Chapter 15
I tossed the stack of Visitor Passes that Scarlett and Justin had looted over to Tiffany and the gym rat.
“You two still have time to hit the upper floors,” I told them. “If the monsters give you any trouble, drop my name. I spent enough time bonding with them that it should carry some weight.”
Tiffany and the meathead stumbled over themselves to thank me, looking like they were ready to kiss the ground I
walked on.
I waved them off, dodging their fawning attempts to escape the excruciating awkwardness of the moment. It felt like a
clumsy tango.
I left them behind and descended alone. The lower levels were a walk in the park.
I faced zero resistance, snagging every remaining card within minutes. Yet, the system voice remained silent.
I knew I was missing the final piece of the puzzle: the thirtieth floor.
But I wasn’t an idiot. After playing house with them for days, I knew their scars by heart.
They had started as four strangers connected only by the cruelty of their deaths.
Meg was a schoolgirl who shielded a stranger from the rain, only to be murdered by the predator she tried to help.
Bernard was framed as a pervert on a bus, yet he still took a knife to the gut to save his accuser from a real attacker.
holding his own spilling intestines as he died.
Eleanor burned alive in her apartment because the building cut corners on fire safety.
Her son knew how to use the equipment, but he was forced to watch her turn to ash because the hydrants were dry.
And the Boss… he was the runaway son of a doomsday cult. He had escaped a toxic home and graduated from the Ivy
League, only to be dragged back to hell.
A
His parents believed eating his brain would grant them immortality. They pinned him down and sawed through his
neck with a dull blade just to crack his skull open.
My reunion with them in this hellhole-this dysfunctional family-was no accident.
The day before my car crash in the real world, I had just gotten paid. I was walking past a cemetery, riding the high of a
good day.
On a whim. I bought four bouquets from a nearby florist and placed them on four adjacent graves chosen completely at
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The readers' comments on the novel: Her fifth daughter died, so she deleted his bloodline.