Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1)

by G. Allen Wilbanks

  “Are we supposed to find the right door to go in?” asked Annie. “I don’t understand. One of them is safe for us to pass, but the others might kill us?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sofia told her. “Do you remember when Hiss told us about the final challenge before he went home? There are ten doors here. There were ten of us when we started in that equipment room. I think we’ve reached the final challenge.”

  “I agree with Sofia,” added Leon. “There’s a door for each of us to go home. We have to figure out which door belongs to which person.”

  “And how do we do that?” Annie asked, examining each of the doors in turn.

  Malcolm marched toward the first door on the left. “By not acting like a bunch o’ twats and start openin’ them,” he declared.

  “Wait!” called out Sofia and Leon in unison, but Malcolm did not pause.

  Grasping the handle, Malcolm rocked it downward and pushed. Nothing moved. He stepped back and tried pulling next. The door swung open easily this time, and he flung it out wide enough to view what waited beyond. A swirling grey vortex filled the doorway, a twisting mass of silver and black storm clouds. It looked like the view of a tornado from the top down, trapped in the confines of the doorframe.

  As the group stared at its hypnotic movement, the grey void began to seep forward, escaping whatever construct had previously held it in place.

  “Ah, fuck!” shouted Malcolm, slamming the door closed and shutting out the creeping mass before it could free itself completely.

  The moment the door latched shut, it shimmered like the sparkle of sunlight reflected off the ripples of a disturbed pond. Then it winked out of existence. One door was gone. Nine remained.

  “That wasn’t my door,” Malcolm asserted, before stepping over to the next potential portal.

  “Malcolm, stop!” shouted Sofia.

  Again, he ignored her and grabbed the metal handle in front of him. Rocking it up and down, his body heaved back and forth as he tried to alternately push and pull the stubborn barrier. It refused to open so much as a crack. Frustrated, he moved on to the next door.

  “We have to stop him,” Sofia warned, but Leon put a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s already too late. Leave him alone.”

  Malcolm moved down the entire line of doors, pulling on each handle in turn, but none of the remaining barricades seemed willing to reveal what they protected. When he had tried all the doors a second time, moving from right to left this time, he turned to face Leon.

  “What’s the trick, boyo? What’s going on?”

  “No trick,” said Leon, sadly. He genuinely felt sorry for Malcolm despite his personal dislike of the man. “Hiss told us when his group made it to the final challenge, they each had one opportunity to select the correct way to get home. You took your chance when you opened the first door. You failed.”

  Panic shone in Malcolm’s eyes as he digested what Leon told him. “No. It ain’t over, yet.”

  “It is,” Leon said. “I just hope you didn’t open one of our doors and ruin someone else’s chance of getting home as well.”

  “I’m not staying here because I opened one wrong fucking door. One of ye’ll have to open another one for me. Or … or let me go through wi’ ye.”

  Annie snorted. “And risk dying or getting stuck here with you? I think you already know the answer to that one, dipshit.” She held up a fist with her middle finger extended.

  Malcolm clenched his fists and started walking in Annie’s direction. Leon and Sofia moved to intercept him, but before any physical confrontation could occur, Shoo spoke up behind them.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed, excitedly.

  They all turned to see what she had found. Leon looked in time to see Shoo darting through an open doorway into another spinning vortex. The storm claimed her, and the door swung shut as she disappeared into the maelstrom. As they all stared at the closed doorway, it too rippled and faded from existence.

  Eight doors remained.

  “Of course,” Leon muttered, unsurprised by what he had witnessed. Shoo never claimed to care about anyone’s safety besides her own. The moment she saw her opportunity to return home, she took it without so much as a backward glance toward the rest of them. “She figured out how to tell the doors apart, but I guess she couldn’t be bothered with letting the rest of us know before she took off.”

  Leon turned back to Malcolm, but the larger man had stepped back a pace, his earlier anger no longer in evidence. His face was pensive.

  “What did she find?” Sofia mused. “We can’t even examine the door she used because it’s already gone.”

  Moving closer to the potential exits, Leon took a moment to examine the surface of the remaining door on the far left. It looked to him like every other door they had found in these God-forsaken challenges. The surface was smooth and white, without a single blemish or visible mark of any kind. The handle was similarly glossy and featureless. As his gaze travelled over the metal plate in the upper corner, his heart began to race. He realized what Shoo had seen.

  “These plates are the clue,” he told the others without turning. He hurried to the next door and examined the etching on its plate. “They’re all different. I think we have to figure out which one belongs to us based on the symbol marked on each plate.” He stepped back to the first door and tapped a finger on the marker. “Like this one here. It looks like a pair of shoes.”

  Annie moved in closer to peer around Leon’s shoulder. “Ballet shoes,” she confirmed. “I think this door is mine.”

  “Don’t open it until you’re absolutely sure,” Leon warned. “Go look at all the others first. Then, when you’re positive this is the only one that makes sense, I think you’re safe to open it.”

  “Good call, Idaho.”

  Annie walked slowly from door to door, peering up at each of the plates and taking a moment to analyze what they might mean. When she reached the end of the row, she came back to stand by Leon.

  “This is mine,” she said again. “None of the other symbols mean anything to me, so this has to be the right one.” Annie hesitated, looking at her feet in embarrassment for a moment before meeting Leon’s eyes. “Should I wait for you guys to find your doors?”

  Leon smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think you need to do that. You should probably follow Shoo’s example. Now that you know which door takes you home, you should get the hell out of here as fast as you possibly can.”

  Annie threw her arms around Leon’s chest and hugged him fiercely. Surprised, he hesitated before wrapping her up in his own embrace. He held her tightly and laid his cheek on top of her head.

  A moment later, Annie put her hands against his stomach and pushed him away. “All right. That’s enough. You’ll have to get your rocks off somewhere else, perv.”

  Sofia moved closer and the two hugged each other as well.

  “Well, I can honestly say this hasn’t been fun,” said Annie. She grasped the handle of her door and pulled it open.

  Malcolm rushed forward at that moment, shoving a hand into Annie’s chest and pushing her roughly backward. She tumbled, arms and legs flailing as she fell to the ground. Without pausing, Malcolm dove through the open doorway, directly into the heart of the spiraling void. The door slammed shut as his feet disappeared over the threshold.

  Annie sprawled on her back, stunned, and trying to understand what had happened. In a sudden panic, she rolled onto her stomach then pushed to her hands and knees. She was too late. Her face twisted with horror as the door that should have taken her home disappeared in front of her eyes.

  “Noooo!” she wailed, crawling to the patch of manicured lawn where her exit had been only seconds before. She had gotten so close to leaving this nightmare behind. “Come back. Wait.”

  On the ground, face down in front of Annie, lay Malcolm. The door had failed to transport him anywhere before blinking out of existence and he had collapsed onto the grass as if he had simply passed through any
normal doorway. Annie climbed to her feet, stood over his prone form and screamed, a wordless keening of impotent rage.

  She kicked Malcolm in the ribs several times as she swore at him. The large man did not move, unresponsive to either Annie’s kicks or her curses.

  “You. Fucking. Coward! Look at me!” Annie shouted, throwing another kick into his side to emphasize her demands. “Get up!”

  When Malcolm still did not respond, Annie dropped to her knees and pushed him, grunting as she rolled him over onto his back. She recoiled, falling backward as she leapt away from the sight of the man’s face.

  Malcolm’s eyes were open but staring unfocused. Blood had flowed in a torrent from his nose and mouth and the lower half of his face was now a fright mask of red. His shirt was also soaked in sticky gore. Blue mottling covered the skin of his face where the blood had not covered it, and the whites of his eyes were shot through with the red lines of hundreds of tiny broken blood vessels.

  No one checked for breathing or a heartbeat. There was no need. Malcolm was dead.

  Leon moved closer to examine the body. The visible injury to the corpse was extensive, far more than should have been possible during the fraction of a second between Malcolm going through the door and falling to the grass. The vortex must have crushed bone and flesh instantly upon contact. He did not know how that was possible, but Leon had no other explanation for the suffering Malcolm had apparently experienced before he died.

  “He looks like he was crushed, then suffocated, or put in vacuum. But that’s impossible, right?”

  “I hope it hurt like hell,” Annie growled, then sniffled loudly. She crawled on her hands and knees, putting more distance between herself and the body in the grass before sitting down and hugging her knees to her chest.

  Leon followed and knelt beside her. “Annie, I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?” she snapped back. “What’s to be sorry about? Because I can’t go back to that shithole I live in? Why the fuck would I even want to go back? What have I got to go home to? I live with my mom, for fuck’s sake. I teach dance to kids that are still shitting their pants, and I work for a fucking floor manager that can’t keep his hands off my ass. Where’s the incentive to go back to that? Blondie probably did me a fucking favor.”

  Leon sat down beside Annie, placed his arms around her shoulders and hugged her tightly.

  “Get the fuck off of me,” Annie shouted, rocking to the side to pull away from him.

  Leon only held her tighter. Annie placed a hand against his chest and pushed, but her actions had no real strength to them. Her shoulders slumped. She collapsed into Leon’s embrace and began to cry. All pretense of bravery or toughness fled, and Annie’s tiny frame shook with hard, racking sobs as Leon hung on to her and let her mourn.

  Sofia sat down on Annie’s free side and placed her arms around the two of them. Annie’s grief was the only sound. Neither Sofia nor Leon said anything as they held her. What could they say? There was nothing they could do to change what had happened, and nothing they could tell her to make everything all right. All they could do was be here for Annie in this moment, to share her pain and offer what comfort they had to give. So, they did.

  Leon lost track of time as the three companions remained in their solemn embrace. It did not matter. He felt no urgency to move. There was nowhere he needed to be that was more important than where he was now.

  Annie eventually cried herself out. Exhaustion and acceptance of her situation replaced the overwhelming grief that had consumed her. She sniffled noisily, then hiccoughed, causing a shudder to run through her body. Although her tears dried, Annie allowed the moment of closeness to continue a while longer. Leon did not object, and it appeared that neither did Sofia.

  A few more minutes passed in silent communion before Annie finally broke the fragile peace.

  “You two need to go home,” she said, her voice hushed but steady.

  “There’s no hurry,” Sofia assured her.

  “No,” Annie said, shaking her head and turning toward Sofia. Leon pulled back slightly, allowing his arms to drop away from Annie as she moved. “You don’t know that for certain. Those doors could all disappear at any minute. We don’t all have to be trapped here.”

  “What if you and I go through my door together?” Leon suggested. “Maybe we can all still make it home.”

  Annie glanced at Malcolm’s body in answer to that suggestion. “I don’t think I would end up any better than him if we tried that. I might also get you killed in the process. Not going to happen.”

  “But…,” Leon began, although he had nothing more to suggest.

  Annie raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, she patted him on the arm. “But … you and Sofia need to go home.”

  “I don’t think I do,” said Leon, surprising even himself with the proclamation. “I think I need to stay right here. It doesn’t feel right to walk away and leave you behind. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

  Annie growled in frustration at his stubbornness. She turned to Sofia, looking for support. “Tell that idiot that you two have to go home. Please. Don’t let me be the reason that all of us rot here.”

  Sofia glanced at Leon, then back to Annie. She took a long slow breath, then exhaled. “I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere, either,” she said, at last.

  Lurching to her feet, Annie balled her fists and pounded her thighs in disbelief. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? We have spent the last I don’t know how many hours trying to get away from this place, and now that you have a chance to go, you won’t take it.”

  “It’s my fault you’re stuck here,” Leon muttered. “I should have known Malcolm would try something like that. I probably should have let him drop when he fell in the last hallway. Instead, I saved him. He was dangerous, and I let you down.”

  “Guilt? You’re staying because you feel guilty?” Annie asked, incredulously. “You should have done this. You should have done that. You’re just the big strong man that should have done better looking after little old me. Well, fuck you! I’m a big girl, Idaho. I don’t need you taking care of me or feeling bad when things don’t go my way. Sofia, tell him he’s being a moron.”

  “You’re a moron,” Sofia told Leon.

  “I’m still staying.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Me, too.”

  Annie sat back down in the grass, staring at Leon and Sofia as if she had discovered yet another alien lifeform on this journey. “I truly do not understand you guys.”

  The three sat, staring at the grass between them as they wrestled with their own thoughts. Leon knew he was probably being foolish, but he had no intention of leaving Annie to die in this place alone. He did feel some guilt at not stopping Malcolm before he had pushed through Annie’s exit, but that was only a minor part of his decision. It was wrong to abandon someone when they were helpless and afraid, even when it was to save yourself. He couldn’t do it.

  Leon refused to be Malcolm or Shoo, tossing aside everyone else in the name of self-preservation. It was not in his nature. If that meant that he died here with Annie, then so be it. Was he being a martyr? Maybe. But again, so be it.

  He did need to come up with a plan to get Sofia to leave, however. One unnecessary sacrifice in the name of brainless chivalry was plenty. Two was unthinkable.

  More time passed, although the sun remained directly overhead making Leon think they were in another large simulation room where the sky was merely a projection meant to simulate a real location. The doors remained firmly fixed in place, waiting for the final two humans to choose among them. Annie was right, however. They could evaporate at any moment. The Apex might grow tired of waiting for them to make a decision and simply take matters into their own hands.

  Leon glanced toward Sofia, thinking about what he could say to her that would convince her to go home without him or Annie. Before he could come up with anything, Annie surprised them both by jumping to her feet. Her eyes were locked on so
mething over Leon’s right shoulder, and by the haunted expression on her face, she probably wasn’t seeing anything good.

  “What?” he asked, turning his head to search for whatever had grabbed Annie’s attention. He and Sofia climbed to their feet when they saw it.

  An older man wearing grey and white boxer shorts and nothing else, strolled across the lawn toward them. The man walked calmly in their direction, seeming to be in no particular hurry, though his direction of travel was not random. The focus of his gaze proved that the three of them were most definitely his goal. The old man smiled at them as he approached, and Leon caught the familiar glint of bright amber in the stranger’s eyes.

  “Honghui?” Leon asked, stunned. “What are you doing here?”

  Honghui sauntered to within fifteen feet of Leon and stopped. “The real question, young human, is what are you doing here? You should have gone back to your world some time ago.”

  “Human?” asked Sofia. “Then you’re … one of the Apex?”

  Honghui’s smile broadened. “No. Merely one of their, ah, subordinates. I think that word suffices. I am here to watch your progress and make a determination.”

  “A determination about what?”

  “Pass or fail,” Honghui told Sofia. “You die, then you fail. You survive, you pass. You two, however,” he pointed a finger at Sofia then swept it toward Leon, “are somewhere in the middle. You have met the challenges, but for some reason refuse to leave. If you remain too much longer, I will be forced to call it a fail, wipe the board clean, and collect new participants. Perhaps I have let myself become too vested in this challenge, but I am loathe to eliminate two beings that have thus far played so well.”

  “Played?” Annie interrupted. “This is just a game to you?”

  “To me, yes. There are no consequences to me regardless of how this resolves. To you, however, it is vitally important. Not merely because your individual lives are at risk, but because you three represent the greater population of your world. Your planet is being evaluated based on your performance. Another reason I really do not wish to see you choose to forfeit.”