#NoEscape (Volume 3) (#MurderTrending)

by Gretchen McNeil

  “This isn’t fair!” Mackenzie said, watching the flames shoot up through the now-open hole behind her. The platform on which she stood only had one intact piece of adjacent flooring, and Persey wondered if the imminent danger would inspire enough introspection (maybe) and humility (no way) for Mackenzie to be able to confess her greatest sins. “I’ve got nothing to confess because I’ve never done anything wrong!”

  Ego: one. Introspection and humility: zero.

  “What good are you, then?” Kevin teased.

  None.

  “I don’t think this is a code per se.” Neela had climbed on top of the altar, perched at one corner so she could get a good look at the entire top. “It’s…I think…” She was lost for words, not from fear but from excitement. Her entire face glowed, her smile extending from ear to ear. “This entire altar is a himitsu-bako.”

  Kevin blinked. “A whatid what what?”

  “A puzzle box!”

  “A whatiddy what what?” Kevin repeated.

  “Why are you here?” Wes asked, stepping onto the altar. Persey flinched. How had he made it over? She hadn’t even heard what his confession had been.

  “A puzzle box,” Neela explained, “is a construction of hidden levers, releases, and, occasionally, booby traps that require external manipulation of certain elements in a specific sequence in order to open a secret compartment. In this case, I believe the exit to this room is through the altar.”

  “Down through the altar?” Kevin peered over the side of the platform into the raging inferno beneath them. “That seems like the opposite direction we want to go.”

  Persey didn’t disagree, but since Neela offered the first glimpse of an escape from the Cavethedral, she had to hope that the exit was a safe one. “What do we do?”

  Neela held up her hand, eyes wide and fixed on the top of the altar. “Give me one minute.”

  “Okay,” Kevin said. “But we’ve only got eighteen left.”

  Two more sections of the floor crashed into the inferno. There was so little of it left that Shaun, Mackenzie, and Riot looked like they were completely surrounded by smoke and flames, leaving Persey to wonder if there were even enough slabs left to escort them to the altar. The roar of the inferno reverberated through the stone-lined room, and the air was thick, ash whizzing around in the updrafts. It was getting difficult to breathe, and though the clock said they had eighteen minutes left, Persey wasn’t sure her lungs would last that long.

  She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted at the three stragglers. “Hurry up!” There was no doubt in her mind that a fall into those flames would actually be lethal. That furnace was no fake.

  Mackenzie, despite her earlier insistences, appeared to agree. “I cheated.” Her voice cut through the roar of the fire. “On…on something big.” She paused, and Persey watched her carefully. Mackenzie bit her lower lip, sucking in a spot just inside her mouth as she appeared to wrestle with a decision. Stalling, perhaps, to see if what she’d admitted so far was enough. It wasn’t.

  She doesn’t want to tell us what she cheated on.

  “It was a contest,” Mackenzie continued, somewhat reluctantly. “And a friend of mine knew part of its secret.”

  Still no movement. It was as if the controller knew that Mackenzie was holding something back.

  “And the fucked-up part is that I didn’t need the prize money. I just wanted to win.”

  That was the final piece of her puzzle. Quickly, a series of stones zigzagged into place, offering Mackenzie a route to the altar.

  “And I stole something,” Riot said. His shoulders sagged in resignation. “Not a lame-ass candy bar. But something big. Like corporate-espionage style.”

  Kevin tilted his head to the side. “I thought he said he was a librarian?”

  He did.

  Riot waited a moment, hoping that would be enough, but when the stones didn’t move, he continued. “And I used that information to fuck some shit up royally. People…got hurt.”

  Again, the controller seemed satisfied with the level of vagueness, and Riot made his way across the room.

  Meanwhile, Mackenzie had pushed herself up on the altar beside Neela, who was still perusing the intricate altar top. Patterns were striped across the slab in rows—one checkered like a chessboard, one a mess of swirls, another looked like vines—and split down the middle so that each row had two adjacent pattern mixes. They extended over the edge and down the side of the altar as well, making the whole giant tomb-like slab a garbled mess of lines and shapes. It was as if someone had tiled a bathroom shower pulling tiles blindly from a grab bag.

  “I’ve got this,” Mackenzie said, elbowing Neela out of the way. Kind of ballsy for someone who had judged Persey for being a cheater before admitting to the same. “You can get down and—”

  “Got it!” Neela cried.

  Persey rushed to her side as Riot picked his way toward them. “You do?”

  “You do?” Mackenzie echoed.

  Neela traced a pattern across the altar top with her index finger. “It’s like the scrambled image puzzle from the Hidden Library, but instead of creating a picture from mixed-up tiles, we need to move sections of the altar itself. See this pattern along the right edge?” She pointed to a part of the marble slab with a fleur-de-lis pattern, then drew Persey’s eye to the perpendicular part of the altar below it. “It doesn’t match up with this one. Same on the other side. And if you look at the entire top portion of the altar, you might notice that there are six distinct patterns in play.”

  Persey scanned the altar from end to end. The seemingly random placement of tiles suddenly seemed to arrange themselves before her eyes. “Like that Megaminx puzzle!”

  “Kinda. Only…bigger. And without a central pivot access.”

  “What do we do?” Riot asked. Tweed vest discarded, he’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, ready to work.

  Neela slid off the corner of the altar and placed her hands on the edge. “Help me push?”

  Riot scrambled to her side, and on Neela’s cue, the two of them leaned into the altar, using strength and body weight against the seemingly solid slab of marble.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mackenzie said. “You can’t possibly move that thing. It’s gotta weigh two—”

  Her thought was interrupted by a mechanical click as altar they were pushing against gave way, shifting so that an entire foot of that row hung off the altar on the opposite side.

  “—tons.” Mackenzie looked and sounded deflated as she finished her sentence.

  The right side of Neela’s mouth twitched into a half smile as she quickly pointed to Persey and Kevin on the opposite side of the altar. “You guys, same thing.”

  Without a word, they both fell against the other side, pushing the tiled row. Just as before, with a heavy click, the vibrations of which Persey could feel radiating up her arms, the section of tile moved.

  For the next few minutes, Neela directed traffic, shouting to be heard over the roaring inferno as she scurried around the dais. A push here, a pull, twist, and pivot there—portions of the marble altar top slid around in a seeming progression. It was tough work, and everyone had a thin sheen of sweat coating their faces while the clock continued its relentless countdown. Persey knew she had to trust Neela—no one else had a clue about what to do with that puzzle—but as she eyed the clock through the smoke-filled Cavethedral, she wondered what would happen if they ran out of time.

  As much as she wanted to end this competition, a fiery end wouldn’t save anyone.

  More pieces of the altar were shifted out of place, and it became clear that, far from being a solid piece, the altar was actually a wood-and-metal frame over which two-inch-thick strips of marble had been laid. An intricate pattern of springs and hinges allowed some portions to swing from horizontal to vertical, while other sections of the slab were released by a mechanical infrastructure after a pattern of shifts.

  The whole thing kind of boggled Persey’s mind. As s
uccessful as she had been so far in identifying challenges and piecing together solutions, the three-dimensional vision needed for a spatial puzzle of this kind was a little beyond her.

  Neela, on the other hand, was in her element. Her decisions were swift, and her orders concise and to the point—a far cry from the verbose nervous word vomit with which she usually communicated—and after just a few minutes, they’d managed to get all the pieces into place. Or at least Neela seemed to think so. Aside from the new arrangement of patterns and the cool breeze of air she could feel wafting up through the gaps in the marble, Persey couldn’t tell if they were succeeding or not.

  “This should be it,” Neela said, her ear pressed to one side of the altar. Everyone was lined up beside her, ready to put their shoulders against the lid. “I’m pretty sure that last click released the entire top of this thing.”

  Wes eyed the countdown clock, which had just passed the ten-minute mark. “You’d better hope so. If you’re wrong, we’re not going to have much time to try again.”

  “I’m not wrong.” Persey loved Neela’s confidence. “Everyone ready?”

  A round of grunts signified assents, and Persey hoped, for everyone’s sakes, that this worked.

  “On three, then,” Neela said. “One. Two.”

  They heaved simultaneously. Persey felt, rather than heard, a groan as if something ancient and rusted and barely functional inside the altar gave way. Then, without warning, the individual strips of the altar lid broke apart, one by one careening forward and toppling onto the dais.

  The puzzle box was open.

  “YOU DID IT!” PERSEY CRIED, DUST RISING FROM THE INTERIOR of the altar as the marble strips crashed to a stop.

  “We did it.” Neela paused, peering into the hollow altar. “But what did we do?”

  Persey joined her at the lip of the now-topless altar. The interior appeared to be some kind of a chute angling away from the altar, but beyond that, she couldn’t see.

  “Are we supposed to slide down that thing?” Mackenzie asked.

  Kevin whistled. “That didn’t work out so well for Arlo.”

  Wes coughed, choking on the oppressive smoke that was filling the room. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Okay, okay,” Kevin said, grinning ear to ear. “Don’t lose your head.”

  Neela gasped. “Oh, Kevin.”

  “Too soon?”

  Persey wrinkled her upper lip. “It will always be too soon.”

  The platform the altar was on sat shuddered, a warning that it too might drop at any moment. Would it hold until all seven of them made it down the chute?

  Seven…

  Persey spun around, making a quick head count. One, two, three, four, five, six…“Where’s Shaun?”

  Everyone turned toward the back of the Cavethedral. Standing on his isolated platform halfway across the room, Shaun was angled away from them. His body appeared even more rigid and unmoving than usual, so utterly lifeless that for a moment Persey wondered if he’d had a heart attack. But then, he would have crumpled to the ground.

  “Shaun-bot!” Kevin cried, waving his arms over his head to try to get Shaun’s attention even though they could only see his profile. “Dude, you’ve got to get out of there.”

  No response.

  “Confess something!” Neela shouted. “Anything.”

  “He’s in a fear coma,” Wes said.

  “Shock, more likely.” Riot cupped his hand around his mouth. “Shaun! Hey, Shaun!”

  Still nothing.

  If the stinging smoke, crackling flames, and fear of death by immolation weren’t enough to jar him out of his state of shock, Persey seriously doubted that shouting his name would do the trick. They needed something else to get his attention. There was actually a path of intact platforms—some of the last in the room—that led to within arm’s reach of him, but the nearest platform to the altar was ten feet away. Too far to jump and risk falling. If only they could get to it, they might have a chance to reach Shaun.

  Persey’s eyes fell onto a chunk of marble that had broken from the side of the altar. Maybe if she could hit him with it, it might startle him into action? Worth a shot.

  Persey picked up the shiny white stone and hurled it with all of her strength.

  She’d been worried that she couldn’t throw it far enough, but instead of falling short, the projectile sailed past Shaun’s head, narrowly missing his temple.

  “Trying to get rid of the competition?” Kevin said with a snort. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “I was trying to wake him up,” Persey said, still wondering what Kevin’s confession had really meant. “I’m not a killer.”

  Kevin’s hand flew to his heart. “Ouch. That hurt.”

  “Target practice!” Wes cried, following Persey’s lead. His aim was better, and less potentially lethal, striking the platform right beside Shaun. Who didn’t even flinch.

  “This is ridiculous,” Mackenzie said, eyes fixed on the countdown clock. “We should just leave him.”

  Persey cringed, horrified. “We can’t leave him. That’s practically murder.”

  “Not like we can reach him anyway. We’d need a helicopter. Or a bridge.”

  A bridge? “Good idea!” Persey raced around the backside of the altar, where sections of the lid lay against the wall. “Do you think this will reach that nearby platform?”

  Neela was by her side instantly. “Yes, but if that platform goes, the bridge goes.”

  “Right.” If the platform released into the flames, Shaun, and anyone who was trying to rescue him, would be cut off.

  “Who’d be stupid enough to go out there?” Wes said, a nervous laugh in his voice. Like he thought he might get volunteered.

  Persey sighed, realizing the answer. He’s my responsibility. Shaun might have been a narcissist, but she couldn’t let him die. “Me.”

  “Eight minutes.” Mackenzie pointed at the countdown clock. “We don’t have time.”

  “Then don’t help,” Riot snapped. It was nice to know that Persey wasn’t the only one who’d had it with Mackenzie.

  Despite, or perhaps because of, Riot’s words, Mackenzie joined the effort to haul the heavy marble slab around the front of the altar and slide it out toward the last remaining platform anywhere near the dais. As the fulcrum point was pushed farther out over the abyss, it took all of their strength to keep the slab horizontal, and just when Persey was afraid they couldn’t hold it any longer, the marble scraped across rugged wood. The bridge was set.

  “You sure about this?” Neela asked, her hand on Persey’s arm as she stepped up onto the marble.

  No. “I’ll be okay.”

  Neela looked as unconvinced as Persey felt. “We’ll all stand on this end. Keep the slab out there like a plank in case the platform goes. That way, you might be able to reach it.”

  “All?” Wes said. “Speak for your—”

  “ALL.” Kevin collared him, roughly pulling him up onto the marble. “Or I swear to God I’ll throw you over right now.”

  Persey was pretty sure he’d do it, too.

  “We’ll keep this thing out there as long as we can,” Kevin said. “Just don’t dawdle.”

  She smiled at him, tight and grim. “Noted.”

  Feeble exit strategy in place, Persey took a deep breath. She could have ended this competition before they got this far, and now Arlo was dead, Shaun in danger. She thought of the animals her brother used to mutilate, wondered what he’d done at Columbia that would force him to leave the country. More of the same? His victims were helpless, all of them. Just like Persey was with her dad. Only, she wasn’t helpless now and she wasn’t going to sit around and let anyone else die if she could help it.

  This wasn’t about the money anymore; it was about survival.

  The heat of the flames, dry and smothering, hit her full in the face the moment she cleared the dais. She half expected the wood platform to give way before she reached it, tipping her forward into t
he flames, but it stayed put. Stable. She was able to walk to the next two, then just a quick jump to a third. Then a fourth.

  “Shaun!” she called as she got closer. She was on his left, hardly an arm’s length away, and she could see that his immobility wasn’t complete. His eyes found Persey’s face as she approached, and she could have sworn they were pleading with her. Asking for help.

  She was as close to him as she could get without landing on his narrow platform, but leaping the distance onto it would probably knock him over and send them both careening into the furnace. If they both reached toward each other from where they were, though, they should have been able to touch. “Take my hand.”

  But Shaun stood still.

  “SHAUN!” she yelled. “You have to take my hand or you’re going to die. Do you understand?”

  This time, she saw him twitch. The fingers on his left hand, which hung limply at his side, wiggled ever so slightly. Like a man who’d been paralyzed desperately attempting to move his limbs. Once again, she saw that pleading look in his eyes and his lips, slightly parted, quivered.

  “Helf,” he said, his voice more air than tone. “Helf!”

  Helf? “Help? Do you need help?”

  “HELF EE!”

  Help me. It was as if he couldn’t pronounce the p or the m. Can’t move his lips.

  “Shaun…” She inched as close to the edge of the stone as she dared to go. “Shaun, are you paralyzed?”

  “Persey!” Neela cried. “Hurry up!”

  Slowly, Shaun’s eyelids closed and reopened.

  “One blink for yes,” Persey said. “Right?”

  Again, Shaun blinked his eyes. Just once.

  Paralyzed. Shaun was trying to move—his fingers twitched as if they were desperate to reach out to her, his eyelids communicating but only by an extreme effort, and the one word he could get out between his parted lips was “help.” No, Shaun’s physical situation wasn’t psychosomatic. It actually looked as if he’d been drugged.

  The floor beneath her rumbled. The orange flames appeared to consume the whole room, casting their capricious glow on the rough-hewn walls as if even the rocks around them were on fire. Persey’s entire body was damp with sweat, fabric sticking to her skin, and her palms were so slick she wasn’t sure she could maintain a hold on Shaun’s hand even if she could reach him.