Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace



"Ouch!" I couldn't help but cry out.

"Wakey, wakey!" Bran rushed over, supporting me with excitement. "You alright?"

It took me a while before I could open my eyes, the pain was so intense I couldn't even breathe. "Don't touch me..."

My arm hurt.

My leg hurt.

Everything hurt.

Bran finally let go of his grip.

Dexter hurried over, worry etched across his face. "Do you remember who pushed you?"

I shook my head. "It was too dark."

But I was pretty sure, the person who pushed me, they were after Dexter.

In a split-second decision, I pushed Dexter out of the way, and then... I was the one falling.

Besides me and Dexter, there had to be someone else hiding on that floor.

"Who was the last one down? Did you see anyone?" I asked through the pain.

Bran shook his head. "We were too panicked seeing you fall, didn't notice if anyone else was on the stairs."

"It was pitch black on the seventeenth floor. When you fell, I couldn't see anything," Dexter frowned, instinctively reaching for my hand but stopped himself, mindful of Melody's presence, and pulled back. "We need to get out of here fast. That maniac...won't spare any of us."

"The seventeenth floor briefly brought us together, fostered some trust..." Melody began analyzing again. "This means, the next level will likely see even more carnage."

There were three power outages on the seventeenth floor, supposedly signaling three deaths, but I survived.

The sixteenth floor was likely where the real carnage would begin.

That person won't let us make it to the ground alive.

"Bang, bang, bang! Anyone there? Is someone on the other side?"

Suddenly, we heard banging on the walls of the room we were in.

The wall seemed to be made of drywall, partitioned off, sounding flimsy.

I exchanged a wary glance with Bran, then looked at James and the others, counting the survivors minus those who had died, leaving thirteen of us. So, who was banging and talking on the other side of the drywall?

"That voice sounds familiar," Bran muttered under his breath.

"It's Finn!" I exclaimed, equally surprised at the sight of the drywall.

"Boom!" Probably frustrated by the lack of response, Finn started pounding on the wall.

Dexter instinctively pulled me away, keeping me at a distance from that wall.

Before long, Finn's head popped through. "Holy smokes, you're all here."

I stared at him in shock, and he mirrored my surprise.

"Quit the chit-chat." Another voice came through, Robin's voice.

Robin pushed Finn aside, kicked through the drywall, and came through.

"What's everyone doing here?" Robin was just as surprised.

He and Finn, both in what looked like hospital gowns, seemed to have been captured like us.

Besides Finn and Robin, Stella also came through.

"Stella!" I gasped. How did the three of them end up here too?

"Where is this? We woke up here," Stella

Ofatched her head. "

was just on a blind date, had a glass of juice, and then blacked out."

"I saw her being taken away, followed, and got ambushed..." Robin cleared his throat awkwardly.

"And you, Finn? You're part of the special investigation team," we all turned our attention to Finn.

"Heh..." Finn touched his nose

sheepishly. "I let myself get captured

on purpose. My goal was to catch

the serial killer and bring them to justice!"

"But why did they wake up on the sixteenth floor, and we on the eighteenth?" Annora asked, puzzled.

"Because they're cops." Bran

scoffed. "A special investigation

expert, a detective, a forensic

scientist. Heh, it's the maniac's way

of taunting us, challenging everyone, and signaling that the gameis leveling up."

Leveling up the game.

Meaning... the difficulty was about to increase.

Escaping the sixteenth floor would be tougher than ever.

Suddenly, my head started throbbing again, my ears ringing.

Warm liquid trickled from my nose, it was a nosebleed...

And then, countless memories began to flood my mind...