Rebekah wasted no time at all, jumping and kicking off the adjacent wall and diving through the closing hallway. She rolled as she landed, gaining her footing almost immediately and never losing a stride. She had a few more yards to go before the first finish line. She could see it in front of her. That’s when the entire corridor shifted, changing from square to circular. She kept her footing, but the room began to spin around her.
Come on Rebekah! She berated herself. Rebekah vaulted, catching a foot on the rolling floor. It threatened to flip her onto her head. But Rebekah was ready, diving into a series of cartwheels that put her past the spinning room and on the other side of the finish line. She stopped herself, her breathing heavy. She needed a second to recover.
“That was really something,” she muttered as the air burned her lungs. She hadn’t run into anything like that ever in her life.
“Did you know she was that fast?” Ian asked, trying his best to be heard over the crowd. Marcus shook his head. Rebekah was quick, but she hadn’t ever been that fast before. Marcus began to understand what Rebekah had been doing with her free time the past year.
“Eight point two seconds ladies and gentlemen!” the announcer’s voice said, thundering through the Holodrome. Rebekah had just broken the single cycle record.
The rest area was only a few meters long, and Rebekah walked quickly to the next section. In front of her, stretching upward was a latticework of bars and beams. Rebekah looked up, seeing the web-like structure extend upward almost thirty feet from the Holodrome floor.
“Okay,” she said quietly. A small digital clocked ticked away her remaining rest period. Rebekah tapped the small button next to the clock, waiting for the clue she’d been promised.
“At the top of the platform, a small object awaits. Get the object and get back down the other side without damaging it, or yourself.” Rebekah grimaced. Of course, they didn’t say what the object was, or how she was supposed to get to it.
The clock read ten seconds.
“Here we go,” Rebekah cracked her knuckles, shook out her hands and lunged. Her hands closed around the first bar, checking to make sure her grip was solid. The bar gave only slightly, bending with her weight. With a heave and a shift of her mass, Rebekah pulled herself into a tuck and swung out, wrapping her knees around the next bar above her.
Leaping and tumbling her way, Rebekah was up the thirty feet of bars in only a handful of seconds. The platform at the top was empty of all but a pedestal with a small plastic egg on it. Rebekah approached quickly, taking the egg in her hand and setting it in a pouch on her belt. It wasn’t the safest place to put it, but she’d need both her hands to get back down the other side.
“And now . . .,” she said to herself, looking down from the platform. That’s when the bars leading down the latticework started to move. The maze was shifting. Rebekah grimaced, watching the moving bars for a pattern. The clock was ticking. She needed to go.
“Let’s do it,” she muttered as she dove head first into the air. Marcus had done this once before, and Rebekah knew it was possible. She felt the air rushing past her as she descended. She could hear the gasp from the crowd. She could imagine Marcus’s reaction. He was probably standing from his seat, a terrified prayer flying out of his mind.
A tuck and a twist shifted Rebekah into position. She reached out with both hands and caught a bar. The grip wasn’t strong, but Rebekah didn’t need it to be. She let her momentum carry her around and flip her. Her body was tucked neatly as she careened through the air. She counted the seconds.
One!
She was unable to see with her head tucked between her knees.
Two!
But it was a simple matter to open up at the right time.
Three!
One miscount though, and she’d miss her target.
Four! KICK!
The world appeared again as she uncoiled herself. The bar was there, and Rebekah grabbed it with one hand. Her eyes glanced about. The bar she was on wasn’t moving sideways. It was moving downward. She was below the ground plane.
“Blast!” Rebekah used her momentum to throw herself upward. She was losing time. The ground came up to her view, and then away again. The bars were moving like a Ferris wheel. Rebekah gave it one last kick, reaching out with her hands, grabbing the edge of the floor with her fingers.
With effort, Rebekah hoisted herself up and crossed the finish line, stopping the clock. It took her a second to gain her legs again, but she managed to straighten up and check her pouch.
“Good thing,” she said after making sure there were no cracks in the surface of the plastic egg. She started for the next cycle, wondering what could possibly be more challenging.
“Jeez that was risky,” Jack exclaimed. He’d never seen anyone dive off a thirty-foot platform like that before. He’d never even considered such a maneuver. It was suicide. But Rebekah had managed it.
“That is forty-seven seconds all together. She lost a little climbing back up the rungs,” Uther said, checking the game clock. Rebekah was still on pace to beat Darius, but not by nearly as much now.
“Well, the next part shouldn’t take that long,” Mary added. She sounded certain. But then, she wasn’t in it.
“How’s she doing?” Darius asked, leaning against the railing in front of Marcus and Ian. He wiped his face with a towel, his ordeal in the Tumbler still taking its toll on him. Marcus frowned a little.
“She’s not dead,” he said solemnly. Darius grunted at that.
“Of course she’s not dead. We have the same teacher. I meant what’s her time?” Ian pointed to the clock. Darius smirked a little.
“Well I’ll be.”
The third cycle was fairly unremarkable looking. The room looked to be about eight by eight feet, with bare walls and no ceiling. The only things that Rebekah could see were the teardrop pattern on the floor and the cameras placed inside for coverage. A quick tap on the hint button gave her the clue.
“The egg knows the exit.” Rebekah frowned. That wasn’t terribly helpful. But then Rebekah wasn’t expecting all the answers. This was one of the puzzle trials. She’d need her brains to gain an exit.
“The egg knows the exit, huh?” The rest clock read fifteen seconds. At least she had a moment to think. “What’s the exit?” she asked, shaking the egg in front of her face. The little thing didn’t move at all. Not that she expected it to.
Rebekah stepped into the room, and immediately found herself stuck. The walls on both sides started to close in, and the door at the front of the room sealed itself. She was trapped with only a way back. She looked at the egg, and tried to figure out why the secret to the exit would be in the little shell. The egg shifted a little in her hand, the small end pointing at the moving wall.
It would only be a matter of seconds before the walls closed up around her. Exiting back wasn’t an option if she wanted to avoid a penalty. She made her mind work as she looked around.
“The egg knows the exit,” she muttered as she walked around. “What’s special about an egg?” Her toe caught on one of the teardrop designs on the floor, nearly tripping her. They weren’t just a design. They were bubbles in the floor. They had been deceiving before. The floor was like an egg carton set on its side. She glanced about, trying to figure the reason for it, when the answer came to her. She moved to the right, seeing one teardrop that was actually a pit in the floor. The logic of it seemed to work, and Rebekah did what she thought, setting the egg in the teardrop hole.
The wall approached the egg and didn’t stop. Instead, it seemed to just swallow over the egg, as though the wall were made of rubber. Rebekah frowned at it. That wasn’t what she had expected. And it wasn’t any help either. Now she was short her very necessary egg.
The wall halted suddenly. Rebekah heard something move. The wall behind her stopped as well, and the wall before her stretched and warped, becoming almost transparent.
“Okay,” she said. The egg was blinking on the other si
de of the wall, pointing the way forward. Twenty feet ahead, a door waited. Rebekah would have to go through the wall. She touched it, feeling it compress beneath her fingers. It wouldn’t take much to tear through it, except that she knew it couldn’t be that easy.
“Well,” she said, walking forward and pressing her hands into the membrane. It moved away from her, but quickly recoiled, forcing her back again. The wall was composed of a reflexive membrane, meant to hold its original shape no matter the force applied. This was going to take something other than force to solve.
“She’s stuck,” Ellis said simply. They’d seen Darius and Axia both solve this. Rebekah just needed a little time to think.
“She’s not stuck,” Jack shot back. Ellis slunk in his chair a little. He knew Jack hadn’t meant it to be mean, but he took it that way anyway.
“It took March almost two minutes to solve this,” Mary said, taking a sip of her drink.
“She’s only been in there for twenty-eight seconds.” Jack was looking a little concerned. He’d hoped Rebekah’s mind worked as quickly as her reflexes. He looked at Uther, who had his eyes closed. “Uther?”
“She is reasoning it out. Allow your mind to calm, and you will see.” He opened his eyes again and motioned to the field of play. Jack looked down again. Rebekah was on the move.
Can’t go through. Can’t go around. Rebekah laid herself on the floor and saw a quarter inch gap. With a little effort, she managed to get her hand beneath the wall. She reached for the egg, pulling it from its slot. The minute she pulled it free, the wall contracted and started moving again. Then we go under, she heard Marcus say in her head. She wasn’t sure this was going to work, but she had a hunch. She lay there motionless, waiting as the wall did to her what it had done to the egg.
After a moment, the rubberized partition had moved completely over her and left her in a hallway. She stood and ran until she crossed the finish line for the cycle. The rest clock read two minutes.
“That’s weird.” Rebekah gave the clock a tap. It didn’t react. Instead, a voice came through the small speaker next to the clock.
“You have one minute to stop this digital clock in cycle four. You may use any means necessary to halt it.” Rebekah heard a distant click, like the sound of a door opening somewhere. The clock started.
“How am I-” she muttered. The clock was inside the wall, and the wall was sealed shut. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that the mechanism to stop the clock was inside. But she couldn’t see any way to get to it.
“Intruder detected. Sterilize this room.” The voice sounded mechanical, and Rebekah knew instantly that she wasn’t dealing with a person. She pivoted around, and saw what looked like a giant Taser cannon coming down from a hole in the ceiling. She gasped as she heard it whine to life. It was aiming for her.
“That blasted thing,” Darius said under his breath. The stun cannon had given him his first real challenge of the course. He’d lost so much time there. It had been the only thing that he felt he had failed at.
“She’s on pace to beat you Mister March,” Ian said simply. He was trying to get a gauge on this guy. So far, he was the prototypical Dragoon. Stolid and inflexible.
“She’s not going to beat me,” he responded, his voice a little darker than the moment before.
The thing was persistent. Rebekah had managed to avoid a few of its initial volleys, but the computer was learning her tendencies. The thing was starting to anticipate her tactics and cut off her routes. The stun blasts weren’t terribly painful, but they had made her arm numb, and thrown her around the room a little. Rebekah wasn’t seeing stars yet, but she knew another hit or two might put her down for the count.
The cannon whirred as it followed her movements, its axial servo designed specifically to track fast moving targets. Rebekah feinted a run and dove toward the thing. But a quick bolt of electricity knocked her back against the wall. She took a second to see the clock. She had less than a minute.
Come on Norik! She barked at herself. The cannon made a threatening noise, almost like a mechanical growl, shifting itself forward a little, as though it were trying to bait her. Rebekah faked left, then faked right and headed for the clock.
The cannon let go another arc of energy, but Rebekah hurdled over it, flipping once and then kicking off the wall, changing her momentum and flipping back the other direction. She landed flat on her back as another arc seared across her view. The dancing bolt of electricity cooked the air over her face, making her entire body tingle.
That was too close, she thought, wasting no time flipping herself up into a handstand, and then cartwheeling backwards away from another charge. The stun cannon tried to cut her off, but Rebekah was ready. With a gymnast’s skill, she sprung off the balls of her feet and tumbled in midair, landing on her fingers and toes, her body almost parallel with the floor.
No time for this, she thought. Get that thing shut off! The cannon whirred back into place, aiming right at her. Rebekah sprung upwards and didn’t stop moving, only giving herself a second to shift her weight before going straight for the cannon.
The cannon knew how close she was. It spun wildly, trying to keep her at a reasonable distance with its own size. Rebekah ducked the swinging cannon and pulled herself up onto the firing column. She didn’t waste a second, grabbing a clump of wires and yanking them from the machine. The cannon fell silent.
“Oh jeez!” The Taser suddenly went wild, nearly tossing Rebekah to the deck. She held on for all it was worth as Taser bolts careened around the room. The clock was still ticking down. She had only a few scant seconds left. She wasn’t sure what she could do.
“Stop!” she yelled in frustration, peppering the column with frustrated kicks. The Taser stopped bucking, and started to spin. Rebekah let herself fall off this time, and watched as the bolts of electricity intensified. The cannon was rotating in a set pattern now, and the bolts became a stream. A cascade of light struck the face of the clock, stopping it and the cannon with only four seconds on the readout. Rebekah let out a ragged sigh and got to her feet.
“I’m not doing that again,” she mumbled, her legs unsteady. Her body felt like jelly.
Ellis was watching the match, but not as closely as he had expected. Instead, he was paying much more attention to Mary than to the maze. Not that he was staring. In fact, he was looking directly at the viewing display. But all his attentions were focused at Mary. She didn’t seem to mind so much, doing her best to just pay him no mind at all.
“She’s approaching the three-minute mark,” Mary said, sipping her drink again. Her hand was on the armrest next to Ellis. He wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe he could hold her hand, if she let him.
“And four cycles remaining,” Uther said from the other side. Ellis steeled himself. This wasn’t the time.
Watch the match, you dork! he thought.
Donavan walked into the reactor room of the Triumphant, and smirked at the sight before him. Sage was hammering away at the keypad in front of him, trying his level best to fix the problem with the core vibrations. He looked frustrated.
The rest of the engineering crew was out watching the Power Tumbler, taking advantage of their conditional shore leave. Sage was here by himself with Tracy, both trying to figure what was wrong with Sage’s math. He’d never had any problem with the formulas before.
“That’s not right either,” Tracy said softly, more to herself than to anyone else. Sage grimaced as his computation simulator signaled another failure.
“This is supposed to be working,” he muttered. Donavan walked up, trying not to disrupt the process of thought going on in front of him. Sage looked up at the glowing blue sphere over their heads. Donavan could see a pleading look in his eyes, if only for a moment. As though he were trying to will the machine to work.
The ship had been humming lately. Not that it didn’t throb when the core was active. But this was different. Donavan could feel it in the ship. He could feel it in the soles of his shoes
. Things were off, and judging by the way the room was shuddering, it was clear that the reactor core was the trouble. The intermittent rumble in the deck plates was wrong, but Sage had promised him that this was just a part of the shakedown process. Donavan wanted to believe him, but something nagged at him. This wasn’t right.
“Status,” Donavan said when he thought he saw an opening. Sage didn’t look away from the core as quickly as the captain expected. He turned slowly, and Donavan saw a strange remoteness in his eyes.
“We’re working on it,” he said, letting his face go slack.
“I can see that,” Donavan returned. “The question of status is so you can tell me what you know about this. I already KNOW you’re working. I can SEE you working. Why isn’t IT working?” Sage looked a little offended, but he nodded anyway. He let out a frustrated breath and began.
“For reasons I can’t figure yet, the vibrational patterns of the core are not stabilizing.” Sage gave the keypad another set of computations, and the room grew quiet, but only for a moment. Donavan could feel the pulse of the great reactor in the deck plates beneath him shift subtly. It made his shoes squeak as he fought for his footing.
“You said it’s an experimental system. Maybe it needs more work,” Donavan said, steadying himself on Sage’s headrest. Sage glanced over his shoulder at his captain, shaking his head. An annoyed grunt rumbled from his chest.
“No. My machine is flawless. It’s the math. The computations are the thing here. I just need to fine tune the formula.” Donavan came closer, looking over Sage’s shoulder at the small monitor he was working with.
“The math?” he asked. Sage nodded, almost like a nervous fidget.
“If I can get the formula right, I can keep this thing spinning at the proper speed and pattern. And if the rotational pattern is perfected, then the vibrational problem will cease. The tremors will fall in line with the structural frequency of the ship and then you won’t even notice them.” Sage waited as another computation worked its way through the computer. After a moment, the room grew quieter, but the vibrations continued, only slightly less intense.
The Paladin Archives Book Two The Withering Falseblade Page 30
