Headquarters, Sector 0
Metro City, Canada
June 16th, 2015
11:27 AM
"Chloe Baldwin"
It had been four days since Riley and Sawyer rescued Silver from Trojan. He still seemed to be mostly himself, but he seemed a bit more cranky and reserved, even from Jenna.
All things considered, I guess he was handling the loss of an eye as well as could be expected. He kept joking that he only needed one to begin with, or that at least Trojan didn't get his right eye, which is his dominant one, whatever that means.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk about what happened between you and Trojan?" I asked.
"Chloe, I'm fine!" he snapped.
"There's no need for that," I said, "We just want to help you."
"We have bigger problems to deal with," he sighed, "There will be plenty of time AFTER we defeat Trojan."
"Just leave him be, Chloe," said Sawyer, as he passed by, "He'll tell us when he's ready. That is, assuming that he even has something to tell."
I went over to the lounge area and joined in on the other's conversation.
"All things considered," said Oz, "Out of all the times Trojan could've escaped from Cyberspace, he sure picked a pretty convenient time."
He was referring to the fact that since it's June, there was hardly anything going on at school. We had already finished the curriculum in most of the classes we still had to attend. Just this morning, in English, we played hangman. But, to be fair, we could only use vocabulary words we had learned that year or words from Shakespeare plays.
"Definitely makes it easier to study for exams." said Riley.
"I still can't believe that you volunteered to take French class," said Marcus, pointing a finger at him, "This isn't Québec, you know."
"I think I would've noticed if we suddenly got transported to a different province," said Riley, "Besides, it is the second official language in Canada."
"Aren't you also taking two English courses this semester?" asked Oz.
"That's because I was one credit short," said Riley, "But I only have to write the Provincial Exam for one of them."
"Seriously dude," said Marcus, "French?"
"Don't mock it," said Riley, "It's one of the most romantic languages out there."
Marcus and Oz still looked sceptical, so Riley took Rachel's hands with one of his hands and stared deep into her eyes while caressing her cheek with his other hand.
"Tes yeux sont plus beaux que les diamants." he said.
Rachel swooned and collapsed into his arms. Even though she was probably just pretending to help him prove his point, I cracked up at the ridiculousness of the scene.
Oz came over to Riley and got down on one knee as if he was proposing to him.
"Dude, you have to teach me how to do that." he begged.
"I really don't." said Riley, flicking him on the forehead.
Oz snapped his fingers in disappointment and then got up to check on Silver and Jenna.
"By the way, what did you say to her?" I asked.
"I asked if she wanted to order some take out for supper tonight."
"Oh." I said.
Marcus seemed disappointed and then followed after Oz to see if the situation had changed.
"Did you really ask about dinner?" chuckled Rachel.
"Of course not," said Riley, "I said that your eyes are more beautiful than diamonds."
"Really?" asked Rachel.
"Really." he said.
She pulled in him in closer and they rubbed noses momentarily before they leaned in further a kiss.
"You two are so cute," I said, "But seriously guys, get a room."
"EEEEEK!" shrieked Jenna.
All three of us scrambled to our feet and dashed over to see what was going on.
"Hello, Rangers," said a voice, "No need to fear. I'm not really here."
My heart skipped a beat when I thought I saw Trojan standing in the middle of Headquarters. But then when he spoke that last line I calmed down and realized that it was just a hologram or something.
"I just thought you might want to know that one of you, I'm not sure which, but one of you fell for a trap I left behind in my old outpost before I made my legendary escape."
We all looked around curiously. But Silver already seemed to know exactly what Trojan was talking about.
"I hold in my hand, the remote that will activate the trap," said Trojan, "You will be completely cut off from the outside world. The only way to escape is to play along and follow the rules."
"Why should we believe anything you say?" snapped Silver.
"Silver! It's to see you again," said Trojan, he scanned Silver's face before continuing, "What? Too soon? Anyway, it doesn't matter if you believe me or not. I'm just telling you how it is."
"I think he's talking about you, Marcus," said Silver, "He must have booby trapped the anchor or something."
"Well, there you have it. Best of luck, Rangers!" said Trojan.
The hologram's finger seemed to move in slow motion towards the button on the device held in his other hand. Seconds after the he pushed the button, Headquarters dissolved around us and we were transported somewhere else.
"Shit..." muttered Oz.
"Where are we?" asked Sawyer.
"It looks like Cyberspace," said Marcus, "Everything has that same wire frame look."
"It can't be that easy," said Rachel, "Trojan knows that Silver has a way of sending people to and from Cyberspace."
"She's right," said Riley, "I doubt Trojan would make such a rookie mistake. Even though it might look like Cyberspace, I think we're inside some sort of simulation, like the Matrix."
"Well, if none of this is real, then what's the point of trapping us here?" asked Oz, "If it's all a simulation, then it doesn't matter if we get hurt, right?"
"Clearly you've never seen the Matrix," said Sawyer, "If they died in the simulation, they died in real life too."
"Okay, so the stakes are real," I said, "But if Trojan wants to kill us, then why did he explain the rules of the simulation before sending us inside it?"
"I don't think this simulation is supposed to kill us," said Riley, "I think it's more designed to test us. We've been Power Rangers for months, but we've never been able to fight Trojan directly."
"Yeah, he's right," said Marcus, "He wants to know how resourceful we are and wants to get a good feel of what we're capable of."
"He's turned us into lab rats." said Sawyer.
"Welcome to Phase One!" said a loud booming voice that echoed throughout the entire simulation, "The first objective is really straightforward, actually. Except without the straight part. Or the forward part."
It was Trojan's voice. Either it was pre-recorded, or he was somehow watching us from outside the simulation and actually projecting his voice for us to hear.
"All you have to do is reach the center of the maze. I've taken upon myself to disable your ranger powers in here, so don't bother trying." he continued.
"Why should we listen to you?" asked Marcus angrily.
"Because I'm the one that trapped you in there," said Trojan, "And I could kill you all right now just as easily. But I won't, so long as you play by the rules."
"Doesn't look like we have much of a choice." said Sawyer.
"That's right! You don't." said Trojan.
"So how do we reach the center of the maze?" I asked.
There was no answer.
"Alright then. As your leader, I just have one rule that I want to issue up front before we even take one step into that maze," said Riley, "If anyone so much as suggests that we split up, I will break their nose."
"What if Rachel were to suggest it?" sneered Oz.
"She wouldn't, because she's not an idiot," said Riley, "I'm not saying the rest of you are either though."
"We know what you meant." I said.
"So did I," said Oz, "I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit."
"I know you were, man," said Riley, "But we can't be joking around. If we don't take this seriously, we're probably not going to make it very far."
"And on that happy note. Let's get started before Trojan gets bored." I said.
For what felt like the first 500 or so steps, the maze actually seemed to be pretty linear. But then eventually we came to our first fork.
"Let's put it to a vote," said Riley, "Everyone raise your left hand if you think we should go left and raise your right hand if you think we should go right."
It ended up being a dead tie.
"Does anyone have any spare change?" I asked, "Maybe we could use them as breadcrumbs or something."
"Not a bad idea," said Marcus, reaching into his pockets, "I've got a couple loonies and toonies."
"No, no," I said, "Those are too valuable. I'm thinking more like nickels or dimes."
"At first I agreed with the government's decision to stop making pennies, but in this particular instance, they'd be perfect." said Sawyer.
"Or how about I use my lipstick to draw lines on the walls as we go?" asked Rachel.
"I like it, but sweetie, don't use YOUR lipstick, use mine, I'm the rich one here, remember?" I said.
"Since the vote ended in a tie, let's just go right." said Riley.
So we took the right path at the first fork. We didn't come across any other forks for quite a long while. But when we rounded the next corner, we saw that there were tiny nozzles on both walls of the corridor. Every couple of seconds, a stream of fire would shoot out from the nozzles for a few seconds and then stop.
Sawyer took one look at the flames and then leapt straight through the obstacle while the nozzles had stopped spraying. Oz saw this and did the same thing, but he was a tad late and the flames came back on and scorched his foot a little.
"Yeow!" he wailed, from the other side.
Eventually the rest of us made across as well, but only Oz ended up getting touched by the flames.
"Trojan never mentioned there'd be traps." said Marcus.
"Of course not," I said, "That would have made it too easy."
"You alright, Oz?" asked Rachel.
"My shoe took most of it," he said, "Still really hurt though."
"Let's keep going then." said Riley.
Rachel made sure to go back and continue marking the corridor that led to the fire nozzles with the lipstick before we continued on.
At the end of the same corridor, the path split into three different directions. We could see some of Rachel's lipstick trail down one path, so that eliminated that option.
"Okay, let's vote again," I said, "Do we go left or keep going straight?"
Oz and Riley voted for going straight, and everyone else opted for going left, so we took the left path and continued onwards. After walking about halfway down the path, I heard a creaking sound and felt a gust of wind behind me. I turned just in time to see a giant swinging blade coming right for me.
"EVERYBODY GET DOWN!" I screamed while diving to the floor.
If I had been so much as a second slower, I might've just died. The blade was heading back the other way now. As I got to my feet, I saw it retract back inside the wall.
"Wow, that was close." panted Rachel.
"Can't let it distract us," said Oz, "We're probably getting close."
We turned the corner and came to another fork. After voting, we decided to stay to the left, that path led to a hallway full of criss-crossing laser beams.
Luckily, they weren't invisible. Rachel used her gymnastics training to get past the lasers and scout ahead, but then came back saying that it was a dead end.
So we returned to the last fork and went right instead. After another set of nasty obstacles we came across another dead end. Which meant that we had to follow Rachel's lipstick marks back to the fork before the blade trap.
We already knew that we couldn't take the right path when we came to this fork the first time, and now we know that the left path also leads to a dead end. With only one direction left for us to go, we followed it down another corridor.
This particular corridor actually had taller walls and a ceiling, unlike all the other corridors we'd seen so far in the maze. As we entered it, we wondered why this specific corridor had a ceiling, until it started filling with a poisonous gas.
We don't know for sure if it was poisonous, but what else would it be? Even if Trojan did use colourful smoke to make us think it was toxic gas, we weren't going to stick around and find out.
At the end of the gas hallway, there was a physical door that we had to open to get back to the rest of the maze. The ceiling was also gone again. I suppose the ceiling was needed for that particular part of the maze so that the gas would only be an obstacle for that specific section and not spread to other areas.
After following that hallway for a while we arrived at yet another fork. We all voted again and the result was that we would take the right path. Interestingly enough, the right path was connected to the middle path, so we just ended up going in a circle.
We only needed to take a few steps down the left path to deduce that we had to be getting close to the center. The entire corridor was basically one long death trap. Riley was at the front of the group, so he was the first to discover that parts of the floor would give way and fall into what appeared to be a bottomless pit.
His foot was half on the trap floor and half on the normal floor when the first piece fell away and he halted everyone by holding his arms out.
"No! Wait! The floor is a trap." he said.
"How do we know where to stand?" asked Marcus.
"I can't tell yet." said Riley.
"Leave this to me," said Oz, "I'm not football quarterback for nothing."
Oz shot forward like a bolt of lightning. Or maybe something more realistic. He aligned himself so that he was to the left of the first trap tile. It turns out that by sheer luck, he managed to literally position himself directly in between where the tiles would fall.
The speed of him running by was enough to trigger all the other fake tiles and cause them to fall down each of their own little pits. Now we knew where we could safely walk. Once we were all across, we were met with another obstacle, and another and then another.
After that there was one final obstacle. We knew it was the last one because we could actually see the center of the maze from the other side. It was simply a fence that was blocked our way. We couldn't climb over it because it there was no top to the fence. We also couldn't go around it or underneath it for the same reasons.
"What are we supposed to do about this?" I asked, examining the fence curiously.
Sawyer walked over to the fence a gave it a quick poke. There was a spark and he pulled his hand away quickly.
"It's an electric fence." he said, nursing his finger by sucking on it.
"There has to be some sort of trick to it." said Oz.
"Or at the very least something we can exploit to get past it." said Rachel.
"Marcus, I'll take those loonies and toonies now." I said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change.
"Here," he said, handing me the change, "That should be about ten bucks."
I don't know where the idea came from, but nobody else was coming up with any better ideas. I took one coin and threw it at the fence. The loonie created a spark when it hit the fence and then bounced off, landing on the floor nearby, slightly scorched, but otherwise okay.
I took another coin and tossed it at the fence slightly more to the right than last time. Again, it sparked and bounced off. I took another and this time threw it even more to the right. It sparked and bounced off yet again.
"What are you doing, Chloe?" asked Marcus,
"If we can't go around the fence," I said, "Maybe we have to go through the fence."
"How can we go through an electrified, solid object?" asked Sawyer.
"I think that's exactly what Trojan wants us to figure out." said Riley.
"Give us some change, Chloe." said Rachel, reaching her hand out to take some coins from my hand.
Everyone took some of the discarded change, including the ones that bounced off the fence and got a little charred. We all took turns throwing loonies and toonies at the fence in slightly different places each time.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the last coin I had in my hand went THROUGH the fence when I threw it.
"It's right in the middle at the bottom." I said, getting down on my knees to examine the precise spot more closely.
You had to look very, very closely, but there was small patch near the bottom where you could actually see that there was no electricity running through it.
"If you look very closely, you should see the safe spot," I said, "Follow me one at a time and stay low."
As I crawled forward through the fence, Oz was next in line and followed behind me through the safe spot of the electrified fence.
"You've got such a great ass, Chloe." he said.
"Shut up Oz," I said, smirking, "But thanks, I guess."
Once we were all safely on the other side of the fence, it became obvious immediately that we had indeed accomplished our task. We had reached the center of the maze, and Trojan was waiting for us with an uncharacteristic grin.
"Congratulations, Power Rangers," he said, "You've successfully completed Phase One, give yourselves a pat on the back."
"What happens now?" asked Riley.
"Now, you get to advance to Phase Two," said Trojan, "However, there is just one small problem that I think needs to be rectified before I send you to the next simulation."
"And what problem is that?" asked Sawyer.
He just disappeared into thin air. So I guess that means that it wasn't really Trojan. It was probably just another hologram or something.
"You made it all the way through my maze much quicker than I would've expected," said Trojan's voice, echoing throughout the entire simulation again, "Although you did complete Phase One, I'm a little disappointed that not one of you ended up dying or at the very least getting maimed by all my traps and hazards."
"I spent days and days developing that maze and you six made it through not only remarkably quickly, but you also made it through without even so much as scratch." Trojan whined.
"It looks like you underestimated us." said Riley.
"I feel ripped off," said Trojan menacingly, "After all the work I put into designing this maze, the least you could do is show your appreciation by giving me what I wanted to see!"
The entire maze was plunged into total darkness when Trojan stopped talking. We stood there in absolute silence, waiting for something to happen.
Then there was a high pitched cackling sound, followed by a squelching sound and a faint whimper.
The lights came back on and standing in front of us was Trojan. He had transformed his arm into a long, brutal tendril that was now covered in blood and protruding out of Marcus' chest!
"There," said Trojan, with a twisted smile, "That's much better."