"I FEEL like this is a trick," Khan said, getting to his feet. "Chi might act dumb when she wants to, but she's smart. Very."

"A girl who got away with killing her own family doesn't leave evidence like this behind," I said, catching onto what he was saying. "So, either she planted it or someone else did."

"Possibly the killer," Khan said, tapping his chin before leaning down toward the body again.

Clicking on my iPad, I leaned against the threshold as he continued looking over Layla's mouth again. I went back to the footage, slowly going over everything this time. And when it cut to the laundry room, I heard something I was missing.

A noise — a clacking sound. Like she dropped or threw something. I rewound it again with the volume turned all the way up, and I heard it yet again.

When Layla first entered the laundry room, I saw her wave her arms near the far corner. I thought she was just moving her arms around, and the noise came from her stumbling feet on the floor. But when I examined it closely, the noise closely follows her movements, and a soft shadow of something being thrown was seen when I paused the footage.

I couldn't make out what it was though, but maybe it was still there.

"Come on," I said to Khan who was deep in thought. "We need to get to the laundry room." I didn't wait for him to respond; I just found myself running there with him on my heels, confusion morphing his angelic features.

"What's going on?" he asked once we got there, and I searched around the small space.

"In the video, when she's in here, she throws something in the corner," I said, going toward the corner where the metal radiator stood. I slammed down onto my knees and stuck my hand under the metal thing, cursing under my breath when the heat burned me.

"Let me try," he said, grabbing a rag from the sink. He wrapped it around his hand and placed it under the radiator. "Whatever it was is melted now." He pulled back the rag, showing me tiny specks of black char with microscopic dots of yellow, or was it orange? Or neither, and the heat discolored it?

Fuck, I couldn't tell.

I slammed my fist against the wall. "I should've gotten here earlier. How could I miss this? It was right there in front of my face."

Khan tossed the rag in the sink. "It's an easy mistake. The footage isn't that focused and clear, and it sounded like the noise came from her feet, not from her throwing something." He pointed to the hallway. "Let's retrack her whole footpath while watching the video. We might catch something else."

"Might as well give it a try."

♟♙♟

By the time we got started, it was early in the a.m., meaning if we were on the outside, the tip of the bright sun would be cracking the surface, shimmering with multi-color pinks, oranges and reds while birds chirped morning lullabies.

But we weren't on the outside. We were in some underground bunker mansion with no stairs, cameramen following us around like A-list celebrities, while everyone else slept, their only escape from this horrible place.

"She ran from her room," Khan said as we both loitered outside of Layla's open bedroom door. The odor of burnt wood and smoke still clung to the atmosphere, mingling with the stench of shit and filth.

"To the kitchen pantry," I said, fast walking her path as my iPad played her last moments. "With Rucker chasing her."

"She's not touching anything, right?"

"No, just running for her life," I said, stopping in the kitchen pantry like she did. "Then she stays here until I think she hears Rucker leave."

Khan pointed toward the kitchen. "Then she tiptoes out here to the common room."

We followed her route, looking for more clues along the way, but we find nothing so far. Every step just added to the frustration and discouragement building up in my chest bone, but I breathed it away, knowing it would only hold me back. I couldn't give up yet.

The common room was empty as expected, and it brought a smile to my lips to see Khan reenact Layla's frantic demeanor. Watching his usual cool, unreadable expression turn to one of fear as he swept stuff off tables cut through some of the negative emotions bubbling inside.

"What?" he asked, innocently as a smile graced his face. "Gotta do everything she did, right?"

I smiled. "After she crashed into the common room, knocking over the clues, she digs through them." I squatted down over the clues, running my fingers through the mess. "And then flicks her head back while bringing her hand to her lips before darting into the hall again."

"And then minutes later, she's wobbling," Khan said, leaning down next to me, hands stifling through the clues. "It sounds like she might've eaten something here?"

"Eat what?" I motioned to the floor. "Nothing's edible and everyone's clue is here."

"Maybe, it wasn't a clue?" Khan said.

"Like she could've ate something, and it got lodged into her throat, and it slowly choked her?" I said, knowing the idea sounded dumb. "And that's why she's wobbling? From lack of oxygen to the brain?"

"I can't think of anything that would slowly choke her," he said, shaking his head. "A choking death is usually a few minutes. She was alive for at least another twenty and showed no choking signs as she walked."

"I know, it was a dumb thought," I said, flopping to the floor.

"No, it's okay to throw out different theories," he said, encouragingly while looking down at the footage. "She could've also been covering her mouth. Like trying to silence her breathing so people couldn't find her. Or she could've been burping?"

"Burping?" I said, rolling the idea around in my head. "Like maybe she ate something already, and it was trying to come back up?"

"Possibly," he said. "Or she could've been holding back her throw up. She could've been feeling sick before she kidnapped us, and with everything going on, it started to affect her then."

"So you agree with Sebastian? That she was poisoned before our kidnapping?"

"I'm not sure, but everything's starting to point to some type of poison or toxin. And during our whole kidnapping and everything before her death, she was breathing hard, blood pressure probably high, and you could see she was running on adrenaline."

"Okay?"

"Those little things can speed up the reaction of poison on the body," he said, nodding. "While it might've looked like she was poisoned after she kidnapped us, it could've happened way before. And all this stress on her body sped up the effects."

"But if she was poisoned before the kidnapping, it really could've been anyone."

Khan stared down at the clues before looking me in the eyes. "I have a theory. I didn't think it had any merit, but it keeps coming back to me."

"What is it?"

"We all kept saying that everyone has a motive, right?" he asked. "Because she tried to kill everyone, everyone has a motive to kill her. But what if it's not that?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you were sleeping, I got to read some of her journal," he said, eyes still on mine. "The beginning seemed normal enough, but as I got toward the middle, I started to skim because her ideas kept going in all these different directions and some of the events weren't even in order. My first thoughts were that it was just a dead end, nonsense. I was wasting my time, but something told me to keep going, so I kept reading, looking over things very carefully, and that's when I caught hints of things."

"Hints of what?"

"Layla was very observant," he said. "Probably because most people ignored her here. And when you're used to being in the shadows and not being noticed, people do things around you, not realizing that you're watching. Layla never outright said anything, but she hinted in her journal that she knew things about people. Personal things."

"Like their secrets?"

He nodded. "I think so. I thought it was probably nothing, but then I remembered when she kidnapped us. How she said weird things to certain people."

My mind went back to those moments, trying to rehash Layla's words in my mind. "She called me, Gmie, Rucker and Sebastian the worst of the worst, right?"

"Yes, and she spit on Aries," Khan said, scratching his head. "And told him that, 'God doesn't like your kind. You won't be cleansed. You deserve to burn.' Those words stuck with me because they sounded specific like she knew something about him that we didn't."

"You're trying to say that Layla might've figured out our secrets?"

Did she know mine? I didn't even know mine.

"Yes, and look at what happened to Tiran? His secret was horrible, and everyone turned against him," Khan said, blinking. "If he somehow survived that voting session, he would've been ostracized and ridiculed and probably voted off or killed next."

That true. "Yeah."

"What if she figured out someone's secret, and they thought she was going to expose them," Khan said, shrugging. "And they didn't want the Tiran treatment, so they poisoned her."

"But instead of dying right away, she kidnaps us and then we escape and then she dies," I said, "in my room."

"It's just a theory, I didn't iron out the specifics," he said. "She could've also been blackmailing them as well."

"But wouldn't that be in her journal?" I asked. "The secret, and the blackmail? If she did."

"We didn't read the whole thing," he said. "And didn't you notice as you got deeper into it, it's not in order? Like she talked about the cannibalism challenge before the tall cake challenge."

"I just thought she was slowly losing it, just putting ideas wherever, you know?"

"I think she was writing it out of order on purpose, so if anyone found it, they couldn't understand it and just think it was nonsense like I did at first or think it was unimportant, basic ramblings like you did," he said. "I think there's a system to it that I don't understand yet. But I will."

"Shit," I said, thinking over his words. "It makes sense a bit that maybe she discovered someone's secret and they killed her for it. It's possible. Very possible."

He stared down at the contestants' clues. "We need to figure out everyone's secret. Including our teammates."

"You said you didn't think they did it?"

"Based on the theory that she was killed or poisoned after she kidnapped us," he said, looking into my eyes. "But if she was poisoned before kidnapping us, everyone's a suspect."

"That true," I said, tone soft.

"Let's go with the theory that she was indeed poisoned and that's what she died from," he said. "If someone poisoned Layla, two days ago, for example, the killer had two days to get rid of the evidence. How much evidence, if there was any at all, could you get rid of in forty-eight hours?"

"Everything."

"Yes, and they probably did get rid of everything because there's no physical evidence of anything, and nothing on the cameras either so far." He paused for a moment. "I said I didn't get any sneaky or hiding type vibes from our teammates but would you give off sneaky or hiding vibes when you already thought—"

My heart dropped to my stomach. "You won."

"All they need to do is sit back and relax and pretend to 'search for her killer.' They know all evidence is gone and nothing points to them, so they don't have to act suspicious." His eyes radiated into mine, making my heart pound and skin crawl at the same time. "Acting is the easiest thing for a psychopath. None of us would be here if the creators didn't think we were all one."

Acting. My brain flashed with different images and memories. I thought of Yaz's humor, and Rucker's protectiveness and the way he made fun of Sebastian. And Sebastian, I thought of the way he held me after being choked and all the nice things he's said to me. Could they all be just acting?

When Khan put it like that, her killer could be anyone. I couldn't trust anyone.

Never. Never trust them.

"You okay?" Khan asked, tearing my thoughts from Tini.

Shaking my head, I wiped my face, trying to search for Tini, but she wasn't there. Did I imagine her again? "Umm yeah, just thinking," I said before coughing. "What's our next step?"

"We need to figure out everyone's secret," Khan said, looking down at the clues. "And we only have thirteen hours."

"That doesn't sound impossible at all, does it?"

♟♙♟

Thank you to everyone who nominated Battle of the Killers for Best Horror Story in The Fiction Awards 2019 and other awards! I love you guys so much. You're the reason I keep writing <3