**You have ninety seconds to hide. If you are found, you die. Good luck.**

The voice slithered through the dark like oil spilling over wet pavement. It didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. It planted itself in every crevice of her skull like a root burrowing for water. Marlie froze, her chest a hollow cathedral for the screaming silence that followed. Ninety seconds.

Her feet moved before her brain did, scraping the linoleum of the room she didn’t remember entering. The air smelled like mildew and burnt sugar. Fluorescent lights sputtered, bleeding pale yellow onto the walls, and her shadow staggered like it was drunk. She flung open a door that led to nowhere—a janitor’s closet stuffed with empty shelves and a single rusted mop.

She couldn’t die here. Not like this.

A timer she couldn’t see ticked inside her chest, louder than her heartbeat. Maybe they’d sync up eventually. Maybe she’d find out what happens after the last second. She slammed the closet door shut and ran.

**“Why are you running?”**

The voice again. It didn’t come from a speaker, but from everywhere, like the walls themselves had grown mouths. Her breath stuttered as she slipped on something slick on the floor. Blood? Water? Both? It didn’t matter. Her knee hit the ground, skin tearing open on the tile, but she clawed her way to her feet and kept going.

“Fuck you,” she hissed at the empty hallway, her voice trembling. Her chest burned like it was filled with splinters. “I’m not dying here. Not like this.”

**“You think you deserve to live?”**

The hallway stretched longer as she ran. The walls melted into shadows. No end in sight. Behind her, the sound of footsteps. Heavy, deliberate, the kind of sound that belongs to something patient. Something that’s already decided you’re not getting out.

She ducked into a room at random, the door groaning on its hinges as she pressed herself against the wall. Inside, there was nothing but a single chair bolted to the center of the floor.

**“You’re wasting time.”**

Her stomach churned, and for a moment, she wondered what would happen if she just…stopped. Sat down on the chair and waited. Let it find her. Maybe it would be kinder than running, because the running hurt—her lungs, her legs, her head—all of it screamed for release.

But then, her body spoke for her, buzzing like a live wire: **hide. survive. fight.**

She slid under the chair, curling into herself, knees pulled tight to her chest. She covered her mouth with both hands, trying to smother the sound of her shallow, terrified breathing.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

Until it wasn’t.

The door creaked open.

She didn’t look. She couldn’t.

“Found you,” it whispered, soft as a kiss.

And then—darkness.

—

When Marlie woke, her body felt like a stone dropped in water, heavy and sinking. She wasn’t dead. That realization crawled over her like a spider, too many legs skittering up her spine. She was lying in a bed now, its sheets starched and clean. The kind of clean that smelled like hospitals and bleach.

Sitting in a chair by her side was a man—or something wearing a man’s skin. His face was all sharp angles, cheekbones carved like threats. His eyes, however, were hollow, like someone had scooped out his soul and left the sockets empty. He smiled.

“Do you want to play again?”

Marlie didn’t answer. She stared at him, her throat too raw for words.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, standing. “Good. I like you.”

He leaned in, close enough that she could smell him—copper and ash and something sweet, like honey rotting in the sun.

“But next time,” he murmured, lips brushing her ear, “try harder.”

And then he was gone.

Marlie stared at the ceiling, her body still and her mind a thunderstorm of broken glass. The voice echoed in her head, over and over again, like a song she couldn’t stop humming.

**You have ninety seconds to hide. If you are found, you die. Good luck.**

She smiled, lips splitting open like old scars.

“Fuck you,” she whispered to the empty room.

It whispered back: **See you soon.**