He explained to the others what he had been thinking, and that he now knew it wouldn’t work.
“Every time the sensor line is crossed, the wall falls into place. It doesn’t matter what position the wall is in at the time,” Leon said. “So, how do we stop that from happening? Is there some way to spoof the sensor so it doesn’t know we’re crossing it?”
Annie darted to the other side of the room. “Stay back!” she yelled, then touched the black stripe on her side. The wall dropped into place. She walked back to the others, giving them a little shrug. “I was wondering if we tried to cross at another point, maybe it would ignore us. I guess not. It was worth checking.”
“Anything is worth trying,” Leon assured her. “Who knows what’ll work until we test it? Now we know location doesn’t seem to matter. We’ve tried both sides of the room, and the ball set off the sensor in the middle, about fifteen feet in the air.”
“Location,” Sofia muttered. “What if it isn’t which location, but rather how many locations?”
“You mean, keep triggering the wall until it stops working? Breaks down?”
She shook her head. “No. I think we will get tired before the wall does.”
“Multiple triggers at once?” Leon guessed again. “Maybe if all of us go at one time?”
“No, not that either. Well… Maybe. But that wasn’t what I was thinking. Annie, can you please go to the other side again?”
Annie waved in acknowledgement and jogged to the opposite side of the room again.
“Okay, Leon, I want you to trigger the wall, but this time, when it falls, leave your hand on the sensor. Don’t move it off until I tell you. All right?”
“What are we doing?” Leon asked.
“I’ll tell you after we try it. This might be really stupid, but you did say we should try everything. Annie! Get ready! Leon is going to drop the wall.” Sofia nodded toward him. “Go.”
Leon placed his hand on the sensor line and the wall fell. The noise it made was not getting any quieter, and Leon’s ears were beginning to ring from the repetitive impacts.
“Don’t move,” Sofia warned him a second time. Leon nodded his understanding.
The wall began to climb, and Sofia watched it until it reseated itself into its resting position.
“Keep your hand there no matter what happens. Okay?”
“Okay. I said I would,” Leon told her, slightly irritated she felt the need to keep telling him to stay still.
“Annie!” Sofia shouted. “Touch the sensor on your side.”
Annie brushed her hand across the black line and flinched back. Nothing happened. The wall did not come down.
“Again!” Sofia told her.
Annie passed her hand over the sensor with the same result. Sofia stepped up next to Leon and stared at the empty space in front of her.
“For God’s sake, don’t move your hand, Leon.”
“Alright!” he snapped. “You don’t have to keep saying it.
“Sorry,” Sofia said quietly. Then, she held her hand straight out. If the wall came down at that instant, her arm would have been removed at the shoulder. Miraculously, she remained intact. She jerked her hand back, suddenly losing her nerve, and puffed out the breath she had been holding.
“You can move your hand,” she told Leon.
He did, staring at her in shocked awe.
“How did you know?” he asked.
Sofia laughed, a nervous chuckle. “I didn’t. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you what I was doing. I was thinking about my phone back home, and I figured it was worth a shot.”
“Your phone?” asked Annie, returning to the rest of the group. “What does your phone have to do with this?”
Everyone in the room stared at Sofia, the same question reflected in their eyes. Sofia laughed again, self-consciously.
“In my parents’ house, we have this push-button phone. They’ve had it forever and although it’s starting to have some problems, they refuse to replace it. Sometimes the number ‘4’ sticks. If I’m calling a phone number with a four in it and the button sticks, I can’t input the next number until I bang the stupid thing hard enough to knock the stuck button loose. If the four stays pressed down, the phone doesn’t acknowledge any of the other buttons. I started to wonder if this wall would behave the same way. If it’s already triggered and that trigger hasn’t been released, would it recognize another activation of the sensor?”
“That … that’s brilliant!” Leon gushed. Sofia had found their way out on her first attempt. “I might have been here for years and never figured that out. Okay, let’s do this. I’ll drop the wall and hold the sensor. When the wall resets, everyone run to the other side.”
“No,” Shoo said, immediately. “All, not run. We, one at a time, go.”
“Why one at a time?” asked Annie.
Shoo cocked her head at Annie. The chitinous shell of her face gave no hint of expression, but her posture and the nervous twitching of her small hands clearly conveyed her dislike of being questioned. Instead of a rebuke, however, she explained her position. “If we, the wall correctly, have not figured, then we all, while crossing, may die. Rather than all together, dying, better one dies, while others, do survive.”
Despite the cynical nature of her explanation, Leon realized Shoo was right. Her plan would minimize casualties if they had made a miscalculation and the wall fell while they crossed under it. The reality remained they did not know for certain what would happen when one of them stepped across that first line, and one death, while tragic, was better than six.
“Who goes first?” asked Annie.
“She’s the one with the genius plan,” said Malcolm, pointing at Sofia. “Let ‘er go first.”
Annie looked about to object, but Sofia cut her off. “Fine. I suppose that’s fair. I’ll cross under first, then the rest of you can follow in whatever order you like. Leon, drop the wall.”
Leon nodded. “You’re ready?” he asked.
“As ready as I’m going to be. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” When all Sofia got was confused looks from the others around her, she shook her head in disappointment. “None of you have ever read a history book? Fine. Never mind. Just drop the wall.”
Leon slapped a hand against the black line and the deadly portcullis fell. As it had each time previously, the heavy obstruction climbed back to its perch high above them and waited. Sofia reached past Leon to touch the black strip at another location. Nothing happened. Next, she waved a hand in the empty space directly in front of her. Again, nothing.
Sofia closed her eyes, took a quick breath, and blew it out. She hesitated another moment to steel her resolve, then darted forward.
The wall crashed to the ground.
CHAPTER 13
The crash of the wall striking the floor echoed through the empty space around the stunned group. Leon jumped back with a cry of alarm and the others, who had been further away, flinched back in surprise. Annie screamed, covering her mouth with her fists. Even the implacable Kack seemed startled by the barricade’s sudden appearance.
Leon was in shock, his mind unable to accept what had happened. When his heart dropped out of his throat and he could speak again, he turned toward Shoo for an explanation, for some kind of reassurance. “We tested it. It worked. Sofia should have been able to cross. Wh-what happened?”
Shoo did not respond. In the silence, the wall began to rise once more. Leon remembered the fate of the ball that had been caught under the plummeting mass of metal, and he could only imagine what that same impact would do to a fragile human body. Although afraid to see what remained of the girl he had known as Sofia, Leon forced himself to look. He stared into the growing gap between the floor and the retreating barricade. The rising wall revealed a pair of black-clad legs, a white button-up shirt and, finally, the smiling face of Sofia looking at them from the other side of the black lines.
“That was interesting,” Sofia said, then paused. The smile le
ft her face as she registered the stunned expressions staring back at her.
Leon almost darted forward to hug her in relief but managed to check himself at the last minute as he recalled what the catastrophic results of that gesture would surely be. He flicked a glance up at the ceiling, then looked back to Sofia.
“We thought you got killed,” he said, lamely. “The wall came down after you went under, and…”
“Yeah, it scared me pretty badly, too. As soon as I went under, the wall fell right behind me.” She pointed at the second black line on the wall. “I think the line on this side is a secondary trigger. It’s a good thing Shoo had us do this one at a time. Anybody directly behind me would have been crushed.”
Leon’s hands started to shake. The adrenaline spike that flooded his system when he thought Sofia had been killed was still pumping through his veins, and the resulting aftermath left him jittery and a bit sick to his stomach. At least his breathing began to slow, and his heartbeat was easing to a more normal rate. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans to hide their tremors.
The rest of the group took a moment to ease their own frayed nerves before announcing they were ready to resume their efforts at moving past the first barricade. At a gesture from Shoo, Leon triggered the wall, and held the sensor as the impediment lifted back to its starting point. Annie went through next. Each time, the wall retriggered as another member of the party passed by the second sensor, and after every crossing, Leon started the process over again. After Annie successfully passed the obstacle, Malcolm went through, followed by Hiss, Kack and Shoo.
“How are you getting over here?” asked Sofia, when Leon was the last of their group still on the wrong side of the lethal challenge.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I think I have the solution.”
Leon reached into his backpack and removed one of the oddly shaped, apple flavored fruits. He set the fruit on the ground resting against the bottom portion of the black line. The wall predictably fell into place. When it had lifted out of the way, Leon waved a hand over the sensor to test his theory. There was no reaction.
Expressing a confidence he did not actually feel, he walked under the wall to the other side. As he crossed the second sensor line, the massive barricade fell behind him. He could feel the wind of its passage and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end in reaction to the sensation. A chill climbed his spine causing him to shudder involuntarily.
He forced a smile at the others. “That’s one down,” he told them, brightly. “I imagine we have two more.”
“Give me one of those apple things,” Annie told him, holding out her hand.
He complied, setting the fruit upright in her outstretched palm. “What do you want if for?”
“Because you throw like a girl.”
Annie turned and hurled the fruit across the room. As it passed by the second set of black marks, a new barricade flashed down out of the ceiling, slapping it out of the air in midflight.
“Just in case we were missing something else,” Annie explained, although no one had asked.
They made their way single file to the next obstacle. Leon touched the sensor for a test run and allowed the wall to reset. Hiss counted out the time. This barrier, like the last, remained seated on the ground for thirteen seconds then spent exactly twenty-four seconds rising back into place. The same mechanical click could be heard in the recesses of the ceiling as the wall was secured internally.
“Who’s first this time?” asked Leon, standing next to the trigger line.
Shoo pointed a small hand at Kack, who gestured his acknowledgment. He stepped up to the line next to Leon.
“Ready?” Leon asked. Kack responded with the wave of one small hand, the equivalent of a shrug. “Good enough,” Leon told him.
Leon touched the sensor and braced himself for the crash. Thirteen seconds passed, and the wall began its ponderous climb. As soon as it was high enough for Kack to step beneath it, he reached out a large hand to touch the sensor above Leon’s head. The wall did not react. Kack hesitated a moment, then waved the same hand in the air underneath the rising slab of rock. Again, there was no reaction from the wall.
As the heavy stone gate reached the ceiling, Kack stepped through. Leon heard the small hollow click that signified the supporting latch had engaged, then the wall crashed back to the ground.
Too fast, thought Leon, leaping backward. That was too soon.
“Did he get through?” Sofia asked. “Did he…? Oh!”
Sofia pointed toward the floor at the edge of the stone barrier. One long, yellow-brown leg protruded from underneath the edge of the barricade. Dark green ichor puddled around the severed end of the multi-jointed limb. The group stared in horrified fascination while the wall separated from the floor and lifted, revealing an unrecognizable mass of hard shell and colorful liquid that seconds ago had been a living, sentient being. Amidst the pulverized mass, like a horrible cosmic joke, was the almost completely intact material of Kack’s yellow vest.
Kack, however, was gone.
Leon turned to the remaining two members of the Many. “Shoo, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” He paused when he realized Shoo was not paying him any attention. She was watching the blood-stained wall settle flush with the stone roof and click into place. She next set about examining the sensor strip.
Hiss seemed more bothered by the death than Shoo. His head hung low between hunched shoulders, and he gazed at the floor while his small hands repeatedly touched his face and eyes. He looked like a praying mantis grooming itself. The behavior lasted several seconds before he finally seemed to remember that he was not alone.
“Are you okay?” Sofia asked Shoo. The female Many was still examining the black line in front of her. She turned two eyes toward the human.
“I, okay, am. Why, I, okay, would not be?”
“I thought, because of what happened to Kack, you might be upset.”
“Upset? Yes, I see. I, upset, am. In this strange place, males, not so easy to replace, are. But still Hiss, there is.”
Sofia, nonplussed by the cold response from Shoo, did not respond to the statement. Shoo was indeed upset, but not about Kack dying. She was upset that one of the males she had been using to protect herself was now gone and there was no easy way to replace him. The Many had a very different view of life and death than humans did, and Sofia was only now seeming to recognize that fact.
Malcolm chose that moment to chime in. “If we’re all done being weepy eyed over the bug, we need to suss out what went wrong. I don’t think I like the idea of ending up spread out on the windscreen like that bloke, there.”
Leon clenched his fists in anger, but the emotion was not aimed at Malcolm or his callous comment. “What went wrong is simple,” he said. “I assumed that all three walls in here would react exactly the same, even though every damn thing we’ve run into in this horrible place has been completely different from the last. I should have known better. I should have done a couple tests before letting him go under.”
Sofia rested a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t know. None of us did.”
“I should have! I should have realized…”
“Realized what?” Sofia interjected. “That everything on this world can kill us? We all know that. Kack knew that before he walked under the wall. We’re making the best decisions we can. None of us thought that this wall would be any different from the last one. That’s not on you. That’s on all of us.”
Leon’s shoulders slumped. “It would have taken two minutes to test the wall a couple times and realize the mistake. I was in too much of a hurry to take two lousy minutes.”
“Leon…”
“You’re being a dick, Idaho,” chimed in Annie, cutting off whatever Sofia was about to say. “If you think this is your fault, then you must think that you’re the smartest fucker here. That, or the rest of us are too stupid to look out for ourselves. But guess what? You’re not my dadd
y, and nobody picked you to lead this shit brigade, so stop pretending you can tell any of us what to do. If I get killed today, it isn’t because I was following orders. It’s because I agreed to whatever fucked up plan it was that got me cut in half, or poisoned, or…” she pointed at Kack’s remains on the floor. “Or smashed into paste.”
Annie’s anger faded and began to melt into something else. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, and she turned her back to Leon before they could fall.
Leon deflated. Annie’s attack had been harsh but justified. His self-recriminations were a selfish exercise of ego. No single person in this group was responsible for all the others, and no individual needed to shoulder the full burden of keeping everyone safe. If the group occasionally looked to Leon for ideas, that was okay, but they were also free to disagree or come up with their own alternative.
“I’m sorry, Annie,” he said.
“You’re goddamned right, you’re sorry,” she said, wiping the sleeve of Michael’s jacket under one eye and sniffing softly.
“And Sofia, thank you for trying to make me feel better.”
Sofia patted a hand on his chest. “Anytime. Although I think Annie did a better job than I did.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes I need to get hit in the head with something before I can hear what people are saying to me. Annie swings a pretty hard bat.”
“Fuck, you lot are hard to be around,” Malcolm complained. “If you’re done fingering the girls, mate, maybe we can talk about what to do next?”
Annie’s face turned a bright shade of red and Leon could see her about to go off on Malcolm. That tirade, while likely entertaining, would probably not improve their chances of getting out of this trap alive. Trying to keep the peace between the two of them, Leon directed the conversation back to something less volatile.
Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1) Page 18
