Chapter 3

SuprSolvr swung her blade left and right, timing her slices to meet the creatures on their way up or on their way down, sometimes even taking out two or three at a time. She didn’t expect it to be this much fun. Maybe it was because she hated ticks, and this felt a little like getting revenge—even if it was silly to think of it that way. Plus she was good at it. Her volleyball practice came in handy again; it gave her quick reflexes.

Fites was doing even better. She heard his yells and whoops as he whirled around and brandished his beam sword with elaborate moves.

A tick landed on her shoulder, and as she tried to wipe it off she accidentally dropped her beam sword. The light of the blade disappeared as the ticks swarmed over it.

Solvr dropped to the floor and reached for it, feeling the prickle of little legs on her arm and the zaps of their electronic bites. She grabbed the hilt, leaped up, and shook a few bugs off her arm before turning on the blade and resuming the fight.

“Um, Solvr?” Fites’s voice drifted over to her.

“Yeah?”

He patted under his sword-wielding arm with his free hand. She looked down and saw a tick dangling from her arm. She grabbed the bug by the body, twisted it the way she’d learned on her camping trip, and hurled it to the floor. She slashed at it with her beam sword and watched it vanish.

She glanced at her wristband. Her health was now under 50%. That one tick had sucked over half her health. She’d also taken some damage reaching for her beam sword.

And still the bugs kept coming, wave after wave. She barely had a chance to catch her breath.

“I think they’re infinite!” she shouted.

“I thought you said they were arachnids!” Fites shouted back. Solvr glanced around the room. There’s got to be a way to stop the bugs from coming. She’d played screen games where she pulled open a dam and flooded the enemy, or rang a bell that called them away. She saw a computer kiosk hidden in a nook that she hadn’t noticed before.

“Cover me!” she yelled.

She ran for the kiosk. It was about waist high, with an angled glass top so she could see a computer monitor and a flat gray keyboard with bright white letters. Ticks landed on her back and shoulders and zapped her through the suit. She wriggled and shrugged to shake them off, trying to focus. The monitor screen was dark. She tapped on the spacebar and woke up the computer.

A two-line message appeared in gray letters on the white screen:

1 ENTER PASSCODE TO DEBUG

2 GET PASSCODE HINT

She didn’t know the passcode, so she hit the “2” key.

“I could use help!” Fites called to her. SuprSolvr glanced back and saw the ticks whirling around him. She leaped back into the fight, spinning her beam sword and taking out at least a dozen ticks. She slashed and hacked and stomped and the ticks let up, at least a little, for a moment.

When she ran back to the kiosk there was a new message—the hint.

EIGHT-LEGGED ENEMIES ALL AROUND
SOUND OF CLOCK WINDING DOWN

The cursor flashed, waiting for her answer. Fites hollered in the background. A tick jumped onto the keyboard. Solvr knocked it off and backed up the cursor, deleting the gibberish the tick had typed in. She realized the answer. There was one word that solved both halves of the riddle.

“I’ve got like eight percent life!” Fites shouted. “My blade is almost out!”

“One more second!” Ticks landed on her, but she tried to ignore them. She didn’t have time for a typo. She carefully typed:

TICKS

She hit “Enter” and wheeled around, prepared to continue the fight. But now the bugs were scurrying away, vanishing under the walls. Seconds later there were none left.

She looked back over her shoulder at the monitor and saw a new message:

DEBUGGING COMPLETE

A door opened next to the kiosk, leading to another corridor. Across the room, the original door re-opened. Fites was on the ground, his drained weapon lying an inch from his open hand.

“Are you all right?”

You can’t be dead, she thought. Or you would have been brought back to the beginning already. She walked over and crouched to check his wristband. His health status was at 2%.

“I’m fine,” he said, opening his eyes. “Just got stunned for a second.”

“You’re not that fine,” she said as she helped him up. “Check your health status.”

He did. “Oh. Guess I should power up ASAP.” He looked around the now empty room. “So, how did you get rid of those bugs?”

“I solved a riddle on the computer console. You answer it to debug.” She paused for effect, but he just stared at her. “Get it?”

“Ugh. I hate puns,” he said. “So what was the riddle?”

She told him. He shrugged, clearly not getting it.

“Ticks,” she explained. “Ticks like a bug, ticks like in a clock.” She couldn’t help but smile. She did like puns.

“Ah,” he said, shaking his head. “Thanks for figuring it out.”

“No problem. Thanks for taking out the enemies while I did.”

“It’s okay. I like fighting.”

“That’s why the Game Runner said we need to work together. One to fend off enemies and one to solve the puzzle.”

“Well, now I need to recharge my health.” He started walking down the new corridor. “Onward through the maze!”

“You mean the labyrinth,” she said as she followed. The walls in this corridor were dimmer than before.

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“There’s only one path in a labyrinth. It’s a long and winding path, but there’s just the one.”

“So we can’t get lost?”

“Nope. But we can still run out of time.” Solvr glanced at her wristband as they walked.

Thirty minutes had passed. She couldn’t believe it had already been half an hour.

Are we going too slowly? she wondered. When she looked up, she saw the floor had turned from solid blue to yellow with black diagonal lines that usually meant danger and high voltage.

“Stop!” she cried, but she was too late. Fites stepped onto the yellow and vanished.