Contest

by Matthew Reilly

  Where the hell are we . . . ?

  His heart pumped loudly inside his head. He could feel a wave of panic spreading slowly through his body. No. He had to stay calm—rational—had to look after Holly.

  He felt for her at his shoulder. She held him tightly, frightened.

  ‘Daddy . . .’

  If he could just see something, he thought, trying to contain his own ever-increasing fear. A break in the darkness. A splinter of light. Anything.

  He looked left, then right. Nothing.

  Only black. Endless, seamless black.

  A fear of the dark didn’t seem quite so irrational now.

  ‘Daddy. What’s happening!’

  He could feel Holly’s head pushed close against his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know, honey,’ Swain pursed his lips in thought. And then he remembered.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, stretching his hand awkwardly underneath Holly to reach into his jeans pocket. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the cold slippery metal of the lighter.

  The Zippo flipped open with a metallic calink! and Swain flipped down on the cartwheel. The flint sparked for an instant, but the lighter didn’t catch. Swain tried again. Another spark but no flame.

  ‘Christ,’ he said aloud. ‘Some smoker.’

  ‘Daddy . . .’

  ‘Just hold on, honey,’ Swain put the lighter back in his pocket and turned to face the darkness again. ‘Let’s see if we can find a door or something.’

  He lifted his foot and took a hesitant step forward. As he lowered it, however, he began to understand why some people feared the dark so much. The sheer helplessness of not knowing what was right in front of you was terrifying.

  His shoe hit the floor. It was hard. Cold. Like slate, or marble.

  He took another step forward. Only this time, as his foot came down, it didn’t find any floor. Just empty space.

  ‘Uh-oh.’

  His sense of panic began to rise again. Where the hell was he? Was he standing on the rim of a ledge? If he was, how far down did it go? Was it on every side of him?

  Shit.

  Swain slowly lowered his foot further over the edge.

  Nothing.

  Slowly. Further. Still nothing.

  Then his foot hit something. More floor, not far below where he was standing.

  Swain pushed down and forward again. Another piece of floor. He smiled in the darkness, relieved.

  Steps.

  Holding Holly close to his chest, Swain cautiously descended the stairs.

  ‘Where are we, Daddy?’

  In the darkness, Swain stopped. He glanced at Holly. Although everything was still dark, he could just make out the outline of her face. The hollows of her eye sockets, the shadow of her nose across her cheek.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  He was about to take another step forward when he snapped up to look at Holly again. The hollows of her eye sockets, the shadow across her cheek—

  A shadow.

  There must be a light.

  Somewhere.

  Swain looked closely at her face and, scanning the shadow of her nose, he suddenly saw it—a soft green glow, so dim that it barely revealed her other features. Swain leaned closer and—abruptly—the gentle glow vanished.

  ‘Damn it.’

  He slowly moved his head back and, equally slowly, the glow returned, half covering Holly’s face.

  Swain’s eyes widened. It was his own shadow covering his daughter’s face.

  The light source was somewhere behind him.

  Swain spun around.

  And there, in the sheet of blackness in front of him, he saw it. It was hovering in the darkness, level with his eyes and yet completely still—a tiny green light.

  It couldn’t have been more than six feet away, and it shone like a small pilot light on a VCR. Swain stared intently at the tiny green light.

  And then he heard a voice.

  ‘Hello, Contestant.’

  It came from the green light.

  It sounded prim, proper, refined. And yet at the same time high-pitched, as if spoken by a midget.

  It came again.

  ‘Hello, Contestant. Welcome to the labyrinth.’

  Swain squeezed Holly close. ‘Who is that? Where are you?’

  ‘I am here. Can you not see me?’ The voice was not threatening. It was almost, Swain thought, helpful.

  ‘No. it’s too dark.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Hmm,’ the voice sounded disheartened. ‘Just a moment.’

  The tiny green light bounced away to Swain’s left, bobbing up and down. Then it stopped.

  ‘Ah. Here we are.’

  Something clicked and some overhead fluorescent lights immediately came to life.

  In this new-found light, Swain saw that he was standing halfway down a flight of wide marble stairs with banisters made of dark polished wood. The stairs seemed to spiral down several floors before disappearing into darkness.

  Swain guessed he was at the top of the stairwell, since no stairs ascended from the landing above him. Only a heavy-looking wooden door led out from the landing.

  His gaze moved left from the door, and suddenly he saw the owner of the voice.

  There, standing next to a light switch, stood a man no more than four feet tall, dressed completely in white.

  White shoes, white coveralls, white gloves.

  The little man was holding something in one white-gloved hand. It looked like a grey wristwatch. Swain noticed that the small green light he had seen before was attached to the face of the wristwatch.

  In addition to his completely white outfit, Swain saw that the little man wore an odd white skull cap that covered every part of his head, except for his face.

  ‘Daddy, it looks like an eggshell,’ Holly whispered.

  ‘Shh.’

  The little man in white stepped forward, so that he stood on the edge of the landing, his head a little higher than Swain’s. He spoke perfect English, without trace of an accent.

  ‘Hello. Welcome to the labyrinth. My name is Selexin and I am your guide.’ He extended his little white hand. ‘How do you do?’

  Swain was still staring in disbelief at the little white man. He absently offered his own hand in return. The little man cocked his head.

  ‘You have an interesting weapon,’ he said, looking down at the telephone receiver in Swain’s hand.

  Swain glanced at the receiver. The spiral cord leading out from the phone had been cut several inches from where it met the hand-piece. He hadn’t realised that he was still holding it. He quickly handed it to Holly, and shook hands awkwardly with the man in white.

  ‘How do you do?’ Selexin bowed solemnly.

  ‘I’m gettin’ there,’ Swain said, warily. ‘How about you?’

  The man in white smiled earnestly and nodded politely. ‘Oh, yes. Thank you. I am getting there, too.’

  Swain hesitated. ‘Listen, I don’t know who or what you are, but . . .’

  Holly wasn’t listening. She was staring at the hand-piece of the telephone. Without a spiral cord snaking back to a base unit, it looked like a cellular.

  She examined the shortened phone cord. The cut at the end of it looked as if someone had snipped it with a pair of extremely sharp scissors. It was a clean cut. A perfectly clean cut. The wires inside the cord were not even frayed.

  Holly shrugged and put the phone in her uniform pocket. Her own cellular phone, even if it didn’t work. She looked back at the little man in white. He was talking to her father.

  ‘I have no intention of harming you,’ he was saying.

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No,’ Selexin paused. ‘Well, not me.’

  ‘Then if you don’t mind, do you think you could tell us where we are and how the hell we can get out of here?’ Swain said, taking a step up the stairs towards the landing.

  The little man seemed shocked.

  ‘Get out?’ he said blankly. ‘No one gets out. Not yet.�
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  ‘What do you mean no one gets out? Where are we?’

  ‘You are in the labyrinth.’

  Swain looked at the stairs around him. ‘And where is this labyrinth?’

  ‘Why, Contestant, this is Earth, of course.’

  Swain sighed. ‘Listen, ah . . .’

  ‘Selexin.’

  ‘Yes. Selexin,’ Swain offered a weak smile. ‘Selexin, if it’s okay with you, I think my daughter and I would like to leave your labyrinth. I don’t know what it is you’re doing here, but I don’t think we’re going to be a part of it.’

  Swain climbed the stairs and walked over to the door leading out from the landing. He was reaching for the door handle when Selexin snatched his hand away.

  ‘Don’t!’

  He held Swain’s hand away from the heavy wooden door. ‘Like I said, no one gets out, yet. The labyrinth has been sealed. Look.’

  He pointed to the gap between the door and its solid wooden frame. ‘You see?’

  Swain looked at the gap and saw nothing. ‘No,’ he said, unimpressed.

  ‘Look closely.’

  Swain leaned closer and peered at the inside of the door frame.

  And then he saw it.

  A tiny blue fork of electricity licked out from the gap between the door and the frame.

  He only just saw it, but the sudden electric blue flash of light was unmistakable. Swain’s eyes followed the door frame up its vertical edge. Every few inches there was a distinct flicker of the bright blue charge between the frame and the door.

  It was the same on all four sides of the door.

  Slowly, Swain stepped back onto the landing. He spoke as he turned, his voice soft and flat.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  In the atrium of the library, Officer Paul Hawkins was pacing back and forth in front of the Information Desk.

  ‘I’m telling you, I saw it,’ he said.

  Parker was sitting with her feet up on the desk, chewing on a candy bar, now happily reading a back issue of Cosmopolitan.

  ‘Sure you did.’ She didn’t even look up as she spoke.

  Hawkins was angry. ‘I said, I saw it.’

  ‘Then go and check it out for yourself,’ Parker offered him a dismissive wave. As far as she was concerned, Hawkins was green. Too young, too fresh and far too eager. And like every other rookie, always suspicious that the crime of the century was happening right under his nose.

  Hawkins walked off toward the bookcases near the stairwell, mumbling to himself.

  ‘What’d you say?’ Parker called lazily from behind her magazine.

  ‘Nothing,’ Hawkins muttered as he stalked off. ‘I’m going to see if it happens again.’

  Parker looked up from her magazine to see Hawkins disappear through the stairwell doors. She shook her head.

  ‘Rookie.’

  Slowly, Hawkins climbed the wide marble stairs, peering around every turn, hoping to see it happen again. He leaned out over the banister and looked up into the shaft.

  With the stairwell lights out, he knew he would barely be able to see beyond the first landing—

  There was a light!

  Up at the top.

  One of the fluorescent lights up at the very top of the stairwell was on—and it hadn’t been on before.

  Hawkins felt his adrenalin surge.

  Someone was in here.

  What should he do now? Get Parker? Yes, backup—backup was good. No, wait. She wouldn’t believe him. She hadn’t before.

  Hawkins peered back up into the shaft and saw the light. He took a hesitant step up the stairs.

  And then it happened.

  Hawkins immediately leapt back from the banister as a blinding stream of white light burst up through the central shaft of the stairwell, instantly illuminating everything around it.

  Flecks of dust swirling around the hollow core of the stairwell suddenly came to life as the rising light struck them, creating a dazzling column of vertical white light.

  Hawkins stared at it in awe. It was exactly what he had seen before—a brilliant stream of white light pouring through the shaft of the stairwell.

  And yet, somehow, this time it was different.

  The source was different. This time, it wasn’t coming from somewhere high up in the stairwell.

  No, this time it was coming from below.

  Slowly, Hawkins peered out over the edge of the banister, looking down into the shaft.

  The light seemed to be coming from underneath one of the landings below him. All he could make out was the edge of what looked like a large glowing sphere of pure white—

  It went out.

  It didn’t fade. It didn’t flicker. It just disappeared to black. Just as it had done before.

  Hawkins suddenly found himself standing in the empty stairwell again, the hollow shaft in the centre now no more than a silent, gaping hole of blackness.

  He looked back over his shoulder toward the atrium. Beyond the bookcases, he could see Parker’s feet resting lazily on the counter of the Information Desk. He thought about calling to her, but decided against it.

  He turned back to face the darkened stairwell.

  He swallowed, and suddenly forgot all about the fluorescent light that had been turned on upstairs.

  Hawkins pulled his heavy police-issue flashlight from his belt and switched it on.

  Then he began his descent into the darkness.

  Selexin was still holding the grey wristband. It was heavy in his hand, mainly because of the thick metal straps used to clasp it to its wearer’s wrist.

  He glanced at the face. It was rectangular—like an elongated digital watch—broad in width, short in height. At the top of the face, the little green pilot light burned brightly. Next to it was another light, slightly larger than the green one, dull red in colour. At the moment it was lifeless.

  Good, Selexin thought.

  Beneath the two lights there was a narrow oblong display that read:

  INCOMPLETE—1

  Selexin looked up from the watch-face. He saw Swain and Holly standing at a window, gazing out, both careful to stay a safe distance from the electrified window panes.

  Selexin grunted, shook his head sadly, and looked back down at the wristband. The display flickered.

  INCOMPLETE—1

  The words disappeared for an instant. When they returned, they had changed. The display now read:

  INCOMPLETE—2

  And it was stable again.

  Selexin walked over to Swain at the window and stopped beside him.

  ‘Now do you understand?’

  Swain continued to stare out the window.

  After he had seen the electrified door at the top of the stairwell, he had immediately come down the first flight of stairs and opened the nearest door. It was a large fireproof door marked with a red ‘3’.

  It had opened onto an extremely broad, low-ceilinged room, perhaps fifty yards wide. Swain had gone straight across it—winding his way through a forest of odd-looking steel-framed desks—heading directly for the nearest window.

  The room was completely filled with the peculiarly shaped desks. Each had a vertical partition attached to the rear edge, so that it formed an L-shape with the horizontal writing surface. Hundreds of these desks, bunched together in tight clusters of four, covered the vast floorspace of the room.

  Now, as he looked out the window and saw the familiar inner city park, surrounded by the darkened streets of New York City, Swain began to understand.

  ‘Where are we, Daddy?’

  Swain’s eyes took in the multitude of partitioned desks in the room around them. In the near corner of the room was a heavy-looking maintenance door, next to which was a sign:

  QUIET PLEASE.

  THIS ROOM IS FOR PRIVATE STUDY ONLY.

  NO CARRY BAGS PERMITTED.

  A study hall.

  Swain turned to face Selexin. ‘We’re in the library, honey. The State Library.’

 
; Selexin nodded. Correct.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘Is the labyrinth.’

  ‘This, is a library.’

  ‘That it may well be,’ Selexin shrugged, ‘but that is of little concern for you now.’

  Swain said, ‘I think it’s of a lot of concern for me now. What are you doing here and what do you want with us?’

  ‘Well, first of all,’ the smaller man began, ‘we do not exactly want both of you.’ He looked at Swain. ‘We actually only want you.’

  ‘So why did you bring my daughter too?’

  ‘It was unintentional, I can assure you. Contestants are strictly forbidden to have assistance of any kind. She must have entered the field just before you were teleported.’

  ‘Teleported?’

  ‘Yes, Contestant,’ Selexin sighed sadly. ‘Teleported. And you can count yourself extremely fortunate that she was fully inside the field at the time. If she had been only partially inside the field, she might have been—’

  There was a loud rumble of thunder outside the window. Swain looked out through the glass and saw dark storm clouds rolling across the face of the moon. It was well and truly dark outside now. Streaks of rain began to appear on the window.

  He turned back. ‘The white light.’

  ‘Yes,’ Selexin said, ‘the field. Everything inside the field at the time the systems are initialised is teleported.’

  ‘Like the phone,’ Swain said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But only half the phone came with us.’

  ‘Because only half the phone was inside the field,’ Selexin said. ‘In its simplest form, the field is merely a spherical hole in the air. Anything inside that sphere is, at the time of teleportation, lifted up and placed elsewhere, whether it is attached to something else or not.’

  ‘And you determine where we go. Is that right?’ Swain said.

  ‘Yes. Now, Contestant—’

  Swain held up his hand. ‘Wait a minute. Why do you keep calling me that?’

  ‘Calling you what?’

  ‘“Contestant”. Why do you keep calling me “Contestant”?’

  ‘Because that is what you are, that is why you have been brought here’ Selexin said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘To compete. To compete in the Seventh Presidian.’

  ‘Presidian?’

  Now it was Selexin who frowned.

  ‘Yes,’ his voice tightened. ‘Hmmm, I suspected this might happen.’ He gave a long sigh and looked impatiently at the metal wristband in his hand. Its green light was still burning and its display still read: