The Host's Judgement

3. The First Blood

The floor continued to tilt. The metallic grinding of hidden gears beneath the marble echoed like the bones of a waking monster. Anyone who tried to stand immediately lost their balance, falling onto the decorated floor or sliding toward the brushed-metal doors on the east wall.

“Hold on!” I shouted, digging the soles of my boots into the grooves of the solid mahogany table.

Beside me, Elena gripped the edge with both hands, her impeccable nails cracking against the wood. The fat man to my left wasn’t so lucky, his weight sent him sliding across the polished floor, knocking over chairs until he slammed into the wall with a groan of pain.

When the floor finally stopped moving, we were all cornered at the eastern end of the room, facing the two neon signs that pulsed intermittently: COOPERATION and BETRAYAL.

The Host’s voice tore through the darkness moments later:

“The mechanics are simple. Before you are the only two exits from this room. If all twenty of you pass through the COOPERATION door, the first stage will be completed without casualties. However, the darkness door will close in exactly three minutes. If there is only one person left in the room when time expires… that person will be eliminated.”

A desperate murmur erupted.

“It’s obvious!” the man in the crumpled suit shouted, eyes wide. “Let’s all go left! Cooperate! It’s a trap to see if we’re selfish!”

“Wait,” Marcus stepped forward, shoving the suited man aside. He stared at the signs with a calculating gleam. “What if the Cooperation door is the real trap? What if the Host is waiting for us to act like good little idiots so he can crush us all at once?”

“We don’t have time for barroom philosophy!” Elena hissed, pointing at the digital panel above the doors that had started a new countdown.

[ 02:15 ]

“I’m going through Cooperation!” a young woman, crying while clutching a worn bag, ran toward the left door. She pushed the metal bar. The door gave way easily, revealing a lit corridor. She stepped through without looking back.

That triggered the herd effect. Within seconds, a trail of panicked participants began squeezing through the same opening. I moved with the flow, feeling adrenaline burn through my muscles. The weight of the backpack on my back reminded me what was at stake: my entire life came down to getting out of this hotel alive.

Fewer than ten people remained to enter when a tall man in an olive-green military jacket with deep scars on his knuckles suddenly stopped in front of the Cooperation door. His name on the dinner card was Thomas. He looked down the illuminated corridor and then at the neon sign.

“There’s something wrong,” Thomas’s voice was thick, accustomed to giving orders. “The ceiling of that corridor… the panels are misaligned. It’s a pressure trap. If we all go in, the weight will trigger something.”

“Get out of the way, you lunatic!” the fat man, still recovering from his fall, tried to shove Thomas with all his weight. “I’m not dying here!”

“Let go of me, you pig!” Thomas reacted on pure military instinct. He delivered a violent punch to the fat man’s stomach, doubling him over, breathless.

Driven by sudden paranoia and the arrogance of believing he was smarter than the system, Thomas spun on his heels.

“I’m going the other way. The Host respects those who have the courage to betray.”

[ 00:45 ]

He ran toward the BETRAYAL door. Marcus watched the scene without moving a muscle, eyes narrowed, testing Thomas’s reactions.

Thomas pushed the metal bar on the right door. It opened with a loud pneumatic snap. But there was no corridor there. There was only a small metal cabin, the size of a single-person elevator, completely empty. The moment the ex-soldier stepped inside, a thick glass panel descended from the ceiling at absurd speed, isolating him from the rest of us.

“Thomas!” I shouted, running to the glass.

Inside, red lights turned on. Thomas pounded on the armored glass, but the sound that reached us was muffled. On the ceiling of the cabin, four mechanical openings expanded.

Clack.

Solid steel stakes, thick as human arms and sharp as spears, plummeted from the ceiling with the force of hydraulic pistons.

The first impact pierced Thomas’s left shoulder, pinning him to the metal floor. His scream was cut short as the second and third stakes came down diagonally, tearing through his chest and abdomen with a horrible wet sound of flesh and bones being shattered. Blood sprayed against the armored glass, running in thick lines and obscuring the horror happening inside. The final spear pierced the top of his head, silencing him forever.

Some of the women screamed and vomited on the dining room floor. Marcus took a step back, paling for the first time.

[ 00:15 ]

The timer was in its final seconds. The Cooperation door began to close slowly, heavy and inevitable.

“Move! Now!” Elena yelled, pulling me by the arm.

We pushed the last survivors into the left corridor as the iron door slammed shut behind us with a deafening crash, locking the hotel into a new level of silence.

I looked down at the floor of the new corridor and realized Thomas had been right about the pressure plates and we had just stepped on them.