Chapter 10: Wrath

I stood there in the empty Hall with Fin ten feet away and everything he'd just said hanging in the air.

"Say that again," I said.

"I'm going to send you home."

"You can do that."

"Yes."

"Then send everyone home."

Fin shook his head.

"It doesn't work like that."

"Then make it work like that."

"I'm the appraiser," Fin said. "Not the door."

"That's a convenient thing to be."

"It's what I am."

I walked toward him.

"You watched me for four years. You read my note. And now you tell me you can save one person and it's me."

"Yes."

"Why."

"Because you didn't have to be fair," Fin said. "Nobody was checking. Nobody would ever have known. You built it fair anyway."

"So did everyone who ever made anything."

"No," Fin said. "They didn't."

The door behind him opened and people started coming back in from the lust room.

They came in quiet. Nobody was talking.

The woman from design had her arms wrapped around herself.

Fin stepped back from me and put his hands behind his back.

"Fourth trial," he said. "Now."

"Now?"

"Now."

The seven carved figures on the door lit up red.

The floor of the Hall began to move.

Not under our feet. Above us.

The ceiling came down. Slow, black, smooth, and it stopped twenty feet over our heads and sealed.

The walls went up. All four of them. No doors.

Forty-one people in a closed box.

"Wrath," Fin said. "There's no room for this one. You are the room."

"What does that mean," the VP said.

Fin didn't answer him.

The lights went out.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Draven Steals My Game Then Hell Takes Us from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.