The Prize: Book One (34 page)

"Sorry, Princess.  Had to do that.”  Penn muttered as he wrapped her in the Thrakee blanket before hoisted her up in a firefighter's carry.

How far he'd have to carry her he didn't know, nor did he care.  He plodded on along for an hour, his skin now black but still burning with the heat and blistering where droplets of molten rock from the exploding pools splashed him.  By now, he was down to a slow walk, just putting one foot before the other, refusing to give up.  He dare not look to see what lay ahead, but eventually, the cinder path ended at the edge of a bubbling pool of lava.  Blinking sweat out of his eyes, he looked up and saw the end of his journey, just four feet away.

"Oh God!”  He muttered, panting for breath, almost sobbing in frustration.  Backing off the edge of the pool, he knelt and let Ellis slip to the hot ground.  A face full of warm water brought her around.

"You asshole!”  She spluttered as she came awake, madder than a wet hen, rubbing her jaw.  ”You hit me!”

“Had to, you were making the journey too long.”

“Me?”  She looked at him in surprise.

She gulped.  Had her fear inadvertently made the path longer by worrying about getting to the end?  How long after he'd knocked her out had he come to the end of the path?  An hour, two?  Moreover, he'd carried her all the way.

“Well one of us was.”  Penn leaned forward and kissed her forehead.  ”Sorry about the sucker punch.”  Somewhat mollified, Ellis shrugged, and kissed him back, then rubbed her sore jaw.

"Where the hell are we?”

"Silly question, that.”  Ellis looked at him, her hand covering her mouth in horror.

"Oh my God, your burned to a crisp.”

"Tell me about it.  Can you stand?" Wincing as the dry skin on his face cracked.

"Of course I can.”  She snapped.  Sometimes men asked the stupidest question, she thought as she got to her feet.

"How about the long jump?"

"What?”  Penn pointed behind him.  The end of the path was slowly crumbling into the lava pool.  The four-foot jump he showed her was now five-foot and getting wider.

"For God's sake, run and jump as far as you can, NOW!”  As he said it, Penn took off running.  Ellis did the same, knowing they'd only get one chance.

She saw him hit the edge, the toe of his boot dipping into the lava pool as he dug in and jumped.  She did the same, landing on top of Penn who was yelling in agony.  Without hesitation, she pulled her knife, slashing the lace and ripping the boot off.  The boot toe was charred and almost gone, as was the sock, but thankfully his toes were intact.  Ellis poured a little of their water on his foot and Penn hissed in pain.  She offered him a pain pill and he breathed a sigh of relief when it kicked in.

"What now, Sir Galahad?”

"First I'll fix this boot, and then hobble up the trail.”  Penn grimaced, trying to make light of his injury as he chipped the hardened lava off his boot.  The Empire made its combat boots tough to withstand a lot of abuse, and thankfully they were tough enough to protect his toes.  After he’d applied burn cream to the scorched skin, he gently pulled on another sock before sliding his foot carefully back into the boot.  Fishing trough his fanny pack, he came up with a spare lace and retied his boot.

"Let's go, Princess.”  As the moved off into another tunnel, neither saw the shadowy figures jump the gap as they had done, and follow slowly after them.

The passageways twisted and turned left and right, up and down.  Then the rock walls returned and the temperature began to drop.  Soon they could see their smoky breath, and Penn had a horrible feeling what they'd find next.

"Damn it!”  Ellis swore, looking at the ice field before them as they exited the tunnel.

"We are almost there, I can feel it.”

"But…”

"Just move, and quit complaining, woman.”  He gave her a lop-sided grin as he said it.  He wrapped the Thrakee thermal blanket around them.  ”This should keep us warm while the power pack holds out.”

Together, they stepped off into the ice.  It was impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction through the driving snow, and without a compass and the constantly shifting wind, for all they knew they might be walking in circles, but Penn refused to quit.  Ellis kept her mind as blank as possible, trying to avoid the fears that plagued her on the lava field.  Like Penn, she focused on putting one frozen foot in front of the other and nothing else.  Penn was limping badly by the time they reached bare rock and warmer air, dragging his burned and frostbitten foot behind him, but he refused to stop and doctor it.  Ellis looked up to see another opening, and a passageway beyond.  She prayed that they reached the end, but instead, they entered another huge chamber with a transparent floor.  The moment the entered, the portal closed behind them.  With great caution, they started across the dimly lit room, expecting the floor to vanish from under their feet at any moment, just as it had for the trooper.  As they reached what they thought was the center, the light strengthened until it became almost blinding and they discovered they were in a great spherical chamber.  Everything was blindingly white, a complete absence of color.  They looked around but there was nothing to see.  It was if they stood suspended at the center of a giant sphere.  The walls were impossible to discern where the walls were now, and the transparent floor gave them the impression they were standing on thin air.

“Oh crap!”  Ellis said, looking at Penn.  He wasn't looking at her, and for a moment, she thought he hadn't heard her.  He turned back and said something.  She saw his mouth move yet no sound came out.

“Penn, can you hear me?”  He took hold of her chin and drew her mouth to his ear. 

“Penn, can you hear me?”  She said again, louder this time.  It was obvious that he couldn't, and she couldn't hear him either when he attempted to yell in her ear.  Penn gestured to her to stay, and dropping his pack, he limped away from her.  Ellis watched as he dwindled into the distance.  There was no way they traveled the distance Penn's dwindling figure suggested.

“Oh lord!”  She muttered to herself.  This place made no sense.

There was no puzzle to solve, nothing threatening them, just two people in a colorless, soundless, blindingly white sphere of unknown size.  She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the tiny figure in the distance turn and start walking back to her.  Penn sat and she sank into a cross legged position on the floor facing him.  Somehow, Penn seemed at peace, and after taking off his boots and doctoring his foot the best he could, he pulled an MRE out of his pack and handed it to her.  She shared it with him wondering just how bad his foot really was.  From the look of it, worse than he pretended, the skin on the toes and around the lower foot turning black.  They followed the meal with a bottle of water each, and Ellis looked in her pack for something to write on.

'What now?'  She wrote and handed him a pad and pen.  He scribbled something and handed it back.

“Meditate.”

'Oh shit!  He's going all Zen on me now'.  Ellis thought, yet in a strange way it made sense.  There was nothing for them to look at, nothing to hear to distract them, so what else was there to do but either sleep or meditate?

Penn placed the back of his open hand on each knee and composed himself.  After a few moments, he closed his eyes, and began breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.  Ellis had seen it all before, and it bored her.  A sore butt was all Ellis ever got out of meditating, that and a stiff back.  Still, Ellis followed Penn's example, laying her arms gently across her knees.  It wasn't long before she felt herself falling somewhere between awake and asleep, but she wasn't sure that's where she was supposed to be.  After a while, her mind drifted off into a sort of limbo, and she lost track of the passage of time.  Her childhood came back to her, and she thought of happier times before the Empire arrived.  She saw her grandfather's face as clearly, as if she was standing in front of him, seeing his wise old eyes, and skin burned dark by the rays of the desert sun.

“Yuta hey,” he greeted her.

“Yuta hey grandfather.”  She smiled in greeting.

“So you have come back to see me, granddaughter.”

“Yes papa.  I've missed you.”

“I missed you, too, Morning Star.  We are waiting for you as always.”

“We, grandfather?” She was puzzled, but loved his use of her secret name.

“Yes.  Your brothers and sisters are all here waiting for you to return.”

“I don't understand, grandfather.”

“I know, but you soon will.  Come to Stone Mountain and you will find us.”  He smiled then, and reached out to touch her face.  Her eyes flew open at the touch to find it was Penn touching her.

Nothing had changed in the sphere, yet she felt more at peace.  She looked down at the crono and was astonished to discover that eighteen hours had passed.  Penn smiled as he offered her the canteen of water, before resuming his meditation.  Ellis sighed in resignation, and began the breathing exercise.  The next time she opened her eyes, another twenty hours had passed.  It didn't seem possible, yet her crono didn't lie.  If she dreamed this time, she had no recollection of it.  The chamber seemed a little smaller somehow, but she couldn't put her finger on why, as there were no visual cues.  Penn appeared deep in meditation.  His breathing was very slow, and she knew his heart rate would be next to nothing.  Composing herself, she started again.  It was much easier to drop into a meditative state the third time.  Time passed, and each time she awoke, she drank a little more water and went back into meditation.  She trusted Penn would wake her if anything happened, and almost three days later, he did.  Penn pointed over her shoulder to an opening no more than ten feet away.  As they walked stiffly out of the room, sound returned.

“Christ on a crutch!  What the hell was that all about?”  She asked, ripping open an MRE and triggering the heating element.  She was starving.  Penn did the same.

“I suspect it was a test to see if we could do nothing.”

“That's daft.”

“Not really, it was just a matter of learning to be patient, to wait for something to happen.  In this case, a door opened.”

“You think?”

“I suspect that if we hadn't meditated, the wait would have been a lot longer.”

“Shit!  You could go mad in there if you stayed too long.”

“And that I think was the point.”

“But if you didn't learn to be patient, you'd never get out of that room.  That's a hell of a way to die.”

“Yes, it is.”  He answered thoughtfully, wondering what happened to the bodies of the people who come before them.  If any of them had died, where were the bodies?

After the meal, they took off down the passageway.  The short corridor led them to the doorway a huge cylindrical room, like a giant chimney with a spiral staircase leading upward.  Ellis looked up in shock.  As far as she could tell, the stairway went upward forever.  There was no ceiling, but she was beyond questions now.  If the path led upward, then upward they'd go.  The stairway was just wide enough for them to climb side-by-side, and as they climbed higher, it reached a point where Ellis dare not look down.  With no guardrail on the outside, she knew that one false step meant they would plunge to their death.  Their pace slowed to a crawl, and their leg muscles started to cramp, screaming in agony with each step.

"Whoever dreamed this place up was a frigging maniac!”

"There's got be a method in this madness.”  Penn muttered through the haze of pain.

They lost track of time or place, just to force themselves to take each step, their feet nothing more than numb lumps of meat at the end of their pain-filled legs.  Neither looked up to see where they were going.  It was pointless, their path just an endless spiral of steps leading upward.  Just when their legs could take no more, they stumbled onto a landing.  Somehow, the shaft had narrowed, ending in a point above their heads.  For a while, they just sat down by the entrance and rested, too exhausted to do anything more for the moment.  By now, Penn right foot was nothing more than a throbbing black lump at the end of his leg.