Disclaimer: I don't own Saw or any of the music or movies I may reference.
Everything to prove, nothing to lose
Just when everything has fallen to the ground
Gonna knock it down
Just believe me when I tell you it's alright
-Sum 41
PRESENT DAY
The tortured duo walked along, looking left and right for any indication of where they were supposed to go. There were many different corridors they could go down, but only one seemed to beckon them forth with light.
They looked at each other for silent assurance, then agreed to go down the hallway that was lit.
This hallway was different from the others they had ventured through. The fluorescent lights must have been recently installed because they weren't dim or flickering. They were vibrant and consistent, and humming lightly.
Nevertheless, their clear brightness indicated that not only was this the hallway they were supposed to be walking, but their captor wanted the light to be as bright as possible.
The reason why was still unclear.
Maybe this was going to be their final stage. Maybe the bright lights were meant to be reminiscent of the bathroom where they had first been tested.
Was everything going to end here?
"I don't trust this," Lawrence muttered. "Something doesn't smell right."
"No, of course, because everything until now was on the up-and-up," Adam snarked.
Lawrence gave him an annoyed look. "I'm just saying, this looks way too…open…and clear. You know what I mean?"
"I mean, yeah, I guess," Adam admitted. He was too preoccupied by the sensation of the blood on his shirt drying and hardening over his open cuts. Every time he moved, he could feel the crunching and tearing of the fabric and scabs.
"All the other paths before have been dark, and we've had to tread lightly. Why is THIS one all brightly lit?" Lawrence asked rhetorically.
"I don't know, man. But we're running out of time. Let's just—" Adam stepped forward, and immediately, some kind of spear or javelin jutted horizontally out of the wall and just missed skewering him. "JESUS!" he yelped, jerking out of its path and losing his balance at the same time, falling to the floor.
"ADAM!" cried Lawrence, forcing himself not to leap out into the fray to throw his body over Adam's.
Adam lay panting with wide eyes, realizing that the entire hallway must be rigged to fire spears at them if they so much as stepped out of line. He carefully grabbed the spear and pushed it back, hearing the clicking of gears, and continued pushing it back until it had fully retreated back into the wall and became re-locked in whatever spring-loaded mechanism it had shot from.
"Come here, come here, grab on," said Lawrence. He stuck out his cane for Adam to grab, and then he gently dragged the younger man across the sleek tile floor and back to his side. Adam stood up, looked down the hall, looked back at Lawrence, and then back down the hall again.
"Don't make an Indiana Jones reference; I'm not in the mood," said Lawrence.
Adam grinned and scoffed to himself.
"Well, at least you're familiar with the mechanics," he said. "Obviously, we have to step on the right tiles to avoid getting shanked."
"Yes. But how do we figure out which are the right tiles?" Lawrence asked.
Adam bit his lip and shrugged.
Both of them thought "Remember."
Where had they come across bright fluorescent lights and tiles before? The bathroom. Everything about this trial referred to their first experience together. Everything had something to do with that night.
Suddenly, Lawrence twisted his head from side to side, furiously looking for something.
"What? What is it?" asked Adam.
"Light switch."
"Huh?"
"It—oh. Here," Lawrence stepped towards the wall and flicked off the light switch.
The hallway was plunged into darkness, allowing an almost hopscotch-like path of glowing square tiles to appear.
Lawrence turned the lights back on. The men looked at each other.
"Glow-in-the-dark paint," they said in unison.
"Let me go first," said Lawrence.
Adam turned the lights off again, and this time they noticed that at the end of the hallway was also a doorway into another room that had the lights on in it. They both deduced that they were supposed to cross the hallway on the glowing tiles and then enter that room at the end of the hall.
Lawrence carefully set his left foot out onto one glowing tile, and then set his cane out onto the next one, stabilizing himself until he could set his prosthetic right foot out onto another tile.
The more he studied the random path before him, the more it began to look like a QR code. He briefly considered that the selection of which tiles were safe to step on might be a puzzle in itself, but then he reminded himself that the "mastermind" behind this probably wasn't clever enough to create something like that.
He did notice, however, that in the middle of the path, there were three tiles in a row off to the left, that were right up against the wall. No blank tiles in between. Just three tiles, one after the other, up against the wall to the left.
Lawrence was able to put all his weight on those three tiles and rest a bit before moving on to almost hop from another to the next, until he came to a very thin, glowing, horizontal line at the end of the pattern of glowing tiles. He assumed this was a finish line of sorts, and that everything beyond it was safe.
He stepped over it, and found he was right; no spears shot out of the walls, even though he was no longer stepping on glowing tiles.
The doctor let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and glanced up to the light source a few feet away. The lit room off to the side was shining enough light out that he could see another light switch on the wall, and he turned it on.
The lights went back on, and he looked back down towards the hall at Adam who was standing right where he'd left him.
"You ready?" asked Lawrence.
Adam nodded, so Lawrence turned off the lights again.
Now it was Adam's turn to cross.
Lawrence was so nervous it was all he could do to try to steady his breathing and lower his own heartrate. But if he could cross the hallway with only one real foot, Adam could certainly do it on two.
Still, the older man strained his ears to listen to Adam's breathing and whining, knowing the young man was scared he was going to screw something up.
He watched the glowing tiles as they became partially obscured by the shape of Adam's feet, and held his breath in anticipation, even though he knew he had no reason to think that anything would go wrong; Adam was following the exact same directions he had.
When Adam reached the three consecutive tiles, the young man stopped to take a breath. He leaned against the wall on his left.
Lawrence, on the other end of the hall, was becoming increasingly curious about the room that was emitting light off to his side.
While Lawrence poked his head into the room, which he realized was a bathroom with two stalls and two sinks, the wall Adam was leaning against slowly slid open.
Two hands reached out in the dark and grabbed Adam around the neck and dragged him back into a dark passageway.
"WH—mm!" Adam managed to utter through his muffled mouth.
"Adam?" Lawrence called.
No response.
"…Adam?" he called again into the darkness.
Nothing.
"…are you there?" the doctor asked fearfully. "Hello?"
There was no answer but silence.
"OK, don't move! I'm going to turn on the lights!" Lawrence called out. He flipped the switch, and the hallway was immediately illuminated again.
Only this time, Adam was gone.
"ADAM?!" Lawrence yelled.
Where could he have gone? Did he fall through a trapdoor? Did someone swoop down from the ceiling and snatch him away?
No.
The wall.
Lawrence looked towards the middle of the hallway and noticed for the first time that the hallway was made up of newly applied drywall. This wall may not have even been part of the original structure of the building. Only now did it occur to him that every twist and turn of this maze could have been built like a pop-up haunted house. Every hallway they'd passed through might have been constructed only months ago. Maybe this warehouse never had any hallways to begin with; maybe every floor was just a big open space that was originally meant to be filled with cubicles or large appliances (or WARES. It was a WAREHOUSE, after all).
He turned the lights off again, keeping his eyes on the exact same spot on the wall. When he flipped the switch again, he saw that the three glowing tiles in a row were right up against the spot on the wall he had been looking.
That was it.
Someone had been standing just on the other side of the wall, waiting for Adam to reach that spot where he would feel safe taking a break leaning against the wall, and then the wall must have opened, and Adam was dragged away.
That had to be what happened.
But Lawrence knew there was no way he could go over there and examine it. He would have to turn the lights back off in order to navigate his way back to the three tiles, and even then, what would he do? How would he be able to get the wall open again without losing his balance and stepping onto a dark tile and triggering another spear?
No.
He couldn't go back. He could only go forward.
This was a game, and he had to play by the rules.
The little bathroom was where he was supposed to go next.
Bathrooms were significant.
Lawrence took a few deep breaths to prepare himself, then entered the small room.
Whatever he needed to finish this game, he knew he would find in there.
END OF CHAPTER 16
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