Maelstrom

Twenty-Three

[quod periit, periit]

"All clear."

Reese spun around, arrow nocked, and kicked down the stairwell door. Seamlessly, he, Lukas, and Mark filed through the office floor and hurried their way down its corridors.

"This is getting weird." Mark muttered from behind Reese.

"Shut up." Reese hissed. "They might not be able to see us, but they can probably still hear us."

"Well, that's a shortcoming on Kaya's abilities."

"Shut up."

Lukas crept to the end of a corridor, checking the makeshift map he'd scribbled onto his palm. He cast a sour look at the ceiling, as if somehow the tiles had lied to him. "We should be close."

"But are we close?" Mark asked.

Before Lukas could answer, the sound of a door opening forced the boys to duck. Muffled voices swept down the opposite corridor, towards a separate bank of rooms. Eventually, the voices disappeared behind the sound of another door swinging shut.

Reese let out a breath. Being invisible was one thing, but the last thing he wanted was for his luck to run out and be ambushed by Menoetious' henchmen. With a shake of his head, he pressed a finger to his ear, turning on the comms system linking him to Dale and Eli, who were staking out the front door across the street.

"We're on the ninth floor," Reese reported. "Where's the highest security?"

"You guys are right on top of it," Eli said. "Take a left at the end of the hall."

Reese looked up to where Lukas was getting to his feet, at the end of the hall. The only thing was it was a dead end.

"There is no left." Reese said flatly. "Are we on the wrong floor?"

Mark furrowed his eyebrows at that, getting to his feet. "No, wait a minute." He walked over to the ceiling-to-floor window, squinting so intensely that it looked like he'd seen something fly over the horizon. "There's a symbol in the glass." He squinted again. "It's an omega."

Lukas snorted, "That's ironic."

Reese opened his mouth to relay the news to Dale and Eli, but before he could, Dale responded with a quick, "We're on it." A few seconds passed, and her voice came back on the line. "It's a secret passageway. Try touching it."

Reese watched Mark warily. The last time there'd been a secret passageway opened by godly blood, it had been the Labyrinth, and neither of them had had good experiences within its depths. However, desperate times called for desperate measures, and Reese watched as Mark pressed a finger to the omega.

Despite being near-invisible in its imprint, the omega began to shimmer. Suddenly, the entire window began to shimmer as if it had become water, rippling and moving along to each sudden change in its surface. Within moments, the dead end had elongated into a T of hallways, made entirely of glass. Reese stepped onto it, half-expecting to plummet to his death, but the glass held.

"I have officially seen it all," Reese muttered to himself. He looked behind him to Lukas and Mark, who were testing the glass for themselves. "Come on."

"This does look familiar," Lukas affirmed. He started down the glass hallway.

"Did Menoetious give you a tour or something?" Mark asked.