Win

  “You know what happened after you left to give yourself up to Deneb Gratu?”

  “No, what?”

  “We threw her out,” Zaap interrupts. “Out of the Safe Base.”

  “Oh. . . .” My lips part.

  “Yeah,” Brie continues. “Although Deneb’s crew cut down the scaffolding, and the shelter room slid down several levels, and the floor was all crooked, it was still mostly intact. So we stayed in the shambles of that Safe Base for most of the remaining time. But traitor girl got the boot as soon as we could get a gun on her. . . . Only took a few minutes. She was all messed up after her brother got killed anyway, all for nothing—”

  “Gwen Lark, please!” Lolu’s voice comes from below.

  “What’s the point, Lolu?” I say. “I get it, you did what you had to do for your brother, and I’m really sorry for what happened to him. But you screwed me over.”

  There’s a pause.

  “I know. It was dishonorable, what I did,” Lolu says quietly, looking up at me. “So, I . . . owe you.”

  “Why, yes, you do,” Brie says. “Your life belongs to Lark now, if you’re so eager to consider things fairly. She has every right to kill you and earn the pitiful handful of AG points that you’re worth—”

  “Brie, please,” I interrupt. “Let me. . . .”

  But Lolu replies, “Yes, agreed. You can kill me rightfully, but I ask that you wait until after the Games are over—do it to satisfy your honor. For now, allow me back on the team to work with you. I will work hard and fight for you, at your side, and give my word to always defend you.”

  “Your word is worth crap,” Brie continues with anger.

  “Actually, that’s not quite right,” I say. “She never made any loyalty promises—none of us really did. We all agreed to work together temporarily. So, technically she didn’t break her word since she never gave it. It was just a rotten way she chose to end our temporary arrangement. But then, it’s the Games, and as they say, everything goes. . . .”

  Brie cranes her neck sideways, glaring in irritation at me. “So what you’re saying—”

  “I’m saying, come up here, Lolu.”

  “Um, I don’t like this,” Kokayi mutters.

  Zaap frowns and shakes his head. He then spits over the stone into the abyss below, barely missing Lolu.

  Chihar just watches calmly.

  Another pause, as Lolu stares up at me and the others, narrowing her eyes from the bright sunlight that shines directly in her face at this angle.

  “Come on,” I say, biting my lip.

  Lolu nods mutely and starts to climb. In seconds she reaches our double stone platform, stands up, with a sullen expression, and looks at me.

  I take a step toward her. “Tell me why you’re really here,” I say. “And please don’t lie. Is it really an honor thing? What do you get out of this? Because I’m not sure what to think about you right now. And I definitely don’t trust you.”

  “Yes, you have the right,” she says, wrinkling her forehead with effort. I notice her skinny hands are clenched in fists, and they are trembling. For some reason that one detail acts strangely to affect me.

  The others take steps closer also, in an aggressive show of force, surrounding Lolu. But she stands her ground, even as Zaap comes behind her on one side, and Kokayi on the other. A cold breeze blows from the ocean, whipping filaments of everyone’s hair. . . .

  “Want to cut her down, Lark, or should I? Easy AG points.” Brie moves closer, flicking her wrists like magic, and a short knife appears in her hands.

  “No,” I say in a firm voice. And then I look at Lolu again, staring directly in her eyes. “Well? Why are you here?”

  She presses her mouth tight, and says, “I need to be on a team for a chance to make it in the Games. It’s very hard to survive alone. Khadram is gone, so I have to win in my Category, or my mother dies, which ruins my family, and my brother would’ve died for nothing. . . . Please. After I win, and she gets the treatment, you can kill me, I already told you. . . .”

  “Okay, but why this team?” I persist. “You can join another and avoid the baggage you have with me.”

  “Baggage? What bags?” Lolu blinks in momentary confusion.

  “Earth expression,” I say. “Means, we have a history and a bond, in this case an unpleasant one.”

  “Because I did you wrong and I owe you. It is the truth. I either make it up to you, or I have no pride—” Lolu goes silent, frowning even more, clenching her fists.

  I let out a held breath. “All right,” I say. “I am okay with you being on this team again. But you’ll have to prove yourself constantly, and you will be watched closely.”

  “You’re okay, but I’m not!” Brie exclaims. “Seriously, Lark?”

  “We can use a Technician. And she’s pretty good.” I look at Brie and the others. “How about we vote on it? All in favor of giving Lolu another chance, say yes.”

  There’s a pause of silence. Distant swells of audience noise and announcer chatter echo from the cliffs. . . . Here, you can barely hear the murmur of the surf below, and the ocean wind is blowing. . . .

  “Yes,” I say loudly.

  The wind-swept silence continues.

  Then Chihar speaks in his mild voice, “Since you were the one wronged and you are willing, then yes.”

  I look at the rest of them, raising my eyebrows meaningfully.

  Zaap just shakes his head negatively, looking very sullen.

  Brie also shakes her head in disgust.

  Which leaves Kokayi.

  “Well?” I say to the Entertainer.

  Kokayi tugs at his long braids, then says, “Fine, yes, we need a Technician. But I will not turn my back on this little one.”

  “Good,” I say. “And no one says you should.”

  Lolu continues to stand frozen in place, as though condemned and waiting for her fate to be decided, even though she heard our votes.

  “Three yes votes to two. You’re back on this team, Lolu,” I say mildly.

  The Technician girl looks down at her feet and nods.

  Brie makes a rude snort. “Big mistake.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But now it’s time we get back to work. Time to explore the interior of the pyramid.”

  We spend the next hour climbing horizontally—in other words, across the nearest stones instead of up. In the process we encounter almost no one else, only more shadowed stones and less light, the deeper we go.

  The few other like-minded Contenders moving in the interior avoid us and we avoid them, busy examining the limestone (and the occasional pink granite) surfaces of each block. So far, we’ve not come up on anything resembling symbols or etchings or any other surface anomalies, nor have we stumbled upon any interior pyramid chambers, but I’m certain that’s going to happen eventually.

  Once we do—and I admit to feeling a kind of crazy giddy excitement at this impossible opportunity of exploring the genuine guts of the ancient Great Pyramid of Giza—we might find completely new, amazing, hieroglyph-covered secret chamber walls, which are probably the “symbols” the Games officials are talking about. . . . And yes, they have to be new, previously-undiscovered chambers, because the known, explored ones—such as the King’s Chamber, the Queen’s Chamber, or the Grand Gallery—are bare of any hieroglyphs or decorations, with a few rare exceptions.

  Oh, if only my Dad could see this!

  For the first time in these Games I’ve temporarily forgotten the relentless dangers, and I’m actually enjoying myself—if you don’t count the pain in my hands getting scraped raw by the endless climb from block to block.

  The sounds of the audience roar from the cliffs and the constant announcers’ commentary are getting more and more remote and muffled, as we venture deeper. At some point however we hear the ringing bells designating the new hour, and we freeze and listen in fear.

  Boulders of immense weight hover all around . . . with only gaps of a few feet between them. . . . My heart is
pounding. . . .

  This is the moment of truth. The pyramid is about to rearrange itself, and we’re inside this merciless engine of change, not knowing what will happen to us, or which way we’ll need to hurry to get out of the way of being crushed.

  And then it happens.

  Above, below, right, left. . . . From every direction the grinding begins, as giant slabs meet randomly, scrape and grate against each other, or move apart.

  I crouch on a slab of stone next to Brie and Chihar, with my head already bent from the low “ceiling” formed by the levitating stone directly overhead, when that same stone starts coming down on us.

  Brie curses, and looks around for a place to move, to get out of the way.

  At the same time, the stone we’re standing on begins to shift sideways to the right, widening the chasm gap, and yet another stone behind us begins to move further away, opening a gap with a long drop to another stone many feet below.

  I make a stifled sound of panic, while Kokayi, somewhere up ahead, cries, “This way! Quickly! Hurry!”

  Zaap and Lolu (so that he can keep an eye on her) are perched on a slightly higher level than we are. Right now I can hear them, feet stepping quickly on the stone, causing dust and tiny pieces of rock to crumble and fall into the precipices all around, as they scramble.

  “Oh, hell! We’re getting crushed!” Brie pushes me forward, as I hold onto my hovering equipment bag for balance. “Move, move!”

  “Where?” I cry, trying to keep my footing on the slab moving from under us. “I can’t see anything close to our level, only a big chasm—”

  “Gwen Lark, this way!” Immediately I hear Lolu’s voice calling out to me, as she’s apparently doing her duty on my behalf.

  I look up and see the two of them through the newly created opening that’s widening before us, as the blocks shift. But to get to their stone I would have to jump at least two feet—which sounds trivial, but believe me, it’s not, when there’s very little leverage and everything is moving.

  I grab on to my equipment bag and sing the rising command. With a lurch, my bag lifts upward, taking me with it, as I wrap my arms around it. As soon as I’m high enough, I feel Lolu’s hands on my arms and elbows, as she pulls me in, so that now I’m on the same slab as she and Zaap.

  “Brie!” I exclaim, looking down—while my bag continues to rise, until Zaap puts his weight on it to temporarily stop the motion—and pulls me further out of the way.

  “Right behind you!” Brie Walton replies. I see her leap upward easily, then grab onto the edges of the block and pull herself up. She’s breathing only a little fast, and it’s mostly the adrenaline of having to react so quickly to this weird physical situation happening all around us.

  In that moment, I hear awful bloodcurdling screams coming from elsewhere in the pyramid.

  Someone just got crushed. . . .

  Meanwhile, still below us, I hear Chihar sing the rise command, and then he too is lifted, and we pull him in and onto our stone.

  A few seconds later the pyramid motion comes to a halt. It’s over—at least for one hour.

  And then it will happen all over again.

  This is terrifying, I think, paused on this new, smaller stone slab next to the others. I sing to cancel the rise command, and so does Chihar, and then we try to get our bearings. Kokayi is leaning down from the next block right above us, as he once again manages to get out of the way and finds a better position.

  “Everybody okay?” Brie says. “You too, mountain goat, okay up there?”

  From above comes Kokayi’s soft laugher. “Never better, amrevet. You should all come up here and visit me.”

  But I ignore the banter. I’m focused on the thought that we need a plan more than ever, if we’re to survive. And so I look around, in the low light of this levitating stone formation, look at all their faces.

  “We need to find a Safe Base, now.” I say. “This hourly rearrangement thing is going to kill us before any other hostile Contenders do. This time we got lucky, but I just don’t see how we can keep up this mad scramble every hour for the next four days. I’m already exhausted.”

  “Agreed,” Chihar says. “The more tired we get, the more difficult it will be to react quickly enough to escape the unpredictable moving stones.”

  “Not to mention, we’ll need more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep. I don’t know about you, but I get very cranky if I don’t get my zees.” Brie stands with her arms folded at her chest, staring hard at all of us, especially Lolu—who pretends not to notice.

  “If all else fails, we can return to the exterior of the pyramid and rest on the outer stones for two uninterrupted hours before they turn to Hot Zones,” Kokayi says from above. “But then we risk being taken for kill points by other Contenders.”

  “Yes, notice there are fewer others here inside—at least for now,” Brie says. “So in that sense it’s safer here.”

  “I’d rather risk deadly stones than deadly people,” Lolu says quietly.

  Zaap nods. “Yes.”

  “Then it’s decided. Let’s start looking,” I say. “The clock is running, with less than an hour till the next structural change.”

  Chapter 58

  The Safe Base in this second stage of the Games is supposed to be a plain block like any other, distinguished only by the presence of a four-color beacon lamp. And so we crawl around from stone to stone, gradually moving inward and upward in our search. We look for beacons, at the same time as we continue to pay attention in case we come upon anything that resembles a symbol or a hieroglyph etching.

  “See anything?” We call out to each other as we scale block after block in this unending monotony of levitating rocks and gaping spaces, and eventually almost no light, except for the omnipresent illuminated “dust motes” which are the nano-cameras.

  But the answer is always, “No.”

  Soon, because it’s gotten to be dangerously dark, many of us take out micro flashlights and other light-emitting devices. My equipment bag has a very useful light device, a wearable band with a small light attached, which can be worn many ways, including head, arm, or wrist. I put it on as a headband, to keep my hands free for climbing.

  The others, I notice, have similar gadgets. Our lights cast strange lurching shadows in the thick twilight, as we move. . . .

  “I’m getting thirsty,” Brie mutters with aggravation, climbing as usual right next to me. “Pretty soon, I’m gonna need to pee.”

  “Easy,” Zaap says tiredly, hanging off the next block before us. “Just pee on a rock, or in the drop below. I did, back there.”

  “Zaap! Oh, no! No, no!” I respond immediately, as my pulse pounds, frenetic with outrage. “Please tell me you did not just pee on the Great Pyramid of Giza! Dear lord in heaven! This is a precious Earth treasure, a Wonder of the Ancient World, not your personal toilet! Don’t you remember, there are sewer ducts located on the ocean slope outside, so you need to hold it in!”

  “Oh, jeez. . . .” Brie pauses climbing and looks at me, craning her neck sideways and shaking her head. “Seriously, Lark. Think about it this way—during the hundreds of years or whatever time they took to build this thing—”

  “Twenty years,” I say in a loud voice. “It took twenty years to build the Great Pyramid.”

  Brie rolls her eyes. “Yes, during those twenty years, do you really think none of those workers ever stopped to take a whiz against the nearest stone? Sure they did, probably a million times. So, your precious pyramid is very likely soaked in human pee. . . . Generations of it!”

  “Oh . . . ugh!” I exclaim.

  “Sorry to ruin it for you. Ahem, urine it for you.” Brie snorts and resumes climbing. “But you have to admit, it’s kind of poetic—right up your alley, since you’ve got your head stuck so far up your—”

  “Enough! Shut up, Walton!” I close my eyes for a moment—because I just . . . can’t . . . even—and try to calm down. “And don’t you dare, don’t you even think about
going on these ancient stones when they have perfectly good sewers—”

  “Which are perfectly inconveniently located outside. Just to get back out there, I’d need a couple of hours, an elephant bladder, or adult diapers.”

  The others are staring at us curiously. Zaap shakes his head, sending all kinds of grotesque shadows around us from the light on his headband. He cusses in Atlanteo under his breath, and mutters: “Crazy Earthies.”

  Before I can make another retort in this ridiculous conversation, we hear the distant sound of bells.

  Time for the pyramid to move again.

  Somehow we scramble and survive the shifting stones. And then we do it again . . . and again . . . several more times in the next few hours, all the while continuing to search aimlessly for any sign of a Safe Base beacon. Unfortunately, so far, the only lights we see are our own.

  The monotony of the pyramid interior is unbroken, making it harder to keep track of time. And as the exhaustion from climbing sets in, it also feels like time has either ground to a halt, or flies in a blink. . . . All the while, your heart is racing with a constant background sense of impending panic, knowing that the stones will begin to shift at any moment, and if you don’t get out of the way fast enough, you could die. . . .

  After a while, even the terrifying bells that mark each hour begin to make existential sense, since they provide the only real feeling of temporal progression. Yes, I can pull out my time gadget and check the hour anytime, but in this weird floating ancient tomb it’s easy to forget modern realities and get sucked into the deep flow of antiquity.

  What’s really interesting is that we almost never seem to run into other Contenders, either solitary or in teams. The pyramid is so huge, and its disassembled and scattered range so vast, that apparently it’s big enough to keep us all separated from each other, as we search inside for we-know-not-what.

  A minor blessing, I think, glad to not have to deal with enemy combat for as long as possible.

  At some point, instead of bells, we hear the distant sounds of the Games choir, acapella voices singing the Invocation Hymn.