Corridor (A MythWorks Novel) Read online

  He landed rear-first with a thud, followed by a crack in whatever ground supported him.

  “Troy!” shouted the girl.

  “I’m okay,” he whined. An agonizing ache was pulsing in his lower back.

  He reached a hand out to feel the surface, and wasn’t sure whether to be relieved at its smooth familiarity or not. “I think I fell to another part of the path.”

  “You are one lucky duck,” she said. “You may have just taken a little shortcut.”

  “Wonderful,” he moaned.

  “Can you try to open your eyes for a moment and look around?”

  “What am I looking for?” He squinted hard as he craned his head.

  “The Exit,” said the girl.

  That word got his heart racing again. What would the Exit look like? Although, if it looked like anything at all, it would stand out in this place.

  He didn’t see anything.

  Troy heard another loud crack, and the ground shifted. Instead of flat, the whole world was tilted slightly to the right.

  “What was that?” he cried.

  “The platform—it’s cracking. The whole place is coming apart! You’re out of time—you have to go!”

  He scrambled quickly onto his stomach and began crawling as fast as he dared, praying that he wouldn’t take another fall.

  He soon hit another downward incline, but thankfully, this one was shorter, and he managed to stop before sailing over the edge. Not resting, he rolled back over and kept crawling as the cracking and popping grew louder, reaching his ears from all directions. He could hear the elevated platforms coming apart above and below and from all sides.

  On he crawled, turning two more times and following a long, straight path that seemed like it would never end. He nearly lost his hold three times along the way, and at one point, his heart leapt into his throat when an entire arm and shoulder were suddenly dangling over an edge before he even knew he was close to one. But he couldn’t afford to stop and recover from the shock. He reeled his arm back in tight and kept crawling.

  There was a loud thunderclap, and he sensed that a piece of the platform had just broken away and fallen, somewhere. The bright white light faded a fraction, though it was still too bright to see anything.

  “Doesn’t sound like you’ve turned lately…” said the girl. “Has the path been straight for a while?”

  “Yes!” He shouted to be heard above the cracking and crashing noises.

  “Open your eyes, you may be almost there.”

  The ground lurched, dropping two inches as he opened his eyes and saw a darkened doorway just ahead. The light faded a bit more with the next quake, letting him make out some of the details of his surroundings.

  Some fifty feet ahead and off to the left, a solid metal door loomed. He saw no handle, knob, or hinges. Only the faint engraving of a stylized tree inside a circle. A small threshold, no more than a few feet deep, stuck out from the base of the door. The whole thing was situated in the middle of a vast metal wall, hundreds of feet high and wide.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Troy hopped to his feet and sprinted along the path toward the door. It was easier now that he could see, but his shoes slipped along the slick platform and his muscles remained tensed with every step. The wind slammed into him again, but he was ready this time, bending his body into it, and he managed to just hold onto his balance, edging closer to the side but not toppling over. The white path extending before him ended before it touched the threshold in front of the door, hanging in empty space a good four feet away from the wall.

  “Jump!” shouted the girl.

  When he neared the end of the path, the ground collapsed under him. He soared briefly through the air and slammed into the landing stomach-first, knocking the wind from his lungs. With his feet dangling, he reached out with both hands and grasped this new surface, finding it was nothing like the icy path that brought him here. It was flat, but covered in scuffs and grooves and—

  Was that blood?

  A dried and cracking red shoeprint pointed to the door from the exact spot where he’d landed. Someone else had dangled here—someone with blood on their shoe.

  Again, he used the leg trick to heave himself up and over this final ledge and roll onto his back. He lay there, panting and shivering, but not because he was cold. “I thought maybe you’d be here waiting for me,” he joked, and was instantly embarrassed at how idiotic it sounded coming out of his mouth.

  The girl said nothing.

  He stood slowly on wobbly knees, and moved to the door. It was solid steel, no doorknob, no handle, not even a peephole.

  He swung his arms back and forth in front of it, as if hailing a cab. “Hey! I’m here, I made it! Let me out!”

  The circular tree engraving on the door came to life, glowing as the door slid slowly upward toward the lintel above.

  It was moving at a painfully unhurried pace, so he turned for a moment and looked back at the vast space behind him. From here, he was finally able to get a decent look at the place, the blinding white light fading at last. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that the winding platform he’d crawled on was pure white, just like everything else, and seemed to be suspended in midair. But it was impossibly long, snaking around the room in three hundred and sixty directions. Up, down, sideways, this way and that, again and again, winding in an endless, chaotic pattern. Bits were cracking and breaking free everywhere he looked. He couldn’t see the floor down below, but it had to be down there. The perimeter walls were just barely visible, several hundred yards away on either side. They were silver, solid metal, just like the wall surrounding the Exit. No windows, no skylights, no view at all to the outside world.

  “My name is Victoria.”

  “Victoria…” he repeated, rolling the word around inside his mouth. “That’s kinda long. Can I call you Vicky?” he asked, still gazing in wonder at this strange, alien place.

  “Not under any circumstances.”

  As he watched, the cubist, maze-like pathway fractured and collapsed entirely with a great crash, disappearing into the abyss below.

  “Where am I?” he asked as the echoing crash faded.

  He heard Victoria’s intake of breath as she prepared to answer, but she was cut off by another female voice. This one was so loud, he covered his ears.

  “Congratulations, Runner thirty-seven thirty-five. You have escaped the White Room.”

  The new voice spoke in a formal diction somewhere between a referee at a sporting event and a newscaster. For a second, he thought that he might next hear a round of applause. But there was nothing.

  “Who said that?” he called out. Runner thirty-seven thirty-five? He hadn’t been running. He wasn’t even able to walk. He turned his head up to search the ceiling. It was so high he couldn’t find it. Was there a loudspeaker up there? “Where’s Victoria?”

  “I’m here,” Victoria replied.

  “Who was that? What’s the White Room?” he said, panic rising again. “What is this place?”

  “This is the Corridor.”

  TROY TURNED TO SEE that the door had risen enough for him to crawl under. Once he was on the other side, it slammed down fast behind him with such finality, he suspected it would never open again.

  Looking up, he saw that he was inside another massive, enclosed space. Yet this one was different than the last in every other respect. There were no issues with visibility here; everything was perfectly, terrifyingly clear. This chamber was an upright circle in shape, like the center of an enormous car tire. But the surface wasn’t rubber.

  He stood at a precipice halfway up one side of the circle so that it curved both up and away from him, and down as well. A dark, golden hue colored everything, down to the room’s jagged, rock-like surface covering the vertical loop. The flat sides were the same silvery metal he’d seen in the White Room.

  The size of the place was simply staggering. He’d never been inside a building this big before. It was probably fewer than a hundre
d feet wide, but the giant circle had to be at least a mile in diameter. On the far side of the chamber, precisely opposite from where he now stood, he recognized the tiny outline of another steel Exit door and threshold exactly like the one he’d just walked through.

  “You,” said Victoria, “have just entered the Yellow Room.”

  “No…” Troy said, his feet carrying him backwards until he hit the metal door. “No, no, no!”

  “I’m sorry Troy, but the White Room was only the beginning.”

  Troy was sorely tempted to call this Victoria a terribly foul name. It wasn’t his style, but he was nearing his breaking point.

  He looked down at the golden rock that curved away from him below, and then up the far side. It was covered with with sharp edges, crevices, and outcroppings. It had to be another manmade construct because where could a massive, brightly-lit, yellow cave in the shape of a perfect, vertical circle exist in nature?

  His shoulders fell, and he let his body slide slowly down until he was sitting, his back against the door.

  “What’s the Corridor?” he asked in a small voice.

  “It’s not easy to explain,” said Victoria. “You will find it to be a place of great mystery and wonder. But don’t stay still for too long. If you want to survive, you must Run.”

  “Mystery and wonder, eh?” said Troy. “Sounds like the Chocolate Factory. If the Oompa-Loompas were more into killing than candy.”

  “The Corridor is a series of environments, challenges, and puzzles that have to be overcome. I’m the Conduit, you’re the Runner. I’m here to tell you the rules. You must decide how to use them.”

  Troy swallowed, questions rushing through his mind in a piercing burst of fear. He took a deep breath to steady himself. He would have to take this one step—and one question—at a time.

  He crawled up to the edge of the landing and looked down. Was he seriously supposed to climb this?

  “Why was I brought here?” he asked, trying a different tack.

  “To Run,” replied Victoria.

  “You said that already. But why? Why build a place like this, and then kidnap people to come and try to survive it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He examined the sharp edge of the landing and the craggy yellow rocks below. “You said you’re my ‘Conduit.’ What’s that mean?”

  “I give voice to the will of the Corridor.”

  The Corridor’s will. She made it sound like this place was alive. And she was a…Conduit. A connection between the Runner and the Corridor. It had the kind of crazy logic that things have when you’re dreaming. But at least it was something.

  “How big is it?” he said quietly.

  “Very. Miles long. Ten, maybe twenty. I don’t know. I’ve never seen it from the outside.”

  He held his breath for a moment, trying to picture a structure of this size in his mind. He had no frame of reference for something so huge.

  “And how many Rooms?”

  “I don’t know. Haven’t seen them all. But I know that every Room is a puzzle. Like a maze that changes its solution every time there’s a new Runner. I know what a Room’s ingredients are—at least, the Rooms I’ve seen—but the result is different every time.”

  Again his eyes dropped down to the rocks below, and he desperately hoped that there might be some way to the other side that didn’t involve crossing over them. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

  “So. The Yellow Room.”

  “Yep,” she replied.

  “What do I do?”

  “Have you ever been, um… ‘rock climbing’?” she asked, putting an odd emphasis on the words.

  “No.”

  “Then I hope you’re a quick learner.”

  This was crazy.

  He sighed as he knelt at the edge of the landing. There was nothing else but to try to work his way down. He’d already delayed enough with his questions, and, though it hadn’t escaped his notice that Victoria had patiently answered every one of them this time, he had the feeling that her “hurry up and get moving” spiel was sure to start up again any minute.

  He turned on his hands and knees and backed up to the edge, slowly and carefully looking for handholds or tiny crevices where he could put his feet once he let go of the landing. Finally, he placed his foot on a rock about three feet down, and was pleased to find that it held his weight. Another rock a foot or so beneath that one was his target for his next foot, while his eyes landed on some cracks not far below the landing where his shaking hands could find their first firm handhold.

  Troy’s hand came up sharply when his first handhold of rock sliced through his skin. He watched a line of blood flow down his palm and drip onto the yellow rocks.

  What kind of sadistic person would build a place like this? Frankly, he wasn’t convinced that Victoria wasn’t behind it all, or at least in on it. Yet there was a certain beauty to the Corridor as well, something awe-inspiring about its scale and geometry. How could something this size even exist? He couldn’t conceive of the technology required to construct a place like this.

  That line of thinking led to a final, inevitable question. What was outside the Corridor’s walls? Was the world he knew out there waiting for him? Was he hidden in some place covered by jungle or ocean or mountaintops that satellites couldn’t see? Or was he somewhere…else?

  It had to get easier with every inch down. He attempted to reassure himself with these words. After all, it was a straight drop at the moment, but already he could see a slight angle that would eventually level out. But his relief was short-lived when he remembered that once he reached the bottom, he would have to climb back up the other side to reach the exit. And he knew ascending was going to be a lot harder than this descent.

  Troy had never done anything like this in his life. It wasn’t his kind of thing. He wasn’t an athlete. He wasn’t even athletic. And unlike his dad, he’d never found anything particularly great about the outdoors.

  Was his dad freaking out at home because Troy was missing? Or had his friends and family not yet realized anything was amiss? How long had he been here, anyway?

  Just a few feet down, and already sweat was rolling through his thick, dark brown hair, down his forehead and nose, and dripping onto his shirt. He clung to the rocks with all his might, but his arms were trembling uncontrollably.

  “I don’t know…if I can do this,” he said softly between breaths, almost hoping Victoria wouldn’t hear it.

  “You can,” she replied, her voice full of sudden conviction. He almost believed her. “You have to.”

  “But...I don’t have big muscles like other guys.” Even just talking while holding on to the sharp-edged rocks was tiring him. “I’m not strong.”

  “This isn’t about strength,” said Victoria. “Surviving the Corridor is a matter of how much you want it.”

  “Want what?”

  “To live,” was her matter-of-fact reply. “You have to want it more than anything you’ve ever wanted before.”

  “You’re a regular fortune cookie,” he mumbled, lowering one leg to find purchase on another craggy bit of rock. He thought he heard a faint chuckle from Victoria.

  Climbing down wasn’t remotely close to anything he’d call “easy,” but at least the rock was uneven enough to provide plenty to hold on to, unlike the smooth surfaces of the White Room. He shuddered at the thought of falling, tumbling violently against the rocks. There were some smoother patches here and there, but mostly, it was wildly uneven terrain of solid rock with lots of sharp edges.

  Just take small, steady movements. One grip at a time.

  Still, a little distraction from the mortal terror wouldn’t be the worst thing…

  “So how many of these Rooms have you seen?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t say.”

  Troy slammed his hand against the rocks in anger. He opened another cut, but didn’t care. “Why should I believe whatever you tell me?”

  She’d helped him
escape the White Room, but she’d held back, too. And he was certain she was holding back plenty more.

  “Look at your wrist,” said Victoria. “The right one.”

  Troy looked down.

  “The other right one.”

  His weary muscles weakened as his dazed eyes turned slowly to his right hand. He almost let go of the rock at the sight. Fortunately, he was not so much dangling as clinging now, the rock face having angled down to a good thirty degrees or more.

  He held to the nearest crevice with his left hand while examining his right. Around his wrist was a solid metal band, stainless steel, and curved like a bracelet, less than half an inch in width. At the top of the band, where the face might be on a watch, was a tiny circle with a familiar, intricate symbol etched into it.

  It was the elaborate, ornate tree again—the one he’d seen on the Exit door in the White Room. A perfect match. Thick trunk with grooves so deep, they made the tree feel ancient. Dozens of branches, smooth and curved, swirling about. Hundreds of tiny, barely perceptible leaves.

  How had this thing gotten onto his wrist and how long had it been there? It was as if someone had carved away a chunk of flesh the exact size of this bracelet, and then inserted the metal band in its place. It went all the way around, touching on the underside. Even if it hadn’t been bonded to his arm, there would be no getting it off now. He couldn’t tell how thick the band was because its silver surface was flush against the surrounding tissue. Only a faint red, infected tint to the skin touching the bracelet gave any clue that the thing didn’t belong there.

  “What is it?” he asked. “How did you know—?”

  “Listen,” she said, cutting through his panic with slow, emphatic words. “Choose to accept now that there are things I know that I can’t tell you. Some of them you’re meant to discover on your own, and others I’m not allowed to explain until the time is right. If I go too far, if I say too much, our connection will be permanently severed. And believe me, you can’t do this without me. But I promise, I won’t ever lie to you.”

  “Yeah?” His ears burned red. Wasn’t omission the same as lying? “So what’s the bracelet for? Or is that something I have to figure out on my own?”