That same, sick feeling that had struck her when she first injected Adam returned to Amanda, quickly replacing the brief bit of happiness she had just felt in gazing over this man's peacefully resting unconscious body.

This current state of his was, albeit temporarily, keeping him blissfully unaware of the horrors that lie just ahead of him, and for a brief moment, said state had also allowed Amanda to imagine what it might be like just to watch him sleep.

—

When the short lived moment did fade, she looked up with a sigh, having arrived at the dilapidated building in which this God forsaken game was set to take place.

She hardly needed it, she'd just as easily transported him from his shitty apartment to her car to get him here, but she grabbed a wheelbarrow that they kept around this place anyway to wheel him the rest of the way.

This place was in no better shape than the shithole he seemed to call home, and the idea of dragging his body against the floor of it just didn't sit right with her.

"But, why?" She thought to herself. It was such a stupid thing, especially with what he was about to be subjected to.

Most of all though, "Why HIM?", that question from even earlier that she was still asking herself.

That question that, once again, she would just almost as quickly shake off to allow herself to go through with this plan, as instructed to.

When she finally wheeled him up to the bathroom's doorway, John, who had just situated Lawrence at the other end of the room, looked up at her and nodded with approval as she carted the unconscious man the rest of the way into the room.

—
"Put his left leg in the shackle." He instructed as he watched her lift him up to place him into the bathtub of water, that sat across the room from where Lawrence was chained up.

She looked over at him, nodded, and proceeded to do as instructed.

—

She took another look at Adam, after doing so, gently stroking her hand through his short, black hair, before leaving him there.

Also, as instructed, she left him with a key to the shackle that bound his ankle to the pipe it was chained to, intending to place it in such a way that it wouldn't get lost, should he wake up startled and thrashing upon realizing where he was…..though given her current emotional state and the stress of it all, she wasn't exactly in the right state of mind to be making that call…...a mistake that would inevitably prove to be unfortunately detrimental, by the game's end.

—

—

"What's that?" She asked John, upon looking back up to find John injecting his arm with something, as he prepared to lay down in the pool of blood on the grimey bathroom floor beneath him.

"Slow my heart rate, relax my muscles." He explained, picking up the gun that would lay loosely in his grip, as he got down on his knees to lie down on the floor with it, though not before watching to make sure Amanda collected all of their supplies to take back out with her.

"It's time to start our game." He told her, as she did. "...close the door behind you."

—
"Our game." …

She was beginning to wonder if that was still true or not.

—
She nodded, regardless, taking the stuff away in the wheelbarrow she'd brought Adam in on, and turned to take one last look before she went, when she reached the doorway.

As she stood hesitating in the doorway, unbeknownst to John as he laid with his head facing the other way, she looked back over to where Adam laid in the bathtub.

She brought a hand to her face as she whimpered quietly to herself, trying to keep herself together, at least until the door was shut and she was completely out of sight and earshot, and slid the heavy door shut and locked it, before turning back to trudge her way down the long, dimly lit hallway from which she'd come.

Amanda would be keeping an eye on the game from one of the computer monitors, but only as an additional watch, as John had roped a third man into this game of theirs to keep an eye on things from his own monitors.

A hospital orderly, who went by the name of Zepp and who was known to work with Lawrence, who had also been assigned to hold Lawrence's wife and daughter captive on his end, as part of the game.

A task that, had John been aware of her current true motive for wanting to keep an eye on things, he probably would've thought twice about.

Adam may be the first person that she had become this emotionally attached to…..so much so, that for the first time since John had taken her under his wing, she had begun to question his philosophy, but that didn't mean this was the first time her emotions had gotten in the way of her staying detached enough to John's standards.

She pulled up her chair and made herself comfortable, as she prepared to wait for Adam and this other man to awaken from their drugged state and become aware of their current, unfamiliar surroundings.

It was after another hour or so that things started to finally pick up and allow for the game to actually begin.

Lawrence, who would be the primary focus of the game, was the first of the two men to wake up and start trying to piece together where he was.

He was, naturally, very frantic at first, making attempts to yell for help and demanding to know where he was and what was going on, until he eventually calmed down and began trying to come to his own conclusions for his answers.

Adam, on the other hand, was arguably even more frantic when he eventually woke up.

The second he woke up and realized he had no idea where he was, he started thrashing in the tub, in his panic, til he finally managed to stumble up to his feet and out onto the floor, where he continued to stumble around in the dark.

"Help! Someone help me!" He called out, his voice trembling as he waited for a response. "Hey! …..shit, I'm probably dead."

"You're not dead." Lawrence finally responded, remarkably more calmly.

"WHO'S THAT?!"

"There's no point in yelling." Lawrence tried to tell him. "...I already tried that."

But it was to no avail, as Adam only became more frantic.

"TURN ON THE LIGHTS!" He shouted

"I would if I could."

"What the fuck is going on?! Where am I?!" Adam demanded

—

—
Amanda's heart sunk, just as it had when she was hearing the panic and fear in his voice just before she drugged him, back at his apartment, and she tried to calm herself back down by reminding herself he had something of an advantage over Lawrence….he had a key to his shackle, right?

Maybe it wouldn't do him much good, but it was something, right?

Whatever little reassurance she was starting to take from that was also short lived, as the realization hit her that she couldn't, for the life of her, remember if she had properly secured his key, as John had instructed.

"Would it even have mattered?" She tried to justify to herself, under the assumption she hadn't.

Given how much he was panicking and flailing around in the water, it was just as possible for the key to have gotten away from him and slipped down the drain, even if it had been tucked safely enough into a pocket or something. Right?

"Fuck." She whimpered to herself.