The silence that followed the Host’s announcement was suffocating. No one moved for almost a full minute. The crystal chandelier, now bathed in that sickly red light, cast long, distorted shadows across the walls of the foyer. I glanced to the side and saw Marcus. His square jaw was clenched tight, fists buried in the pockets of his expensive but worn suit jacket. The initial arrogance had evaporated, replaced by cold calculation. “This is ridiculous,” shouted a fat man in a suit that looked three sizes too big, wiping sweat from his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. “This is kidnapping! They can’t lock us in here! I’m calling the police.” He yanked his phone from his pocket. Several others did the same. I already knew the result before I even pulled mine from my jacket pocket. No signal. Not a single bar. Not even for emergency calls. The hotel was completely isolated, blocked by some kind of frequency jammer built into the stone walls. “It’s no use,” said the woman in

The floor beneath our feet sank almost a centimeter with a dry click. I held my breath, expecting stakes similar to the ones that had torn Thomas apart to rain down from the ceiling or for the corridor to turn into a meat grinder. Around me, the eighteen survivors froze in place. The smell of fresh blood still seemed to cling to my nostrils, carried from the room we had just left. But the massacre didn’t come. Instead, the pressure plates clicked again, and a row of white fluorescent lights flickered on along the ceiling, illuminating the corridor that ended in a new, spacious hall with gray walls and completely devoid of any luxurious furniture. In the center of this new space, nineteen individual frosted-glass cabins were lined up, each with a digital screen on the side. The Host’s voice echoed, free of static, seeming to float above our heads: “Congratulations on choosing collective survival… for now. Thomas’s sacrifice was a necessary lesson: arrogance is a mortal sin in t

The oxygen that filled my lungs again had a metallic taste of blood and glass dust. I was still on my knees, coughing, with small shards embedded in the palms of my hands, when the sound of three long, continuous beeps echoed through the gray hall. The red lights inside the cabins of Arthur, Letícia, and Clarice went out, leaving only the fallen bodies in the gloom. “My God… they’re dead. They really died,” Daniela’s voice, the real estate broker, rose in pitch, bordering on hysteria. She pointed at the cabin where Letícia, the woman in the fake fur coat, lay with her face pressed against the glass. “Did anyone doubt it?” Marcus stepped forward, adjusting the sleeves of his crumpled suit jacket as if he had just left a boring business meeting. He didn’t look once at Arthur’s cabin the man he had just betrayed and indirectly murdered. “You killed him, you bastard!” Roberto, the ex-cop, lunged at Marcus, grabbing him by the lapels. Roberto’s physical build was imposing, but the

I slammed the door to my room shut, my heart pounding so hard against my ribs it felt like it wanted to break my bones from the inside out. Samuel’s blood was still fresh in my memory, the metallic smell mixed with the gunpowder from the industrial nail gun invading my nostrils. I leaned my forehead against the cold wood of the door, trying to steady my breathing. That’s when I realized it. The labored breathing echoing in the room wasn’t just mine. My muscles locked up. The darkness in the room was almost total, broken only by a red emergency light beam coming through the gap under the door. Slowly, I slid my hand along the wall until I found the brass light switch. Click. The yellow light from the bedside lamps flooded the room. I sat down on the floor, shock draining my strength. Curled up in the darkest corner of the room, hugging his own knees on top of my bed, was a boy. The hood of his gray sweatshirt was pulled over his head, but I recognized him immediately. It wa

The sound of the acrylic breaking was like a rifle shot in the silence of the lobby.The plank with Hugo’s name exploded into dozens of transparent shards under the impact of his hundred kilos. For a fraction of a second, the ex-security guard hung suspended in the air, arms stretched upward in a desperate reflex to grab the side ropes of the bridge.He didn’t reach them. His hands slipped on the rough hemp, tearing away strands of rope and skin.Hugo’s scream was a guttural roar that tore through the elevator shaft as his body plummeted into the void. Four floors. It took only two seconds of free fall, but they felt like an eternity.The impact against the concrete floor of the sub-basement was a wet, heavy, and final thud. THUD.The sound of bones, ribs, and skull shattering all at once echoed up the shaft, rising to us like a macabre echo. Daniela let out a shrill scream, covering her eyes and falling to her knees on the lobby carpet. Down below, Hugo’s body lay in an anatomically