The Host's Judgement

5. Elena's Mistake

The electronic beep echoed in the confined space of the cabin, sharp and final, like the last beat of a heart on a cardiac monitor. On the screen in front of me, the word I had chosen glowed in static green: SHARE.

I had risked everything on the integrity of a stranger. A cold doctor I had known for less than an hour. I held my breath, my chest aching from lack of air, as a loading bar processed the result of Pair Number Three.

The cabin’s gears clicked. The screen changed to display the verdict:

PAIR 3:

Hayes: SHARE

Elena Vance: STEAL

RESULT: Player 1 (Hayes) punished. Player 2 (Elena) advances with privilege.

The blood drained from my face in an instant. A sharp, paralyzing cold rose from the soles of my boots to the pit of my stomach. She had betrayed me. Elena’s rationality, her gentle words at dinner, our mutual survival pact… everything had been a meticulous performance to ensure I would be the sacrificial lamb while she walked away with the advantage.

“You bitch…” I growled through gritted teeth, slamming my fist against the digital screen. The frosted glass in front of me instantly cleared, becoming transparent again, but the door remained locked.

On the other side of the glass, Elena’s cabin opened with a pneumatic hiss. She stepped out with her shoulders straight and her chin raised. When her eyes met mine through my transparent prison, I saw no remorse only a dark, surgical determination. She didn’t see me as a human being, I was just an obstacle removed. In her right hand, she held a small black metal box with the symbol of a golden key printed on it the privilege the Host had promised.

Before I could scream against the glass, the speakers in the ceiling of my cabin came to life, but not with the Host’s voice. It was a different audio recording. A high-pitched frequency with background noises that sounded like the constant beeping of a hospital ICU.

“Doctor Vance, her vitals are dropping! She’s going into anaphylactic shock!” a young, desperate nurse’s voice echoed.

“Calm down… prepare twenty milligrams of… no, wait…” Elena’s own voice appeared in the recording, but it was slurred, unsteady, lacking the firmness she displayed now. There was drunk panic in her words. “The dose… give the adrenaline dose now.”

“Doctor, that’s the wrong dosage! The chart says…”

“Do what I told you! I’m the chief surgeon here!”

A long, continuous, high-pitched sound filled the audio. The sound of a flatline on the heart monitor. The sound of death.

The recording cut off abruptly. The Host’s original voice took control of the environment, cold and accusatory:

“Elena Vance. One of the brightest minds in surgical medicine, reduced to an opioid-addicted executioner. Ten years ago, her medical error cost the life of an eighteen-year-old girl in the emergency ward. Her hospital covered up the crime to protect its own name, but Elena’s mistake was recorded in the book of justice. And today, she proved she is still willing to sacrifice innocent lives to save her own skin.”

In the central hall, the other survivors who had chosen to share watched the scene. Marcus was already outside, displaying a scornful smile he had also robbed his pair, the man in the crumpled suit, who was now crying, locked in his own punishment cabin.

“Hayes,” the Host addressed me. “You chose innocence and trust in a den of wolves. For your naivety, you must be punished. But the punishment does not come from my hands. It comes from the one you chose to protect.”

The electronic panel below my screen began a sixty-second countdown. The ventilation slits at the top of the cabin sealed shut with a hermetic click. A sucking sound began.

They were removing the oxygen from the cabin.

The air left my lungs almost immediately. I tried to draw a breath, but what entered my throat was a dry, suffocating vacuum that made my ribs burn. I fell to my knees on the metal floor, clawing at my own neck. My eyes widened as I stared at Elena through the glass. She took a step back, averting her gaze, unable to face the consequences of her “privilege.”

My vision began to darken at the edges, the colors of the hall fading into a dull gray. The biological desperation of dying by asphyxiation took over. My fingers beat desperately against the glass, leaving sweat marks and nail scratches. I couldn’t die here. Not in a glass aquarium because of a drug-addicted doctor’s greed.

I looked to the side. In the cabin next to mine, the man in the crumpled suit whom Marcus had mercilessly betrayed was already unconscious on the floor, lips turning purple.

Twenty seconds left on the panel. My mind wavered, bringing back memories of my moldy apartment, overdue electricity bills, and that cursed night ten years ago the fire, the screams… No. I survived that night. I’m not dying today.

With the last remnant of strength and pure adrenaline my body could muster, I pulled the worn backpack off my back. My movements were slow, as if I were underwater. I opened the main zipper and reached inside, groping until I found the heaviest object I carried: the thick glass picture frame with the cast-iron border containing the photo from my golden days.

I gripped the frame with both hands, planted my feet against the back wall of the cabin for leverage, and delivered a brutal blow with the iron corner against the center of the glass door panel.

The impact vibrated through my arms, shattering the remains of my own picture frame and scattering pieces of the photo across the cabin floor. The armored glass of the cabin didn’t break, but a web of small white cracks appeared at the point of impact.

Ten seconds.

I screamed a breathless sound that tore through my throat and struck again. And again. With all the strength of my desperation.

On the third impact, the glass gave way. It didn’t shatter like normal glass, but ruptured into thousands of granular pieces under the pressure of the internal vacuum. The air from the hall rushed into the cabin like a punch to my chest. I fell forward, coughing violently, sucking oxygen into my lungs like a man drinking water in the desert. My hands and arms were covered in small cuts that bled onto the pieces of my destroyed photo.

I was alive. But the game had just collected its price.

When I managed to stand up, leaning on the metal structure of the destroyed cabin, I looked out at the hall. The central panel on the wall displayed the final scoreboard of the round.

Three cabins at the back had not been broken. Three participants who had trusted the wrong people didn’t have the same strength or heavy object to rupture their confinement. Through the glass that had become transparent again, we could see the bodies lying inside.

In the first cabin on the left, the man in the crumpled suit whom Marcus had pitilessly betrayed was slumped against the glass. It was Arthur, the lottery shop owner. His eyes were bulging, fixed on the ceiling, and his purple tongue protruded slightly from his mouth. He had spent his final seconds scratching at the metal until he tore off his own nails.

In the center cabin, the lifeless body of Letícia, the former model, lay on her knees with her face pressed against the iron floor. Her fake fur coat was torn at the neck a reflection of the desperation of someone who tried to create space for air that no longer existed.

In the third cabin, the hospital administrator, Clarice, lay on her side, hair covering her pale face and lips completely blue. Her pair, the real estate broker Daniela, covered her mouth with her hands upon seeing the corpse, letting out a muffled sob of guilt. Daniela had chosen STEAL, securing her passage and condemning Clarice to the vacuum.

Nineteen had started the round. Sixteen remained.

Elena was still standing a few meters away, holding her black privilege box. Sweat trickled down her neck, and her composure had vanished upon seeing that I had escaped the trap she had set for me.

I wiped the blood from my lower lip with the back of my hand, feeling every small cut sting in the cold of that place. I stepped out of the wreckage of broken glass and fixed my eyes on hers. I was no longer the desperate, bankrupt writer who had entered this hotel to pay his debts.

I was a survivor. And Elena Vance had just become the first name on my list.