Win

  “Zaap?” Moving on a lower level stone I look up wearily and stop my climb, panting. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “It hurts! Sharp like a knife! I don’t know!” Zaap’s voice comes ragged. He then strikes at something in the air next to him. “Get back, no!”

  “Let me see,” Brie says, climbing up to the same stone with Zaap and Chihar. She crouches down and tries to examine his abdomen.

  “No! Get back or I kill you now!” Zaap lashes out, wild-eyed, then again doubles over in pain.

  Brie puts her hands palms up. “Whoa, okay. Not going to touch you.”

  “Does he have a wound there?” Tuar says, leaping onto another nearby block.

  “No idea.” Lolu shrugs, following him.

  “Hurts!” Zaap mumbles.

  “Just try to breathe,” Chihar says in a soothing tone, looking down at the boy.

  We wait for several moments, hearing Zaap breathe with difficulty and moan.

  And then just like that, it’s over. Zaap stops rocking and looks up, almost in surprise. “It’s gone. . . . No pain. Better now.” And he gets up easily.

  “Okay. . . .” Brie mutters, standing up also, next to Chihar.

  “Are you sure?” Kokayi says. “Are you sure you are unhurt?”

  Zaap shrugs. “No more pain, no problem.”

  We resume moving.

  About five minutes later, Kokayi cries out sharply, and stops climbing ahead of us. “Strange! My hands and arms! I cannot feel my arms!” he says, standing motionless with an expression of alarm, while his upper limbs swing limply at his sides.

  “What the hell now?” Brie exclaims.

  “No, really! I cannot feel my hands! As if I don’t have them!” Kokayi stares down at himself, frowning.

  Kateb approaches him. “Try to move your fingers.”

  Kokayi just shakes his head.

  Lolu jumps onto the stone next to him and takes his hand, squeezing it. “Can you feel this?”

  “No, amrevet, I don’t feel anything!” There’s now panic in Kokayi’s expression.

  Again everyone stops. Chihar sighs and sits down quietly, wiping his forehead.

  Meanwhile Kokayi stands, looking extremely helpless, a panicked expression of disbelief on his face. He turns his waist, and his arms flop about like empty sleeves. He stomps his feet in place, bends forward and back at the waist, comes up again, but his upper limbs remain lifeless and atrophied, swinging at his sides.

  While we watch in confusion, Lolu makes a strange noise, and puts her hands up to her face. “No! No!” she says. “I can’t see!”

  “What?” Tuar shakes his head and grumbles. “What is happening?”

  Lolu blinks rapidly, squeezes her eyes, and turns her head from side to side. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused. “I don’t know, but I can’t see! It just came over, like dark nothing, and now I can’t see anything!”

  “Great,” Brie says in a hard voice and plops down on a stone slab nearby.

  From his seated position, Chihar reaches into his equipment bag to retrieve a water flask. “I assume this must be another effect related to the hallucinations.”

  “Very likely.” I sigh and sit down also, folding my legs under me. “Let’s wait it out.”

  And that’s when the crazy mother of all pain hits me like a blow in the head and the chest, knocking the breath from me. In one second my lungs are on fire and my head is splitting from the worst headache I’ve ever had.

  “Oh God . . .” I whisper and reach out with one hand, my palm flat against the cold stone to steady myself—just before I pass out.

  When I come to, the Games choir is singing the hymn to indicate Noon Ghost Time. I groan and sit up, completely drained and weak, but all my pain is gone—no more headache and my lungs are perfectly clear. However, my teammates are scattered around the stones in the vicinity, holding on to various body parts, moaning and groaning, or silently convulsing.

  I see that Kokayi is just fine and has regained the use of his hands and arms, because he’s holding up Chihar who is retching into the precipice.

  Lolu appears to have her vision back, and she immediately glances at me as I rise and says, “I can see again. And you are alive, Imperial Lady Gwen—good.”

  A few feet away, Brie grunts and leaps to a stone island adjacent to mine. “Whatever this effect is, it really sucks, let me just say, okay? It sucks and blows to hell, and I hope the Games ass-wipe who came up with it suffers it tonight after dinner!”

  Brie pauses to wipe her mouth, and she looks white and sickly. I can see fresh sweat glistening on her forehead. “Lucky Lady Lark. You merely keeled over, neat and pretty. Me? I just puked up whatever tiny bit of water I drank . . . after I had the runs. Barely had time to pull my pants down. How about that?” And she snorts angrily.

  I shake my head slowly, not finding the energy to even reply.

  A few feet away Tuar lies on his back, gurgling for breath, while Zaap props his head up to keep him from choking. And Kateb is on his side, in a fetal position.

  “Only half a day left to go,” I whisper in a faint voice, as Anubis rises to stand against the nearest stone.

  “You know what? Screw you,” I say to the Egyptian god-shadow. And then I turn and look out into empty space intentionally, hoping that the Games nano-cameras are watching—of course they are.

  “Bring it on, ass-wipes,” I say, as my body shakes with angry, breathless, hysterical silent laughter.

  Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.

  Stupid idiot Gwen bigmouth Lark.

  As soon as Noon Ghost Time is over, we hear the sound of bells ringing three times. Apparently this time it’s an indicator of New Instructions or Taboo Rules. The bells echo over the cliffs, and the distant Games audience falls silent, as we all listen with trepidation.

  “Hot chili piss . . . what now, ye Games gods?” Brie stands up, with her arms wrapped around herself nervously.

  Those of my teammates still dealing with the pain and illness or newly recovering, try to pay attention.

  “New Instructions!” says the voice of the Games announcer. “Contenders, note! On this final day of Stage Two be prepared for changes in the motion of the Pyramid. One change is simple—in the final hour the Pyramid will reassemble itself. All parts will come back together in its original configuration to re-form the finished structure. All spaces between the stones that were not a part of the original structure will cease to exist, and if you are caught between them you will die. You must therefore exit the interior and remain on the outside in the final hour of this stage.

  “The other change will come at any moment between now and midnight, in the form of a surprise. This is your one and only warning. Be prepared or die!”

  The bells ring three times again, and the clamor of the audience up on the cliffs swells into an excited roar.

  “This is really bad,” Chihar says, newly recovered from his painful episode.

  Kateb sits up also, no longer in pain. And Tuar gets his breath back. It’s as if the Games warning acted to shock the afflicted Contenders out of their various hallucinatory pains and illnesses, at least for now.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Lolu stares at me and the others. “How are we expected to prepare for a surprise?”

  I rub my forehead with both hands and exhale tiredly. “I think the whole point is, we can’t prepare.”

  “Yeah, they don’t want us to know when it hits, only to crap our pants waiting for it,” Brie says with a frown.

  Kokayi nods, rotating his shoulders and moving his upper limbs in muscle stretches. “I’d wager my dear mother’s liver, in these final hours they want to see as much carnage as possible.”

  Brie watches the Entertainer flex his arms and fingers. “Are you sure your mother would want you to wager her liver, Coco?”

  Kokayi snorts. “Why not ask her yourself, amrevet? My mother is right here beside you. See? She’s that very l
oud old hag who’s been riding my back for hours, with her finger-claws around my throat. Isn’t that right, mamai?” And the Entertainer looks back over his shoulder with a painful yet somehow fond smile, as if addressing someone. . . .

  Brie rolls her eyes then shivers.

  “Well,” I say, ignoring the strangeness of their bittersweet, hallucinogen-induced banter. “At least they warned us about the final hour, so we’ll know to get out of the way of the converging stones tonight. But now we need to be prepared to stay closer to the exterior of the pyramid in general. We’ll still hide inside, just not so deep that we won’t be able to get out in a hurry.”

  “Agreed,” Chihar says.

  We gather ourselves up and once again start moving. Our goal is to stay on the same horizontal level but advance in the general direction that leads to the outside. A few minutes later, however, we’re stopped once again, this time by an incredible roar from the Games audience.

  “. . . The Blue Grail!” the announcer cries. “It’s official, Grail Games worshippers, the Challenge is completed! He has the Blue Grail! I repeat, Artist Rurim Kiv has in his possession the Blue Grail! All ten Symbols correctly marked, the Symbol Lock is disabled and the cradle unlocked! What an unbelievable accomplishment for a lone Contender not affiliated with any team!”

  “Wait, who?” Brie mutters.

  “I wish we had a Safe Base surveillance screen to watch,” Kateb retorts, behind her. “Though, not really necessary. I suspect we all know him—the Yellow Artist.”

  “Rurim Kiv! Rurim Kiv!” the audience chants the name of someone completely unknown only minutes ago.

  “Oh, you mean, that same Yellow chazuf who was stealing our data?” Zaap says in anger.

  Lolu growls, “Yes, him.”

  “. . . Now that he has the Blue Grail,” the announcer gushes, “will this little-known Artist be able to hold on to it for the rest of the day? Or will everyone’s favorites Thalassa, Deneb Gratu, or even Hedj Kukkait make a play for it? Wait—this is remarkable! Rurim Kiv has just disappeared completely from sight and taken the Grail with him! Where did he go? He cannot escape the nano-cameras for too long—”

  In that moment, I feel a slight barely perceptible lurch underneath my feet. It’s followed by a pang of vertigo.

  The stone on which I’m standing is no longer perfectly stationary in its “resting” hover state. Instead it seems to be now floating very gently forward.

  And as I look around, all the other neighboring stones around us have also started moving, maintaining the same proportional distances between them, but all set in gentle motion. It’s almost impossible to tell. . . .

  Tuar puts his hand up and we all freeze, wide-eyed and tense, as we keep our footing and watch a slow play of changing shadows on the stone surfaces. . . . The displacement of light and shadows is the only indicator of movement to our senses.

  “Can you feel it? Something is definitely happening,” Kateb says.

  Lolu’s eyes are very wide. “Yes, everything is moving!”

  “I think,” Brie says, “this is our surprise.”

  Chapter 70

  “If that’s the case,” I say, “then we need to quickly get to the outside—right now. Before anything else happens.”

  “Agreed!” Tuar nods, and leaps across the chasm to the next stone. “Judging by noise, the cliffs are over there. Which way is best?”

  I pause to think.

  “Quickly, pick!” Brie nudges me.

  “Let’s try the right slope, not the cliffs-side slope,” I say. “My guess is, most Contenders will decide to go toward the cliffs. We don’t want to be in a crowd when things get ugly.”

  “Things are ugly enough,” Kateb says. “Let’s go!”

  And we start climbing.

  Twenty minutes later, it feels like we’re moving in circles. No matter how much we try to orient by the noise levels outside, it seems we’re constantly turning in the wrong direction. Even the direction of the audience roar seems to change, which I know is impossible.

  “I don’t understand, what is going on?” Lolu stops yet another time to stare at her GPS-like directional gadget. “These readings are incorrect! Or my mind is gone!”

  “Where are we going?” Zaap mutters. “Let’s just go outside already!”

  “What do you think we’re doing, fool?” Lolu snaps at him.

  “Whatever we’re doing, is not what we think we’re doing,” Chihar says suddenly.

  Brie looks back at Chihar. “Huh?”

  The Scientist looks around at all of us. “Let’s stop for a moment and listen to the sound outside. Pay special attention to where it’s coming from.”

  We stand and listen. And after a few moments it becomes apparent that the direction of the noise is changing.

  “What does it mean?” Kokayi says. “The cliffs were this way. But now, judging by the audience noise, they seem to be slightly off to my left.”

  “I think—we’re turning,” I say. “Either the cliffs are turning or we are.”

  “Yes, yes!” Chihar nods with an excited light in his slightly feverish eyes. “We’re turning—the whole pyramid is turning!”

  “Holy crap. . . .” Brie shakes her head. “You mean all these stones are ponies and we’re on a merry-go-round?”

  “What kind of Earth fish-eater nonsense are you uttering, Entrepreneur?” Lolu glares at Brie who merely raises her brows and glares back.

  My Atlanteo is insufficient to explain a carousel to Lolu, so I simply say, “It’s rotating on its center axis. The pyramid is spinning.”

  Kateb frowns and spits into the precipice. “No wonder we couldn’t get outside, all this time we were using sound to guide us.”

  Tuar just makes an angry growl noise.

  Now that we know what we’re up against, we use another gadget to guide us forward in a straight line. We move straight ahead, and fifteen minutes later reach the exterior stones. Here on the periphery the afternoon sunlight is bright white, and the stones are well-lit, but we don’t emerge all the way outside.

  “Let’s stay here for a while,” I say. “Three or four block layers deep into the pyramid is fine. We won’t be as visible to the other Contenders. And we can take turns looking out there—carefully.”

  “Fine by me,” Brie says. “My turn first. I need to go and see for myself what the hell’s going on out there, what’s with all this spinning crap.”

  The others don’t protest and we settle down in place on our stones. Meanwhile Brie goes leaping from block to block about four times until she’s on an outer stone that’s part of the pyramid slope. She perches there, her hair buffeted by the strong ocean wind, and then returns to us a minute later.

  “Yup, we’re turning all right,” she says, letting out a frustrated breath.

  “How fast is the motion?” Chihar asks.

  “Not too bad. Kind of crawling along.” Brie glances from him to me. “But I have a feeling—just a hunch—that the speed may be increasing very slowly.”

  “I’ll go look,” Kokayi says.

  “When you do, pick a landmark and count slowly until you see it again,” Chihar says. “It will help us determine the speed of rotation.”

  When it’s my turn to venture outside, I first check to see that there are no hostile Contenders nearby. I see only a couple of Greens and a Red in the distance high up near the summit. They don’t bother to notice me, so I settle on a slab of limestone with my feet dangling over the precipice, and watch the white-washed incandescent sky over the silver-blue ocean. We’re definitely turning because the view before me changes slightly. In a few minutes I see the line of beach followed by the cliffs as they come around.

  The motion of the entire sprawling pyramid structure is very smooth and gradual, clockwise in direction. The Great Pyramid of Giza is indeed rotating on its axis like an inverted top. As it turns, the corners of the pyramid sweep closely past the transparent glass wall that still stands on the sand separating the Game Zon
e from the rest of the beach. There’s only a few feet of clearance. . . .

  My vision doubles at some point, and suddenly I see fragments of the cliffs in triplicate while the ocean fractures into three layers, each overlaying the other. I blink, rub my eyes, and try to ignore the usual ghostly whispers at my back, and the shadows of the Egyptian gods on the rocks on both sides of me.

  My brothers, George and Gordie, appear on one stone directly above and then recede, fading into nothing. . . .

  And then, as my heart pounds, I look out, with my side of the pyramid once again facing the ocean, and I see a small dark object bobbing gently in the wind.

  Avaneh’s equipment bag hovers before me, abandoned in place. The strap hangs loosely, stirred by the breeze, exactly as I remembered it in that last moment when she fell. . . .

  I focus on it, feeling my guts churn with intensity, with horror and grief . . . while the tears pool once again in my eyes, and there’s a rising tide at the back of my throat. . . .

  I breathe raggedly, then blink. And it’s gone—yet another hallucination.

  The rest of the afternoon passes swiftly, yet feels interminable. My teammates and I stay out of sight just within the interior, biding our time. We listen to the Games commentators and the audience react to the various celebrity Contender teams roaming around the pyramid in search of the elusive Rurim Kiv, the Yellow Artist who unlocked the Blue Grail.

  From the relentless announcer chatter and commentary, we finally learn that the act of removing the Blue Grail is what initiated the “surprise.” The moment the Challenge was solved and the Grail lifted from the cradle stone was the exact moment when we felt that initial lurch of pyramid motion.

  At this point the Games action is haphazard, since everyone is still actively hallucinating. Even the strongest Contenders are not immune to the physical pain and illness symptoms that continue to plague everyone in the Game Zone.

  “. . . Team Irtiu is up on the summit, about to head down the slope to confront Team Gratu waiting on the bottom—” one announcer cries over the spectator din. “But oh, oh—look at that! Three of them have collapsed in pain, and Thalassa herself appears to be temporarily paralyzed from the waist down!”