Disclaimer: I don't own Until Dawn.

A/N: Eh, turns out there's a third part to this story. xD Been sitting on most of this all week but turns out I won't get a chance to write the third part until at least the weekend. Enjoy part two the now anyway. :)

My Candle Burns at Both Ends (It Will Not Last the Night)

Chapter Two: Murder or Mercy

Sam woke slowly. Her head swam and her thoughts were slow and sluggish. Only a vague sense of urgency and unease kept her from falling back asleep. There was something…something important…if only she weren't so tired…

Her mind rolled like a whale turning slowly in the waves, thoughts slipping through her grasp like minnows darting through her fingers. Something…something about being chased…

She squinted into dark, vaguely aware of some sort of binding around her arms and legs, securing her to the chair she was in. The only light she could see was a wall of television screens, flickering with dull blue light that hurt her head even more. And the outline of a figure…of someone...sitting in front of them…

The silhouette was setting alarms wailing in some corner of her brain but it was behind walls and walls of cotton wool, so distant it might as well be on another planet.

A deep garbled voice spoke a very familiar name and Sam struggled with her uncooperative brain long enough to think, Jessica, he said Jessica, before losing the battle and slipping into unconsciousness once more.

xxx

Jess blinked, stirring slowly. Her head felt too heavy for her neck. What happened…? She sat up, trying to get her bearings.

The room she was in looked if it was underground, what with its bare concrete walls and floor, no windows, a single door and a solitary bulb hanging from the ceiling without a lampshade. In large, obvious letters, the word 'EXIT' was sloppily scrawled in red paint above the doorframe and between her and the door… Jess' gaze fell upon the ground, increasingly horrified as her memories started to trickle back. Between her and the door, stretched an expanse of broken glass, sharp and glinting in the harsh light.

"Oh God," she whimpered, suddenly excruciatingly aware of her bare feet and legs, of the thin fabric of her shirt. "Oh God, I can't…"

"You'll have to if you want to leave, Jessica." That horrible voice suddenly spoke from nowhere and Jess shrieked before she could stop herself. Heart pounding in shock, she clamped a hand over her mouth as electronic laughter issued from the hidden speakers. "Or you could just stay here," the psycho continued, still sounding amused. "I hear starvation is a slow, painful way to die."

"What do you want?!" Jess screamed, clenching her fists, nails biting painfully into her palms. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"

The psycho chuckled. "A lot of things, or so I've been told. As for what I want," his voice dropped, becoming even deeper and more menacing. "What I want is for you to pay for what you've done Jessica. You and all your friends."

"What? I don't understan –" But then her mind flashed to what had happened so recently on this mountain and ice pooled in her stomach. "You mean – you mean Hannah and Beth."

"Yes," the voice snarled, low and thick with anger, crackling with electronic distortion. "You killed them, Jessica. And now, I'm going to kill you."

Jess shook her head, in disbelief and grief and horror. "We never meant – never meant to hurt Hannah –"

"They are dead!" The psycho roared, raising his voice for the first time and his rage seemed to fill the room. "And they're never coming back, regardless of what you meant!"

For a few seconds, there was no sound as Jess stood stock still, trembling. Then he spoke again, sounding as calm as if he had never lost his temper. "Tick-tock Jessica. Michael will be worried."

Jess had thought she was scared before; now her stomach dropped as she hit an entirely new level of fear, ice cascading through her as she practically went numb with terror. "Mike," she breathed, horrified. She had been so distracted, she hadn't thought –

"Where is he?" she screamed. "Where is my boyfriend you son of a bitch –"

The speaker system shut off with a final sort of click and Jess' furious, terrified question was left to bounce off the bare concrete walls, unanswered.

xxx

Emily woke with a start. Her head was throbbing painfully, and she was pretty sure the skin was split over her left eye. There was certainly plenty of blood coating the side of her head; she could feel it drying on her skin and matting her hair.

It was also then that, as she sat up, she discovered she had been lying in the centre of a ring of ten metal boxes of various shapes and sizes, in a bare concrete room. She also discovered that her ankles were clamped in manacles and chained to the floor. "What the hell…?"

"Hello Emily. Nice of you to join us again in the world of the waking. Now, we're going to play a little game, you and I – put your vaunted intelligence to the test. You see, in one of the boxes around you is the key to your manacles. And in the other nine there are bear traps. I'm going to read you a riddle Emily, and then you're going to have to make a choice…"

xxx

Mike stirred with a groan. He rolled up onto his hands and knees, and sat back on his heels, staring sluggishly around the room. He appeared to have been lying in some sort of derelict entrance hall. It had clearly been a grand room at one point but it was now littered with chunks of rubble, the staircases were in ruins and all the windows and the doors had been boarded up. Cold moonlight fell in through a skylight three storeys above and illuminated a sign reading Blackwood Sanatorium.

I'm in the old sanatorium? Mike blinked, feeling his brain beginning to get up to speed. Memories began to flood back in and he jerked upright. "Jessica!" he cried, panicked. "Jess!" Silence and the echo of his own voice was his only answer.

Scrambling to his feet, he set off in an uneven, stumbling run for the only visible exit to the room. His limbs were clumsy with cold; the only thing he was wearing was his jeans and he had been lying on a bare, stone floor for God knows how long.

He reached the doorway and came to a halt. There was a small antechamber ahead of him, then another set of closed double doors, over which was plaque with the word 'Chapel' written on it. Set up in the antechamber however, was a small table with two open cages on it, each with an object inside.

Mike paced forward warily and peered at the cages in the semi-dark. In the left, there was a machete. In the right, there was a pistol, with three bullets lined up neatly next to it, gleaming in the half-light. Between them there was a slip of paper, with the words 'Choose your weapon' written on it.

Mike frowned. What's to stop me taking both? Reaching in, he lifted out the gun and ammunition and then moved to the other cage to take out the machete, but with a loud snik, it snapped shut, missing his fingertips by millimetres.

"Shit!" Mike jumped back, heart beating fast from the narrow escape. I guess that's what's stopping me. He loaded the bullets into the gun and paced forward to the chapel door, every nerve on high alert as his mind raced. That psycho must have a reason for arming me. He wouldn't want me to be able to defend myself against him, so it stands to reason that something else is going to attack me…

Mike peered through the slot in one of the doors, conveniently located at eye height and his mouth went dry at the sight that greeted him. Lean, sleek canine shapes prowled through the chapel, claws clicking on the bare stone floor and eyes glowing in the faint moonlight trickling down from the dusty skylight.

Wolves, Mike thought in absolute disbelief. Motherfucking wolves. What kind of psycho risks his life trapping a bunch of wild…oh right. The kind of psycho that spies on you when you're having sex, knocks you out with sleeping gas and kidnaps you.

He glanced uncertainly at the gun in his hand. He'd never killed anything in his life before. And there were a lot more wolves than bullets for his gun. But there were no other paths open to him; the doors and windows of the room behind him were boarded over and nailed shut, and there was no way he could pry them open with only his bare hands. Waiting was always an option but – Jess had to be here somewhere too. His stomach tightened at the thought. He couldn't stay here; God knows that psycho could be doing to her. Not to mention if he stayed put, the psycho might decide to just open the doors remotely and let the wolves into this room too.

No, going on is the only option. Even if it is playing into his hands. The thought left a sour taste in Mike's mouth but he could see no other way. Taking a deep breath, he hoisted the pistol, adjusted his grip and sent up a brief prayer to a God he was no longer sure he believed in. Then he cracked the door open and slid as silently as he was able into the wolves' den.

xxx

When Matt woke, the first thing he was aware of was how much his head hurt. His skull throbbed and ached all over, although the pain seemed to radiate out from a spot on the back of his head. His mouth was throbbing as well, and his lips felt oddly thick, swollen and inflamed. He tried to raise his hand to touch the site of his wounds and that was when he discovered that he couldn't move his fingers at all.

The hell… He squinted, through the dark and through blurred, painful vision, and then his eyes widened in shock. He was sitting slumped in a chair, which was bolted to the floor, in a small, shadowy room. His legs were manacled to the chair and his hands were bound, oddly delicately, in red thread. Deceptively slender strands had been woven in and out, and in and out, and all around his fingers, like some child's failed game of cat's cradle. The mass of thin red threads secured his hands to the handles on a big camera in front of him, which was long and mounted on some sort of stand. It was the sort of camera that wouldn't look out of place on a movie set and the front end of it was pointed towards a window of smoky glass, that Matt could just about see by craning his head around the bulk of the camera.

Through the glass, barely visible, was what looked like two cells made of thick, wire-mesh. And in one of them was…

"Emily!" Matt tried to shout but a sudden explosion of pain in his mouth made him instinctively recoil into the chair. What the hell... he thought, bewildered and hurting. He carefully, tentatively tried to open his mouth again. It hurt a lot less, but it still sparked wild, bright pain from the sensitive skin around his lips and he couldn't part them more than a couple of millimetres without the pain reaching agonising levels. There was an odd resistance too, some sort of material moving as he moved his mouth, increasing the pressure on what he assumed was damaged skin…

"Hello Matthew."

Matt jumped in surprise as a deep, electronically distorted voice spoke. It echoed, disproportionately loud in the tiny room. "Today you're going to help me with a little experiment. I imagine you've already noticed the camera in front of you; after all, it's hard to miss something you're attached to."

Matt wriggled futilely in his bonds, trying to find a loose knot, something. It didn't take a genius to work out that this was not a good situation to be in, even if he had no clue what the hell was going on or why.

"And it's not been the first camera you've been attached to, has it Matthew?" The deep voice gained a dangerous edge. "Not quite as literally as this one, but you were very eager to film Hannah that night last year, weren't you?"

Matt froze and the voice laughed. It wasn't a pleasant laugh, but electronic overlay made it even more horrible and menacing. "I see you do remember. Well, you'll be pleased to know you'll have the front row seat for the upcoming performance, since you're in charge of filming this one too."

Matt's horrified gaze landed on the view through the smoky window in front of him, the two wire-mesh cages, one of which contained a pale-looking Emily, gripping the mesh tightly with one hand. It looked like it was the only thing keeping her upright. "Mmmf!" he tried to protest but once again, he couldn't open his mouth without a fresh wave of agony.

"Oh, no need to thank me. After all, I do know how you like to watch Matt," the voice rumbled mockingly. "But remember, there is no talking allowed from the audience during the performance. Not that you'll be able to, with your mouth sewn shut."

Matt's mind went blank with shock. …What? Slowly, tentatively, he probed the back of his lips with his tongue. Focusing past the initial shock of pain, he found…thread. Strands of thread disappearing into his skin.

"Prevention is better than cure, Matthew," the voice chided. "I didn't think you'd be able to keep quiet and we don't want to throw off the performers, do we? Now sit tight. The show's about to begin…"

xxx

Jess gritted her teeth as she limped along the narrow corridor. It had taken her a while to get out of the glass-strewn room but she had managed to use her shirt as a makeshift broom, wrapping her hands in it and crawling forwards on hands and knees, carefully sweeping the glass out of the way.

Not all of it though; slivers of glass studded her knees and shins, testimony to her failure to catch all of the pieces. She had picked them out as best she could, but there were some shards she wasn't going to be able to remove without tweezers. With every step, fresh blood trickled down her legs from the puncture wounds and the glass ground against her flesh.

Could be worse, Jess reminded herself grimly. You could have feet full of glass and then you wouldn't be walking at all. Although at the moment, I don't know where the hell I'm walking to.

The corridor was grey and featureless, with exposed pipes running overhead. She had been following it ever since she left the room of glass and so far she hadn't come across any other rooms or hallways branching off this one. It's got to end eventually, she reasoned. I have to get out of here, I have to find Mike. The thought of her boyfriend threatened to shatter her relative calm and Jess took several deep breaths, trying to regain her equilibrium. The psycho's taunt about Mike had been haunting her. What if he was lying somewhere, injured, and she was wasting time down here, wandering about in this fucking endless hallway?

Jess bit her lip hard, trying to suppress the mix of fear and anger that threatened to overwhelm her. I need to get out of here… She rounded the corner and halted in surprise. The corridor ended abruptly about three metres away, terminating in a plain metal door.

Jess stared at it, curling her right hand reflexively in a fist. She was aware she was likely playing right into the psycho's hands, running around like a rat in his maze, but what were the other options? There were no other route to take and she couldn't break through the walls without a fucking pickaxe or something.

No choice. Keep going. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward and grasped the door handle. It opened easily at her touch…into complete darkness.

Jess frowned. Sliding one foot forward in front of her carefully, in case there was a sudden drop just inside the door, she tentatively felt her way into the new room.

"Hello?" a familiar voice called from the darkness, tone touched with irritation as usual. "What the hell is with the powercut?"

"Emily?" Jess asked, astonished. At any other moment, Em would have been the last person she would have wanted to see, but right now any (relatively) friendly face would be a welcome sight.

"Jess?" Emily sounded equally astonished. Then she suddenly yelled, "No, don't come in, you idiot! It's a fucking – !"

The door swung shut behind Jess with a resounding bang and at the same moment, light flooded the room as all the overhead lights suddenly came on.

" – trap," Emily finished resignedly. "Why are you so goddamn stupid sometimes, Jess?"

The blonde squinted against the light as her eyes adjusted. She was standing in some sort of cage made of sturdy wire-mesh, with a small slot about fifty centimetres long and twenty centimetres tall, situated around eye-level. Emily was in a cage exactly the same as hers, immediately adjacent to her own cell. Apart from that the room they were in was empty of anything else. Only one other door led into it, directly opposite their cages.

"Well, it looks like you were caught in the exact same trap to me," Jess retorted.

"Yeah, whatever," Emily muttered, leaning against the wall of her cage. Jess frowned. That response wasn't like Emily, her tone lacking its usual bite.

The blonde looked closer and realised exactly how pale and drawn Emily's face was. Then her eyes fell on the brunette's left arm. She seemed to have wrapped it in her jacket and was cradling it close, in a hunched, protective sort of way. And…and there was something horribly wrong with the outline of her arm through the coat. It was hard to tell with the dark fabric, but her jacket looked soaked through…

"Em?" Jess didn't realise she was speaking in a sort of hushed whisper, until it was already out, floating in the space between them. "Em, is your arm…?"

"Okay?" Emily's voice was laced with its usual mocking this time, although a lot more exhausted than normal and with new bitterness threading around her words. "No. And it's never going to be fucking okay again. That psycho made me answer riddles to get the key to my handcuffs and for every wrong answer, a fucking bear trap took a chunk out of me."

Jess stared, speechless with horror. Emily offered her a twisted smile. "What about you?"

"Uh," Jess gave herself a shake and glanced down at her legs, streaked with blood. "I had to get out of room filled with broken glass."

Emily considered. "Doesn't seem so bad."

Jess laughed, partly in disbelief, partly in morbid amusement. Only Em would turn even this into a contest. Although, that could be easily her way of coping. "No shoes, no socks, no jeans," she reminded her, joining in.

Emily nodded. "That's more difficult. Still easier though than –"

The door across from them was flung open so hard it rebounded off the wall and a bloodied figure sprinted into the room. An eerie howling drifted along the corridor behind them and the figure slammed the door shut again, cutting the sound off, and slumping against the wall in relief. Then they raised their head slightly and Jess's eyes widened in a mixture of horror and joy. "Mike!" she cried, hearing the call echoed by Emily next to her.

Her boyfriend looked up, seeming to see the room in front of him for the first time. Jess couldn't exactly blame him for not being lucid. His bare torso and arms were littered with deep gouges and bite marks, and his entire body was streaked in scarlet. His jeans seemed to have protected his legs a little better but teeth and claws had clearly still penetrated the fabric; the denim was also tattered and soaked in blood.

"Jess? Em?" he whispered in disbelief. Then relief so strong it was painful to look at appeared on his face and he hobbled forward, nearly falling against the front of Jess's cage. The blonde didn't recall actually moving, only being suddenly pressed up against the fence, trying to desperately touch as much of Mike as she could through the mesh.

"Mike, oh my God, Mike," she repeated over and over, tears running down her face. Mike was no better, tears washing trails through the blood on his face. Their hands found each other through the narrow slot in the front of Jess's cage, and they clutched at each other desperately, yearning for more than that meagre contact.

"Well, now that everyone is present, I think it's time to begin the experiment."

No. Jess raised her head and snarled at that by now familiar, hated, dreaded voice coming from unseen speakers. "Fuck you!"

In the cage next to her, Emily was gripping the mesh with her one good hand, growling similar insults.

"Now, this experiment involves all of you, but Michael has the starring role in this performance."

Mike dazedly raised his head at the sound of his name and Jess' fear spiked at the unfocused expression on his face. How much blood had he lost exactly?

"Now, Michael. You will pick up that gun that you dropped by the door and load it with this bullet." A small panel opened in the ceiling and a single gleaming bullet fell through, bouncing off the concrete floor with a loud tinkle.

"And then you will make a choice; Jessica or Emily. Who lives – and who dies?"

A/N: To the anonymous reviewer HCookienotlogged – as you can see, this part of the story answers your question as to whether or not Sam died from the amount of gas Josh gave her. :) However, please keep in mind that this is not a happy story. As much as I do like them as a pairing, I don't foresee a happily ever after ending; not down this branch of the butterfly effect anyway. :(

Thank you for reading - please let me know what you thought in a review. :)