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“I…” Caryn glanced around, seeming at a loss. She was subtly shaking as though racked with chills, even as a bead of perspiration crawled down her temple.
Suddenly the numbers three and zero flashed on the wall to their left. At the same time, a tiny sequence of eight or nine green lights fluttered past their feet, following the seams of the metal paneling, snakelike. Another series of lights appeared, this time red, darting past them and heading up the right wall and then fading out. Then the entire room exploded with color: reds, greens, blues, and purples slithered along the panels, taking random paths before dying about halfway up one of the three walls.
To their left, the number three changed to a two and the zero to a nine…then eight…seven.
“It’s a countdown!” Onnika exclaimed. Thirty seconds. Just thirty seconds to figure out this puzzle. She turned to Caryn, who looked drowsy and confused, and clamped her by the shoulders. “How do we get out of here?”
Caryn’s lids seemed to slide closed of their own accord, and her body listed. “Follow the lights.”
Onnika glanced at the clock: Twenty-one, nineteen, eighteen. Then at the lights: they were a kaleidoscope of color clashing at intersections and breaking apart.
A hissing sound had her hackles rising. Her gaze darted frantically. A fine grey mist began seeping from the ceiling, thickening like a dark cloud above them. “What is that?” she asked aloud, though she didn’t expect Caryn to know the answer. Seconds later, it became very clear what it was when breathing became a challenge. Little daggers sprouted in her lungs, and they both erupted into coughing fits.Poison!Caryn could handle no more. She wouldn’t survive.
Pulling Caryn low to the floor, they crawled to the center of the room. The clock flashed thirteen…twelve…eleven.
“How do we follow the lights?” she asked. “They’re all going in different directions.” The haze of poison inched lower, taking up nearly half the room. She felt more of it invade her every breath.
Caryn seemed dazed, hunched over, clutching her chest. “Do you remember home?” Her voice came out so grated and low Onnika nearly hadn’t heard.
After pointlessly trying to clear her lungs, Onnika replied, “Home? Caryn, focus! I need you here…now.”
“I miss it. All that lovely green. I’m so tired. I just wanted to go home.” Caryn’s head slumped to the floor, coughing and struggling for breath.
Eight…
Seven…
Six…
“Caryn! Please. Stay awake.” A serpent of green lights slinked between them, crawling to a spot on the floor and vanishing at an intersection of panels. Another trail of green lights vanished at the next intersection over, and yet another at the one above that. A fourth one made its way to where she guessed and she mentally drew a line, connecting all four endpoints together.
With only seconds left on the clock, Onnika dragged Caryn to the center of the panel and banged on it with all her might.
The toxic cloud sank closer, with only inches of breathable air remaining.
Three…
Two…
In a last-ditch effort, Onnika banged the butt of her fist onto all four corners where the lights had vanished—
Weightlessness came as a sudden and intense shock, and her brain didn’t comprehend what was happening until the moment her body met with a hard, uneven surface. The impact blasted the air from her lungs, and she spent the next several seconds gasping painfully. For a moment, she knew only pain and the urgency to get her bearings fast before the next hellish trap was tripped. She blinked several times to clear the sizzling sparks from her vision. High above, there was a bright square of light that her dazed mind had briefly mistaken for a sun. When that light began to dim, being cut off by a panel sliding into place, she realized it was the hole they’d fallen through; the light was filtering in from the poison room. Then she was gazing up at nothing but a dark, cavernous ceiling ornamented with reddish-brown stalactites. She rolled to her side, fighting her dry heaves, the poison in her system slowly abating.
She could hear Caryn nearby, coughing as well. It was a blissful, beautiful sound, because it meant she was alive. She caught sight of Caryn in time to see her hack up something black. In this dim lighting, it could have been bile…or blood.
Eventually her own breath started to come easier. She waited another few seconds for her dizziness to wane, then, pushing onto her hip, she surveyed the rest of their surroundings. They seemed to be in a subterranean level of The Gauntlet. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought they were on another world entirely. The redolent scent of soil hung heavy in the air. The uneven walls and floor were dusted with red-tinted powdered clay that stained her skin and hair where it touched her. Large loops of roots ran in and out of the walls. Musical chirps of insects in the dark danced around the room. Flowers grew from cracks in the wall, their petals glowing with a deep, unnatural blue light. There were no doors or caves to wander through, or any obvious place where a door might open up for them.
Caryn sat up and wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand, leaving behind a smudge of red-tinted soil. Onnika could not have been more proud when her sister pushed herself to stand and squared her shoulders once more as though ready for the next challenge. With a slight twinge in her right knee and left wrist, she rose, too, and then they waited for whatever would come next.
