Recruitment

by K A Riley

He gives me a sideways glance. “Because this is starting to get real, Kress. All that stuff we talked about on our last night in the Valta? When you and I admitted we were worried?” I nod, surprised he even remembers that conversation. “It turns out that all those worries were justified, and now we’re finding out exactly why.”

  He picks up his pace and walks ahead with Rain, Granden, and Trench, leaving me behind, where I suddenly feel more alone than ever.

  14

  “Welcome to Gamma Cube.”

  Hiller is all smiles, but I’m starting to get a sense there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Training isn’t supposed to result in serious injuries. Up until Karmine, Kella, and I got hurt, I thought Trench was deliberately going pretty hard on us.

  Afterwards, though, there was a look in his eyes, one that I didn’t expect to see. It was almost pleasure, like he was finally getting a chance to stop being nice.

  Hiller walks us through a few corridors and finally to a door where she instructs us to stop.

  “Your job is simple,” she says. “You will enter this room. I’ll lock it behind you. You just need to get back out. In order to do so, you’ll have to gather clues. You’ll try to solve some puzzles. If you’re successful, you’ll find the key that unlocks the door. Your goal is to get out in thirty minutes or less. If you manage that, you’ll be rewarded with points. If you fail, you’ll either get punished or else you’ll get off with…a stern warning.”

  She pushes down on the two large gold handles and pulls. The big double-doors swing out with a gentle sigh. One at a time, we enter the room. As Amaranthine and I step in, Hiller reaches over and closes each of the big double doors behind us. They click shut, and we all take in the large room.

  Through the gloom, we can see that it’s a mess of random objects. A large silver table sits in the middle of the room, surrounded by four silver chairs. The walls are dark, crumbling brick. A tall cabinet leans against one wall, its shelves lined with books and various knick-knacks. Paintings hang on two of the walls. A piano sits off in one corner, hollowed out down to its frame and looking ready to collapse.

  “It’s an Escape Room!” Rain blurts out after a few seconds.

  “A what?”

  “My dad told me about them. He always liked solving puzzles and such. He told me about these rooms he and his friends used to play in when they were in college. They were designed to be fun, challenge your mind, and improve your teamwork abilities. Stuff like that.”

  “So what do we have to do?” Terk asks.

  “I was wondering the same,” Kella says. “Hiller didn’t exactly give us a giant list of detailed instructions.”

  “Well, I think we’re supposed to look around and find clues,” Rain says, “track down a key, and get out of here.”

  “In thirty minutes?”

  “Don’t worry, Terk,” Rain says, reaching up to put her small hand on his bowling-ball sized shoulder. “We can do this.”

  Cardyn isn’t so optimistic. It’s dark in here but there’s still enough light for me to see the wrinkles in his forehead and the deep stress lines spreading through his face. “But where do we even start?” he whines. “Anything in here could be a clue. Or it could all just be a big time-wasting trick to see how gullible we are and how much dumb stuff we’re willing to do just to pass another one of their weird tests.”

  “Relax, Card,” Brohn says. “What happened to Karmine and Kella was a fluke.”

  “Hey,” I protest with a smirk. “I got hurt, too.”

  Karmine gives me a good-natured snort. “Kress, you got the wind knocked out of you. We got cracks in our skeletons. There’s no comparison. Either way, it’s all part of our exercises. We’re being trained to fight the most important battle ever with everything in the world at stake. It’s totally normal that there will be some glitches along the way.”

  “You call that a glitch?” I ask, gesturing to the blue gel cast still on his healing arm.

  “How’s it feeling, anyway?” Brohn asks.

  Karmine flexes his fingers and rotates his arm slowly at the elbow. “Better than I would’ve thought. Stiff, but not crazy pain like before. This cast is actually pretty amazing. Wish we’d had something like this in the med kits back in the Valta. We could have fixed up a lot of injuries.”

  “Good to know,” Brohn replies. “We’re going to need you for this challenge.”

  “So how do we start this thing?” Cardyn asks, panic in his voice.

  “How about over there?” I say, hoping to calm him by directing his attention somewhere specific. “That could be where we’re supposed to start.”

  Everyone turns to see where I’m pointing. Next to the cabinet is a large painting that looks like an up-close tangle of black, white, and yellow threads.

  “I know this painting,” I tell the group. One just like it used to hang above the couch in my living room back in the Valta. I always thought it looked like the fibers of a carpet through one of Dad’s microscopes. Micah swore he could see patterns and figures of people and such hidden among all the random lines. Dad told us that it was an example of abstract expressionism. “It’s called Jackson Pollack’s Number One. And the one over there,” I add, pointing to the opposite wall where a painting of black lines and blotches on a cream-colored background is hanging on an angle, “is Franz Kline’s Painting Number 2. I think they must be steps one and two in the puzzle.”

  Kella looks impressed, and I can’t hold back my pride or my smile. I give her a shrug. “What can I say? We had a bunch of paintings in our house before, you know…the attacks. I only liked the weird ones that didn’t look like actual things. Dad taught me about some of the artists from a big book we had on the coffee table. He said this kind of art was spontaneous and instinctive, like me.”

  “And pretty clever, too,” Kella adds. “We’ve got a one and a two. That’s a good sign we’re on the right track.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” Card calls out, already on the move. “Let’s get this thing solved and get out of here. This room is too creepy to hang around in.”

  We all follow him over to the first painting, which hangs next to the cabinet. On one of the cabinet shelves is a small box sealed with a combination lock. Instead of numbers, though, the four dials on the lock contain just letters.

  “What are we supposed to do with this?”

  “Open it, obviously.”

  “But how?”

  “There’s got to be a clue, right?”

  “Here,” I say. “Try this.” I lift the Pollack painting down from the wall and flip it around. Sure enough, on the back is a riddle written in black marker in small, tidy handwriting.

  “I guess we can’t just guess, then.”

  “Why not?” Card asks. “We have a one in three shot at getting it right.”

  “This isn’t meant to test our gambling skills,” I say with a sideways glare. “We’re supposed to figure out the clue.”

  “Well, it can’t be Cara, by definition,” Rain says. “It tells us right there that she’s not the youngest.”

  “And it can’t be Anna. Also, by definition. She’s the oldest.”

  “So it’s Barb. Do we all agree?”

  We all chime in with a nod, a “Yes,” or an “I think so.”

  Brohn invites Rain to step forward and spin the dials on the lock. She clicks each dial around until they all line up to spell “B-A-R-B.”

  “Fingers crossed,” she says and tugs on the lock. To our combined relief, it clicks open. Rain lifts the lid to reveal a scroll of parchment paper. When she unrolls it we all peer over her shoulder in the dim light. On one side is a huge red “N,” which we quickly realize matches the large red “N” on the wall with the Kline painting. “So, we go over to step number two,” she says.

  We cross the room and stand in front of the Kline painting. As we do, the “N” on the parchment lights up, and we’re able to make out the faint text on the reverse side of the scroll:

 
“It’s a bunch of random numbers,” Terk moans with a hang-dog look. “How are we supposed to know what numbers are supposed to come next?”

  “Try adding each number with the one before,” Karmine suggests.

  Rain does some quick calculations. “No. That’s not a pattern.”

  Kella suggests seeing if there’s a pattern in the difference between numbers. We all do some more calculations in our heads, but nobody comes up with anything.

  “What if each number represents a letter of the alphabet?” Kella asks.

  “Yes!” Brohn says. “Great idea! So if one equals ‘A,’ four equals ‘D.’ Nine equals ‘I.’ One equals ‘A’ again. Six equals ‘F.’ Two equals ‘B.’” Brohn’s voice trails off. “Adiafb? I don’t think that’s a word.”

  “Too bad,” Karmine says to Kella. “I thought you had something there.”

  “Wait!” Rain shouts with a bounce and a clap of her hands. “It’s squares!”

  “What?”

  “See. One squared is one. Two squared is four. Three squared is nine. Four squared is sixteen. That gets us up to nine squared, which is eighty-one. So the next number to be squared is ten, which makes the last three numbers one, zero, zero.”

  “You’re a genius!” Cardyn says.

  “What does the other part of the riddle mean?” I ask. “The ‘turning the right way’ and the ‘degree’?”

  Rain nods and asks us to give her a minute. “Well,” she says at last, “the arrow on the wall with the ‘N’ above it must be a compass. ‘N’ is due north. If we turn one-hundred degrees to the right from here…” Rain pivots around until she’s facing the wall behind us. We all turn with her and see what she sees: On the wall, there are nine apple-sized blue dots that we can see only from a certain angle. Underneath, a faint caption reads:

  Surrounding the dot in the lower right-hand corner are the letters: RTHERESTA.

  “I guess we’re supposed to connect the dots by tracing with our finger,” I say.

  “Don’t worry, my fellow Conspirators,” Cardyn announces grandly. “I’ve got this!”

  He begins by reading the letters at the bottom of the puzzle. “Wait. What does ‘Rest Art He’ mean?” he asks.

  “No,” Karmine calls out. “It says, ‘He Restart.’”

  “No,” Brohn offers. “It says ‘The Rest Ar.’”

  “The rest are what?” Terk asks.

  “You’re such dopes,” Kella says, shouldering past the boys. “It says, ‘Start Here.’”

  Brohn, Terk, Cardyn, and Karmine exchange sheepish grins and step back.

  Starting at the blue dot in the lower right-hand corner, Kella begins to draw lines on the wall with her finger. She drags her fingertip along the wall, connecting the dots left to right and up and down. As she goes, the lines light up bright yellow.

  When she lifts her finger, the lines she’s already drawn disappear, and she’s forced to start again. When she tries to backtrack over lines she’s already made, the other lines disappear, and she’s forced to start yet again.

  “Let me try,” I say. But I don’t have any more luck than Kella did.

  The others try as well, and we waste ten minutes on failed attempt after failed attempt. We draw squares. Rectangles. We try vertical, horizontal, and back and forth in every combination until we finally give up.

  “It’s impossible,” Terk complains.

  “Maybe we should focus on a different clue,” I suggest.

  “Yeah,” Brohn sighs. “Maybe.”

  We turn to follow him across the room to where three marble sculptures of horses sit on a shelf. Brohn, Rain, and Kella each grab a statue and start turning them over in their hands. They poke and prod the statues, pull at the legs and heads, but…nothing.

  “Nothing,” Kella announces. “This is hopeless.”

  I get startled when I’m suddenly tapped on the shoulder from behind. I whip around to see Amaranthine standing in front of me, pointing back to the wall with the nine blue dots that she has apparently just connected on her own:

  The lines she’s traced with her finger on the wall are lit up in bright yellow.

  “Hey!” I call out to the others. “Manthy solved it!”

  They all turn to see Amaranthine standing off to one side, her head down, her hands crossed in front of her.

  Card charges forward to give her a hard clap on the shoulder. “Good ol’ Manthy,” he beams. “Always thinking outside the box.”

  Amaranthine scowls at Card before taking a step back and brushing off her shoulder where he touched her.

  “It’s an arrow!” I say.

  “And it’s pointing up and to the left,” Card adds.

  Everyone follows my finger to the top of the brick wall where we see that one of the bricks high up by the ceiling now has a faint yellow glow around its edges. It’s too high for any of us to reach—even Terk, who stretches up as high as he can before giving up.

  We have a quick look around for something to stand on, but the chairs and the table are fixed to the floor.

  “How about giving me a boost?” I ask.

  Terk grins. “Sure thing.”

  I step into his cupped hands, and he slings me up and around until I’m on his back. Pressing my hands to his head, I climb up onto his shoulders and stand nearly all the way up on shaky legs. Reaching up, I’m able to wiggle the brick and eventually slide it out completely.

  When Terk’s helped guide me down from his shoulders, I hand the brick to Brohn, who flips it over in his hands to reveal a false bottom. He slides it open, and a thick golden key in the shape of a boat clunks to the ground.

  The timer on the wall above the big wooden door has ticked down to less than a minute. We rush over as one, and Brohn slips the key into the keyhole. He tries to turn it, but nothing happens. He tries again. Nothing.

  “Let me,” Terk says and grabs the key with both hands and starts to strain it one way then the other.

  “Stop!” Rain calls out. “You’ll snap it, you big dope.”

  “Wait!” I say, jumping between them. “I just figured out why Hiller said we’d get ‘a stern’ warning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if she didn’t mean ‘stern’ like strict, but ‘astern?’”

  “What the heck’s ‘astern’?”

  “It’s the back of a boat. Here. Let me.” I take the key from Terk and, holding it by the toothed side, I insert it backwards, head first, into the lock. Before I have time to doubt myself and wonder how wrong I might be, I give the shaft of the key a quick turn. It rotates easily, and the lock disengages just as the clock above our heads stops with twenty seconds to spare.

  The wooden double doors open to reveal Hiller on the other side. She’s nodding, clearly impressed. But Chucker and Kellerson, who are positioned on either side of her, seem disappointed.

  “Well done,” Hiller says.

  “What’s with them?” Cardyn asks, pointing one at a time to her burly bodyguards.

  “Oh, they’re just mad. If you hadn’t made it out, they were going to get to administer the punishment.”

  She turns and starts walking away down the long hallway. “Don’t worry. You made it out.”

  Terk leans down to me. “Did she say punishment?”

  “Yes. Yes, she did.”

  Without another word, Chucker and Kellerson lead us from the building, out to the middle of the Agora, where we take our places on the Capsule Pads for our nightly descent into the Silo.

  15

  When we’re back in the Silo, the boys shower first while Rain, Kella, Amaranthine, and I collapse on the cots to wait for our turn. The rhythmic thump of the water in the next room is music to my ears. For some reason, it sounds like applause.

  Steam from the Shower Room billows out into the Dormitory in a thick cloud of underground fog. The Silo is always humid, but tonight, it seems especially sticky. Stray strands of hair keep clinging to my face, and my body keeps churning out perspirat
ion whether I’m standing, walking, or sitting perfectly still. Even so, I’m feeling unusually content.

  While the boys chatter in echoing fragments in the next room twenty feet away, I stretch out on my cot and take deep, sighing breaths. I’m just hoping I don’t fall asleep before I have the chance to shower. Waking up this sticky would mean a full day of physical training while tugging at my clothes and getting distracted into all kinds of mistakes I can’t afford to make.

  Training has been a daily challenge, but some days—like today—are actually kind of fun. With the structured days, the set routine of lessons and instruction, and the feeling that I’m actually improving over time, it’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’m in school. My childhood was derailed by war, loss, and fear. But now that the terror’s subsided over being recruited, I’m finally getting a taste of what a normal life could have been like if the war had never begun. I even like the fact that we’re being graded. It fills me with a weird sense of purpose, kind of an assurance that everything we’re doing here is happening for a reason and that a prize awaits us on the other side.

  Of course, technically that “prize” is war. But at least I’m beginning to feel like an active participant in my own life now, instead of slogging around in the Valta waiting to die.

  Of all of us, Rain seems to share my enthusiasm the most. She’s even gotten into blathery speculations about the personal lives of the guards, the Trainers, and Hiller. She’s good at acting like a regular teenager instead of a mentally and physically tough warrior-in-the-making, and I’m grateful for it.

  Today, she’s set her gossipy sights on Kella.

  “So what’s with you two?” she asks her, perching on the edge of her cot.

  “What’s with what two?” Kella replies, a thread of suspicion in her voice.

  “Oh, you know,” Rain replies with a melodious lilt. “You and Karmine. Pairing up all the time for shooting drills in the Agora. Hanging out together while we did the Escape Room puzzles. Always finding a way to get matched up as sparring partners for combat training.”