Chapter Eleven

With Tom bedridden, the group avoids Communal Tasks and keeps to couples. Lily and Sam daydream about staying to the end. Candice privately proposes a final four—Candice, Andrew, Lily, and Sam—vowing no more banishments once rules lift, sharing resources and living peacefully without screens.

After dark, Tom summons Lily to the gray room about his broken record player. He slaps her and rips out a lock of her hair. Sam intervenes, punching Tom until he stops. The system announces a compound-wide punishment before sunrise, and tension spikes as everyone gathers in the bedroom.

In the fraught aftermath, Candice tends Lily and confronts Tom; Tom taunts Lily’s worth, and Candice slaps him. Andrew urges calm; Becca suggests banishing both men. They agree to push tasks tomorrow to trigger a banishment.

Before dawn, the punishment ignites: fire races from the shed across parched grass, consuming gardens, orchard, and hedge. Andrew drags Tom back from the burning shed; Candice deploys a fire extinguisher; Lily and Sam activate sprinklers and fetch hose and sandbags, with Becca helping haul them.

By morning, the house and distant maze survive, but the compound outside is devastated—ash-coated and colorless. The shed is lost, and the group surveys the ruin, their work erased and future stability imperiled.