ACT II SCENE XXXVI
POLYIDUS

QUESTIONS STARTED TO FORM in her head and streamed from her consciousness like a gushing stream. Cassandra quickly made her way towards the other girl who continued to look at her with those piercing green eyes. In more ways than one, she reminded her of Teresa with the way she held herself. There was an inner confidence that she exuded.

"I know you," she breathed out when she was close enough. "How?"

Rachel shook her head. "I guess it's residual memory."

"Aris said you died," Cassandra looked at the girl in front of her as if she was a ghost. "He told us that Beth stabbed you with a knife."

The redhead frowned in apparent confusion. "I remember that happening… but WICKED managed to save me somehow. I woke up just a couple of days ago and they told me that it wasn't my time yet. They sent me here, told me to wait for you."

"Wait for me?" Cassandra's perplexed expression mirrored the girl's.

"They said you had the key," Rachel gestured to the cave entrance behind her.

She took a step to the side so that Cassandra could see what lied behind her. There was a door that glowed with an eerie green shine that she had failed to notice before, thinking that it was just a trick of the light somehow. Both girls exchanged apprehensive glances with one another.

Cassandra licked her dried and cracked lips. "Did they… happen to mention what was behind the creepy glowing door?"

Rachel shook her head. "They only told me what I needed to know, so I assumed you'd know what to do."

"Well, I'm just as clueless as you are," she mumbled unhappily.

"I don't want to sound like a crazy person," Rachel reached out and held onto her arm. "But if we don't find a way to get inside that thing, they'll kill Aris… and maybe Minho too. I…"

Her eyes grew wide when she heard what the girl had to say. Threatening the lives of the people most important to them did sound like something WICKED would do. Cassandra clenched her jaw as she turned back to the glowing door and bit her bottom lip. She could taste blood from a small tear beneath her teeth. It didn't seem like either of them had a choice.

"Okay… um…" she tried to rack her brain for anything that could be useful. "Did they say anything else to you? What's the key supposed to look like? Maybe it's a code?"

"They said it was a prophecy," Rachel told her. "She who had the ability of foresight but no one would believe."

"Yeah, that sounds like something they'd say too," she responded before gasping. "Prophecy…"

Cassandra patted around her pants for the correct pocket before pulling out the capsule that she had forgotten about until that very moment. So this was what it was supposed to be for. She turned the capsule around between her fingers before looking up with a raised eyebrow.

"How is this a key anyway?" she asked.

Rachel shrugged. "Maybe there's a bar code or something. Look, there's a scanner beside the door."

She strained her eyes through the dark and found the little box that Rachel was referring to. Taking a step closer, she took a deep breath as she stood in front of the door with the capsule gripped tightly in her hand.

"I have a bad feeling about this," she said, glancing back at the other girl. "What if there's a monster behind those doors? Or some kinda mutated Crank cannibal that's waiting to eat us?"

"Then I'll do it myself. I can't let Aris die," Rachel shook her head. "He's my best friend, he's been through too much."

Cassandra lowered her gaze to the ground. "If what you say is true, then I guess neither of us has a choice…"

She took a deep breath before steeling herself and raising her hand with the capsule towards the scanner. There was a brief pause as the machine detected the row of letters that made up the word PROPHESI on the capsule's surface. Then there was a beep as the red light on the scanner turned green. A hiss resounded next to her as the lock on the door disengaged and tendrils of steam seeped through the widening crack.

Cassandra took a step back as it opened fully to reveal a large cavern of emptiness. Her heart started to beat hard against her chest as she drew her knife in anticipation of something to come charging out of that pit of black shadows. Cold air blew against her face from the opening as if she had just opened the gate to the underworld itself.

"I don't think… there's anything inside," Rachel whispered next to her, voice filled with apprehension. "Wait, what's that?"

There was the sound of mechanical whirring, as if someone had just switched on a power source. Another green glow lit up from the very back of the cavern, illuminating what seemed to be a large room. The light was coming from a lone computer terminal, exactly like the one that was meant to input the code words back in the Maze underneath the Griever Hole.

She groaned in exasperation. "Not another damn word puzzle."

"Should we…" Rachel started hesitantly. "Check it out?"

Cassandra picked up a rock from the ground and threw it into dark room. It clicked twice across the floor with a hollow echo. It seemed like the entire room was built inside the cave with reinforced metal on every side. Straining her eyes again, she could see squares lining every inch of its surface with small protrusions along every grid that ended in black holes. She eyed them dubiously and took a step closer to peek inside.

After making sure that the coast was definitely clear, she rolled a larger rock to place it by the entrance. Hopefully it would stop the door from closing fully, if it did decide to do that. Rachel went in after her, following carefully with fearful wide eyes.

"There's something on the computer," she pointed with another whisper.

Cassandra walked closer towards the terminal and cocked her head to the side. There was a keypad built into it and the screen was completely blank. Next to the keypad were a switch and hole that looked like a socket for something.

"The key," Rachel urged. "There must be something inside it?"

Cassandra started to examined the capsule again, finding a thin crack midway through its length. She tried to pull it apart but it was stuck shut, until she found a tiny circle around the top. She pressed on it and there was an audible click as the capsule popped into two sections. One end of it had the shape identical to the pattern of the socket on the computer terminal so she carefully inserted it inside.

There was a series of beeps from the computer and code started to run itself across the screen. She stared in awed mesmerisation as the program booted itself back to life, thousands of letters flashing across the screen too quickly for her eyes to catch any decipherable meaning from them.

Then everything stopped and she was prompted to press the enter key. She wondered what this entire thing was all about when she reached up with her finger and pressed the function on the keypad. The green glow was suddenly replaced with blue and four words flashed across the screen in large black capitals.

Cassandra felt her heart race and she couldn't stop the gasp from her throat as she stared at the single familiar sentence in front of her. It felt like the whole world was disintegrating around her and icy cold fear rooted her immobile. She swallowed, eyes darting across the screen again and again, but she couldn't believe what she was seeing. She didn't want to believe it. They were the exact same words that had ben haunting her for so long, since that rainy night in the Glade.

YOU WERE A MISTAKE.

Then she felt a sharp tug at the back of her head as someone pulled her hair back.