The glowing red zero hung in the air for a heartbeat, a silent verdict. Then, the words replaced it, stark white against the screen that dominated their white prison.
PROVIDE A CONFESSION. ONE TRUTH YOU HAVE NEVER TOLD ANYONE. THE AUDIENCE WILL JUDGE ITS WORTH.
A new timer materialized beneath the command: 02:00. The digits began their cold descent.
For a moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing. Then Vivian let out a wet, choked sound. "A… confession? I can't. I don't have any secrets." Her voice was a high, fragile thread. It was so obviously a lie that it hung in the air, pathetic and transparent.
"This is textbook psychological warfare," Marcus spat, crossing his arms. His analytical façade was back, but it was paper-thin, his eyes darting to the timer. "They want to dismantle our boundaries, create shame and division. We shouldn't engage. It's a trap."
"Everything in this place is a trap!" Richie shouted, his pain making him sharp. He was leaning heavily against the wall, his bandaged leg held stiff. He glared at the screen, then his gaze caught on something new. A smaller, semi-transparent overlay had appeared at the bottom of the main screen. It was a feed of the Vtube livestream chat, moving in a relentless, dizzying scroll.
User 'CourtSide': is it me or does Richie look more captivating trapped and scared senseless than when he is on the basketball court?
Richie's face, already pale from pain, went ashen. His jaw worked. "You gotta be kidding me," he breathed, the words devoid of their usual bravado. It was a whisper of pure, horrified disbelief.
Chloe's mind, however, was clicking pieces into place with a cold, dreadful clarity. She watched the chat scroll, saw the usernames and the flippant, cruel commentary. She looked at the timer, then at the frozen, expectant image of the mask on the left side of the screen.
"It's not about whether we play, Marcus," she said, her voice low but cutting through the panic. "Look. We're already playing. They're not just judging if we confess. They're judging how we do it. Our performance. If we're boring… if we don't give them a show…" She didn't finish the sentence. The clown's voice, laughing about someone getting "spilled," echoed in the silent room.
The timer hit 01:45.
Vivian broke. The pressure was a physical thing, and she was the weakest vessel. "Fine! Okay! I… I cheated on my organic chemistry final! I had the answers written on my water bottle!" She blurted it out, her face flushed with shame and relief.
For three seconds, nothing happened. Then the chat exploded.
BORING. -1000 POINTS. WEAK SAUCE. DIDN'T EVEN GET CAUGHT? LAME.
A low hum filled the room. From the seam where the wall met the floor near Vivian's feet, a blue-white arc of electricity snapped out. It wasn't a massive bolt, but it was precise and vicious. It caught her in the calf.
Vivian screamed—a short, sharp sound of absolute agony—and crumpled to the floor, her body convulsing once before going limp, smoke rising from the scorched fabric of her pants.
"Vivian!" Chloe was at her side instantly, rolling her over. Vivian's eyes were wide, tears streaming, her breath coming in hitched sobs. The shock was more psychological than physical now; the punishment was real, immediate, and tied to the whims of an invisible crowd.
"They're rating us," Chloe said, looking up at the others, her eyes blazing with a furious understanding. "It's a game show from hell. We have to give them something real. Not just to humiliate ourselves, but to… to control it. We do this together. We decide what they see."
The timer read 01:20.
Richie, galvanized by Vivian's pain and the creeping horror of the chat, exploded. "This is absurd! We're not contestants! We're hostages! We're being puppeteered by a psychopath for the amusement of a bunch of sick, bored trolls in their basements!" He was shouting at the screen, his finger jabbing at the camera, his face a mask of righteous, furious indignation.
The chat, predictably, devoured him.
User 'BallHog': lol listen to him whine. just like his idiot dad who got taken out by Azaqor. apple didn't fall far.
User 'ReaperFan': hey guys lets make a poll! Vote for the deletion of Richie Blackwell! 🗳️
User 'Spectre': Good idea. Maybe Azaqor will notice. I wonder what he'd think.
User 'Concerned37': You people suggesting this are as insane as Azaqor.
User 'ChaosEnjoyer': DELETE DELETE DELETE
The word "DELETION" began to repeat, a digital chant scrolling alongside the live feed of Richie's furious, terrified face. He saw it. The color drained from him completely, leaving a greying, waxy pallor. His rant died in his throat. He wasn't just in danger from the game master. He was on the ballot for execution by popular vote. His bravado shattered, replaced by the primal, hollow-eyed terror of a lamb seeing the slaughterhouse gate.
Elijah had been silent, still as a stone. His mind wasn't on his own secret; it was racing through scenarios. A boring confession got a shock. An angry tirade incited a mob to call for death. The audience was a capricious, monstrous god. They needed to be fed a narrative, not just a fact.
He saw Richie's terror. He saw the chat chanting. He saw Marcus, frozen, calculating the odds of his own confession. He saw Chloe, trying to hold them all together.
And he knew.
If the audience turned on one of them, it would turn on all of them. They would start voting them off one by one for entertainment. He couldn't let that momentum start. He had to redirect the narrative, now.
At 00:45, Elijah moved. He took two deliberate steps forward, placing himself directly between Richie and the screen, blocking the younger man's terrified face from the main camera.
"My turn," he said, his voice not loud, but clear and solid in the dead air. It cut through the tension like a knife.
He turned to face the screen fully, his back straight, his expression not defiant, but eerily composed. The chat slowed, curious. The timer glowed: 00:38.
Elijah looked directly into the lens, his grey eyes meeting the countless unseen eyes on the other side.
"The truth I've never told anyone," he began, each word measured, "is that I am not afraid of dying in here."
He paused, letting the statement hang. The chat scrolled with ??? and edgy.
He continued, his gaze unwavering. "I'm afraid of who I'll have to become to get out."
He offered nothing else. No explanation. No details. It was a confession not of an act, but of a potential—a dark, open-ended fear that implicated not just him, but the very nature of the game. It was a secret everyone in the room shared but hadn't named.
The chat erupted, but differently this time.
User 'DeepThinker': Whoa. Meta.
User 'MaskFan': He gets it. He understands the game.
User 'StoryTime': Now THAT'S a character arc. +5000
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT: SPIKING
No shock came. The timer for his turn simply vanished. The Mask on the left side of the screen seemed to… lean forward infinitesimally.
A path had been shown. They weren't just confessing sins. They were building characters for an audience.
Marcus understood instantly. When the prompt flashed to him at 00:25, he smoothed his shirt, adopted a cold, boardroom demeanor, and looked at the camera with contempt—not for the game, but for the necessity of the performance.
"I've been siphoning proprietary data from my father's competitors since I was sixteen," he stated, his voice devoid of emotion. "Not for money. For the certainty that I knew more than him. I built a shadow portfolio. He still doesn't know."
It was ruthless, clever, and amoral. The audience, appreciating the villainous flair, rewarded him. USER 'CorpPrince' SUPERCHATS $100: "A true heir! Respect."
When it was Chloe's turn, the timer was at 00:10. She didn't look at the camera. She looked at Vivian, still sniffling on the floor, then at Richie's shell-shocked face, then finally at Elijah. She drew a shaky breath, not to steady herself, but to give weight to her words.
"My mother didn't 'travel for her mental health' when I was twelve," Chloe said, her voice clear and painfully unadorned. "She left a note on the kitchen counter saying the silence in our perfect house was suffocating her, and she chose the noise of the world instead. She chose freedom over me. My father bought the cover story. I never corrected him."
It was raw, personal, and framed not as a victim's plea, but as a survivor's scar. The chat flooded with heart emojis and "STRENGTH" and "HALVERN QUEEN."
The final timer expired.
For a long moment, there was silence. Then, the familiar, layered voice filled the room, this time with a wet, smoker's chuckle underlying the words.
"Adequate. You have learned the first rule of performance: give the crowd a character. The spectacle progresses."
With a soft hiss, a circular section of the wall to their right irised open, revealing not another sterile hallway, but a blast of discordant color and sound.
The door to the next game was open.
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