It felt like waiting for a verdict. No one spoke. No one moved. Chairs remained untouched. Plates were only half-empty. The low hum of electricity was the only reminder that time still passed.

Joseph couldn’t tell how long they had sat like that, minutes blurred into hours. Maybe more. Maybe less. It didn’t matter. They were just waiting for the next knock, the next rule, and the next name to disappear behind a sealed door and never return.

Sasha had curled into herself on the loveseat, her eyes glassy. Preston sat stiff beside her, hands clasped so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Leo stared out the window, watching for a sunrise that would never come. Max had stopped trying to make jokes. Eli was on the floor, back against the wall, his gaze fixed on Lena’s empty seat. 

Joseph counted the seconds in his head.

Until finally—

The locks clicked. Footsteps followed.

Ten masked men entered again, wordless and mechanical. One of them gestured.

“Stand.”

No one disobeyed.

They were herded silently through the long hall, back to the playroom. The same flickering lights. The same too-clean air. Chairs and walls scrubbed of any trace of the last game, as if it had never happened.

But something was different.

At the center of the room stood ten piñatas—one for each of them. Suspended from metal rods, strung from chains bolted to the ceiling. They weren’t cartoonish or colorful. No bright donkeys or birthday stars. Instead, they were heavy, solid, and unnaturally smooth—like they had been sculpted by hand and painted to resemble papier-mâché.

Beneath each piñata hung a small name card: Joseph, Eli, Max, Sasha, Preston, Nina, Celeste, Amelia, Leo, Jude.

Not assigned piñatas, but labeled ones.

The voice came over the speaker, smooth and slow.

“Welcome to your next game.”

No one breathed.

“This game has two rounds. In the first, each of you will break your piñata. You have thirty minutes. If you fail—”

The pause was long enough to feel deliberate.

“You lose.”

Sasha took a shaky step back. “Wait, we have to…? With what?”

A masked figure stepped forward, holding a toy baseball bat in each gloved hand. He placed them down.

“Begin.”

At first, they hesitated. The bats looked like props—plastic shells painted red and blue, which you’d find in a dollar store aisle between bubbles and party hats. Joseph turned one over in his hands, half-expecting it to squeak.

Max gave his piñata a gentle tap. It didn’t flinch.

“Okay…” he muttered. “So they gave us toys. That’s cool. Love that.”

No one laughed.

Amelia rolled her eyes and tossed her bat to the floor. “This is a joke. We’re not doing this.”

“I’m not breaking my hand over a rigged plastic rock,” Preston added, dropping his bat as if it were contaminated.

Sasha looked between them, uncertain. “Maybe if we all just… don’t play…”

“We can’t keep doing whatever they say,” Nina said quietly. “This isn’t a game. It’s a punishment.”

Joseph didn’t speak. He was watching the masked men, and none of them moved.

Then Eli stepped forward and raised his voice. “You hear that?” he called toward the cameras. “We’re done. You want a show? Do it yourself. We’re not your puppets.”

One of the masked men raised a gun. It wasn’t a warning this time. It was a threat. The barrel followed Eli’s movement as he stepped back slowly, defiantly.

“I said we’re not—”

BANG.

The shot tore through the silence like a whipcrack. Concrete dust exploded from the wall just behind Eli’s head. 

He flinched hard, stumbled, and hit the floor, hands bracing as if the impact knocked him down. The girls screamed. Max ducked. Jude froze mid-breath. Eli looked up slowly, eyes wide, panting, heartbeat pounding in his ears. He was still alive, just not by much. 

The gun lowered. No one else spoke or argued. They picked up the bats and began to play.

Leo rewound and took a swing. The bat bounced back with a hollow thunk and barely left a dent. Sasha flinched at the sound. Nina looked up at the ceiling, jaw clenched. “It’s not even cracking.”

“They’re messing with us,” Amelia said quietly. “They want us to burn out, to get desperate.”

Ten minutes passed—the room filled with dull thuds and strained breaths. Plastic clattered. Sweat formed at brows and temples. Max tried swinging two bats at once until one cracked in half. Jude knelt beside his piñata, examining the edges as if he might solve it with math. Celeste kept trying, swinging harder, her arms trembling from the effort. 

Preston cursed every five seconds. “This is bullshit. It’s not even real papier-mâché. It’s like—concrete. What the hell do they expect us to do, beat it with our teeth?”

No one laughed.

Time bled forward. Twenty minutes now. Joseph’s hands ached. His bat had dents in it. Sasha had already dropped hers, breathing hard, palms shaking.

Then Leo stopped swinging. He just stared at the bat in his hands. Then at the piñata. He looked over his shoulder, voice low but certain.

“He never said we had to use this.”

Everyone paused.

“What?” Max asked.

Leo stepped forward, raised his arm, and drove his fist straight into the side of the piñata. 

The sound was different—duller, deeper.

Pain flashed across his face, but he kept going. “Use your hands,” he said, teeth gritted. “If you want to win, use your goddamn hands.”

The others hesitated. Joseph blinked at his knuckles, then at Leo, and then at the piñata. Finally, he dropped the bat.

The room shifted.

One by one, they followed his lead. Palms, fists, elbows—some even used their shoulders. Max screamed as he slammed his forearm into the side of his piñata. Preston yelled after every blow. Blood smeared across knuckles. Celeste tore a nail but didn’t flinch.

The final five minutes erupted into chaos. Sasha sobbed quietly but kept punching. Nina gritted her teeth and drove her knee into the side repeatedly. Amelia didn’t make a sound, just kept going—faster, harder. Jude winced every time his hand struck the surface, but didn’t stop. Leo’s fists were already bleeding, yet he didn’t hesitate or look at anyone. He drove another punch into the hard shell of his piñata, even as his knuckles split. Then another, until, with a sickening crack, a seam split down the side, and something small and metallic dropped to the floor with a dull clink.

No victory music. No fanfare.

Just Leo standing over it, chest heaving, blood dripping onto the concrete.

Joseph’s piñata broke next. His hands were shaking; one of his fingers wouldn’t bend right. But he hit it again, once, twice, and the edge gave out. The top caved in, and shards of the false shell scattered at his feet. He didn’t blink.

Across the room, Max let out a hoarse, broken laugh. “Alright,” he muttered to no one, “my turn.” He hurled himself at his piñata, using his elbow, shoulders, and knees. “C’mon, you ugly freak—break!” A sharp blow to the base finally did it. The bottom cracked open, and a piece of reinforced paper fluttered out. Max collapsed to the floor beside it, wheezing.

Preston let out a curse as he slammed his foot into the piñata over and over again. “I’m not going last—I’m not going last—” His voice cracked. He switched to fists, knees, and fists again—one final hit, and the entire thing split in half. “Yeah!” he gasped, stumbling back. “Take that, you stupid—” He didn’t finish the sentence, just dropped to the floor, breathing hard.

Nina’s approach was quieter and more methodical. She gritted her teeth and repeatedly focused on one spot—same angle, same place. Her fist left bloody smudges each time. Then, finally, a snap. She dropped her arms and slid down the wall behind her, legs pulled up, as if the pain hadn’t even registered yet.

Sasha sobbed openly as she punched. Her arms moved in half-loops, shaking between each strike. “I can’t—” she whimpered, “I can’t—” But she didn’t stop, not even when her hands slipped or her nails cracked. Then, a piece fell loose. She stared at it, disbelieving, and then slumped down, holding her wrists like they didn’t belong to her.

Jude’s knuckles were already purple. He never screamed or cursed. He closed his eyes briefly, drew a slow breath, and drove both hands into the side. A piece crumbled. Another hit, and the top burst open. He stepped back silently, blood trailing down his arm as if it didn’t belong to him either.

Eli’s jaw was clenched. His breaths were ragged. He didn’t care how loud he was—he roared with each strike. “Fuck you!” he yelled, cracking the shell open like it owed him something. “You’re not taking me too!” The piñata broke as if it knew to surrender. Eli just stood there afterward, shaking, blood on his lips from where he’d bitten down too hard.

Only Celeste remained.

She was the smallest of them, the lightest. Her hands were cut up, raw, and trembling. Her bat had snapped in half long ago. Her arms had stopped swinging a full minute ago. She swayed on her feet, knees barely holding her.

Thirty seconds left.

Everyone turned toward her.

She took one shaky step back.

Twenty seconds.

“Celeste—” Joseph started.

“Come on, Cel,” Max shouted, his voice breaking. “You can do it—”

She tried to lift her arm, but it dropped again.

Ten seconds.

Her eyes closed.

Her hands curled into fists.

And then—

With a scream that came from somewhere deep, she lunged forward and slammed her forehead into the piñata. A dull crack rang out. The shell buckled. She did it again, and on the second blow, something snapped. The piñata collapsed. So did she.

The buzzer sounded. It was over.

For a second, no one moved.

Then Max dropped to his knees beside her. “Celeste—hey, come on, talk to me.” Nina rushed over next, and Leo hovered close behind. Even Jude, still dazed from his trial, staggered toward her, blinking hard.

Celeste was breathing—but barely. Her face was pale, streaked with sweat and blood. Her eyes fluttered but didn’t open.

“She needs help,” Nina whispered.

Joseph stood frozen, heart hammering. He couldn’t stop staring at her broken piñata—her name scattered in sharp paper pieces around her like confetti at a funeral.

They stood there, every one of them—bruised, bleeding, broken—among the wreckage of their names. No cheers. No relief. Only pain. And the sick, dawning horror of what round two might look like.

Because deep down, they all knew this wasn't the end of the game. It was merely a break before the real punishment began.

The speaker crackled to life. “Congratulations,” the voice said, flat and mechanical. “All players have completed Round One.”

There was a pause.

“You have thirty minutes to rest before Round Two begins.”

Then silence. Not even a click—just that: thirty minutes. Time to heal, to dread, and to wait.