You will awaken in the middle of a medium-sized room, slumped against a wall, with no memory of how you got there. The room is made entirely of concrete; it's a seven-by-ten-foot cell. There are no doors or visible entrances or exits of any kind.

At the center of this room, the person you care about most in the world is lying on a table, much like the autopsy tables seen in morgues. They have been strapped down. Next to this table is a tray with various instruments and tools on it. Beneath the table is a single drain, a few inches in diameter.

You will hear my voice come from a speaker embedded into the center of the ceiling. I will tell you what you need to do: to save your life and the life of your loved one, you must torture them. You must inflict as much pain as you possibly can.

Inevitably, you will hesitate. You may even try to resist, searching for the exits that do not exist. If you're foolish, you may beg, plead, and ask me why this is happening. You'll receive no answer if you do. As this happens, I shall impress upon you the hopelessness of your situation. If you do not capitulate to my demands, you and your loved one will die from dehydration. Your only hope is to hurt the person you care about most in the world -- to bring them to the edge of the abyss of death even as you try to drag them and yourself away from it.

So you will walk to that table, and look at that tray. You'll find all the tools of the trade. Scalpels, knives, screwdrivers, battery-powered drills, a buzz saw, a gallery of sledgehammers. Guns, bullets, spears -- every surgical and torture-related implement you can imagine, and a few you can't. I'll let you start things off -- for undoubtedly, you'll start off small, trying to do as little harm as possible. And as you inflict minor pains, I'll start directing you, instructing you, on tortures and pains you can inflict. Gouge that out, smash that in, rip that off and crush this into pulp. And you'll listen -- you will beg but you will listen -- for it is the only way you and your friend have to survive.

Your hands will stain with blood, and your face will stain with tears. Your ears shall hear their screams, and their eyes, widened, tearful, bloodied, they'll be burned into your brain eternally, haunting every moment of your life from here on out. Your loved one, they will beg and they will scream and they will plead with you to stop, but you, to save their life, will not. Your loved one, they will beg and they will scream and they will plead with you to let them die, but you, to save your life, will not comply. And you, you will beg and you will curse and you will plead with me to let you stop, but I will not; the show, it must go on. Get back to work.

If you're noble, you will reach the point where you cannot go on. You'll stop; you will resist, and that is when I shall insist that you comply, that you discontinue denial and resume this deathly trial. I'll turn up all the lights, I'll turn up all the heat, and I'll release my little secret: noxious, damned repulsive gas. The smell of death itself; you'll start to choke, you'll start to cough; you will not breathe nor will you have the nerve to defy what must happen. The fumes, the stench, the poison gas will keep you going on. You'll do anything to keep yourself from breathing it again -- I promise you, you will.

It will end. Don't you worry, this will end. When your loved one's blood has stained the walls; when desp'rate screams have left a cursed ringing in your head. When they wish that they were dead. When limbs are lost and senses gone and neat white picket fence between your mind and human evil -- when that boundary's been crossed -- that is when I shall relent and reveal your salvation: through descent. I'll tell you of a secret hatch within the floor. Release your friend and haul them down with you.

But the trial is not over; you have merely reached the next stage. And the things I'll make you do will leave you shameful and bereft. The room you are in is smaller now, and somewhat darker. There's one locked door on a wall. Here's where variation comes into play.

If the person you care about most cares about someone else the most, I will hold that third one captive. If either if you refuse my demands, that third person will die. If the person you care about most cares about you the most -- even after what you've done to them -- then your life's the one that I will threaten.

One by one, you'll sever your loved one's limbs. And when the limbs are gone, you'll chop off every little digit, and you'll feed it to them. And when that's done, you'll defile the one you care about the most, and then they'll do the same to you. You will ravage every orifice, and they'll do the same to you. And then you'll rape them one more time, and as you climax, you will slit their throat.

Down the hatch from which you entered, several knifes will fall, along with a single hammer. With these, you will approach the lifeless corpse of the person you care about most in the world. You'll carve open more orifices, and defile each one. Carve a hole into the spine and pulverize the bone -- you don't want it in the way. Repeat the process all along the spine -- no more than a one inch gap between each hole -- and then you'll ravage every single one.

And when that's done, the door will unlock, and you will walk through it. (If there was a third person, they'll come with you.)

This is the final room. There's a door on the opposite side. (If there was a third person, they will go through this door and to the path to freedom.) The room is similar to the first room.

You will lie down on the table, and I'll enter with a gun (so you do not resist). I'll strap you down, and torture you in ways none can describe. I'll cut things out, and stitch them elsewhere -- remake you into the wretch you have become inside. I'll slice you up and stab you out and crush your bones and yet you'll stay alive -- ah, the marvel of modern medicine. And as this happens, screens on every wall will play back your misdeeds -- oh, how you tortured they you love the most. You'll hear screams even as I make you scream. Your pain will not drown out the pain you caused.

When I'm done is when you -- blinded, bloodied, beaten, wounded, deafened, haunted, horrified, and barely alive -- will open the last door. The blinding light of a hallway's what will greet you, as you fumble through it, to your freedom, to the world outside.