The Quantum Games(The Alchemists Academy)

Chapter 20





There were hedges all around Wirt, making it impossible to see where Spencer was. This was the final test, the contest, and the arena for it was a maze, which had sprung up in response to Ms. Lake’s magic when the headmaster ordered her to do it. She hadn’t looked happy, but she’d done it.

Wirt held his quantum ball. Spencer was out there somewhere with an identical one. The question was, where? No. The question was why they were doing this. Why were they stalking each other through a maze while people looked on from the raised stand above it? Why were they planning to kill one another for their entertainment, for one meaningless place at a school?

“Spencer,” Wirt called out. It would give away his position, but right then he didn’t care. “Spencer, don’t do this. I don’t want to have to fight you. Do you really want to risk your life just so that you can stay in the same place as Alana?”

“That’s low, Wirt.” Spencer’s voice came from somewhere away to Wirt’s left, but he was starting to realize that in this maze, that kind of direction meant less than nothing. Already he’d passed through patches in it that seemed to be upside down, or to pass through themselves. There had even been one point where Wirt had been sure that he’d spotted Spencer at the end of a long stretch, only to realize that he was somehow looking at the back of his own head.

“You need to think about it though,” Wirt insisted, keeping moving. If he stayed in one spot, Spencer might be able to use his voice to find him, and he might throw the quantum ball before Wirt could say anything more.

“I don’t need to think anymore,” Spencer replied. “I’ve thought. This isn’t about Alana. She’s a part of this, but not the whole thing. This school… it’s what I want, Wirt. More than that. It feels like what I’m meant to do. Roland tried to steal that away from me. I won’t let you do it too.”

“I’m not trying to steal anything,” Wirt said, but he knew even as he said it that Spencer wasn’t going to listen. Why would he? They were on opposite sides of this contest, so Spencer was obviously going to assume that anything he said was a lie, a trick. Just some way of getting his defenses down long enough to kill him.

That wasn’t what Wirt wanted at all. It certainly wasn’t what he had planned. Yet what else could he do? If Spencer wasn’t about to yield, and he wasn’t… what else was there? Wirt found himself thinking back to Alana’s words. She’d wanted him to find another option. To find a way, but what way was there that might work? Wirt looked up to the magically rebuilt stand in search of inspiration, watching the faces of the parents and teachers there. After what Roland had done, they no longer looked so eager to see the contest. They looked troubled, restless. Ms. Lake was there, though even as Wirt watched she hurried off. Ender Paine was there too, staring down at the contest. There was no sign of Ms. Burns, or of Alana either, even though Priscilla was up there with her father and brother.

The maze made things harder. It meant that Wirt had to hunt for Spencer. It meant that Spencer might ambush him at any point. Wirt extended his senses, trying to get a grip on where he was, and then pushed further, remembering the way he’d felt the trees in the forest, the way he’d felt everything in the tree that housed the school.

In an instant, it came to him. He could feel the hedges around him. He could feel the space between them. Wirt had the complete layout of the maze in his head then, and more than that, he knew where Spencer was. It would be so easy to sneak up on him using that knowledge. Just one simple piece of transportation, and he’d be behind him, where Spencer couldn’t defend.

No, he couldn’t do that. He just couldn’t. Summoning up his transportation magic, Wirt blinked himself to the center of the maze instead, where it opened out into a large circular space with an ornamental fountain in the middle for no reason Wirt could see. Find another way, Alana had said. Well, there was only one way to do that.


“Spencer! Spencer, I’m in the middle of the maze. Follow my voice until you find it.”

Wirt kept talking, his eyes on the way in, and eventually, carefully, Spencer edged his way into the open space at the heart of the maze. What would he think? What would the watching spectators think? That Wirt had called him out for some kind of face to face duel? Wirt swallowed. It could still turn into that so easily. What if Spencer didn’t listen? What if he threw the quantum ball? Already, he was raising it.

“Don’t throw it, Spencer,” Wirt said. “I’m not going to, so don’t.”

“Don’t throw it? Just like that?”

“Why not?” Wirt smiled over at his friend. “Not killing one another has to be better than killing one another, doesn’t it?”

Spencer shook his head. “I… I won’t throw if you don’t, but what then, Wirt? We can’t stand here like this forever.”

Spencer was right. It was a standoff. Wirt could feel the tension. Neither of them was making a move to throw the ball at the moment, but how long would that last? Eventually, Spencer would get nervous and fling his quantum ball at Wirt, and then Wirt would throw his back at Spencer… so maybe Wirt should just throw his now to get the advantage? No, that was the kind of thinking that would make it happen. They could hold like this.

How long, though.

“Stop. Please, both of you, stop.”

Both Wirt and Spencer looked around in shock as Alana walked into the center of the maze. She looked as beautiful as ever, but it was clear that she had been crying, and there was another look to her too. One of total determination, mixed in with a kind of desperation, as though she knew exactly what she was going to do. As though there weren’t any choices left for her.

How had she gotten there? The maze was closed off, so how had she managed to sneak in? Wirt found himself thinking about Ms. Burns’ absence from the stands. Had she had something to do with it? No, she wouldn’t do that, would she? She wouldn’t do something with such potentially disastrous consequences. Would she?

Right then, Wirt didn’t know. Spencer didn’t seem to know either.

“Alana,” Spencer said. “You can’t be here. You have to go.”

“What? So you two can kill one another?” Alana looked from him to Wirt and back. “I won’t let that happen. I won’t. I’m not going to let you die, whatever it takes.”

Whatever it takes. Wirt knew what it might take if he and Spencer threw the balls they held. He knew what might happen, what was going to happen, because it had happened before. He’d seen it. They all had.

“Spencer,” he said, “we have to stop. This is going to be like your father and Elise.”

“It’s not going to be like that,” Spencer said. “Alana wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t she?” Wirt looked at Alana. “Why are you here, Alana? What are you here to do?”

Wirt watched the emotions flicker across Alana’s face. Determination, fear, love and confusion vied for space on her features over the course of a couple of seconds.

“I… don’t know.”

“You do know,” Wirt insisted. “We all know. Don’t do it, Alana.”

“I have to,” she said, shaking her head. “I have to stop this. I can’t let the two of you die.”

They stood there like that, all so still, and Wirt could feel the tension there. None of them wanted to do the things they were so close to doing. Spencer didn’t want to throw the ball he held. Wirt didn’t want to throw his at Spencer. Alana clearly didn’t want to throw herself between them, intercepting the flight of the quantum balls with her body and letting them disintegrate her. Wirt could see her shaking with the thought of it, fresh tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

Yet they were going to do it. Wirt could feel the inevitability of it like a lead weight pressing down on him. He could feel the pressure of the crowd’s eyes on them, willing them to do it, almost pushing them towards it. It was like the weight of everything that had happened before was shoving its way through into the world, forcing the three of them along the paths that were to come like actors playing out their parts in a script.

Then Wirt felt it. There was something else there, barely discernible, just on the edge of everything he could make out. It was a thought that didn’t fit, a sound on the fringes of hearing, something not quite seen out of the corner of his eye. A thin tendril of magic wrapping around the three of them.

“Alana, Spencer, listen to me,” he said. “This isn’t just history repeating. This is magic. There’s something here trying to get us to kill one another. There’s something pushing us to do it. We need to fight it, all of us.”

Spencer shook his head, sudden fury seeming to take over his expression. “It’s a trick. You want me to put down my quantum ball. You want to make it easy to kill me.”

“No, Spencer,” Wirt insisted. He looked across to Alana, but she seemed to be as caught up in it as Spencer was. Her eyes were glassy, as though seeing something completely different to what was actually happening. Wirt tried looking up into the stand, but Ender Paine was apparently in deep, whispered conversation with Ms. Lake, who had returned from wherever she had gone and now looked ashen. There was no chance of catching their attention.

Which meant that it was going to happen. Unless Wirt could do something, it was really going to happen. Alana would die. He or Spencer would die. There would be so much pain. So much destruction. Wirt fought it. He reached down into himself and grasped for the thread of power he could feel there, and he managed to get a hold on it. He could feel the connections to Spencer and Alana. He could feel the connections to some larger pattern too, half glimpsed, but right then Wirt needed all the strength he could find. He threw it at the little thread of magic, attacking it, pulling at it, trying to hold it back.

Slowly though, so slowly, Spencer started to raise his hand to throw the ball. Alana seemed to tense, ready to jump, and Wirt strained as he fought not to react. But it was hard. Too hard. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t…

“Stop!”

Ender Paine’s voice carried over the maze, and as it did so Wirt felt the tendrils holding him snap.

“Stop,” the headmaster repeated, and his face looked as pale as Ms. Lake’s had. “The Quantum Games are at an end.”