45. Alexander
ALEXANDER
The Priestess in charge lines them up in an arbitrary order that she has written on a parchment.
Lazarus, Zeno, and Eudoxia are herded somewhere to the beginning of the line while he and Kallias are around the middle, separated only by that young Cohort Leader who abandoned his team in the first Trial.
Alexander scowls pointedly and the boy smirks back, the little bastard. Before Alexander can rapid-fire some devastating insults, the line moves forward.
He holds his breath as they cross the border out of the Academy. Even though he knows they won’t trigger the alarms, it’s still a relief when they pass it.
Step one, completed. Exit the detection zone.
There is no chatter at all in the line and the heavy silence makes Alexander want to itch off his own skin. Plus, he misses Kallias—he is, indeed, only a few feet ahead of Alexander, but it’s still too far. At this point, anywhere outside of Alexander’s arms would be too far.
They reach a newly made, musty tunnel in the ground and after a long time trekking through it, they come to a stop in front of a metal door with a fancy-looking lock. It’s covered in some kind of wrap made to look like marble, a stark contrast to the dirt it’s embedded in.
Kallias looks back to give him a curt nod.
Let’s do this.
Alexander nods back.
The Priestess opens the door to reveal a narrow and curving hall that, once he enters it, is completely suffocating. Directly to his right is a metal wall, and a foot to the left are numbered doors starting at forty-seven and descending from there.
Eventually the line curves into a full circle and every Auxiliary stands in front of a door, himself at nineteen and Kallias at seventeen. A robotic female voice echoes off the metal walls seconds after everyone stops moving.
“The Trial begins with a choice. Pick wisely.”
“Well, that’s really specific,” he mumbles, but no one is close enough to hear. Zeno would have laughed. And, great, now he misses Zeno too.
The door in front of him clicks and slowly swings open. With that, he focuses in. Whatever decision he’s about to make could make or break everything.
What awaits him inside is not what he expected. He was ready for a crazy trolley problem, but instead there’s a table with six different weapons on it, half of them bronze and half of them steel.
On the steel side is a handgun, a taser, and knuckle dusters. The bronze side, a sword, a spear, and a crossbow.
Okay, well, clearly there’s a theme here: old school versus new school.
Practically speaking, the taser would be the best. It would knock out but not maim anyone who tries to pick a fight with him. Obviously no one is going to choose the handgun because if the pattern holds, the Guardians aren’t going to let anyone die. Which means the gun has to be full of blanks.
He reaches for the taser, but stops himself. What about the Minotaur?
Whether it’s a fifteen-foot bull or something else, Theseus killed the Minotaur with a bronze sword. What if the Guardians are testing their knowledge of the myth, or of how much of the hint they understood? What if the monster can only be defeated by bronze?
And with that, the modern weapons feel out of the question. He investigates the bronze trio. It’s not very hard to pick one.
Alexander is a king. And a king doesn’t shoot from afar, doesn’t throw unwieldy blades. A king goes out swinging.
He grabs the sword.
The moment he does, the other weapons flicker like they’re glitching, and then disappear. He instinctively reaches out to where they used to be, and, to his surprise, he can still feel them there. That answers the very first question he had after stepping into the Republic.
He didn’t teleport from the coast to the city, nor was he hallucinating. It’s perception that they toy with here. Before he can appreciate it, the female voice comes back.
“All Auxiliaries have chosen their weapons. Prepare, now, to enter the Labyrinth.
“If incapacitated, whether by your fellow Auxiliaries or the map itself, you are eliminated.
As for the Minotaur, that responsibility falls to you.
On your rings is an image of the Auxiliary for whom you will be the Minotaur.
You are responsible for tracking them down and taking them out while watching out for whoever has you.
“If you eliminate your target, you will inherit theirs. Once twenty-seven participants are eliminated, all weapons will be altered to non-lethal, and those who have incapacitated the most targets will have an advantage.
“Your victims are not limited to your target. Feel free to knock out anyone you please.”
He pulls the screen up on his ring. Every function has been taken offline except one: an image of his target, a boy a few years older than him.
How poetic. After all this time pretending to be teammates, the Guardians have finally made it clear who the enemy really is.
Each other.
The table in front of him sinks into the floor and the wall behind it flickers away.
“May the Forms grant you wisdom in Justice. Start in ten, nine, eight—” the voice says as he takes stock of his surroundings.
He sees just what Ophelia’s diagram described—Auxiliaries appearing out of hidden doorways from each of their individual compartments.
They’re in a circle, Kallias almost directly next to him, with Zeno, Eudoxia, and Lazarus on the other side.
“—seven, six, five—”
He can see the pathway that he and Kallias are meant to start on to the right and sends a prayer to God that Ophelia’s plan will work.
“—four, three, two—”
He takes a deep breath and holds his sword in a ready position.
“One.”
Bang.
Something flies past him, and when it finds its target, everyone in the maze stills in shock. The boy next to him, the one who just smirked at him in line, is crumpled on the floor, face-down.
Alexander breaks the stillness. He might not like the kid, but he’s not going to leave him on the floor. He yanks and pulls, but the boy doesn’t move. Not even when a frenzy breaks out behind them.
“You have to get up,” Alexander says.
No response.
He thought the guns would have blanks, but maybe they have a stun function instead?
He sighs and turns the boy over, ready to shake him until he wakes up, but…
But he doesn’t look like the boy anymore. He was shot in the eye, Alexander can see now. Blood paints his face and the ground and Alexander’s hands.
Because this boy isn’t stunned.
“He’s dead,” Kallias whispers next to him, shaking his arm like he’s been trying to get his attention for a while. “We have to go. We don’t have time.”
“Someone killed him,” he starts, slowly. His brain hasn’t quite caught up. “I thought there was no killing. They always say that you might die but no one has yet and I thought that meant no killing.”
“I know. I know,” Kallias placates, grabbing his hand and tugging him away from the boy’s body.
“He’s dead!” Alexander yells, pulling away to fall back to the boy. The dead boy. The last time he saw someone like this, it was his father. But he died in his sleep, not… not like this.
“And what can you do for him now?” Kallias chastises. “If we stay here, we’re going to end up just like him.”
“But—”
“Alexander, please. We have to go.”
Kallias is right. Alexander knows he is. So he closes his eyes and lets himself be dragged to his feet and over to the pathway they’re starting on. He drops one of the mirror pieces from his sleeve into his hand.
“Lead the way,” he says, his voice so dull it hardly sounds like his own.
Kallias sighs in relief and nods. “To the impossible plan.” He raises his crossbow like a cup.
“Hear, hear.” He clinks his sword against it.