“She isn’t here,” Fourteen said.
“What do you mean?” I said with surprise. “She said she would be here for the competition.”
“I inquired with Blok,” Fourteen said. “They told me that she was observing the Grand X with the trustees in the city.”
I stared straight ahead, trying to compute what that meant. She was supposed to be there! She promised me she would be there! Something must have happened that she couldn’t get away. Was she all right? Was she revealed as a member of the revivers? Nevva was a Traveler. She knew how serious this was. Then again, she wasn’t there when Remudi competed, and that turned out about as badly as possible. Things were coming to a head here on Quillan, on all fronts. I wondered if her triple life had finally caught up with her. There had to be a good reason why she wasn’t there, but I couldn’t come up with one. I decided not to let it freak me out. It didn’t change what I had to do. I was down. Two games to one. Challenger Green had the upper hand. I had to keep my head in the game. Or the games. Or whatever.
When we arrived back at the castle. Fourteen led me back up to my room and stopped at my door.
“I will try to learn more about Miss Winter,” he said. “It seems to be of great importance to you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been a real friend.”
“Friend,” he said. “No one has ever referred to me as a friend.”
“Yeah, well, you are. How much time do I have?”
“I do not know,” he replied. “I will return shortly to let you know. Please try and get some rest.”
I was beat. Not tired. Beat. It’s not like I wanted to lie down and go to sleep or anything. I just needed to catch my breath, and my thoughts. I dragged myself over to the bed and lay down on my back. I actually hoped this rest period wouldn’t be too long. I didn’t want to stiffen up or lose my psyche.
Be careful what you wish for.
No sooner did I settle in and focus up at the ceiling, than my bed fell through the floor! A trapdoor had opened and swallowed up my bed, with me in it! I looked up to see the door close above me, cutting out all the light. I was falling in pitch darkness. I quickly grabbed on to either end of the bed, not knowing when I’d hit bottom. The fall only lasted a few seconds, and it turned out that it was more of a controlled fall than I thought. The bed had actually been lowered quickly. I landed with only a minor thump.
I didn’t move. There was nothing to see. Absolutely nothing. I was in total darkness. The room sounded big, though.
“Are you ready. Challenger Red?” came a teasing voice that echoed through the emptiness. It was LaBerge. His voice was amplified.
“Ready for what?”
LaBerge laughed and said, “Ahhh, that’s your penalty for losing in the Clown Forest.”
“Clown Forest.” That’s what he called that game? What a geek.
“What do you mean? What’s my penalty?” I called out.
“Your penalty is… we’re not going to tell you the rules to this next game.” He chuckled. “Good luck.”
There was no rest period. Game number four had already begun.
(CONTINUED)
QUILLAN
I had been here before. I knew what it was like to be in the dark and vulnerable. Loor had trained me in the dark. She taught me how to use my other senses. To listen and feel. I knew what to do. I lay flat on the bed and kept my breathing shallow. If Challenger Green was out there, I would feel him before he got close enough to attack.
I heard nothing. I felt nothing. It was like I was floating in limbo. But I didn’t panic. Moving would be a mistake.
I heard a sound. It wasn’t a living thing, it was… something. Something quick. It sounded like it flashed by overhead. It couldn’t have lasted for more than a second. Whatever it was, it gave off a high-pitched ring as it sped by. I heard another one. It came from a different direction. The sound flew over me and disappeared quickly. There was no question, something was flying above me in the dark. Another one flew by, this one was barely over my head. I felt the slight ripple of air as it sped past. Whatever it was, it was moving fast. I didn’t want to get hit, so I stayed on my back, listening.
I heard a few more passes, some close, some distant. All fast. What was it? Though I wasn’t told the rules for this game, something didn’t make sense. I was in total darkness. How could the rest of Quillan see what was going on if there was no light?
As if in answer, the world suddenly came alive. White light filled the room. It was so bright that I was just as blind as when it was dark. At the same time, music started playing. It was loud, upbeat, electronic music like they played at the challenger parties. It was so loud that I could no longer hear the thing flying around the room. This was worse than darkness. I now had two senses taken away. I forced myself to stay on my back. Looking around, my eyes adjusted enough that I could make out shapes. The room itself was totally white. Floor, walls, ceiling, everything. The bright lights were on the high ceiling, and they were moving in time to the music. There were hundreds of them, all flashing in different directions. They were painting the room with light, making it impossible to see.
I saw a flash of silver a few feet above my head. It had to be what was making the sound, though I couldn’t hear it over the music. I lost it in the lights. What was it? I started feeling a little too vulnerable by lying on the bed like that, so I quickly rolled off onto the floor, but crouched down low, using the bed for protection. I peeked my head up over the mattress in time to see another silver flash. This one I locked on to. It was headed in my direction, about five feet over my head- I followed it as it shot over me, continued on, then stuck into a wall only a few yards away. What was it? I was close enough to that wall that I felt confident enough to crawl to it. I got down on my belly and crawled, commando style, across the floor to the wall. Looking up, I saw what was making the sound… and my heart sank. It was a silver disk. It didn’t look much different from a CD. But it was embedded an inch into the wall. CDs weren’t sharp like that. I realized that the sound I was hearing wasn’t from a single source. Whatever the game was in this white, noisy room, to play it meant you had to dodge sharp, lethal Frisbees that were randomly fired in all directions.
Suddenly, rampaging clown dolls didn’t seem so bad.
Chunk! Another disk embedded itself in the wall over my head. There was no fooling around. These things were deadly. Veego and LaBerge had upped the stakes. The question now was, what was the game? I kept my back to the wall and squinted to get a look at the room. My eyes had adjusted enough that I could make out some detail. The room was giant. The ceiling was high. You could fit eight basketball courts inside, with room left over for a running track. It wasn’t empty. There looked to be several mountains scattered around. I’m serious. There were craggy mounds all over the place that had to be thirty or forty feet high. They were just as white as the rest of the room, looking like giant icebergs. I could see little glints of silver where the killer disks had embedded themselves at various places. Still, I had no clue as to what the game could be, besides avoiding decapitation, that is.
My eye caught movement. It was dark against all the bright white. It was Challenger Green. He was climbing one of the mounds. If my penalty for losing the clown game was to not learn the rules, that meant Challenger Green did know the rules. I watched him for a clue. He climbed the mound easily. There were several places for foot and handholds. It looked like climbing was the easy part. The hard part was avoiding the speeding disks. I saw one disk fly toward him and stick into the side of the mound, next to his leg. He never saw it coming, nearly fell off the mound. That meant he didn’t know’ when to expect these things. Which meant I wouldn’t know either. Swell.
The top of this minimountain came to a peak. Challenger Green quickly scampered to the summit, did something I couldn’t see, then hurried back down. Whatever he did up there, I figured I had to do it too. That was the deal. We had to climb these mountains. At least I had a goal now, besides avoiding being sliced in half, that is.