Warning: Mention of the others grim situations, slight bloodiness. Hint of a suicide.
"Hello, Peter. You use your camera to shy away from intimacy. Welcome to your own sanctuary; here you will be able to watch fellow classmates and other acquaintances. They will see you too, which you are going to have to use to your advantage. In the metal box in front of the monitors, you will find one of two keys that will unlock the main door. It is accompanied with a map that gives you crucial knowledge as to where the door to the exit is located. However it is not that simple. Another map instructs you as to where to find a key to unlock your room. You are going to have to communicate with the others and instruct them where this key is so that you and the key that unlocks their freedom are out of this room.
This information accompanies a loaded gun. I know you prefer to have control. How does it feel to be on this side of the camera? Now you are on the other side of the camera and must find a way to communicate to the others and clue them in about what they don't know if you want to save your own life. If you fail to play, the poison will finish you off in two to five hours."
Peter had watched it all on the TV monitors that were stacked in the corner. He had no choice but to carefully study their every movement. When they looked up at the cameras, he frantically began to try to communicate through his own camera. But they weren't looking for him, they were more concerned with the one who put them in this situation and got off on watching it. Even waving the map at the camera had gone unnoticed by the others.
He had to keep shaking off the feeling that he was invisible. Everyone has had that moment when they are ignored in a conversation. You could never be sure why; perhaps the crowds too big and loud, you were being redundant or simply boring, but whatever the reason you could not shake the sensation that you were being overlooked. Every once in awhile, when that happened, he wondered if he were even there. He knew that he wouldn't have this paranoia if he hadn't had that panic attack when his parents announced their divorce. The panic attack that had brought on a sense of not being real, not being present. If he were real and present in that moment, why would they be doing this to him? The whole time he was screaming inside, wake up, wake up.
Here, he knew he wasn't the first to wake up. He had seen J.T. roaming around and watching the monitor. He wasn't sure what happened to Craig. From the moment he started watching, Craig was motionless on the floor except for an occasional twitch and the rhythm of his chest rising and falling. Peter had also noticed that Craig had a scalpel in his hand and there was a smear on the floor. Perhaps it was blood. Something must have happened.
He wasn't the last to wake up either and was holding onto that fact for some hope. Craig's cellmate and ex-girlfriend Ashley had moved around a bit, but never seemed coherent. Peter could relate, whatever he was given to knock him out had made the sequence of events prior to being out cold and the first few moments upon waking a bit hazy and were panic stricken. He couldn't even place it in minutes and it seemed jumbled when he thought about them now. All the others had shown signs of being conscious, with the exception of Ashley and Dylan. He was fairly certain Dylan was never meant to awaken. He attempted to keep a grasp on the possibility that Ashley's movement indicated she was struggling to awaken and was meant to. Maybe she was the last to be knocked out, Peter tried to reassure himself. But he couldn't hold onto too much optimism. He had been so sure Jay would be the one to make it out of this alive. If anyone had the survival instinct, it had to be someone like Jay.
He had seen the moment when Jay had smashed the monitor and camera in his own holding cell, the door to the outside hall wide open. Peter was sure that Jay had lost it by that point, having to unintentionally kill two people. Maybe that was why he literally fell into Alex's trap. Peter had dug his fingernails deep into the palms of his hands as he had anxiously watched Alex. All she had to do was keep her head up above the water. "It's not that damn hard," he had shouted at the camera in desperation. Soon after that declaration, Alex had hit her head and he watched her body floated around the murky water. She had circled the pool drainage gate but never went down. She was now face down in the sludge. He recalled how he had been surprised when Alex's monitor had flashed on. That was his clue that several rooms hadn't been discovered yet. He waited in dread for one of the black monitors to flash on and the struggle would start again.
Peter didn't watch Emma's last moments. He had watched it out of the corner of his eye after Emma had given up her struggle and had caught a glimpse of Paige lying next to Emma's bizarre water chamber. He would glance over every so often but the stillness in that room became too much to bear. Every once in awhile he swore that he could see her breathe, but he was playing that same mind game when it came to Toby and Hazel.
He had long given up on Manny after Darcy met her fate. Manny had reached a new level of hysteria; he wasn't sure if she was intentionally slicing up her arms on the bladed arm trap or not. Even if he did get himself out of here, he wasn't sure he dared to go near Manny without that loaded gun. He was certain that she would pounce on the first living thing she saw with the intensity of a rabid animal. He wasn't sure what had happened to J.T. and Liberty after they had wandered into an adjoining room and was pretty sure that he didn't want to know.
Peter hoped that Sean and Ellie were still in the game, but it was looking grim. When he watched them on the screen now, he averted his gaze from the gruesome sight of Sean slouched in the corner, the blood pool growing. Peter knew that Sean was cradling his injured arm and he wouldn't be forced to deal with the shock of seeing Sean without his hand, but his imagination filled in the rest. He would occasionally see Ellie's hand or red hair pop up out of the pit but he refused to get excited by now. The last time she had tried to pull herself out, he could tell she was unbelievably weak. He wondered how long she would continue to fight.
His last hope had been Jimmy and Spinner, who seemed to be doing much less than the rest of them. At least it was buying them all time, although by this point it seemed like the longer they survived the closer they were to losing the game. When he saw Spinner hunch over in pain, he began to yell at the camera in his cell even though he knew it was the type of camera that couldn't pick up audio. He stopped yelling and nearly threw up when he saw that Spinner's hands seemed to be stuck in a claw like pose. Was it the result of broken bones? There was no blood and he couldn't figure out why else Spin would have screamed like that and why he was so shocky now. Peter still refused to admit to himself that his heart had pounded with anticipation when it seemed like Spin was going to cut into Jimmy. He knew it was the only way they had a shot, what else could he feel?
Why wouldn't any of them notice him? He began to wonder if he was even on their monitors. Funny how he could get attention before with the things he taped, but once he was in front of the lens he was invisible. He was invisible behind the lens as well, to an extent. There was more power in the position behind the lens though. He was able to get to people, see what they couldn't, and then shove it in their faces and make them see what they really were and what it all was about. As long as there was a response to what he showed them on film, he was there. He wasn't in the picture, but he was in the critical position behind the camera. He made things happen.
His finger was on the trigger now. He hoped he could wait until the last moment before he had to make this happen. His lungs were heavy now though, his heart pounded so fast that he felt the pulse in his temples. He wasn't sure if his body would go out before his mind did. He felt himself slipping.
I'm sure you all know who's next. As long as something doesn't separate me from a computer, the final two chapters will be up and will conclude with the last on Halloween night.