This was a bad time for their tech to start glitching out on them. Sure, Nolan had just argued for staying and helping the natives, but with a maze full of Death Spheres and their safety net cut, the prospect of doing so was way less appealing. Both he and Parker tried to will themselves awake, a skill new trainees learned early on, but neither of them managed to pull it off. They appeared to be stuck here. That meant there really was only one way out.
“This isn’t good,” Nolan said, stating the obvious. “If we can’t wake up, something else is going on.”
“They’ll notice when we don’t show up at the schoolscape, right? They’ll be able to wake us in the real world,” Parker said.
“I hope so.” But Nolan could only think of his friend, Frostee, stuck in a dreamscape he couldn’t wake or escape from. There were ways to become trapped in the dream world. “We shouldn’t count on it, though. I think we’re going to have to go back in the maze.”
Parker grimaced. “I don’t like it when you’re right. I know we just got out of that place, but we should find the chief. See if we can’t take another crack at it. The sooner we get out of here the better.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Chief Archer was absent from her quarters, so they spent the next few minutes searching the village for her. The encampment was conspicuously empty as well, and only one place came to mind when he thought of where they might all be collected. On the outskirts of camp, they found the villagers crowded into the set of bleachers, with all eyes down on the maze below. Chief Archer sat at the very top, a thin wooden device pressed against one eye like an old-fashioned spyglass.
It did not seem like the best time to disturb her, so they picked a spot on the bleachers from which to watch the events unfold. From up here, Nolan had a hard time telling what was going on. A tiny figure wound through various sections of the maze, slowly making his way to the middle.
“Ah, you joined us.” Angie was sitting on the row below them. She’d turned around to smile up at them.
“I’m always up for a good show,” Nolan told her.
“It is a historic day. This in Unbaranga’s third trip into the maze.”
“Aw, Barry? I’m going to miss Barry,” Parker said.
Nolan turned and stared at him. Had he named all the natives? He shook his head and returned his gaze to the poor man’s plight below. He stood near the doors in the center, looking infinitesimally small from this vantage point. Nolan sure hoped the little guy knew how to play a skull flute, or he was about to be smashed like bug. By a giant plant bug.
A shrill note permeated the dreamscape, revealing Barry was no musician. Moments later the plant monster scaled over the doors and gave chase. The native could scoot on his tiny legs, but the creature’s pursuit was short. Nolan expected a viney leg to smash him underfoot or those deadly pincers to cut him in half, but instead, the monster swatted him into the air. Barry landed directly on a switch point, and a collective sigh of disappointment rippled through the bleachers.
Angie hung her head and whispered, “The black gates turn red.”
Nolan frowned, remembering the phrase from her earlier warning. Then he watched in horror as the swirling black orb Barry had fallen into flared with a bright, crimson light. A second later the light cooled, leaving behind a distinctly deadly Death Sphere.
He blinked. Had he really just seen that? It certainly explained the abundance of Death Spheres within the maze.
Parker elbowed him. “Yeah, I don’t want to go back in the maze anymore.”
“For sure.” He tapped Angie on the shoulder. “Does that always happen?”
She nodded. “On the third try. Every time.”
Three strikes and you’re out, no doubt about that. Things were suddenly far more complicated than before.
Up on the top row, Chief Archer tucked her spyglass away, a scowl on her face. Most of the natives were clearing out, so Nolan bounded up the steps to her.
“We want another shot,” he told her.
“No, we don’t,” Parker said. Nolan smacked him on the shoulder.
The chief smiled at them and said, “Are you sure you want to go back in so soon? You should take more rest. I need you operating at peak mental capacity. It’s not often I’m blessed with travelers through the Dreamgate. I expect much more out of you than these natives, and I don’t want to waste your trials for naught.”
Nolan hesitated. Dreamgate? Hadn’t everyone referred to it as the Royal Ring before? He studied her porcelain face for a moment, that sickening feeling of unease further knotting itself into a giant ball in his gut. What was a tall, white woman doing as the chief of a tribe of short, dark natives anyway? Her coat was decorated with depictions of switch points. And hadn’t she called them dreamers when the maze first spat them out?
The silence gathered between them. Nolan didn’t want to ask his next question, mostly because he knew whatever answer she gave would likely confirm his fears. In the end, curiosity won out.
“How long have you been stuck here?” he asked her.
Her lips curled back, giving a menacing curve to her smile. “Too long.”
For a second, no one said anything. Parker eventually caught up. “Wait. You’re dreaming too?”
“I am. Took you two boys long enough to figure it out.”
“Why not tell us?” Nolan asked. “We can work together. Solve this thing and get us all out of this stupid dreamscape.”
She held an arm up and pointed to the band around her wrist. “I’m not risking adding another one of these until I am absolutely certain I can reach the center of the maze and find the true exit from this place.”
“So you’re going to send in villagers like cannon fodder until they figure it out for you?”
“Pssh.” She waved a hand at them. “They’re natives. They’re expendable.”
Nolan felt his fury rising. “They have names! Like Bill! And Angie! And what about us? You know we’re dreamers. Real people. Are you content to have the death of a couple of kids on your conscience?”
Her voice rose to match his. “I have been in here a long, long time, and I’ve lost people, Nolan. I watched those Deathgates swallow up two of my partners, so I know exactly what I’m dealing with. If I have to sacrifice two boys, so be it.”
Nolan lunged, unable to contain his anger any longer. She evaded him easily, stepping back off the bleachers and floating out of reach in the air above them.
“What the heck? I thought we couldn’t fly here?”
“You can’t,” she said, another devious smile flashing across her lips. “I took measures to make sure of that.”
Nolan looked to his partner, but Parker only shrugged.
This time the chief laughed at them. “I can make you another cup of tea if you’d like.”
Parker slapped his own cheek. “Man, we are morons.”
“What?” Nolan asked.
“Eenid-Ibi tea,” he said slowly, waiting for Nolan’s reaction. When he didn’t answer, he spelled it out for him. “What does that sound like, Erling? Inhibit tea, don’t you think.”
Crap. Nolan had once taken an inhibitor dart to the neck while dreaming, and it had regulated his abilities and kept him asleep.
He turned back to Chief Archer. “You think we’re going to wake up, don’t you?”
“Unless you somehow came here the same way I did, it’s a distinct possibility.”
“Let us go, then. We can wake up. Send someone in from the Institute to help you. They’ll be able to sort this all out.”
“Aww, that’s cute. You think I’m going to trust your Institute after what they’ve done? Sorry, kids, but I make sure not to repeat my mistakes. Now, we were discussing another foray into the maze. You should probably prepare for that.”
Based on what they’d just learned, saying no likely wasn’t an option anymore. Nolan sighed and glanced at his partner. “Hope you’ve developed some musical talent in the last hour.”
“No guarantees,” Parker told him. “But I’ve got an idea brewing.”
The statement didn’t do a whole lot to ease Nolan’s nerves. Their lives were on the line here, and he still didn’t trust Parker enough to leave his fate in the boy’s hands. He didn’t have any new ideas himself, though, and only held out a slim hope they would be able to find a way to the center of the maze on the next go-around.
Angie and Bill marched them down to the entrance again. This time Chief Archer accompanied them, perhaps to keep a closer eye on them. Nolan didn’t know why. It’s not like they had anywhere else to run.
They each received another skull flute, and moments later the energy barrier snapped into place as they reentered the maze. Nolan gazed through the shimmering wall. The chief was still floating in the air, the natives standing by her side.
“I’d like to say this has been fun, but you’re a total lunatic, you know,” he told her. “We’re going to find a way out of here, and we won’t help you do the same.”
She smiled yet again. “That’s why I watch, Nolan. You can’t keep secrets from me. If you find your way to the center, I’ll see exactly how you did it.”
He glared at her, a sudden epiphany formulating a new plan on the fly. “Who said anything about going to the center?”
She eyed him for a full ten seconds before delivering a smirk and floating away toward the village.
After she’d left, Parker said to him, “What are you doing, Erling? I told you I was cooking up a plan for us.”
“Mine’s better. We’re going to take a seat, wait for the tea to wear off, and hope we wake up before she realizes what we’re doing.” The more he thought about it, the more it felt like their best bet. Waking might take a while, but waiting here would keep them out of the dangerous center of the maze. They could just sit near the entrance, safe and sound. Then, when the effects of the tea subsided, they would say goodbye to this crazy dreamscape and leave the chief here to toil away for several more years.
“I don’t like it,” Parker said. “Don’t you think our teachers would have woken us already when they noticed the rebounders fail?”
“The tea might be keeping us under too.”
“We can’t sit around and do nothing. We could be wasting a shot at figuring this out. If you remember, we only get three chances at this. Three strikes and we’re out. Permanently.”
Nolan glanced at the metal cuff around his wrist, all too aware of what was at stake. “This chief isn’t a good person. We can’t show her the way out.”
“What about the natives you want to save? You leave her here, she’ll keep tossing more of them into Death Spheres every day.”
“That’s why we wake up. Go grab reinforcements.”
Parker sighed, glancing down the long passage ahead of them. “Fine. Have it your way. But if this backfires and we get slapped with another band, I make all the decisions next time through.”
That proposition was frightening. Nolan would have trusted pretty much anyone else at the Institute with the task. Not Parker, though. On the flip side, Parker was trusting him right now, even though Nolan himself was not a hundred percent sure of his plan.
“Deal,” he said. Then he brushed some rocks away to clear a patch of dirt to sit on.
They waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Nolan was not born with a lot of patience, and he’d definitely not developed any more as he’d gotten older. So he got up and paced.
And paced.
And paced some more.
His feet had worn a deep path in the floor by the time the dreamscape began to shake. A low rumble accompanied the vibration, like a minor earthquake striking the maze. The noise seemed to be originating from the center, and both he and Parker stared long and hard down the passage in front of them, fearful of what the rumbling might mean. The sound didn’t resemble drumbeats, so hopefully the plant monster was still imprisoned in the center. It sounded more like an avalanche, like hundreds of rocks sliding down a hill. A second later the first rock came into view.
Only, it wasn’t a rock. It was a rolling black switch point.
A dozen more of the spheres cascaded around the bend, violently tumbling toward them with an alarming amount of speed. Death Spheres followed, and the entire passage was soon flooded with a churning sea of black and red. With the barrier behind them, there was nowhere to run. The rolling orbs were too closely packed together for them to maneuver around them. The maze was forcing them through a switch point. They needed to make sure it wasn’t through a red one.
“The maze is kicking us out, Erling. So much for your brilliant plan.”
“At least I had a plan.”
“Still doesn’t make it a good one.”
The pair edged toward the left of the passage, where a single black orb led the pack of tumbling switch points. They jumped into that orb before any of the Death Spheres had a chance to draw close. The world turned black, and Nolan felt the second band sear onto his arm just above the first one as the Stream took them and deposited them on the hillside. A very disappointed group of onlookers greeted them as they tumbled into the grass.
“Sorry, boys.” Chief Archer forced a look of sympathy their way. “I forgot to tell you about that defense mechanism. You must play, or the maze will make you pay.” She laughed heartily and left them to sit there all alone.
Nolan tapped his metal band. “Strike two. Man, I hate being down in the count.”
“And I hate dreaming with you,” Parker said, but he lacked the usual venom in his voice.
Nolan could tell the boy was scared. He was too. They only had one more shot at this, and they had to get it right.
Or else.