Chapter 3
LIORA
Dirk Husker’s cartoon face flickers off the screen, and the silence that follows isn’t peace—it’s pressure. The air hums like static, full of tension and recycled oxygen. You can taste the fear in it. Burnt ozone and human sweat.
Borzen Kain is the first to move.
“Roles?” he growls, metallic voice grinding like a bad motor. He’s half machine, half nightmare, the kind of guy who could probably rip a tank in half just to see if it bleeds. His one good eye glows dull red under the flickering light.
The console in the center of the room lights up, displaying words in blocky, glowing letters:
PLAYER ROLES ASSIGNED.
ENGINEER – LIORA BEVINS
brICK – BORZEN KAIN
RAY – DRAVVEN SOL
HEALER – ALLOV
WILDCARD – UNKNOWN
WILDCARD – UNKNOWN
BONUS CANNON FODDER – CIVILIANS
“Bonus CANNONT FODDER?” I say aloud. “What the hell kind of—”
Dirk’s voice booms overhead. “That’s the beauty of this game, sweetheart. Don’t worry! You’ll stay alive if you keep moving. If not—” The voice makes a game-show buzzer sound. “You’ll be the fodder.”
Borzen smashes the nearest wall with his fist. The wall dents but doesn’t break. He grunts. “This is a cage.”
Dravven Sol leans casually against a pillar like we’re not trapped in a death labyrinth. His long coat swishes as he flips his blaster in one hand, casual and graceful. Alzhon—gunslinger species. They make sarcasm look like a martial art.
“You’re just figuring that out?” he says.
“Knock it off,” I mutter, staring at the console again. The screen flickers, reshaping into a three-dimensional schematic. My schematic. The structure of Monstrous Mazes. Except... wrong. The rooms have changed. The trap parameters have evolved beyond anything I ever coded.
“Oh, no,” I whisper. “He didn’t just copy it. He expanded it.”
Allov kneels beside me, her half-grolgath features twisting in concern. She’s got the kind of calm presence you’d expect from a priestess—until you look into her eyes and realize she’s just as scared as the rest of us. “Liora,” she says softly, “you understand this place?”
“Not anymore.”
We move out as a group, though “group” might be too generous. The civilians trail behind us, murmuring and shuffling like they think being quiet will make them invisible. They’re wrong. The maze hums—hungry. Watching.
The first room looks like one of my older levels. The Gravity Reversal Chamber. I designed it as a puzzle—safe, elegant, clever. You step on the wrong tile, you float for a few seconds, maybe get dizzy. Nothing lethal.
Husker turned it into a blender.
The floor is black glass, the ceiling a mirror. The far exit glows with a faint amber light. Simple, right? Except my gut’s already screaming.
“Stay close,” I say. “Don’t move till I say so.”
A man in the back—thin, terrified, clutching a compad that doesn’t work—murmurs, “Why are we listening to her?”
“Because she built this,” Borzen rumbles. “You want to live, you listen.”
“Built it?” the man gasps. “You—you did this?”
I freeze. The civilians all turn to look at me like I’m the one holding the knife. And maybe I am, metaphorically speaking.
“I didn’t make this,” I say quickly. “Husker took my designs and—”
But I don’t finish. Because one of the civilians—blonde, shaking, crying quietly—takes a step forward.
“Please, I just want out,” she whispers, and runs.
“Wait—!” I shout.
Her foot hits a tile. The world flips.
The gravity pulse slams her upward. She hits the ceiling with a crunch that echoes like thunder. She’s alive for half a second. Then the lights flicker red, and the ceiling becomes a floor again.
She splatters like dropped fruit.
The civilians scream. One vomits. Someone starts pounding on the wall. I just stand there, shaking, the sound of my own heartbeat roaring in my ears.
Dirk’s voice pops through the speaker. “Oops! Someone forgot to read the rules! Tsk tsk. Penalty for lack of teamwork: minus one player!”
Borzen’s shoulders heave. “I’m going to tear that man apart.”
“Get in line,” Dravven mutters.
“Everyone MOVE,” I snap. “Follow my steps exactly.”
We edge through the chamber, single file. I walk them through the old logic—blue tiles are safe, white are resets, red are bad news. It works. For once. We reach the door.
The next room is worse.
At first glance, it looks like an exit. A glowing archway, marked EXIT in big, friendly letters. The civilians almost sprint toward it before I throw an arm out.
“Stop,” I hiss. “Don’t touch that.”
“It’s the door!” one of them yells. “We can leave!”
“No,” I say. “It’s bait.”
He doesn’t listen. He runs. Halfway through the archway, the door ripples like water. Thin, shimmering wires slice through him before he even realizes. He falls in sections—perfect, clean cuts. For half a second, his top half looks confused about where the rest went. Then both parts collapse.
The Maze hums, pleased.
Dirk’s voice comes through, dripping with mock sympathy. “Ouch. You really can’t rush these things. Read the fine print, people! Always read the fine print!”
I want to throw up.
The smell of burnt plasma and blood hits hard—like melted copper and ozone. My stomach twists. The civilians press against the wall, sobbing. Dravven looks away. Borzen cracks his knuckles like he’s trying to crush air.
I swallow hard. “Okay,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “Okay, think.”
The floor panels shimmer faintly, coded lines underneath. My brain shifts gears automatically, mapping the old logic, searching for patterns. The maze talks to me, like it used to when I designed it. Except now it whispers with Dirk’s voice.
“This isn’t a puzzle,” I murmur. “It’s a message.”
“What kind of message?” Allov asks.
“A taunt,” I say. “He wants me to know I’m still playing.”
We keep moving. Each room is worse than the last.
A chamber where the air turns acidic if you stay too long. A hallway where the walls pulse like lungs. A pit that whispers your name in someone else’s voice.
Every time someone dies, Dirk chimes in with that same game-show enthusiasm. “Ooooh, bonus round! You’ve unlocked pain receptors!” or “What a spectacular loss! Ten out of ten!”
By the time we make it through seven chambers, four of the civilians are dead. One vaporized, one crushed, one drowned in something that looked like quicksilver, and one simply gone—swallowed by a floor that closed like a mouth.
Allov kneels by the most recent corpse, murmuring a prayer to Ataxia, her god of chaos and mercy. Her hands shake. “They didn’t deserve this.”
“None of us do,” I say, kneeling beside her. The air smells like burnt flesh. My throat burns with bile. “We’re not just in his maze. We are the maze.”
Borzen paces. “We keep moving. Standing still gets us killed.”
Dravven wipes his blade on his coat, frowning. “You talk like you’ve done this before.”
Borzen growls, “Surviving’s a skill.”
“Talking’s a hobby,” Dravven shoots back.
“Boys,” I snap, my voice sharper than I mean it. “Focus.”
They both look at me. Borzen’s eyes flash with irritation, but there’s something else too—respect, maybe. He’s used to commanding. So am I. We fall into rhythm without meaning to.
We hit a junction—two corridors, both identical.
My code brain kicks in again. “This is a binary choice puzzle,” I say. “Left or right. In the original version, one’s a trap, one’s safe.”
“Which?” Dravven asks.
I stare at the walls. The lighting pattern. The flicker timing. My heartbeat syncs to it, an old rhythm I know too well. I point left.
Borzen grunts. “You sure?”
“No,” I say. “But it’s the one I would’ve picked.”
He nods once. “Good enough.”
We move. The corridor tightens, closing behind us. The light turns crimson. I hear a hum—low, almost inaudible. The civilians are whispering again. One of them, a man with shaking hands, clutches his chest. “We’re all going to die here,” he says.
“Not if we keep our heads,” I snap. But I’m not sure I believe myself.
The hum grows louder. The walls ripple, metallic veins glowing red. Allov gasps. “What’s happening?”
“Adaptive response,” I whisper. “It’s scanning us.”
“Scanning for what?”
“For fear.”
The lights dim. Dirk’s voice slithers through the air. “Oh, excellent work, players! You’re so close to your first checkpoint. Just a few more survivors needed for the bonus round!”
I grit my teeth. “You sick—”
“Now, now. Don’t be rude. We’ve got an audience!”
The floor jolts. We tumble forward as the entire corridor shifts ninety degrees, reorienting. One of the civilians slides screaming into the darkness, vanishing. The rest of us cling to the new “floor,” panting.
“Checkpoint reached!” Dirk cheers. “See? Teamwork makes the screams work!”
Dravven groans. “If I ever get out of here, I’m erasing every file with his name on it.”
Borzen laughs once, low and humorless. “I’m going to erase his head.”
“Get in line,” I mutter again.
We collapse into a maintenance chamber, doors sealing behind us. It’s quiet, for now. The air’s stale but breathable. Allov passes around salvaged nutrient bars she scavenged from a dispenser. No one eats.
I sink down against the wall, my hands shaking. I can’t stop seeing the civilians’ faces. Can’t stop hearing the screams.
Borzen kneels across from me, metal hand resting on his knee. “You built this,” he says quietly.
I look up, ready to argue—but his tone isn’t accusing. It’s curious. “You built something... this complex.”
“I built a game,” I whisper. “Not this. Not the traps. Not the deaths.”
He nods once. “Still. Clever work.”
I laugh bitterly. “You call this clever?”
“I call it survival,” he says. “You think too much. Keep thinking. We need that.”
Dravven chuckles. “Look at us. The brick, the ray, the engineer, and the priestess. Sounds like the start of a bad joke.”
Allov smiles faintly. “Let’s hope it doesn’t end like one.”
Borzen stands. “Rest if you can. We will move again in five.”
As he walks away, I stare at my reflection in the metal floor. My face looks strange. Older. Harder. The Maze hums softly around me, alive and hungry.
Somewhere behind the walls, Dirk is still watching.
And somewhere else, something darker is moving—something not controlled by him.
I feel it.
It’s coming for us.