The heavy metal door of the control room clicked shut behind Chef Hatchet with a dull, final thud that seemed to swallow every other sound in the cramped space. The echo lingered for a second too long, like the room itself was holding its breath.
Chris McLean was alone.
The only light came from the bank of monitors lining the wall, bathing his face in cold, flickering blue. His trademark grin was still plastered on, but the edges had started to crack—forced, brittle, the smile of a man who refused to admit the game might be slipping out of his hands. His fingers jabbed at the keyboard with increasing urgency, trying to force a system reboot, override the rogue modules, anything. The screens responded with mocking flickers and static bursts, as though something—or someone—inside the machinery was deliberately resisting him.
"Come on, you piece of junk…" Chris muttered under his breath, leaning so close his nose almost touched the glass. "It's just a glitch. An old, forgotten, stupid little module glitch. I've handled worse. Way worse."
A low, metallic clicking started somewhere behind the panels. Not from the maze feeds. Not from the contestants' frantic footsteps echoing through the speakers. This was closer. Inside the walls. Inside the room.
Chris froze for half a heartbeat, then forced another laugh. It came out thin and hollow, bouncing off the steel surfaces like a bad echo.
"Chef! Buddy! Where the hell are you? This isn't funny anymore!"
Silence answered him.
He pushed back from the console and stood up slowly, scanning the dim space. Rusty pipes snaked along the ceiling like veins. Old cables hung loose, swaying slightly even though there was no breeze. Dust motes drifted in the monitor glow. The control room had always felt like his kingdom—small, but absolute. Now it felt like a cage he'd built himself.
On the screens, the maze continued its merciless life. Moving walls slid shut. Floors clicked and dropped. The contestants—those twenty-one beautiful, screaming disasters—kept pushing forward, unaware that their sadistic puppet master was no longer pulling the strings. Chris barely glanced at them. His pulse thrummed in his ears, louder than any trap.
A faint creak came from above.
An old lever on the far wall shifted on its own—slow, deliberate, with the groan of metal long unused.
Chris's head snapped up.
"What the…?"
Then it happened.
From the ceiling, a section of the ancient framework gave way. A heavy, rusted iron grate—identical in design to the deadly shafts buried deep in the maze, only scaled down just enough to fit the room—detached with terrifying precision and plummeted straight toward him.
Time seemed to stretch.
Chris looked up.
His eyes widened to the size of saucers.
"No," he whispered, the word barely audible. "No. This isn't fair. I'M the host. I'M the one who decides—"
The grate fell.
There was no dramatic slow-motion. No heroic last-second dodge. Only a single, choked, animal sound ripped from his throat—half manic laughter, half pure terror—before the iron met flesh and bone.
A sickening crunch echoed through the room.
Blood sprayed in thick, dark arcs across the monitors, streaking down the screens like crimson tears. His body jerked once, violently, then collapsed. The severed head rolled lazily across the grated floor, coming to rest facing one of the security cameras. The glassy eyes stared straight into the lens. Even in death, the corner of his mouth twitched upward, as though trying one final time to sell the moment to an invisible audience.
Then… nothing.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
The monitors kept glowing. The feeds from the maze rolled on without interruption. Walls shifted. Floors collapsed. Contestants shouted at each other in panic and frustration. But no announcement came. No mocking voice crackled through the speakers. No sadistic laughter rang out.
The loudspeaker stayed dead.
Minutes passed—maybe five, maybe ten. Time lost meaning in the blood-smelling dark.
The door clicked open again.
Chef Hatchet stepped inside, toolbox dangling from one massive hand. He stopped dead in the doorway.
His eyes took in the scene: the overturned chair, the smeared blood, the iron grate embedded halfway into the floor, the headless torso slumped against the console, and the head—Chris's head—staring blankly at the camera like a discarded prop.
Chef didn't scream. Didn't curse. Didn't even blink for several long seconds.
Then, very slowly, he set the toolbox down on the floor with a soft metallic clank.
"You damn idiot…" he whispered, voice rough and low, almost tender in its exhaustion. "I told you. I told you we should've shut it down the second those traps went wrong."
He took one step forward, then another, boots leaving faint prints in the spreading blood.
He stopped beside the body. Looked down.
There was no grief in his expression. No rage. Just a bone-deep weariness that had been building for years—through every humiliating task, every screamed order, every time Chris had treated him like an oversized butler instead of a partner.
Chef crouched slowly, elbows on his knees, staring at what remained of the man who had once dragged him into this nightmare of a career.
"If this isn't my game anymore…" he murmured, repeating Chris's own words from earlier, but now they sounded different—quiet, final, almost philosophical. "…then it's not just a show."
The system didn't care. The modules kept turning. Somewhere deep in the machinery, something—or someone—continued to pull invisible strings.
Chef rose to his full height again. His shadow fell across the monitors, blocking the blue light for a moment.
He glanced at the screens. The contestants were still moving, still alive, still clueless.
They hadn't heard the crunch. They hadn't seen the blood. To them, the silence from the host was just another cruel trick. Another way for Chris to build tension.
But Chris wasn't building tension anymore.
Chef turned toward the door. He didn't close it behind him.
He simply stood there for a long moment—framed in the doorway, backlit by the corridor lights—surrounded by the coppery smell of blood and the soft hum of machinery that refused to die.
And in that silence, he understood something terrible.
The show would go on.
Without its star.
Without its soul.
Without mercy.