The room is pitch black.
As always, I’m the last one to walk forward into the maze, but this time it doesn’t really work out to my advantage because everyone else has obviously done this enough to know that the moment our feet cross the threshold of the simulation, all of our senses are torn away.
At least I hope it’s all of us and not just me.
I imagine this is how having a stroke must feel. I can’t see or hear anything and there’s only the vaguest sensation of the ground beneath my feet that says my feet must still be moving. I have no freaking clue how this simulation is possible, how the Draven campus managed to create this hellscape, but I’m utterly defenseless.
I also should’ve taken it easy on my workout.
I don’t know how long I walk through the bleak nothingness, only that when it ends and I can finally see again, the light is blinding, my eyes streaming and my head aching with a sharp pain. My bond immediately reacts to the pain, my gift straining under my control, and I have to stop for a second to regain control. There’s no one around me, no sign of the dozens of other people in the class, and I don’t know if that’s just because I’ve been going so slow or if the… magic or whatever is happening here has put us all in different places in the maze.
All I know is that the walls are all made of black bricks and the ground is concrete, stained in places and very obviously the spilled substance was blood. Fuck, there’s a stain big enough that the person had to have died there, no matter what Gabe said about this place being monitored.
Death isn’t exactly the worst option here but it’s also not my first choice.
I’m too busy freaking the fuck out to notice the sounds of footsteps, but the roar of something definitely gets my attention.
There’s a shifter nearby.
I don’t know what Gabe can turn into, but there’s three other shifters in our class, so I can’t assume he’s come to find me. Knowing my luck, Brenton is also a shifter and he’s come to rip my throat out and make a whole new stain on the ground. We all need to reach the center to win, but I’m sure Zoey is fine with losing me and taking the hit on her point tally.
I step back, pressing my back against the wall behind me and preparing myself for whatever the hell is about to happen when there’s a grinding, groaning, snapping sound—
And then the walls start moving.
What in the Harry Potter bullshit is this?! I have to spring away from the wall behind me but it’s not the one moving. No, it’s the one across from me, rushing towards me and I’m about to be crushed to death if I don’t get my shaking knees under control and move my ass.
The panic flooding my entire body is actually a good thing because I’m conditioned to work at my peak performance while absolutely shitting myself, so I manage to get my legs working and dart out of the way. There’s a crunch and a thud, then a small flash of light before I hear the groaning of whoever the shifter is now that they’re trapped on the other side of the wall, very obviously injured.
Do I call out to them? Do I call out and hope someone will come help them or will I just give away my position doing that and get myself killed for my kindness?
A voice calls out and makes up my mind for me, “Fuck, Martinez, what are you doing getting snapped by the walls? That’s rookie shit!”
I have no clue who that is but the panting shifter answers, “I could smell the new girl, I thought we could use her as bait for the pond bitch.”
Uhm, first of all, fuck Martinez. I can’t believe I was going to help the asshole, but secondly, and most importantly, what the fuck is the pond bitch?
I think I’m going to puke.
I also don’t have time to let my nerves get the better of me so I push on, choosing the only path I can that appears to circle the entire maze. The only other direction I can head in is backwards and I don’t want to go through the deprivation area again, thank you very much. I have to block out the screams of the other students as much as I possibly can as they echo around the room.
I start at a walking pace but then I start to get the creeps about the walls caving in on me and pick up the pace, jogging so I don’t run out of steam so early on.
The sounds in this place are kind of terrifying.
There’s a flame in here somewhere and every time I see the bursts of light reflect onto the ridiculously high ceiling, I start to panic all over again about air quality and the entire basement burning down. My feet move faster without me even trying, the adrenaline kicking in, and I only slow down when I finally reach the corner at the end of the building.
I stop and take a breath there, forcing my heartbeat to slow down because panic is a great motivator, but I need to use my brain here. I have no access to my gift, and although the training in this stupid class has upped my stamina, I still have very little self defense skills.
If I get around this corner and find myself staring at a fully shifted wolf or cougar or something, I am well and truly screwed.
I strain to try to hear something but there’s nothing there, only the distant sounds of students fighting and yelling at each other, so I slowly creep forward to peek around the stone wall.
There’s a garden there.
An entire freaking room carved out of the basement with plants everywhere. It’s… well, it’s kind of stunning, vines growing over the walls and bright blooms of flowers breaking through the deep and gorgeous greenery. It’s like something out of Wonderland, like this entire basement is some twisted and sick version of all my favorite tales.
Only the more I look, the more I see that this isn’t a paradise.
The vines are moving for one, slowly reaching out towards me like they’re about to wrap around my body and take me out. The flowers are all weeping, the liquid coming out of them is eating away at the ground as it drops, and then there’s the small matter of the thorns.
They’re popping up everywhere.
I look down at myself and curse the shorts and tee I’m wearing because they’re not going to protect me from shit but once again, time is working against me here and the longer I stand around indecisively, the bigger and more dangerous the horrors in the room are becoming.
Okay.
Okay, this is fine. I can walk through thorns and acid while dodging creeping vines. Totally reasonable. My gift wouldn’t help me with this anyway, so no use feeling shitty about not having it, just zip through this, Oleander.
Self talk doesn’t really help but imagining everything I’m going to do to this entire freaking school the second I’m no longer powerless sure does. When the first thorn imbeds itself into my thigh, I think about bringing North Draven to his goddamn knees. When the acid starts to eat it’s way through the soles of my shoes, I imagine the look on Nox’s face when I show him exactly how I could break him open. I think about proving myself to Gryphon, showing him that I’m not some useless fucking brat.
And Gabe.
Ho boy, the thoughts of exactly what I’d say to Gabe blocks out the tearing pain of the vines wrapping around my wrist and yanking at my injured arm perfectly. The more of the pain I can ignore and work past, the more aggressive the garden gets about trying to stop me, trying to hurt me so badly that I stop trying to get through.
When I finally get to the small opening, the soles of my shoes are completely gone and my shirt is in tatters, blood running down my stomach from the wounds on my entire torso. There’s vines wrapped around both of my arms and my thighs, twisting and tightening painfully, and I have to slam myself into the wall and then wrench myself around the corner to pry them off, stumbling to my knees as they finally snap and break away from the main plant. I panic, assuming they’ll still be able to wrap around me or that they’ll suddenly become snakes, because that’s the horror show bullshit I’m expecting here, but they instantly fall away from me as though they really were just vines all along.
I stay on my knees for a second longer, panting and rolling my shoulders back painfully, trying to test the muscles out, and the screaming around me reaches a fever pitch.
Does Vivian have some weird fucking S&M kink I didn’t ever want to know about? Does he get off on torturing students and listening to their terror?
I’m definitely going to ask him about it later because I have zero freaking shame about calling him out. This is supposed to be a college class, for fuck’s sake. Who in their right mind does this to their students?
The shuffling catches my attention first.
I startle and scramble back before my brain catches on to what I’m actually seeing. In the doorway of the killer garden is what I thought was a tree trunk, but is actually a student wrapped entirely in vines. She’s alive, I can see her breathing, but she’s out cold. There are cuts all over her body from the thorns and her feet are bare, but she looks almost peaceful now that she’s unconscious.
What exactly is the protocol here?
I feel very strongly about not getting myself killed or injured for another student who hates my freaking guts, but if there’s a chance this thing is going to kill her— am I really the type to just abandon her?
“Vivian, a little guidance here would’ve been nice,” I mutter to myself, mostly so I don’t feel so fucking guilty for just leaving because, let’s just face it, I’m going to walk away.
A light blinks to life on the wall.
It’s red and is right over the girl, like it’s drawing attention to her. I decide that it’s enough of a beacon that someone must be coming to get her and I get my ass moving. I pull the remains of my sneakers off and throw them aside, wincing a little at the cold concrete on my bare feet as I break back into a jog. As I look out at the other walls as I jog, I see other little blinking red lights and my heart finally sinks back out of my throat. It must be normal, something that happens when a student has been taken out of the running, and at a quick count from where I am, there’s at least ten people out. I can only see a small section of the walls from where I am, so hopefully there aren’t many people left here for me to come up against.
The screaming also quietens down a little the deeper into the maze I get, less frequent now, which proves there’s less people here being tortured. I have to duck behind one of the corners to avoid a trio of students. One of them was a girl holding a palm full of fire while one of the guys was holding out a forcefield and the other’s eyes glowed. They all look battered and bruised, but they’re alive and working together, so obviously they’re my pick for making it to the center and winning the passing grade.
The guy with the glowing eyes glanced down in my direction but didn’t comment on seeing me or noticing anything out of the ordinary, so either he couldn’t see me, or he has no interest in feeding me to the pond bitch like that dickhead Martinez.
Fucking Martinez.
I’m going to punch him in the face the second I get out of this maze.
When the trio is gone, I get back up from my crouch, every inch of my body screaming in protest, and then I keep working my way through the maze slowly, doubling back after each dead end. It’s frustrating and slow going, especially now that I’m on bare feet, and a few times I come across an unconscious student or a mysterious pool of blood that has my stomach dropping.
The real terror starts when I find another room, this time with a huge body of water, and I start to panic that I’ve found the infamous pond because I’m not sure I can fight a sea creature right now.
There’s only one way for me to go though, and it’s the doorway cut out of the other side.
There’s no fucking way I’m swimming across, even if I hadn’t been warned, because the water stinks and I don’t want to puke my way across right now. There are rocks and boulders to one side that I could scale my way across but my jelly arms hate that option, so I walk around the water’s edge for a second, like I can make a sturdy bridge appear with nothing but my desperation.
No such luck.
Rock climbing it is. The small stones bite into my feet and the larger boulders move a little under my body weight, which is both insulting and unsettling. I scramble to the highest point and then take a second to breathe and attempt to get some strength back in my arms. I know now how much those training sessions have done for me because even me of six months ago would’ve been wrapped up in the vines.
From this vantage point, I can actually see how close I am to the center and, fuck me, it’s close. I memorize the path, and thank God that I climbed this stupid thing because there’s three rooms I can avoid if I do this right.
I can’t see Gabe but there is a freaking massive snow leopard in one of the rooms fighting against… okay, it’s so gross I don’t want to say it, but there’s a plague of rats in one of the rooms and I suddenly understand all of the screaming because no. No, I would rather face the quiet and absent pond bitch than a million diseased and disgusting rats, thanks.
My skin crawls like I might just pass out and die, so I decide it’s time to get the hell out of here and pray the walls don’t move on me because, dammit, I need some luck for once!
The second I start to crawl down the other side of the rock, I come face-to-face with the pond bitch and I wish so badly that I could scrub my mind of her because holy fucking nightmare is she disgusting.
She was once human, I think. Her skin is grey and sliding away from the bone of her skull, her hair is mostly gone, only little tufts of it sticking up in small patches. Her teeth are broken and sharply pointed as she gapes up at me with milky white eyes, her jaw flapping like she’s gasping for air, and I’m officially never sleeping again because this bitch is definitely going to haunt me.
Her hand wraps around my ankle, the dirty pond water dripping from her nightmare body onto the bare skin of my foot, and all I can think is that I’m going to get some flesh-eating parasite from her.
I turn the part of my brain that is freaking the fuck out off and switch my survival mode back on, gripping the edges of the rock and then swinging my free leg up until I can get a good kick in, striking her shoulder first. When that doesn’t get her off me, I bite the bullet and kick her in the face, her teeth cutting the heel of my foot, but with a gurgling scream, her hand loosens enough for me to wrench my foot away.
I slide down the rock, skinning the backs of my thighs and shredding my hands, but desperate times and all that. When I land at the bottom, breaking my ass and knocking the wind out of myself, I scurry away as fast as my broken body will let me. Even when I get past the threshold of the room and back out into the hallway I keep crawling, the gurgling sounds of the pond bitch bouncing on the brick walls.
I’m quitting this goddamn class.
I turn two corners on my hands and knees before I finally relocate my pride and struggle to my feet. My nose is running, my eyes are stinging, and my chest rattles with every breath, but I’m alive.
I’m going to need a healer the moment I get out of here and I will break North in half with my bare hands if he tries to stop me from accessing one.
Luckily, blessedly, the walls stay put and I make it to the center of the fucking maze. My body collapses onto the ground in a heaving, shaking mess.
The motherfucking center of this stupid, murderous, dickheaded maze.
I don’t even get the chance to feel proud of myself, to feel happy that I made it through by myself and without using my gift once, because I find Zoey and Brenton jogging through the doorway at the other end of the room, their eyes on the flag for a second before they notice me slumped over here.
Zoey grins as she stalks over to me, the crop top she’s wearing is tight across her chest and soaked through from whatever she’s been up against in the maze so far, but overall she looks a million times better than I do. Whatever she’s been up against, Brenton has taken the brunt of it. He’s torn up like me but he’s still standing.
My eyes flick over to the flag only a few feet away, but with my ‘walking-chloroform’ here, there’s no chance I’m getting it.
I hate this bitch.
I feel her gift take me over, the poison of it touching my skin and floating through my veins. My body is so fucking used to it now, a regular Friday occurrence, that I’m not surprised when my nose starts dripping blood and my mouth fills up with it in response.
It’s fucking infuriating.
I spit at her, my blood bright red on her cheek, and her squeal is fucking music to my ears. “You’re an absolute cunt and someday you’re going to regret this bullshit. I’m patient, I can wait you out.”
She smirks at me. “Like I’d be scared of some gift-less reject. Nighty-night, bitch.”
And then she knocks me the fuck out.
