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  I took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as I could, trying hard to respect her wishes. Despite the way I'd been brought here, I felt like she was genuinely trying to help me out. I didn't trust them, but I didn't mistrust her.

  "Okay, Evelyn. Let's do this."

  "Agreed. The Labyrinth is directly below us. It takes up most of the Station, actually. Come with me and I'll drop off you right in the middle of it."

  "And then?" She may have told me not to ask any more questions, but I was desperate for a hint regarding what I was in for.

  "And then you'll see why thirteen days could change everything."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Evelyn took my hand and led me through the door and back out into the hallway. I was still getting used to the way the shape of the helmet's visor altered my peripheral vision, but that didn't stop me from noticing that she was worried.

  We must be cutting it close...

  It was subtle, but I sensed a change in her demeanor toward me as well. She'd been all business a few minutes ago, but something about the embarrassing situation we'd just shared had softened her feelings toward me.

  That's what I thought, at least. But once we started walking, I caught a surreptitious glance that held something that broke my heart.

  Pity.

  I tried not to let it get to me as we finally hit a spot where another hallway met the one we were currently in. Evelyn guided me to the right, and then pulled me up short in front of a much larger blast door as it slowly irised open.

  Judging by the design, the thing we stepped into was an elevator. She reached out and placed her palm against a panel of dark glass, which lit up and got us underway. The motion was smoothly engineered, and I got the feeling that we were moving a lot faster than it felt like.

  "What floor are we on?" I asked. I only asked to try and break the tension, but when she pointedly ignored me I tried again. "Evelyn?"

  "If all goes to plan, you will never be alone on this elevator."

  Right... That was odd. "Will the palm reader even work through the gloves?"

  "No." She turned toward me and reached out. For a second I thought she was going to put her arm around my shoulders, but a light pressure on my upper back made it clear that all she was doing was fucking with the control panel on the rear of the suit.

  Sure enough, I heard at least a dozen muffled clicks and felt internal vibrations along the seams that encircled my wrists, ankles and neck.

  "I'm locking you in, Evvex," she said, her speech suddenly full of unexpected anger. "Just in case you get any ideas. Don't hurt Adam. He didn't volunteer for this."

  "Evelyn? Who are you talking to?" Right away I knew that she couldn't hear me. My voice was loud in my own ears, but the speakers that had picked up outside sound didn't register it. When she'd adjusted the controls, she'd muted me.

  "I'm sorry, but I've turned off your output," she said. "I can't explain why, right now. All you need to know is that we have fifty-eight seconds. That should be plenty of time, though their measurements are much more precise than ours. You've done really well so far, Adam."

  I nodded. It was all I could do, since she wouldn't hear me if I bothered to protest.

  A long series of red lights were beginning to assemble in vertical lines along the walls. I had no idea how big the station actually was, but it felt like we were dropping down right into the heart of it. "This place must be huge."

  "The center of the Labyrinth is a mile below where we started. We get there fast, though. If your stomach feels like it's in your throat, that's why."

  Now that we were so damn near to whatever it was I was here for, I licked my lips and tried to slow my breathing down a little. My mouth was dry, and the air filtration system I could hear rhythmically pumping an oxygen mix through meshed gills below where the helmet met the neck seam wasn't helping.

  There was a big red button on her side of the elevator. I pointed at it and then gave her the 'what's that for' gesture when she glanced at me.

  She frowned. "Whatever you do, don't push it. If it stops you from getting curious and trying it out though, this elevator shaft is built along the central spine of the Station. Our orbit is selected primarily to allow us to aim the top of this shaft at the nearest star. If things go wrong in here and the button is pressed, six military-grade hydrogen thrusters beneath our feet will simultaneously ignite. Mercifully, the G-forces involved would rob us of consciousness a few moments before crushing the elevator's occupants to a pulp on the floor. What's left would be fired into the heart of the Sun."

  I had to admit, the doctor certainly had a flair for the dramatic. If she'd been trying to scare me, she’d done a damn good job. I took a couple of steps away from the button until my shoulder was wedged against the opposite wall.

  She laughed. "Good call, Adam.

  The description of what the elevator could do to us had certainly put a chill through me, but it didn't answer the real question.

  Why? What was the point of rigging a method of travel into a death trap?

  I sighed. I hadn't planned to do much of anything today, and hanging out in a space station that seemed ready and willing to hand out one-way tickets to the center of the solar system had certainly not been on the agenda.

  I didn't ask her anything else. I knew she wouldn't answer even if I had.

  "Adam," she said at last. She looked at her watch again. "Nineteen seconds."

  I just stood there.

  "It's okay to be frightened," she said. "You'd be crazy if you weren't. It's good, though. Fear may keep you safe, for a little while at least. Go in and look around. Familiarize yourself. None of us are expecting miracles from you, at least not right away. If you come back and you aren't gibbering like a lunatic, by my estimation you'll have passed with flying colors."

  It occurred to me that I didn't know what kind of doctor Evelyn was. After that little pep talk, I was hoping that she wasn't a psychologist, because that had to be the worst fucking pregame rev up I'd ever heard in my life.

  The lights in the elevator bathed it in red, and then flickered and strengthened.

  "Arriving at the center of the Labyrinth in ten seconds," chirped a computer voice that was much too happy to deliver that message.

  "Adam, I'll make you a deal, okay? The next time we see each other, I'll answer every question you have. Even if you won't like the answer, I promise to play it straight with you. Agreed?"

  She held out her hand, and I shook it.

  The computer hadn't lost any of its joy. "Five seconds."

  Evelyn let me go and guided me ahead of her, toward the door that would soon be opening. I felt her tap a few buttons on the controls back there.

  Without warning, the curved glass of the helmet went pitch black. The speakers near my ears began to spew a multi-phased, irritatingly random series of notes, each one having absolutely nothing to do with the one that had come before it. The music, if it could even be called that, swelled and fell away without rhyme or reason.

  I could just barely make out her words as she pushed me out of the elevator. "I'll explain it all if you come back."

  If?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Before I had a chance to try and adjust to the way the helmet had robbed me of all meaningful sight and sound, something in the back of my head detonated. The pain struck with such overwhelming force that I felt my knees hit the ground before I even realized I was falling.

  The darkness that swam in front of me had a distinctly crimson hue, even though my eyes were shut tight from the shock of the unexpected attack. Opening them didn't fix it, since the glass was still blacked out.

  Someone was behind me. Either that, or my tumor had picked that moment to go supernova. I could deal with a flesh and blood attacker a lot easier than a cancerous one, which meant I found myself hoping that someone had just tried to take me out with a cheap shot.

  If that was the case, I didn't have much time to spare since a second attack wouldn't be far be
hind. Anyone willing to blindside me once wouldn't hesitate to take another swing.

  Sure enough, a line of pain punctuated my body right down the middle. My eyes felt like they were going to burst, and my spine lit up in four or five places at once.

  That wasn't the end of it. Each injury became something else entirely as parts of me that had never served a purpose stirred and awakened. I was aware of entire spectrums of sound and light and temperature that I had never even imagined, though I had no control over the flood of input they forced on me.

  A terrible howl echoed in the glass, beating my eardrums bloody. The noise didn't stop until I sucked down a ragged lungful of air, which told me that it had been my own traitor throat making it.

  And then everything was gone. The pain vanished completely. All sensation left me, and with it fled any understanding I had gained or assumptions I had just gained.

  As my center of gravity shifted uncontrollably I lost my balance, sprawling forward into a yawning void that swallowed my mind and devoured my body.

  The important parts of me were sent somewhere incredibly far, impossibly fast. Something dangerous loomed up ahead, moving toward me. As it approached I felt it scrutinize my soul, and only when its cold judgment had seen me for the frail, frightened, bitter creature I was at my core did it pass me and take root in the place I'd just left behind.

  Its laughter tore at me, and I was glad to be siphoned away. Anywhere was better than the place that thing was about to call home.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I was no longer on the station. I knew that right away. I took a step and felt soft ground beneath my boot. The visor was no longer blacked out or playing music, which let me look up and see a sky above me with three moons and a visible stretch of prismatic dust.

  There was a lush area and a stream ahead of me, at the end of a wooded trail. I should have been able to hear the water, but the visor was no longer feeding me outside sounds.

  I reached for the edge of the visor and found a release lever. I had a choice, now: explore the world ahead of me without the benefit of sound, or remove the helmet and risk a death by either poison or simple asphyxiation.

  When I glanced to my right and left, the trees along the path grew, twisting their branches together and corkscrewing up from the ground to weave themselves together into an impenetrable barrier. I turned around and saw that they'd crowded the area behind me, too.

  Unless I wanted to just stand here, I only had one option. Forward.

  Subtle, I thought. Just because I was feeling ornery and didn't exactly like being told what to do, I took a couple of steps towards the wall of vegetation on my left anyway. The branches flexed in response, forcing shimmering, four-inch purple thorns from their bark. Each of them sported both a wicked serration and a dangerous hook on the end.

  "Okay," I said out loud, my voice not going any farther than the inside of my helmet. "I get it. You want me to head to the glade. Message received."

  As I walked, I tried to maintain a list of everything that was new or unique to this place, but I gave up only after a couple of steps because just about nothing was the same. Or rather, everything was just one notch away from what it should be.

  The grass I was walking on, for instance, was as brittle as frost. I could tell that the half of the stream nearest me flowed correctly, but the other side was running uphill. The clouds overhead were as still as a mural, despite the nearby leaves blowing in a gentle breeze.

  I wondered if the people back on the station were monitoring my progress. They must be, otherwise what was the point of the mics? "Are you guys still watching?" I called out. "Because the damn suit is already broken. It wasn't my fault, but I can't hear anything out there."

  There was a shiver in the air just ahead of me. Before I could react, unseen hands had flipped the helmet's release and plucked it from my head. It fell at my feet.

  "Incredible," gasped the shifting wobble of light. A moment later a silver orb popped into being in its place. I guess I should have been surprised, but maybe my capacity for amazement had already been burnt out. "Are you talking to me? I should have been hidden from your sight..."

  "Sure," I said, going with it. If I went down the ‘is it speaking English or am I understanding a non-human language’ road, I don’t think I’d ever recover… "If you want to hide for me, you're going to have to do better than that."

  Skill: Bluff

  The ability to willfully and purposely deceive.

  Base score - Thirty-two

  New score - Thirty-three

  I blinked. Every part of me had felt that message go through me like purposeful lightning. I'd read it with my eyes and tasted it with my tongue. Something had taken over all of the bandwidth that made me Adam Harris for a millisecond and used it to dump the information in before handing me back control.

  It reminded me that I had no idea where I was or what the rules were. My little gambit had worked though, so I decided to push a little harder. "Don't you have a job to do?" I asked it, crossing my fingers that his profession wasn't 'Noob Slayer'. "Get on with it."

  The surface of the orb was mercurial, and I saw it shift and slip in a number of confused patterns. When it spoke again, it was with a sputter. If I'd ever wanted to see a flabbergasted sphere, I could now check that off my bucket list. "I scanned you as you arrived, but with your permission I'm going to do it again."

  "Go for it."

  "Thank you. I hope for your sake I don't discover anything untoward. You humans have been informed of the dire consequences of breaking the rules, and..."

  The orb trailed off, and I stood still and waited for the scan. If Evelyn had done something sneaky back at the station, I was probably about to be the one that suffered for it.

  "My apologies," it said a moment later. "I appear to have been mistaken. Tell me, was it mere intuition you were using just now? You have yet to earn the experience required to choose a profession, so I cannot see how any of the higher-tier skills could be aiding you."

  It didn't shut up, but now it was talking to itself and not me. "Unless... Tell me, has your Faction perchance managed to use a Relic?"

  I shook my head in confusion. The last word he'd used thundered through me the same way the message about the Bluff skill had. "I don't think so. I mean, if they have, I don't know anything about it. I'm new here, wherever here is."

  It hovered in silence for a second, deep in thought. "Forgive me, you must be at a loss. A Relic is an artifact created by the Citadel. They are extraordinarily rare, and—"

  One of the nearby branches hemming me into this path reached out with a thorny tendril and struck the orb with enough force to send it spinning towards the stream. I took a surprised step forward, but the tree limb retreated back into the overgrowth before I had a chance to do something dumb and think about attacking it on behalf of the only thing that had thus far been willing to speak with me.

  The orb lay at my feet now, nestled in the upside-down helmet. I grit my teeth and picked it up, letting out a sigh of relief when my hands weren't singed to a crisp or overloaded with electricity. "Are you okay, man?"

  The liquid inside was still spinning, but the surface texture was motionless for the first time. Once its externals got back up to speed, it wobbled into the air once more. "Thank you," it said, bobbing in my direction.

  "What was that all about? Why did the tree hit you?"

  "I deserved it."

  "Really?" I asked.

  "I'm only here to teach you the basics and answer the questions I'm allowed to. The Citadel correctly adjudicated that there was a very real possibility I may have been about to divulge too much. The reaction was warranted."

  I sighed, annoyed at myself for having gotten my hopes up so easily. This guy wasn't a friend. "So you're working against me too, huh?"

  "Not as such. The Citadel enforces the rules as best it is able. You will not be given any advantages that you don't deserve. You can rest assured that your competitors will be
treated the same."

  I nodded. "That seems fair."

  "Adam Harris, I think you will find that is actually the literal definition of 'fair'."

  Sarcasm. I could work with that. "So, do I get to keep you? Or are you going to flit off as soon as you spit the rules out at me?"

  It seemed to have recovered from the tree's attack, since it was far better capable of stabilizing itself in the air. "I am a guide and you are new. The Citadel is almost full, which means that I will probably be with you for some time."

  "Are you able to fight on my behalf?"

  "Absolutely not."

  I had figured as much. "Will you tell me if I'm about to do something incredibly stupid that will end in my painful demise?"

  The orb did a quick zip to the right and left, which was as close to shaking its head 'no' as it could do. "Why would I do that?"

  "What good are you, then? I mean, how hard can the rules here really be?" I demanded.

  It shivered with indignation. "I'm afraid you've misinterpreted the reason for my initial appearance, which in turn has me questioning my earlier estimation of your abilities. I won't be beside you the whole time, so if you were looking for some merry companion to share your exploits with, then allow me to disappoint you. When you reach memorable and important stages of the Citadel, I will be there to advise you on the path ahead. You may choose to take my advice, but rest assured it will be always be impartial."

  "So what you're saying is I should listen to you now, because it could be a while before I can hear your sultry tones again."

  "In a word, yes."

  I cracked my knuckles, and it shuddered, clearly not a fan of the sound. "Let's get down to business, then. It seems you've got answers. Well, I've got questions."

  It laughed. "I hope that gesture wasn't meant to intimidate me. Let me remind you Adam, I've seen your stats and I think that, even without arms, I could most likely take you..."