These Deadly Games by Diana Urban

Author:Diana Urban [Urban, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250797193
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-31T18:30:00+00:00

Before I could puzzle it out or consider the subtext of the riddle, my room plunged into darkness.

CHAPTER 22

I gasped and stared at the light fixture hanging from the ceiling as though it might offer some explanation. Did we lose power? No—the tiny light on my laptop’s power cord was still lit. The light switch next to the door was already in the on position, but I flicked it anyway, back and forth. Nothing happened.

The riddle. You saw less in the dark. The answer was darkness. Dread spread through my chest.

The lights turned on again.

I leaped away from the light switch like a ghost was hovering there.

But, no, it wasn’t a ghost. There was one other way to control the lights. When Dad was obsessed with home renovation, he’d replaced all our light bulbs with smart ones so we could use an app to control them, dim them, and switch to fun colors. Zoey had asked her parents for one after I got mine, and we’d created a code to communicate via our lights—purple meant game night, blue meant have to study, green meant come over ASAP, pink meant love you, and so on. The novelty wore off fast, since we could text each other—

The lights turned red.

“Jesus.” I backed against the wall, goose bumps coating my skin like a rash as my room glowed like an old-school darkroom. This was unreal. I glanced out the window at Zoey’s. Was she doing this? Was she watching me now, laughing her sadistic ass off? The thought made my blood boil, and I navigated to the lights app, switching them back to normal.

That’s when I noticed the slew of notification icons atop the screen. Oh, God. Word about Matty’s death had clearly spread like wildfire—tons of classmates had sent me sympathy messages across several social apps. No. He couldn’t be dead—not really. I was so used to our avatars dying and regenerating in MortalDusk, over and over again, it was almost like part of me expected Matty to come over tomorrow like nothing had happened—

The lights turned red again.

My chest compressed, and I scrambled onto my bed and hugged my knees to my chest, burying my face in my arms to hide from both the onslaught of red light and the messages. Looking would only make everything more real. Nothing about today could be real. Matty couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. An0nym0us1 couldn’t have this much control over my life, down to my freaking lights. This couldn’t be happening. I rocked back and forth, back and forth.

Eventually, I calmed down, and curiosity got the best of me. I wiped my face, took a deep breath, and looked at my notifications. The most recent message caught my eye. From Dylan, about an hour ago.

Hi.

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