Rowan Kline Zorida 

DAY ONE

Where the hell is Oakley? 

I don’t remember waking up; I only remember going out. 

I pound against each wall, listening for the sound each permits. I got in here somehow, and I would get out the same way. There has to be one hidden latch, false wall, or escape route. 

There. One of the walls feels different, and I don’t waste a second, shouldering into it. I’ll tear this wall down with bloodied fingertips if that's what it takes to get to her. 

I can’t let someone hurt her. I vow to die of exhaustion trying to get through the stone separating us if that's what it takes to keep a single soul from touching her. I am aware of what the world could do. She is not. 

I plead for it to give way, but it shows no sign of doing so. A sharp pain bursts through my shoulder, but I repress it. Each movement taking more effort than the last. Whatever is possessing me at the moment isn’t strong enough. 

The possibility of the consequences of my failure is enough to keep me going. The one who suffers the most won’t be me, and that hurts more than the feeling of throwing myself against this wall.

I’m breaking, and my attacks become weak and sloppier by the second. The drugs aren’t keeping me unconcious anymore, but they still have some affect on me. My movements turn sluggish, but they don’t stop.

I give it my final push, harnessing everything I have left.

Pound, pound, pound. 

And then—

Crack.

——<+>——

The scientists watched from the other side of the wall. Cries from the boy were heard from inside the observation area, yet not one of them reacted. It had been the same action repeated since the beginning.

It is very common for people to attempt breaking through the wall, yet they rarely succeed. Few ever found the weak spot in the wall that was the door. Those who were smart, or lucky enough, rarely ever had the brawn to break through. 

This boy would be no different. He was only going to injure himself, possibly die trying, and every person in the room knew it. So they sat, idled, spinning pens and tapping their fingers against desktops. 

He was persistent. They were instructed to record observations made, but there were very few. He had only done one thing. He woke up, found the wall, and has been throwing himself against it ever since. 

The scientists believed that he would eventually change tactics. After two hours in the room, they would activate the intercom and speak to him. The boy would have to persuade them to release him, or he would die in the room. 

He wasn’t part of the few that refused to try, and for that, the observers were grateful. Few give up, and even fewer never start trying in the first place. The ones that rely on others never make it out. They expect a savior, and by the time they realize the falseness of their belief, it's too late. 

The boy could have found the puzzle. If he found the wall, he could find the key slot. It had the same symbol as the disk on the ceiling light, and he could easily dislodge the key and get out. 

He injured himself, that much was clear, but there was no sign of stopping. 

“Do you think he will break through?” One scientist asks another quietly. 

“Not a chance.” The other replies simply, “Most of them try this. Only a few succeed. I don’t believe he will be one of those few, taking into account the circumstances.” 

“He's persistent, he definitely has motivation,” another adds. 

“They all do, they fear what they do not know. He's no different.” 

The first woman speaks up once more, “No, this is different, I assure you.” 

Muscaria enters the room, and every spine in the observation room snaps straight. She speaks cooly, lending her weight into her arms as she leans over the table, looking at the screen. 

“How is this one doing?” 

A scientist on the far side of the room responds, updating her on the child's behavior. 

Muscaria smiles, intrigued, “He wasn’t even supposed to be here. He was just an addition during the abduction.” She looks through a stack of papers on the table, before pulling one from the pile, “This girl, Oriana. Oakley Ruby Oriana. I had my eye on her for a while. It seems she is well-liked and well-known, so I had hoped she would be able to sway votes. Do we have any updates on her?” 

“No, not at the moment. She is still under the effects of the drug, but we plan to wake her sometime in the next hour.” 

She nods, watching the boy on the monitor.

“At the rate he's going, he shouldn’t last long. Throwing yourself into a wall with that much force for that long will result in numerous injuries. Your numbers won't be thrown off.” 

She shrugs, “I don't care about the numbers. It only means more people for our cause.” She turns up the volume and listens. It was a series of grunts or yells as he threw himself into the wall time and time again. 

“How long has he been awake?” 

“Just under 50 minutes.” 

“And how long has he been attempting to escape this way?” 

A pause. 

“Just under 50 minutes, Miss,” He says timidly.

Her eyebrows quirk up in an amused smirk, “Interesting. I hope this one escapes. He could be an asset if trained correctly.” She stands straighter, crossing her arms, and turning to look at the one in charge, “And he was administered the correct ratio of gas?” 

They confirmed her question, nodding and mumbling. 

A burst of sound streams from the monitor as one excruciatingly angered sound is ripped from the boy, Zorida. He thrust his body into the wall, but this time, a sickening crack echoed through the room. 

A wicked smile sprang into Muscaria’s face, and a short, harsh laugh burst from her lips. She lurches forward, clapping her hands together. This time, with almost more force, he slowly made the crack grow. It took him less than five minutes to break enough of the wall to stumble through the hole. 

Muscaria cackled, the sound high-pitched, while she clapped her hands repeatedly, clearly impressed. 

Every jaw in the room was on the floor.

“What was his time?” she whirled to the scientist, a crazed look in her eye. 

He stuttered and stammered, scrambling to find the answer for her. He turned to his monitors and clicked a few buttons, a string of code running across the screen. 

“Fifty-four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.” He mumbled back, still unable to comprehend it. 

Absolute silence. 

——<+>——

I'm bleeding, and I'm sure my whole body is about to fall apart as I walk through the debris of the wreckage. I don’t know how long it took me to get through, but every second is agony, knowing she could be hurt. 

My heart sinks as I see another door in front of me. I slink down the hallway, my head threatening to fall right off my body and roll down the rest of the way. 

I reach for the doorknob, begging it to open. I’m disposed into a dark room, a dark purple hue overcast. The door shuts, and I’m too foggy in the mind to care. There is a video playing, but I can't focus on that either. Is it talking about Candorless?

I slump to the floor and drop my head between my knees, holding onto consciousness by a thread. 

I have to keep going. 

I listen with my ears as a soothing and powerful voice tells me about a game I have been put in against my will. 

No one kidnaps someone with good intentions. There is trouble here, and I know that someone is going to get hurt. I just can’t let that someone be Oakley. 

They talk about a compartment I don’t care about. I would have a role to play, and I would either be forced to kill or be killed. 

But Oakley can’t kill. I will have to do it for her.

The woman explained the rest of the rules, and I understood most of them. Everything's a blur as I force myself to crawl to the compartment and wrap my fingers around the container inside. 

I almost don’t open it. 

When I do, I feel my heart stop beating, and my lungs collapse. 

My vision fades in and out, and it’s hard to force it to focus long enough to make sense of the symbols, the glowing blue words engraved into the glass rectangle.  

ASSASSIN.

I want to throw the glass piece, but my shoulder isn’t working like it should. I would cut myself to slivers with this one shard of broken glass. I clasp the slip in my palm, looking at the ceiling. 

I don’t want to hurt anyone. I promise I don’t. But I’m starting to feel like no matter what I do, or how hard I try, I always end up doing so. I smother the war playing out in my mind and body before it can grow any larger. 

I stagger to my feet as a door opens and light spills into the room. I am told to find my quarters within the fortris. There were seven floors, but four were tall enough to be five stories each. 

Multiple doors lined the hallway, leading to a spiral staircase.

There is a strange-looking man dressed in all white at the top of the stairs. As I get closer, I noticed that the man wasn’t a man. The robot had a screen where the face should be, and parts of its body were cut too perfectly. The strange gadget it held in its hands is something I had never seen a person hold before. Something isn’t right with me. 

It asks for my name, and I almost feel as if I can’t give it. I have a strange taste in my mouth. Once I speak my name, the screen displays it and a corresponding number. 

1036

A tower and a room. I’m falling forward with every step, but I stumble down the stairs anyway. I'm on the very top floor, in the very last room. I stagger to the floor as I step off into my hallway, sitting in a pathetic pile of pain against the wall. 

I hear a voice before I can pull myself up. It’s not Oakleys, which only makes my heart puncture again. 

“What hell did you escape from?” The man had a juvenile tone to his voice. Open, expressive, and almost childish. I am surprised to look up and see he looks my age, if not older.

He has copper hair and a face full of freckles, his only features my mind can grab onto. He is looking at me as if I were some sort of spectacle, one he would pay to watch. 

He grabs my arms, and I am not in a state to fight it. Adrenaline is the best pain killer, but it isn’t pulsing through me anymore, and I can tell there is something wrong with me. He could be trying to murder me for all I know, and I don’t think I would mind it.

He rambles, but I don't find myself trying to listen. When he stops, he seems to be waiting for an answer from me. 

“Holy hell, man, you really are out of it, huh?”

“What was your question?” I try not to cringe at the pain the words shoot through me. 

“It’s a miracle, he lives.” He throws his hands up and they smack back at his sides, “What’s your room number?”

I repeat the number and he groans, “Of course you get the room all the way at the end. I stop to help someone out of the kindness of my heart, and now I have to drag his ass all the way to the end of the hallway.” 

I would roll my eyes if I had the energy. 

“Come on, up you go big guy.” He helps me walk down the hallway, pointing out every injury he finds. 

I suck in air with every movement I make, they all send a new wave of pain through my body. I have to spend every ounce of control I have left to keep my eyes open and not let my mind go black. 

“I’ve been exploring this place a bit, if you want to call it that, and I’ve run into a few others. They seemed somewhat loopy and tired, but you… Whatever demons you fought in that room got you pretty good. Your body wants to give out, I can tell. By the blood in your mouth, I would guess there is some internal bleeding. That, or you bit your cheek. You’re pretty bruised up, I’m guessing internally as much as externally. They should be sending healers to every room, or at least that’s what I was told. But hey, what do I know?”

He changes our course and we are face to face with a door. He battles between carrying my weight and opening the door. 

We stagger inside, and he tries to push me onto the bed, but I fight him on it. It’s tempting to let myself crumble apart on the mattress, but I fight the urge. 

I sit, but that is all I allow. 

I hate being this vulnerable. I hate showing people how weak I am. Shame clouds my thoughts, but I hide it.

“You said… you said you saw a lot of people…” The words are as dragged out and sloppily spoken as my mind is. My lips close as my eyelids battle to do the same. 

“Yeah…”

I feel the words in my mouth, but I can’t push them out of me. My world swirls, and my limbs turn numb, and I can’t remember what I'm doing, or who I'm trying to find.