Maybe Victoria was right. The only way out is to Run. Maybe no instructions or rules existed about getting back in because it simply wasn’t possible.
But he sensed more was in this place than he could see. Something…elusive. Purposeful. He felt it in every cell of his worn out body.
For now, trying to escape was what he had to do. And if that meant telling Victoria what she wanted to hear—not that he had any intention of leaving her to her fate—then so be it.
“I could never forget you,” he said in a hushed tone. “I promise. I won’t.”
“Alright, then. Get ready. Let’s see what I can do…”
Troy chose not to speak, not to say or do anything that might break her concentration. He stood perfectly still, and waited.
After a couple of minutes, he almost suggested that she give up.
“Run!” Her voice quivered. Was she locked in some kind of mental battle? “Go! Now!”
Troy started moving, but had no idea where she meant for him to go. What was going on? He detected no change to the Gray Room’s power supply or configuration.
That was when the Room went dark. Troy nearly stumbled in surprise, but did his best to keep moving.
She’d done it. She’d really done it!
“Talk to me! Where do I go?” he cried.
“Right there!” She strained to get the words out and sounded frustrated that he didn’t understand.
But there was nothing. He stopped and spun in place. The whole Room was still pitch black. He was about to speak again when a loud bang sounded twenty feet to his right. A five-foot square hole in the wall of the Room had opened up, and a dim light beyond shined into the Gray Room.
Troy sprinted for the hole, swallowing the pain in his foot, and saw that the metal panel that had covered the wall at this exact spot had crashed to the ground below it. The bottom of the square hole was still attached to one side of the panel. But he didn’t stop to examine it; he jumped through the hole like a hurdle on a race track.
As soon as he was on the other side, the panel swung back up and slammed shut, sealing itself behind him.
His first instinct was to cover his ears with his hands to block out the monstrously loud noise of grinding, scraping, squeaking, metal-on-metal pounding, and the hum of electricity. He felt like he was inside the biggest clock ever built, only infinitely more complex.
“You made it…” whispered Victoria, and Troy got the impression that whatever she’d done to confuse or overpower the Corridor was all used up. She wouldn’t be able to do it again, at least not for a long while.
Troy allowed himself a moment to whisper a sigh of relief. Not only had he accessed the Corridor’s “backstage,” but Victoria was still connected to him. If he had lost contact with her... He shuddered. It was a more terrifying thought than the vast space he now stood in.
An enormous, barren hallway extended away from him in both directions, farther than he could see. It looked like the hallway ran parallel to the length of the Corridor. He turned back to see that the wall he’d jumped through was at least five stories high, though he was at its very bottom, on a ground floor that was made of what looked like cement. Troy swiveled his head slowly to the opposite wall some forty feet or so away, which he decided had to be the Corridor’s outer wall. This wall tapered inward as his eyes followed it up to a row of huge lights hanging from what he assumed was the ceiling, which he couldn’t make out. Somewhere high up, he saw the turning silhouettes of immense gears.
“Now what?” asked Victoria, her voice small and drenched in awe.
“I was kind of hoping there’d be a door with a big exit sign over it,” Troy joked, though internally his reaction matched hers.
Troy looked down the long stretch one way, and then the other. He knew the general direction he’d been going in his journey through the Corridor’s Rooms. So he turned around and began to hobble with a painfully slow limp.
Troy guesstimated that this backstage area was easily ten or twenty stories high, possibly more. But where the Rooms were all slick polish and deliberate designs, the hallway was a mess, with black pipes running in all directions, cables and wires strung about, huge columns, and endless stairs.
And yet, Troy marveled at its asymmetrical, mechanical beauty. It was all metal panels and big cement bricks. He passed a huge round column a few feet away; it was at least five feet wide, and it ran from the ground all the way up to somewhere high above—the building’s roof, he guessed.
While staring at the column, his legs gave out and he found himself lying on the floor.
“Troy!”
He lazily pushed himself back up to his feet, dazed. Had he tripped over something?
“You scared me,” said Victoria. “You were out for almost ten minutes.”
What? He’d passed out? He had no memory of blacking out.
One thing was certain: that sprint to the hole in the wall had taken a lot more out of him than he thought. He found his canister resting up against the huge column and swallowed the last few drops of his water. He tossed the empty container aside, but the miraculous, crystal clear fluid was no help at all this time. As his dad often said, his “get up and go had got up and went.” His energy reserves were dry, and his body was begging him for rest. As he stumbled along, every step became harder and harder. His eyes were trying to close on their own, and his head felt way too heavy to hold up straight.
“Troy? Stay with me,” said Victoria.
“I’m trying. Don’t feel so good. May need to skip school tomorrow.”
Was that a joke? Or had he really lost his grip on reality for a moment and believed himself to be at home in bed?
Anything was possible in his state. Once or twice, he dreamt for a few seconds. But every time he opened his eyes again, he was still standing. Still moving. Still pressing forward.
Where was that exit sign? It had to be around here somewhere.
Staggering along, he noticed that there were staircases everywhere. Some straight, some spiral, leading this way and that, and catwalks and platforms above him, connecting them.
He stumbled to the nearest stairs, and he sluggishly climbed to a grated metal catwalk that led to another flight.
Where were all the stage hands, the back-of-house grunts who ensured that everything ran smoothly? The place was empty, and it all looked exactly the same. Where did it begin, and where did it end? Where were the emergency exits? Fire escapes? Ejection pods?
“Troy, maybe you should sit down for a few minutes,” said Victoria.
“No, no, no.” He felt lethargic, lightheaded. “No time to stop. They might catch me.”
“Who might?” asked Victoria.
“You know. Them.” He turned to another flight of stairs and walked up farther. “The little green aliens. Or the guy with all the cigarettes. Haven’t you ever seen X-Files?”
“Troy, please… You’re delirious. Please stop and rest.”
He should have fallen, tripping over his own feet, but they managed to keep taking steps. His gait was slow and off-kilter; he favored his good foot and shuffled on the one the Brown Room had crushed. But he was no longer looking at giant gears and panels and wires. He was hypnotized by the ground passing by beneath him, the metal grating two or three stories up. Did it go on forever and ever? Everything else about this insane place did, so why wouldn’t it?
His thoughts wandered. He watched the silver, black, and white colors of the ground floor pass through the tiny holes in the grating.
He was also at home, staring out his bedroom window a year ago as his brother got in his car and drove away, heading off to his first year of college.
He was thirteen, standing on the out-of-bounds line in the school gymnasium, looking like a stick figure, his P.E. clothes hanging from his bony frame. Lined up on either side of him were thirteen guys who were twenty pounds heavier and shaped the way that guys are meant to be shaped.
He was seven years old, his father kneeling and hol
ding him tight after telling Troy that his mother was dead and he would never see her again.
He was four, terrified and crying as the neighbors’ dog chased him through the yard; his mom and dad were running out of the house to scoop him up and make him safe again.
Why couldn’t they be here to make everything okay now?
It may have been minutes, or hours, or days later when he finally stopped. The path had ended, and he was staring at a huge, round door, emblazoned with the same tree symbol he’d seen throughout the Corridor and on the bracelet bonded to his arm. But this version of the emblem was enormous, covering the entire door and showing off just how intricate and stylized the tree was as its thick limbs kept breaking off into smaller and smaller branches. The moment he recognized it, he snapped back to the moment.
“Is this it?” he said, finding his voice again. It was dry and hoarse, and he had difficulty speaking over the din of the grinding machinery.
Victoria sounded like she didn’t know what to say. “There’s only one way to find out.” Her voice sounded thick, and he wondered if she’d been crying. How long had he been walking? With her watching the whole time, fearing he might collapse and die at any moment?
Only then did he look down again at his bare feet and realize that they were bleeding. The metal grating had shredded his soles; there was a trail of faint, bloody footsteps that stretched farther behind than he could see. He was still in the bizarre backstage, but he’d walked to an area far from where he’d begun. Strange that he felt no pain in his crusty, red feet. Was he so used to pain at this point that it simply no longer fired the pain receptors in his head?
Troy shook his head violently to clear out the cobwebs. Was this the end of the road? Was it possible he’d bypassed the remaining Rooms and advanced straight to the main Exit? Above, below, and on both sides of the door, the wall stretched out for dozens of feet, but nowhere did he spot a place where it intersected with another wall. For all intents and purposes, this was it.
Could it really be that he’d finally found the way out?
“If I walk through this door, and our connection is severed…” His voice trailed off.
“It’s okay,” said Victoria. “I know.”
“Thank you, for everything,” he said.
“You don’t have to thank me. I just did what I’m here to do.”
Troy shook his head. “No…that’s not what I’m thanking you for.”
Victoria said nothing, but Troy thought he heard a little huff or a sniffle.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, raising his arm as high as he could reach.
Slowly, the tree emblem lit up with a hue that began dim but grew brighter. There was an incredibly loud metal clang, like the catch in a gigantic lock being released. The round door sank inward by half a foot, and then rolled, loud and slow, to the left.
The view beyond the door was dark. He could see nothing at all.
Troy took a deep breath.
“Good luck,” said Victoria.
He stepped through the open hatch into the darkness. The hatch rolled shut behind him, and any last traces of light were extinguished. No breeze blew, no light shone, and nothing sounded after the door’s echo. Was he outside now?
He took a few tentative steps forward. “Hello?”
No answer. Nothing but crickets, his dad would say.
“You still with me?” he asked.
“I am,” replied Victoria.
Maybe he had to put more distance between himself and the Corridor before it acknowledged his escape and activated whatever the procedure was for Runners who made it out…
He began walking again, but only made it three more steps before loud clicking sounds came from overhead, powerful lights switched on high above, and he was standing in the center of the Gray Room.
Troy froze. Blinked.
“No…” Troy whispered, spinning to look in all directions. He dropped to the ground, entirely spent.
This wasn’t happening.
It couldn’t.
“But…it was real,” he protested.
Victoria said nothing; she was probably just as shocked as he was.
“I was there, I was out! Victoria, it was real! Right? What happened—it was real!”
“I—I’m not exactly sure…” Her voice was higher than usual, and quivering.
Troy put his head between his knees, certain he was going to throw up. “But the Corridor talks to you, right? Can’t you just ask it what’s happening?”
Victoria let out a breath. “I don’t hear it speak like that. I just get feelings, impressions. Sometimes images. It’s more of an instinctual knowledge than any kind of verbal—”
Troy slammed his good hand, palm first, repeatedly against the ground. “What is going on?”
“What we did—it worked. You were out, you escaped to the backstage area. But…when you got all quiet, when you were out of it, up on that catwalk…I think the Corridor recognized that you were delirious, and it—it adapted. You were disoriented, so it…modified your path and led you back here.”
Troy’s brain was going to explode, or his heart was going to give out; he wasn’t sure which would come first. What she said was exactly the kind of thing the Corridor would do—though he hadn’t realized before that the Corridor was changing itself to adapt to him while he was mid-Run. But where was the giant door he’d stepped through just a few feet back? He was right in the middle of this enormous Room, and he could see the entrance door several hundred feet behind, and the Exit the same distance ahead. There was not so much as an archway anywhere close by.
“I don’t understand… Is the Corridor one big holodeck or something?”
“A holodeck?”
Troy scratched his head and swatted at the tears forming below his eyes. How did he explain the concept of holograms to someone from the early twentieth century? “It’s a, uh…an illusion. A fake, a fabrication. Like, it looks and feels like one thing, but it’s just a trick, because it’s really something else.”
He heard Victoria sigh. “The Corridor is not an illusion. It can change its configuration on-the-fly, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. These are real walls surrounding you. That was real water and ice in the Blue Room. Actual plant life in the Green Room. Real lava in the Red Room. It’s not just conjuring these things out of thin air.”
Troy leaned back, collapsing flat on his back. He shook his head and closed his eyes. As far as he was concerned, he could just give up the ghost right here.
He was done. Game over. The Corridor—this mad place of endless wonders and dangers—had won.
“You can’t give up now.”
Troy’s blood boiled. “Watch me!” he screamed, drilling his eyes shut.
“Troy, you don’t understand,” she went on. “The Corridor wants you to know… That Exit in front of you? It leads to the Black Room.”
Something about this pricked Troy’s ears. Despite his bloodied soles and his crushed foot, despite the frostbitten sores and the burn to his back, despite his broken wrist and his utter lack of strength… The only thing that had kept him going, pushing him far beyond the pain that he should have been able to tolerate was the promise of freedom as his reward. That somewhere, at the end of all this, he might escape, and earn a second chance at living the rest of the life that was taken by that bright red truck on the side of the road.
Black Room. Black. If it started in the White Room…
He hardly had any voice at all when his lips formed his next words. “Are you telling me—?”
“The Black Room is the hardest Room of all. But beyond it, if you survive one last challenge, freedom awaits.”
Troy closed his eyes. He could just give up and die. Right here.
But if the hope of freedom was still alive, and it was almost close enough to touch, smell, even taste…
“Are you sure—?”
“It’s not a lie. It’s not a trick. I promise you. I can tell. This is it, Troy. You’
re at the end.”
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t drag his body back upright and push on for a little bit longer. He had nothing left in his muscles to carry him that far.
But he had to try.
He pushed himself up to a crawl on shaking arms, to his bare knees, and finally his bleeding and broken feet.
“Troy,” said Victoria, her throat again thick with emotion. “I believe in you. You can do this. You just have to go a little farther.”
Troy took a deep breath and let it out. He winced as he lifted his broken foot and placed it one step ahead.
It was time.
“CONGRATULATIONS, RUNNER THIRTY-SEVEN THIRTY-FIVE. You have escaped the Gray Room.”
It was black. Completely, wholly black in every way. Not a fraction of light seeped in through any kind of crack. Troy was in absolute darkness. There was no way of seeing how big the Black Room was, but he felt its smallness from the echoes of his footsteps. Compared to the other Rooms, it was tiny.
What was the deal? Was he supposed to feel his way around the wall to find the Exit? That wouldn’t be much of a challenge in a Room so miniscule. There had to be more to it than this.
Troy waited. Give it a few minutes, and see what happened. There had to be a catch. No way would the Corridor simply let him locate the Exit and leave. The Black Room is the hardest Room of all. The bottom was going to give way, the rug swept from under his feet, or the very sky would fall. Something.
A few seconds later, he heard a clack as a brilliant spotlight sprung to life. Fewer than twenty feet to his left, a bright flood light was shining straight down from a few feet above, illuminating a white door that Troy hadn’t noticed until now. The door bore the tree insignia in a muted silver.
“The Exit,” he whispered. “That’s really it.”
As if in answer, the tree came to life and shined almost as bright as the White Room. It froze that way, beckoning him to come. He limped forward a single step, but stopped at the sound of Victoria’s voice.
“No…” she whispered in the most alarmed tone of voice he’d ever heard from her.
Corridor (A MythWorks Novel) Page 11
