Countdown - Michelle Rowen

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      “Oliver,” I said.

      He finally glanced at me, and his eyes widened. “Kira, hey. I’ve been looking all over for you. You totally disappeared yesterday.”

      Yesterday? How long had I been unconscious before I woke up in that room? How long had I been unconscious before this level?

      I let out a shaky breath. “I need your help. Badly.”

      He raised his eyebrows. “You look serious.”

      “You have no idea.”

      “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

      Rogan’s hand curled around my arm. “Kira, this isn’t a good idea.”

      Oliver’s gaze shifted to him, and his eyes widened again. “New friend?”

      I looked at Rogan and then back at Oliver. Rogan outweighed the shorter, scrawnier kid by at least fifty pounds of muscle.

      “Uh, this is Rogan Ellis.” I gulped. “We both need your help.”

      “Rogan Ellis...” Oliver’s eyes widened even more at hearing the name. I guess I was the only one who hadn’t heard of his crimes before today. “Kira, do you have any idea who this guy is?”

      “Yes, but you have to listen to me...” I trailed off. I suddenly felt something. A strange sensation like we were being watched.

      I glanced over my shoulder and was positive I saw a silver digicam slide behind the far corner.

      “We can’t involve your friend in this,” Rogan whispered only loud enough for me to hear. “Unless you want to get him killed.”

      Oliver’s knuckles were white, and he gripped the edge of the table. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, Kira, but if you need my help, you know I’d do anything for you. But him—” His voice caught a little with fear. “I don’t want him anywhere near me.”

      Oliver had a crush on me. Thankfully, he’d never acted on it, but it was always there, an undeniable presence in the room with us. And I’d admit it, I took it as a compliment. It was nice to feel wanted. I was banking on that crush to make him want to help us. To help me. But the last thing I wanted to do was to put him in danger.

      And that was exactly what I was doing by even talking to him.

      Damn. Rogan was right.

      “Where do you want to go?” He closed his laptop and stood up from the table.

      “You know what?” I swallowed and shook my head. “Never mind.”

      He moved a step toward me. “Kira, you look really stressed. Tell me what’s wrong.”

      I took a step back and felt Rogan behind me. “This was a mistake.”

      He eyed Rogan with a mix of fear and hate. “Is it him? Is he forcing you to do something?”

      “None of your business what I’m doing,” Rogan growled.

      Oliver’s jaw tensed, and he turned his glare from Rogan to me again. “I can help you. You just have to come with me.”

      “Help her? Yeah, you look so tough.” Rogan snorted. “You think you can save her from me?”

      I really wanted him to shut up and not make this worse than it already was.

      “If I have to.” Oliver gave me another confused look. “Is he hurting you?”

      I shook my head. I had to back away. I couldn’t get Oliver involved in this. It had been a mistake to approach him. “No...Rogan and me...we’re together.”

      “Together?”

      I nodded. It was better to hurt him now if it would keep him safe in the long run. “I just wanted you to know so you...so you stop bothering me.”

      He put a hand to his chest. “I’m bothering you?”

      “Just leave me alone, Oliver.”

      He blinked. “He’s a murderer, Kira. Don’t you know that?”

      I gave him a blank look and turned my back to him. “Maybe I don’t care.”

      Wow, what a huge lie that was.

      “Kira—”

      “Don’t follow us,” Rogan snarled at him.

      “Or what?”

      “Or you’ll regret it. Trust me on that.”

      I didn’t look back as I left the food court with Rogan at my side. I never should have gone there in the first place. Oliver must hate me. I hadn’t wanted to hurt him. He had nothing to do with the mess I’d somehow gotten myself into.

      Tears of frustration slid down my cheeks. “You didn’t have to be such a dick to him.”

      “I did what I had to do.”

      I brushed my tears away before Rogan could see I was crying.

      Two men in security uniforms approached us.

      “We’re going to have to ask you to leave the premises,” one said. He had a hand on the gun at his side. “Now.”

      Rogan’s lips twitched. “My, how times have changed. How do you know I wasn’t about to do some shopping with my daddy’s gold card?”

      One of the guards eyed his dirty clothes and the bloodstain on his shoulder and then glanced at me. “Is this boy bothering you, young lady?”

      They didn’t seem to recognize Rogan like Oliver had.

      Tell them! my mind screamed. Tell them everything. They can help you.

      I caught a flash of silver out of the corner of my eye. The digicam.

      “The level’s already begun, hasn’t it?” I asked Rogan quietly.

      “Yeah, it has.”

      I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, if I told the security guards what was going on, I would be severely and painfully punished. And the guards themselves would probably not walk out of here alive.

      “He’s with me, actually.” The words felt thick and unnatural leaving my mouth.

      The other guard grabbed my arm. “Then you’ll both have to go.”

      “Fine. We’ll go.” I wrenched away from him.

      We cleared the food court and headed down a mostly abandoned hallway toward the exit. More tears burned my eyes, but I forced them back. Crying wouldn’t solve a damn thing.

      “What are they doing to us?” I asked after a moment, mostly to myself. “How could anyone find this entertaining?”

      “You’d be surprised. Some people are sick.”

      Yeah, he should know. “Why did they even put us here in the mall? Just to mess with our minds?”

      “Something like that.” Rogan’s arm tightened around my waist then, as if he was trying to comfort me. Weird. A moment later, as if he realized what he’d done, he pulled away from me and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you remember what Jonathan told us this level is all about?”

      I tried to think back through the thick storm cloud of memories. “The accountant.”

      He nodded. “Take a look.”

      I looked in the direction he pointed to see the man who had been featured on the holoscreen. Bernard Jones. I recognized his balding head and bland features. He emerged from an electronics shop with a bag of purchases, then turned left and started walking toward the same exit we were headed for.

      I heard the whir as a camera moved behind us. It was moving behind things to stay hidden from any regular people.

      Rogan’s

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