Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1)

by G. Allen Wilbanks

  Annie spoke up again. “What happens to Earth if they don’t go back?”

  Honghui waved a hand dismissively. “Enough. I am not here to answer questions. I am here to give you one last opportunity to select a path home before ending the challenge. So, I ask you, will you leave, or must I report back that all selected humans have failed this test?”

  “We’ll leave,” said Leon. “But Annie goes with us. It’s not her fault she lost her door.”

  Sofia stepped up next to Leon, lending her support to his proclamation. Honghui, however, shook his head sadly.

  “Fault or no, the rules are clear. Her exit was improperly used, and she remains here.”

  “To die,” clarified Leon.

  “Yes, to die. As I said before, as soon as you leave, the board is wiped clean.”

  “Then Sofia will go home, and I will stay here with Annie.”

  “The hell I will!” Sofia blurted out. “You don’t get to tell me to stay or go. I have…”

  “Stop!” cried Honghui, covering his eyes with his hands. “I think you humans are going to be insufferable. However, that is a problem for others and for another time.” He lowered his hands and bowed his head for a moment. When he looked up, the smile was back on his face.

  “What if I offered an alternative solution?” he asked.

  The three said nothing but waited intently for what Honghui might say next.

  “The female cannot go home. The rules are specific about that, however, she has not technically lost, either. She survived all challenges. Because of this, I can make an offer.”

  “I’m listening,” said Annie.

  “For each selected group, there is one participant selected from a prior challenge. This individual serves as a guide, advising the others of the rules and the expectations we have for their compliance. This guide is necessary to provide each group a warning of what they face and prepare them to meet the challenges.

  “As you have survived all previous tests, you are fit to act as a guide for our next collection of human subjects. If you consent to serve in this capacity, I will see that you are so utilized.”

  “But I would have to go through this whole thing again?” Annie asked.

  “Not identical, but similar. Yes.”

  “And, if I say no?”

  Honghui’s smile turned sad. “Then we are back to our original problem.”

  Annie gazed at the ground between her toes, the stillness of her posture belying the obvious frenetic activity in her mind. Leon rested a hand on her shoulder, giving what support he could. Neither of the options she had been presented were ideal, yet one was still vastly superior to the other. A small chance of survival was infinitely better than no chance at all. She still took a long moment to think, searching for a third option, another path she could take. In the end, nothing useful presented itself.

  “I will be your guide for the next group,” she said, meeting Honghui’s amber eyes once more. “Leon and Sofia go home.”

  “Agreed,” said the alien in human form. “Of course, they must still select the correct door to leave. Rules are rules.”

  “Annie,” began Leon, still not prepared to leave her behind.

  She cut him off. “Nope. You and Sofia are getting the fuck out of here. No more arguments on that one. Thanks for everything, but you’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  Leon put out a hand toward her, but Annie slapped it away. “Find your door, Idaho,” she told him.

  Leon and Sofia exchanged a glance and a nod before turning to face the seven remaining doors. The blank, white surfaces waited ominously for their decisions.

  Sofia reached out and took Leon’s hand in hers. They grasped each other tightly as they stepped up to the first of the remaining doors in the row. The metal marker in the right corner was etched with a symbol that Leon did not recognize. It was a circle enclosed in a larger circle. Along the circumference of the larger circle were three dots separated from each other by irregular spaces. It looked to Leon like a representation of a solar system, or perhaps an atom. It was not familiar to him and, from the puzzled look on Sofia’s face, it had no meaning for her either.

  They moved on to the next door.

  “Ah,” gasped Sofia. “I … I think this is me.”

  The etching was of three flowers on long, multi-leafed stems. The leaves were long and pointed, while the blooms were small and cup shaped.

  “Flowers?” asked Leon. “This means something to you?”

  Sofia nodded. “Tulips. The name of the restaurant where I was working is ‘The Three Tulips.’ I don’t think this is a coincidence.”

  Leon was forced to agree with her assessment, but since they had only survived to get this far because they didn’t take anything for granted, he suggested they look at all the other doors before Sofia opened this one. She did not argue. They walked to the next door, still holding hands.

  The next two doors bore no markings significant to either Leon or Sofia. One appeared to be an inverted ‘V’ with a circle over the top, and the next was a box with a series of lines through it that suspiciously resembled a window barricaded with bars. They moved past these quickly. Door number five had what might have been a badly drawn, stylized ‘7’ over the etching of a palm tree. The two stared at the etching for a moment and prepared to move further down the row of portals when Leon suddenly recognized what he was seeing.

  He laughed.

  “This is probably mine,” he told Sofia, a wide grin spread across his face. He pointed at the shape on top. “This is Florida. And this, right below it is supposed to be a fountain.”

  Sofia shook her head, not understanding the reference. Then her eyes lit with comprehension. “It’s your name!” she exclaimed, delighted.

  “Ponce De Leon explored Florida searching for the Fountain of Youth,” Leon agreed. “This has to be my door.”

  Despite his certainty, caution ruled his actions and he walked with Sofia to check the remaining two doors in the row. Neither of the remaining symbols registered as significant to the pair. Confident now in their selections, Leon and Sofia returned to the exit marked with tulips. Annie joined them by the door.

  “No long goodbyes,” Annie told Sofia, embracing her fiercely and releasing her just as quickly. “Now get out of here. Go home.”

  Sofia turned to hug Leon as well. He held the embrace a while longer than Annie had. Sofia was warm and soft against him, and Leon thought that perhaps, in different circumstances, he might be enjoying this moment quite a bit. She pulled away after several long heartbeats, but the time still felt too brief to him. Sofia placed a hand on his chest as she stepped away. Leon wondered for a moment if he was only being hopeful, or if she regretted ending the hug as well.

  Sofia grasped the handle of her door and pulled. It opened toward her without resistance. The grey swirl of the expected vortex was revealed in the doorway. Pausing, Sofia turned to look over her shoulder.

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t…”

  “Go!” Annie and Leon told her together. Annie flapped a hand at her, shooing her through the waiting opening.

  “Good luck, Annie,” Sofia said, stepping into the twisting maelstrom.

  Sofia and the door disappeared together, leaving three people and six doors remaining on the manicured grass.

  “Your turn,” Annie told Leon firmly. “Open your door and go.”

  Leon stepped toward Annie and scooped her up in a bear hug. Annie stood still, letting Leon hold her without returning his embrace. “That’s enough,” she said.

  Leon did not retreat. “I’m not letting go until you hug me back,” he told her.

  Annie placed her arms around his waist. She patted his back a few times as though simply appeasing him, but her grip suddenly tightened, and she clung to him desperately. Leon could feel her fear, could feel the rapid beat of her heart in her chest as she pressed against him, and his own heart began to break. He kept his face stoic and refused to let Annie see his pain, kn
owing she was struggling enough with her own emotions without feeling like she needed to comfort him.

  Annie broke the embrace, placing her hands against Leon’s stomach as she had before and pushing him away. He allowed her to escape. Holding on any longer would not help her and it would only make leaving harder. Leon noticed that Annie’s cheeks were wet. She turned away from him and wiped an arm across her face.

  “God, you are such a moron,” she told him, not turning back to face him. “I thought I told you to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Beat them, Annie. Beat them and come home. When you get back, Sofia and I will be waiting for you.”

  Leon looked toward Honghui, who had not moved or spoken since Annie had agreed to stay. “Keep your promise,” he warned the alien observer, though the threat had no teeth behind it and they both knew it.

  Honghui spread his arms outward, palms up in acknowledgement.

  Satisfied that the response was all he could hope for, Leon approached his door and reached for the handle.

  “Wait!” called Annie, holding out a hand toward him. “I don’t want that to be the last thing I say to you.”

  Leon cocked his head toward her and waited.

  “I’m really glad I had the chance to meet you, Leon. It’s good to know that people like you still exist. You’re a really nice guy.” She smiled mischievously, then added, “Perv.”

  Leon smiled and pulled open the door. “Get home safe, Annie,” he told her. Then, afraid that if he waited any longer he might never find the strength to leave, he stepped into the waiting vortex.

  CHAPTER 17

  The gray and silver vortex surrounded Leon and pulled him forward, swallowing and submerging him in utter darkness. He felt the void pull him off his feet and propel him through space. With no sense of up and down, right or left, he did not feel as if he were falling, but a brush of air against his skin gave him an undeniable sense of movement. The feeling of weightlessness coupled with the sensation of relentless momentum left him light-headed and anxious. It was a tipping point, like riding a roller coaster as the car stops its climb at the apex of the mountain and ticks suspensefully toward the edge of the first dizzying plummet.

  The trip home reminded Leon of the original journey to the Apex’s testing grounds. There was no railing beneath him and no wall behind his back as he soared through the dark, and the lack of light occurred quite suddenly this time, rather than the gradual fade to nothingness he had experienced before, yet it was familiar enough that he felt no urge to panic in the surrounding nothingness. Traveling in this manner left him unsettled, but oddly, it was also no longer completely novel. He had experienced this sensation before. The familiarity stoked his hopes rather than his fears. He was going home.

  With no light to see, and no sense of speed other than the most basic feeling of forward motion, Leon could not gauge the passage of time with any accuracy. He did not let that bother him. Taking deep breaths, he forced himself to relax. This journey, like the original one that had taken him from his home world, would end. Eventually. He simply needed to be patient.

  At last, an hour, a week, or maybe a year later, He spied the first delicate pinpoint of light ahead. As he watched, it grew steadily brighter and widened into a visible opening. He would be free soon, but the location of his eventual landing remained a mystery to be solved. Would he be back home, or were there more unpleasant surprises waiting for him when he exited the dark?

  The tunnel spat him out into blinding brightness. Expecting the visual assault this time, he closed his eyes against the light and tried to anticipate the timing of his arrival with less than fortunate results. Leon struck the ground with sudden, brutal impact. He attempted to roll with the momentum of his landing, and he threw out his hands to arrest his fall, but the rough, abrasive surface beneath him tore at the tender skin of his palms and face as he landed.

  Blinking away tears caused by pain coupled with the sudden assault of the surrounding light, he peered myopically around to find he was lying on the concrete paving of the parking structure at his university. He was home. The vortex had cast him out in the exact same spot it had snatched him away.

  Pushing to his knees, Leon fished his phone out of his pocket and checked the time. The display read 7:45 AM; almost exactly the same time he had been taken away. He cocked his head in confusion as he gazed at the lighted readout. How could that be possible? he wondered. Had he gone through a vortex of time as well as distance that brought him back to the same moment he had left? That seemed unlikely. Had the whole adventure been only his imagination? Maybe it was nothing more than a fever dream, or comatose hallucination brought about by falling and hitting his head after an unsuccessful attempt to slide down the metal railing.

  No, Leon realized as he checked the date display underneath the time. He had been abducted on a Tuesday. He remembered the classes he was supposed to attend that day. Today was Wednesday. He was missing exactly twenty-four hours. One full day. Not even long enough for anyone to have realized he was gone and reported him missing. His professors would have marked him absent from class, but otherwise not cared that he had not shown up, and his roommate might have wondered in passing where he was, but not been unduly concerned about him not coming home last night. No one would be worried or looking for him yet.

  He didn’t have morning classes today, so there was no reason for him to stay on campus. He patted the front legs of his jeans and was relieved to find his car keys still in his pocket. He had not discarded them while trapped off planet. Thank goodness for minor miracles.

  Opting for the elevator this time rather than another trek along the paved spiral ramp, Leon returned to his car. He found his vehicle parked precisely where he left it. Although in some ways it felt like weeks or longer, he had only left the car behind a day ago, so remembering where it was parked was not difficult. He chirped the locks open with his key fob, tossed his backpack across to the passenger seat, and collapsed behind the steering wheel.

  Leon stabbed a key into the ignition lock and prepared to crank the engine to life.

  His phone rang.

  He was tempted to ignore it. Leon did not want to talk to anyone at that moment. He only wanted to start the car, drive home, and crawl into his bed. The past twenty-four hours had been a waking nightmare, and whoever was calling could wait until he had slept a few hundred hours and was in a better frame of mind for a conversation. Still, something made him pause. Releasing the key, he shifted onto his right hip and pulled his phone from his pocket. The caller identification screen announced, “Unknown Caller.”

  Again, Leon thought about ignoring the call. Anyone that wasn’t in his list of contacts was probably not someone he had any interest in talking to. Not right now, anyway. Yet the same curious urge caused him to tap the answer button to accept the call. He brought the phone to his ear.

  “Hello?” he asked, ready to hang up if this proved to be a telemarketer or some equally unwelcomed interruption. Leon realized his shoulders had hunched as though he expected to be suddenly attacked. He forced himself to relax.

  “Leon?” asked a soft, female voice. The question was almost a whisper.

  “Yes,” he replied. “This is Leon.”

  “Juan Ponce De Leon?” asked the woman again.

  “Yes,” he said, irritation growing in his voice. “Who is this?”

  There was a long pause. Leon thought perhaps the caller had hung up and he prepared to disconnect the call at his end when the woman finally spoke again.

  “Sofia,” she said. “Mi nombre es Sofia. Me conoces?”

  Leon’s hands began to shake, and his breathing became shallow. He had the sudden urge to cry. “Oh my God. It was all real,”

  “Si,” Sofia responded.

  Leon heard a catch in her voice and wondered if she was fighting the same tidal wave of emotions that had mercilessly rolled over him. When he landed on the floor of the parking garage, he had known the ordeal really happened. There was no
way to deny its reality. Yet, he had been in shock and his mind had been actively trying to find ways to deal with the idea of being abducted and almost killed multiple times. Unable to process everything all at once, he had chosen to ignore the worst of it, to push it down where he did not have to think about the events of the last twenty-four hours beyond a shallow acknowledgement of their existence.

  He had gone into autopilot, simply figuring out what was necessary to survive each immediate moment as it came and went. Remembering how to use an elevator and finding his car had been enough conscious thought to keep him busy and focused.

  Hearing Sofia’s voice brought the entire suppressed experienced roaring back to the front of his brain.

  “Leon?” Sofia asked him after another longer pause. “Hablas espanol?”

  Um, no,” he admitted. “Entiendo un poco, pero no lo hablo muy bien.”

  Before his father had been killed, Leon’s parents predominantly spoke Spanish around the house. He had grown up understanding the language when they talked, but because his mother insisted that he should speak English without any noticeable accent, he had never been permitted to practice the little bit of Spanish he learned. While he easily comprehended what others said when they spoke around him, he struggled to respond. Embarrassed by his own halting speech when he attempted to communicate, he had mostly given up and generally stuck to English when he talked.

  “Do you speak English?” he asked.

  “I studied it in school, so a little, yes.”

  Between Leon’s understanding of Spanish and Sofia’s slightly weaker English skills, the two managed to communicate without too much difficulty despite the alien translator in their heads no longer offering assistance.

  “How did you find me so quickly?”

  “I’ve been back for a little more than an hour. As soon as I got home, I searched for you on the computer. I figured there can’t be too many Ponce De Leon Alvarado’s living in Idaho.”

  “No, probably not,” Leon agreed. “Hang on. You’ve been back for an hour? How can that be possible? I left five minutes after you did, and I only got back a few minutes ago.”