There Are Only Four (The Competition Archives Book 1) Page 3

“Always,” I promise, and some of the disorienting panic fades. Luka needs me. He trusts me to help our team achieve victory, and I can’t let him down.

  Luka smiles slightly and releases my elbow, but not before his thumb brushes almost imperceptibly over my skin.

  “We should slow down.” He steps away from me, even though our pace has already reduced. “From the looks of the towers ahead, we will need to climb to reach the center. Don’t want to expend all our energy here.”

  Jude and Serene look relieved at his words, as if they believe Luka knows exactly what to expect from this domineering construction, but I am not convinced. I understand him, even if I do not know him. He is concerned and confused. This is not what we were expecting and suddenly plunging headlong into the unknown seems like a trap.

  Our pace slows significantly as our legs weary from treading the hard surface. We have yet to find any clues, puzzles, or challenges which is a puzzle in and of itself. I am not sure how long we have been walking. There is no sun overhead to herald the time of day. At first I had assumed this maze was outside, but the artificial immobility of the lackluster lighting convinced me we are trapped in a dome of sorts; its vast ceiling invisible in its sky-like camouflage. It makes sense, all things considered. We are on camera. Somewhere hidden in these slabs of concrete are cameras tracking our every move like rats in an experimental labyrinth. They do not want anyone escaping out of bounds. What would their precious viewers think of unviewable rogue children? Better to keep their terror confined.

  “The walls are closing in on us.” Jude breaks my reverie, and I jerk to high alert. I half expect our concrete cage to be hurtling in to flatten us, but nothing but drab sameness meets my sight. Jude’s eyes twitch back and forth like trapped prey, and I twist behind me to see the path we have discarded in our journey.

  “I wasn’t sure at first, but I think you are right,” Luka says. “It’s subtle, but the walkway is slowly getting more narrow.”

  “What does that mean?” Serene asks.

  “Hopefully, that the real maze is about to start,” I say. “Straight corridors don’t exactly test us. Makes for boring television.”

  “I hope so,” Serene says with a slight sigh of complaint. “My feet are killing me from all this walking, and we haven’t even gotten to the hard parts.”

  “I’m sure we will get there soon.” Luka places an encouraging hand on Serene’s shoulder. “This walk is probably just to throw us off. Give us something we don’t expect and tire us out. Make the game more interesting.”

  Make it more interesting or evil? That’s my real question, but I keep my lips clenched shut like a doll forced to live with a perpetual smile despite the truth behind the mask. Who knows who is listening? Who is watching? I do not want to throw rocks at the hornets’ nest… not yet at least.

  As we resume our silence, I am no longer oblivious to the narrowing walls, and their claustrophobia is all I can see. Slowly, our steps draw our group into a tighter cluster, and I am forced to walk shoulder to shoulder with Luka in the lead while Jude and Serene crowd our backs. The walkway is not so narrow that we have to huddle like rabbits in a burrow, but rather, the closer the corridor encroaches, the more our skin revolts at the idea of scraping over the rough walls. The less space it provides, the further into a pack we collect as if the concrete will burn us alive if we even so much as brush it.

  A groaning interrupts the silence, and the sound of stone grinding gears shatters the air. Deep within the maze something shifts, and despite our wildly searching eyes, the eruption seems to come from nowhere. I flick my gaze to Luka as the shuddering of machinery vibrates the passage with such force, my chest rumbles like a death rattle. His eyes hold mine, and I search for strength in them, but I only find the same concern flooding his irises I know is drowning mine.

  An ear-splitting grating explodes from the section behind us, and all four of us jerk and duck collectively like a well-choreographed dance.

  “The wall!” Serene blurts, but I already see it. The corridor at our backs is moving, its massive slabs corralling us like cattle. Instinctively, I pick up my pace, reaching behind me to grasp Serene’s searching fingers. She clutches my hand with an iron fist and together we push onward, an impenetrable attack closing in on us. The rumble of the gears is deafening. It blots out every other noise, consuming our ears, invading our minds. Jude has lifted his palms to his ears. I want to mimic him, to block the pain of the overwhelming sound from my head, but Serene’s clutch imprisons my hands, unbreakable claws digging into my flesh.

  Luka is screaming something unintelligible but gives up after unsuccessful seconds in favor of gesturing behind us. The wall is closing in faster, on a collision course with our spines. I think I curse at the sight. I’m not sure; all I know is that a concrete slab of that magnitude should not be barreling down upon us with the speed of a manic train.

  My legs kick into full gear, and my hand tightens around Serene’s as I haul her after me. The pace is breathless. My lungs sear red hot like an iron poker is stabbing them, but I do not stop. Serene stumbles, her fumble nearly wrenching her from my grasp, but Jude is atop her in a second, propelling her forward. The mechanical roaring drowns out the slapping of our feet against the ground, as if to convince us we are not moving, but I can feel the impact jarring my knees, straining my ankles.

  We round a corner, and the maze abruptly comes to a dead end. Panic bubbles in my chest, crushing my heart with its deadly fingers. In a matter of seconds, we will be crushed between the wall at our backs and the concrete at our fronts. Tears prick my eyes with sudden ferocity. I don’t mean to cry, but my body’s response to the horror of death is a visceral explosion.

  Suddenly Luka’s chest barrels into my shoulder, and I almost collapse, but his arms seize my waist and half carry my flailing body until my feet are once again firmly on the ground. He gestures wildly as he herds me toward the side of the corridor, and I see it. Our salvation. An opening.

  I yank Serene from behind me and catapult her viciously for the gap. Her shoulder scrapes the concrete as she barrels through, but I don’t care. I shove her relentlessly as I charge after her. Jude explodes through the gateway next, and Luka is last, barely making it through before the wall groans a defeated roar and slows its chase. The grinding of gears fades and after a minute, the maze is utterly silent except for the ringing in our ears.

  For a moment no one moves; our voices locked behind the dam of panic in our throats. The absence of the machinery’s purr seems louder than its cacophony was. The section we just vacated has vanished, overgrown with new solid walls. It barred the way back; the maze demands our onward movement.

  “That could have killed us!” Jude blurts into the silence. “What is wrong with these people?”

  Luka erupts in hysterical laughter at Jude’s outburst and doubles over as he heaves for breath. His rigid fingers grip his knees, supporting his shaking torso, but the rest of us just stare at him with ever widening eyes.

  “This isn’t funny,” Jude panics.

  “No.” Luka stands up and wipes his eyes. “No, it is not. Their commitment to the testing process is impressive, although I guess that’s to be expected on a show this popular.” He takes in Jude’s and Serene’s cheeks, blotchy with concern, and shifts closer to me. “It’s all a game,” he reassures them as he holds my gaze, and I’m not sure if he’s telling them or asking me for confirmation. “But still we need to keep our eyes open. No slacking, even if the maze seems too easy. Remember, this is all for good television.”

  But the word television is cut off by sudden and deafening screaming. Not joyous, not playful, not even battle cries, but the kind four youths would scream if they were burning alive.

  Chapter Four

  The sound does not cease, but continues in long and agonizing wails. Tears spring uncontrollably to my eyes at the tortured voices, the horrible death cries of children. They carry over the concrete, echoing off the concealed dome above in terrifying
pulses, as if the victims are watching their own flesh peel and blister from their bones in slow motion.

  We cannot see where the screams are coming from, nevertheless we are frozen where we stand. Jude covers his ears as if his fingers will blot out the noise, but nothing can drown out the torture rattling in our skulls. The color drains from our faces until we are pale ghosts haunting this corridor. What on earth could be happening? This is a competition, a test of our abilities. We are supposed to be safe, aren’t we?

  Luka seems to hear my thoughts. “Maybe the closing wall malfunctioned.” His gaze shifts uncomfortably to the blocked path we just catapulted through.

  “Or they set fire to them on purpose,” I say in a barely audible whisper. I don’t know what possesses me to say it, but the terror in my gut is threatening to heave itself past my lips, and my tears won’t stop.

  Luka studies my face for a moment with a hollow expression, and I’m not sure if it’s shock that I could utter such words or shock that I’m right that turns his already pale skin almost translucent.

  “Let’s go.” He grabs my wrist, and we take off running again even though the screams still linger thick in the air, but they have now been joined by a faint smell of sickening smoke like cooking flesh burned beyond recognition. A sobbing Serene pulls Jude by the front of his shirt to force him to keep up. If she hadn’t, his feet would have stuck to the cement where he stood until he became part of its framework.

  The screaming children is the first sign that the maze we were told we would enter is a lie. This is not a competition; this is a trap. The second clue is that there aren’t any. Isn’t that how they explained it? What they promised our parents, not that I remember that conversation? They called it a game to test the brilliance and the athleticism of today’s youth. Which children of our era are smart enough to unravel the mysteries and clues of the maze? But there aren’t any clues. Just countless left and right turns of pale towering concrete, endless running in circles until my lungs hurt and my feet ache.

  But we have to run. We don’t get to leave unless we run, unless we win. So we follow Luka as if he knows the way out, but we are merely blind rats leading each other.

  “I can’t!” Serene collapses to her knees in a sobbing heap and curls against the towering wall. “I can’t breathe,” and she isn’t exaggerating. Her chest heaves and jerks, desperate to pull air into her faltering lungs. The rest of us skid to a halt, and I bolt back to where she quivers with hyperventilation.

  “Serene?”

  “I can’t,” she repeats. “You’re too fast,” but her words come out garbled as she cries. I know her refusal to run has nothing to do with the burning exhaustion in her lungs from Luka’s demanding pace, but from the lingering smoke and acrid air we cannot escape. I’m not sure how long we have been barreling through the twists and turns. It seems we should have escaped the horrors by now, but we haven’t; the oxygen is still thick and vile. Even though the air has fallen quiet, I still hear their anguish echoing through my mind.

  “Serene,” Luka says between panting breaths. “We have to keep moving. Can you walk at least?” She shakes her head, and fat tears roll off her beautiful copper skin and into her lap. Luka looks to me for help, but seeing her tears has rekindled mine. Struggling to keep up with Luka’s pace kept the terror at bay, but standing still has brought the panic rushing back tenfold.

  “Come on, Serene,” Luka says softly as he bends over. He scoops her up in his powerful arms and sets her on her feet beside him. He folds her into his chest with a solid bicep wrapped around her shoulders and pulls her slowly down the path. Serene’s face burrows into his jacket as he guides her, and it takes all of his strength to keep her from collapsing.

  I watch them walk together in their desperate embrace for a few seconds before my gaze turns to Jude. His sunken eyes are void of emotion, fear shutting him down. He does not possess the fortitude to pull himself out of this immobilizing haze, and so I shove my own self pity down like acidic bile and step to him.

  “We’re gonna be okay.” I extend my hand and let it hover inches from his. I could just grab him, but I hope that coaxing him to move will help resurrect him from his trance. Like a creature of the undead, Jude’s head twists to look at my waiting palm. He stares for a moment as if confused by its meaning, and then he grips me with a weak hold. “We’ll stick together.” I pull him close and interlace my fingers with his. “We will be all right.” I hope it is the truth. Please let this be the truth. And with hands fused together like soldered metal, we catch up to Luka and Serene.

  Before long, our path tilts down a slight decline, and the maze itself lifts before us, a three-dimensional death trap. The walls to our left and right are the same solidly smooth slabs we have grown accustomed to, but a climb rises ahead to deter any further progress. It is a wide cylinder shape that extends stories high, but the concrete is not smooth like the rest of the structure. It is constructed from stacked circular blocks, a manufactured vertebrate hemmed in by impossibly tall barriers. There is no way to go but up, but the base of the climb seems relatively easy. The stone segments are almost as large as Luka, more than enough for solid footholds, yet an ominous feeling drips into my chest.

  “Wait,” I say as Luka’s fingers grip a generous handhold, and he recoils from the formation at my plea.

  “What’s wrong?” He surveys the architecture for danger he missed.

  “It’s too easy.” I sidle up beside him. “The climb… it’s too easy.”

  Luka’s sight shifts from me to the concrete and then back. “Free climbing is never easy. It may look like the path is well defined, but trust me, when we get high enough that a fall will kill us, our muscles will burn. There will be no rest up there. One slip, and we are dead.”

  “I know.” I place my palm on his bicep, his skin hot to the touch even under his jacket. “I can’t explain it. It just feels too…”

  Darkness explodes around us, cutting off my words. We freeze in our blindness, and Serene sucks in a breath behind me. For a moment we hover, unable to move in the blackness, when a slight click disrupts the silence, and pale emergency lights flicker to life. Their soft glow barely illuminates the maze, their reach only bright enough to see a few paces at a time.

  “It’s too easy,” Luka repeats my warning into the artificial night.

  My gaze finds his, my grip tightening around his arm. “They want us to climb in the dark.”

  Chapter Five

  “I don’t feel safe climbing this in the dark,” comes Serene’s disembodied voice. “The emergency lighting is barely bright enough for us to see the ground. What happens when we’re hundreds of feet in the air?”

  “It’s like they want us to fall,” I whisper.

  “Why would you say that?” The panic is sharp in Jude’s voice, and I can feel Luka’s disapproving eyes on my skin.

  “I don’t know,” I breathe, almost as an apology. “Why make us climb in the dark? Trust me, someone will slip while climbing this. The dark will ensure it.” I look at Luka’s chastising face in the pale, eerie light. “This part of the maze will kill a contestant before it is over.”

  “Stop.” Luka and Serene silence me with their unison command.

  “Just stop.” Luka steps to the imposing structure barring our path. “We are not going to die.”

  “We won’t,” I agree, stepping back from the blocks to disappear into the enveloping shadows, “because we won’t climb it.”

  “But we’ve got to,” Serene says without conviction.

  “They have to turn the lights on, eventually. When they do, then we climb.”

  “We’ll fall behind if we wait,” Luka says, but it’s not an argument, simply an observation of our standings.

  “Better last than dead.”

  “What if they refuse to turn on the lights until all the teams climb?” Jude directs his question at me as if I have the answers his terror so desperately craves.

  “We’ll make that decision
when that time comes, but I have a feeling they won’t leave the lights off forever. Children falling unexpectedly in the dark will only hold its appeal for so long. Eventually, the audience will want to see our broken bodies splatter on the pavement.” This time no one reprimands my cynicism.

  “We vote then,” Luka says. “Wait it out and fall behind? Or climb in the dark?”

  I am not surprised by the unanimous decision.

  My eyes open of their own volition, waking me from an uneasy slumber. My spine screams in agony, the unforgiving concrete a harsh bed beneath my exhausted bones. For a moment I gasp, unable to move, the pain gnawing at my body like flesh-eating bacteria, and my lungs suck in breaths as if the air might cool the burning in my muscles. It takes me a minute before I can successfully peel my back from the maze wall, and as the fog of sleep drains from my mind, a nagging in my brain whispers that it was not the torture in my vertebrae that woke me. No, it was something inside me that blared its warning alarm, something I cannot put my finger on.

  I glance at Luka’s still sleeping form beside me. His large frame leans against the wall as does mine, and there is an indent in his jacket from where my head had rested in slumber. Serene sleeps against his opposite shoulder, and Jude snores lightly, his head cradled in her lap. After voting to wait the darkness out, Luka had suggested we try to sleep. We had gone hours without food or water. Combined with exhaustion, this climb would undoubtedly end in tragedy, even in ideal conditions, and so he argued that some rest would go a long way in giving us a fighting chance in the challenge to come. The ground was a punishing resting place, but fatigue consumed us, delivering us to our nightmares with urgent haste.

  I try to stand, but my muscles spasm, and I tip back against the wall with a slap of flesh against stone. I survey the darkness, searching for the disruption to my sleep, but there is nothing. The maze is silent. No odor drifts through my nostrils. No vibrations disturb the concrete. All is peaceful, yet my heart races. It thunders like a wild stampede, like animals careening through my chest, and I cannot shake the inkling that my body knows what my mind and senses cannot perceive.