by Chris Babu
Immediate death? Drayden shuddered. Maybe this was a terrible idea.
“Very well,” said Payne. He stepped up to the blank computer screen and keyboard. It rested on a lengthy wooden planked table, like a picnic table without the benches. “Presumably, none of you have used a computer before. It’s quite simple. When I press this key, a riddle will appear on the screen, as well as a ticking clock. You have five minutes to solve the riddle and type the solution on the keyboard, hitting Enter, here. You may answer only once. If you are successful, the clock will stop and I will open the door behind me. You will start your journey. If you are not, this Initiation is over. Understood?”
Drayden nodded. Remain calm, just think clearly.
Payne hit the Enter key and stepped off to the side.
The screen read:
“YOU FORCE HEAVEN TO BE EMPTY”
“_ _ _ _ _ _ _”
A timer appeared: 05:00, 04:59, 04:58…
Charlie scratched his head. “You force heaven to be empty. What the hell does that mean?”
“There are seven spaces,” Sidney spoke up. “The answer has seven letters.”
Drayden’s face flushed with heat. He didn’t know the answer.
Alex grabbed Drayden’s arm. “Well?”
Drayden shook him off. “I don’t know. Let me think.”
“Well, think fast!” Alex yelled.
“I need a minute!” Drayden snapped. He stepped away and tugged on his left ear. Think, dammit! He stole a glance at the clock.
04:35, 04:34…
Catrice squatted. She chewed her nails, staring into space.
Drayden grimaced. Was everyone counting on him to solve this?
Tim corralled Charlie, Alex, and Sidney, and raised his hands. “What forces Heaven to be empty? What would empty out Heaven?”
“God? Or no, the devil?” Sidney asked.
Tim’s face lit up. “Good! The devil. That makes sense, right? The devil would empty out Heaven. Nice, Sid!”
“Devil only has five letters,” Alex said, examining his outstretched fingers.
Drayden couldn’t concentrate with everyone yelling. His mind was blank. The devil was a logical thought, but it was a real answer, not a trick. Mr. Kale had said to search for a gimmick.
Charlie bumped his fists together. “What’s another name for the devil?”
“Satan?” Tim asked. “No, five letters.”
“Antichrist?” Sidney asked, counting the letters on her fingers.
“Lucifer?” Tim asked. “Lucifer. Lucifer!” he screamed, jumping up and down. “Seven letters!”
Drayden checked the clock again.
03:40, 03:39…
He started to hyperventilate. Breathe, relax. He rubbed his temples.
Tim ran over. “Dray, Lucifer? What do you think?”
Drayden shook his head.
“You sure? Okay.”
Sidney pressed both hands into the sides of her head. “Three minutes left!”
Tim ran back to Charlie, Alex, and Sidney, huddled around the computer. Catrice sat on the ground in her own world and ran both hands through her hair. She whipped open her backpack and took out her paper and pencil.
“I think we should type Lucifer,” Alex said.
Tim grabbed Alex by the arm. “No, Drayden said it’s wrong.”
“So? What is he, the boss? I don’t hear any answers out of mister smarty-pants over there. I’m typing it.” Alex shoved Tim away and leaned over the computer.
From behind, Tim jammed his arm under Alex’s chin. He yanked him backward and tossed him to the ground on his back. He jabbed his finger at Alex. “It’s the wrong answer, Alex! We only get one guess. If we fail this, we’re dead!”
Alex shot back up, daggers in his eyes. Tim blocked his path to the computer.
“Two minutes left!” Sidney screamed, on the verge of tears.
Drayden crouched. He removed his cap and wiped sweat from his forehead. Think! What’s the trick? Nothing came to him.
Charlie stepped forward. “You force heaven to be empty. You force heaven to be empty. You force heaven to be empty.” He kept repeating it.
Tim turned to him, his eyes fiery. “Shut up, Charlie.”
Charlie continued. “You force heaven to be empty. You force heaven to be empty.”
“Oh my God, one minute!” Sidney shrieked, tears streaking her cheeks.
Charlie bellowed. “You force heaven to be empty! You force heaven to be empty!”
Tim rushed Charlie, got right in his face, and punched his finger into Charlie’s chest. “For the love of God, please shut the hell up!”
Wait…Something…
“No!” Drayden shouted. “Keep going, Charlie!”
Sidney and Alex gawked at him, their mouths open.
Tim looked flummoxed. “You got something, Dray?”
Drayden held up his hand to Tim, grimacing. There was something there.
“You force heaven to be empty! You force heaven to be empty!”
“Drayden, thirty seconds!” Tim hollered, both hands behind his head.
Drayden tried to block everything else out. He closed his eyes. In his head now. You force heaven to be empty. You force heaven to be empty. You force heaven to be empty.
Sidney sobbed. “Fifteen seconds!”
You force heaven to be empty.
You force heaven to be empty.
Something clicked in Drayden’s mind.
You force heaven to be empty.
Seven characters.
You four seven two be em ty.
U 4 7 2 B M T.
“Drayden!” Sidney screamed.
Drayden sprinted to the keyboard. Where were the keys? With one shaky finger, scrambling to find each one, he typed “U 4 7 2 B M T” and hit Enter. The clock stopped. Time remaining: 00:02.
He exhaled, his knees buckling.
Everyone waited a moment, as if making sure they’d really solved it. Finally, Tim whooped and embraced Drayden. “You did it!”
“Yeah!” Charlie shouted and slapped Drayden on the back. “All right!”
Sidney rushed him and hugged him tight. “Thank you, thank you!” she cried, her tears soaking his shirt, her body warm against his.
Alex walked away without a word. The others celebrated, patting Drayden on the head, high-fiving and laughing.
Drayden watched Catrice.
She knelt and placed her things back in her backpack, without looking up even once.
Owen Payne rejoined them, his arms crossed. “Your journey commences. Good luck.” He pushed a black button beside the shiny door. The door creaked open, revealing a staircase down into darkness.
CHAPTER 10
One step closer, Mom.
Charlie buried his head in his backpack, making exaggerated happy faces. “It’s like Christmas in this bag!”
“Guess we’ll need our flashlights,” Tim said.
Everyone dug them out before heading down the stairs. Nobody had ever used one before. They all sat for a moment, flipping them on and off.
Drayden unscrewed his to check out the battery. He removed it, rotating it in his fingers, feeling the cool, smooth metal of the tiny cylinder. This was like out of his history books. It was shocking that the Bureau had batteries. Supposedly they’d expired decades ago. He made a mental note of the superior technology the Bureau had already showcased: mechanical pencils, computers, flashlights, plenty of eggs, and now batteries.
Tim led the way down the stairs, his flashlight’s yellow beam guiding the way. At the bottom they flashed the lights around. They stood on the train tracks in the tunnel, which extended quite wide, with a flat ceiling. It housed tracks for four trains, two downtown and two uptown. Vertical black steel beams every five feet separ
ated the tracks, creating the effect of walls between them. Besides the steel rails and wooden ties of the track, the ground was mostly dirt and gravel. Everything was damp and reeked of mold.
The tracks themselves didn’t look like the ones from books or movies. Six feet separated the railroad ties in most places, with deep ditches between them. It would be near impossible to walk on the tracks. Luckily, a foot of flat space existed on the outside of each rail that would suffice.
“I studied the map already,” Drayden said. “Memorized it. The easiest way is just staying on this track for the Two-Three Line, straight down to the Wall Street Station.”
“What are all these other tracks?” Tim asked.
“This one on the right is for the One Line train; the ‘local’ it was called in a footnote,” Drayden said. “It runs beside the Two-Three Line. I guess it’s local because it stops at more stations along the way, but branches off further down and ends at South Ferry. The Two-Three Line doesn’t have that many stops. The other tracks on our left were for the uptown trains that went north. As long as we stay on either the uptown or downtown Two-Three Line tracks, we’re good.”
Tim hooked his thumb south. “Shall we?”
They hiked in silence. Everyone except Sidney shined their flashlights on the ground to avoid tripping on the ends of the rail ties. She aimed hers at the walls, exposing archaic graffiti. Apart from their flashlights, the tunnel was pitch black. Periodically, grates to the street above cast rays of sunlight onto the tracks.
Drayden’s nerves finally settled down, although he remained shaken by his struggle to crack that riddle. Before the Initiation, he mostly feared the bravery tests. After that first intelligence one, both challenge types scared him. If he hadn’t solved it, they’d be on a bus to exile right now. Two seconds, two beats of a heart, defined the difference between life and death.
Nobody else was any help either, thrusting all the weight of solving it on his shoulders. He knew Catrice was brilliant from school, yet she hadn’t helped at all. If she’d been on the verge of solving it on paper, she kept it to herself. He wondered why she and the others had entered the Initiation. Given the long journey ahead, it would probably come up.
Charlie broke the silence. “Dray, man, thank God you solved that riddle. We were such flunks.” He held his hand like a gun, pressed it to his temple, and pretended to fire it. “Were you just playing with us, making it come down to the wire? That was tighter than a cockroach on a crumb.” He play-punched Drayden in the shoulder.
Drayden had always hated Charlie because he was Alex’s goon. Yet, at times in the past, he could tell Charlie wasn’t a totally bad kid. Even a few days ago when Alex sucker punched him, Charlie had tossed him his hat.
“Charlie!” Alex yelled from up ahead, glowering at both of them.
Charlie hustled to catch up to Alex. Alex whispered to him, and Charlie glanced back at Drayden. They continued ahead, separate from the pack.
An amused smile grew on Drayden’s face. He hated to admit how much he welcomed the praise, and loved being the hero for once. Catrice’s indifference still bugged him. She never thanked him, or even looked him in the eyes. Fear may have paralyzed her, or failing to solve the riddle disappointed her. Perhaps he should approach her to collaborate on the next challenge. But did that make sense either? Completing the Initiation was the goal, and it was too critical to worry about impressing a girl. He had to stay focused.
“What the…?” Tim said, startling Drayden.
He squinted, then saw it, a red glow in the darkness. A black digital clock with a red display hung from the ceiling. It read 07:51:22 and counted down.
“How long is it going to take us anyway?” Tim asked. “Is eight hours enough time? Should we be running?”
Drayden scratched his chin as he walked. There were twenty north-south blocks per mile. They started at Seventy-Second Street. To reach the Lab, at Fourteenth Street, was fifty-eight blocks, roughly three miles. Ignoring the challenges, if they walked three miles per hour, or a block per minute, they’d reach Fourteenth Street in an hour. Fourteenth Street was greater than halfway to Wall Street. Even with some time-consuming challenges ahead, eight hours seemed like way too much time. “I don’t think we should stop and nap, but eight hours is plenty, in my opinion.”
“If there were no challenges,” Catrice said, “the walk to Wall Street would only take two hours or so.” She glanced at Drayden.
“Thanks, Catrice,” Tim said. “So maybe we can take some breaks along the way.”
“Light up ahead!” Charlie yelled.
Drayden gritted his teeth. Hopefully it was a clock and not a station.
The dim light ahead appeared to come from the right side of the tunnel.
Charlie hustled ahead and hollered again from about thirty yards away. “Sixty-Sixth Street station! Nothing here!”
Drayden exhaled, recalling that Eris Page had said only brightly lit stations contained challenges. Many challenges remained, but it was a relief to pass an empty station. If all the small stations on the One Line were empty, there wouldn’t be many challenges at all.
As they passed, sunlight canvassed the platform from the street above. Even though the stations were open to the world, this section of the Dorms was off limits. The streets would be deserted. Eris Page had said if they dared to escape for some reason, they would be exiled. The creepy station sat untouched from its last use a generation ago. The platform, set off to the right, lay covered in dust and garbage.
Sidney strolled up beside Drayden, shining the flashlight on her face. She gazed at him with puffy, red eyes. “Hey.” She wrapped her arm around his waist. “Thanks again. Sorry I got all crazy back there.”
“You doing better now?”
She pulled her arm away. “Yeah. I was just so nervous. I couldn’t stop thinking about my sister and her being all alone if we failed. I’m sure I’ll be fine now that we got that first one out of the way. What’s up with her, though?” She motioned toward Catrice. “Did she even go to our school? I’m not sure that girl actually has a pulse.” She snickered, or maybe sniffled.
Drayden didn’t want to make Sidney feel crappy for saying that, but he wasn’t going to laugh at Catrice’s expense. He had a special appreciation for not being noticed by the popular kids. He shrugged, and decided Sidney had sniffled. “Yeah, she went to our school. She was quiet. I guess we all just deal with things our own way.”
Tim slowed and let them catch up. “Hey, Sid. Even though it wasn’t the right answer, I dug your devil idea. Sounded right to me. How’d you come up with that?”
Drayden knew Tim too well. He either liked Sidney, he simply couldn’t resist hitting on any girl nearby, or he wanted to prove to Drayden that even the Initiation couldn’t muzzle his bravado.
“Oh, I dunno.” She waved her hand through the air. “I’m Catholic, and my family is pretty religious. It was stupid anyway. Thank God Dray was here to fix it.”
“I didn’t think it was stupid,” Drayden said. “It was smart, very logical.”
Tim shined his flashlight on his own face and poked Drayden behind Sidney’s back. When Drayden looked, Tim closed his eyes, puckered his lips, and made overly dramatic kissing motions in the air behind her.
Drayden shook his head. He appreciated Tim’s attempt to lighten the mood, but the upcoming challenge had to be close. His stomach was already twisted in knots.
Tim quickly pointed his flashlight at the ground before Sidney noticed.
“Can we talk about this death thing for a second?” Sidney asked. “Did anyone know we’d be facing immediate death?”
“No,” Drayden said, picturing his head being lopped off by some blade.
“We knew exile was a risk coming in,” Tim said. “It’s pretty much the same thing.”
“Yeah, but there’s some hope with exile!” Charlie called from up
ahead. “Like you become some crazy person who finds a way to survive in the woods or something. With death, well, there’s not much hope.”
“Well said, Charlie,” Drayden said. “With death, there isn’t much hope. I’m not looking forward to the first death challenge.”
Tim pulled Drayden back and let Sidney walk ahead. He whispered in Drayden’s ear. “Dude, Sid likes you. She’s super hot. What are you waiting for?”
After making sure no one else was listening, Drayden said, “I know. I like her too, but you know I’m into Catrice.”
“Dray, no offense, but you gotta let that go. She doesn’t like anyone. Sid is a real live girl who’s interested. I’m just saying.”
“We’re in the middle of the damn Initiation, chotch,” Drayden whispered back. “I’m worried about surviving, not finding a girlfriend. Besides, even if we pass, we’ll probably end up in different zones.”
“Maybe you can score that elusive first kiss in the tunnel.”
“Lights up ahead!” Charlie shouted. “Station!”
The Fifty-Ninth Street station crushed Drayden’s spirit. Another stop on the One Line, it dashed any hope the challenges would only occur at the less-frequent stations on the Two-Three Line.
Tim led the way up the steps to the platform. The brilliant white lights revealed another spotless station. On One Line stops, the platform was flush with the far-right wall of the station. All four sets of tracks ran through the center, and the uptown platform sat on the station’s left side.
The pledges walked down the platform to a spot brightened by sunlight from the street above. Here, steel supporting pillars with peeling green paint broke up the otherwise circular space. A large table holding a few glass objects stood in the center, with a steel box beside it on the floor. A clock hung above the table, displaying the remaining time: 07:39:48, 07:39:47…
Drayden’s heart pounded. He scanned the area for Owen Payne, or anyone else.
