Labyrinth (23 page)

“No idea,” he replied. “But we’ve only got one choice, so I suggest we take it and don’t stop until we start sucking in fresh, clean air.”

“I like the way that sounds,” Annja said.

Chapter 26

Their excitement grew as they crested the slope and saw that it leveled out into a room with a hardwood floor. A first in the maze. Annja helped Kessel the last few steps and they looked back at how far they’d had to climb.

Kessel whistled. “I can’t even figure out where we started. It’s too dark to see the bottom from here.”

“Got to be almost a quarter mile,” Annja said. “At least.”

Kessel turned and looked at the room they stood in. A single door faced them across the expanse of floor. “The exit. At last.”

He strode across the floor and grabbed the doorknob even as Annja was shouting, “Stop!”

Kessel froze with his hand on the door.

Annja exhaled in a rush. “Sorry. Just a habit after so much crap in the maze—”

Kessel nodded. “We’re not in the maze anymore, Annja. Now let’s get out of here.” He pulled the door open.

And as Annja stepped onto the floor, it shattered beneath her. For the briefest moment, she was frozen in space, screaming for Kessel to grab her hand.

To hold on.

To do anything.

But it was too late. Even as she saw Kessel lunge at her hand, Annja plummeted into darkness.

S
HE
HURTLED
THROUGH
the blackest tunnel she’d ever been in. It was worse than anything the maze had yet thrown at her. And to think, she’d been foolish enough to believe they could simply leave because the tunnels didn’t look like those in the rest of the maze.

The realization stung. After all that buildup. After all that hope.

They were still in the maze.

Still a long way from escaping it.

And Annja was currently falling toward some inevitable conclusion. She had no idea how to prepare.

If I even draw the sword right now I’ll impale myself, she thought. It’s just too risky.

She kept her knees drawn up, trying to minimize the chances that she would break any bones.

Annja wanted to close her eyes and wake up back in Brooklyn. She wanted to find herself anywhere but in this maze, at the mercy of someone she didn’t even recognize, didn’t even know.

She wanted to be free.

But there was no way she was going to give Fairclough the satisfaction of breaking her.

She would have her own satisfaction when it came time to break him.

Y
OU
IDIOT
!

Kessel knelt by the gaping hole on his hands and knees. Seeing Annja plunge through the floor moments before had scared the crap out of him. How could he have been so stupid to open the door without checking it for a trip wire or some sort of booby trap?

Kessel shook his head. Annja was gone and Kessel couldn’t even tell if she had vanished down another tunnel or what. Worse, with the condition his head was in, he couldn’t take the chance of dropping behind her. If he even caught a glancing blow to his head now, he’d die.

He stood by the edge of the collapsed floor and stared into the pit for several minutes. But it was no use. Annja was gone, back down the rabbit hole, and Kessel had an open door behind him.

And only one way to go.

Through it.

He glanced back at the hole and frowned. I won’t leave without you, Annja.

A
NNJA
COULD
FEEL
HER
momentum slowing. Ahead of her, she could see light and, as she zipped onto a straight stretch of tunnel, she made a decision.

She brought the sword out and steeled herself for a sudden explosion of combat. Maybe they were waiting to kill her as soon as she came out of the tunnel.

I won’t be such an easy mark, she thought. And she was feeling a heat pulsing throughout her veins now that she was determined not to crack. She’d played nice all along.

It was time to get mean.

K
ESSEL
WALKED
THROUGH
the door and found himself facing a flight of steps. Looking up from the bottom, the steps numbered about twenty and ended at a single metal door.

Kessel frowned. The last time I opened a door the floor caved in. What would happen when he reached that door? Would the steps fall apart?

Kessel switched himself on and started checking the stair treads for any obvious signs that they’d been tampered with. He also looked for thin filament wires that might indicate the presence of explosives or something else that could ruin his day.

It took time, peering up at each step in succession, so he could make sure it was safe to proceed. And as he moved from stair to stair, sweat built up along his forehead, sliding down into his eyes. He’d forgotten how tense this kind of work could be. The potential existed for sudden mayhem at any moment.

And he could be killed if he lost focus for even one second.

And then Annja would truly be alone.

W
HEN
SHE
CAME
SPEEDING
through the opening, Annja let out a war cry and leaped off the end of the tunnel, and came to her feet ready to slay an army of demons, if need be.

But she was in an empty room.

Lights overhead illuminated a single door. And since the only other exit was the tunnel, Annja started to move to the door.

But then she stopped.

No, this time we make sure there’s truly no other way out of this place before I take the obvious. And so she spent the next thirty minutes prodding the walls trying to determine if there were any secret passages or other exits.

She found nothing.

Annja sighed as she walked to the door.

H
E
WAS
CLOSE
to the top.

Five stairs away, Kessel heard something on the other side of the door.

Movement.

Of course, he had no weapons at his disposal. Nothing but his body, which had been trained with the SEALs. But given his wound, unarmed combat wasn’t exactly a good prescription for long life at the moment.

Still, if it came down to it, Kessel would fight to the death. He took a breath and continued checking the stairs, moving ever closer to the top.

And to the door that stood there.

I
T
WAS
DARK
WHEN
Annja opened the door, standing to one side. There was no way she was going to frame it in case there was some booby trap or surprise attack waiting on the other side. So she positioned herself to one side of the doorjamb with a hand on the knob, slowly turning it until it clicked and opened back on the hinges. The door made no sound as it swung open, indicating that someone had oiled the hinges and kept them in good condition.

But what lay beyond it?

There was only one way to find out. Annja rose and, with her sword in her hands, walked toward the opening.

L
AST
STEP
.

Kessel checked the tread and, as with the others before it, found nothing. He wiped the sweat from his face and then wiped his hands on his pants. The last time he’d had to check for stuff like this had been at an insurgent safe-house in Iraq.

But that had been a number of years ago. Since then, Kessel hadn’t had to deal with trip wires and booby traps and improvised explosives or any of the other things that had killed lots of his friends.

Until today.

Until now.

He stood on the landing in front of the door.

This was the last thing he’d have to check over. And so he bent and got to work, running his hands over every inch of the frame.

I
T
WAS
ANOTHER
corridor.

Annja groaned, but then she heard a noise. Actually, a fair bit of noise. Were those voices? Were there people up ahead?

And if there were, what were they doing? If she’d been planning an ambush, she wouldn’t be making noise when the target could hear it. That wouldn’t be smart.

Maybe it’s not an ambush, she thought.

She frowned. This whole damned thing has been one type of ambush or other. Even when she thought she was safe, it turned out to be just another trap.

Just another way to get her to go crazy.

I’m not falling for it again.

So she crept closer to the noise. Closer to what she hoped were some actual honest-to-goodness answers.

Instead of more questions.

T
HE
DOOR
WAS
CLEAR
.

Kessel finished checking and wiped his sweaty hands on his pants again. He’d gone over the door and the frame, peered through the keyhole and even felt around the underside of the jamb and the knob itself, trying to figure out if there was anything conceivably wrong with it.

When he was done, he was forced to conclude that the door was perfectly normal.

Which didn’t make him feel good at all.

Nothing’s been normal about this place from the moment Annja and I got put in here, he thought.

But there was little choice but to open the door. And that’s what made him so upset. Fairclough had apparently designed this place to funnel people toward something. He’d removed their ability to choose their own destiny. He’d given them no choice at all. You either played the way he wanted you to play or else you stayed in the maze forever.

Well, I’m not staying in this dump any longer, thought Kessel.

I’m getting out.

He opened the door.