Friday, March 14, 2008

Chapter 42: Individuality Pays Off

~ The Team 6 trio walked cautiously down the hall, trying every door they passed. In vain as it would happen.

"Seriously?" said Takyle in exasperation. "Every one of these is locked?" At just that moment, quite naturally, Andrew tried a knob on the left that actually turned.

"No. Not every one." He pushed it open and peered in. "Another hallway. Shall we go down it?" Takyle tried a couple more doors.

"I suppose so. Can we mark our path somehow in case we have to come back this way? This looks suspiciously like a maze to me." Andrew nodded.

"Sure, we can mark it. How do you feel about destruction of property?" Takyle shrugged.

"I'm ok with it. I think it's a given for the race," she said. "I mean, there was no rule against it or anything."

"Sweet." Andrew pulled out his pocket knife and took long strip of paint off of the door just above the doorknob on both sides. "How about that? Unmistakable."

"Brilliant. Let's go." Takyle slipped through the door with Jaden trailing and Andrew let it swing closed behind them. Another long hallway, one unlocked door leading to an empty room with four more doors, one leading to another hallway, leading to another room, and then another one. At each door they passed through Andrew stopped to carve his notch in it, leaving a trail. After another half dozen or so he paused.

"You know guys, in hindsight, perhaps it would have been better to mark these doors with an arrow or something. You know, to indicate which direction we were going at the time...I'm gonna start doing that," he pronounced decisively. Before proceeding into the next room he turned to Jaden.

"You've been awfully quiet there. Anything on your mind?" Jaden shook his head.

"No, nothing in particular. This place just seems a little strange is all."

"How do you mean?" asked Andrew, stepping out into yet another gray hallway lined with doors.

"Well, it has a different feel than the rest of the places we've been in. I don't know." He paused for a moment. "What I do know is that we have definitely already been this way." Jaden pointed at a door that they were just passing. Over the doorknob a distinctive strip of paint was conspicuously missing.

"Aw, hell," muttered Andrew under his breath. "Wouldn't ya just freaking know it." He raised his voice to call Takyle back. "Hey boss, you're going to love this. We've been going in a circle all this time." Up ahead Takyle stopped and before she turned around Jaden heard her utter a few choice expletives to the labyrinth. ~

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just finished catching up. Navigating the archive is a little obnoxious. Maybe next/previous chapter buttons, or dynamic menu based on the chapter you're on?

Renee Leyburn said...

Indeed, that's the one thing that I really don't like about this server. If you know of a way to do that in Blogger without giving up the ability to manually manipulate the template code, I'd love to have all the hints I can get!