CHAPTER FOUR
( HOLD YOUR TONGUE )

AYSON COULD DO nothing but watch as the clock ahead of them ticked away quickly, Cameron not making any decisions. Once the first shock whipped through his body, he jolted in his position and yelled with so much force that the girl winced. Almost immediately afterwards, he shoves his free hand up, and hesitates before emerging it into the box of liquid. With a piercing scream, the raven-haired girl examines his hand that almost burns away in the acid.

Yanking his hand back out, the man lurches, and looks to them for help. "One of you get the hell up and help me!" As soon as he finishes his short rampage towards them, he screams again.

The seconds had passed all too quickly, and he had gotten shocked again. This time, as the puppet had said, the voltage had gone up another level; Ayson could almost hear it in his writhes of pain. The tears rolling down his face were proof that he might not make it out, and maybe the others wouldn't either. Cameron grits his teeth, his jaw growing with force as, once again, his hand is shoved into the acid. It eats away at his flesh, pulling and burning at the exposed skin. His screams don't stop as he reaches farther inside, almost touching the knife.

But he doesn't, and yanks his hand out again. Cameron, jerks against the restraints on the table, begging for one of them— any of them to help him. The girl wished that she could somehow get him out, but she, too, would have to follow the rules. If she tried to help him, not only would he die; she would, too. The lasers weren't going anywhere, and it ruled out her option of moving forward. So what good would it do in the end? Absolutely none.

The next wave of shock moved the table from its hinges in the floor; the intensity could be felt in the ground below their fingertips, and nothing seemed to prepare Ayson for the blood-curdling scream that left Cameron's lips. Her tears fell freely as Aidan pulled her into his chest, whispering sweet nothings into her ear to act as a distraction.

"I don't know if I can do this," she glances up at his for a moment, her bottom lip quivering before she looks back down.

"Everything's gonna be okay, sweetheart," he mumbles, running his fingers through her soft curls and pulling her back to him. "Don't cry, you'll be okay. Nothing will happen to you, we'll make it out of here."

Her heart didn't pound as hard in her chest as she focused on his words; as she gave in to the comfort of his touch and relaxed into his arms. If she weren't in this situation, she might've blushed at the sound of the nickname "sweetheart" dripping from his tongue like smooth honey. But how could she focus on that now, when a man was dying in the room, and pleading for one of them to end his misery?

From the sounds that came next, Ayson assumes that he had stuck his hand back into the acid, or whatever was left of it, that is. Instead of looking at Cameron, she chose to focus on the clock— less than a minute left. Had it really only been four minutes? It felt like hours, being tortured by the awful noises of death. But Aidan slightly jumped, leading her vision back to Cameron, who had somehow gotten a hold on the knife that had been glued to the top of the acid box. He yanked it from the box with a yell, fumbling to use the knife to saw into one of the several restraints on his torso.

Another jolt made him fumble, and grip the knife a little too hard— it sliced at the flesh on his already shredded hand, making him yell out in even more aggravation and torture. But he didn't stay down for long, finishing of the first restraint. He had two more to go, and thirty more seconds to go. But, quickly enough, before ten seconds had passed, he had managed to cut another restraint. It was the next shock wave that completely threw him off. His back arched off of the bed from the immense pressure that shot through his body like a lightning bolt, and sent the knife out of his grasp and to the floor.

When the suffering of that shock was over, Cameron realized that he had dropped the knife in the process. He still had one restraint, and no way to get it off.

"Oh no," Ayson murmurs, burying her face in Aidan's shoulder. "He's not going to make it."

"No, no, no," Cameron says to himself, pulling and tugging at the last leather strap. "Oh no, no, no, no!"

He had made it far; but not far enough. The timer had stopped now, and Aidan closed his eyes as the woman in the pantsuit screamed tenderly from the scene in front of them. The final restraint snapped as Cameron's whole body lurched and jumped and cracked on the table. His eyes had gone bright red with no sign of white, and he was foaming from the mouth. There were snaps as his bones broke inside of him from the torment of the full-intensity shock. It burned the hair from his body, and fried his brain— so much, that blood and a pink goo spilled from both of his ears when it finally stopped.

Cameron stopped moving, and no more garbled noises came from his throat. The lasers disappeared from in front of the remaining four, but none of them moved for a moment.

"C'mon dollface, we need to get to the next room," Aidan says to Ayson, pulling her onto her feet. He leads the way to the door opposite of them, careful to hide the girl's eyes from the place of their peer's death. He carefully shoved the door open, revealing a chair with some sort of attached device.

Beside it, there's a set of dentistry tools laying on a silver table. The blinding white lights from the ceiling reflected off of it, and the room smelled like bleach. It reminded Ayson of a setup at the dentist, the chair at least. Whatever was attached to it wasn't like anything she'd seen before.

As the lady in the pantsuit and Joel entered the room, the door slammed shut behind them. The timer was located on the ceiling this time, most likely for the convenience of whoever has to face down this torture device. Just below it was a mirror, although it wasn't a very big one. The audio tape was hanging from the ceiling by a string this time, dangling down in front of Joel.

He scans it for a short moment, before nodding to the others and pressing the 'play' button.

"Hello again, players. I want to play another game, but let's try someone else this time." Ayson was sure that after this was over, if she managed to get out alive, she would have nightmares of this voice.

"One of you work as a dentist— you studied for four years at a private university, and got a job out of college. But just because you do good for others sometimes doesn't make you a saint, now does it?"

The voice pauses, allowing them to all share glances before it continues.

"Due to your mental illnesses that you refuse to admit, you drowned your four-year-old daughter one night in the bath tub. But you didn't confess, did you? You made everyone believe that it was your mother, who is cursed with a severe case of Alzheimer's, and can't remember what happened the night she came to stay with you and your husband.

"You may have been able to keep quiet and avoid the situation while your mother rots in prison for your crimes, but I think it's time that you take a seat and have a taste of your own medicine."

Ayson looks to the woman beside her in utter horror. Aidan pulls her away from the crazed murderer, and secures her behind his back.

"So take a seat, Elizabeth. Strap yourself in. Let's see how long you can hold your tongue."

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