~ It was not long at all before Team 6 reached the tower and discovered, neatly tucked away in the shadows cast by the massive wooden legs and framework, a media station. While Jaden and Andrew stood looking around warily, Takyle touched its screen and it began to hum quietly. Lighted text and a map blinked into life on the dark green background and she quickly scanned the dots on the map.
"Looks like there are three other teams on this level now and eight teams are somewhere behind us. Two teams are ahead and all together six teams are out of the race so far... Four people are dead and it looks like all but five of the teams have at least one injury serious enough to declare here."
"And look at that, we're one of them," Andrew stated blandly, reading over her shoulder.
"Well I wonder which of us they could be referring to?" Takyle answered. "Come on guys, let's climb."
"What do you think could be up there?" asked Jaden as they started up the rickety, wooden steps.
"Rapunzel?" guessed Andrew.
"If that were the case then shouldn't we be on a hair-powered elevator or something?" said Takyle. Jaden nodded.
"Yeah, but in the story I think you had to call to the maiden, and we didn't do that, so we have to walk up." Takyle shook her head regretfully.
"Damn. Oh well, lessons learned."
Jaden began silently counting stairs and got somewhere past 150 before he lost track of his tally and happened to look up. Through the sparse, dilapidated scaffolding that supported the steps, Jaden could see the vast, mountainous terrain stretching spectacularly out away from them in every direction. From this high up the thorny shrubs and sharp rocks covering the slopes were smoothed over and in the new light of day everything looked fresh and clean. Jaden opened his mouth to ask Andrew why the hell they didn't bring a camera, but caught himself.
"It's not real, moron." He shook his head and kept trudging up the stairs.
"Hey, don't be too hard on me, I've never seen anything like this before!"
"Andy?"
"Yup," answered Andrew.
"Think there are really places like this?"
"Like this fire tower?"
"Yeah, well, all of it. This," said Jaden, gesturing outward to everything surrounding them.
"Yes, I suppose so. Not a lot of places like this left, but there are some." Andrew paused on a landing to take a deep breath before tackling the next flight. "Ever been to Yellowstone?"
"No."
"It's amazing," chipped in Takyle.
"Yes, 'tis. We should go there sometime if we ever get out of this friggin' race," said Andrew. Jaden suddenly grabbed Andrew's arm to stop him.
"Quiet! Did you hear that?"
"What?" whispered Andrew. Jaden stood perfectly still, head cocked to the side. There it was again.
Shouting. ~
2 comments:
Here's hoping I won't need to wait another two months to find out where the stairs go. (Other than up.)
Something tells me that you won't... The something is the fact that the next chapter is written and queued to publish on Monday. So you won't have to wait another two months this time. :-D
But ah, thanks for sticking with me!
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