She decides to try

Ellie takes a deep breath. She cannot let herself think about the punishment now, she just has to ace this and make any punishment completely irrelevant. They are just trying to scare her... It will not work. Of course, it is working already, but if she admits that even to herself, she will have already lost.

"Sorry, I was just surprised", Ellie says, hoping she sounds calmer now. "You are right, it will not matter. I'm ready to start". The host nods and the animation begins again, this time with three beeps serving as a countdown. There is no need to steal precious seconds from her by catching her unprepared this time; a minute per question is plenty... If her knowledge and state of mind will allow her to answer at all, that is.

As before, the questions are clearly intended to trick rather than purely test knowledge; as before, Ellie does not know how is she doing as she answers them. Although the extra time is very helpful, it also leaves her the room to second-guess herself... And make her even more worried as the next question comes. And the next. The comfortable armchair she herself asked for is not helping either. The leather is cold on her bare skin and, frankly, it feels wrong to have kicked someone out of their seat and have them stand two feet away, no matter how much they deserve ridicule.

Ellie gets a question the answer to which she genuinely does not know. She makes her best guess after long consideration and answers the next one easily, but the one after (which is second to last) is again actually rather specific rather than just tricky. Only one such question occurred in the first set, but she dismisses the thought of complaining, having to admit that the whole thing is still close enough to the first set. She has to guess again, hoping to get lucky, as she can definitely rule out two options out of four; the remaining odds are not SO bad, right? The final question is quite easy again, but Ellie is actually **** to answer it, knowing it will end the challenge and bring the very likely punishment. A part of her is still proud for not backing off; the rest of her, however, is inwardly screaming in increasing terror.

"D", she finally says, as the time threatens to run out.