Author's Note

In celebration of Amazon Prime Video's newest series Panic, I am thrilled to be teaming up with Amazon Prime Video and Wattpad to write this exclusive chapter that puts my characters from this story into the world of Panic!

I hope this chapter intrigues and inspires you to learn more about Panic. Visit the #PanicWritingContest on Wattpad for the chance to put your creative writing chops to the test and learn more about the show!

To find out more about the contest, prizes, and how to enter, check out the #PanicWritingContest here: wattpad.com/AmazonPrimeVideo

Don't forget to watch the series premiere on May 28th, only on Amazon Prime Video, here: http://primevideo.com/

***

Adolescence and stupidity went hand-in-hand, but Jade considered herself a smart girl—straight As, perfect attendance. Heck, she'd be attending university abroad come August.

Then why the hell was she at Panic?

Because she'd bought into this nonsense and didn't want her money to go to waste. When she'd first learn of Panic, she'd wanted nothing to do with it, but every senior had to buy into the game, whether or not they wanted to—one dollar for every day of school. 180 days of school and $180 of her allowances later, she was beyond pissed.

The poor kids had it worse. Jade had seen Gibby get his jaw knocked sideways for not paying up on time. The most that happened to her was a threatening note on her locker—a gentle reminder they'd called it. No one expected anything of her, the foreign exchange student who didn't speak, meek and modest as Christ himself.

They didn't expect her. They wouldn't suspect her when their entire game came crashing down. Even now, Skorpi was in her pocket, recording everything. Though there wasn't much to hear beyond the wind rustling the corn and the distant bleat of a goat. She'd transferred every email, every recorded conversation and every picture circulated by the contestants to Skorpi's memory chip, and when she hopped on the plane to Germany in August, it would all be in the police's hands.

"Snitches and talkers get stitches and walkers," they said. But so did the idiots who competed in this game. People had died, people had been maimed, people had irreversible psychological damage. Panic had to end. It would end. With her.

Jade peeped at the farmhouse, a white-washed dwelling just beyond the field of swaying corn. At the ungodly hour, it was hard to make out anything beyond the pickup truck parked out front and the glow of a TV beyond the front window. A porch lamp provided a small halo of light that didn't reach beyond the steps.

The name of the game tonight was breaking and entering. The "judges" whoever the hell they were, expected the participants to break into this house and steal evidence of their entry, because screw laws, right? She'd done her fair share of dumb teenager nonsense, but this was pushing it.

While she didn't know the owner of this property, but she'd learned enough to predict that someone was going to get either killed or sent to the ICU tonight. Spurlock was a gun toting, bible thumping American, whose only masters were God and the second amendment. And they were about to steal from him.

"Is everyone here?" Diggins asked, his voice a hair above a whisper. The rustle of clothing and the shuffling of feet against the damp earth were the only answers given. "Fine, you all know why we're here. Get ready. On my mark."

Jade could feel the reluctance as the participants stepped forward. The air buzzed with tension. Even her own heartbeat sped up. She couldn't tell how many other competitors stood around her, but of the twenty-three competitors they'd started with, five had dropped out and six had been disqualified. She imagined even more people dropped out upon seeing tonight's game.

Jade breathed easy and flexed her fingers.

"Mark!" Diggins whisper-screamed.

While the other competitors went straight for the fence, Jade skirted around the property, the damp ground muting her footfalls. She slowed to a stop around the back side of the farmhouse, behind an old shed flanked by tractors and planter with wheels caked in mud.

Jade tapped her pocket and reached a hand in for Skorpi. The little robot unfurled his eight legs and stretched out his pincers. Two glowing green eyes stared up at her, and his stinger drifted from side to side. He already knew what he need to do, so she laid him on the ground and watched him skitter towards the back door of the house.

The night remained quiet; the other competitors were being cautious too. For now. If the previous games were any indication, someone would do something stupid soon enough.

Jade pulled out her cellphone and tapped the Skorpi shaped icon. A cast of green fell over the screen, accented by glowing white shapes, Skorpi's night vision. He skittered under the backdoor, into the kitchen, his legs tapping a rhythm against the tile. The view spun ninety degrees as he climbed onto the wall to undo the latches and deadlock.

At the opposite end of the room, a glowing dog-shaped lump laid balled up by the door. Jade ordered Skorpi to wait. They couldn't be reckless about this. Cliff diving and walking across a suspended plank were different; in those situations, she had more control. Her plan here depended more on the other players and the homeowner than herself.

The dog popped its head up, nose pointed to the door. It was hard to tell its breed when it was just a luminescent shape on her screen, but the judges had warned them Pitbulls, rottweilers and a few mongrels, along with rumors that he only fed them human meat so it would be all they craved.

Jade rolled her eyes at that. Americans.

The dog let out a growl, then a bark. A crash sounded near the front of the house, like glass breaking, and chaos erupted around the farm. Dogs barking, shouting from inside the house that she heard both through the phone's speaker and the air around her. She had to make her move now.

Jade tucked the phone in her back pocket and rounded the shed. The crack of a gun made her jump and stumble over her own feet. Pins and needle ran up and down her spine. The rational side of her mind urged her to stop, turn on her heel, and go back home. Forget about exposing Panic, but the dumb, self-righteous teenager spurred her on.

She pressed her back to the kitchen door and took a breath to calm her racing heart. Get in, get whatever you can from the gunroom, get out. She repeated it three times in her head before cracking the kitchen door.

It swung open with a groan, drowned out by the cacophony in the front yard. She slipped in, and Skorpi skittered to her side. Inside was warm and smelled faintly of marmalade and freshly baked bread. She scooped Skorpi up and worked her way blindly around the kitchen. Her knee connected with the island in the middle, and she thanked the gods she couldn't scream even if she wanted to.

The dog had left its post at the gun room door, she guessed, to join the chaos outside. Another crack rang out, followed by a scream, and a chill fell over Jade, raising gooseflesh on her arms. Skorpi beeped and jumped into the pocket of her hoodie. Even he knew they shouldn't be out here, mixed up in this mess. She fumbled with her phone and hit the flashlight icon with a shaking finger.

The gun room was simple, just a wooden table and chair atop an old throw rug. But the guns. They covered the wall like a mosaic of steel and death. Some looked too big for Jade to handle, while others looked small enough to slip neatly into her pocket.

A sinking feeling settled in Jade's gut and churned up her dinner. She had collections of her own, video games, dead bugs frozen in resin or nailed to a board, but there was something cold and sinister about collecting killing machines.

Another door stood to her left, shut and bolted—coming in through the kitchen was a smart choice. She crossed to the table and found a disassembled revolver with a box of ammunition on top. A few bullets had spilled out onto the table and glinted under her flashlight. She took one between the thumb and forefinger, made sure not to touch anything else, booked it out of the house.

Outside, the wail of sirens echoed in the distance, and blue and red lights cut into the night sky. Jade rounded the shed again and stuck to the shadows of tractors as she made her way to the field. The corn swallowed her, but didn't drown out the crack of gunfire or the screams of her classmates. She clamped her hands over her ears as she half ran, half stumbled through the crops.

Sweat dripped into her eyes and blurred her vision, but she couldn't stop. If a patrol car brought her home, Markus would kill her and Zaharah would help. She paused at the edge of the field and swallowed the bile pooling in her mouth. Red and blue lights cut the air above her head as two patrol cars charged up the dirt road to the house.

That was fast, too fast. Someone must have tipped them off. There'd been rumors that Scully was working with the Sheriff, which meant someone would find him beaten half to death in a ditch tomorrow. Sad, but that would take some heat off her.

Jade thanked the moonless midnight and her foresight to wear a black hoodie as she ran from the cornfield into the bushes edging the farm. Her bike leaned against a thick oak, its deep green finish making it near invisible. She didn't bother putting on her helmet. She hopped on and pedaled as fast as she could. Leaves swirled in her wake, her hood flew back, and her braids broke free from their hair ties and whipped around her face, but she refused to stop.

Adolescence and stupidity went hand in hand, and after tonight, Jade couldn't consider herself a smart girl anymore. Smart girls didn't break into the homes of gun-toting maniacs. Smart girls knew their life was worth more than fifty large. And no matter how noble their intentions...

Smart girls did not do Panic.