Corridor (A MythWorks Novel) Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE BOOKS OF ROBIN PARRISH...

  “Robin Parrish is a keen-eyed, passionate pop cultural savant, whose writing is as incisive and insightful as it is entertaining.”

  —Allan Heinberg, Executive Producer, Grey’s Anatomy

  “The moral dilemmas that the characters find themselves engaged in are palpable; the setting of a faltering America seems almost too real… and the final conclusion rushes to a crashing and unexpected crescendo. Vigilante is a story well told that touches on themes worth thinking about in this day and age.”

  —Joshua Olds, LifeIsStory

  “Parrish’s cinematic, visual writing has again produced an action packed movie in book form with strong similarities to comic book superheroes. His characters show great depth as they struggle with moral and ethical issues that could be torn from today’s headlines… Parrish’s strong characterizations and insightful writing make [Vigilante] not one to miss.”

  —Gail Welborn, Washington Christian Book Review Examiner

  “Once again, [with Nightmare], Robin Parrish proves he belongs in the ranks with Frank Peretti and Mike Dellosso, telling a creepy story with a powerful underlying purpose.”

  —Eric Wilson, author of Jerusalem’s Undead Trilogy

  “With the tightly paced and plotted storyline, the excellent characterizations and the attention to story details made [Nightmare] one of my favorite reads of all time. In suspense fiction, it stands easily next to Dean Koontz and Stephen King.”

  —Paul A. Rose, Jr., actor

  “Parrish writes so cinematically [in Offworld], every scene comes to life. The action rips across the pages, and the characters would make stars of the actors in the roles. Parrish keeps the suspense taut by giving more questions than answers and keeping the characters constantly on the run for their lives. The chase scenes are phenomenal, especially Trisha’s leap with two jeeps across the sky into a skyscraper. On the screen, it’s the kind of scene that would earn a cheer of awe from the crowd, on the page, it made my jaw drop and I wanted to share it with someone else!”

  —Christina Lockstein, Christy’s Book Blog

  Other books by Robin parrish

  Vigilante

  Nightmare

  Offworld

  Merciless

  Fearless

  Relentless

  TROY’S SKIN TINGLED. His eyes were clamped shut tight, though he didn’t know why. He tried opening them, but his surroundings were too bright; it was as if he’d been swallowed by pure light and there was nowhere to fix his gaze. Putting up a hand to shade his eyes didn’t help because the light was casting no shadows. It shone from everywhere and everything.

  Something terrible had been happening in his dream just before he awoke. Something. Terrifying. So traumatizing that his skin still tingled, covered in beads of sweat. His heart was still trying its best to destroy his ribcage in its quest to break free.

  But what caused these feelings? What had been happening to him just before he woke up here?

  And where exactly was here, anyway? The light here was impossible. He couldn’t think of anyplace that had light so strong it completely erased shadows. It was like sitting on the surface of the sun. Only without the heat. In fact, now that he thought about it, it was cold here. He was sure that if he’d been able to see anything, his own breath would be visible.

  Troy heard an ambient humming coming from somewhere, a pronounced white noise so loud he could almost feel the vibration in the filling of a back tooth.

  His hands probed the ground as he lay flat on his back. It was slick and smooth, yet hard like glass or plastic. It was mildly cold to the touch.

  His heart rate was rising, and though the air he inhaled was definitely oxygen, he found it awfully hard to catch his breath. His senses were sharp enough to detect that this place, wherever it was, was enormous like how he imagined a wide-open desert to be. Maybe it was the way the air moved, maybe it was the tiny echoes of faint sounds reaching distant walls, but Troy knew that, despite how big he felt the space was, he was inside something. Troy had once been on a vacation to Orlando with his dad and brothers. Their hotel had an incredible, ten-story atrium that encompassed the lobby, the hallways between rooms, and two restaurants, but at least ten of those could have fit in here. Maybe twenty.

  Troy tried opening his eyes again to see if the light had faded, and found that, if anything, it was brighter. Could human eyes adjust to this kind of intensity?

  “Can—hear—?”

  He jerked. His eyes snapped open involuntarily, and he quickly forced them closed again to avoid going blind.

  “—have—calm—!” called out the voice. What direction was it coming from? It seemed like it was coming from everywhere.

  He knew the voice wanted him to calm down. How was he supposed to do that? He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here, he had no idea where “here” was, and he couldn’t see anything because it felt like ten thousand spotlights were shining on him.

  “What is this? Where am I?” he screamed as loud as he could, and even, then he feared it wasn’t enough to break through the blaring white noise.

  “Calm—!” replied the voice. It was so loud it rattled the insides of Troy’s head.

  “Calm down?” he asked. “Fine, okay…” How was he supposed to calm down in the middle of all this?

  He clutched at his chest, felt the hammering beneath the dark green t-shirt, and tried taking long, slow breaths.

  “Yes, good—more,” said the voice, a bit more soothing now.

  Was it a female voice? It was too high-pitched to be a guy.

  It took every ounce of concentration he could muster, but he managed to achieve a measure of calm.

  “Are you hearing me?” asked the voice. Yes, definitely a girl. No discernable accent.

  “Yeah,” said Troy, his breath heavy as he tried to force his heart to slow down. “What’s going on? Where am I? Who—?”

  “Stop,” the girl said. “Just stop. I can’t answer your questions. You have to trust me. There’s no time. The only way out is to Run. But you have to do it now. Stay where you are, and you’re dead!”

  Her voice carried just the right amount of desperation to be convincing. Move or die? His stomach was twisting into knots that grew tighter by the moment. He didn’t rely on others for help. It was pointless. He never even asked for help from anyone else.

  “Wait,” he said. “You ‘can’t answer’ my questions? Seriously? You kidnap me, bring me to this place, won’t tell me anything…and you think I’ll just trust you?”

  “I didn’t bring you here,” she snapped. “I’m just your Conduit. A sort of…mouthpiece—”

  “How am I even hearing you?” Troy interrupted, unable to stop himself, though his body began crawling, slowly. “It’s like you’re right next to me. Is there something in my—?”

  “Listen to me, there’s no time! Go!”

  “Wait, what?” he replied, still not able to catch up to her instructions. He bore down with his eyes closed and swallowed hard, trying to force this strange girl’s words to conform to some kind of logic. “You made me get all calm, and now you—?”

  “Don’t work yourself up again,” replied the exasperated girl. “Listen to what I’m saying. I can help you, but you won’t be able to hear me unless you stay calm.”

  Troy cracked open his eyes, but had to immediately shut them again. “It’s so bright! Where am I supposed to go if I can’t even see?”

  “I know it’s bright,” replied the girl, “but you have to try not to panic.”

  “Try not to panic!” Troy screamed. “I have no idea how I got here, I can’t see a thing, and there’s a girl in my head telling me not to
freak out!”

  Troy suspected his outburst had cut off his communication with the girl, given her warnings about remaining calm, but for the moment he didn’t care. He should’ve been grateful for her help. He knew that. But every word he said was tinged with a resentment that he couldn’t suppress.

  He sat still, cross-legged, feeling the cool breeze—was it getting colder?—and waited for the girl to speak again. The brightness had prevented him from getting even one solid look at this eerie place, but he was certain there were no walls anywhere close by. The persistent humming and his own voice rolled across the flat, perfectly smooth surface with a hollow echo. It felt like he was the only person in an enormous colosseum.

  He reached a hand up and felt around his ears. Nothing was feeding the mystery girl’s voice to him. Yet he’d heard her audibly, with perfect clarity. So how was he able to hear her voice if it wasn’t entering through his ears?

  “Listen,” she said, her voice bursting back to life, “you have to start—”

  “Moving, yeah,” Troy rolled onto his hands and knees and began to stand. The flat surface felt like a refrigerator shelf now. “Heard you the first time. I get the idea—” He’d barely made it to his feet when a wintery gust blasted into his chest, and he was sent flying backwards.

  “No! I didn’t say stand—!” she cried, but was cut off again.

  He tumbled on the flat surface, blown hard by the powerful wind, and before he knew it, the floor had vanished, and he was falling. Instinctively, he grasped at anything he could reach, and his right hand found hold of the ledge. Only it wasn’t like a cliff face; just like the ground, it was a perfectly straight, flat edge at a precise right angle. Without something coarse to provide traction, his grip would last only seconds. Maybe less.

  Was everything in this place made of the same material? It was like some kind of hard plastic. Cold. Impossibly smooth. A dozen more thoughts flew through his mind—his dad, the way Cori’s red hair would slowly come loose from her scrunchie during P.E., his hideously green Volkswagen Beetle, the Chem test he hadn’t studied for yet, the ice-cold fear that siezed his muscles—in that brief moment as he hung from the side of the ledge. His right hand was sweaty, his grip was failing, and he wasn’t very strong to begin with. He grabbed at the ledge with his left hand, buying himself a couple more seconds.

  “Swing a leg up!” shouted the girl. “Use your shoes!”

  Troy didn’t hesitate. He lifted his left leg, and the rubber traction of his sneakers briefly caught the flat surface.

  “Roll over!”

  With a grunt, he flung himself up and over the edge and laid on his back, panting hard.

  “Thanks,” he whispered, and hoped it was loud enough for her to hear. He couldn’t get anything else to come out just now.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied. “You can’t stand. Not in here. Keep your body flat against the ground and crawl. As fast as you can.”

  Oh, was that all? Crawl while completely prone? No problem! Maybe he could carry a big rifle while he was at it, like those World War II soldiers in the movies, crawling in the mud under barbed wire.

  Another thought occurred to him. Between breaths, he asked, “Can you see me?”

  “Like I said, I’m your Conduit. I see what you see and I hear your voice,” she said. “That’s all. But I don’t see anything at the moment since your eyes are shut. All that matters is, if you want to stay alive you have to listen and do what I say. No hesitation. No second-guessing. No questions. Can you do that?”

  His instinctive answer was not the one she wanted to hear. “Not without effort,” was the best he could offer.

  “It’ll have to do.”

  She was right. What choice did he have?

  “Do you know the way out of this place?” asked Troy.

  “I know how to find it,” she replied.

  “You, wait—what?!”

  “It’s different every time!” she said, frustration growing in her voice. “Now, you have to move—you’ve been still too long!”

  “Why? What’s—”

  The ground began to shake before Troy could finish his question.

  “If you take too long to escape, it starts to collapse! Now stop asking stupid questions, get up on your hands and knees, and move, you idiot!”

  He rolled quickly, and began to crawl on the glass-like ground as it trembled beneath him. He was going to have to do this blind. And if he didn’t crawl fast enough, the whole place was going to shake itself apart around him. The surface beneath him was slick as ice now, making it impossible to cling to.

  Was it time to wake up yet?

  “It’s kind of narrow, so go as fast as you can, but put out your hands to feel what’s in front of you so you’ll know if you reach the edge.”

  “I don’t even know if I’m going the right way!” he shouted.

  “If you haven’t fallen off, you’re going the right way. Hurry!”

  Troy crawled. He almost tumbled over when he reached an edge just ahead, but still he couldn’t open his eyes to check his position. His fingers prodded the area to his left, and found that he was at a corner. The ledge continued there, extending in that direction. So he turned to his left and tentatively crawled forward again. He was relieved to find that the ground continued on. At least for the moment.

  “How much farther is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, her voice tense. “Go faster!”

  “What do you want from me?! I’m trying! It’s all white and slippery—it’s like the Apple Store from Hell!” he shouted back. “You want me to move fast in a place that’s made to force you to go as slow as possible?! I’m freezing! Do you know how slippery this is? I can’t do this!”

  The girl was quiet.

  Great. He was getting the silent treatment from the girl inside his head. Or maybe he’d cut off their “connection” again.

  He paused as his mind wandered briefly astray. Was this what it felt like to go insane? Was it all some hallucination? The theory was a lot easier to swallow than the notion that this place was real.

  Still he crawled, moving in silence for several minutes, making course corrections whenever he came to an edge. It was far too slow going, and the structure didn’t care for his lack of progress: the periodic trembling grew stronger with each quake.

  Troy had never spent much time pondering what it would be like to be blind. He wasn’t unsympathetic to the handicapped; it just wasn’t the kind of thing he dwelled on. It was hard enough trying to survive the bullies at school or the uncomfortable silences at home. But this couldn’t be anything like truly being blind, anyway, because even with his eyes clamped shut tight, his eyelids were unable to block out the overwhelmingly white light.

  The cold wind blew again, and he toppled to one side. He compensated by collapsing to lie flat on his stomach.

  “Get as low as you can when the wind blows,” said the girl, speaking at last. “But don’t waste time. You’ve got minutes to escape. Maybe less.”

  “Thanks,” he replied. As maddening and confusing as this situation was, he decided now wasn’t the time to alienate his one human contact. Especially when it seemed that she truly wanted to help him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “What’s yours?” she countered.

  Okay, fine. Be that way. “Troy,” he replied. “My dad’s a big Cowboys fan,” he added, almost as a joke.

  She made no comment.

  When she was silent for too long, he cleared his throat. “Your turn,” he said.

  The ground shook violently just then, and he fruitlessly clutched at the flat surface. Another gust of wind spun him onto his back, and it was only by luck that he wasn’t close enough to the edge to go over.

  “Tell you what,” the girl said. “You make it to the Exit, and I’ll tell you my name. If you’re not going to get that far…I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this again.”

  If this statement was i
ntended to be a form of motivation, it didn’t work. So far, there wasn’t much about this girl Troy liked. She reminded him of cheerleaders, the know-it-all popular girls who never stooped to talk to him, much less get to know him.

  He reached another corner and adjusted his heading to the right. But after a few seconds, his fingers detected that the platform was about to shift downward at an angle. Not a terribly sharp angle, but given how slippery the surface was, a rapid descent down a slide would be nearly impossible to control. What if he fell off the other side?

  “Uh, I think there’s a ramp,” he said, his voice quivering a bit.

  “Up or down?” she replied, unsurprised to hear this.

  “Down!” he said, his answer punctuated with a start as the ground shook harder than before, forcing him to lie down flat.

  “Spin around so your feet are in front of you. Use your shoes as brakes.”

  Huh. That was actually a pretty good idea.

  When the tremor stopped, he rotated his body a full one hundred and eighty degrees, and then flipped onto his back. Slowly and carefully, he kept his feet touching the surface of the platform as he crept up to the edge, and then went over.

  Even with his knees bent so that his feet were flat against the surface, he couldn’t help sliding down considerably faster than he wanted to, like sledding on wet ice.

  “Talk to me. What’s happening?” asked the girl.

  “Not now!” he shouted, picking up speed.

  The slide went on and on. Had to be at least a hundred feet by now. Two hundred? Three! Would it ever stop?

  Troy was going way too fast now to come to a quick halt when the path became horizontal again.

  Troy thought he heard the girl scream, but some part of his brain realized the sound was coming from his own mouth.

  “I can’t stop!” he shouted.

  “—going to—!” was the garbled response.

  He bore down on his feet harder, forcing his legs to tighten and ram into the ground.

  He never felt the edge. He was simply falling through the air, the platform left far behind.