It’s Jules.
I can smell his hair, that sharp, floral pomade he was wearing. I sit up, relief burning through me. Ease myself onto my knees. Please don’t notice I’m up. Whoever’s here, please don’t kill me. I crawl forward. My fingers find Jules’s face and I clamp my hand over his mouth.
“Jules,” I whisper. He tries to shrug me off, but he doesn’t wake up. “Jules!” My free hand jogs his shoulder. Now his eyes must have snapped open because he’s struggling, grunting.
“Jules, shut up. It’s me.”
I move my hand and pray he won’t start screaming. I keep the other hand on his shoulder so he stays down.
“Anouk?” His voice is a cracked whisper, scared.
“Wait. Be quiet.” I crawl a little further, come to another body.
This one’s Lilly. I can just make out her hair, lying in blond waves against the dark floor. I shake her. She comes up quiet, with a soft gasp. Hayden’s next. He doesn’t wake up at all. I shake him, press a finger to his pulse and feel the rapid pump. He’s alive. So why isn’t he moving?
I keep crawling, a hard knot of pain springing up in my head. Will is curled up like a huge puppy. I barely touch him and he rolls onto his back and stares at me.
I can see a bit more now: the outline of Will’s face, and the shapes of the others sitting up, looking around blearily.
“Guys?” I clear my throat as softly as I can. Dig my fingernails into my palms. “They drugged us. They took us somewhere; we need to get out.”
Lilly sobs, high and strangled. “Where? Get out of where?”
“I don’t know. Just keep quiet. Move slowly.” I feel the tension prickling around me like an electrical storm, rising toward full-blown ignition. I keep my voice low, all on exhale, no sudden spikes in case someone’s listening: “Don’t panic. Don’t panic.”
Jules stands and knocks against a wall. The sound is hollow, beer bottles rolling against each other on the floor of a car. We’re using more air now that we’re awake. I can already feel the space heating up.
“I don’t have my phone,” Jules says. “They took my phone!”
I go back to Hayden and kick him hard. I don’t care if it hurts; we need to move now. I see a pinprick of light spark to my left. Lilly has a key-chain light in her hand. She’s crying over it, shining it directly into her eye.
“Oh, thank you.” I grab it from her. Point it over the walls. I see a person facing me, and for a second everything inside me shrivels in stone-cold terror. But it’s just my own reflection. The walls are mirrored. We’re in a room—a small cube—and everything from the floor to the ceiling is mirrored.
“Help me find a way out,” I gasp. Start stumbling around, feeling along the glass for seams. I don’t know how much time we have, but the people who brought us here do. They’ll know exactly how long the red pills last, and what they plan on doing to us afterward, and if ours have already worn off they’ll be coming soon. It occurs to me that the mirrors might be two-way. Someone might be right on the other side, watching us.
I find a seam in the corner of the chamber. Dig in my fingernails and pull. Nothing moves. I start to sweat. We’re piling over one another now, a bunch of squirming guinea pigs in a cage.
“Anouk?”
I swing the light around. Right into Will’s face. Crap. He raises a hand to shield his eyes. “There are chairs,” he says, and gestures.
I spin the key-chain light.
Sure enough, two chairs, facing each other. Spindly gilt Louis XIV things, starkly out of place against the glass. Were they even there ten seconds ago?
No, they just randomly appeared, Anouk, of course they were there. I go to one. Try to pick it up. Maybe we can use it to go ballistic on the glass. It’s bolted to the floor. I drop down. There are thin grooves surrounding the legs, marking a square.
I shine the light up. The ceiling is glass, but it’s not completely mirrored like the walls. I can see myself in it, my face a pale oval, eyes wide. And I can also see through it: the faintest ghost of a mural, floating just above.
A butterfly. The wings are wide and ragged. In each one is a human eye, peering down.
“Look up,” I say. “Look!”
The eyes are positioned exactly above the chairs.
“Somebody go sit in that chair. Anybody, go!”
Jules and Lilly are hyperventilating. Will frowns at me. Frowns at the chair. Goes to it. I sit opposite him.
Nothing happens. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess because the chairs are the only anomaly in the room, it stands to reason that they’re somehow related to––
A sharp clack splits the air. The chair drops under me, one inch. Lilly lets out a soft screech. My hands clench the seat, so hard my knuckles pop. I stare at Will. His chair dropped, too.
“Um . . .” I swallow. “Ok, that was—”