Draven Steals My Game Then Hell Takes Us novel · Chapter 3 of 17

Chapter 3: Pride

The first trial begins. Each person faces a mirror that shows their worst self. Draven walks through clean; Andrew is dragged back by what he sees.

I stood up.

My legs were steady, which surprised me.

Fin walked past me toward the far wall and the crowd parted for him without a sound.

"Follow," he said.

We followed.

The Hall went on longer than it should have. I counted my steps to keep my head straight.

Two hundred and ten steps and then the wall opened into a room with no ceiling.

The room was round and black and mirrored on every side.

Not glass. Better than glass.

Every panel showed the room back to us, and every person in it, and a little more than that.

People stopped at the threshold.

"Inside," Fin said.

We went inside.

The mirrors were cold. I could feel it off them from six feet away.

"Pride is the first sin," Fin said. "It's the one that hides the others. So it goes first."

He turned in the middle of the room and looked at all forty of us.

"Stand where you are. Look at yourself. The mirror will show you what you actually are."

"That's it?" Draven said.

"That's it."

Draven laughed. "I look at myself all day."

Fin didn't answer him.

The mirrors went bright at once.

I looked at mine.

At first it was just me. Sandy hair, navy sweater, the coat I'd worn since October.

Then my reflection moved without me.

It turned its head to the left. I hadn't moved.

It smiled at me.

And I knew that smile.

It was the smile I used when I was about to say something I didn't mean.

All around the room people were making noises.

Someone laughed. Someone said, "Oh, that's not fair."

A woman from accounting started crying and put her hands over her face.

The mirror-me stood there and waited for me.

"Say it," it said.

Its voice came out of the panel like it was standing next to me.

"Say what?"

"You know what."

I did know.

Seven years ago I was twenty-two and I signed a paper I didn't read.

Draven slid it across the desk and said it was standard.

I was two weeks into my first real job and I wanted to be the kind of person who didn't make a fuss.

So I signed it.

I never told anyone. Not my mother. Not one friend.

I told myself I was being reasonable.

The mirror-me put its hands in its pockets, the way I do.

"You could've read it," it said. "You had all night."

"It was my first week."

"You read everything. You read the manual for the coffee machine. You read the terms on a free app."

I didn't say anything.

"You didn't read it because you wanted him to like you."

"That's not true."

"You wanted the job so badly you'd have signed anything he put in front of you."

Behind me someone was being dragged.

I turned and saw a man from QA on his knees, sliding backward toward the wall.

His mirror had him by both wrists. He was screaming.

The panel swallowed him and the mirror went smooth.

Fin stood at the edge of the room with his hands behind his back.

"Where did he go?" I said.

"He failed pride," Fin said. "He'll wait below."

"He didn't do anything."

"He told himself a lie for eleven years. It came out of the mirror and he called it the truth."

Another man went. Then a woman. Then two more.

I looked back at my own panel.

The mirror-me was still standing there.

"You're not better than him," it said. "You knew what he was doing and you kept building."

"I built my own thing."

"You built his name on it."

"I built it right. I built it fair."

"You built it in the dark, alone, and you never once said it out loud. Because if you said it out loud he'd have fired you."

"I was going to leave."

"You were going to leave at sunset. Seven years late."

My chest hurt.

The mirror-me leaned forward until its face was six inches from the glass.

"You didn't stay for the money," it said. "You stayed because you wanted him to admit it. You wanted him to look at you and say you were the one."

I couldn't answer.

"Pride," it said. "That's the whole thing. That's all you are."

Something hooked me behind the ribs and pulled.

My heels left the floor.

I slid backward across the black marble, arms out, clawing at nothing.

"Fin," I said.

Fin didn't move.

The panel came up behind me and it was cold, so cold it burned.

I got one hand flat against the floor.

I got the other one down.

I stopped sliding.

"You're wrong," I said.

The mirror-me tilted its head.

"I wanted him to admit it," I said. "That part's true. I wanted it every day for seven years."

I got a knee under me.

"But I didn't build it in the dark to hide it. I built it in the dark so it couldn't be taken."

My foot found the floor.

"I built it so the score would be the score. So nobody could buy it. Not him. Not his father. Not me."

The hook in my ribs let go.

I got up.

I walked back across the room to my panel and stood in front of it.

"That's not pride," I said. "That's the only thing I ever got right."

The mirror-me looked at me for a long moment.

Then it turned its head to the left.

I hadn't moved.

It turned its head to the left again, and again, and faster, like something was spinning it from behind.

Its face changed.

The sandy hair went brown and loose and unruly.

The jaw went soft.

The eyes went warm.

Draven's face looked back at me out of my own mirror.

I turned around.

Draven was standing ten feet away, hands in his pockets, watching my panel.

He had already walked through. His coat wasn't even wrinkled.

He looked at the mirror, then at me, and he shrugged.

"Interesting," he said.

My reflection raised Draven's hand and pointed at my chest.

Fin's voice came from the edge of the room.

"Next," he said. "Draven Hale."

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