by Meg Ripley
"This is definitely an adventure," she said as Jordan helped her up.
He laughed softly and put a finger to his lips to quiet her.
"One minute," he whispered.
They pressed to the wall, hunkering together close to the ground so that they could hide from the people leaning over the edge of the wall to see them. River eased closer to the corner and peered back at the main wall. The guards were only a few feet away, but didn't seem to have noticed them.
Without any notice, the guards standing near the wall suddenly stepped forward to get in line with the one in front of them, turned their backs to River and Jordan, and marched away in silence.
"Go!" Jordan hissed and started running toward the place where the guards had stood.
River followed, watching as Jordan disappeared into the wall.
****
The breath caught in River's throat when Jordan seemed to sink into the wall, but in her next step, she saw that he had discovered the dip in the wall and was standing at a narrow door. His fingers traced the letters of an engraving, softened and weathered with age, in the center of the stone door.
River looked at it, but she couldn't read the characters. She could feel the seconds ticking by. There was a rusted latch on the door and she reached for it, doubting it would work. At any moment, the other guards would come into place and catch them. She pushed harder on the latch and felt the rust grinding to powder beneath her palm and the edges biting into her skin.
The sound of grass-muffled footsteps filled their ears and Jordan pushed her hand out of the way to grab the latch. He pressed it, shaking it. Suddenly the latch gave way and the door shifted, opening just enough that they could slip through and push it closed behind them.
Darkness engulfed them, sharpening their other senses so that River felt like she could hear the blood rushing through her veins. She tried to control her breathing, but the panic at nearly getting caught by the guards made it ragged and heavy as it poured from her lungs. A soft glow appeared in front of her and she saw that Jordan had turned the flashlight on his phone on and was holding it beneath his shirt to filter the light.
He placed a finger on his lips to quiet her again and gestured deeper into the space they had entered. She followed him cautiously, aware of the foreboding silence from outside that told her the second shift of guards had taken their place.
"What do we do now?" River whispered.
"Those guards will be there until morning, so we are stuck in here until then."
River's head fell back and she gave a sigh of exasperation. When she said she wanted adventure, she hadn't meant that she wanted to get trapped inside the Great Wall overnight. At least she had some bottled water and a few snacks tucked in her backpack she had reserved for getting through the lectures.
"As long as we are stuck in here, we might as well do a little exploration," she finally said, deciding that sitting around on the floor and bemoaning her current state of existence was not a productive use of their time.
"Absolutely," Jordan said, brightening up.
"Could you read those words engraved on the door?"
"'Knowledge is Power.'"
River looked at him quizzically.
"Really? I wonder what that means."
Jordan shook his head and they continued along the narrow corridor they had entered when they stepped through the door. The light from his cell phone illuminated just enough space in front of them that they were able to follow the turns and curves of the corridor. Suddenly the beam fell on the sharp edge of a staircase that looked like it was carved directly into the stone as it disappeared down into the darkness.
River glanced at Jordan. He shrugged at her and the two stepped down onto the next step, both pausing for a moment as if worried there would be some sort of alarm or trap that would alert the guards outside to their wanderings. When nothing happened, River took another step down and soon they were making their way down the stairs, her hand grazing the wall beside her to keep her steady on the steep passage.
"Do you have any idea what the whole 'Knowledge is Power' thing is all about?" she asked, glancing over at Jordan who seemed to be concentrating intensely on making his way down the steps.
"No. The characters looked weathered, so they were definitely old, but they didn't look like someone just randomly them carved there. They weren't graffiti or something somebody did quickly. I've never heard that phrase used when talking about the Wall."
"Neither have I."
River took another step and felt herself stumble. Jordan reached down and grabbed her arm to stabilize her and help her back to her feet. She looked down at the steps at her feet and then back in the direction from which they came.
"When did we start going up?" she asked.
"What?"
"We were going down the stairs. When did we start going up?"
Jordan looked back and then up the stairs ahead of them. They had been walking down the stairs, but now all of the stairs they could see behind them and in front of them showed that they were climbing up.
"I don't know."
River watched Jordan run back down the stairs for a few feet and hold up his phone to shine the light down the staircase.
"I can't even see where it changed," he said.
"What do we do? Do we just keep going up or do we try to go back down?"
River was starting to feel nervous. The sudden, unnoticed change of direction was disorienting, and she realized that she didn't even realize how long they had been walking, making her unsure of how far from the door they must have gone.
"We can't be too far from the top of the wall. Let's just keep climbing for a few more minutes."
River nodded and they started climbing again, silent now as they both concentrated on counting the steps beneath their feet and trying to orient themselves in the space. They climbed for several more minutes before the light from Jordan's phone shone onto the top of the staircase and what looked like a trap door set into the ceiling.
He handed River the phone so that she could hold the light steady on the door while he tried to open it. The metal handle on the bottom didn't look rusted or aged like the one outside and he wrapped his hand firmly around it. He gave a hard tug and the door fell open, forcing him to step back so that it didn't hit him. River caught him by flattening his hands on his back, indulging herself for just a moment by letting her fingers trail over the muscles that she could feel beneath his shirt.
Jordan pulled the door the rest of the way down and a bright light poured into the staircase. River immediately noticed that it didn't look like sunlight. She followed him up through the door and the moment she stepped up onto the smooth white floor, she heard the trapdoor slam closed as if triggered by their weight.
River gasped at the loud sound and stumbled back, hitting something hard behind her. She turned and saw a wall of what looked like thick, clear glass. Taking a step back, she turned to look at Jordan. He was a few feet away, his hand pressed against an identical wall in front of him. She glanced around, looking for an opening, but they were standing in a fully enclosed glass cube.
****
River's eyes adjusted to the stark white light of the space and she noticed snowflakes drifting through the air around them as if they stood in a snow globe. The flakes sparkled in the light and River realized that they weren't white, but silver, and disappeared as they reached the floor.
She extended her hand to catch the flakes in her palm. As they touched her skin, they seemed to melt, creating a pool of liquid that dripped like mercury off of the sides and splashed, then disappeared, on the gleaming white floor.
"What are these?" she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper as she extended her hand to show Jordan the silvery liquid.
The flakes streaked across his face and sparkled in his dark hair. He shook his head, unable to come up with any words. She stroked her thumb across his cheekbone. The silver liquid spread across his skin and faded as if dissipating back into
the air. She could see her hand trembling as the fear set in and she turned back to the glass wall.
Flattening her palms against it, she leaned close to the wall and stared beyond it at the room around her. The light seemed to reflect off of the gleaming walls and she noticed what appeared to be empty picture frames crafted of iridescent glass positioned at regular intervals along the walls. Long, narrow silver bars separated the frames. There was no furniture in the room and she didn't see any doors or windows.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
Her voice came out of her powdery and strained as if the words themselves were afraid to enter the strange space. She saw Jordan's mouth open like he was starting to say something, but the sound of shouts from somewhere outside of the room stopped him. River stepped closer to Jordan and felt his hand slip down her arm to hold hers comfortingly.
Suddenly a section of the wall across from them slid open and a gorgeous, but frantic-looking young man burst into the room. He didn't acknowledge them, but turned and touched his hand to the wall. The open section slammed closed and he turned his hand sharply. River heard a loud hiss and click like a tremendous lock sliding into place but didn't see any change in the appearance of the wall.
"Hey," Jordan said, pounding on the wall of the cube with his palm, "Hey, can you get us out of here?"
The young man's eyes snapped to them and a startled look crossed his face. River noticed a glint of light reflect from him and saw two iridescent gems embedded in the skin at the outer corner of one eye. She wanted to touch the gems; to run her fingers across them and press her hands to the hard chest that rose and fell raggedly beneath his shirt.
Still ignoring them, the man wrapped his fingers around one of the silver bars between the picture frames and pulled it out of the wall.
There was another shout from outside of the room and River heard loud thuds like someone ramming the wall near where it had slid open to let the man inside. He rushed toward the glass cube and thrust the silver bar forward. It slid effortlessly through the glass and the end bloomed like a metal flower with several curved petals that overlapped just enough to create a cup that caught the silver flakes as they fell.
He waited a few seconds until the cup filled halfway with the metallic liquid, and then withdrew the bar, leaving the glass intact and solid as it left. Jordan pounded on the glass again, moving his hands to different places as if looking for an area that would open. The young man turned and crossed to one of the empty picture frames on the wall. Reaching into the cup at the end of the bar, he scooped some of the liquid into his hand and spread it across the wall within the iridescent glass confines.
River gasped as the silver liquid became like paint, creating a moving image as he swept it across the white wall. It looked like a section of a city with tall, cylindrical buildings positioned close together along narrow roads congested with tiny, fast-moving vehicles. The young man scrutinized it closely, moving his head back and forth quickly as he examined every detail of the image.
When he seemed to have learned what he wanted, he swept his hand back over the wall in the opposite direction, reducing the image back to the silver liquid, which he poured from his palm back into the metal cup. Jordan continued to pound on the glass and call out to him, but he seemed completely focused as he crossed back to the glass cube and pushed the bar back through the glass, tilting it so that the liquid streamed out onto the floor.
Jordan grabbed onto the bar and the young man's eyes snapped to him. He tilted his head, his eyes flitting from Jordan to River as if this was the first time he had noticed they were there. They lowered to River's hands and she placed one on the bar next to Jordan's, holding it tightly. He met her eyes and she saw the gems in his face glow red, fade to a light purple, and then return to red.
Without saying a word or taking his eyes from her, the man pulled the bar back with one hard movement, yanking them toward the glass before River had a chance to let go. She prepared herself for the impact with the wall, but never felt it. Instead, she felt the floor disappear from beneath her feet and in the next moment was struggling to get them back under her beside the young man on the other side of the glass wall.
Just as she got her balance, the young man dropped the silver bar and looked between her and Jordan.
"Run."
****
River didn't have the chance to think. The floor seemed to unfurl under her feet as she ran behind the young man to the opposite side of the room and through another section of the wall he opened by touching his hand to it like he had closed the first section. She could feel Jordan close behind her as they made their way through the wall and down a narrow hallway that was as bright and stark looking as the room they had just left.
She wanted to know where they were going but was too afraid to ask. There was a feeling of panic and urgency in the way the young man had told them to run and the pounding on the wall from where the young man had entered still drummed in her ears. They continued along the hallway and then through another wall into a darkened room.
"No. No, no, no, no, no," the young man said, running around the edge of the wall, tracing his fingers along the expanse as if looking for something.
"What is it?" Jordan asked.
The gems embedded in the young man's face pulsated brighter red as he turned to them.
"Light," he said, "There's no light. We can't get out."
"Then why'd we come in here?" River demanded.
"I didn't realize they had started turning off the activators."
He sounded frustrated and angry, and River felt a sudden wave of concern for him. She looked at Jordan. In the dim light of the room, his face looked shadowy and older than it had before they leapt from the side of the wall.
"What are the activators?" she asked.
"The walls need light to operate. The activators create the light."
Jordan glanced at River and she shrugged at him, nodding subtly. He reached in his pocket and withdrew his phone. River felt a moment of worry that it wouldn't work, but he drew his finger across the screen and the yellow light of the flashlight feature glowed from the end.
The young man stepped back, staring at the phone as if it both terrified and intrigued him.
"Will it work?" Jordan asked.
He didn't say anything, but the young man gestured at a section of the wall. Jordan stepped forward and held the phone up so that the light illuminated the section of the wall, thrusting it in front of him like a weapon. If she hadn't been so confused and afraid, River would probably have found the visual funny.
There was a moment of tense stillness before the young man reached forward and touched his hand to the wall. The wall groaned and inched open slowly. He tucked his fingers in the gap and wrenched it open further so that there was enough space that they could run through. River let out a breath she hadn't even realized she had been holding and surged forward, chasing the boys out of the room and down another hallway.
The intense, almost cutting light of the corridor was fading, disappearing behind them as they ran. River pushed harder, picking up her speed as if trying to outrun the darkness. Just as the final section of the corridor went dark, the young man threw himself forward and touched the wall, opening a section that led out of the building.
The wall slid closed behind her just as River made it out into the shadowy purple light of sunset. There was a strange buzz in the air like everything around her was electrified. It shivered through her, making her feel off balance. The young man didn't seem to notice it, but Jordan shook his head, obviously having the same uncomfortable reaction to the sound.
"Come on," the man insisted, gesturing at them as he continued to run.
There was no grass or trees as they ran. The ground beneath them felt like rubber, and all around them she could see gleaming metal buildings like the ones she saw in the image the silver liquid created across the wall. They seemed to be running behind the buildings, as if the cylindrical towers created th
e boundaries for a busy city.
The light around them grew dimmer as they ran, and with it, the buzzing feeling of the air softened. Out of the corner of her eye River could see the vibrancy of the buildings fading and the number of tiny, round vehicles zipping along the roads lessened. They were running through near darkness by the time the young man took a sharp turn and stepped through the wall of a tall, dull-looking building.
River and Jordan followed him, running through the wall and finally came to a stop in what looked like an abandoned warehouse. The dull, cement-encased room was a pronounced contrast to the bright light of the first building, but River found the soft shadows comforting and protective. Her legs felt suddenly weak and she sank to the floor, resting her back against one of the walls.
"You're safe now," the young man said, "They won't look here."
"Who's 'they'?" River asked.
"Who are you?" Jordan demanded, his voice nearly overlapping hers.
"My name is Geming."
River saw Jordan's eyes narrow.
"Revolution," he said in a startled whisper.
"Your name is 'Revolution'?" River asked.
Geming looked at her, his jaw set. She noticed that the gems beside his eye were no longer red.
"It's what they call me," he said matter-of-factly and something in his voice told her that she shouldn't pry any further.
"I'm River," she offered, hoping to ease the unpleasant tension that seemed to hold the three of them together while also keeping them at a distance.
"How did you get here?" Geming asked.
"We don’t even know where we are. How far from the Great Wall are we?"
A strange expression crossed Geming's face and his body noticeably stiffened.