The man with the scar and his fellow group of cheaters looked over at Clara, but made no move to help her. She stayed on the floor, unmoving, except for the rising and falling of her chest as she breathed.
Hudson jumped again when Cor placed his hand on his shoulder. “How about we see if she needs any help, ok?” he said, then started walking over to Clara’s prone form and the rift. Hudson hurried after him.
She was in bad shape: still breathing, but barely conscious. Her upper body seemed mostly fine, with no visible wounds, but her legs were a different story. They were a mess of ripped cloth and blood.
Cor ripped the arms off of his shirt and began to rip those into strips of cloth. Hudson rolled her onto her back, and gasped when he saw her face. She had a long, deep cut across her forehead, her right eye, and her cheek. The blood was dry and crusted across her eye, and he couldn’t tell if her eye had been injured as well or not.
“She’s still bleeding from these cuts on her legs. Help me get those wrapped up,” Cor said. “Nice and tight.”
Hudson nodded, took a few strips of cloth from Cor, and started wrapping some of the gashes on her legs. They might be able to stop the bleeding, but what then? She needed to go to a hospital. She’d lost a lot of blood and needed stitches on a number of wounds. Some of them were deep, even into her muscles.
The rift in front of them suddenly closed; the wall sliding back into place seamlessly, making it look as if there had never been a hole in space there at all.
“Resource collection for today is complete. Please place all collected materials on the floor of the hangar, in the designated space.” The robotic voice of Director Ix echoed through the hangar.
Hudson looked over at where they had dumped their silvery quartz crystals on the floor. It was right next to the small pile of example resources, as well as the larger pile of resources gathered by the other group. He hoped it was the correct spot.
“Participants who do not place all collected resources in the appropriate areas will be subject to punishment.”
At that announcement, Vince and the middle-aged woman he had been talking to rather animatedly both froze. Hurriedly, they both ran over to the piles of crystals, pulled a few more crystals out of their pockets, and threw them on the piles.
Hudson was busy wrapping the last of the bigger gashes on Clara’s legs – she was still unconscious – when he saw Vince do that. Why would he try to keep some of those crystals for himself? Were they valuable or could they be used to help escape from here somehow – and if so, how did he know? And what had he called them again – maseki?
Hudson frowned. Lots of things to ask Vince about; he seemed to be hiding a few things. But so many strange things were going on, and more important things (like making sure his new acquaintance – couldn’t call her a friend quite yet – didn’t bleed out on the floor) were taking precedence, so he let it go.
“Tallying results and rewards. For the group of Corvinus Landry, Hudson Appleseed, and Vince Delacroix: 192.1 kilograms gathered. 6 merit points each are awarded.
“For the group of George Adams, Guo Huang, Kenji Abe, Suzume Yasunori, Kexin Zhuang, Eunbi Lee, Qian Huang, Eustace Sachs, Beatrice Caron and Clara Baring: 503.7 kilograms gathered. 5 merit points each are awarded.
“For the remaining twenty-one participants: 0 kilograms gathered. 0 merit points.
“Total resources gathered: 695.8 kilograms. An additional 304.2 kilograms is needed to unlock the trial’s first Sigil Challenge.”
First Sigil Challenge? What was that? If they gathered enough resources, then a new Challenge would unlock? Maybe that was how they got out of this nightmarish trial – gather enough shiny rocks, unlock a test, pass the test, find a way out. Something else to add to Hudson’s list of things he didn’t know but was determined to find out.
“All participants, please form a single-file line and exit the hangar,” Director Ix’s voice chimed out at the same time a door materialized in the hangar's wall. The new door was very close to where the rift had opened up as well, but in this case, Hudson could see clearly the bright hallway beyond.
“What about Clara?” Hudson whispered urgently at Cor.
“We’ve got wraps on her wounds, hopefully that’ll be enough. She’s breathing steady.”
“Should we pick her up and carry her with us?” Hudson asked. Most of the participants had finished forming a line and were walking through the open doorway out of the hangar.
Cor shrugged. “It’s probably OK to move her. It doesn’t look like she has any broken bones or internal damage. She’s unconscious, which isn’t good, but she was able to make it through the portal, so she’s probably ok to move.”
Cor helped Hudson lift Clara up into a fireman’s carry, and they hurried to join the end of the line of participants. It felt wrong leaving her on the floor; she was unconscious and obviously unable to line up herself.
As they walked out of the hangar, Hudson could see portals darker than the darkest black wink around all of the tools and resources on the hangar floor. In just a blink, the hangar had returned to a shining, pristine state. Even the dust and blood stains on the floor were gone.
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Right before Hudson exited the hangar, there was a high-pitched whine in his ear. He stumbled slightly, the weight on shoulders was suddenly gone.
“Participant Clara Baring is unconscious and unable to comply with stated orders. This is a violation of Rule #2. Punishment: removed to quarters for 12 hours.”
Hudson clenched his fists. How could being hurt and unconscious be deserving of a punishment?
At least he had done what he could to help her. The deep part of him that had bridled at the injustice of her group deserting her, the furiously angry part that he constantly repressed and that had been screaming inside him for anyone to go help her – that part was quiet now.
Hudson did not have much time to brood. They did not walk far before emerging into a room similar in size and space to the area this morning where the participants had their battle royale challenge. The interior of the room, however, was vastly different.
Instead of a sand-covered sumo ring shape dominating the space, the room was set up like a futuristic classroom. Thirty desks and chairs made five rows of six, constructed out of the same aluminum metal as the floors, walls and ceilings. On the surface of each desk was each participant’s name and number.
After everyone found their desk and sat down, Hudson looked around and noticed there were no empty seats. He wasn’t sure, but he thought there were thirty four total participants. They – whomever “they” was, if they existed in addition to the disembodied voice of Director Ix – had not put desks out for the participants who were undergoing punishments. “They” must have changed the number of desks very quickly in order to reduce the number from thirty-one to thirty, when Clara was removed from their number.
Or did they originally plan for Clara to have failed to return through the rift portal?
“Participants, please conduct visualization exercises using the provided visualization aids. Place both hands, palms down, onto the desk. Conduct your cultivation technique, then visualize the pattern as depicted on the surface of the desk. Successful visualization of a pattern will unlock the next pattern for visualization.
“Removing your palms from the desk will interrupt the visualization aid. Leaving your desk is not permitted. Distracting other participants is not permitted. You have four hours.”
Hudson was physically and mentally exhausted, anxious and upset, and fast becoming hungry again after using all of his energy to mine in the rift. But he had decided he wasn’t going to just get by and go with the flow. And if he had to copy the cheaters that knew more than he did and weren’t telling everyone else, he would do it again on this activity.
Whatever this activity was.
Hudson put his hands, palms down on the desk, before sneaking a few quick peeks around. He could see the members of the dusty and bloody cheater group doing the same. They were breathing in and out, clearly doing a breathing technique, while their eyes were closed. So perhaps he was supposed to visualize something in his mind? Like visualization during yoga or meditation.
He looked down at the surface of his desk, and saw that his number and name had disappeared. In its place was a looping pattern. A single blue dot was arranged on the left end of a yellow figure-eight pattern. The pattern narrowed at the point where the blue dot was, and then widened back out. A light pulsed along the pattern, moving from the dot to the other side of the pattern and then back in a continuous loop.
Let’s give this a try, Hudson thought to himself as he closed his eyes and tried to picture in his mind’s eye the pattern on the desk. If he had been less exhausted he might have been a lot more self-conscious.
After visualizing the pattern for a minute or so, he opened his eyes and looked back down. The pattern briefly flashed red, and continued its continuous loops.
He hadn’t expected to succeed on his first try, although he wasn’t sure one, what success would actually look like, and two, how the desk would know when he did succeed.
He sighed and took another look around the room again. He was sitting towards the middle of the room and couldn’t see Cor or Vince. They must be sitting behind him. The woman Vince had been speaking with in the hangar was in front of him, but she was simply resting her head on her arms on the desk, and not attempting to follow directions.
The only sound in the room was the low exhalations of air from the cheater group doing their cultivation techniques while practicing their visualizations.
Ah, Hudson realized, he had not been doing a cultivation technique either. He decided to try again while using his Engine Breath technique.
Focusing on the explosive pattern of his breaths, Hudson first settled into the rhythm of his technique before then visualizing the pattern on the desk. It was far more difficult than simply visualizing the pattern – trying to focus on two things at the same time was not easy. But after trying for a minute, he opened his eyes and looked down at the desk for feedback.
Instead of the entire pattern flashing red, the single dot on the left side flashed red briefly, before resuming its normal, yellow color. He must be making a mistake at that part.
He looked more closely at the pattern and realized that he had been visualizing a figure eight or an infinity sign, when instead, the pattern was slightly different. If he looked very closely at the detail – and wondered what type of screen technology it was made out of, to both seamlessly integrate into the rest of the desk and have such ridiculously high resolution – he could see that there was a front and a back to the pattern.
The glow would move along the front of the pattern, then seamlessly fold over to the back of the pattern at the dot, then move along the back of the pattern. He could tell it was on the backside of the yellow track because the glow was dimmer.
Hudson realized he had seen this before. It was a möbius strip. A geometrical curiosity that you could make pretty easily by taking a strip of paper, twisting it once, and then taping the ends together. It had the geometrical distinction of having only a single surface. There was no “front” or “back” to a möbius strip, not really, even if it might look that way. If you started at any point on the surface of the strip, you could travel along the strip until you reached any other point on the surface, without going over the edge or flipping to the “back” of it.
Hudson had been fascinated with them in middle school, and had liked to make them out of strips of paper and tape.
Now that he recognized the right pattern, he closed his eyes and visualized the glowing light moving along the surface of a möbius strip.
After about a minute of visualizing, he felt more so than heard a small chime or vibration through the palms of his hands, and when he looked down, the möbius strip pattern had turned green, and a numeral “1” had appeared on the upper right of his desk.
One complete, and an unknown number to go…