V2Ch28-The Thirteenth Step

As the last of the team donated blood, the vase filled up to the brim.

Creepy shit, DaSilva thought. Like something I’d expect to see in a horror movie.

And then the floor behind the vase opened up. A single ripple went through the surface of the blood as the floor quietly moved. DaSilva found himself strangely apprehensive that the vase might topple over and spill crimson everywhere.

DaSilva forced himself to look away from the vase and tilted his head to instead peer down into the opening.

The space looked like it became pitch black deeper down. There were apparently no lights illuminating the dark. The torchlight from the room DaSilva was currently in revealed a stone staircase leading down into the bowels of the Earth. He stepped behind the vase and looked down at the area around the opening. He expected writing of some sort. The System had given them written clues in each phase of this place thus far.

Sure enough, when he bent to look closely at the opening, he found an inscription on the floor directly in front of it, gleaming in the torchlight.

“Fortune favors the bold,” he read aloud, at a volume everyone could hear. “I guess it wants us to advance boldly.”

But then, the last inscription had felt less than straightforward to DaSilva.

Any volunteers to go first?

He turned his head to glance back at the team, but it was as he’d expected. Everyone was waiting for him. He sighed quietly and began to descend the stairs.

Burdens of command, he thought a bit nervously. You always have to be out front. This is why I never tested for Sergeant. But here, I’m Chief of Police.

As he descended, DaSilva moved slowly and counted steps. It was a way of calming himself down, and it would also help him gauge how far underground they were relative to the chamber they had just left. He found that counting, along with slow, deep breaths, was quite effective at helping him keep his cool.

One step, two step, three, four…

Behind him, he could hear the rest of the team slowly and quietly taking the first stairs down as DaSilva reached the sixth step.

As he hit the ninth, he turned back just to get some reference for how deep he was, and he saw the top step was just over his head height now.

They couldn’t have mounted some torches in here like they did in the previous rooms?

There had to be something up with this space. A danger they were concealing in these shadows. But at least he would be the one stepping into whatever was wrong, before his team did. He reluctantly resumed the descent.

Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.

On the thirteenth step, DaSilva felt the stair his foot landed on shift beneath him, pressing down slightly into the ground.

Crap. Is this thing unstable, or—?

Gears within the walls audibly moved now. DaSilva tried to jump forward, but the walls began to move around him. A chunk of wall to his left detached from the rest of the structure almost silently, popping out slightly like a pouting lip. At the same time, a portion of wall to his right receded and slid out of view with a scraping sound, leaving an opening. The left chunk of wall suddenly sprang at DaSilva, shoving him into the hole on his right.

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!” He screamed as he fell into darkness.

—

Where did the Detective go?! Yulia thought, horrified.

She was near the back of the line, out of direct view of the Detective, when she heard the sound of the walls moving—and then the sound of DaSilva screaming.

“Oh my gosh!” Cara gasped from right in front of her.

“Detective!” Jose yelled from a little further forward.

“Detective DaSilva! Are you there?!” Adelaide called out.

There was a moment of eerie silence, and the mood of the group began to change.

Those just in front of Yulia started to press forward to get a better look at what was happening, while Mr. Davidson in the front tried to hold his ground, arms pressed against the walls to keep himself from being pushed forward.

“Let’s all stay calm!” said Mr. Davidson. He was positioned directly behind where DaSilva had been, and Yulia guessed he was nervous about being pushed toward whatever trap the Detective must have activated.

“Did you see what happened to him?” Adelaide asked from a little further back.

“Yeah, the wall came open and swallowed him!” Mr. Davidson said.

“That’s exactly it,” Mrs. Davidson agreed. “He took a step forward, and one of the walls pushed him into an opening that appeared.”

“Do you know where he stepped?” Adelaide asked.

They spent a few minutes trying to reenact Detective DaSilva’s disappearance without triggering a repeat. Finally, Adelaide figured out that he had trodden on the thirteenth stair, and that was what activated the trap.

“So we just had to avoid the thirteenth stair,” Mr. Davidson murmured. “Or maybe every thirteenth stair? I wouldn’t want to test the stairs that come in multiples of thirteen to see if someone disappears each time.”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Davidson says. “We’ll just descend very carefully, bearing in mind the lesson the Detective has left us with.”

“Who says it’s even a bad thing?” Yulia murmured to herself.

The quiet chatter between other group members seemed to die. Yulia looked up and realized everyone was staring at her.

Oh, that was out loud. She swallowed nervously.

“What do you mean?” Adelaide asked. “About it not being a bad thing?”

“Just the inscription.” Yulia pointed. “The Detective read it. ‘Fortune favors the bold.’ Thirteen is a lucky number to some people and an unlucky number to others, isn’t it? I think the inscription is a hint about that. Detective DaSilva was being bold. He went first.”

“You think that it must be a good thing, because the person who walks down the stairs first was always going to trigger that trap?” Adelaide asked slowly. “It was unavoidable, so it must be good fortune?”

“I don’t know.” Yulia shrugged and lowered her eyes.

But the System hasn’t outright killed anyone yet. The proctor killed someone, but he was trying to get people to attack her. Then again, DaSilva had triggered a trap before that fired arrows at him. Maybe she was putting too much faith in the System being reasonable.

“I think it does make sense that it’s not a bad thing,” Adelaide said thoughtfully. “The System hasn’t been randomly killing people, and why would it target someone just for being the first person down the stairs?”

Yulia smiled appreciatively and nodded her agreement with Adelaide.

“Are you willing to gamble your life on it?” Mr. Davidson asked drily. “Maybe it’s targeting people who don’t notice traps on the ground. He got shot full of arrows before just because he stood too close to a wall.”

“I think you might be right,” Jose said quietly. “We should avoid touching steps in multiples of thirteen. Unless someone has a rope we could use to lower someone down after DaSilva, and maybe pull them back up. Otherwise, there’s no safe way to test this.”

The group quickly came to the consensus that they wouldn’t test the rigged stairs out. The first in line, now Mr. Davidson, would count steps out loud as he descended. Then he would step over the thirteenth stair, and he would stand on the fourteenth step and give the next person a hand skipping the trick stair. The next person would then descend further, counting from the beginning, while the rest of the party crossed the thirteenth stair.

After the discussion, they began descending the stairs in the same order they had before, employing their new strategy.

Is this really the right way? Yulia wondered as she carefully avoided the thirteenth step. If we really needed to avoid that step, what happened to the Detective?

—

Detective DaSilva dropped a short distance through open air.

Then he landed on a stone slide, and he slid much less sharply downward for several minutes. Much faster travel than walking down a staircase, and the pace was so relaxed that he didn’t bother trying to slow down.

So this is what the inscription meant by “Fortune favors the bold,” he thought. Hopefully the others figure it out somehow.

Surely this was bringing him closer to the finish line of this race.

The only thing that gave him a slight feeling of concern was the temperature. As he fell, the air was getting warmer, and not by small degrees. It felt as if he was falling toward a desert.

Finally, he landed lightly on his feet in a small cave. He looked around cautiously before he moved forward. Curiously, his eyes adjusted to the near darkness of this cave much better than they had in the stairwell earlier. There must be some light source in the distance, he reckoned. And he had a guess what that might be, related to the temperature change he’d noticed.

The cave air was even hotter than the air above had been. As he scoped out his surroundings, he looked for a heat source.

But DaSilva found nothing.

Finally, having found no sign of other life or movement, he advanced. He walked away from the slide. As he moved, the heat pounded him more intensely with every step, and he began to feel apprehension about where he’d landed.

As he rounded a corner, he noticed the lighting change from a dim ambient glow to a much more vivid reflected orange radiance.

A confirmation of what he had feared.

But still, he advanced. If the others followed the same way he’d gone, or even if they took some longer route to reach the same place, he needed to know what lay at the end of this cave. As he proceeded, the air grew hotter, uncomfortably hot, before he’d reached the end of the tunnel. DaSilva finally paused, stripped off his heavy armor, and stowed it in his Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions.

He continued to advance, sweating bullets, until he reached the mouth of the cave. There was a small, semicircular landing beyond it, and a black stone bridge affixed to the landing, but neither of those captured DaSilva’s attention at first.

Instead, his eyes were drawn to the glowing red river of lava that flowed slowly beneath the bridge.

No wonder it’s so damn hot, he thought.

The landing felt like a tiny island in the seething, bubbling river, but DaSilva stepped out onto it. Any clue he could get would be to the group’s advantage whenever they made it here.

Standing out in the open, he could see there were other bridges lining the river, attached to other landings that connected to other cave openings.

There are enough bridges for all of the other teams, he reckoned. Everyone has to complete whatever this challenge is, then? Does that mean it’s the last one?

Then he saw the inscription.

—

At last, Yulia and the group finished descending the staircase.

It had comprised hundreds, if not a thousand or more, stairs. They had been forced to descend slowly, because there was no lighting through the entire route.

But at last, they reached a landing. They emerged into what looked like a cave.

It was immediately noticeable how much warmer the air was.

“Oh, you finally made it,” came a voice.

“Oh my gosh!” Cara exclaimed.

In a corner of the cave, seated with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head and arms resting on his knees, was Detective DaSilva. He’d stripped his armor off, and his sweat had soaked through his shirt in multiple places.

“I knew you survived!” Yulia said, expression bright and happy.

—

“So, the challenge is a bridge,” DaSilva explained. “The Bridge of Faith. I’m pretty sure it’s the final challenge, because I’ve occasionally seen or heard other groups coming by and crossing their own bridges from their own caves. But they all have to do the same thing.” He grimaced. “Not all of them succeeded. We have to think carefully about this.”

“What do you mean, not all of them succeeded?” Frank asked guardedly.

DaSilva gave him a weary look. “Just what I said. Listen, it’s okay with me if we don’t do this. Sooner or later, this challenge ends. We’ll get transported out once it’s over, just like in every other challenge.”

“What happens if you fail?” Yulia asked, looking DaSilva in the eyes.

He avoided her gaze for a moment, then sighed and slumped his shoulders.

“I saw one of the groups that failed. The first couple made it across the bridge, and then when the others were crossing, it collapsed.”

“Into that?!” Frank gestured wildly at the lava river.

“Exactly,” DaSilva said. “No survivors. No point in even wearing armor. You’d just get scorched before you melted, maybe.”

“So what are the rules?” Adelaide asked. “Why did they fail?”

“This inscription is probably the most straightforward of the lot,” DaSilva said, shaking his head. “Heh. I still can’t make heads or tails of what it really means, though. The instruction is: ‘Let no one with less faith cross after one who has more.’”

“Is that religious faith, romantic fidelity, faith in the System…?” Adelaide mused aloud.

“This is why I’m completely supportive of quitting now,” DaSilva said. “We have no way of knowing, and we only get one shot at getting it right. More than one team has definitely tumbled to their deaths.”

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me,” Yulia said quietly. “I know it’s insane, but I don’t want to back down. This place feels like a test of faith. I have faith. I’ll be okay. And we need the food.”

“That’s nuts!” Frank said bluntly. “Your interpretation isn’t the only one. You can’t—”

“It’s okay to cross if you want to, Yulia,” DaSilva said quietly. “But we don’t know if we get any winnings if only part of the group makes it. There would be no point in you going alone.”

“My faith is strong,” she said, voice full of resolve. “I want to cross.”

Karen Davidson spoke up: “You know, sometimes it’s the kids who remind you of the things that you used to know were important. If this place wasn’t some kind of a test of faith, a hallucination was the next most likely thing. But if it’s either of those things, if this place is God testing us or if I’ve lost my marbles, either way, it makes sense to cross the bridge.”

“Or this place isn’t some test made by a god or a devil, and our lives are in our own hands,” Paulo said.

Jose elbowed him in the ribs.

“I will fear no evil, for thou art with me,” Adelaide murmured quietly.

The group discussed in hushed tones for a few minutes. Maybe the heat got to them. Maybe it was mass hysteria. Or the strength of a teenager’s faith and conviction.

They all agreed to cross.

There was more discussion, as the group tried to sort themselves from least to most faithful. Cara was near the front along with Frank. The Dante brothers were in the middle, with Paulo in front of Jose. Adelaide and Karen were further back.

And bringing up the rear—

“I think I’m the most faithful, so I should be last,” Yulia said with a firmness she never knew she had.

“No. Full stop. No.” DaSilva spoke with an absolute firmness that brooked no argument.

“But you weren’t even sure if you were willing to cross—”

“And we still don’t have to!” DaSilva said sharply. “This is a kind of madness we’ve all fallen under. If we make it, then I love that you led us to it, but it’s madness all the same. I can’t let you cross after me, Yulia. Do you understand? If the bridge collapsed because you tried to cross after me, that would effectively mean that I killed you by putting myself first. That can’t happen. No fuckin’ way. If you can’t accept that, then we’ll all fuckin’ stay right here, capisce?”

“Then you—”

“Don’t underestimate me,” he interrupted. He was now openly rubbing the crucifix that hung around his neck. “My faith is strong, too.”

I would rather die a thousand times than cause you to come to harm, little girl, he thought.

Finally, she assented, a worried expression creasing her otherwise unlined face.

I’ve lived a long, full life anyway, he wanted to tell her.