Tick wanted to say something, ask for help, run. He expected someone to come for him, to summon him to Chu. But as far as he could tell, the whole place was deserted.
He stepped out of his room, then peeked around the door. The main door leading into the long hallway was open. It was dark out there, too—darker than it had been last night. He walked into the hall and glanced in both directions. Small emergency lights cast pale semicircles of red that didn’t even reach the floor—anything could be hiding in the shadows.
What’s going on? he thought.
He started walking to the right, sliding the tips of his fingers along the wall. He heard a faint buzzing from the lights; the air smelled like plastic and computer machinery. He’d only made it a hundred steps or so when a shadow formed ahead of him, the figure of a person leaning against the wall.
“Who’s there?” Tick asked.
“It’s me,” a female voice whispered. Mistress Jane.
Surprisingly, Tick felt a wave of relief splash over him. “What are you doing? What are we supposed to do?”
Jane pushed herself away from the wall and walked toward Tick, stopping beneath one of the emergency lights. It cast an eerie red glow on her black hair and down her face, creased with angled shadows under her eyes and nose and mouth. Tick pushed away the thought that she looked like she was covered in blood.
“What are we supposed to do?” she repeated. “We’re supposed to kill each other.”
Tick felt a chill at the simplicity of the statement, but he knew she was right. “That’s it? He’s just going to wait around until we follow his orders and fight to the death?”
“Looks like it,” Jane said. She held out a piece of paper. “This was taped to the front of both of our doors—looks like you missed yours.”
Tick took the note from her; the paper had an odd roughness to it. Jane tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear, staring at the floor. Tick’s gaze lingered on her for a second—and he thought for the first time that she was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. He snapped his eyes away, focusing on the note in his hands.
She’s evil, Tick, he told himself. Evil people aren’t supposed to be pretty.
He could barely see the paper so he held it up closer to the light. To his surprise, he saw it wasn’t paper at all, but rather an extremely thin piece of plastic. Electronic, glowing green letters scrawled across its face one by one, just like someone typing a message on a computer screen:
There are no instructions. No rules. Nothing is forbidden. When only one of you remains, please walk to the end of the hallway outside your dormitory. Go to the right. You have until noon, or you both die.
“We have three hours,” Jane said when Tick looked up from the note.
~
“Someone’s done lumped you over the ’ead with a teapot, they ’ave,” Mothball said, glaring down at Paul with her thin arms folded. “You’ve got a ruddy broken arm.”
“I don’t care,” Paul said. He flexed his fingers while moving his arm up and down. “It’s set. It feels fine. I’m going.”
They stood with Rutger and Sofia next to the armory door; the other Realitants going to the Fourth had already received all they needed.
“Now’s not a time for false bravery,” Rutger said. “This makes your trip to steal the Barrier Wand from Mistress Jane look like a nice stroll down a country lane. This is serious business, and it’s highly doubtful everyone will return alive—if anyone does.”
Paul opened his mouth then closed it, swallowing a sudden lump in his throat. He looked over at Sofia. “You’re going, right?”
“Of course I am,” she replied, looking awfully bored considering what was about to happen.
Paul turned back to Mothball and Rutger. “Then I’m going too.”
Mothball surprised him with her booming laugh. “So be it, then. Won’t be me goin’ to tell yer mum you’ve been sliced to bits by one of Chu’s nasties. Come on.”
She stooped to enter the room; Rutger waved Paul and Sofia through before he followed.
The armory was large but cramped with several aisles of metal-grid shelves rising from floor to ceiling, packed with an odd assortment of menacing objects. Some looked like guns, but most resembled trinkets and gadgets from a futuristic toy store: metal shafts with glass spheres attached to one end; awkward chunks of machinery with no rhyme or reason, like 3-D puzzles; cool watches with all kinds of dials and switches, but no timepiece; countless small devices that gave no clue as to their purpose.
“Where was all this stuff when we went to the Thirteenth?” Sofia asked.
“Most of it’s junk,” Mothball replied. “Experiments and such that couldn’t hurt a fly on a toad paddie. Sound Slicers were our best bet then.”
“Over here,” Rutger called from a couple of aisles down.