Without another word, they return to Reese's room. As soon as the door is closed, he pulls a long chain from around his neck and holds it out to Rebecca. A small stainless steel rectangular prism dangles at its center.

  “Take this,” he says.

  Rebecca frowns. “What's that?”

  Reese pushes the upper part of the case, and it slides open, revealing a hollow space behind it. "It works with magnets," he explains, as if that were the surprising part. Inside the case, there is a single USB drive, the size of a cherry pit but flat and metallic. "Remember my guy? The programmer I talked to you about," he says. "He sent it today."

  Rebecca raises her eyebrows. "He's 'your guy', now?"

  "When he makes himself useful and pays his debts, yup, he's my guy," Reese replies.

  He closes the case, and the division line fades as the two parts seal together. Then, he slips it into Rebecca's jacket pocket—the one with a zipper.

  "Stick it in the USB port," he tells her. "It messes with the system's input history. Rewrites the most commonly typed words, then auto-hits enter. If it works like it should, you'll have access to the whole thing."

  When he lets go of the zipper, his fingers drag against the fabric of her jacket for half a second before he drops his hand. He exhales deeper than necessary.

  Rebecca swallows, her mind racing. Besides the possibility of claustrophobia, insects, being found by the spider drones, or getting lost in the vents, she didn’t expect there to be something else that could go wrong.

  She takes one deep breath and says, “Let’s do it.”

  She has faced bigger challenges, she tells herself, forcing courage to take hold. She mastered the infamous Italian Fouetté turn, for Christ’s sake—sacrifice had always been second nature. Starving herself, smoking like a chimney to cope with the nerves, pushing her body to its limits with nineteen-hour training days. A simple shaft wasn’t going to break her. And anyway, there is no turning back now.

  Reese glances up at the vents above his bed, then drags it out of the way, the legs scraping across the floor with a screeching protest. The ceiling towers above them, nearly half a meter taller than Reese, who already stands a head taller than her. Without a word, Reese positions his hands, inviting her to step up. He propels her upwards with a gentle yet firm push. Rebecca places her left foot on his right shoulder, then mirrors the action with her right.

  “Wow,” Reese exclaims, gazing up at her as she squats on his shoulders. She can easily reach the opening now.

  He hands her a screwdriver, and she deftly removes the screws. Once all four are out, the metallic vent slides away from the wall with surprising ease, revealing a dark, dusty shaft. The simplicity of it all is almost laughable—either the producers grossly underestimate the contestants or they’re overly confident in their security systems.

  Then, she crawls in. The tunnel wraps around her, cold and narrow. The darkness suffocates her. “I’m scared,” she mumbles, her whispered voice traveling far into the void in front of her.

  “Rebecca,” Reese shouts from his room. “Don’t move until you hear me play, okay? And then make sure to follow me; I’ll walk slowly so you can keep up.”

  Rebecca nods, aware that he can’t see her, but she doesn’t trust herself to speak without breaking.

  From inside the ventilation system, the sound of his guitar is faint but clear. He plays a melancholic melody and sings with a throaty voice. A few wrong notes tell her he’s more focused on her than the song.

  In simpler times, she would have doubted it. She might’ve questioned whether the emotion in his voice was real—whether the lyrics meant something, or were just shallow words that sounded pretty. But here, with the darkness pressing in and faint, terrifying tickles creeping over her neck and legs, that’s the least of her concerns.

  She knows he’s playing for her.

  Rebecca finds it surprisingly easy to navigate the claustrophobic tunnels of the ventilation system. Her shoulders and hips occasionally scrape against loose screws and other obstructions, but aside from that, she moves with an almost unnatural fluidity. In the corners, her limbs bend and twist in ways that defy the limitations of the cramped duct. The implanted metal fibers in her muscles allow her to squeeze through impossibly narrow passages with ease. Where a larger person would get stuck, Rebecca flows, carving her path through the metallic labyrinth faster than Reese, who is deliberately walking slowly.

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  The only moment she lags behind is when she hears a squeak near her ear, followed by a small ball of fur scurrying across her legs. She screams and curls in on herself. “Oh my God,” she whispers. Tears threaten to spill again, but she holds them back.

  For the rest of the path, she keeps her eyes closed; the darkness doesn’t let her see anything anyway. Besides, the music sounds clearer that way. After a while, moving through the shaft, guided by Reese’s guitar, feels a lot like dancing. The notes propel her; they’re in charge—her body only responds. Still, she startles at every faint noise skittering through the vents.

  Suddenly, a soft, almost imperceptible beep reaches her ears. It’s coming from her phone. She can’t reach it—not in this position—but she knows it’s a message from Reese. And she knows what it says.

  She opens her eyes. Just ahead, a thin line of light pierces her corneas. As she crawls closer, the glow spreads, tinting the vent walls a deep shade of blue. Emergency lights. She’s reached the nurse’s office.

  She pauses, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. Running her fingers along the edges of the vent, she notes that it has the same number of screws as the one in Reese’s room, positioned exactly the same way. The problem is, she’ll have to unscrew them from the inside out—a task that demands both precision and patience.

  Reese thought of everything, she realizes as she presses the screwdriver against the bottom of the screw in the upper right corner. Its tip is sharper than a standard screwdriver, biting into the metal with ease.

  "Lefty loosey, righty tighty," she reminds herself—only this time, she has to go the opposite way. Carefully, she applies pressure, feeling the screw resist, then finally loosens. It takes several tries with all four, but she gets them out.

  With a final, fluid motion, she turns, angling her legs toward the opening—easily the hardest part. Then she forces herself through the last stretch of the duct and drops onto the chair by the desk.

  The room looks exactly as Rebecca remembered it, only now tainted by a haunting solitude in the consuming darkness.

  She lets out an audible gasp when she spots the AI nurse, standing frozen against the wall, its head bowed, a polite smile still plastered on its lips—likely a vestige from its last interaction with one of the contestants. Its eyes remain open. A chilling sight.

  A computer terminal sits on the small desk, its screen dark and unblinking. Rebecca scans the room, searching for potential threats, hidden cameras, or any trace of surveillance. But beyond the sterile white walls and neatly arranged medical supplies, she finds nothing.

  The computer flickers to life as she presses the power button. The screen greets her with its artificial glow, displaying a blank field over a blurred background. Her heart hammers against her ribs as she fumbles along the side of the computer, searching for the USB port. On the third try, the device slips into place with a quiet click. Almost instantly, the password begins to type itself.

  She stares at the screen for a moment too long, caught in awe, as the desktop—with its files and folders—gives her access to what she’s been searching for. Reese’s guy was apparently a genius.

  Outside, a melody drifts through the thin walls; Reese’s guitar keeps her company, now positioned just beyond the nurse’s office door. His voice, rich and resonant, carries the lyrics of a familiar song. The image of him, sitting cross-legged on the floor, guitar cradled in his arms, forms clearly in her mind.

  Rebecca’s gaze drifts over the endless array of folders, lost in a maze of information with no clear path forward. She runs a finger across the icons, reading the labels as they tilt under her touch. She hesitates, unsure which one to click. She needs something specific—a detail, a clue that could help them escape. But where does she start?

  Each file holds countless possibilities. Each folder, a potential dead end. Time is limited; every second feels precious, every moment a race against an invisible deadline.

  Then, one folder stands out: "Contestants."

  She takes a deep breath, steadies herself, and clicks.

  The folder reveals a series of subfolders, each labeled with a number. Heart pounding, Rebecca clicks on hers—42. Seeing it there, the number that’s become so intimately hers throughout the show, suddenly feels foreign. Just one out of 53 others.

  Inside, she’s met with a wall of complex graphics, data points and interconnected lines that make her feel more ignorant than ever. There’s no text, let alone pictures; just shifting visual representations of complex networks that seem to chart her every move, every interaction, every fleeting emotion she’s felt while being a prisoner in the grand performance of Live. Her life has been dissected and reduced to decimals, curves, and bars. All of it cold and impersonal.

  The data is dense, overwhelming, and Rebecca can’t decipher it. She tries to uncover patterns, searching for some underlying logic, some hidden key to understanding, but the information remains stubbornly opaque. Frustrated and disappointed, she moves on to Reese’s folder—number 13.

  The data within is just as baffling as hers, yet distinct in its details, and even more vast—she never stops scrolling. She just gives up midway, stopping at a bar graph that shows an almost even split of something happening—though she can’t decipher what.

  Suddenly, the graphics and charts vanish, replaced by a single pop-up message and a soft beep—almost identical to the one on her phone when she receives a notification. It’s a video call. She blinks at the screen, the incoming call persisting despite her lack of response. The sight of it, however, is quickly overshadowed by a new text message on her phone, a simple instruction from Reese: "Take the call."

  Rebecca frowns. That wasn’t part of their plan—if anything, it feels like a deviation. But why would Reese send that message if he didn’t think it was important? And how could he possibly know about the call? Had "his guy" handled that too?

  She cracks her knuckles before finally accepting.

  The screen resolves into the image of a woman with blunt, shoulder-length black hair and a severe fringe that hides most of her forehead. Her expression is neutral, almost mask-like. The only sign that she’s human—and not a high-tech android like the nurse—is the slight flare of her nostrils with each breath.

  Her voice, when it comes, is smooth, low, and strikingly cold.

  “Good evening, Contestant 42.”