The Impossible Race: Cragbridge Hall, Volume 3

by Chad Morris

  “Good point,” Rafa said. “Stop, Anjum.”

  It felt strange to have someone bossing Anjum around for a change.

  Anjum gradually came to a halt. “I think you’re right, Abby. I’ll need to be carried to the rover, and be as careful as possible by my left knee.”

  Malcolm picked him up underneath his arms, Derick by the waist, and Maria and Nia at the legs. They moved awkwardly toward the rover.

  “It’s blinking quicker now,” Anjum updated. “Hurry.”

  “He shouldn’t be as heavy in less gravity,” Abby said. “Could just two people take him?”

  “Malcolm, you keep my head,” Anjum said. “Nia, my feet. Now go.”

  They did, moving fluidly. With only two people to coordinate, they moved much quicker in skips across the red sand.

  “It’s beeping quicker,” Anjum said, his voice louder and with more staccato.

  “Faster,” Carol yelled. “No blood boiling today!”

  “Someone open up the rover ahead of time and be ready for me!” Anjum said.

  Rafa and Derick both took off ahead.

  “It’s counting down,” Anjum said. “10, 9, 8, 7 . . .”

  Acid

  Thankfully, by the time Anjum counted down to 4, Malcolm and Nia threw him into the rover and Rafa closed the door behind him.

  Mars faded.

  They barely had time to congratulate each other before they were in another world.

  “Welcome to the second challenge of the final round,” a girl’s voice said. “I will be your guide.”

  “We’re in some sort of aircraft . . . or hovercraft . . . inside a cave,” Nia guessed, still a little winded from helping carry Anjum on Mars.

  “Of sorts,” the guide said. She was a teenager a few years older than Derick, maybe another programmer.

  A calm light lit the pod. They seemed to be in some sort of cockpit with a little storage area behind it. It only had enough room for the team. Each one sat in a chair. The front and sides of the pod were large curved windows, but there wasn’t much to see. As Nia had said, it looked like they were in some sort of cave, but the pod wasn’t moving as far as they could tell.

  “And what does this craft we’re in do?” Malcolm asked. “Does it fly or something?”

  “This machine is for your protection and it does fly. In a moment, you’re going to need it to. Someone please take the controls.”

  “Jess, you’re on it,” Anjum said. She was used to driving all sorts of robots around. Good choice. “And everyone buckle up. We don’t know what’s coming.”

  Derick realized he was sitting in the chair with the controls and quickly switched with Jess and strapped in. Too bad. Driving a flying pod through their challenge sounded fun.

  In an instant, one wall of the cave opened and light flooded in. It temporarily blinded Derick. He thought he saw a row of white rocks on the same wall that had opened. What kind of cave wall opens up? Was this an earthquake?

  A flood of water crashed in, sending the pod reeling.

  “Hang on!” Anjum yelled.

  The water crashed both above them and below them, enough to lift them off the cave floor. The pod skirted back several feet and then plummeted down a cavern.

  The team was a mix of screams and cheers. It was like a crazy amusement park ride. They dove farther and farther down the cave, which was getting darker with each moment. Then the pod splashed into a pool of water. The impact jolted Derick in his seat.

  “Oh yeah!” Carol said. “Let’s do it again. The Crazy Cave Fall! That landing was a little rough, though.”

  “Any ideas where we are?” Anjum asked. “Look up famous caves, especially ones next to waterfalls.”

  “Wait,” Jess said. “I think I found something.” She wasn’t researching on her rings, but surveying all of the controls of the pod. She pulled on a lever, and headlight beams shone from the front of the pod. Everyone gazed out the windows.

  “This is the weirdest place I’ve ever seen,” Maria said. “And I’ve been to some weird places. Like, you should see my Aunt Magda’s house when she throws a party. She makes really creepy piñatas.”

  The lake was yellow with white foam, and where they could see the sides and walls, it was a dark pink and folded in large rolls.

  “Is this another planet?” Carol said. “Because it doesn’t look familiar at all.”

  “It could also be something out of literature,” Piper reminded. “Journey to the Center of the Earth or something.”

  “You are incorrect,” the guide said. She had buckled up in a seat at the back of the pod.

  “It wasn’t officially a guess, but thanks for the update,” Piper quipped back.

  “You’re welcome.”

  From above them, a stream of sludge came crashing down and into the foamy pond. The yellow liquid splashed over the windows of the pod and slowly slimed its way down.

  “Gross,” Nia said.

  “Uh,” Derick mumbled, watching the sludge. It was in a shallow end of the lake and rested on the bottom. “I think we’ve got a problem. Look.”

  Everyone watched as the sludge started to dissolve.

  “That’s not good,” Malcolm said, pointing at the window. Small splotches showed where thin layers had worn off the pod.

  “I think this is some sort of acid lake,” Derick said.

  “You’re getting closer,” the guide said. “And though you do not yet know your location, your challenge is to get out before you find out how much of this pod the acid will eat.”

  “There is an acid lake at the bottom of the Kawah Ijen volcano crater in Indonesia,” Abby said, researching on her rings. “It can eat through metal and just touching it can burn the skin. Maybe we are somehow in a cave that flows out of that lake.”

  “Incorrect,” the guide said.

  “There are acid lakes by the Dollol volcano in Ethiopia,” Maria said. “One sip and birds die. It has almost the same intensity as gastric acid.”

  “Incorrect again,” the guide said.

  They named a few more, but none were correct.

  “Keep researching,” Anjum commanded. “Jess, can you fly this thing and get us out of here?”

  Jess nodded and began pushing buttons. “I think I’ve got it,” she said. The pod began to hover. “I don’t have much fuel though.” She tapped on a gauge.

  “We only need enough to get out,” Anjum said.

  Their headlights showed a pinkish wall and the pod rose to where they and the sludge had dropped it. “Uh. We have a problem,” Jess said. “There’s no opening.”

  “There has to be,” Malcolm said. “That’s how we got in.”

  They hovered, waiting for a moment.

  Without warning, a spot on the wall opened and a mound of sludge dropped in.

  “There it is,” Anjum yelled. “Now!”

  Jess pushed forward on the controls and the pod shot ahead, but not in time. It bounced off the wall. The opening had closed.

  They tried twice more, but the hole closed as soon as the sludge passed through.

  “Is there any other way out?” Anjum asked.

  Jess flew around the enclosure shining their lights everywhere. Nothing.

  “I think the water level is going down,” Nia said. “There has to be an opening at the bottom of the lake.”

  “Let me think about that,” Anjum said. “I can’t see how immersing ourselves in acid would help our situation. Jess, bring it down again, before we run out of fuel.”

  “Gross. Ew. Yucky. Nasty-not-niceness,” Carol said. She bounced around like a little girl who had seen a spider. “Wait wait wait! I figured it out.” She pointed at Maria. “You said that a lake in Ethiopia has almost the same intensity as . . . ?”

  “Gastric acid,” Nia interrupted. “That’s what digests your food in your stom—” she didn’t finish the last word before breaking into a new sentence. “A stomach. We’re in a stomach!”

  “Correct,” the guide said. “Two m
inutes, forty-seven seconds.”

  “Oh! We’re super tiny,” Piper said. “We were up in the mouth, the person drank, and we came down here.”

  “You’re correct,” the guide said. “This pod is proportioned to be about half the size of the average swallowable pill. You have journeyed into a virtual stomach.”

  “Eww,” Carol said. “The sludge is food being digested. I love food. If this challenge has any effect on my love of eating, somebody is going to be in serious trouble.”

  “So if we go down through the stomach,” Malcolm said, “we enter the intestines. That could take a while to digest. I think the best way is back up.”

  “But the opening keeps closing,” Jess said, “unless it’s shooting water or food back down at us.”

  “We need to either be able to guess when the food is about to come through,” Anjum said, “and fly through it, or . . . we need to make this virtual person vomit.”

  “Tell me you didn’t just say that,” Carol said. “Grossest challenge ever.”

  “Anjum’s right,” Derick said. “And so is Carol. But how do we make that happen? It’s not like we can make it stick its finger down its throat.”

  “Foreign objects,” Malcolm said. “This pod has to be one, so the stomach is probably upset already. Can we open this pod up and throw out anything else that would rile it up?”

  “I think this lever unlocks that door,” Jess said, pointing to her controls, then a handle on the wall.

  “Let’s do it,” Anjum said. They opened the door and threw out seat covers and any supplies they found. The stomach began to froth and bubble more. “Now ram the pod against the sides of the stomach. Let’s use up the fuel. It’s now or never.”

  Jess pushed the controls and the pod levitated again. It rammed into the side of the stomach. The acid began to rise.

  “World’s worst anatomy lesson,” Carol said. “Seriously, they should have just used diagrams.”

  The pod rammed the stomach lining again and again. The stomach contents bubbled and riled.

  “Here we go,” Jess called out. “Everyone hang on.”

  Fire

  Derick stood at the bottom of a cliff with a large cave carved in its face. Trees, bushes, and grass filled the scene, except for a large barren patch in front of the cave. Nothing grew there. The rock from the cliff met bare dirt.

  A plume of fire burst out of the cave and a deafening roar echoed out.

  Derick took a step back.

  “What the freaky creepy beast was that?” Carol asked.

  “Was that a dragon?” Maria asked.

  “I can’t think of what else it would be,” Nia said.

  “Well, there were these bulls in Greek mythology that could breathe fire,” Derick added, and touched his head, glad that all his hair was there. “But I doubt they would use the same kind of monster twice in the Race.”

  “I agree,” Anjum said. “Let’s go with the dragon idea. And that narrows down the possibilities of where we are. We have to be inside a work of literature or mythology.”

  “That’s correct, but not specific enough,” the guide said. He wore a long dusty robe with a hood over his head. He carried a wooden staff.

  Derick looked down. He was wearing armor. Gold-encrusted metal plates protected his chest, shoulders, arms, and legs. He also held a long shield in one hand and a helmet in the other. A sword in a sheath hung from his waist. He looked over and saw all of his team dressed the same, though some had a bow and arrows or a spear instead of a sword.

  “To be consistent with this challenge, one of you has to face the dragon,” the guide explained, pointing a covered arm toward the cave. “Alone.”

  “Ohhh! So awesome and so scary all at once,” Carol cried out. “I mean, who hasn’t imagined this before?”

  “That must be part of the story,” Anjum said. “Someone faces a dragon alone. Start your searches while we talk.”

  The beast sent tremors through the ground as it moved inside the cave.

  Derick started his search. There were thousands of instances of dragons in literature. How was he going to narrow this down?

  “Who’s going to face it?” Piper asked, just as it roared again.

  “In my imagination, I always had the guts to do it,” Malcolm said. “And I know this is only virtual, but I’m not too anxious to jump in against oven-breath there. Something that can breathe fire like that could swallow me whole.”

  “And you’re a big bite,” Carol said, then waved frantically. “Oh, I meant that in a very you’re-tall-and-muscular kind of way. It wasn’t a fat joke.”

  “Thanks,” Malcolm said. “But as much as I don’t want to, I’ll face the dragon.” He stepped forward, shifting the spear in his hand and raising his shield.

  “I would too,” Derick said, “but I think if we’re really going to stand a chance, we’d better send in the most agile person we’ve got, not the strongest.”

  “I’m both,” Carol said. “And I’ll do it.” There really seemed to be no situation tense enough that she wouldn’t joke around.

  “I think he was referring to Rafa,” Anjum said. “No offense, Carol. And I believe I would be our second choice with my history in virtuality.”

  Rafa took a deep breath. “If you elect me to, I’ll face the dragon.” That was Rafa, willing and brave.

  Everyone nodded. Rafa put his helmet on his head. It had a Y-shaped opening in front so that Derick could still see his eyes, nose, and most of his mouth. Rafa drew his sword and swished it back and forth through the air. Once he felt he had gauged its weight, he stepped forward. “Too bad I didn’t spend more time in your samurai world, Derick. I could probably use this better.” Then he lifted his shield to protect himself as he moved forward. It was long enough that if he crouched, he could get almost all of himself behind it.

  It was strange to see a friend walk toward something that seemed impossible to beat. Even though it was a virtual test, Rafa would feel the heat of the fire and the pain of a talon or tooth if it got him. And Derick could do nothing.

  Maybe that’s how Abby had been feeling. Maybe she felt like she was watching him step into his death. Maybe he was. And maybe that was even scarier than a virtual dragon.

  Smoke and fire.

  “There’s a story where King Arthur faced a dragon,” Piper said, having found something with her rings.

  “That is not this instance,” the guide said.

  Derick had forgotten about researching. He looked back at his screen in his contact lenses.

  Rafa crept closer to the darkness of the cave.

  “Saint George slays a dragon in The Golden Legend,” Abby guessed.

  “Also incorrect,” the guide said.

  Rafa took several more steps. Derick searched through the possible entries of literature with dragons in it. It was probably something really old. For some reason they always treat old things like they are more important, more classic, more educational. What was one of the first written stories with a dragon in it? “Beowulf,” Derick nearly shouted out when he found it on his screen. “It’s the oldest surviving epic poem in Old English.”

  “Correct,” the guide said. “Two minutes and sixteen seconds.”

  “Good job, Derick,” Anjum said. “Now, Derick, Abby, Carol, and Jess, focus your searches on Beowulf. We need to know more about the story, especially how the dragon was defeated. The rest of you, let’s watch Rafa and give him counsel. The more eyes on this, the better.”

  “I hate that we have to just stand and watch,” Piper said.

  “That is how it occurred in the story,” the guide said. “Beowulf insisted on fighting the dragon alone.”

  “Rafa,” Malcolm said, “maybe you should come at the opening of the cave from along the cliff; that way the dragon won’t see you coming.”

  Rafa sprinted to the bottom of the cliff and moved closer to the opening.

  “Wow, there is no way you can understand this old thing,” Carol said, reading on
her rings. “It’s in English, but it’s just so old that it hardly makes any sense. Like, what’s a ‘Spear-Danes’ glory’?”

  “Read a summary or a more recent translation,” Jess suggested.

  Good idea. Derick searched through a summary. “Beowulf is the name of the main character, and he was intense. He fought monsters with his bare hands.”

  “But when he faced the dragon, he never went in the cave,” Abby said. “Rafa, stop!”

  Rafa was nearly at the entrance. He danced back to one side.

  “Good point, Abby,” Anjum said. “He would be on the dragon’s turf and have few places to hide. How did Beowulf draw it out?”

  “He screamed into the cave to let it know he was there,” Abby said.

  “Why would that draw out the dragon?” Anjum asked.

  “I think because he liked to eat people,” Abby said, squirming a little.

  “So I’m the live bait,” Rafa said. Walking quietly next to the cliff side, he approached the opening. “Keep researching; I can use the help. But let’s see what I’m up against.” Rafa stepped enough into the cave to yell, “Come on out, dragon!” His voice echoed several times off the walls. He backpedaled away and to the side.

  Footsteps. Big ones. And a roar. The ground rumbled with each step as the dragon moved toward the cave’s entrance. Derick looked around to make sure he was far enough back that the dragon wouldn’t see or attack him first. They all stood at the tree line and were ready to hide at any moment. Of course, the dragon’s fire could also burn down the forest.

  “Stay just to the side of the opening, up against the cliff,” Piper advised. “You may be able to get an attack in before he knows you’re there.”

  “Good idea,” Anjum said.

  “It’s not what Beowulf did,” Carol said. “He met him head-on.”

  “I’m not Beowulf,” Rafa said. “I haven’t faced any monsters with my bare hands.” He spoke quickly and urgently.

  “Good point,” Carol said. “But don’t worry. With your long hair and your armor, you totally look like the good-looking hero in a movie. And the good-looking hero never dies. Sometimes the lovable sidekick does. Or maybe a less-important soldier. Or the father-figure who has to get out of the way so the hero can show his or her true potential. But not the hero.”