Chapter 2: The Crimson Questionnaire

Chapter 2: The Crimson Questionnaire

Leo’s mind refused to process the words on the page. Exsanguination. Arterial spray. Minimize damage to primary organs. It was the detached, clinical language of a butcher’s manual, not a scholarship exam. A wave of nausea churned in his stomach, hot and acidic. This had to be a prank. A sick, twisted psychological evaluation to weed out the weak.

“This is a joke, right?” Leo’s voice was a ragged whisper, swallowed by the cavernous room. “Some kind of… stress test?”

The examiner, who had resumed his slow, soundless pacing at the front of the room, didn’t even grant him a glance. He simply lifted the silver stopwatch, the gesture both dismissive and absolute. The soft click-click-click of the tiny mechanism was the only answer. It was a metronome counting down to a conclusion Leo couldn't begin to fathom. The message was clear: The clock is ticking. Write.

Desperation warred with disgust. He was trapped. The heavy thunk of the bolt sliding into place echoed in his memory. Screaming wouldn't work; the stone walls were too thick. Fighting seemed insane; the examiner possessed an unnatural stillness, a coiled tension that spoke of a strength that belied his gaunt frame.

His gaze fell back to the question. A part of his brain, the pragmatic, academically-trained part that had devoured textbooks for years, took over against his will. It was a problem, and his life had been a series of problems to be solved. He knew the answers. He’d aced AP Biology. He knew about the carotid artery, the femoral, the brachial. He knew how pressure worked, how incisions could be made to sever a vessel cleanly.

His hand, slick with a cold sweat, picked up the pen. The scratching of the nib on the thick, creamy paper was obscenely loud. He wrote, his own handwriting looking alien to him as it formed monstrous sentences. “Method 1: A transverse incision to the common carotid artery, inferior to the bifurcation. This location provides maximum pressure from the aortic arch…”

He didn't dare draw the diagrams.

The bile rose in his throat. He thought of his mother, of the clean, white sheets of her hospital bed and the constant, gentle beep of her monitors. The smell of antiseptic, his driving memory, filled his senses. He was doing this for her. He was swimming through this sewer of a test to reach the clean, sunlit shore of her recovery. The irony was so bitter it almost made him gag.

He finished the first question, his hand cramping. Without pausing, terrified of what stopping might mean, he read the next.

Question 2: A 70kg subject is to be subdued using blunt force trauma. Identify the three most effective strike points on the human skull to induce immediate unconsciousness without causing skull fracture. Specify the required vector and estimated joules of force for each.

It was worse. More specific. More violent. He could feel the phantom impact in his own bones. The temporal bone, the occipital condyle… the terms surfaced from his memory like bloated corpses from a dark lake. He forced himself to write, his descriptions becoming terser, his pen strokes more jagged. He was just a conduit, translating years of learning into a language of pure horror.

The examiner continued his silent patrol. A predator circling its prey, waiting for a sign of weakness. The clock on the wall ticked with agonizing slowness, each second a drop of water on his forehead. Ten minutes. He was halfway through.

The questions blurred together, a macabre descent into the darkest corners of human fragility.

Question 3: Discuss the comparative efficacy of oleander versus ricin as a fast-acting cardiotoxin. Detail the necessary dosage and optimal method of delivery for ingestion.

Question 4: Analyze the psychological impact of prolonged auditory torture. Postulate a sequence of sounds designed to erode a subject’s cognitive resistance within a twelve-hour period.

With every word he wrote, a piece of him felt like it was dying. He was staining his own mind with this filth. The scholarship, the money, his mother’s future—it all felt impossibly distant, a fantasy from another life. The only reality was this cold, silent room, the scratching of his pen, and the cold, grey eyes of the man who watched him.

He scribbled the last word for question four, his fingers numb. The paper was nearly full. He was close to the end. The thought sent a jolt of manic energy through him. Just get through it. Get to the end, and this nightmare would be over. Maybe the door would unlock, and he could walk away and never think of Blackwood Academy again.

With a trembling hand, he turned the page.

And the world fell away.

It wasn't more text. It was a photograph. A full-page, high-resolution color photograph, printed on glossy paper that felt cold and slick beneath his fingertips.

It was of a young man, not much older than himself, slumped in a chair that looked chillingly similar to the one he was sitting in now. His head was thrown back, his mouth agape in a silent scream. His pale chest was a canvas of gruesome, clinical incisions, a perfect, horrifying illustration of the answer he had just given for Question 1. The arterial spray had painted the wall behind him in a ghastly, abstract pattern of crimson. His eyes, wide and glassy, stared into nothingness. They were the eyes of someone who had failed this test. Or passed it. Leo didn't know which was worse.

This wasn't theoretical. This wasn't a psychological test. This was real. These questions weren’t hypothetical—they were a blueprint. A recipe. And this was the result.

Leo’s breath hitched. He couldn’t scream. The air was trapped in his lungs, a block of solid ice. The pen slipped from his nerveless fingers and clattered onto the desk. The small sound was like a thunderclap.

He stared at the dead boy's face, at the horrific, meticulous violence inflicted upon him. The room began to spin. He was going to be sick. He was going to pass out.

Then, a sudden, absolute chill descended upon the back of his neck, colder than the grave-like air of the room. The scent of old paper and something metallic and coppery filled his nostrils. He hadn't heard a single footstep. He hadn’t heard a breath. But he knew, with a certainty that transcended all logic, that the examiner was no longer at the front of the room.

He was right behind him.

A voice, no longer the dry, distant tone from across the hall, but a soft, intimate whisper that brushed against his ear, slid into his mind like a shard of glass.

“For Question Five,” Professor Finch murmured, his breath cold on Leo's skin. “Identify the cause of the hesitation marks on the victim’s throat.”