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WE WERE ESCORTED THROUGH the hallway just as we had been before the first game. Although last time I was half asleep, I had sensed the exhilaration from the other players. But this time was different. None of us were excited to continue the Exogames. There was no telling how prepared we were for this next game, let alone two back-to-back. I was even more worried about the lives of my friends than I was about my own.
Instead of taking us to the small rooms like before, the gazer ushering us had left us in another holding bay, or so we were told. I immediately recognised where we stood. The black walls were different from every other room on Second Earth. There was only one place these walls made an appearance — the spaceships intended for voyages around our solar system. I immediately concluded that the second game was not going to be played on Second Earth or even the real planet Earth. It made sense, though; the Exogames were never played on Second Earth or in the same location twice.
We quickly became restless, so everyone decided to take a seat in the white metal chairs lined with a light strip around the edges. There were two rows of chairs on either end of the ship. I, of course, sat between Jaaspar and Jayde, with Thebe on the other side of Jaaspar. Anyma sat in a chair on the opposite side of the ship because all the chairs on my side had been taken up.
“Did you girls get the clue last night as well?” I whispered to Jayde.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “The gazer standing in our room nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Same with us,” I said, laughing.
Jaaspar heard part of the conversation and laughed with us. Then he turned to Thebe and spoke with her.
“What do you think it means?” I asked.
“Not sure. Our card was blank.”
“Ours as well. And we almost burnt ourselves.”
“From what?” Jayde asked with concern.
“The card,” I said slowly. “Did you touch it?”
“Thebe did. I didn’t grab it.”
I turned to Thebe, leaning over Jaaspar.
“Thebe, the clue from last night, was the card hot?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“It was saturated. It disintegrated through my fingers. I assumed that’s why there was no writing on it. The water must have washed it out.”
“Strange. Ours was hot, almost at boiling point,” I said.
Jaaspar agreed, and I turned back to Jayde. My mind was filled with clouds of confusion, storming like thunder and lightning inside my head.
“Your clue was wet; ours was hot.”
“What do you think it means?” Jayde asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe the next game involves boiling water. I have no idea.”
“The next two games are back-to-back. What if each clue is part of a specific game?”
“That makes sense. But what if someone else got a completely different clue?” I asked.
Jayde leaned over to the player on the other side of her and snapped her fingers at them. Without even looking at the player, I knew exactly who it was. Jayde would have never snapped her fingers like that to anybody else.
“Your clue, what was it?” she asked.
“I’m not telling you,” Neon responded aggressively.
Jayde tilted her head down and stared at him without blinking. Neon leaned further back, almost becoming one with his chair, and hesitated as he made a strange face.
“It was a wet card with nothing on it,” he answered.
I smiled at him politely when he looked at me and I nodded my head down with minuscule movements before looking away. I didn’t want to get stuck in an awkward conversation with him or else he would have gone on about his theories about the Exogames which I didn’t care about.
“There you go, Fate,” Jayde said. “Half of us would have received the wet card, and the other half, the hot card.”
“Prepare for the heat, I guess.”
“What if the water clue is the next game?”
“Then prepare to swim,” I said, realising the implication after I said it. Jaaspar was afraid of water, terrified of being submerged in it. I hoped, for his sake, that if the game involved swimming, we would at least have our heads above the surface.
The door reopened, and Rubie walked in, the doctor who’d recorded my vitals and given me the instructions for the first game. She recognised me and smirked, then stood in the centre between the two rows of chairs. Gazers came in as well and dropped new attire, still sealed in plastic, at our feet. Then they exited the ship, and the door shut.
“Players, again, congratulations on making it past the first game,” she said as she moved between speaking to each side of the ship. “As you all must have heard many times, the difficulty of these next games will be increased.”
“No shit,” Jayde whispered loud enough for only me to hear.
Rubie pulled out her tablet and read the instructions from the screen.
“Game two, a race on Venus,” she said.
“I guess your clue is this next game. My clue has to be the game after,” Jayde whispered to me.
I swore quietly. Venus was the hottest planet in our solar system, with burning sulphur and lava on its rocky surface. It was a fiery furnace, and we were all going to burn to death. There was no doubt about it.
“The suits at your feet will protect you from Venus’ heat and atmosphere,” Rubie continued. “But not for long. Thirty minutes is all you will have to make your way from the drop-off zone to Maat Mons, Venus’ largest volcano. There you will find the open portal to the third game, where I will be waiting to give you further instructions. Halfway across, you will find hoverboards, one for each of you to ride the remaining distance to the portal. Make it there alive before the thirty-minute timer ends and before the portal closes. Good luck,” she said as she turned off her tablet.
Cobalt raised his hand to ask a question, and Rubie nodded to allow him to speak, although nobody really needed permission. We were all adults, except for Thebe, who was only seventeen years old, and we were mature enough to interrupt in order to raise any concerns.
“May I exit to change into the suit?” Cobalt asked.
“The game will begin shortly. Change here now before take-off, or else take your chances on Venus. It’s up to you,” she responded.
Immediately, all the players, including myself, ripped open our plastic packaging and took out our suits. They were black and made of a synthetic material I had never seen before. The suit was seamed together with red stitching and was rather flexible. Nobody cared that we were naked for a split second; we just didn’t want to burn up as soon as the doors opened to the fiery planet.
“Is there a helmet we need to wear?” Neon asked.
“Push the white button between your collarbones, and a force field will activate to protect your head for the duration of the second game.”
“What about footwear?” Kuiper asked.
“Did you check your satchel properly?”
“Never mind, I found them.”
Rubie rolled her eyes; we all did. The boots were the same as they were in the first game. When the tops of the boots made contact with the bottom of the suit, they sealed together tightly, and no matter how hard I tried to disconnect the two materials, they wouldn’t budge.
We were all strapped into our seats with a large restraint over our shoulders. The moment the restraint was secured over my body, familiar emotions came over me, emotions that reminded me of the journey to Mars. It happened exactly like this. One moment, I was enjoying myself on Second Earth, and the next, I was being transported through the solar system on a spacecraft that didn’t feel real.
“Here we go,” Jaaspar said with excitement, but I could tell he wasn’t really in the mood to play another game. “Who’s ready to die?” he asked sarcastically.
The overhead lights turned off, and only a blue light strip from underneath our seats illuminated the ship.
“Good luck, players. See you on the other side, whoever makes it out alive,” Rubie said as she exited.
The ship whirred and made all sorts of strange noises before it folded spacetime to take us to Venus. But that was all we remembered. The human brain wasn’t designed to survive the event, so we were put to sleep. A strange-smelling gas filled the entire ship, and in no less than ten seconds, my eyelids shut, and the world around me faded away as if it didn’t exist in the first place.
* * *
THEBE WAS THE FIRST TO WAKE. I knew this because I was the second player to open my eyes. Then, slowly but surely, everyone else began waking up in their seats and looking around in confusion, wondering if we had landed on Venus. I turned to Jaaspar and smiled nervously, fear in my eyes, but he was still half asleep. A million possibilities ran through my mind over and over. What if the heat kills us instantly? What if I don’t make it to the end of this game? Or my friends, what if they die? What if I forget to activate my helmet?
I pressed the white button between my collarbones and saw the force field shimmer over my head. Everybody else did the same one by one, and a small blue light on the button confirmed that they were activated.
A robotic announcement was made through the speakers above our heads. “Door opening in one minute.”
A small hole opened in the floor, and out came the hovering spherical cameras, one for each of us. The restraints around our bodies unlocked, and we were free to stretch our muscles. Kuiper, with his menacing and sharp eyes, stared at Cobalt the entire time we waited for the door to open.
Then, it happened. The sound of thick bubbling liquid and crashing rocks became louder as the door raised up. Heat poured into the ship, and even through our suits, it was still too intense.
Sapphire was first to exit, closely followed by Neon and then the rest of us.
Red.
That was all I saw.
Red.
But it wasn’t red like on Mars. It was a type of red that glowed a bright scarlet in a spectacular light show. The smoke in the air was thick, but it didn’t block my vision of the uneven terrain ahead. The sky was a melancholic dark grey. The volcano ahead — Maat Mons — actively burned thick sulphur and spat out molten rock. The lava overflowed from the peak and very slowly trickled down. It looked so beautiful that I almost wanted to touch it. The cameras hovered above each of our heads as we moved towards the volcano.
The gravity on Venus was weaker than it was on Earth, but the weighted boots made it feel the same. The gravity regulation methods on Second Earth were very similar, which was why we were required to wear special bracelets around our ankles and wrists.
“How do we find the exit?” Sapphire asked over the winds that slowly picked up.
“There!” Emerald shouted as she pointed in front of us.
A thin green beam of light shot out of the top of the volcano and disappeared into the sky. No wonder Jayde was in awe back on Earth. The beacons would have been immaculate; the one that I could see was more than extraordinary.
Everyone concurred that it led to the portal, just as the beacons had in the first game. We all jogged towards the volcano together but distinctly split into two groups. Jayde, Jaaspar, Thebe and I huddled around Cobalt to protect him from Kuiper. Emerald and Sapphire helped as well. The other players stayed a few metres to the right of us, seeming more concerned about the heat than about Cobalt.
It hadn’t been more than two minutes before the ground rumbled slowly like the beginnings of a growl from the belly of the planet. We paused, and we waited.
“This isn’t going to be as easy as it looks,” Thebe said over the hot winds.
Emerald stepped forward slightly, pressing harder onto the ground with her feet. She must have pushed too hard because small cracks formed everywhere she stepped.
“It’s alright—” She was propelled hundreds of metres into the air, and she landed with a splat onto the hard terrain.
Sapphire painfully screamed as she watched in horror. Boiling blood bubbled slowly out of Emerald’s charred body. I breathed unevenly and fast, and my hands trembled uncontrollably. Jaaspar shook my shoulders to snap me back into reality, and Jayde snapped her fingers in my face.
The ground in front of us cracked as the entire planet growled once more. I finally saw what had killed Emerald only moments ago. It wasn’t a creature or a monster, although, I preferred it to be. It was nature itself. A booming eruption of hot orange lava exploded from the ground into a pillar hundreds of metres into the sky, then crashed back down. Suddenly, more eruptions broke through the cracks in a random arrangement, and the lava splashed everywhere in a pool of thick orange slosh.
“RUN!” Jayde screamed at the top of her lungs.
I sprinted into the expanse without a care of who was behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cobalt racing just ahead of me with Kuiper close behind him. The Exogames didn’t feel like a way to cleanse ourselves of the impurities our crimes had caused; they felt like a way to cleanse Second Earth of its prisoners. There was no way any of us would make it out alive and be sane afterwards.
“Fate, watch out!” Jaaspar called out as he nudged me out of the way of a lava geyser that would have most certainly killed me.
“Thanks,” I said as we continued running and dodging the lava.
The geysers erupted in a spread-out manner and always twice in the same spot.
“Don’t look back. Just keep moving,” Jaaspar instructed.
But I did what he’d told me not to do. I looked back. There was only one person who wasn’t running through the expanse. Thebe. She stood motionless at the beginning of the race as if she were frozen in time. The bright orange and red lava, which was exploding in front of her, didn’t seem to faze her at all.
“Thebe!” I screamed.
She didn’t hear me from where I stood. After all, she was quite far behind and the explosions were deafening. I sprinted back to her, trying not to step in the pools of lava or into a geyser.
“Thebe,” I repeated when I finally reached her.
Still, there was no response. Her pupils were dilated, and even though she was looking directly at me, it was as if I were invisible. I clutched her hand in mine and dragged her into the expanse. Only then did she regain her mobility and realise the sudden danger we were all in.
The pools of lava started merging and left almost no visible terrain. There were small patches of rocky dirt, which Thebe and I utilised to jump across to larger areas of the ground. The geysers on our end had slowed down, but if we stopped for too long, the lava would completely cover the ground and take us both.
“Try to keep up, Thebe!” I panted between words, trying to catch up to the other players.
“How much longer until we get to the hoverboards?” she asked, sidestepping into me a few times to dodge the lava.
“I’m not sure. But as soon as we get there, we’ll be on the home stretch,” I said without any way of knowing if it were true.
The two of us were not too far from the rest of the players. I recognised Sapphire up ahead, leaping over large rocks and boulders. The hovering cameras flew in front of us with their lenses pointed towards the volcano. A lava geyser exploded inches from my face and crashed down close to Thebe.
“Watch out!” I screamed as I brought my arms close to my body and jumped out of the splash zone. “Did you see that?” I asked.
“It’s French to me,” she joked to comfort herself, but it wasn’t a great time to make jokes. She realised I was serious. “No, what is it?”
“The hovering camera moved out of the way a few seconds before the geyser exploded.”
She looked at me with raised eyebrows and tilted her head forward slightly. Thebe wasn’t as intelligent in difficult situations.
“The cameras know when the lava is about to erupt,” I continued. “We can follow the cameras and make it to the hoverboards.”
She brushed past me and jogged closer to the volcano.
“Careful, Thebe,” I warned as I pulled her away from another geyser explosion. “Look at your hovering camera. It will move away from the lava,” I explained slowly and simply.
“Alright, yes, now that makes sense,” she said as her eyes widened.
We raced through the expanse and followed the cameras left and right, zigzagging past every geyser and weaving around each other. We jumped over boulders and puddles of boiling, red-hot lava to avoid the splashes which bounced up far off the ground. We almost tripped on the convex openings the geysers had formed as they broke through the terrain but regained our balance quickly.
The two of us caught up to the rest of the players, who were slowly trying to get through the mess of lava. Jaaspar and Jayde were partnered together just as Thebe and I were. Cobalt was with Sapphire, using the same technique of following the hovering cameras. Kuiper was close behind them with his eyes locked on Cobalt.
“You’re a dead man!” Kuiper screamed as he stretched his arms out.
“Oh no,” Thebe said to me, “he’s going to kill him.”
A pillar of lava erupted from the ground, and at that exact moment, Kuiper, with every ounce of revenge in him, placed his hands on Cobalt and threw him into the geyser. Cobalt disappeared into the lava; he didn’t even scream as he died. Kuiper had kept his promise of ending Cobalt’s life in this game and I wondered how many more of us he was going to kill as the games progressed.
“Oh, God,” I whispered to myself. “Shit just got real.”
Sapphire screamed in horror and shouted profanities at Kuiper.
“Do you want to be next?” Kuiper warned her with ill intent and seriousness.
She shook her head, and Kuiper continued through the expanse.
Kuiper had spoken to us about murdering some of the players during the games, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it was his plan all along. He just needed a target, and Cobalt was unfortunate enough to fall into his trap.
“Fifteen minutes remaining,” the robotic voice announced through the cameras.
“We have to get to the hoverboards,” Thebe said.
Once the geyser that had killed Cobalt crashed back down, the hoverboards were in view. They floated just off the ground at the bottom of Maat Mons in an evenly spread-out row. Neon was first to claim one, closely followed by Hinata. Sapphire managed to pick herself up and jumped on the next hoverboard with Jayde and Jaaspar behind her.
As Thebe and I raced to the remaining hoverboards, we overtook the other players who hadn’t figured out a safe way through the geysers yet.
The oval-shaped hoverboards were plain sheets of a gold metal, much like the surfboards people used on planet Earth hundreds of years ago. I jumped onto one of the remaining boards, and my feet magnetically clicked into place. It was wobbly at first and difficult to keep balanced, but I stretched my hands out on either side of my body to stabilise. Thebe did the same, but she found it easier to control than I did.
Kuiper jumped on the hoverboard next to mine and scrunched his face when he looked at Thebe and me. He leaned forward on his hoverboard and zoomed up the volcano. I leaned forward as well and felt the hot air whizz past my body.
From a distance, I saw Jaaspar struggling to keep himself balanced, and he fell onto Jayde’s hoverboard. He only held onto the edge with a few fingers and raised his legs up to not get hit by any of the geysers, but he seemed unaware that the hoverboards couldn’t hold the weight of two people. Jayde lifted Jaaspar with one arm back onto his own hoverboard, which was still flying beside hers, and I exhaled in relief.
“Hey!” I called at Kuiper, hoping to get his attention.
He didn’t stop or acknowledge my call.
“Kuiper!” I screamed as I pulled up beside him.
“What?” he asked aggressively and rolled his eyes.
“Why did you kill Cobalt?” I had to fight over the rumbling volcano and crashing rocks for Kuiper to hear me.
“I warned him after he left my team and me in the first game. He deserved it.”
“So do all of us. We’re all criminals.”
“Not me. I was framed; I can promise you that,” he responded as he began moving away from me.
“Wait, what do you mean you were framed?” I asked, trying to catch up to him again.
I made the mistake of placing my hands on Kuiper to get his attention again. He retaliated by grasping my shoulders tightly in his fists, and with a hard nudge, he knocked me off my hoverboard. I rolled down the side of the volcano, slowing as the ground evened out. I must have hit my head unknowingly because my vision was slightly blurred. I knew I was bruised up badly because every muscle in my body ached as if it were being torn off my bones.
Thebe rode down to where I had landed and picked me up. I was too heavy for her, and she grunted as she helped me back on my feet. My hoverboard had landed further down the volcano from where I was, and it was almost impossible to reach.
“Ten minutes remaining,” the announcement was made.
“Fate, we still have time,” Thebe said.
I knew Thebe was just trying to convince herself that I would make it out of this game alive, but as the clock ticked closer to the finishing time, the portal looked further away.
The ground rumbled and shook much harder than the previous quakes. It felt as though somebody had taken the planet in their hands and was shaking it around like a maraca. The rocks around us fell, and the smoke from the top of the volcano thickened. Thebe fell off her hoverboard and landed on her back.
“Run.” Thebe tried to scream but her vocal cords made no noise and only air came out of her mouth like a loud whisper.
“Run, Fate. Fate Artemis, run!” Anyma screamed at the top of her lungs as she rode down to encourage me to start moving.
I let my feet take me across the even plain, sprinting faster than I had ever run before in my life. I needed to get my hoverboard to make it to the portal at the top of the volcano. But it was too difficult for me to reach.
“Jump!” Anyma instructed as she followed me.
“What? Are you crazy?” I yelled.
“Just do it, Fate! Jump!” she repeated.
I closed my eyes, which I shouldn’t have done while running, and trusted Anyma’s words. I let my body fly through the air off the side of a volcano, not knowing where I would land. Thankfully, my feet attached to the hoverboard magnetically to prevent me from splattering all over the side of the volcano.
The expanse where the geysers had erupted was no longer covered by pillars of hot, thick lava. It had been replaced by a lake that burned with fire and sulphur. Emerald and Cobalt, who were both killed by a geyser, were now swimming at the very bottom of that lake of fire. It was a second death for them.
My eyes locked onto the beacon above, and the quaking strengthened. Kuiper was nearly at the top of the volcano, along with most of the other players. Hinata rode directly beside him, determined to get to the portal. At that moment, the ground beneath them exploded with heavy ash, and a monstrous wave of lava devoured both of them. The wave was mostly red as lava bubbled out, with patches of blue molten sulphur that mixed into a deep violet.
The entire half of Maat Mons had erupted with ash and giant boulders, which Anyma and I tried to dodge. The lava wave quickly consumed anything in its path as it rolled down the volcano. Thebe wasn’t in front of us, so I turned my head to make sure she was close behind.
She wasn’t.
“Thebe!” I called.
She was still on the ground where I had fallen previously, and she was tugging at her leg. From where I was, she looked like a tiny speck on the ground, and the lava was quickly approaching her. I leaned as far forward on my hoverboard as I possibly could without falling off and raced towards her.
I was fast. Very fast. I was speeding down the side of the volcano in the opposite direction of the exit. But the lava wave was faster.
“Thebe, what’s wrong? What is it?” I couldn’t understand what kept her from resuming her pace towards the portal.
“It’s French.” She was trying to distract herself from her quickly approaching death. It was something she did to comfort herself. “It’s my leg,” she answered.
The closer I was to her, the clearer I could see that her foot was stuck in a small hole in the ground and didn’t look like it would budge. I stretched out my arm and splayed out my fingers to grab her. Her glossy eyes stared deep into my soul, her mouth quivered, and her body trembled as she called for me to save her. I swallowed hard, knowing that I wasn’t going to be fast enough to catch her. Thebe closed her eyes and before she could take hold of my hand, the lava swallowed her whole and took her under. Her hovering camera zoomed up into the portal, and I knew for certain that she was gone.
“No!” I cried as my throat tightened and tears ran down my face. The temperature was so hot that they dried up as quickly as they fell.
“One minute remaining,” the voice announced from my camera.
One minute was not enough. I needed more time to dodge the lava, rocks and anything else the volcano decided to spit out.
My shallow breaths eventually eased, but my eyes were filled with tears, and my vision was blurry. I leaned forward and hoped that none of the projectile rocks would hit me.
“Thirty, twenty-nine,” the countdown began.
Boulders crashed near me and splashed hot lava high into the air. I swung my hoverboard around and blinked the blurriness away so that I could find a safe way to the top. But to be honest, there was never a safe way from the beginning. The game makers planned this round carefully.
I swallowed the built-up saliva in my mouth and screamed as I let the hoverboard take me to the portal. The countdown disappeared in the crashes and rumbling explosions. If I made it through to the next game, it would be for Thebe. If I didn’t, then Thebe sacrificed her life for nothing, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
The portal was within reach, but I couldn’t see through to the other side. It remained opaque for one of two reasons. Either the game makers didn’t want any of us to know the location of the third game before it began, or it was some sort of shield so that no lava or debris would be able to get to the other side. Both reasons made sense, but there was no point in trying to figure out which was the correct one.
The beacon turned off from the top down, and the lasers that lined the portal flickered. I only had mere seconds to make it across, and even though the portal was directly in front of me, I still wasn’t going to reach it. So, there was only one thing left to do.
I leaned as far forward as possible that it felt like I was going to fall into the raging lava below, and swung both of my arms forward, releasing my legs from the hoverboard and allowing my body to fly through the portal just in time before it closed behind me. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I had made it across or if I was dead, but when I saw Rubie’s face, I was certain that I was still in the games and hadn’t died, at least not yet.