Every night at midnight, a new rule appears in Riverside Gardens. Break it, and you die.
The rules are written in black, visible to the entire building.
Behind the black text, only I can see the red text: the loopholes, the price, the countdown, and that "undo button."
The "girlfriend" knocking on my door has a voice exactly like hers, but her location showed her a hundred kilometers away just two hours ago. The neighbor in 702 vanished overnight, and no one in the building remembers he ever existed. The police say there's no such person, but the surveillance footage shows me.
They don't know I can see the patches in every rule.
They don't know the property manager's list already has my name under "next up."
My mother's dialysis costs three thousand a week. My girlfriend disappeared in this very building. My father vanished here twenty years ago.
Tonight at 11:00 p.m., the group chat tagged everyone again: Do not open the door to anyone who knocks.
I glanced at the red text. This time, I was the one being called out.
