Michelle Maddox - Countdown

I stared blindly around at the metal-walled room. There had to be another way out of here. Who would want to kill us? It didn't make any damn sense. None of this made any damn sense.

Rogan swore so loud it hurt my ears over the alarm and countdown.

"Fine!" he yelled. "Take it! You go first."

He threw the key at me and it landed by my feet. Without thinking twice I grabbed it and worked it into my lock. The shackles popped open immediately.

Just as my bindings were unlocked, a door to my left swung open into more darkness. I eyed it with uncertainty, but just for a moment, before I took a step toward it.

"Wait.. " Rogan held a hand out to me. "What about our deal?"

I hesitated. He was a murderer. Mass murderer. I should leave him there, wherever there was. My family's dying screams echoed in my memory.

I pushed any sympathy I might have away and gave him a cold stare and said nothing.

"Nineteen … eighteen.. seventeen …"

Suddenly, swearing loudly, he slumped back against the wall and looked away from me, his chest heaving with each labored breath. He wasn't going to beg me to help him.

He gave up just like that?

He thought he was going to die-honestly, truly die when the countdown ended. I'd seen it in his eyes. You couldn't fake that. Whether it was true or not didn't matter. He believed it.

I swore under my breath and ran back to grab the key off the ground, then closed the distance between us. I sank to the ground and worked the key into his lock. It snapped open. I quickly got back up to my feet and turned away, glancing over my shoulder at him. He was struggling to get to his feet. It was the shoulder wound-it hurt him badly. He could barely walk.

"Ten … nine … eight …"

I turned back and grabbed him around his waist, practically pulling him through the room with me. He leaned heavily against me.

"Four… three.. two … one."

We were through the door on the last count, and it slammed shut behind us with a deafening, heavy metallic grinding noise that shook the ground.

Rogan groaned and collapsed to his knees. I frowned and reached toward him to touch his shoulder. It was knotted with tension.

"You're seriously hurt."

He blinked at me. "You thought… thought I was faking in there?"

"I wasn't sure."

'Thanks for the help."

I was about to say, "Anytime," which would be the typical response to the statement, but I stopped myself. There was no "anytime" with Rogan or any other murderer. This was it. We'd escaped the room and I was so out of there.

Only there was a little problem.

I still wasn't entirely sure where "there" was.

We'd entered another room. This one didn't look much more interesting than the first one. Only this time I could see the outline of a door with no handle. I walked to it and kicked against it as hard as I could.

"Let me out of here!" I yelled as loud as I could. The sound of my voice echoed against the metal walls.

"That's not going to do anything," Rogan said.

"We'll see about that." I kicked the door again. And again. Until my leg hurt but the door didn't look any worse for wear. I hadn't even made a damn dent.

Finally, panting hard and sweating buckets, I stopped and turned around to Rogan. I thrust a finger in his direction. "Start talking. I want to know everything you know."

He blinked up at me, holding one hand against his wound. "You came back for me."

"Yeah. I did. And don't make me regret my decision."

"I thought you'd leave me to die."

"You still think we would have died if we stayed in there?"

He nodded gravely. "The grinding noise? That was the ceiling clamping down on the floor. Twenty thousand pounds of pressure. I'm just guessing that might have killed us on contact."

I just stared at him for a moment blankly.

"How the hell do you-"

Before I could finish asking him how he'd know something like that, I was interrupted.

"Congratulations, Rogan and Kira, on successfully completing Level One of The Countdown."

It was a disembodied voice coming through unseen loudspeakers, just as the countdown had. I couldn't pinpoint the exact direction, but the sound of it physically hurt, and I cringed against the words.

Unlike the countdown itself, which had a metallic sound that betrayed it as a computer-generated voice, this one sounded very human. Very male. And very smug.

"You son of a bitch," Rogan growled. "Let us out of here!"

"Level One," the voice continued, as if it couldn't hear Rogan's comment or was choosing to ignore it, "is to test your abilities of reason and compatibility. You have won the chance to continue on to Level Two, and due to your performance thus far we have teamed you as partners."

"What the hell is going on here?" I demanded. "I don't even know what you're talking about. I didn't sign up for anything like-"

Suddenly what felt like a bolt of lightning ripped through my brain. I screamed and clamped my hands on either side of my head and fell to the ground as white-hot pain tore through me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rogan do the same.

The pain vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and I stared around at the room, numb and in shock.

"Wh-what…?" I managed. My throat hurt.

The voice went on as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. "Your implants have been activated and tuned to each other's frequency. Kindly keep in mind that you are playing as a team, and to separate more than ninety feet from your partner will lead to immediate disqualification."

Implants? Frequency? Disqualification?

I scrambled unsteadily to my feet. I felt dizzy and disoriented and I stumbled, finally bracing myself against a cold metal wall.

"I want to know what the hell is happening here," I demanded hoarsely. "I want to be let out of here immediately or I'm calling the police!"

It was an empty threat. The police wouldn't give a crap what happened to somebody like me. I didn't even have any ID. They'd probably end up throwing me in jail for causing a disturbance.

I was on my own.

Rogan looked over at me. He hadn't bothered getting up from the floor. Maybe he was a lot smarter than I was.

"Give up," he said.

"Like hell I will." I moved toward the door and kicked it again, knowing it wouldn't do anything helpful, but feeling the desperate need to lash out. "Come on! Come on, you bastards. Let me the hell out of here!"

I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye and turned around slowly. The lights in the room dimmed, and a holoscreen appeared out of nowhere, showing an overhead view of the city.

"What the hell?"

The only time I'd ever seen anything like it was from sneaking in to see an old sci-fi movie at the only theater in the city that was still open. Shit like this didn't exist in real life. Did it?

Well, obviously it did, because I was looking right at it.

I walked around the screen, trying to see where it was projected from, but there was nothing. I touched it and the image flickered and morphed as if I'd just dipped my finger into a shallow pool of water. It was partially transparent, and I could see Rogan on the other side. He looked at me and shook his head.

"It begins," he said.

"What begins? What the hell is happening?" I felt a tear of frustration slip down my right cheek.

On the map a round white glow appeared at an intersection that was otherwise unmarked.

"Level One has been completed successfully," the voice returned. It sounded enthusiastic, and there was an odd singsong quality to the words. "There are six levels to The Countdown. Complete all without suffering disqualification or elimination and you will be considered the winner. Your next level is to reach the marker you see on the map by the time the clock runs out. If you are not successful you will be eliminated from The Countdown. Do not delay. You have fifteen minutes to complete this level. Your time starts now."