Christmas: Checkmate

Chapter 2

We stopped in our tracks. Well, this certainly was not something I expected this Saturday evening. I looked back over my shoulder to see the door. "You can choose to leave," the voice said, "if you're scared?"

I didn't even have to look at Aurel to know he bore the same expression as me; offended. Whatever sick game this may be, there was no way we would back down without a fight. It was what we were known for. But, we don't do this for others. We do it for ourselves. It kept us sane and helped us escape from our dreadful reality. Things are so much better now, but we still love the thrill of adventure.

We both stepped forward. The voice gave a short, sadistic laugh. "You have made your choice. We're going to play 3 games. The first challenge is an obstacle course." I turned to Aurel and raised an eyebrow, doubting there being an entire course here underground. He shrugged in reply. Then suddenly, the lights switched on in the arena and behold, indeed there was an obstacle course there. The voice began talking again. "This will test your physical abilities, and we understand if you two are really are capable and if your stories are true. Of course, this is very difficult and..."

Aurel shuffled closer to me and whispered, "Steve is getting boring, you know."

I muffled a laugh. "That's what the voice is called now, eh?" I replied.

Aurel nodded. "So basic, so boring. (A/N: No offence to any Steves reading) Like when will the actual challenge start? Some of us have curfews, you know?" he said.

"What curfew? We're 18. We both live together, with no one else..." I trailed off, incredibly confused.

He shrugged. I sighed, used to this by now. Most of the things he said didn't make sense.

"Excuse me! Stop talking and listen. If you're so confident, do you want to start now? Without instructions?" Steve's voice boomed. Aurel and I nodded enthusiastically towards a camera in the corner and headed towards the starting point of the course. Steve paused. "Oh... um well, you may begin I guess. Although, beware of all the-"

Aurel cut him off. "Yeah, yeah danger and that. We get it, Steve." he said, pressing the red button that said 'Start'.

We ran up to the first obstacle that was a wall, scaling about 20 feet, that looked like a red present. Sticking to the Christmas theme, I guess. I'm assuming we had to somehow get over the wall, but there seemed to be no distinct ridges that we could hold on to. I went closer to the wall and punched it. It tore like paper. I looked over at Aurel and smirked. "What?!" Steve suddenly exclaimed, "How did you get that so fast?"

I shrugged. "If you can't go over or around, go through," we both said in unison. I high-fived Aurel and I let him step through first. He suddenly gasped. I knew him long enough to know it was a pleased gasp. I walked up to him and he pointed to the top. "It's parkour to the top!" he exclaimed happily, swinging himself onto a ledge about 7 feet tall.

"Why are you happy?" Steve muttered disbelievingly, "Normally, people are terrified of the height and the chance that they could, you know, die."

I chuckled and followed Aurel. He absolutely loved parkour and was incredible at it. In fact, it was only this morning that he was telling me how we need to go to another parkour course. It was hard to find ones that challenged Aurel or ones that we haven't already attempted at this point. Aurel made in up in two minutes flat whereas I took a little more time. I was on the second last ledge when I lost my footing. I was barely able to catch a ridge, and thankfully Aurel's reflexes were fast enough to grab my hand. "...Have you been working out more without me? Look at your muscles!" I asked while hanging on for dear life, literally. Aurel just chuckled and pulled me up.