Labyrinth (13 page)

Chapter 13

If they were being stalked in Fairclough’s maze, they didn’t have time to worry about it for long. As they came around another bend in the corridor, a large door barred their way.

Kessel glanced at Annja. “The entrance to another room?”

She shrugged. “Could be.” She ran her hands over the doorjamb. “I don’t think it’s rigged to explode or anything.”

Kessel smiled. “Let’s see what this is about, then.” And he opened the door, studying the darkness that lay beyond before cautiously crossing the threshold.

When nothing happened, Annja stepped in and decided she might as well close the door behind them. There was never any going back in the maze. The light from her sword did little to illuminate their surroundings. Annja could see barely two feet in front of her, but she knew Kessel was close by.

“You think something’s in here with us?” he whispered.

“No, but the room feels much larger than we can see.”

“Wouldn’t the dogs had to have come this way, too?” Kessel asked. “If so, then how did they manage to open the door? I get the feeling that there’s a lot happening here that we’re not entirely being made aware of.”

“Like there’s another route through this maze that we haven’t seen?” Annja nodded. “I agree with you.”

Kessel sighed. “Well, only one way to figure it out. Let’s go—”

Annja stood there for a second, not entirely sure what had just happened. “Kessel?”

He didn’t respond. Annja sank to her knees and felt the floor next to her. Solid. She used the tip of the sword to probe, and as she stabbed at the area ahead of where Kessel had been standing, the sword found empty air.

Annja peered closer and ran her free hand around the floor.

There.

A large hole in the floor.

Kessel must have stepped right into it. Annja peered into the hole. “Kessel!”

She got no response.

Dammit, they’d only just reconnected and now he’d gone missing again. Annja glanced around the room and wondered if there were other trapdoors lying in wait. And if so, where did they lead?

She could take her chances and try to find a way across the room, of course, but she might end up in another hole that brought her to someplace other than where Kessel went.

Annja felt sure that Kessel had stepped into this particular hole. That meant if she went down the same one, she ought to end up wherever he was.

In theory.

Of course, she thought with a frown, knowing Fairclough, he might have some sort of system whereby the tunnels could send people to other destinations.

This whole thing was getting too much for Annja. If there’d been a way out of here, she would gladly have left and deserted Fairclough. All right, maybe that was just wishful thinking. The old book dealer needed her. She couldn’t very well abandon him to his death.

She had a choice to make. She could try to cross the room and risk falling down another rabbit hole. Or she could deliberately take the same one Kessel had.

She sighed. It was a pretty easy decision.

Annja sat and swung her legs over the edge of the hole. She took a deep breath and then pushed off, making sure to first put the sword away so she didn’t risk impaling Kessel.

As the room disappeared behind her, Annja reflected on the possibility that this tunnel might lead to some insidious death trap and that she might very well have just committed suicide.

The tunnel reminded her of a water slide park. She twisted through a greased shaft and then shot along straightaways that accelerated her speed to a dizzying rate.

It was also completely dark in the tunnel. Annja lost her bearings and even her sense of which way was up.

When the tunnel finally ejected her into brilliant white light, she almost screamed at the sudden shock. But then she dropped into a huge pile of pillows that cushioned her fall. And she began to breathe again.

Annja blinked and rapidly crawled off the pillows. As she landed on the stone floor, she glanced around.

There was no sign of Kessel.

She groaned. Where had he disappeared to?

The room she stood in was large, and filled with a dizzying array of doors.
Wonderful. More choices to make.

Kessel had clearly made a decision to go it alone and not wait for her. That kind of pissed her off. But then again, he didn’t know that Annja hadn’t vanished down a different rabbit hole of her own. He wouldn’t have known that she’d be coming down the same one. But why had he gone and shut the door behind him? Even if he’d thought the chance of her following was slim, he could’ve left her a clue. Just in case.

So, now what?

Pick a door.

She counted them. Twelve. Any one of the doors could be the one Kessel had chosen. Annja would have to hope that she chose the same one if she had any chance of catching up with him.

And if she chose wrong?

Nothing she could do about that, she decided.

She looked all of the doors over. Each one was different, either in color, shape or design. Annja recognized some of the designs as being of foreign origin. One wasn’t a door at all, per se, but a shoji screen from Japan that would presumably slide back on rails.

Another was a heavy cherry-red wooden door carved with intricate Nordic runes. Scandinavian?

Annja smirked. What if each led to a different part of the world? How wild would that be?

Impossible. Unless Fairclough had also mastered teleportation.

Annja was rapidly reaching the point where she wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. And Fairclough did seem capable of almost making magic. He’d already proven his capacity for building something truly unique in the maze itself.

She shook her head. Let’s try to stay real here, Annja, she thought.

She took a breath.

If I was Kessel, which would I have chosen?

There was a simple but elegant white door that looked like something out of a mansion in the deep South. Another industrial steel one seemed to have been taken from a warehouse. Still another had a Victorian design that reminded Annja of a BBC production prop.

Which one?

In the end, she opted for the door that looked like it might lead into someone’s garage. It was bruised and battered, with splinters of wood out of it, and smeared with grease.

Annja grasped the doorknob and turned.

The door clicked open and led to a new corridor in front of her. She stepped across the threshold but left the door open behind her. Just in case she somehow ended up in front of Kessel. It was a clue to her whereabouts.

Torches flickered from sconces positioned into the brick walls on either side. Ahead, she could make out a corner she’d have to turn into.

But otherwise, the corridor was empty.

Something was different here, though.

And she recognized it as a sense of foreboding. As if she was getting closer to something.

Could it be, she wondered, that Kessel was right and with each room and corridor she passed through she was being funneled into some ambush point?

Anything was possible. But right now, her priority was finding Kessel and making sure they managed to stay together from here on out.

She thought about calling his name, but then decided against it. No sense alerting a possible threat that she was nearby.

Annja drew her sword.

Its pale gray light failed to reveal any details she hadn’t been able to make out already from the flickering torches, which sent shadows skittering down the corridor with each little shift in the air. Annja caught the scent of burning pitch.

How did Fairclough manage to keep this place functioning if he was lapsed into some state of toxic shock upstairs in his bed? It didn’t make sense. Someone would have needed to light these torches, right? He must have designed a control room.

That meant Fairclough had help from someone. Someone he could trust.

A butler?

A manservant?

She’d seen neither upon entering the estate, but then again, she was in the midst of being kidnapped. And checking for the staff of a great mansion hadn’t really occurred to her. And probably they had been held captive somewhere, too. Otherwise, they’d have alerted the police and freed their employer, surely.

Annja shook her head. Fairclough was more than she’d bargained for. She could remember the conference he’d heard her speak at, all right. And she’d had to leave early. But they’d never even met. Why had one lecture led to all this?

She had mounting concerns and no way to validate them with anyone. It was really frustrating.

She walked down the length of the corridor and, right before the corner, she stopped, sank to the stone floor and then poked her head around.

Another corridor exactly like the one she’d just walked down. Annja counted the number of torches and then looked behind her and counted again.

Same number, she concluded.

She glanced ahead and made a note of the color of some of the stones. Then she looked back.

The same.

Annja frowned. So now she was walking down corridors that were exactly alike? What was the point of that?

Disorientation.

Fairclough was deliberately attempting to disorient anyone who might have gotten into his maze.

But to what end? What would that prove?

Annja took a deep breath.

And then started down the new corridor.

Chapter 14

If Fairclough’s goal had been to disorient those in the maze by replicating the corridors, he was succeeding. As Annja stole down the second corridor, she couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu. Her body wanted her to realize it was lost and she had to fight the instinct to stop and regroup.

Keep going.
This is all part of Fairclough’s plan to ensure his book was safe.

The torchlight flickered as she walked past. And then she thought she heard something farther ahead.

At another corner, Annja took time to stop and listen before peering around it. As she did this time, she saw a shadow disappear around yet another bend.

Should she yell out?

What if it wasn’t Kessel?

True, she had the sword. She could probably easily dispatch anything that attacked her. But what sort of beast could Fairclough have kept down here that could survive for long periods of time? How was it fed and cared for? By whoever managed a control center? Wasn’t that kind of employee a risk to the security of the maze—a vulnerable weakness that put the book at risk?

And why hadn’t Annja seen or heard anything of the wild dogs in a while?

There’s simply too much going on here that I don’t have a clue about, she thought to herself.

She rounded the corner and then ducked back as her ears picked up the telltale twang of something being shot out of a hole. As Annja dropped to the floor, several metal star-shaped blades zipped over her head. They bounced off the rear wall and skittered away.

Annja picked up one of them. A senban shuriken, like the kind she’d once seen used in Japan. But that was years ago. And why would Fairclough have these in his possession? Yeah, he could get them anywhere, but the design seemed unique to the warrior family Annja had come to know well on her trip to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Weird.

She put one of the throwing stars in her pocket and kept walking. As she got to the end of the corridor, she peered down a new hallway.

And saw nothing but a brick wall.

Huh?

The corridor ended just as quickly as it began: a dead end.

But she’d seen a shadow pass down here. And more importantly, Kessel would have had to come this way. So where was he if he’d run into this same obstacle?

These puzzles were getting to be a pain in the ass and she was ready for them to be over. A quick glance at her watch told her that five hours had now passed. She winced.

The longer she stayed underground, the easier it was to get so absorbed in the bizarre happenings down here that the real world seemed a distant memory.

And that was probably what Fairclough was counting on. If someone got trapped, they could wander for weeks and not find their way around or back to safety. They’d die of starvation.

Unless the dogs got to them first.

Or something else.

Annja approached the brick wall and pressed against it, but it was solid. There was even a torch in a sconce on the wall itself. Annja reached up and passed her hand over the flame, making sure it wasn’t some high-tech illusion. But she felt the warmth of the fire and the bite of the flames. It was real enough.

And so was the wall, she decided.

She squatted on the ground. How would she get through this thing?

If Kessel had actually chosen the same door she had and had forced his way through, there would be obvious marks or signs of what he’d done. But there was nothing.

Annja got up and checked where the wall joined the sides of the tunnel. Was there a hidden spring that had caused the wall to block it? But all Annja could make out was a line of mortar. It looked like the wall had been deliberately positioned here a very long time ago.

What about the ceiling? Could this section of wall have dropped down?

But again, the mortar work suggested otherwise. The door wasn’t an illusion, nor did it appear to be something that she could release using some hidden switch.

Which meant there had to be another way past it.

Annja backtracked.

Aside from the flickering torches, she couldn’t make anything out. And again, she had to fight an overwhelming sense of déjà vu which threatened to disrupt her perception of place and time.

Annja glanced back at the blocked corridor. No way past it. And turning the corner was the logical decision to make since there was a corner to turn.

But what if she should have simply stayed on a straight line?

Annja backtracked into the other corridor. This time, instead of turning at the corner, she kept going forward. As she got closer to the wall, the bricks loomed closer and closer.

And then she walked right through it.

She nearly fell over on the other side, amazed that she had managed to walk through a wall.

“Wow.”

It had to be an illusion. Or some holographic generator. Annja wanted to check it out, but as she approached the fake wall, a giant sheet of steel dropped from the ceiling and cut her off. The message was clear: she could always go forward, but never back.

“All right,” Annja said quietly. “I’ll do it your way.”

She turned and kept walking down the new corridor, which again was a perfect replica of the previous ones. Annja shook her head. The level of disorientation was difficult to combat. How much longer would this go on? Was she any closer to the center of the maze? Or Kessel? Or the dogs?

She had no clue as to her whereabouts. Fairclough hadn’t been kind enough to provide a map. Or maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe Fairclough didn’t even know what lay ahead of Annja.

But somehow, she doubted it. The longer she stayed down here, the more she believed that Fairclough had designed this maze to be exactly what he wanted.

Which, as far as Annja could tell, was a complete and utter nightmare.

The dogs came at her so fast that she barely registered their sudden appearance as they rounded the corner.

In the blink of an eye, Annja’s sword was out and a whir of flashing steel swung and hacked amid the yowls and cries of the dogs she was forced to cut down. The scent of blood hung in the air and Annja let the sword droop as she fought back her revulsion at the death she had caused and the adrenaline dump she’d been forced to deal with.

“What a waste of life,” she said quietly. She didn’t blame the dogs. To them, attacking her had meant survival.

Just as Annja had been forced to defend herself in the name of survival.

That didn’t make their deaths any easier to stomach, however. And Annja found herself choking back the reflex to retch.

She’d need to have a few words with Fairclough when she got out of here. Stocking a maze with dogs wasn’t humane. And she didn’t think the animal rights activists would be too pleased with him.

She bent and wiped her blade on the fur of one of the dead dogs. She’d cut his throat and the stone floor ran slick with blood and effluence. Annja blanched. She’d been around death many times before, but this made her ill.

She rose quickly, put the sword away and then stalked down the corridor, aware of the sticky crimson footprints she was leaving in her wake.

I need to find Kessel, she thought. I don’t like being alone in this madness. She came to appreciate the plan behind Fairclough’s mission to secure the book. He wasn’t just interested in keeping it safe; he also wanted to punish those who went after it.

Unfortunately, Annja was being forced to find it. She didn’t want it for herself. But the maze didn’t know that. As far as it was concerned, Annja was here to rob Fairclough. So it treated her like an enemy.

Almost exactly like how the human body would respond to a bacterial infection or virus, she supposed.

Interesting.

The blood trail she was leaving was fading into nothing. She heard noises up ahead and stopped suddenly.

Annja drew her sword.

And waited.

She heard grunts and obvious sounds of a scuffle. Was it the thing that had been stalking them? Had Kessel found it and were they now fighting?

Annja rushed around the corner of the next turn and then froze.

A boxing match was playing on flat-screen TV. Now what the hell was this?

Annja looked around but saw nothing else. The TV screen hung on the wall, and beyond that, there was nothing.

Unless.

Annja jerked around and as she started to head back the way she’d come, a large section of wall dropped, once again, blocking her path. Annja had nowhere to go but forward.

But why distract her like this? Yes, the sound of boxing was effective at getting Annja to commit to coming around the corner faster than she probably would have.

She hesitated.

If there was a trip trigger that caused the wall to drop, and if she’d come around any slower, she might have been crushed by the sheer weight of the wall.

But she had come quicker than normal, clearing the falling wall.

She shook her head. The wall had only dropped once she’d started back. That couldn’t be it.

The TV had another purpose. It had to have.

The boxing appeared to be on a video loop that ran for three minutes and then restarted itself. The sound effects were equally looped to give the impression of there being a fight in the corridor rather than a public ring match.

Annja looked around the TV screen but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Someone had to have activated this, she thought. Or did she switch it on as she progressed through the maze?

Annja reached and punched the channel button. The boxing loop disappeared, replaced by a lot of white static. Annja kept flipping channels, aware of how silly it seemed to be doing this.

But then a different picture appeared on the screen. It looked like a different section of the maze. The stone walls were the same, but she could see a lot more details. It was almost as if she had a bird’s eye view of the action.

Surveillance cameras, she realized.

They
were
being watched.

And what she saw on the TV didn’t make her feel good at all.

Kessel.

He was making his way down another corridor.

And a shadow trailed behind him.