The walls breathed poison. You could smell it - sharp, metallic, seeping through every crack like time running out.

Amanda kept close to the wall, hands steady even as everyone else’s started to tremble. They didn’t trust her - she could see it in their eyes. Maybe they were right not to.

She knew this place. The corners. The sounds. The way the floor creaked right before something bad happened.

She’d been here before.

Xavier was shouting again, slamming his fists against the door like he could scare it open. The others yelled back, their voices blurring into one long, desperate sound.

Amanda tuned them out. The puzzle was all that mattered. The rules were all that mattered.

She crouched beside the safe, eyes scanning the numbers scrawled across the walls. The numbers are in the back of your mind.

She almost laughed.

Of course they were.

She looked at the syringe trap, the pit waiting like an open mouth. The others were too busy fighting to notice her hand shaking.

“Play the game,” she whispered, barely audible. “Don’t let it play you.”

But even as she said it, she could feel it - the walls closing in, the gas crawling down her throat.

Maybe this time, she wasn’t sure which side she was on anymore.