Before I can dwell on what that means, exactly, he takes a step toward me. “I know why you’re here, Steffi,” Tobias says. “I know you’re worried about what you did last year.” He tilts his head; the LED lights catch on his filmy lenses. “At this point, though, my suspicions regarding who set up this room for us lie with everyone equally: Malachi. The James-Mays. Sheriff Stallard. A deranged sociologist. Jacob Webber. Alyssa Hayes. Mr. Foxfield. Any other poor soul targeted by Cedar Creek Confessions. Jigsaw.” He appraises me carefully. “You.”

  I balk. “Me?” I ask, although I guess it makes sense. Tobias has clearly mulled over his options, and I kind of suspect him, too. At the same time, though, I can’t stop hot guilt from pooling in my lungs. Even if my friends and I haven’t been on the best of terms—or any terms, really—since Matt’s death, I still credit the people in this room for helping me make it through high school alive. Am I the kind of person to accuse them of murder with no proof? Is this escape room making me that kind of person?

  Jesus. If Charity were here, she’d point out the flaws in Tobias’s reasoning. She practically lived and breathed innocent until proven guilty, and right now I need to channel her mantra. I can’t let fearmongering get to me; I’m an objective voice of reason, and just like with my blog, I’m not going to make any definitive judgments about anything—or anyone—until I’ve collected the evidence necessary to come to a conclusion.

  Atmosphere: Suspicious. Alibi Offerings: Minimal. Fallacy Utilization: Straw Man.

  “Well,” I tell Tobias, “good luck with that.” And then I push past him and duck through the fridge door, finding myself once again in the bathroom set of Arsonist’s Revenge.

  “Find something?” Guinevere asks. The fraying cuffs of her patchwork pants are stained with black-and-orange splotches I’d rather not think about the origins of. She’s staring at herself in the mirror of the walk-in shower; there are noticeably more nicotine patches on her arms. I blink at her, and she raises a brow in response. “What?”

  “I thought you quit after Matt died.”

  Guinevere shrugs. “Having COPD means you risk exacerbating your symptoms if you smoke, so this is what I’m doing now,” she says as I move to examine the electrical box. The lock holding it shut still isn’t open. Guinevere sniffs. “But don’t act like you care either way.”

  Even though she’s not actively lighting up, I can still remember the smell of her thick smoke. The memory turns my stomach, singes my nostril hairs, forces me back to the empty place in my mind where the night Matt died should be. Repressed memories, Call-Me-Diana always calls them. We’re going to try and unlock your repressed memories. Don’t be so hard on yourself—repressed memories are difficult to deal with for everyone. Your repressed memories exist, trapped inside you, and you need to let them escape.

  “You’re right,” I tell Guinevere. “I don’t care.”

  She scoffs. Like this, with translucent scales plastered all over her skin, she reminds me of a venomous snake: beautiful, muscled, and impossible to handle when threatened. “Well, maybe you should, because Charity’s death is basically your fault.”

  Jesus, I hate her. I hate all of them. But I need them, and I don’t know who I am without them, and I can’t stand the fact that my ex-friends mean so much to me even now.

  “What, no response?” Guinevere goads, turning away from the shower mirror. “You playing sheriff with Charity earlier is the only reason she even started searching for clues in the first place. If you didn’t need to know everything, none of this would’ve happened.”

  “Yeah, well you don’t need to be such a raging bitch,” I snarl, whirling around to fully face her. “I know your boyfriend is dead and you’re grieving and it hurts. Believe me, I get it. I’m fucking furious. I still cry myself to sleep; some nights, I can’t even cry at all. There are so many moments where I just want to pick up my phone and text him, or call you, or eat lunch in our regular booth in the cafeteria, watching Malachi inhale Charity’s uneaten food while Santo laughs at something stupid Tobias said. Feeling all these emotions? It’s infuriating. But I didn’t do anything to you. When Matt died, I lost just as much as you did. So don’t take your anger out on me.”

  “Why?” Guinevere spits, taking a step toward me. “Have you ever stopped to wonder why you’re grieving your supposed best friend as much as the person who loved him?”

  Now it’s my turn to scoff. “You never loved Matt.”

  Guinevere’s nostrils flare. “If you want to make an enemy tonight,” she replies, reaching out to jab a single stiletto into my sternum, “be prepared to watch your back.”

  With that, she jostles my shoulder with her bare one before slipping through the fridge door. I watch her go, my stomach churning, until I realize I’m the only person left in the bathroom.

  Overhead, the LCD screen is at 38:05.

  For the first time all night, my heart twinges with protectiveness for Malachi. Maybe it’s the fact I’m being accused with no proof, but I suddenly feel that even though there’s a real chance Mal could be doing this to us—after all, he holds the power to modify our in-game experience as our Game Master, and he also has a strong motive as the son of the owners: exact revenge on the people who ruined his family business one year ago—the way he suspiciously dropped out of contact (and the undeniable fact that he, at least partially, set up tonight’s escape room) doesn’t necessarily mean he’s involved in Charity’s death.

  Because the truth is, all of us are prime suspects:

  Guinevere Jade Mitchell-Moore, the sharp-edged grieving girlfriend with a nasty nicotine addiction.

  Tobias Quinton Matthews, the black-eye-addled chess rival who refused to sign the escape room waiver.

  Santo Xavier Cesari, the charismatic twin brother with bruises of unknown origin who definitely has skeletons in his closet.

  Or even Stephanie Marie Zamekova, the loner best friend with a traumatic brain injury and a long-dead blog about this exact hobby.

  Because I don’t trust myself anymore. Not since Matt died. Not since I’ve been waking up in the mornings with large swaths of the day just… missing from my mind. And ever since I found the cardstock invitation in my mailbox—ever since we all showed up at BREAKOUT and I’ve been hearing the dark voice in the back of my head that keeps calling me a monster—I’ve been wondering…

  What if I’m the one who orchestrated all of this?

  Wednesday, May 20, 2026, 11:22 PM

  The countdown is at 37:59, and the four of us—because there are only four of us now, with Charity dead and Malachi missing in action—are finally following There’s No Escape Rule #17: Split up as much as possible. Except we’re all in different areas not because of strategy, but because we don’t want to interact with each other. The latest photograph being too blood-logged to serve as a viable clue means low team morale. Our game is no longer about honoring Matt, or mourning his death, or even coming together in search of answers.

  Instead, it’s turning into a twisted psychological experiment.

  I shake my head to dispel the thought and opt instead to refocus on my surroundings, even if my hopes for uncovering something fruitful aren’t exactly high. Within escape rooms, I’ve always prided myself on my spatial intelligence—growing up bilingual in a small town where most people can’t point out the country your parents are from on a map basically primes you for a superiority complex—but I’m not a team player. I can pull my weight, but I don’t work well with others.

  I know it; the people trapped with me know it, too. They’re aware of my flaws.

  All too aware.

  After I poke around the bathroom set for a bit—the pristine toilet lid, the thankfully empty toilet bowl, the toilet tank that’s filled with an unsettling ream of papers that I flip through for only a few seconds before self-preservation kicks in and I decide to put them back until I know what to do with them—my attention returns to the electrical box beside the fridge door. There’s a standard warning decal plastered atop its otherwise unassuming exterior—the whole classic yellow triangle, exclamation mark, DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE deal—but there’s also a purple direction lock keeping the latch shut, so the breaker panel within should be part of the room. Apart from the warning decal, the puzzle reminds me of one in a TERPECA-ranked room I worked to crack over the summer in Boston my sophomore year. Unlike that room’s pristine direction lock, however, this one is rusted around the edges of its lock bar. I picture Matt alive, frowning, flicking the joystick-like contraption in cardinal directions: left, left, left. Left-handed. Where we left off. Left for dead.

  We’ll need to get this open, I imagine him saying in his real voice, one dripping with sarcasm instead of a robotic, computer-generated facsimile devoid of life. He crosses his arms, smirks, leans against the doorjamb as a fuzzy-edged apparition frozen at seventeen. Any ideas?

  “A few,” I murmur, turning around to glance up at the Rorschach prints.

  I’m not screwing around anymore—we need to call for help, and the sooner we get back to the lobby, the sooner we can get our phones to report Charity’s death. If BREAKOUT is rigged against us, another “accident” could occur at any second… which means I’m no longer sabotaging our game to buy us time. Right now, I need to focus on what I do best: escaping.

  “The canvases look like they’re depicting classic inkblots, but the negative space in each one forms an arrow. From left to right, you’ll want to put the code in as up-left-down-down.”

  A small smile slides across Matt’s face. You’ve been holding out on me, Steff.

  Despite the grim circumstances, I almost smile back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I walk over to the electrical box; Matt vanishes as soon as I pop the direction lock open. Adrenaline rushes through me at the sound. God, I’ve missed this.

  I lift the latch and swing the casing open to reveal the breaker panel, where an orange banner reads WARNING: ELECTRICAL HAZARD. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Inside the box, though, there’s no faint hum of power, no whirring energy, no sparking wires. Just one empty cylindrical slot molded in plastic casing. A slot for the clue I told Santo about earlier. It must be a fuse.

  Conventional puzzler wisdom says to thread used locks back through their latches, so I poke my head through the fridge door after complying. “Hey, I opened the electrical box!”

  There’s No Escape Rule #7: When you find a clue, shout it out loudly.

  Tobias doesn’t react to the words—he’s preoccupied by aimlessly picking up pieces of plastic fruit from the dining table—and Guinevere is sitting on the worn couch, near-catatonic, with her trembling arms wrapped around herself. But Santo perks up, and then he’s standing exactly where I just pictured his brother.

  “What unlocked it?” he asks, nudging the direction lock. When I tell him about the Rorschach print code, he nods. “Ah, of course. Want to do the honors?” He offers me the fuse, the amused expression on his burn-scarred face now expectant, and something about the assumption in his glittering eyes makes me shake my head.

  “Wouldn’t want to steal your moment,” I say softly.

  Santo’s ring-adorned hand loosens around the cylinder. “Hmm,” he says, disappointed, and then he slots the fuse in himself before I can warn him.

  The bathroom set floodlights switch from their original color to a brilliant magenta, and Santo dusts his hands before raising a bleached eyebrow at me. See? What did you think would happen?

  I exhale, unable to help but feel like I just failed some kind of test. Jesus, maybe Arsonist’s Revenge is making me more paranoid than I thought.

  Directly in front of us, the wall that spelled out ONE BY ONE when the lights were dark blue now reads WE ALL FALL DOWN.

  “Great. Now that that’s out of the way, we need to figure out how to get out of here,” Guinevere snaps, coming through the fridge door, and I settle into the cadence of her anger that feels as familiar as breathing. “How to seriously get out of here,” she adds. “If we’re encountering puzzles like this after what happened to Charity”—she gestures to the WARNING sticker on the electrical panel—“we need to come up with an actionable plan other than play the game and hope it doesn’t kill us.”

  “I agree,” Santo says. “If we’re going to stand any kind of chance, we need to work together as a team. Deal?”

  Unease itches its way through my bloodstream as I recall my initial trepidation toward Tobias. My grievances with Guinevere. My still-swirling suspicions about Santo. I frown and tamp down the raw emotions. Reemergence of Cedar Creek Confessions a month ago aside, stolen Swiss Army knife aside, cut wires and creepy photographs and handpicked newspaper articles and rigged wordlock solutions and eerie bathtub blood aside, we’re all trapped within Arsonist’s Revenge together. Getting answers about Matt will have to wait. Right now, staying alive is the only thing that matters.

  Guinevere nods, so I nod, too. There’s No Escape Rule #3: Trust your team.

  Santo smiles. “Good.”

  “The only question is, what else can we do?” Tobias asks as he ducks through the fridge door to join us. I guess he got tired of fruit. “There are no windows. No emergency exits, no manual overdrives, and no way to set off the fire alarms without lighter fluid—and Guinevere quit smoking, so she doesn’t even have her Zippo anymore.” He rubs the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Since the wires to the emergency mechanism are cut, we’re trapped in here. All we can do is scramble for clues and hope it leads us to the keypad code.”

  I tilt my head. “Tobias has a point,” I hedge. “Even though there may be deadly consequences, working through the remaining puzzles is the only surefire way to escape Arsonist’s Revenge.” I look down at my blood-soaked sneakers, and for the first time tonight, I’m hyperaware of the fact that we’re all being watched: by one another, by our Game Master, by whoever else is possibly monitoring the blinking security cameras mounted next to the LCD screens in both rooms. “But Santo’s theory from earlier makes sense, too: If we do nothing, we’ll probably be let out by a BREAKOUT employee when this place opens at ten AM tomorrow.”

  “Get to the point,” Guinevere snaps.

  I lick my lips as I drift toward the industrial sink. When I flip the tap, no water comes out.

  “Do any of you remember There’s No Escape Rule Number Nine: Always check every alcove?” I ask, moving on to the toilet. “On my blog, I used that tip for rooms with bathroom sets, like PanIQ Escape Room Atlanta’s Jailbreak.” I lift the tank lid and set it on the tiled floor. There, curled around the pristine flush valve, is a ream of familiar papers—the ones I found only a few minutes earlier. “But it applies here, too.” I glance at each remaining player: Guinevere, Tobias, Santo. “These are building schematics for Suite 263.”

  “Incredible,” Guinevere says, throwing up her manicured hands. “I’m so glad you’ve bestowed us with your absolutely useless input on this situation.”

  “What are you suggesting, Steffi?” Tobias asks, ignoring her, even though I’m sure he already knows.

  I focus on laying out the mechanical plans on the tiled set floor before responding. Four. Six. Eight. If my mind is on my dead friends or our infighting or Gee’s rude comments, then I’m not bringing my A game. And that’s dangerous for all of us.

  When I finally look up at him, though, I’m certain this plan can work.

  “Air,” I tell Tobias, a real smile tugging at the corners of my lips for the first time since we stepped into Arsonist’s Revenge as I point directly above me. “We can use the HVAC to escape.”

  CEDAR CREEK CONFESSIONS

  posted 15 months ago

  So, Cedar Creek. Let’s talk about Alyssa Hayes and last week’s notorious senior prank.

  Here’s the sitch: Mr. Foxfield left the window of his office unlocked for the senior class to get into the high school after hours for the purposes of a harmless senior prank. Head cheerleader Alyssa Hayes orchestrated the prank and came to an agreement with Mr. Foxfield. Sources say the seniors told Mr. Foxfield they wanted to move a few desks to the lobby, TP the cafeteria, and put streamers in every bathroom on the third floor. But what actually happened is the senior class released five thousand live crickets into the building around 5:30 PM on Thursday. And now Alyssa and thirteen other students—Grant Richards, Tyler Duvall, Mary Coffee, Yadriel Peña, Natalie Eu, Bryce Woodward, and Gina Homesley among them—are all facing criminal breaking and entering charges that will impact their permanent record. As the ringleader, Alyssa has the most severe charges. Stanford has rescinded her acceptance, and none of the students involved will be able to walk at graduation.

  Scandalous, right? I know. Word on the street is that these criminal charges are impacting the postgrad plans of not only our dear Alyssa Hayes, but also the other student athletes involved. Here at Cedar Creek Confessions, we’re not exactly sure how this will play out moving forward, but be sure to watch your step in the hallways for the next few weeks—we’re told the exterminators did not, in fact, catch them all. (Here, of course, I’m referring to the live crickets. Many are still at large in the second-floor boys’ bathroom.)

  Either way, seems like that bitch got what she deserved.

  Until next time, Cedar Creek!

  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

  EASTERN DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE

  GREENEVILLE DIVISION

  CATELYN ADLER; ILLARIA CESARI;

  and EDWARD MITCHELL-MOORE,

  Plaintiffs,

  v.

  RANDALL JAMES and TALIYAH MAY,

  Defendants. Case No. 2:25-CR-00123-JRG-DCP

  EXHIBIT D

  Prerecorded Witness Testimony

  Excerpt from Transcript of Witness Testimony

  SHERIFF STALLARD: Can you state your name for the record,

  please?

  MALACHI JAMES-MAY: Can you tell me why I’m here first, Sheriff?