Six minutes

The staircase was narrow and steep, descending into a darkness that seemed to swallow sound. Riley kept one hand on the cold metal railing, counting steps to keep herself grounded. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five.
Behind her, she could hear the others breathing hard, the scrape of shoes on concrete, the occasional muttered curse from Aaron when he stumbled.
At thirty-two steps, they reached the bottom.
The room that greeted them was unlike the previous two. Where Room One had been clinical white and Room Two had been a recreation of their school, Room Three was... small. Impossibly small.
Five glass boxes stood in a circle, each barely large enough for a person to stand upright. They were phone booth-sized, transparent on all sides, with a single chair inside each one. In the center of the circle, a digital display counted down: 06:00.
Six minutes.
"No," Nicole said immediately, backing toward the stairs. "No, I can't. I can't be in a small space. I'm claustrophobic, I—"
"We don't have a choice." Aaron's voice was tight. He was staring at the boxes with barely concealed dread.
A screen on the far wall flickered to life. The distorted voice accompanied the text that appeared:
**ROOM THREE: SIX MINUTES OF SILENCE**
**Anna spent six months isolated. Invisible. Unheard. Now you will spend six minutes the same way. Enter your box. Sit in silence. Experience what she experienced—compressed, concentrated, pure.**
**Rules:****1. You must remain in your box for the full six minutes.****2. You cannot speak or make any sound.****3. You cannot look away from the screen in front of you.****4. Break any rule, and the timer resets for everyone.**
**After six minutes, the door will open. Refuse to enter, and you forfeit one hour from your remaining time.**
The main countdown clock appeared on the screen: 10:15:43.
They had just over ten hours left.
"This is psychological torture," Kyle said, but he was already moving toward one of the boxes. "But an hour is an hour. We can't afford to lose it."
Riley approached her box slowly. Up close, she could see the interior more clearly. The chair was bolted to the floor. A screen was mounted on the wall at eye level. Small ventilation holes dotted the top, but otherwise it was completely sealed.
A coffin made of glass.
"I can't do this," Nicole repeated, her voice rising. "I can't, I'll have a panic attack, I'll—"
"Then we lose an hour," Aaron snapped. "Is that what you want?"
"Don't talk to her like that," Riley said, surprising herself. She looked at Nicole, who was hyperventilating, her face pale. "Nicole. Look at me. Six minutes. That's all. One minute is sixty seconds. Six minutes is three hundred and sixty seconds. You can count them. You can breathe through it. We all can."
"Easy for you to say," Nicole shot back, but some of the panic had left her voice.
Paige was examining her box with clinical detachment, but Riley noticed she was gripping her water bottle so hard her knuckles were white. "The ventilation is adequate. We won't suffocate. It's just... containment. Temporary containment."
"Six months," Kyle said quietly. He was standing in front of his box, one hand pressed against the glass. "Anna felt like this for six months. We can handle six minutes."
One by one, they entered their boxes.
Riley stepped inside hers, and immediately the walls felt closer than they'd looked from outside. The door sealed behind her with a hydraulic hiss that made her jump. She sat down in the chair, her hands gripping the armrests.
The screen in front of her flickered on.
Anna's face appeared. Not the school photo from Room One, but a video. Anna looked about sixteen, sitting on what must have been her bedroom floor, talking to a camera.
"Day one," Anna said. Her voice was steady, but Riley could see she'd been crying. "Riley started a rumor today. She told people I have a crush on Mr. Harrison. That I'm making up lies because he rejected me. It's not true. None of it's true. But I saw how people looked at me in the hallway. They believe her, not me."
The video cut to black for a moment, then resumed.
"Day fifteen. Kyle published an editorial about false accusations in the school paper. He didn't use my name, but everyone knows he's talking about me. Now even the kids who weren't sure before think I'm a liar. The administration is treating me like I'm the problem."
Another cut.
"Day thirty-one. Aaron leaked my complaint to the basketball team. They trashed my locker today. Poured soda and food all over my books. Coach Morrison—that's my dad—he had to come clean it up. Everyone watched. Everyone laughed. My own dad couldn't even look at me afterward."
Riley's throat tightened. She wanted to look away but remembered the rules. She couldn't break them. Couldn't make the others start over.
"Day forty-seven. Paige told the school counselor I'm mentally unstable. Now they're treating me like I'm crazy instead of like I'm telling the truth. They want me to see a therapist. They keep asking me about my 'delusions.'"
Anna's voice was getting quieter, flatter.
"Day sixty-two. Nicole won't talk to me anymore. She was my best friend. The only person I had left. And today she told me to leave her alone. She said I'm a liar. She said she never wants to see me again. I have no one now. No one believes me. No one will help me."
The video showed Anna getting thinner, paler. Dark circles appeared under her eyes. Her clothes hung looser on her frame.
"Day ninety-eight. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I can't concentrate in class. Everyone stares at me. Everyone whispers. Or worse—they ignore me completely. Like I don't exist. Like I'm already gone."
"Day one hundred and fifteen. I don't know how to keep doing this. I don't know how to keep walking through those hallways, sitting in those classrooms, pretending I'm okay when I'm not. I'm so tired. I'm so tired of fighting and no one listening."
"Day one hundred and forty-two. Mom found my journal today. I'd written about wanting to die. She cried. Dad didn't say anything, just left the room. They don't know what to do with me. No one does."
"Day one hundred and sixty-eight. Mr. Harrison got a promotion. He's going to be assistant principal next year. He walks past me in the hallways and smiles. Everyone sees him as this great teacher, this leader. And I'm the girl who tried to ruin his career with lies. That's my legacy now. The liar. The crazy girl. The one no one believes."
Anna's face was drawn, haunted. She looked like a ghost of herself.
"Day one hundred and eighty-three. This is my last video. I found my mom's sleeping pills. I've been saving them, one at a time. I have enough now. Enough to make it stop. I'm so sorry, Mom and Dad. I tried to tell the truth. I tried to be strong. But I can't do it anymore. I can't wake up one more day and face those hallways, those faces, that silence. I just want it to stop."
The video ended.
The screen went black, then displayed a single sentence in white text:
**This is what you did.**
Riley couldn't breathe. Tears were streaming down her face, and she couldn't wipe them away without making noise. Her chest felt like it was caving in. She'd known, intellectually, that Anna had tried to kill herself. But seeing it like this—watching the slow deterioration over six months, hearing Anna's voice get quieter and more hopeless with each entry—it was unbearable.
She glanced sideways through the glass. Nicole was sobbing silently, her whole body shaking. Kyle had his head in his hands. Aaron was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched so tight Riley could see the muscle jumping. Paige's face was wet with tears, but her expression was frozen, clinical distance finally shattered.
The countdown timer hit 03:00.
Three more minutes.
The screen changed again. Now it showed security camera footage from the school. Silent, grainy video of Anna walking through the hallways alone. Being bumped into and ignored. Sitting by herself at lunch while tables full of students laughed and talked around her. Standing in front of her destroyed locker. Sitting in class while no one would partner with her for group projects.
Six months of isolation, compressed into three minutes of footage.
Riley had walked past Anna hundreds of times during those six months. Had seen her in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in class. And Riley had looked right through her, as if she didn't exist.
They all had.
The timer hit 01:00.
One minute left.
The final video began. This one showed a hospital room. Anna in the bed, unconscious, tubes and wires everywhere. A woman Riley recognized as Anna's mother sat beside the bed, holding her daughter's hand, weeping silently.
A man—Anna's father—stood at the window, his back to the camera, shoulders shaking.
A doctor entered, spoke to them. The parents' faces crumpled.
The timestamp showed this was three days after Anna's suicide attempt. The video had no audio, but Riley didn't need it. She could read the devastation in every line of those parents' bodies.
This was what they'd done.
Not just to Anna, but to her family. To everyone who loved her.
The timer hit 00:00.
The glass boxes hissed open simultaneously.
For a long moment, no one moved. They just sat there, shell-shocked, drowning in the weight of what they'd seen.
Then Nicole stumbled out of her box and collapsed on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Kyle followed, looking like he might vomit. Aaron exited stiffly, his face a mask of barely controlled emotion. Paige emerged last, moving like an automaton.
Riley couldn't make herself stand. Her legs felt like water.
"We killed her," Nicole choked out between sobs. "We didn't pull the trigger, but we killed her."
"She survived," Aaron said, but his voice was hollow.
"Did she?" Kyle asked. "The voice said survival isn't the same as living. What kind of life did she have after that? After six months of torture and then a failed suicide attempt? What were the next ten years like for her?"
No one had an answer.
The screen on the far wall lit up again:
**You've experienced six minutes of what Anna endured for six months. But you experienced it knowing it would end. Anna didn't have that luxury. She didn't know if it would ever stop. Now you understand the difference between empathy and true understanding.**
**Room Four awaits. In it, you'll learn what happened to Anna after you all moved on with your lives. After you went to college, built careers, forgot about the girl you destroyed.**
**Time remaining: 10:09:43**
A door appeared in the wall opposite the staircase they'd descended. It was unmarked, plain, terrifying in its simplicity.
Riley finally managed to stand. Her legs shook, but they held.
"I don't want to go in there," Nicole said. "I don't want to know what we did to her. I can't—"
"We have to," Paige said. Her voice was rough, scraped raw. "We owe her that much. To bear witness. To understand fully."
"We were seventeen," Aaron said again, but this time it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "We made mistakes. We were kids who made terrible mistakes."
"And she was a kid who paid for them," Kyle finished. "With her whole life."
Riley walked to the door. Her hand trembled as she reached for the handle.
"Together," she said, echoing Kyle's word from Room One.
They gathered around her. Five people bound by guilt, shame, and the slowly dawning horror of what they'd done.
Riley opened the door.
Room Four was waiting.
---
**End of Chapter 4**