…difficult, too.”

Get to the point, Theo. “What happens in them?”

“Room one is sound. Room two is temperature. Room three is light. Room four is sleep deprivation. Room five is water.”

I slump back in my seat, his words sucking the life from my body. Those all sound like methods of torture. I’ve watched enough crime shows to know that. Hazel and I went through a medieval torture phase. We binge-watched documentaries about people discussing all sorts of horror-filled torture devices. Some of the engineering was pure brilliance, even if it was evil to the core.

The realization makes me dizzy. “What happens in those rooms specifically?”

“Room one,” Theo says, “is loud. So loud. Then there are quiet moments so devoid of sound that every breath you take and every beat of your heart hurts your ears.”

“Room two?” I ask.

“Temperature. One minute, so blistering hot you almost pass out, and the next, so cold you feel your life ebbing away.”