Labyrinth (10 page)

But as the corridor continued, she started to think that this might simply be a passage to lead her to her next challenge.

Maybe I’ve passed this challenge already, she thought.

Maybe.

She heard a rumbling thunder then and forgot the need to stay on the rectangles. Annja let her body guide her and broke into a sprint forward. As the first stones rained down from above, she put her hands overhead to ward off what she could. As it was, she caught a few of them on her hands.

Praying that there were no more darts, she bent her knees, diving into a roll that brought her ten feet ahead of where the roof collapse had started.

The thundering stopped.

Annja got to her feet and looked back. The corridor was completely blocked.

There was no way back now.

Annja had no choice but to proceed.

Chapter 10

The floor switched from the stone tiles to rock.

Annja stopped, aware of the change and wondering what might have triggered it. Had she passed into yet another level? The slope of the floor also flowed down at a slight angle. As she moved slowly ahead, the air grew cooler.

I feel like I’m in a live-action Dungeons & Dragons game, she thought. She wondered if there’d be an ogre around the corner.

Luckily, I have my sword, she thought with a grin.

But there wasn’t an ogre waiting around the corner. And as Annja progressed, the light dimmed even more, making it difficult to see what lay ahead. She squatted, trying to see if she could make out any details of the landscape.

She heard vague noises.

A shuffling sound.

Was someone walking?

But if they were, they didn’t seem to be getting any closer or farther away.

Annja kept moving. She used the sword to light the way ahead, and its gray illumination enabled her to see that she was approaching another corner.

The volume of the sound increased, but Annja wasn’t so sure that she was hearing footsteps now.

But there was definitely something moving back and forth.

When she rounded the corner, she saw what it was.

A large scythe blade swung back and forth over the corridor, its steel edge looking incredibly menacing. Annja would need to pass through it to continue on.

The shaft that held the blade disappeared into a gap in the ceiling almost twenty feet overhead. Annja tried to get a look at the mechanism controlling it, but it was dark and tough to see. Plus, if she got too close, the blade would cut her open. And the size of the blade suggested that even a minor cut would be fatal.

Annja sighed. Fairclough must have had a thing for recreating old Indiana Jones movies. Some of these “props” looked like he’d lifted them right off the set.

Still, it wasn’t much of a deterrent. Annja drew as close as she could to the blade and felt the breeze as it swung back and forth. There was a momentary gap as the blade passed her. If she timed it right, she could leap across and be on her way on the other side before it had a chance to cut her up.

But if she misjudged, that wouldn’t be good at all.

Annja shook her head. It wasn’t worth taking the chance.

So instead, she jumped onto the back of the blade itself, close by the shaft, and squatted there as it swung back and forth. Then she simply leaped off to the other side, rolled and came up in a crouch.

And immediately had to leap to avoid a slashing blade that cut at her exposed legs. Annja went high, looked down and saw that the blade cut in a circular arc. She came down, leaped forward again and landed in a squat, breathing hard, but having escaped injury.

That was a little too close for comfort. Fairclough was stacking his challenges now. Lulling people into assuming there was only one main task to deal with and then nailing them when they got lazy.

Like I did, she thought with a frown.

Well, never again.

Annja followed the corridor down another slope and then found herself facing a simple wooden door. Her first instinct was to check for trip wires, but a quick search revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Annja opened the door and, after a quick visual once-over, walked inside.

She stood in a ten-by-ten room, brightly lit by fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling. But what made the room so interesting were the three doors set into the wall opposite the one she’d come through.

Annja closed the door behind her and heard a click.

She ducked, expectantly, but nothing happened.

Three doors, she thought. Three ways to leave the room?

She approached the door directly in front of her and turned the doorknob and pulled, but nothing happened.

Locked?

She tried pulling again, but couldn’t get it to open.

All right, let’s try the other two, she thought. She went left first, pulled on the door and it opened easily.

The problem was that she now faced a brick wall. Annja closed the door.

Right?

But when she opened that door, she faced a similar brick wall.

Apparently, she mused, the middle door would be the one she’d need to get open in order to proceed. But it was locked.

So what was the puzzle here? How to get the center door open.

Annja stood in the middle of the room and faced the three doors. There had to be a formula, she figured. If one of the doors was open, perhaps that would unlock the center door?

She kept the left door open and then went back to the center door. But it didn’t budge.

Annja tried her luck with the door on the right, leaving it open while she tried the center door again. Still no luck.

This time, Annja left both doors standing wide open and again tried the center door.

But it still didn’t open.

Annja considered hacking her way through the door with the sword, but judging by how the maze had treated her so far, she might end up tripping something particularly nasty if she didn’t figure this out the right way.

Annja stood there with her hands on her hips and took a few deep breaths. She was rapidly losing any and all interest in the maze. Why couldn’t Fairclough have just gotten himself a floor safe?

But Fairclough had enjoyed this. Even if he liked Annja, he was no doubt relishing the thought of her facing the challenges in the maze he’d created. Somewhere in his vegetative state, he was excited about what she’d be discovering down here.

She wondered briefly if Kessel had already met his end. Maybe there’d been another giant fish tank with something even nastier than the bull shark waiting for him. Annja didn’t know. What she did know was she needed to figure out how to get through the door in front of her.

She glanced over her shoulder at the door she’d come through. Then she shrugged and walked back to it.

It wouldn’t open.

“For crying out loud.”

Annja looked around the rest of the room, but there wasn’t much to see. White alabaster walls surrounded her except for the four doors the room contained. The three in front of her and the one behind her.

Annja tried the right door this time. But the center door didn’t open. Then she opened the left door and tried again.

Nothing.

Annja closed the right door and kept the left one standing open. Then she went to the door she’d come through and tried it.

It didn’t budge.

She closed the left door and opened the right door. Then she tried the door she’d come through originally.

This time, it opened.

Annja breathed a sigh of relief. Well, at least I got that far, she thought. There had to be a system here, and somehow, she’d get through it.

She walked back to the center door and tried it, but it was still locked. So Annja went to the left door and opened that one. Then she went back to the center door and tried opening it again.

And this time, it opened.

“Finally,” said Annja. She checked the door frame and then stepped into another corridor. This one was pretty dark, so she pulled her sword out.

As the sword cast a glow down the hallway, Annja moved slowly, trying to figure out what Fairclough would spring on her next. So far, she reasoned, the puzzles hadn’t been that difficult. If anything, they were more like delaying tactics than anything else. Annja hadn’t found them to be too taxing mentally—more bothersome, really, than anything else.

But that could change quickly.

And, frankly, she expected Fairclough to be especially tough on her sometime soon.

But when?

She glanced at her watch. Two hours had passed. Annja blinked. When had that happened?

The floor changed back to stone tiles and Annja froze. She used the tip of the sword and probed each tile as she proceeded slowly. But nothing happened. Annja looked up and checked her surroundings.

The corridor was the length of a football field and Annja realized that she was tired. The stress of forever being alert was starting to take a toll on her. Plus, it didn’t help that she’d burned herself out during the swim through the tunnel. What she really wanted to do was sit down somewhere and take a nap.

A nap.

She frowned. There was no way she could afford to do that. If she fell asleep now, she might not wake up in time to save Fairclough from the toxin Jonas was forcing into his body.

He didn’t deserve to die, Annja thought. Although she might like to give him some hell for putting her through the maze.

Then she heard the hissing sound.

Snakes?

Her heartbeat increased. But no, the hissing sound wasn’t natural. There was no rise and fall to it, just a steady low hiss that grew louder with every step forward.

Annja peered into the darkness, trying to use the sword to make out any details she might have missed.

There.

She spotted a piece of dust coming away from the wall. Annja moved toward it and examined the wall.

There was a round hole in the masonry. And something was blowing out of it. Annja sniffed it.

Gas.

Annja moved away from the nozzle and tried to estimate how long it would take for her to be rendered unconscious from the stuff spraying into the corridor. The answer didn’t make her feel any better.

She had to get out of there fast.

With fifty feet of the corridor remaining, Annja had a choice to make. She could continue on, probing each tile for hidden trip wires and booby traps, or she could simply take her chances and run for it. There was a door at the end of the corridor, and if she could make that, she might have a chance.

But what if running meant she tripped a booby trap?

Annja took a deep breath, aware of the powerful effect of the gas on her already. Her eyelids felt heavy. If she stopped now, she’d fall asleep and possibly never wake up.

No, it was time to go.

Annja ran hard and heard the pops as several darts fired at her. Somehow, she managed to avoid them, aware that she was getting drowsier and drowsier all the time.