"…really the best time to be passed out…now?"
"…all probably exhausted—I'm surprised we haven't…" I stirred from the darkness behind my eyelids.
"Hector?" I mumbled. The back of my head was vaguely throbbing. I touched my palm to it and winced with pain. Eevee was at my side, trying to lick my face, but I pushed it away.
"Careful. You lost consciousness and hit your head when you fell," Hector said softly. My head was in his lap. I slowly pushed off the ground so I could sit up as he told me to take it easy.
"Where are we?" We appeared to be in a hallway with no furniture, except glittering chandeliers hung from the ceiling all the way down as far as I could see. I tenderly pressed my palm against the back of my head and wished for that smashed block of ice from the freezer. It felt like the pounding had gotten worse and a vague touch of nausea was tickling in my throat. Hector and Noanne looked at each other, seeming alarmed.
"…Do you rememb—" Hector started to say.
"Yes, I remember where we are! This fucking hell house filled with people and monsters trying to kill us! I meant we're not in the room with the giant gate anymore, so where are we?" My voice was loud on my ears, and the lights from the chandeliers seemed to be steadily growing in intensity. Every part of me was beginning to throb. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you." Hector nodded and hesitantly put a hand on my shoulder.
"I moved you into the hallway leading to the third area. Something was starting to smell from that woman's body…" I groaned, not wanting to guess why that might have been. Eevee was whining slightly, but I felt too weak to carry it.
"My head's killing me…" I mumbled. Hector suggested having Eevee ride in my backpack, and I managed to nod. Noanne sighed while Hector situated Eevee in my backpack, and, lucky for her, my fit of rage had passed.
"What's wrong?" Hector asked. I thought he was challenging her to say something snarky so then he could go off, but I realized the mood surrounding us had shifted somehow.
"My oldest sister gets big headaches sometimes, so I usually carry medicine around for her. My other sister took it from me, though, because I wanted to go on one of the water rides. She forgot to give it back after." Noanne's back was turned to us, but the soft lilt in her voice gave away what her face probably looked like. I tried to stand and almost stumbled backward, but Hector caught me. I tried to ignore the pounding and the heat licking the back of my head to the rhythm of my heartbeat and hugged Noanne. She didn't say anything, didn't start crying, didn't hug me back. So we stood there like that for a minute before she pulled away and started walking down the hall. Hector put a reassuring hand on my back, and the pain in my skull felt like it let up just a little bit. We started walking.
As we trudged down the hallway, we eventually came upon a large, spiraling staircase. Noanne had been a good 10 paces ahead of us but didn't wait before beginning her ascent. We called for her to slow down, but she either didn't hear or ignored us. We tried to catch up, but when we caught sight of her rounding the curving steps, she'd scurry ahead again.
"I think she just wants to be alone right now," Hector whispered. Then he tipped his head as if to say as alone as she can be. We relaxed our pace but made sure to listen for her footsteps on the plush carpet. I was thinking about Noanne's sisters as we walked up the stairs. I wondered if I'd seen them in the dining hall. Maybe they had been sitting close to us. I thought about Noanne's mom, how she wouldn't realize until the weekend was over that something had happened to her daughters…
"You're stressing yourself out, aren't you? In there?" Hector said and pointed at my head, which was, thankfully, only pulsing with dull enthusiasm at that point. I scoffed and shook my head, although he smiled like he knew I was lying.
"When do you think people will realize something happened to us?" Hector's smile faded. "Will anyone come looking for us?" Hector reached for my hand and intertwined his fingers in mine. He squeezed it twice, probably to comfort us both. Once for him, once for me.
"If we don't make it out somehow, I'm sure Laryn would come looking for you. Don't you?" he said and chuckled quietly. "And my parents would…eventually try checking in on me and maybe figure out something was wrong if I didn't answer their calls or texts."
"God, Laryn would tear this place down with her bare hands… Is it sick that I kind of wish she were here with us?" Hector looked at me, searching my eyes for something.
"Depends on why, I guess."
"I wanna know what she'd say. Would she be as horrified by everything we've seen? …Everything we've done to survive so far?" Hector looked ahead didn't say anything as we continued to climb the steps. Images of the frozen fingers bouncing off the freezer floor lit up like movie theater screens in my mind.
"You'll see her again. I still believe we'll make it out of here."
"Huh." Hector looked at me expectantly. "You're always so positive. Maybe it's finally rubbing off on me 'cause…I think we'll survive, too." I squeezed Hector's hand back. Then I began to wonder how many more steps we had to go before reaching the top. Part of me felt like we were walking really slowly, but I figured it was the fatigue or my head injury.
"How do you think she's doing?" Hector whispered after we caught a glimpse of Noanne's foot before she jumped up a few steps.
"…Hard to say. Now I'm not so sure if her tough kid exterior is an act or not. We can't forget she murdered that woman." Hector bit his lip in contemplation.
"So, you don't believe the woman was trying to trick us?"
"I wasn't really paying attention to her, so I don't know… I mean, even if she wasn't to be trusted, we could've just tied her up somewhere."
"Wouldn't that essentially be the same thing? Being left vulnerable in this place is a death sentence." I blew some hair out of my face, which ended up falling right back into my eyes, so I impatiently slicked my hair to the side behind my ear.
"I guess you have a point. So, then you're saying she was going to die either way?"
"I'm saying we probably can't trust people who attack us out of the blue."
"Even people who don't attack us right away—Robbie waited for the right opportunity before striking." The image of Gyarados snapping at me flashed through my mind, causing an involuntary shudder to ripple through me. I pondered the implication of what I'd just said as Hector looked at me with concern.
"You're dumber than I thought if you think I'd actually attack you," Noanne shouted from ahead. "And you're definitely as dumb as I think since you think I couldn't hear you. Next time, try sign language or something if you want to talk about me when I'm five feet away from you." My face burned with embarrassment and shame, but I also wanted to trust my gut. I hadn't figured Noanne out yet, but it felt right to be careful about her. She was certainly no sweet teenaged child.
"I…," Hector started to say but apparently couldn't find any words.
"We were betrayed before by someone pretending to work with us, and I almost died because of it. You have to admit your behavior is a little concerning," I called out.
"What? Because I took someone out who threatened us?"
"Because you were ruthless," Hector said. Noanne laughed loudly.
"Well, that lady underestimated me, too, and look where it got her. The way I see it, you two are my best shot at getting out of here alive, so I'm not gonna do anything stupid to mess that up. And that person you were talking about before—did you just leave him tied up someplace? Or did you have to kill him?" I licked my lips and smacked them in frustration. We were losing an argument to a 13-year old.
"Technically, we didn't kill him," I replied, realizing after how it probably sounded. As expected, Noanne burst out laughing. She had come into view but allowed us to be close.
"Technically? He attacked you and ended up dead right after, but you didn't kill him." She'd stopped and turned around on us, her hands on her hips. Noanne wore defiance well. I let go of Hector's hand because I was starting to squeeze it hard from getting annoyed.
"There was another Pokémon there that killed him. I hadn't caught it yet, but it seemed like it was protecting me." Noanne didn't seem satisfied by the answer, squinting her eyes at me suspiciously and pursing her lips.
"What about the guy that was attacking me when you first found me? You killed him, didn't you?"
"Yes, but we thought we had to! It might've been different if we knew then what we know now about trainer battles," Hector reasoned, but Noanne shook her head.
"But you still killed him. And what if I hadn't been there when that lady showed up? You wouldn't have killed her if everything else happened the exact same?" We stood there silently.
"…I don't know."
"Yes, you do. You just want to pretend like you're a good person or something who's too nice to hurt other people when you think you have a choice. Well, I think anyone is capable of anything if the situation is right—you always have a choice. And in my world, I have to fight for myself or I get nothing. If I want food, I make some. If I need money, I take it. If someone pushes me into a locker at school, I push them back," she said and pushed Hector. He balanced himself on the step below as Noanne stepped up to me and looked up, anger in her glare.
"This place is the same way. Maybe not everyone came in as someone who was capable of killing someone else, but no one's going to leave without becoming a killer, one way or another. You might be older than me, but that doesn't mean you're better or smarter than me."
"Hey, you two…," Hector said, but Noanne and I ignored him. It felt like my whole body was on fire, but I wasn't sure if it was because I was also angry or because I believed she was right.
"No one's gonna kill me unless I give up. I'm not gonna be soft and leave it up to luck to survive. Letting people who tried to kill me escape also isn't an option. I know why you saved me when you first found me—because you wanted to help someone in trouble. And you can make all the excuses you want about when it's okay or not to kill, but I'm just saying you've done what you had to for survival, just like me." Tears formed in her eyes.
"Hello?" Hector called and waved in our faces, but I grabbed his hand and held onto it so he wouldn't keep trying to distract us.
"I didn't save you because I'm soft, and I don't regret killing that guy because he would've killed you. You're right…about a lot of things. We've—I've done some things I never thought I could do and all because I'm trying to survive this place. And I'm sorry for not trusting you. We may not necessarily be smarter than you because we're older, but, like it or not, we have a responsibility to protect you now. So you can get back to your mom. Maybe from now on, we just trust our actions are all in the name of self-preservation." Noanne nodded once and wiped the tears from her eyes with both hands. I put my hands gently on her shoulder and stooped slightly to be eye-level with her. "But we can't lose our humanity in here. This place wins if we leave and don't even recognize ourselves anymore, okay?" Noanne didn't look up but nodded her head again. Hector cleared his throat loudly as he put his hand on my arm. "What is it?!" I whispered harshly and looked back at him.
"Look," he said patiently and pointed at the inner wall of the stairwell. It appeared to be spiraling upward, slowly but surely. "This building isn't that tall, but I was confused why we hadn't reached the top of the stairs yet. Then we stopped, and I noticed the wall. The steps must be on a track of some sort and moving downward in a spiral. It probably only acts this way when someone's on the steps."
"Damn this place," I muttered. "Let's hurry to try and make up for the lost distance." The others nodded, and we started half-sprinting up the steps. The faster we ran, the more I felt like we were going nowhere. The stairs were responding to how quickly we moved. We adjusted our speed, comparing our progress to the perceived movement of the inner wall. Eventually, we found a brisk walking pace allowed us to move forward without advancing the backwards pull of the stairs too greatly. After what felt like an hour later, we finally reached the next level.
A rectangular opening in the wall on the right revealed a short hallway and a door. We had to hustle a bit to get far enough up the steps to jump out and land in the hallway. The steps seemed to continue higher up, but to Hector's point, the building wasn't that tall so we figured there was nothing worth exploring. Once we all got off the stairs, they stopped moving.
I let Eevee out of my bag so it could stretch its legs, which it did so happily. I pressed my back against the wall and allowed my body to slide down to the ground, heaving a tired sigh. Eevee scampered into my lap and looked up at me with an almost human wisdom in its eyes. My legs were sore, like I had just finished an intense exercise routine. The others followed suit, sitting on either side of me. Noanne seemed to be fine, but I guessed Hector was similarly out of shape like me. We had never been one of those couples that did active things like hike for hours or go to the gym together. The occasional hike we did take usually entailed driving up a mountain, walking around on some trails, and then driving home. And so it seemed unlikely that he would've taken that up in our aftermath.
A single light above us flickered eerily. The double doors at the end of the hallway were large and wooden but seemed beaten up. It looked like it was worn down from old age and perhaps a few too many kicks in certain areas where there were indentations and splintering.
"There better not be another maze…," Hector mumbled and pushed off the ground to stand up. He extended Noanne and me a hand.
"It wasn't that hard to find the way out," Noanne said and stood up on her own. She walked toward the doors and examined them. I grunted softly as I rose to my feet with Hector's help. We nodded at each other before joining Noanne by the doors.
"Let's get this over with," I said and twisted both handles. The knobs turned and allowed me to push the doors open. A flash of white flew away from my face, and I fell back with a yelp. The others had fallen to the ground, as well, covering their heads. When I looked up again, nothing was there, but after a few more moments, the flash of white appeared again. It looked like an Absol leaping through the air, but it appeared from nowhere and disappeared into nothing once it touched the ground on the other side of the doors. Standing back up and facing away from the doors, I allowed the creature to jump at me, and it passed right through.
"A hologram," Hector whispered as he stood upright again.
"I bet some smug piece of shit is watching us on a monitor and laughing their ass off. I swear, I'm gonna burn this place when we get out," I spat and helped Noanne to her feet. We proceeded through the doorway into a dimly lit room. It was difficult to see much because the lights along the wall were small and fading. The carpet seemed darker than in the previous hallway, but the room seemed to be empty otherwise. Hector pulled out his phone to use its flashlight and shone the light around the small, circular chamber. There was another set of double doors ahead and something that looked like a mining cart on the left, so we went to examine it.
The cart was sitting on a metal track that led into a wall. We couldn't find any switches or power sources, so we weren't sure if the cart could be used. Giving up, we tried to open the doors, but they seemed to be locked.
"How are we supposed to keep going?" Noanne asked.
"Maybe we aren't meant to advance through the area from this end," Hector mused.
"So, we have to go all the way around just to get to the start?" I gasped and felt like giving up. It all seemed so pointless.
"Wait, look," Noanne said suddenly, and we turned to her. She put a hand on the large cart, and the track underneath it lit up a bright blue. When she removed her hand, the lights faded. Hector and I joined Noanne at the cart and put our hands on the cart so the tracks would light up again. That time, with all our hands on the cart, the tracks lit up all the way to the wall. I started to hoist myself up over the edge, and when I was fully inside the cart, the wall started to open, revealing another passage. Figuring that was the only way to move forward, Hector helped Noanne and Eevee get into the cart before jumping in himself. I put Eevee back in my bag.
There was a lever in the cart with a big red knob, which I assumed was used to operate the cart, so I pushed it into the forward position. The cart squeaked into motion, and we were soon swallowed by the dark tunnel. The tracks lit up underneath as we moved, rumbling over the bumps, but most of our view ahead was blocked by the cart. I couldn't see much of the tunnel above, and we had all ducked down in case anything was waiting to jump out at us.
There didn't seem to be any turns, and before long, we exited the tunnel, stopping in a room very similar to the one we'd started in. Hopping out carefully, the room was better lit, but it also looked like it'd seen some action. There was a body on the ground by the opposite wall, and blood was smeared over the ground everywhere. There were doors on our right and left, but only the door on the right was slightly open.
"We came from this way, so this is probably the way into the rest of this area," Hector said, pointing at the tunnel and the door on the right.
"So then this door…," I murmured.
"We're back at the start," Noanne said gravely.
"No point in going back there. Are we ready to go to the next room?" I asked. Hector nodded. Noanne seemed not to hear me at first but then slowly started walking toward the door on the right. I wondered what she was thinking about and shot Hector a worried look before I heard voices from the next room. The three of us froze as the voices seemed to drift closer, then farther, and then close again.
"…everywhere already! Where the fuck could it be?!" someone shouted.
"It's…here somewhere. We've already checked the…like, seven times," another voice said. It sounded like a man and a woman.
"Maybe there isn't one here. We've practically torn the place apart and wasted so much time in this area that maybe someone else already found all the other keys!" the man yelled and hit something. Maybe the wall. He was near the door, but we were still standing in the middle of the room. I slid my hand into my pocket, clenching it around Dragonair's Poké Ball. "You're sure you remember seeing three keyholes in that big gate?"
"I'm positive. I don't know how we'd get past that gate if we aren't supposed to find something to unlock it," the woman responded. "And remember the asshole with the Machamp?" The man sighed.
"Right, I was so mad, I forgot. He took two keys off those brats with the dead mom, and that was back in the forest. Bastard can't get through without the third key, so we can strike a deal. Maybe let's just check this first room again and then do another sweep. There's gotta be someplace we didn't think to look yet. Maybe there's a hidden area in the fucking dark room we missed." When a hand appeared, wrapped around the side of the door, my adrenaline kicked in.
"Noanne, stay here. Hector, have a ball ready, and let's go," I whispered quickly and grabbed Hector's hand.