When light finally fills the tunnel, it’s not from reaching the end. Around the next curve, the flames become visible, giving me a brief, hazy first look at the confines of my temporary prison. Smoke is billowing openly over the smooth steel, heating quickly and beginning to warp from the heat. Left unchecked, it will sever this section of the tunnel. It’s smart; slowing people down, adding more obstacles to slow them down. Without hesitation, I leap over the flames, the smell of oil strong here.
Where the fuck did she even hide a bottle of oil? Her pants are skin tight; maybe strapped under her shirt?
I curse, quickly tearing off my shirt that got caught in the crossfire. With that oil, it would just do more harm trying to smother it. I discard it and forget about it, finally breaking through the end of the tunnel into fresh air before I could be cooked alive. I’m drenched in sweat now, but I don’t let it slow me, drying my palms on my shorts.
The area before me is an open stone column, about twenty feet in diameter. Not enough to worry about falling off normally, but the bloody beast lying dead nearby would have made it easy to get knocked off. This one dead, I take a running start before leaping onto the next platform, dropping to a roll as soon as I land.
These things...they aren’t natural. Whatever creature this is, I can nearly guarantee they were bred for the sole purpose of these games, or the rejected experiments of someone involved in something they shouldn’t be. I don’t have time to analyze it now, especially when this one’s just injured instead of lying dead.
About the size of a bobcat, it has a row of spikes protruding down the length of its spine. Its claws are more wicked, and half of its face is rotted away to show the muscles beneath. The thing looks absolutely feral, starved.
I don’t waste time killing each of them, because it would just slow me down. The goal isn’t to take down every challenge in your path, it’s to overcome them and cross the finish line. I don’t need to slaughter the mutated beasts to do that.
I avoid the swipe aimed at my head and break into a sprint, heading to the next platform followed quickly by the next. Each one I reach becomes steadily narrower, the ability to avoid the creatures becoming increasingly impossible. By the time I catch up to Ezra, there’s barely enough for the two of us and the beast to all stand on it, let alone fight.
She curses, locking her legs around its neck and practically sitting on the monster’s head to avoid the spines. It snarls and thrashes, and her leg is already bleeding steadily.
“Are you crazy?” I snap, trying to get the thing’s attention so it doesn’t tear her leg off.
She completely tunes me out as the smell of burning flesh and fur fills my nose. Her hands are pressed to the animal’s temples, and she’s holding on despite its lashing out until it finally collapses in a heap. Climbing off, she winces before tearing off the tattered scraps of material until she has a jagged pair of shorts left. I bite my cheek; it got her left leg pretty bad and she’s bleeding profusely.
“A little, yeah,” she answers absentmindedly.
I watch in awe as her palm heats and she presses it to the wounds, cauterizing them. “Fuck, you really can’t feel that?”
She looks up at me and winks. “Not the heat at least. Cuts hurt like a bitch, but after the stinging stops, it’s more pressure than anything. I’ll explain better later, if you survive,” she taunts, turning her back on me.
“Why’d you fight it instead of run?”
She bends down and snaps off two of the protruding spines from the animal corpse’s back. “Needed these,” she tosses out casually before leaping off the fucking platform like a damn psycho.
I hear her grunt and look over the side, ignoring the shouts behind me as the others fight the beasts. She has the spines dug into the side of the last narrow column left, one that extends high enough that I can’t even see what’s waiting for us. Following her lead, I snap off two of the spines and copy her movements, starting the seemingly impossible climb up.
She has her legs wrapped around the pillar for extra support as she climbs, giving me a prime view of her ass while she makes quick work maintaining her lead. She doesn’t look down at me, keeps putting one hand in front of the other, but she does shout down to carry on our conversation.
“So what’re you making for dinner?” she huffs out between heavy breaths.
I scoff. “Why do I have to cook?”
Fuck, she’s charming. She hasn’t slipped even once, is hovering a few hundred feet in the air, and acts like it’s a walk in the park.
She pants a little before continuing. “My arms will be sore from carrying that trophy all the way home. You won’t suffer the same burden, so really, what else will you be doing?” she teases.
Sitting on top of this column is a larger, square platform. Now that we’ve reached this high, we can’t go any further. My palms are slick with sweat and I have a momentary spike of adrenaline as I fight the anxiety of being backed into a corner with no way out beyond death.
“They don’t hand out trophies,” I dispute as I feign calm.
I scan everything around us, looking for a way to get over the lip without letting go of the pillar and dying. Short of trying to embed the spines at an angle with our legs dangling, praying for the best, I can’t see an option.
“Piles of money then,” she retorts easily, eyes scanning everything, assessing.
“Direct deposit.”
“I’d flip you off if I could,” she scoffs. “Hey, want to help me do something stupid?”
I grit my teeth, my muscles starting to lock up. “Not particularly, but I’m not doing anything at the moment. What’d you have in mind?”
She looks down at me then, biting her lip. “Trust exercise?”
