Recruitment

by K A Riley

  Rain traces the invisible spaces on each of six numbers. “We just need to ignore the markings and focus on the negative space. That makes the first number a four. Then two. Three. Six. One. Five.”

  Kella nods. “Okay. That’s pretty smart. How about if we need to match the two pedestals up?”

  “Yes!” Rain squeals. We must have to match one rock from this set of pedestals to the numbers on the other set.

  “Right,” Brohn says. “The pedestals must be weight-activated. We put the right rock from these pedestals on the right pedestal from over there, and the pulley should activate and lift the door to the box.”

  “Exactly. Now we just need to move the giant, insanely heavy rocks from one side of the room to the other.”

  Brohn pushes against one of the rocks, but it doesn’t move. He pushes against it again, harder this time, with both hands and with all his weight behind the shove. The rock shifts about half an inch.

  “This one looks like it’s going to require some special skills,” Karmine says with an undisguised look and a flick of his thumb in Terk’s direction.

  “Terk,” Brohn says. “You’re the only one of us strong enough to lift those things, so I guess you’re up.”

  Terk beams at the prospect of being useful. Brohn and Kella give him directions for which rock to move across the room to which pedestal. Terk spits dramatically into each of his palms and rubs them together. He approaches the first pedestal, gripping the large rock between his forearms with his chest pressed against it. With a grunt, he heaves the rock off the pedestal. Guided by Cardyn and me, he does a half-walk, half-stagger across the room to the corresponding pedestal and pushes the big rock up onto it. The pedestal drops a bit, and, just as Brohn predicted, the door to the big box lifts up a few inches.

  Kella drops down to the floor to peer inside of the small space at the bottom of the door.

  “It’s too dark,” she says. “I don’t see anything.”

  Brohn directs Terk to move the next rock. Easier said than done, I think.

  But Terk is up to the task. He practically bounces with glee over to the next pedestal, which has an even bigger rock, practically a boulder, perched on top. Like before, he somehow heaves the rock to his chest, half-stumbles across the room, and pushes it up onto the proper pedestal as directed by Cardyn and me. The pedestal drops a bit, and the door raises a few more inches.

  “I can see something!” Kella calls out. Her face is nearly inside the big box.

  I call out for her to be careful. “If that thing comes down, it’s going to cut your head off.”

  She scuttles back a bit and says, “Thanks. I do like my head. I’d rather keep it.”

  “What did you see?” Karmine asks, kneeling down next to her and peering up into the tall box.

  “I think it’s a key. Yes. Definitely a key of some kind. It’s hanging from a hook at the top. If we can get the door up a few more feet, I can slip in and grab it.”

  “Your wish is my command,” Terk says with breathy enthusiasm. One at a time, he lifts the remaining rocks up onto the proper pedestals. A small puff of smoke and debris explodes into the air as each rock lands on the pedestal’s top. Each time, the door lifts up a little more until Kella declares there’s enough room for her to get inside and reach the key.

  “Just be careful,” I warn again. The steel cable looks strong, but the metal door also looks insanely heavy. “Remember, we’re a Conspiracy now. We can’t afford to lose members to hideous box accidents.”

  Kella beams at me and promises to be quick. She ducks down under the door and disappears into the dark space. It takes just a split-second that feels like an hour, then she’s back in flash with a big golden key in her hand.

  Brohn inserts the key into the lock on the exit door, which swings open with a gentle creak. We charge through and down a flight of stairs to another door.

  “Room Number Two,” Brohn announces. “I think we’re making good time.”

  This second room isn’t all that big, and there doesn’t seem to be much to it. Two of the walls are made of concrete blocks. The other two are brick. There are three puzzles laid out on stiff card-stock standing up on a long table in the middle of the room. On the end of the table is a locked box with four numbered dials.

  I examine the box. “It’s a four-digit code,” I say. “I think the numbers for the code must come from the answers to the three puzzles.”

  “That makes sense,” Rain says. She gives me an I’m-proud-of-you look, which I return with a grateful grin.

  “So we solve the puzzles, open the box, and find…what? Another key?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Marvie,” Karmine says, rubbing his hands together with glee. Apparently, he no longer misses his guns and stabby things. “Let’s get started!”

  We gather together at the head of the long table and examine the first card. Under a simplistic set of pictures, an old-style kind of type reads:

  “Easy,” Terk says. “A hundred minutes.”

  Rain gives Terk a condescending look. “No, Terk. The hundred machines are working at the same rate as the five machines were. It’ll take five minutes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry, Big Guy,” Kella says with a laugh. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Rain calls down the length of the table for me to input the number into the lock, and Cardyn stands next to me at the locked box as I turn the first dial to 5.

  The others move on to the next card on the table, which displays another picture and another riddle, which Kella reads out loud:

  ***

  Four prisoners are standing in the formation shown. Each is wearing either a black hat or a white hat. They are told that there are two black hats and two white hats in total.

  Prisoner #1 can see the hat color of Prisoner #2 and Prisoner #3.

  Prisoner #2 can see the hat color of Prisoner #3.

  Neither Prisoner #3 nor Prisoner #4 can see the color of anyone else’s hat.

  They’re not allowed to turn around or take off their hats.

  Whichever prisoner is the first to correctly call out his own hat color will be set free.

  Ten seconds go by before someone finally shouts out the correct answer.

  Who was the first person to shout out his own hat color and be freed?

  ***

  Rain taps her temple and her foot a few times in unison, which means she’s concentrating. “I’ve got it,” she exclaims. “It can’t be Number Three or Four. They can’t see anyone else anyway. If Number Two and Three had the same hat color as each other, Number One would’ve known and shouted out his own hat color right away. Since ten seconds have passed, he doesn’t know. That means that Two and Three have different hat colors. Prisoner Two just has to shout out the opposite color of the hat of Prisoner Three. So the answer is ‘two.’”

  Down at my end of the long table, I turn the second dial to “2.” The mechanism gives a satisfying click.

  That leaves just puzzle number three. The stiff card contains a diagram of a parking lot, kind of like the one outside the school and at the grocery store back in the Valta. There are six numbered parking spaces with one of the numbers covered up by a parked car. Under the image is a single question:

  What’s the missing parking spot number?

  “What?” Kella whines. “It’s impossible. It could be any number in the universe.”

  I have to agree. Other than the fact that they’re all even numbers, I don’t see any pattern.

  “You’re the math expert,” Karmine says to Rain. “Can’t you work something out?”

  “I’m thinking!” Rain protests. “Just give me a minute.”

  Brohn looks up at the digital clock read-out above the door. “We don’t exactly have a ton of minutes. Remember, we still have one more floor after this one.”

  “Okay,” Rain says, her eyes on the ceiling, her fingers tapping out numbers on her thigh. “Sixteen mins six is ten. That�
�s half the difference between sixty-eight and eighty-eight and exactly the difference between eight-eight and ninety-eight. And…”

  “And?” Kella asks after Rain’s long pause.

  “And…I have no idea.” Rain shakes her head, murmuring more to herself than to us. “Unless it’s a matter of square roots. Or factorials. Maybe some sort of closed-line integral equation.”

  We all learned some math back in the Valta, but I have no idea how Rain remembers or even understands a lot of it. It’s like she’s half-human, half-computer. Still, she’s got an edge to her voice, and her long black hair is already getting clumpy with sweat. She doesn’t like not knowing the answers to things. She starts mumbling to herself as we look on helplessly. “Map coordinates? Degrees of a circle? Some sort of Pythagorean equation?”

  I glance at the clock and back at Rain. I don’t want to pressure her, but Brohn’s right. The clock is ticking.

  Rain stomps her foot. “It’s not fair. There should be a clue or a key or an index, something more to go on that just a list of random numbers!”

  “It’s eight-seven,” Amaranthine says.

  “What?”

  “The answer. It’s eighty-seven.”

  We all stare at her. “How do you figure…?” Rain asks, her eyes in an angry squint.

  Amaranthine spreads her fingers out over the card and spins it around so it’s now upside down:

  “See. Eighty-seven.”

  “Manthy,” Cardyn says with a beaming smile and a shake of his head, “sometimes I wish I knew how your brain works.”

  Amaranthine shrugs and walks over to the wall next to the exit door. She leans back with her arms folded and her head down like she’s done and ready for an upright nap.

  Rain tells me to go ahead with the locked box. I input “8” on the third dial and “7” on the last dial. The lock clicks, and the lid pops open.

  Inside, as expected, is a key. Thankfully, there are no more tricks to figure out. The key slips easily into the lock on the exit door, and the eight of us file out one by one. We walk down a narrow set of steps that ends at another door. Like the last one, this one is unlocked and opens easily. Brohn leads us through into our final room.

  The holo-clock above the exit door on the far side of the room is at fifty-two minutes. That leaves eight minutes to solve the final puzzle, get the last key, and get out of this room before we fail this test. I’m sure Hiller is out there on the other side of the door, probably jotting down notes on her little holo-pad and waiting for us to fail.

  On the far side of the room from us are three large silver boxes sitting on top of another long metal table. Each box has a round red button in its upper left-hand corner. The box on the left has a statue of an obese gnome lying on its back, his hands folded on his swollen stomach. The middle box has seven versions of the same statue. The last box has four of them. The gnomes are chubby and cute. They remind me of pictures in the fairy tale books my dad used to read to me at night. Except these poor guys look like they’re in serious discomfort with their round cheeks puffed out, their bellies distended, and their eyes clamped shut in a painful grimace.

  Cardyn steps up to the statues and tries to lift them up. “Maybe there’s a clue underneath one of them,” he suggests with a shoulder shrug. But the pieces are attached to the top of the boxes and won’t budge.

  “Worth a try,” I say.

  “Wait. Look over here,” Brohn calls out from over on the far side of the room. Hanging on the wall is a small framed photograph of the three silver boxes with the gnome statutes we were just standing in front of.

  “Try turning it over,” Kella suggests.

  Brohn takes the picture down from the wall and turns it over in his hands. Sure enough, there’s writing on the back, which Brohn shows us.

  “It’s a picture with another riddle,” Terk says.

  Rain steps forward and reads it out loud:

  “That sounds pretty ominous,” Karmine says. “Do you think ‘lose more than just the game’ is like some kind of a death threat or something?”

  Brohn looks from the photo and back over to the actual silver boxes on the table. “Let’s just worry about getting out of here. This place is starting to creep me out. The final key is in one of those boxes. We’ve got one shot at it.” He calls for Amaranthine to join us, but she seems attached to the wall. “Come on,” Brohn urges. “You’re good at this stuff.”

  Amaranthine lowers her chin to her chest, looks up at him, and shakes her head. “I can’t do it,” she mumbles. “I don’t know the answer.”

  “Wait. I can do it,” Rain says. She puts her fingertips to her forehead. “Just let me think it through.”

  We step back, and it doesn’t take long for Rain to announce that she has indeed figured it out.

  “From the start, each kid can only go in one of two directions, right? That means the total possibilities are two times two times two times two, which is sixteen. Since there are two directions, their chances are two out of sixteen. That means the answer is reduced to one-eighth.”

  “Okay,” Kella says slowly. “So how do we get from one-eighth to being able to open one of the boxes? And how do we know which box to open anyway?”

  “That’s what I’m still trying to figure out.”

  “Oh! I get it!” Cardyn says, pointing over to the box with the overfed gnome lying on top. One over eight. One over-ate. The box with the one bloated gnome. That’s our box!”

  Despite our tension, we can’t help but laugh at the silly pun. We rush over to the table and gather around the left-hand box.

  Cardyn presses the red button on the box with his palm, and a round panel on the face of the big metal container slides open. “Now what?”

  “Maybe the key’s inside?” Kella suggests.

  I lean down and peer into the box. “I don’t see anything. Too dark.”

  “Here,” Terk says stepping forward. “Let me.” Rolling up his sleeve, he gives us a big, crooked-toothed smile. “See?” he beams. “I’m good for more than just lifting heavy stuff.”

  Terk inserts his left arm until it’s shoulder-deep inside the shiny box.

  “Can you feel anything?”

  “Yes. Not a key, though. Feels like…I don’t know. Maybe a metal plate. It’s cold, whatever it is.”

  “The far side of the box?” Brohn asks.

  “No,” Terk says as he leans further in. “I can’t get my arm in deep enough to reach the far side.”

  “Can you move the plate or whatever it is you’re feeling?”

  Terk grimaces with effort. “I don’t think so.”

  Suddenly, the words “INCORRECT INPUT” appear in glowing red on the box above the opening where Terk just inserted his arm.

  We hear a loud thunk from inside the box, and Terk winces in pain.

  “What is it?”

  “Something just clamped onto my wrist.”

  Brohn lunges forward. “Can you pull loose?”

  “Not sure. Probably.”

  Terk winces again as he tugs against whatever is in there holding on to him. Then he tugs harder, and his wince transforms into a grimace of pain. He tugs again, and the pain turns into agony.

  “I’m stuck,” he manages to murmur through clenched teeth.

  Brohn and Karmine circle around behind the table and start running their hands along the edges of the box and feeling around under the table. “Maybe there’s a release or a latch or something,” Brohn says. He’s trying to sound calm as he and Karmine circle back around to join us, but it’s not working. “I think we’re just going to have to—”

  He’s interrupted by the angry hum of something springing to life from inside the box.

  Terk screams at the top of his lungs. It’s a horrifying sound, one I haven’t heard since the days of the bombings in the Valta.

  “Get him out of there!” Kella shouts.

  Brohn and Karmine each grab him by a shoulder and pull back with all their might.

 
; The three of them tumble back to the floor in a heap. The rest of us jump out of the way so we don’t get crushed. But the fear of being caught up in their fall quickly takes a back seat to the horror before us.

  Terk’s left arm has been severed right through his bicep, just below his shoulder.

  The tissue and muscle at the base of what’s left of his arm are blistered red and fused in an angry-looking patch. Whatever cut him seems to have cauterized the wound.

  Terk is barely hanging on to consciousness. In a flash, Rain slings off her jacket and wraps it around the stump where Terk’s arm used to be. She moves fast, but not fast enough to get the wound covered up before Terk manages to get a good look. His mouth hangs open. His eyes roll back, and he slumps down into Brohn’s arms.

  At the same time, a whoosh of gas fills the room, and a putrid cloud of yellow smoke begins to billow from a row of vents up by the ceiling.

  Amaranthine is closest to where the smoke starts settling, and she turns around, startled. She covers her mouth with both hands and takes two steps back, but the smoke or gas or whatever it is acts fast. Manthy’s eyelids flutter, and she stumbles down next to where Brohn and Rain are trying to tend to Terk. Brohn’s able to catch her before she crashes to the ground. She leans in his arms, limp and unmoving.

  “Everyone get down!” he cries out.

  “We’ve got to get out of this room,” Rain screams. “We need to find that last key!”

  “The puzzle!” I shout. “I think I know what we did wrong!”

  Without waiting for anyone to respond, I dash over and grab the photograph from Rain and drop to one knee. Card kneels down next to me, and we scan the puzzle together.