Chapter 2 - I Loved the Monster. Then I Blew Him Up.

Calla's POV

【System Announcement: Player Wade Pruitt has died.】

【Players currently alive: 44. Prize pool updated to: $5,800,000.】

The system voice is completely flat. It still hits me like a shot of adrenaline straight to the vein.

One life. Eight hundred thousand.

The classroom has completely lost it. Lacey scrambles under a desk. Brett's backed against the far wall, face drained of color.

The thing that took Wade's head seems to feed off the screaming. Its feeders thrash wildly as it swings toward the screaming, zeroing in.

I stay exactly where I am, right by the door. Perfectly still.

No eyes. It tracks sound. It sweeps right past me and goes straight for whoever's screaming loudest.

I don't look back. I turn and walk into the dark hallway.

The more of them die, the more money I walk out with. Why would I save anyone?

The hallway stretches out ahead of me, walls lined with yellowed rule sheets. I catch the faint glow of an emergency light at the far end and scan them quickly.

【Rule 3: No loud noise in the hallways after 10 PM. The campus security guard needs her rest.】

【Rule 7: Chemistry lab equipment is expensive. Damage must be compensated with items of equal value.】

I check the countdown watch the system gave me.

9:45 PM.

I take the stairs down to the first floor and head straight for the chemistry lab.

The door's locked. I find a rusted hatchet tucked inside the fire hose cabinet nearby and crack the lock off in one hit. The door swings open and the smell of chemicals hits me immediately. I step inside, pull the door shut, and shove a lab table up against it.

I start going through the cabinets in the dark.

Potassium permanganate. Sulfuric acid. Anhydrous ethanol. Magnesium ribbon.

Back in the real world, I'm the girl everyone walks over. I'm also the top student in my grade. They destroyed my books. I built a library in my head instead.

I pour the potassium permanganate into a glass bottle, add the sulfuric acid, then slowly drip in the ethanol.

It's a simple reaction. But in a horror game with no actual weapons, it's the most effective incendiary device I can put together right now.

Heavy footsteps outside the door.

10 PM.

"Who's in there..." A voice scrapes through the door, low and wet and wrong. "...messing around in my lab..."

The campus security guard.

Something slams into the door hard enough to split the table I wedged against it. A hand forces itself through the gap: pale, swollen, skin mottled with dark patches.

I don't back up. I walk forward, press the incendiary bottle into that hand, tuck a lit strip of magnesium ribbon alongside it, and step back.

"Consider that compensation for the equipment."

I drop behind the nearest lab table.

The explosion tears through the doorway in a wall of light and heat. The potassium permanganate oxidizes violently in the acid, and whatever is on the other side of that door gets swallowed whole. A shriek cuts through the air, and then comes the smell, burnt and thick and awful.

【System Announcement: Player Calla Merritt has defeated basic variant "Vengeful Guard."】

【Points earned: 500.】

【Clue item obtained: Guard's journal page (1/5).】

I stand up and brush the dust off my shirt.

I open the system store and spend the 500 points: a tactical flashlight, a machete, three high-grade healing kits, and one cheeseburger, still hot.

I sit down in the wreckage of the lab and take a bite. The meat is perfect. Juicy and warm, like none of this is even happening.

My system interface lights up. The group chat.

【Brett: HELP!! Something's outside the security office!! It's breaking through the door!!】

【Lacey: Brett please!! I don't wanna die oh my god!!】

【Leo: Does anyone have a weapon?? Can someone please come help us!!】

I read through the messages and swallow another bite.

Then I type.

【Calla: Hey, everyone calm down. The chemistry lab is totally safe. No monsters in here at all.】

I close the chat, pack up my things, push open the window, and drop out into the dark.