Chapter 20
TWENTY
The darkness was all-consuming. I couldn’t see a single thing.
I stood rooted to the spot, trying to find my bearings.
My other senses sharpened, the cries that still reverberated around me becoming louder in my ears, my nose picking up on a distinctive metallic scent I hadn’t been conscious of before…
I shivered. It smelled eerily like blood.
I stretched out my arms, my fingertips brushing against the cool, metal walls on either side of me, and I tried to refocus.
If this was a maze, it meant there had to be other passageways branching off from this one. And, given that the adults were somewhere to my left, it meant I only needed to focus on the left-hand wall. So I moved closer to it, lowering my right arm.
Keeping my left palm flat against the wall, I continued walking.
With each step I took, that metallic scent seemed to grow stronger. About a minute later, when my hand finally felt the wall give way to empty space, my nostrils were twitching from how strong it had become.
I tried to ignore it and focus on entering this next, adjoining passageway I had discovered. I stretched out both my arms again as I moved through it, though this walkway was wider, and my fingertips couldn’t touch both sides at the same time.
In which direction did I need to go from here?
The shouting came from up ahead of me, now, but only in a very general sense. I wasn’t sure whether I needed to start angling to the left or to the right. Gods, I wished the child’s crying would stop. The adult voices would have been a little easier to pinpoint without its constant torment.
I had to settle with bouncing from one wall to the other every few steps, to be sure I wasn’t missing any openings.
Which made things slow. The computer man hadn’t mentioned that I was on a timer, but I was pretty sure that I wasn’t supposed to take my sweet time, either.
I felt the urge to hurry and increased my pace.
I hoped there wasn’t anything in the center of these passageways that I would bump headlong into, since my hands were busy with the walls.
I had been walking for what felt like two minutes, when I remembered my ring. I withdrew my hands and swiped at its little screen. It lit up, casting only a soft glow amidst the gloom, but a glow nonetheless. It cast light that reached a couple of feet in front of me.
I stretched out my right hand to spread the light as far as possible, then continued moving until another opening came into view on my left. Two openings, in fact, directly opposite one another.
I stopped in between them, glancing from one to the other, the exact direction of the adults’ voices still uncertain to my ears.
I made a quick decision and took the one on the right.
When I stepped through, I became aware of a decidedly fainter metallic scent, and I stopped again. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
I retraced my steps back to the central passageway and poked my head through the left opening. The tang was much stronger there, and I was once again conflicted.
I had a suspicion that the scent was there for a reason, the same way the lights had switched off for some reason. Maybe it was to test how well I could rely on my other senses?
Was I supposed to follow the scent? If it was supposed to be a simulation of blood, that would probably be a logical conclusion. Putting it another way, I wasn’t sure where the logic would lie in not following it.
I abandoned my previous plan and took the left passageway.
I brushed my ring to reawaken the screen as it went dark, then sped up to a jog, keeping my eyes sharp and fixed on the nearest wall. I had made it about fifteen feet when my ears registered a new sound.
It sounded like footsteps. Heavy footsteps.
Coming from somewhere behind me.
I halted and swiveled around, my eyes wide as I angled the light behind me.
But there was nothing. At least, nothing close enough to be revealed by the ring’s light.
Which was how close the footsteps had sounded.
A shiver crept down my spine. But the noise had stopped now, so maybe my imagination was growing hyperactive in the dark and it had just been my own footsteps echoing off the walls.
Shaking it off, I faced forward again and kept moving, my eyes returning to the wall.
The next opening came into view half a minute later, and I poked my head through it, sniffing. The coppery scent was weaker here, so I backed away, figuring I ought to try the next one.
But the second I resumed walking, I heard the footsteps again. This time louder and so close, I could’ve sworn I felt hot breath tickling the back of my neck.
I whirled back around with a gasp, but once more, there was nothing there. Except for an unpleasant, sour scent, strong enough to temporarily overpower the tang of blood.
It reminded me of body odor. Could that really be mine? I sped up as fast as I could in the gloom, needing to get away from the feeling that someone was following me.
This place was creepy enough without an invisible stalker.
My legs pumped harder as I heard breathing, laborious and rasping like an old man’s.
That couldn’t be my imagination.
I flew down the next right turn, forgetting to check for the blood scent until I was already ten feet down the new passageway. It smelled weaker here.
Crap.
I considered turning around, but the footsteps were still behind me. And then I heard a low, guttural sound, halfway between a growl and a groan.
Whatever was following me had two feet but didn’t sound human.
It gave me a sudden flashback to a story I’d read once, involving a Greek Prince, a labyrinth, and a giant, horned beast, but I shoved it aside.
It wasn’t helping.
Whatever followed me, its unsettling noises cemented my resolve to keep running. I couldn’t be sure it was real, but after being locked in a tank with that sea monster, I didn’t feel like finding out.
I ran faster, hooking a left turn down another passageway, where the coppery scent grew even weaker. I cursed under my breath, knowing I needed to turn around and find my way back to the trail.
I had to get whatever was following me off my back.
Its heavy footsteps still thudded behind me, its laborious breathing bordering on wheezing, and I poured on the speed, dashing down another opening to my right, then my left, and then another right, then left and right again…
until its footsteps grew fainter, and I was pretty sure I had lost it. At least, for now.
I hoped I hadn’t lost myself, too.
I slowed, needing to somehow pick up the blood scent again.
I couldn’t retrace my steps without risking bumping into that thing again—and besides, I doubted I’d be able to remember the route after all the twists and turns I’d taken.
Which meant one of the turns in this part of the maze had to lead me back on track. Otherwise, I could be screwed.
I pounded through six more twists and turns, still struggling to pick up the scent, until finally, I stumbled onto it again when I emerged in a short passageway that spanned less than six feet. Another opening stood at the end of it and I hurried through.
Emerging on the other side, I realized I was finally close enough to accurately pinpoint the direction of the adults’ screams. I needed to turn left.
I also became aware of an abrupt spike in temperature.
At first, I put that down to my own body heat, after all the running I’d done, but as I ventured deeper into the maze, picking my way closer and closer to the screaming, I knew it wasn’t just me.
My forehead broke out in a heavy sweat as increasingly hot air pressed in against me from all sides. After two more minutes of running, it became so close to unbearable that I almost considered turning back. But the cries were closer than ever now and the metallic scent had never been stronger.
I pressed onward, even as my mouth dried out, and I blinked rapidly to prevent my eyes from doing the same.
The closer I sensed I was getting, the faster I wanted to go, but the heat made it impossible. I felt my legs lagging, my breath wavering, and it was all I could do to maintain my pace.
I ploughed on, until a few minutes later, I stumbled into a passageway with a tall doorway at the end of it.
This doorway was different than any I’d come across before. It contained an actual door, which was closed and surrounded by a bright orange aura.
Fire crackled on the other side, I could feel its intense heat seeping through the cracks.
But why on earth would they have lit a fire? And why could I detect no smoke?
I stopped three feet in front of the door, watching the firelight licking the cracks. The screams undeniably came from behind it.
What was I supposed to do? Open it? What if the handle burned my skin?
The sound of footsteps returned behind me. The rasping breathing returned along with it, echoing once more in my ears. I jerked my hand toward the door’s handle, closing my eyes and bracing myself for pain.
The handle did not burn me. It was completely cool.
I wrapped my whole right hand around it, twisted the knob and shoved my weight against the door.
It swung open seconds before the footsteps reached me and I barreled through to the other side.
I slammed the door shut behind me and jammed the knob back down into its closed position.
I slid to the floor, panting.
The first thing I noticed about my new surroundings was that, like the handle, they were completely cool, too. Which confused the hell out of me.
When my eyes lifted to my surroundings, I became still more confused.
There were flames. A ring of fire, in fact, surrounding a group of thirteen terrified men and women.
But none of it was real.
The heat back there had all been a simulation, just like the scene in front of me was.
The scene was a projection, formed from apparently thousands of tiny light particles. A frighteningly real projection. The expressions on the trapped people’s faces could have fooled me were it not for the fact that their bodies were translucent. I could see through to the wall behind them.
I slowly picked myself up, wondering what I was supposed to do now. I’d reached them, right? That was all the computer man said I needed to do.
I took my first step toward the people and the scene suddenly disintegrated, morphing into a gauzy haze of blue and orange light.
A second later, there was a tumultuous sound of tons of metal sliding simultaneously back into position.
It happened so fast, I almost missed it.
The walls around me disappeared, retracting into the floors as panels shifted, making room for them and sucking them back in, until the maze was no more.
Whatever had been—or appeared to have been?
—following me was nowhere to be seen either.
Yet, one remnant of the test remained. The scene on the other side, where the right entrance would have led me.
The scene with the little girl. I couldn’t make out her features properly from the distance, but she looked Caucasian.
She was still crying and standing on some kind of raised platform.
Like the adults, a ring of fire surrounded her, but her ring had encroached much farther.
It was practically licking at her ankles, appearing seconds away from touching her.
I stilled, wondering why I was being shown this. Was this part of the test? Was I being given a surprise second chance to save her, too?
I didn’t know, but instinctively moved toward her at a run, my feet hammering against the panels, my legs pumping despite my dehydration. As I neared and details of the scene became clearer, my stomach flipped at the color and texture of her hair. It was brown and curly.
I knew this was a simulation, but the coincidence was enough to tip off my shredded nerves.
I sped up, needing to make out the rest of her features, but before I could get close enough, the flames reared up without warning, swallowing her small body whole.
Her cries intensified to screams for several long, harrowing seconds, and then all went silent.
I watched the scene disintegrate, morph into a blue and orange haze, while I stood, shaking and inexplicably disturbed. The blood had left my face, my breathing coming in short, uneven bursts.
It was just a simulation. I knew that. But what was the purpose of showing me that?
Had I been wrong in choosing the adults, and witnessing the death of the child I’d failed was some kind of lesson or punishment?
Whatever the case, I was left with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and the ardent hope that this “screening” was finally over.