The Hollow Game.

Chapter Four

This is definitely Joey’s fault. I don’t know how yet, but it has to be him. The mini earthquakes, the sharp cracks, his annoyingly silent companion. It had to be some cosmic joke that he had decided to play.

“I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?” His companion, Lily if he remembered correctly, asked. “Derek,” he said, eyes trained to the ground despite the lack of light.

She hummed, whether in acknowledgement or something else, he didn’t know or care. The tunnel looped and curved, the walls barely far enough apart for them to walk side by side. Derek blinked as spots appeared in front of him. Grayish green splotches that twirled and danced in the corners of his eyes and vanished every time he closed his eyes. “Is it just me or is the tunnel… shrinking?” He asked, reaching for the wall to steady himself.

“Not really shrinking. More like it’s lightening,” Lily said. He blinked, stretching his hand out in front of him before shaking his head and grasping onto the wall once more. “We must have found the exit.” He didn’t realize how tense he had been until his shoulders sagged and the pressing, crushing weight on his chest lifted. Lily hummed in agreement and the two picked up their speed. All that mattered was getting out of the winding tunnels. The splotches retreated and the darkness seemed to fade as light, bright and unassuming, shined out from the end of the tunnel.

Maybe I won’t do anything too bad to him. Who knows, I might even end up winning this thing! The corners of his mouth twitched at the thought. Winning the Game was like saying you were immune to fear or anger or anything. A robot would even have a hard time winning.

He glanced over at Lily, noting for the first time that she had been one of the more compliant contestants. She met his gaze head on and smiled before turning her attention back to the ever growing light. The two broke out of the tunnel and the grin that had been playing on his lips disappeared immediately as they skidded to a halt. “What?” The ground was gone.

Derek winced as his foot knocked a few stray pebbles into the giant hole. “I thought this was an exit,” he muttered. “There’s light and it tricked us.” Lily hummed, eyeing the area minutely before nodding. “It appears to be man made. Perhaps there’s something that we can use to get down there without breaking the ledge.” He swore and motioned for her to back up as the ground shook. Rocks fell forcefully into the pit and the ledge, already thin and somewhat unstable, crumbled just a bit more. “We can’t head that way, it’s a death sentence!” He glared at her as she just shrugged and smiled, neither agreeing nor denying.

Another burst and the two backed up farther into the tunnel, watching as the ledge chipped away even more. Within minutes it was down to just a few inches, not enough room for them to safely look for anything to go down with. Sighing, Derek took one last look at the light, savoring the sight and shuddering at the near brush with death. Then he turned away and headed back down the tunnel, hand tracing the wall for any holes. “Are you coming?” He called over his shoulder, already wishing for the nice and clean workshop. Seconds later Lily was next to him and they once again tackled the darkness looking for the exit, eyes peeled for any more pits.

“Do you think we’ll find buried treasure or something like that?” Binks blinked, lips pursed as he gave the question serious thought. “Nah, then what would the point of this be? We’ll probably just find ourselves lost.” This made more sense to him. Walking around in the dark, never finding an exit and either starving to death or simply wasting away from dehydration.

When he mentioned this to Ace, she just laughed and said that he thought to much and that they would get out well before either of those things happened. The other girl, Lucy or Latte, something like that, seemed just as skeptical as he did but unlike him, she voiced her doubts loudly and frequently. Loud enough to drown out the occasional booming crack and frequent enough to rival the mini earthquakes. “Hey Binks, anyone home?” He snorted, swatting the hand waving in front of his face away and pining Ace with his best glare. It didn’t work as well as he would’ve liked but for being in the dark and not knowing exactly where the shorter girl’s eyes were, it worked surprisingly well.

“Stop that,” he scolded. “Aw, just making sure you haven’t checked out yet.” She snickered before asking how long he thought they had been walking. He shrugged, “Probably an hour or so. Feels like we’ve went in circles, though.”

“Maybe,” Ace said, “but it could just seem that way.” Lanie snorted, “Of course it seems that way. We’ve been walking forever and we’re still not out of here.” Binks frowned, ignoring the sharp cracks echoing around. The walls were fairly close together and with a few knocks, appeared completely solid. Then without warning either girl, he took out a pocket knife and slashed a makeshift arrow into the stone, causing bits of rock and dust to float through the air. “What did you do?”

“Great idea!” The two said together. Lauren-- seriously, what was her name?-- coughed some more before hitting him in the leg.

Ace laughed, much to the other girl’s irritation. “Now we’ll know if we’re going in circles or not,” he said, putting the knife away. “And what’ll happen if we come across the exit and can’t get out because of the stupid carvings?” He narrowed his eyes at where her voice had came from. “Look Linda--”

“Lottie,” she corrected. Finally, and here I thought she was going to leave me guessing. “Lottie, I’ll do the arrow the other way. Problem solved.”

She huffed and puffed, sounding like a broken oven. “Not problem solved, i***t. You can carved the arrows whichever way you want but we’ll still be lost if we stumble across section after section of them.” Binks opened his mouth but was cut off by another burst of laughter. “Just add something else and after every section we can just do that. I vote a heart,” she said, her grin practically plastered into her voice. Lottie huffed but didn’t say anything as she wandered away from them. Binks rolled his eyes and added the heart next to the arrow. “Isn’t she a bucket of sunshine?”

“Eh, she probably just worried and all that.” He could feel Ace’s shrug before she turned away. “Come on, Binks,” the grin still in her voice. “Let’s go.”

He gently felt the carvings before nodding, following the excited whoop and laughter down the tunnel. He frowned as the cracking grew louder before shrugging off the tight, prickling on the back of his neck. If it was important than they would find out eventually.

“Spikes? Who booby traps an already horrible place with spikes?!” Jackson didn’t bother answering. Instead, he grabbed Milo by the arm and dragged him down another path, hoping that the spikes were just in that section of tunnel. No such luck.

He swore as the floor vibrated and the walls-- so close together and why did he think that was a good thing?-- seemed to close in farther. Milo yelped as stone spikes, no bigger than a bobby pin, came out of the walls and the floor became riddled with tack sized ones. “Come on, there has to be another tunnel farther ahead.”

“I don’t think there’ll be an us farther ahead, dude!” Jackson again ignored him and back tracked as quickly as he could out of the tunnel and back down the previous one. The spikes were larger, their size longer, and with every panicked glance they seemed to grow even more deadly. A crack filled the air, making the two jump and quickly look behind them at the walls. Nothing.

“There, look!” Jackson pointed towards a dark patch, almost completely hidden behind the spikes. “You want to get closer to these things?” Milo asked, horrified. Jackson sighed, “No, I don’t want to get closer but I do want to get away. That seems like as good of a place as any.”

The other boy opened his mouth than closed it with a snap. There wasn’t so much as an argument as there was a lot of sighing and swearing at each other and the deadly points. Finally the two managed to maneuver themselves past the spikes and into the partially hidden tunnel. Jackson thanked everyone he could think of that this section of tunnel was spike free.

“Well, at least we don’t have to go past the spikes again,” Milo said, panting. “Now we just need to get out of here.”

“Or die trying, anyway.” He honestly started to wonder if ignoring Milo could be considered a national sport with how difficult it was. “We won’t die,” he snapped. “If anything we’ll die unaware of our surroundings so hopefully it’s quick.”

“That’s still dying, dude,” the other boy pointed out. The headache that followed was due to the sudden bout of running and dodging, not the annoyance named Milo. And if anyone said otherwise than they obviously didn’t know what they were talking about.

Man, I thought we would actually be playing a game, not wandering around in the dark.

Lottie stared blankly ahead, mentally listing everything she had went through and the added cost. Ruined clothing? $50 screws. Lost in a labyrinth? $1,000 bolts. Trying to keep from strangling two of the contestants simply because they were idiots? $30,000 bolts. That last one was trickier than she had originally thought but she was managing it somehow.

“Hey, I see light up ahead. I think we’ve finally found the exit.” Ace, as the girl had cheerfully introduced herself, never seemed to run out of energy. She bounced in place and whistled merrily, her wheezing laughter echoing around her like it was her theme song. She thought this was some grand adventure, one that she would tackle with a grin on her face and many headaches following behind her.

The boy, Binks, was just plain stupid. He followed along with Ace’s thoughtless schemes without protest; a silent shadow to the sun’s rays. He didn’t seem to care whether he won the Game or not, just that he had been invited. And he couldn’t remember her name!

It wasn’t even a hard name to remember, either. Lottie sent a small glare to where she thought he was before fixing her attention back to the ground. The money’s worth it and I came to win.

She wouldn’t, couldn’t, lose. Not to something so trivial as defeat by being lost. And anyway, there was still time to evaluate her situation before she did something drastic. After all, she came this far and nothing short of death was going to stop her. $100,000,000 tokens was worth everything she was going through. It had to be or else she was back at the beginning and she couldn’t afford to be.