Piper forgets her argument, sprinting to Kate’s side. Kate kicks her legs, trying to get the silhouette off her. Piper yanks at it. I reach them and try to help. The silhouette sucks in raspy breaths. A person.
Is it the girl? Have we found the girl? Should it have been this easy? Why would she come to us?
Piper grips the person’s shoulders and pushes them on to the glowing floor. Her long braid is missing. Short, bristled hair in its place.
A boy.
Probably an eight or nine year. He struggles against Piper’s hold. I push down on his shoulders too.
I cry out in surprise. His skin freezes my fingers, turning them numb. I glance at his face, illuminated by the glow, and scream. I’m not the only one. Screams echo over the walls.
His skin is pale. Too pale. Whiter than white. It almost glows in the darkness. His eyes have no pupils. They’re only the same glowing white. He opens his mouth and lets out a high-pitched screech. Like when something metal is caught in the track of a sliding door.
He shakes uncontrollably against our hands. My perfectly manicured fingernails pierce his skin. Where his blood should be, inky thick liquid seeps out. When it touches my finger, it’s so cold it burns. I resist the urge to snatch my hands away from him.
His own pale hands push against me, pointed fingernails breaking my skin. Red scratches trace down my arms, blood prickling in some spots.
He twists, ripping away from our hands. I grab at his shirt, but it slips through my fingers. He disappears down the left hallway.
I’m breathing hard. It went over so fast, what just happened? What was that? A boy? It couldn’t have been human.
Piper stands further down the hall. She must have tried to catch the boy before he disappeared. Kate’s still on the floor, her face pale. How does she feel about the Heads right now? Does she still think they’re perfect?
Piper slowly walks back to us, her lips pressed into a thin, white line. Kate gradually stands up, her knees shaking. Her eyes are blank, like she’s not even here.
Piper glances at her, concerned. She works up the courage to open her mouth, “Listen, Kate, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
Kate tries to toss Piper a conceited look over her shoulder, but she struggles. She’s fighting off hysteria and tears. “Just stop. You did this to me. I don’t want to deal with you anymore. Why don’t you just leave me alone?”
Piper’s eyes flare open and she presses her lips even tighter together. She doesn’t reply. Kate limps past me, down the right branch of the hallway, away from where the boy went.
Piper reaches my side. She whispers. “I did warn her. I said I heard something but she didn’t listen to me.”
It’s true. Piper warned us before I even heard it. It wasn’t Piper’s fault. She didn’t make that thing attack Kate. She’s just as shaken as the rest of us. We follow Kate down the hall. Piper mutters something about how we are just going back the way we came.
We allow Kate to turn left down a path. We turn a corner and Kate chooses left again. Does she have a plan or is she just wandering? I’m too shocked to do anything about it. What if there are more of those creatures in here? Was the boy the only one? Why was he like that? Was he human or something else? What else could he be? Is he still following us?
I just want this test to be over. I don’t care about what Profession I get anymore. I just want to be done. Kate gasps in front of us. My eyes leave the floor. There’s a door in front of us, the door we originally walked through.
Kate runs towards the door. I open my mouth to call out to her, to tell her it’s the same locked door from earlier. Except the door does slide open. We stumble out into the starting circle.
The empty room used to glow brightly, but now it’s shifted to darkness, only a dim light coming from the floor. As we reach the middle of the circle, the door slides shut behind us.
Piper runs for the door, but it closes before she reaches it. Her face crumples and she leans against the door. Slowly, she collapses to the floor, dazed.
Why would she want to go back in through that door?
“Piper, what’s wrong?” I ask.
She simply shakes her head.
“Why does it matter that the door closed? We wouldn’t have gone back in there anyway.”
She swallows hard. “We don’t know if the girl was in there. We didn’t go down half of the hallways. Who knows what was in there? We went down one hallway twice, the first time it was empty, and the second that…that thing was in there. We could have walked right past the hall with the girl in it. If I had been more focused, maybe we would have found her. Maybe we would have finished the test. I guess it doesn’t matter because we can’t get back in there now.”
She mutters more words under her breath, her voice breaking. How can I respond? Maybe she’s right. Maybe we just ruined our entire future, because we were too focused on annoying Kate.
I glance at Kate. She raises an arrogant eyebrow at me, clearly stating I-told-you-so. I have the sudden, wild urge to smack her.
I crouch next to Piper. “I’m sorry, Piper, but we have to keep moving. We still have another door to go through. Maybe she’s in there, and all this was for nothing. We won’t know unless we keep going.”
Piper lifts her head out of her hands. I smile weakly at her. She struggles to stand, returning my weak smile. I turn to face Kate, her face turned to disgust. “We need to work as a team, understand?”
Piper nods. Kate grudgingly pushes a yes through her lips.
“Okay, so we need—”
I stop as a different door slides open. Sienna and her three roommates stumble out, only their silhouettes visible in the dim lighting. Sienna and Bridget carry another girl, her arms and legs limp. Eyes closed. Fingers dragging on the floor.
They’re all breathing hard. “Terrifying.” Sienna says to our worried faces. “No time to explain right now. She needs help. We don’t know what happened to her.”
The door we just came through slides open. An Official sprints through. Where did she come from? Was she hidden in those halls as well? She grabs the girl, prying her out of Sienna and Bridget’s hands. She carries her back through the door. It closes the second she passes through.
Sienna and her roommates stare at the door, still processing what just happened. Bridget seems to come out of her trance first. “We need to keep moving. We still have two more doors to go through.”
We nod, all of us wondering what might be waiting for us.
“I also think we should exchange names, just to help with communication.”
We list our names. Six people remaining. Annie. Sienna. Bridget. Piper. Kate. Me.
Bridget says, “I think we should do the final doors together. We need to stick together as one group, to help defend each other. The girl has to be there. If she isn’t, then I guess we’ll have to do all the doors again…”
The girl next to her, Annie, screams. “No. Don’t make me do it again.”
I can do nothing but stare as she takes several steps backwards, screaming about the things she just experienced.
Her eyes widen, seeing things in the darkness that aren’t there. She waves her hands through the air.
Sienna runs to her side, grabbing her arms and holding them still. She whispers in a soft, soothing tone, “It’s okay, it’s okay. No more, Annie, no more.”
Annie continues screaming, wrestling her hands out of Sienna’s tight grip. Trying to defend herself from the hallucinations. Sienna’s words slip from their soothing tone, begging Annie, “Annie. Come on, they aren’t here. Nothing’s going to hurt you, I promise. Stop, Annie, stop. Please.”
Sienna abandons her words of comfort, simply repeating her name. Desperate. Hysterical.
Frantic tears spring up in Sienna’s eyes. “Annie. Annie.”
It makes no impression. Annie’s face twists and crumples. Her knees collapse. Sienna and Bridget hold Annie up by her elbows. If they hadn’t been so quick, Annie would have smashed to the floor. She moans, a horrible sound. Worse than the tears. Worse than the screams.
An Official reappears through the door and runs to the scene.
She pulls out something from her pocket. Thin, shiny. Blue. A shot.
Sienna notices and screams something unintelligible to Bridget. Bridget glances behind her and sees the advancing Official.
Bridget leans over, abruptly calm. She whispers into Sienna’s ear. Sienna gives Bridget a quick nod. She lays Annie down on the floor, standing protectively over her. Annie’s still awake, her mouth moving soundlessly. Whispers unheard. Her eyes dart back and forth. A part of her occasionally twitches. A hand lashing out. A foot kicking.
Bridget walks towards the Official. She’s at least a few inches taller. Strands of hair have escapes her braid, frizzing around her head, giving her a crazed look. The Official’s footsteps falter.
She holds up the blue shot, as if that will make Bridget let her pass. Bridget narrows her eyes in response.
The Official commands, “Step aside.”
Bridget crosses her arms over her chest, and raises both her eyebrows in a challenge. Piper slips to Sienna’s side. Sienna whispers something to her before Piper sneaks away again. She creeps along the outside of the circle, out of the vision of the Official.
The Official lifts the shot higher in the air, motioning to it. Bridget stands firm, keeping the Official away from Annie. Piper darts behind the Official. She doesn’t attack the Official. She doesn’t yell.
As the Official warily watches Bridget, Piper plucks the shot from the Official’s outstretched hand.