The second day on the island began with a pale clarity, a light that seemed filtered through ash. Inside the hotel, the silence of the lobby was broken only by the rhythmic scrape of a whetstone against steel. John sat in one of the velvet armchairs, oblivious to the luxury surrounding him, focused solely on the blade of his tactical knife.
"This place is sick," John muttered to himself, his gravelly voice breaking the silence. "But at least it's a relief that piece of shit Matheo was taken out. Arrogance kills faster than bullets in a place like this."
He looked up at the sound of footsteps. Theo, a nurse with weary features, was finishing changing the bandages on Lance—an athletic man whose arm had been wounded in the initial confrontation with Matheo's group.
"Those kids... they were brave enough to face a challenge like that right off the bat," Theo commented, washing his hands with the little alcohol remaining. "I didn't expect the original winner's group to be so... efficient."
"They were smart," John countered, sheathing his knife. "By acting early, they secured supplies and can now afford to wait a day or two with the upper hand. Now there are only five groups left, including ours. The competition is narrowing down."
Lance tested the movement of his bandaged arm, grimacing in pain. "Are we participating today, John?"
"We are. I believe that as the days pass, the challenges will become more sadistic. Yesterday was a straight-line sprint over acid; today, Smith will want something that forces us to think—or tear each other apart. If we win today's game, we'll be on equal footing with the winners of the first."
In a corner of the room, Carina and Nicole, two of the young women who had arrived with Yuki, watched the conversation with wide eyes. They looked like cornered birds in a storm. John noticed them, but his expression did not soften. To him, at that moment, they were dead weight who needed to learn to carry their own burdens if they wanted to see the sun on the third day.
"We won't hunt anyone unless they cross our path. Understood?" John cast a stern look at the group. "We participate for survival, not for fun. And while we're out there, keep an eye on everything. We need to find out who is responsible for this madness."
"It must have cost a fortune to build these walls and this hotel," Lance remarked, looking out the window. "That narrows down the list of billionaires with the power to do something of this caliber without the world noticing."
While the soldiers prepared, miles away, the forest exhaled a scent of damp earth and decay. Dante and Foxy walked along a dense trail, far from the cave. The air there was heavy, as if the vegetation itself were trying to suffocate them.
Suddenly, through the twisted canopy, they spotted a misshapen metallic mass. It was the wreckage of a small plane, its tail driven into the ground like an aluminum tombstone.
"Creepy..." Dante whispered, feeling a chill. As he approached the broken windows, he recoiled. Inside the plane, still strapped in by seatbelts, were only skeletons wearing white lab coats, now yellowed by time.
"Oh, come on, stop being such a wuss, kid," Foxy said, letting out a short, sarcastic laugh. "You did well in that acid trial, saved our skins. You're not going to chicken out over a pile of bones, are you?"
Foxy entered the wreckage without hesitation. He kicked metal crates and luggage remains with disturbing indifference. Dante noticed that Foxy never took off his glasses, even under the dense shadow of the fuselage. The light did not reflect off his lenses; it was as if he had two black abysses in his face.
"Look at what fate had in store for us," Foxy said, kicking a leather briefcase. A document slid across the metal floor. "Nerd Harry is going to love this. Take it to him."
Foxy continued exploring, rummaging through what appeared to be the cargo hold. He found an old knife with an oxidized blade and a worn wooden handle. It wasn't a combat weapon, but he spun it between his fingers with a dexterity that made Dante take a step back.
"Let's go. There's nothing here but paper and ghosts," Foxy declared, tucking the old knife into his waistband with an enigmatic smile.
On the way back, the silence was broken only by Dante's heavy footsteps. Foxy, on the other hand, moved without making a single sound, as if floating over the dry leaves.
"You know, Dante," Foxy began, his voice far too smooth. "Fear is a useful tool, but if you hold onto it for too long, it consumes you. Those men in the plane... they died trying to run from something. The secret is never to run. It's to wait for what's coming and cut it first."
Dante swallowed hard, unsure if Foxy was giving him advice or a threat.
Upon arriving at the cave, the group was on alert. Yuki remained seated next to Alex, her small hands gripping his arm with possessive strength. Alex was silent, eyes fixed on the entrance, only relaxing when he saw Dante.
"We found this in the wreckage of a plane in the forest," Dante explained, handing the papers to Harry.
"And this little beauty too," Foxy showed off the rusted knife, his sarcastic smile ever-present. "Good for starting a fire, but I doubt it's good for a real fight."
Elisa, who was helping Harry fix wooden stakes at the cave entrance, reached out. "It might be useful to me. Can I have it?"
"Of course, sugar. Keep it," Foxy replied playfully, handing over the knife with a theatrical bow.
Harry sat on the cave floor, spreading out the documents. The group gathered around him, the faint morning light illuminating the yellowed pages.
"I'll read it to you," Harry said, his voice serious. "The first one looks like a diary entry from one of the plane's passengers."
Document 1: Flight Log - February 5th "Are we really going to have to work on that deserted island just to build this park? Why not build it near the city? These rich folks are always doing useless, expensive things. But well, I need to pay my bills..."
February 6th: "Something is definitely wrong with this place. Last night, we saw a strange figure near the east sector. The island is supposed to be deserted, except for the workers. I hope it was just my imagination. One of the workers died today after eating fruit from one of the trees. Idiot. Eating something without knowing what it is in a place like this is suicide."
February 7th: "Work continues steadily. We're getting used to the hostile environment. We got news that we'll be able to go home once a week and spend three days before coming back. At least they don't seem to be in a hurry to end the isolation..."
Harry stopped reading, looking at the group. "The page ends here. The other document isn't from the same diary. I assume the plane crash happened on one of those round trips. They were leaving or arriving when they went down."
"And the second document?" Alex asked, the tension rising in his shoulders.
Harry picked up a technical sheet, full of complex diagrams and mathematical calculations.
Document 2: Hydraulic Engineering Report "The owners specified that there must be submerged walls around the entire length of the island. The mechanism must be capable of raising them in less than five minutes. What for? These guys are crazy. Working underwater with this level of plating is insane. But the contract is worth millions. Better to build it than to break the confidentiality clause."
Below the text, there were detailed drawings of the walls that had emerged from the ocean the previous day.
"This is madness," Harry commented, tracing his fingers over the diagrams. "They built these walls from scratch, and it took years. The planning for this 'game' didn't start yesterday. This was decades in the making."
"Why the hell would anyone spend so much money just to do this?" Alex questioned, looking toward the cave entrance. "Kidnapping people, building a fortress in the middle of nowhere... what is the endgame?"
"Must be stuck-up rich pranks, exactly like the guy in the diary said," Foxy commented, cleaning his nails with a piece of wood. "Some people have so much money that the only thing left to buy is the power of life and death over others. Knowing who these lunatics are might be worth something if we get out of here."
"It's terrifying..." Dante murmured, hugging his knees in the corner of the cave. "They planned to trap us here long before we were even born."
"What matters now isn't who built it," Alex said, standing up and checking his pistol. "What matters is that Smith knows where we are and what we're thinking. And if he's monitoring John too, today's game is going to be much worse than yesterday's."
At that moment, back at the hotel, John was finishing his preparations. He looked at the large screen in the lobby, where the countdown to the second event flashed in red numbers. He didn't know about the documents or the island's past, but he knew one thing: civilization was already a distant memory. Now, only the mechanics of survival remained.
Harry tucked the papers into his backpack, but his mind was racing at a thousand miles per hour. He noticed something he didn't tell the others: the diagrams of the walls showed a flaw—a maintenance point that remained submerged. If they could reach it... perhaps the island wasn't so impenetrable after all.
Foxy, sitting in the shadows, watched Harry. He noticed the glint in the strategist's eyes. An almost imperceptible smile tugged at his lips, but behind his dark glasses, his eyes remained fixed, waiting for the moment the next life would be claimed by the island.
The second day was only beginning, and the Hell Resort was still very hungry.