Chapter 4: The Unwinnable Game

Chapter 4: The Unwinnable Game

Time had ceased to be a measure of minutes and seconds. It was now the space between heartbeats, the gap between each soft click of the examiner’s stopwatch. The final two questions on the page weren't questions at all; they were a death sentence and a signature line.

Question 9: …select your preferred method of corporal cessation. Question 10: Fulfill your choice.

The words pulsed with a malevolent energy, a black hole on the page threatening to suck the very soul from him. The faces of the victims in the photographs flashed behind his eyes—the boy with the severed arteries, the girl with the fractured skull. They had answered. They had chosen. They had passed.

And in that moment of absolute clarity, a dam of terror broke inside Leo, and a raw, defiant rage flooded his veins.

No.

He wouldn't write another word. He wouldn't pick a weapon for his own murderer. He would not dignify this sadistic ritual with a final, compliant act. He lifted his head, his jaw set, and stared directly at the gaunt figure standing by the door. He would let the clock run out. Let this monstrous game end on his terms, not Finch’s.

Professor Finch met his gaze. There was no anger in those cold, grey eyes, only a detached, academic curiosity. He looked less like a killer and more like a lepidopterist observing an interesting but stubborn specimen as it refused to uncurl its wings. He held up the stopwatch, the silver casing glinting in the dim light.

Ten seconds.

Leo’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Nine. He could feel the blood pounding in his ears. Eight. The room seemed to shrink, the walls closing in. Seven. Finch’s cruel smile widened, a hairline crack in a marble statue. Six. He braced himself, every muscle in his body coiled like a spring. Five.

He had to move.

Four.

The instant the thought formed, he acted. With a strangled cry that was more animal than human, Leo kicked his chair back. It screeched across the floorboards and crashed into the desk behind him. He launched himself forward, not toward Finch, but toward the door. It was his only hope, a fool’s hope. Maybe the lock wasn't as solid as it seemed. Maybe he could break it. Maybe anything was better than sitting here, waiting.

The room was a blur of empty desks and lengthening shadows. The heavy oak door grew in his vision, the ornate brass handle his single, desperate focus. His feet pounded on the floor, the sound a frantic, fleeting rebellion against the crushing silence.

He was almost there. His fingers stretched out, reaching for the cold metal—

A blur of tweed.

The air beside him seemed to warp, to displace with a speed that defied physics. He didn’t even see Finch move. One moment, the professor was across the room; the next, a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

It wasn't a grip. It was a vise. A band of cold, unyielding iron that dug into his flesh, arresting his forward momentum so abruptly that his teeth snapped together. The strength was impossible, monstrous. It felt as if the building itself had reached out and grabbed him. Leo was wiry and quick, but he might as well have been a child fighting a hydraulic press.

He was spun around, his back slamming into the solid wood of the door he’d so desperately sought. The impact knocked the wind from him, and he gasped, his vision swimming with black spots. Professor Finch stood before him, not even breathing hard. His expression was one of mild disappointment, the kind a teacher reserves for a student who has failed to grasp a simple concept.

“Such a predictable response,” Finch said, his voice a low, calm murmur that cut through Leo’s panic. He tightened his grip, and Leo winced as pain, sharp and electric, shot down his arm. “Flight is the recourse of the intellectually bankrupt. The final, panicked twitch of a failed organism.”

“Let me go!” Leo snarled, struggling uselessly against the inhuman strength pinning him.

Finch ignored him, his cold grey eyes flicking from Leo’s face down to the exam paper still sitting on the front desk. “An examiner’s primary duty, Mr. Vance, is not merely to grade. It is to instruct. To guide. To ensure that his students do not leave the hall with an incomplete understanding of the material.” He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to that same chilling whisper that had grazed Leo's ear before. “I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to fail.”

A new, more profound horror washed over Leo. The test wasn't over. The clock hitting zero wasn't the end. It was merely the end of the written portion. Now came the practical.

“You left question nine blank,” Finch continued, his tone laced with a pedantic disapproval. “A lack of initiative. Fortunately, your earlier answers show a certain… latent preference.” He released Leo’s shoulder only to grab his arm, dragging him away from the door and back towards the desk with effortless strength. He shoved Leo stumbling forward, forcing him to look down at his own spidery, panicked scrawl.

Finch’s long, pale finger tapped the paper, next to Leo's answer for Question 3, the one about toxins. “You demonstrated a commendable understanding of chemistry here, Mr. Vance. Specifically, the effects of intense heat on complex protein chains. Denaturation. Combustion.”

The word hung in the air, thick and oily.

“A fine choice, I think,” Finch mused, a flicker of genuine, terrifying enthusiasm in his eyes. “It is both thorough and visually instructive. An excellent subject for a follow-up question.”

Finch reached into the inner pocket of his tweed jacket. Leo’s mind raced, expecting a scalpel, a syringe, some clinical instrument of death plucked from the pages of his own horrific answers.

What the professor produced was something far more mundane, and a thousand times more terrifying.

A Zippo lighter. Worn, silver, utilitarian.

With a flick of his thumb, Finch snapped the lid open. The sound, a sharp clink, was an exclamation point at the end of Leo’s life. Another flick, this time against the flint wheel. A spark flared.

Snap.

A small, perfect flame erupted in the gloom of the classroom, dancing with hypnotic malevolence. It cast Finch’s gaunt features in a flickering, ghoulish light, carving deep shadows into the hollows of his cheeks and his cold, dead eyes.

“Now then, Mr. Vance,” Professor Finch said, the cruel smile stretching his lips as he took a slow, deliberate step forward. The tiny flame swayed, a miniature sun promising an agonizing end. “Let us begin your remedial studies.”