Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“A Bond, unbreakable and brazen, pulling at your core, penetrating your mind. If I did not know that it had come from the Geist, I should call it unholy.”
Ithrew my hands out to catch myself against the side of the tube. My palms stung as they slammed against the cold metal, and I bit down hard.
A dim light restored some of my vision and I glanced around until something pricked me.
I hissed and jerked my left hand back, shaking it to clear the stinging sensation.
A needle retracted from a miniature door in the tube.
I looked down at my index finger. A tiny blot of red bloomed at the tip.
I wiped the blood away and tried to peer out of the tube.
A million questions flitted through my mind. Where was I? Why had they taken my blood? And what was I supposed to do now?
I kept blinking to adjust to the dim light of the room. I started running my fingers along the metal walls, but the floor beneath my feet dropped, and I collapsed onto the scratchy carpet about six feet below. Spikes of pain rattled my knee as it collided with the ground.
Grunting and clutching my leg, I stood. It was brighter down here but not by much.
Had I come from outside in the middle of the day, I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
But since I’d already spent so long in the complete darkness of the tunnel, my eyes were greedy for whatever light my surroundings could offer.
On either side of me, only a foot or so away, were walls so tall, I couldn’t see where they met the ceiling above, assuming there was one. The lack of a draft or the waning sunlight told me I must’ve been in an enclosed chamber. There was nothing else to see. Just me, the carpet, and the walls.
The walls were made of a smooth, solid material I couldn’t identify. It was pale white and so smooth and polished that, even in the dim light, I could trace the movement of what must have been my own reflection. They emitted a faint glow and seemed to be the only source of light around.
I turned in a small circle but I was closed in on three sides and there was no way back up to the tube. The only way to go was forward.
I started walking.
But only a minute or so in, I stopped. It felt pointless, too easy—wrong. Half of the people who competed in the first Trial failed. I couldn’t imagine that would happen if all they’d had to do was walk straight down a narrow hallway.
I looked around again. I couldn’t see where I’d begun and there was no exit ahead of me. The walls didn’t curve. There were no turns or offshoots, no forks or paths to choose from. The only way forward was that solitary narrow hall which seemed to go on forever.
Frowning, I approached one wall and examined it. There were no markings, not even a scratch. There wasn’t even an indentation where the material met its mate. It was just one solid piece from floor to ceiling. I sighed. What was I supposed to do?
When I closed my eyes, something faint, almost imperceptible, tugged at my senses. A feeling in the pit of my stomach, behind my navel and right above. A tugging sensation. Like a sewing needle pulling along the thread.
I glanced down but saw nothing there. I placed a hand gently over my belly button and closed my eyes, seeking the strange sensation again, trying to understand it.
It grew stronger, more insistent, pulling me onward. I took a step. Then another. But the pulling ceased. I opened my eyes, and the same kind of whooshing from back in the tunnel filled the narrow hall. I whirled around to the wall behind me. A door had opened, having appeared out of nowhere.
After only a moment’s hesitation, I stepped through it.
On the other side was another hallway much the same as the first, but this one shot off in a different direction.
I followed it for a time, waiting to discover if that tugging sensation would return.
It had to be what I needed to follow and the reason so many other participants had failed.
If I hadn’t stopped walking to think, I would never have felt it at all.
But I didn’t feel it again. Not for a while.
So long, I almost considered turning back until I reached a fork in the path.
The narrow hallway split into two directions, one running at a ninety-degree angle to the left, the other veering slightly off the straight path toward the right.
I stared at the options, eyes darting back and forth between them.
There it was. The tugging. Stronger this time and pulling me toward the right. I veered in the correct direction and kept walking.
The phenomenon vanished again about thirty feet down the alternative path, right as the wall beside me slid open with another whoosh. I charged through to the other side without pause.
This hallway set off in yet another direction still. I started down it, pacing myself and waiting for that same pull. But I journeyed for a good five minutes and it didn’t come back.
After a few more minutes of wandering straight down that hallway, a light appeared up ahead. The brighter glow of another opening, the word ‘exit’ scrawled above it in red block letters. For a moment, elation shot through me. I’d done it! I was almost out. Then I stopped and stared at the gateway.
Something didn’t feel right. It was a door; it was an exit, but the pull remained absent.
Perhaps this was the end, though. Perhaps I’d done whatever was needed to pass the first Trial and that was why the sensation was gone.
Maybe most people never felt that faint tugging at all. Maybe that was the whole test.
I took a tentative step toward the exit.
Wrong.
I froze. It was the same as before, a voice speaking to me from within my own mind, the same thing I’d experienced when I’d pressed my hands to the Oathstone. But this time, it wasn’t my voice. It was sharper, more furious, and undeniably male.
I blinked and eased back. Turning, I squinted into the dimness behind me. Was someone there?
Then, I felt it. The tug, weaker than the last but present all the same.
It was pulling me back. I followed its guidance and stepped back down the hall.
The feeling grew with every inch along the path I’d already walked.
I trudged on until that familiar whoosh cut through the silence again and I looked up to find that another opening had been cut into the solid stone wall.
I smiled and slipped inside.
Brightness assaulted my retinas the moment I entered this next room.
I shielded my eyes and peeked through my fingers.
Everything was that same cold, smooth white with the iridescent glow.
I could see the ceiling now, only five or so feet above my head and inlaid with brilliant, buzzing light fixtures set at regular intervals in neat rows of three.
The carpet had been replaced with the same smooth material as the walls and the walls themselves were arranged in a familiar shape: a dodecagon, just like Sanctuary itself.
Every side contained a door. Twelve of them. Each closed and waiting for me to choose the way forward.
I closed my eyes and took a breath but felt nothing.
I sighed and tried to fight down the rising tide of panic growing within me. I could do this. I’d done it already.
Hands dropped loosely to my sides, I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck. I exhaled, long and slow, and closed my eyes again. I concentrated on nothing but that feeling, that faint tugging at my core, the very center of my being.
There.
It pulled me at an angle, leading me left. I turned slowly, eyes still firmly pressed closed in fear of breaking the connection. Only once the invisible thread pulling me forward felt taut, straight, did I open my eyes again.
There was a door directly in front of me. I took a hesitant step forward, bolstered by the sensation building as I approached. This had to be it. I marched forward and flung the door open wide.
There were no more walls. Even the one behind me fell away after a few steps beyond the door.
I was in a large, open square room, much darker than the one I’d just been in.
There was one white light above, suspended in the air over a strange set of glowing silver rings that hovered at shoulder height.
I approached them slowly, cautiously, remembering the itching, burning sensation in my palms when I’d neared the Oathstone. I scratched them once in memory, then pressed them against my thighs.
The floating rings emanated a faint hum as they turned slowly in midair. I fought every urge to reach out and touch them despite how badly I wanted to discover how they did that.
No, this isn’t it.
I startled and glanced around.
This can’t be it.
That voice again. That male. It was coming from the other side of the room, I was sure of it, even though there was no one else there.
The tether at my navel came alive again, tugging me forward with a pull so strong, I thought it might pull me apart. I gasped and stumbled ahead, allowing the invisible tug to yank me across the room, toward the disembodied voice.
I just have to feel it again. I just have to focus.
But I was feeling it. So strongly, I might get sick from the force of it. I closed my eyes and breathed, trying to calm my stomach and ease the frustration.
His frustration.
What?
The wall directly in front of me slid open and I stared into the green eyes of a man I’d seen outside the eleventh tunnel.
The same golden skin, same tall and muscular build, same lush black hair; he was supposedly from one of the high houses.
Only now he wasn’t whispering conspiratorially into his friend’s ear, stoic and scowling.
He was focused, every muscle rigid in concentration and vigilance.
At least for a moment. In the breadth of time it took for him to do the same appraisal of me, the scowl was back and he pushed past me into the room.