by Gwynn White
Their badges shone, the Maze logo set in the center.
“Kill me,” I said. “Just kill me.”
“Shut up.” He hit me with a short club. “Give some room, coming out!”
They hauled me to my feet. My lips swelled. A sharp tooth fell out. They’re not going to kill me!
I kicked out and sank my toe in the cop’s midsection then rammed the one behind me into the bathroom sink. He buckled backwards and lost his grip on my wrists. A gap opened and I could see the front of the tavern, where the crazies would eat the back of my head. Where I would die and respawn.
I knew how to escape.
A sharp tingle lit the small of my back. I went rigid. My knees folded. I collapsed into a pile, the hard floor slamming into my cheek. Elbows bending the wrong way, legs twisted beneath me, my nervous system shut down. The cop bent over, held a two-prong weapon in front of a sharp smile and touched the trigger. Blue lightning flashed in my face.
There was laughter. This was followed by casual talk of drinks once they tossed me in a cell. Someone yanked on my bound wrists. I stretched like a noodle.
“Give him a second,” someone said. “I don’t feel like carrying him.”
My face slapped the floor. Pain would follow when my nervous system was back online. Until then, I lay in a heap and listened to the banter continue like they had spouses and careers. Like they had lives.
Is this still a game?
A pair of brown shoes was visible beneath the stall. I followed the long legs up a uniform to a face framed by brown hair and mirrored eyes.
See your face, with your eyes.
She took a step. Hesitated. The exit key was on the floor, the stamp of the Maze pointed at me.
Seeyourselfseeyourselfseeyourself…
“Try him again,” one of the cops said.
Cass knelt down and swept the exit key off the floor. They didn’t notice her crouched in the corner. My arms were wrenched upward. Pain stabbed into my shoulders; tendons stretched.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t play dead.”
I got to my knees and closed my eyes, focusing on the words. Pursed my lips. I had to say it, to let her know. She had to hear it.
“I see you,” I said.
She sprang across the room. I turned my head and heard the cops’ surprise, felt the tension on my wrists. Felt the hilt meet the back of my head, where I saw it glowing in the bathroom mirror when I saw myself, with my eyes.
The stamp entered the tattoo on the back of my head.
The lights went out. No one shouted; no one pulled my bound wrists. The hard floor was no longer grinding on my knees.
Lung-burn.
I struggled to draw air, my lungs shrunken balloons. Bubble-strings tickled my legs. Something flushed around me, swirling in this disorientation. I was beginning to rise, but up was down and inside was out.
The hard rubber of a respirator pressed inside my throat.
I gagged to remove it but twisted against a glass wall. Salty solution flushed through my nostrils and between my lips. A sudden sense of buoyancy pushed me upward.
And I broke the surface.
Arms flaccid, fingers stiff, I reached up and caught an edge. The tug of a line was at the small of my back. The mask’s visor was foggy with colors that merged together and smeared my vision. It was snowing thick shiny flakes. The static of engines was in my ears.
I pulled off the mask, the respirator’s tongue slipping from my throat. I dry-heaved into the bubbling surface.
“It’s all right,” someone called.
Hands were under my arms. I fought them off. Returning to the skin was like falling into the Big Bang—space rushing outward at the speed of light. I held onto the tank like a ledge, my life depending on three inches of reality. A time dilation turned my brain in and out of focus.
The winch tugged me higher.
“Stop,” I croaked.
I wiped my face. The antiseptic-gel sting watered my eyes and seared my nostrils. The roar of the engine began to wane and I recognized it as something else. Not an engine.
Voices.
For a moment, I thought I was dreaming, that I’d fall into a bed of lava or a giant nest of hornets, the challenge of another world upon me. The bright lights were fuzzy. My eyelids barely open.
“Just relax,” someone said. “Dial in.”
There were others near him. They were calling out vitals, touching my neck, holding my arms. My pulse slammed in my throat, but the air I breathed was cool and sweet. There were more voices. They were cheering.
And confetti.
It fell from a ceiling of red and green and orange lights.
They were ecstatic, on their feet, screaming a name. One voice called above them, an amplified voice that garbled through fluid in my ears. He was a blurry form in front of me, hand up and presenting a smile.
“Is she ready?” someone asked.
I ran my hand over my face again and spit the taste of gel off my tongue. The stubble of new eyebrows had grown in.
“You ready?” someone asked me.
I wiped down my head once more and felt the notch on my right ear. I looked into the water. My body black in the skin suit. But the evidence of my true body—my skin—wavered beneath the surface.
See your face, with your eyes.
It wasn’t a bad poem after all. It was the clue to escape, to recognize my original face, to know my true self.
Find yourself in the Maze.
All those bodies I had occupied weren’t me. I was the answer. I was the path, the escape. My true face was in front of me all that time. I saw her, the one with the mirrored eyes and the notched ear. It was her mirrored eyes that reflected the bathroom mirror and the tattoo on the back of my head.
“Let’s go!”
The cable tightened. Ever so slowly, I was hoisted from the tank. When I hung above the surface, the crowd’s roar was deafening. Scenes of the Maze I had endured played on screens above their heads. I dangled for their honor. And the announcer called.
“Here she is…” he started. “The winner of the sixty-fifth Maze…”
The chlorinated smell was thick. The scent of gel burned my sinuses. I hung there crying.
It smelled like home.
INTERVIEW
“Your father bit your ear,” the man states.
“It was a dog,” Cassidy says.
“It was in the EMT’s report. Blood on his lips, a chunk on the floor.”
“They were mistaken. He hit his mouth, bit his tongue.”
“He was insane and we both know why. But he bit you for a reason. Why do you think that is?”
Cassidy sits back, meeting the man’s stare. Hands steady on her lap.
“He marked you,” the man says. “Somehow that helped you win the Maze.”
“Interesting theory, Sean.”
“The Maze is a parallel universe. You cross into it with limited memories but the same physicality. Your father knew it would give you an edge without tipping off the creators. And somehow you altered your memories, made them believe a dog bit you. Not your father.”
“You know a lot about the Maze.”
“I know what it did to him.”
Cassidy nods. He’s reached the end of his plea. It’s nothing more than that. But how can he understand the mountain unless he’s stood at the foot of it and gazed at the majesty, stood atop its peak, exhausted and victorious?
She stands. “Time’s up.”
A man opens the door. They can’t keep her any longer. Not without evidence. Not with a memory dump she voluntarily provided, one that showed them exactly what she wanted them to see. One that gave them nothing about the Maze or the people who run it.
Or the one she won.
“Because it was there?” Sean says without turning. “You risked your sanity, you lost your father, because it was there?”
“What else is there, Sean?”
“How do you know my name?”
S
he looks around the room, a smile’s shadow growing. Thoughts swirl around her, a silky breeze cools her mind—her thoughts, his thoughts, the people in the other room. It flows through her like data.
The Maze transformed her.
The rewards for conquering the mountain were beyond words, something very few could understand. Not Sean, not most of the world. To risk it all for clarity of mind would only make sense to her. To someone watching from a safety net, it looks like insanity.
If they could see this gift, the true prize, they would gladly drop into the tank or take the needle. They would risk everything for a reward money could not touch. Even Sean.
If he could only see what I see… with my eyes.
Passage Out
Anthea Sharp
The roar and shake of spacecraft blasting off from Southampton had long since ceased to wake Diana Smythe from her ragged slumber. The door alcove she called home was scant shelter from the elements, but she’d learned to catch what rest she could. A stealthy approach or a whisper of malice, however, would bring her awake in an instant, hand tight around the hilt of her makeshift dagger.
She’d had a gun, once, a light-pistol that could slice a man’s arm off, or put a smoking hole in his chest at fifty paces.
Long gone, now, along with the rest of the remnants of her former life. Diana didn’t even have a gold locket with her parent’s picture, or a pocket watch with a loving inscription, or any of the tokens common to novels about abandoned girls seeking their long lost homes and families.
Her life was not a storyvid. She knew well enough that parents didn’t miraculously come back to life after a flaming carriage crash, and lost fortunes never magically re-appeared.
And the dream of the spaceport had long since become a grimy reality, measured in take-offs and landings, in the ebb and flow of her small store of coins. Not enough. Never enough to buy passage out, not even a berth to the moon.
“Di, get up.”
A toe in her ribs made her roll away and open her eyes. Dawn feathered the sky in blue and pink, and made the grungy corner she called home almost pretty. Silhouetted against the sky stood a young boy with matted brown hair and a chipped-tooth smile.
“Go away, Tipper.”
“Can’t.” The boy squatted down next to her and poked her shoulder with a grimy finger. “Found something.”
That woke her up. Diana sat, her holey woolen blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders. The nights were still chilly, but at least spring had finally come. She’d made it through another winter on the streets.
“What did—” She broke off, waited for the roar of the blast-off to fade.
Both she and Tipper looked up. From the sound of that lift, it was one of the bigger ships; a Fauntleroy 220, she guessed. The gleaming silver shape arced overhead, catching the light that hadn’t yet reached the alleyways and streets. It was a Fauntleroy, just as she’d guessed. Soon after she’d arrived in Southampton, hopeful and starving, she’d found she had a talent for identifying the ships, scanning the arc of their flights in a heartbeat, gauging velocity and lift, and guessing at their destinations.
If she couldn’t get to the stars, she could image others traveling there, and watch them go.
Tipper stared at the ship, the longing on his face so clear Diana had to look away. Sure, she probably had the same look in her eyes, but she’d had a few extra years to hide it. Tipper was still a kid, for all his cockiness. Still dreaming the child’s dream of space—the blackness full of stars and possibility. A million futures to choose from.
Diana swallowed and ignored the tight clutch of hunger in her belly. When the sky was empty, she asked again.
“What did you find?”
Tipper darted a glance down the alley, then shook his head and motioned her to follow.
“If this is some kind of joke…” She gave him her best hard-eyed stare as she rolled up her blanket and shoved it into the satchel holding her possessions. The ones that mattered, anyway.
“Isn’t,” he said.
“Tally-ho, then.”
She brushed off her trousers, scooped up her bag, and grabbed the parasol she’d nicked from a highborn chit. It was battered and stained, but if she held it just right, wore her salvaged satin skirt, and did her hair up in style (fastened with string and bits of charred metal, not that anyone would get close enough to notice), she could pass for gentry. For a brief time, anyway.
Her accent helped, of course. At least, when she was in the better part of the city. Down here, in the rookeries by the spaceport, she pulled a covering of Cockney over the smoothly articulated syllables she’d grown up speaking.
Darting like a mongoose, Tipper led her through the twists of the alleys, through derelict buildings, and at last to the sheer, shiny wall of the spaceport itself. It rose a dozen meters into the air, silvery and impermeable, and so clean.
Diana went and laid her hand against the surface, the alien material faintly cool against her palm. There was no need for a stun current—the Yxleti-made wall was impervious to any human effort. No knife or gun, laser or explosive could even mar it, let alone break through.
There were only two ways into the oval-shaped spaceport district. Passengers and those with official business used the front entrance at one end of the oval. Cargo and employees went through the Spaceport Authority processing area on the other end. Between the two, nothing but sheer walls.
“Psst.” Tipper waved at her from a shadowy ruin ahead.
When Diana joined him beside the crumbling wall, he gave her a grin full of mischief.
“Lookit this.” He nudged a crumbling piece of pressboard aside with his foot to reveal a dark shaft disappearing into the ground.
She leaned over and peered into the blackness. The edges were perfectly straight, the hole just big enough to admit a body. Provided that a person was not afraid of closed-in, dark places. She shivered.
“Where does it go?”
“I waited for you, to find out.”
Diana shot Tipper a look. It wasn’t just the rough fondness of the streets that had made him wait, but the sense of self-preservation every alley rat needed to survive. It would be sheer foolishness to disappear down that black shaft without anyone knowing where you’d gone, or waiting up above to pull you back up if necessary.
“You’ve got a rope?” She glanced around the ruin, the two partially-standing walls not providing nearly enough cover for what they were about to do.
“Sure. And lights. And water and some brat bars, just in case.”
He went to the corner and rummaged beneath a piss-scented tarp, emerging with the described items.
“Here.” He handed one of the foil-wrapped bars to her.
“I don’t want that.”
B-rations, brats for short, were the lowest-level foodstuffs. Even at her hungriest, she could barely choke down a mouthful of the gluey substance.
“Toff,” Tipper said.
“Ain’t.”
Despite hazy memories of silky dresses and mathematics lessons and a pony of her own. That was half a lifetime ago, or more. It didn’t matter now. She tucked the brat bar into her trouser pocket, planning to give it back to Tipper after they… well. After they found whatever it was they were going to find down there.
“Probably just leads to the sewers,” she said, taking a sniff of the air over the shaft.
It wasn’t as foul as she expected. Dry, not rank, with a whiff of fuel. A jagged shard of hope sawed at her. Could this possibly be a tunnel into the spaceport?
Rumor was the Yxleti had used a network of tunnels when constructing the port. But they had all been filled up again. Even if this was a former passage to the spaceport, it surely ended in an impassable wall of rubble.
Still, her heartbeat pumped up with possibility.
She helped Tipper secure the rope to the sturdiest beam they could find. He wrapped it around his chest and under his arms, then donned a pair of stained leather gloves two sizes too big.
“Are you sure you want to go first?” She glanced into the hole. “It looks deep.”
“I found it, I get to explore it. And I dropped a lightstick down there yesterday. Bottom’s not too far.”
He grinned at her. She had the feeling “not too far” had a different meaning, once you were dangling at the end of a rope.
“Speaking of light…” He held a battered lightstick out to her, then tucked a second one into a makeshift headband and settled it over his filthy hair.
Before she could wish him luck, he scrambled over the edge of the shaft and let himself down.
Diana knelt and watched him go down. The shaft was small enough that he could brace his legs and back on opposite sides and control his descent. Once, he slipped, and she swallowed back a cry of dismay as he slid a full meter down the hole before catching himself.
Sooner than she would have liked, all she could see was the lightstick attached to his head. It bobbed up and down, sparking dull reflections from the sides of the shaft. After a while, the light stopped, and the rope jiggled wildly.
“Tipper?” She leaned over the hole, fear clenching her gut.
Something was down there, and had eaten him. The rope went slack.
Dammit. Without com devices—which no alley rat could ever afford—she had to guess at what was happening.
Hands shaking, she pulled the rope back up and inspected the end. No blood, no fraying.
“Di.” Tipper’s voice echoed softly up.
She blew the stale air of fear out of her lungs. “Now what?” she hissed down into the hole.
“Going to explore. Sit tight.”
The roar of lift washed over the silvery spaceport walls. Diana glanced up as the Volux V-class freighter lumbered up into the lower atmosphere. Bound in-system, she’d guess; one of the outlying Jupiterean moons, or maybe just Mars.
“Tipper?” She leaned forward at the flicker of light from below.
“Di! Come down—it’s a passage through.”
She didn’t believe it, though Tipper had never been a practical joker like some of the other alley rats.
“Who’ll guard the rope?”