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“Are you okay?” Drake asked in concern.
“I’m fine,” I muttered angrily, mad at myself for not being on guard.
Drake and Jace helped me up.
“Maybe we should split up,” Remy suggested. “We know in this simulation we’re searching for a black box with a blue jewel on it.”
“Okay,” Jace said reluctantly. “Blake, Drake, and Troy you come with me. Remy, you have Jaxson and Noah.”
“Now you guys know how I feel without an active gift,” Noah said a bit smugly as he started to follow Remy.
Noah and Rachel came with us often on our missions. I didn’t realize how helpless they felt when the rest of us were actively using our gifts. “I want my gift back,” I muttered angrily as I started heading to my right.
It was crazy how realistic everything looked. With the helmet, we were transported to another place. Right now, we were in what appeared to be a museum. Gavin and the other designers must have done some extensive research, because it looked authentic, like I was really there and not in the cave of a mountain.
It was a plus that our helmets and clothing were lightweight and weren’t cumbersome, so we were able to move freely.
“We know the room is-” I began to say when Jace held his hand up. I clamped my mouth shut and realized that there were simulated people in the hallway in front of us. He pointed towards the corridor they were in.
I knew he assumed that the box was that way. Every time we encountered more than one person, it usually indicated that they were hiding or protecting something. We hadn’t found the items we were looking for this quickly before, so this seemed promising.
We crept forward, sticking to the walls and behind the sculptures and displays. Jace pointed to Drake and Troy at one point and mimicked running. Understanding dawned in their eyes, and they nodded. I knew he was hoping they could draw out the people. Hopefully, they’d take chase and we could go after them.
Jace pushed me back so we would be hidden better in the shadows, then nodded at Troy and Drake. They both stood up and took off running in the direction we had just come from. We waited in bated breath as the simulations ran after them. Jace held out his hand and counted down to a fist. We got up simultaneously and crept towards where they’d been lurking. We were still silent, just in case anyone else remained.
“Stacked Jax terminated,” the cool mechanical voice came over the sound system.
I grimaced, knowing the scenario had killed Jaxson. We had all put in unique usernames for ourselves, and Jaxson being Jaxson, had picked out that ridiculous name. Noah, Jace, Remy, and Troy refused to share their names with me, so I hadn’t told him what I had chosen.
“Dre. Critically injured,” the cool mechanical voice said moments later. Dre was the name Drake had chosen for himself.
I shuddered, glad that this was just a training exercise. It still spurred me forward. The sooner we retrieved the box, the sooner the simulation ended. We finally entered the room that we thought it was in and saw a tall ladder mounted on the wall on the other side of the room. The only issue was that the ladder was missing several rungs. The first rung was approximately ten feet off the ground.
We ran over there, and without hesitating, Jace hoisted me up. In the simulation, the helmet made us believe we were climbing a ladder in a museum. If we were to remove the helmets, the ladder might be there, but it was mounted on a rock face. We had already encountered other obstacles similar to this.
The cold rungs of the ladder felt weird beneath my fingertips. We had all been given gloves that had tiny wires running throughout them. Jemmy had already realized how realistic the pain was when she was goofing around earlier and stuck her head in a simulated fire. Even though the fire was non-existent, she still felt the pain of it. The wires tricked her brain into believing the sensation and injury were real.
When I climbed to the top of the ladder, I viewed the box to the right. It was sitting on a pedestal that was roughly four feet high. I hoisted myself up to the ledge above me and ran towards it, continually checking my footing. From previous simulations, I knew that if something looked too easy, it probably was. Gavin, Sierra, Darren, and the other techies had brilliantly hidden other traps within the simulations.
I stopped short when I noticed small sensors around it. I slowly approached it and saw the sensors were surrounding a ten-foot area. I had seen enough action movies to bolster my courage as I gingerly stepped over the first two sensors. I army-crawled through the next four. I climbed over the next set. Then ducked, stood, and ducked through the remaining two.
I could only imagine how crazy I must’ve looked to the techies and Gavin and Sierra. The cameras attached to our helmets displayed what we were seeing onto a monitor in the tech area. If a person was just watching us and not the monitor, it would probably look like I was doing a strange dance.
I stood up and reached the box. I picked it up and smiled triumphantly. My victory was short lived as I noticed the case it was sitting on turn red, and a countdown box appeared. I hastily set it back down and saw it turn green. I rubbed my forehead, trying to figure out how I could remove it without it turning red.
I gingerly took the box back off, and the countdown began once more. I placed my hand on it. So it was a pressure plate of sorts. I looked around for something to replace the box with other than my hand and…nothing.
The box and my boot were approximately the same weight. I removed my boot, conscious of the sensors right behind me. There was one way to test my theory out. With my boot in my left hand and my right hand poised over the box, I tried to quickly place the boot on the platform as I pulled the box up. It had only turned red for a split second.
I turned back around and looked down at Jace with a satisfied smile. I did my weird, awkward dance back through. As I got to the top of the ladder, I heard the cold, detached, robotic voice. “Simulation complete.”
I whooped loudly and removed my helmet. I looked down at Jace and blanched. I had climbed a lot higher than I thought I had, and the place I was standing was a lot narrower than I remembered. I looked back to where I had just come from.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I yelled towards the booth. They were too far away from me, but I knew the mics in the helmet were directly connected to them. “I could have died!”
“Relax Ake,” Gavin’s laughing voice responded in my ear. “There are safety nets below.”
I looked over the ledge, and sure enough, there were safety nets, but I wished I would have known the position I was in before this. The place I retrieved the box from was even more precarious.
