How I Commit A Murder

"We should help Kat and Trevor," I whispered to Nick, still flat on the floor.

He nodded. "I have a plan. I'm going to crawl close to the attackers, you just join Kat and Trevor."

"But I can't let you do this alone," I whispered, furiously. "It's dangerous! Being close to the attackers puts you in direct line of fire."

"I'll be fine." He squeezed my hand.

Hesitantly, I gave in and crawled in the direction of our defenders. I glanced towards Nick from the corner of my eye and saw him getting nearer to the attackers unnoticeably. I just hoped I too wouldn't get noticed.

I jumped up behind Kate and started firing but then the disaster happened. Nick was too close to them and they noticed him. My eyes widened. I couldn't let them hurt Nick. When I saw one of the attackers aiming at him, I lost it. I ran towards him, with the gun in my hand, firing at all the attackers. I just had one thought in my mind: I had to save Nick.

And then I killed somebody. The laser from my gun burned the entire chest of the guy who was about to attack Nick and he dropped dead.

Even though it seemed longer, all of this had just happened within a second. I had murdered somebody in just a second.

The rest of the attackers ran towards the opposite corridor without looking back.

"Are you okay?" Someone asked me, I don't know who. I just knew that I had killed a guy and his body was lying in front of me. We hadn't realized but we had reached the center of the maze while trying to attack and defend at the same time; and kill... So if this was what we were supposed to get, a dead body, for reaching the center then I was going to hunt down whoever made this stupid game and kill them too, I wouldn't even feel guilty for it.

"Hey, Jane. Can you hear me?" This voice was a lot gentler than before. They were worried but I just couldn't respond. I felt numb. My mind was working but it wasn't ready to give any signals to my body to work.

Someone picked me up and it finally forced me to turn my head and look who it was. Dominic was carrying me away from the site of the murder, away from the dead body. Kat and Trevor were searching through the guy's stuff, maybe trying to find out his identity.

I couldn't hold it in anymore. Tears started rolling down my cheeks and I fell apart.

"I didn't even know his name," I said, sobbing hysterically and drenching Dominic's t-shirt with my tears. "We don't even if he has a family waiting for him to come home, ignorant of the fact he never will."

He put me down when we reached a corridor a little away from the center and sat in front of me. "It was not your fault."

"How can you say that? How can you say it was not my fault? I killed him! I fired at him when I knew it was lethal. How is it not my fault?!" I was screaming. I don't know why I was screaming at Dominic, he hadn't even done anything, but he let me. He let me vent and I started feeling a little better. After several minutes of screaming and crying, I finally stopped, not because I was done but because Kat and Trevor were back and they looked terrified.

"What happened?" Dominic got up and steered them a little away from me. Whatever they were about to tell, I guess he knew it wasn't good for me to hear. It was kind of him to do that but whatever information they had, I wasn't going to miss out on it.

"It's gone." Kat was wringing her hands as if she wanted to scream but she was barely audible, because of me probably. I scooted a little closer to them to hear the full conversation.

"What's gone?" Nick looked at me from the corner of his eye but I managed to fool him into thinking that I wasn't listening. Staring at my hands and remaining expressionless while trying to eavesdrop but not look guilty by pretending to be engrossed by my hands that had just committed a murder was easier than I'd thought. I peeked at them, they were fully absorbed in the conversation.

"We don't know-how. We were looking through the stuff, we turned around to look for something that might've been dropped at the time of the firing." Tyler was explaining something to Nick. Did they lose the ID of that guy, of they found it at all? "We were both facing different directions and neither of us was facing the way where it was and when we turned to look at it, Poof! It was gone. AWOL. No sign anywhere

"Can you please be clear? Was it the ID?" Nick spoke my thoughts.

"No!" Kate yelled. "No, it wasn't the ID. It was the person that disappeared. The dead body is gone."