The Host's Judgement

7. The Painting on the Wall

The scream echoed through the wine-red carpeted corridor violent and shrill, dying out as if an invisible hand had strangled the victim’s throat. I was still holding the Host’s note between my trembling fingers. “You used her back to reach the window…” I crumpled the black paper, shoved it into my jacket pocket, and unlocked my bedroom door with my heart pounding in my throat.

The corridor was dark, lit only by emergency lights that cast a sinister reddish glow over the wooden doors. Other survivors were beginning to poke their heads out, frightened.

“It came from there! Room 14!” shouted Daniela, the real estate broker, pointing to the end of the corridor.

Marcus, Roberto, and Lucas were already striding down the hall. I joined the group. Roberto, using his ex-cop strength, kicked the lock on door 14. The wood cracked and the door gave way, slamming against the inner wall.

The scene inside made us stop abruptly.

The room belonged to Samuel, the structural engineer. He was kneeling in the center of the luxurious room, his hands bound behind his back with high-resistance plastic zip ties. In front of him, the large oil painting on the wall the same depiction of the burning nightclub that was in my room had been torn in half. Behind the canvas, a concrete niche was revealed, containing an industrial metal mechanical arm.

The mechanical arm held an industrial nail gun, pointed directly at the back of Samuel’s head.

“Help… please… I can’t move!” Samuel cried, nose running, face red with panic. The digital display on the mechanical arm showed a countdown: 00:45 seconds.

“What the hell is going on here?!” Marcus bellowed, taking a step back, afraid of triggering some pressure plate.

“It’s Samuel,” Lucas, the hacker, crossed his arms, analyzing the machinery with a frightening coldness. “Samuel from Horizon Construction. He went bankrupt three years ago after being sued for using beach sand and expired cement in three residential buildings. But his real rot is older. He was the engineer who signed the false report certifying the safety of that nightclub ten years ago. He received fifty thousand to say the gypsum ceiling and acoustic insulation were safe. They weren’t.”

“I needed the money! My son was sick!” Samuel screamed desperately as the timer dropped to 00:20 seconds. “Get me out of here! Cut these ties!”

Roberto searched his pockets for a blade, but the hotel’s rules had confiscated everything at the entrance. I looked around, searching for something heavy.

“Don’t touch him,” Diana the lawyer’s cynical voice came from the doorway. She looked at the scene with professional detachment. “Look at the floor. If you step inside the yellow line around him, the trigger activates early. It’s a simple physics test. The Host wants to see if anyone will sacrifice themselves for the corrupt engineer.”

“Diana, please! You defended me in the first trial!” Samuel begged, eyes fixed on her. “You know I didn’t mean to!”

“I defended you because your money was good at the time, Samuel,” Diana replied coldly. “Now, you’re a toxic asset.”

[ 00:05 ]

“No! Wait!” Samuel let out one last scream.

[ 00:00 ]

The mechanical arm fired. The sound was a deafening pneumatic snap. THWIP!

A ten-centimeter steel nail was driven directly into the base of Samuel’s skull. His body jerked violently forward. The nail pierced his brainstem and exited through his forehead, shattering the frontal bone. Blood and brain matter sprayed against the exposed concrete wall behind the torn painting. Samuel fell sideways, eyes wide open, staring into nothingness, as blood began pooling on the luxury carpet.

Daniela let out a horrified scream and covered her mouth, running back into the corridor.

Fifteen of us remained.

“One less pig in the world,” Marcus muttered, wiping a microscopic drop of blood that had splattered on his chrome shoe. He turned his back and left.

I stood there for a few more seconds, staring at Samuel’s body. The Host wasn’t waiting for the official games in the hall to kill us. He was hunting us in our own rooms, using our sins as the rope.

When I turned to leave, I noticed something strange on Samuel’s torn painting. On the back of the destroyed canvas, written by hand in red ink, was a list of names. I managed to read the first three before the lights in the room began to flicker, signaling that we should leave:

Marcus.

Diana.

Hayes.

I returned to my room with my heart in my mouth, but when I pushed the door open, I realized it was no longer empty. Someone was sitting on my bed, waiting for me in the shadows.