Michelle Rowen - Countdown

“I was. But there aren’t any doors. There’s nothing. And if we’d reached the finish line, you’d think there’d be some sort of sign.” His words finally betrayed a sharp edge of strain.

“I’m going to let go of you now,” I said.

“Thanks for the warning.”

He eased back against the concrete wall behind him, and I stepped away to stand in the middle of the alley. I turned around slowly, trying hard to ignore the ticking that was potentially counting down the last seconds of my life.

“I used to watch TV shows like this,” I said. “Not exactly like this one, of course, but they have the races and the puzzles to solve. Usually at this early level of a game, it’s still fairly easy. Or at least, not insanely impossible to figure out.” I glared at the camera hovering in the air four feet from my face.

“You don’t know the people who set this game up. It’s all about the losing, not the winning, for them.”

“I’m just saying that it can’t be the end. Not yet. What’s the fun in eliminating contestants in level two?”

I scanned the alley. Two brick walls. One concrete wall, gray and unyielding, behind Rogan’s hunched-over frame. I looked up. A sliver of slate-gray sky showed above the thirty-story buildings that surrounded us like cold, emotionless sentries.

“What did you think we were running toward?” I asked. “What did you see on that map?”

He looked around. “It was an office. I remember it from before I got sent away. I could have sworn it was right here.”

“One minute remains in this level of Countdown.”

“59...58...57...”

There was a Dumpster to the side of us, full to overflowing. Strange, considering that the neighborhood was deserted. A rotting apple core lay to the side of it, the fruit turning brown. No flies, though. It didn’t seem as if anyone or anything lived here anymore, but that piece of fruit didn’t seem as old as it should have, considering the surroundings.

“What kind of office was it?” I asked.

“What?”

“What kind of office?” I repeated, loud enough to be heard over the countdown.

“It was a...a doctor’s office. A psychiatrist.”

“Let me guess, your doctor?”

Rogan’s expression shadowed. “I had a few appointments there, yeah.”

“Obviously he wasn’t very good at what he did if you went psycho, anyway.”

He glowered at me.

A doctor’s office. Right here. But now it was gone? Was Rogan tripping out, or was he remembering something important?

I sure hoped it was something important. We didn’t have time to be wrong.

I went toward that Dumpster and jumped in.

“What are you doing?” Rogan demanded.

“Trying very hard not to die.”

I plunged my hands into muck and filth. Rotting food, discarded boxes, plastic bags filled with rancid garbage. Living on the streets had given me a necessary talent for Dumpster diving. You could find some really good stuff if you had the time and motivation to go searching.

Currently I didn’t have the time, but I sure as hell had the motivation.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. Even when I found it, I still wasn’t sure.

“24...23...22...”

It was a bell attached to a sign that read: Please ring bell and the receptionist will be right with you.

Okay, it was something.

I held my breath and rang the bell.

Nothing happened for a moment, and what little hope I had started to fade, but then I heard something. A heavy, metallic sound.

“Kira. Look.” Rogan pointed at the ground.

I looked over the edge of the Dumpster to see that a door in the ground had slid open. I hadn’t even noticed the edges of it before.

“10...9...8...”

I launched myself out of the garbage like somebody possessed and grabbed Rogan’s arm. There was a flight of stairs leading down. I pulled him with me, and we quickly descended into the semidarkness below.

“3...2...1...”

The door above us slammed shut with the force of a guillotine. When nothing else happened, I quickly continued down to the bottom of the stairs. A short hallway led into a white room.

Rogan met my gaze. “I don’t feel dead yet. Should we be celebrating?”

I thought about that as I tried to bring my breathing back down to a normal pace. “If we’re dead, then death wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Congratulations, Rogan and Kira, on successfully completing level two of Countdown.”

I rubbed my temples, finally allowing myself a measure of relief. “Is he going to say that every time? Because that’s going to get old really fast.”

Another camera appeared and whipped past my face. I watched my eyes narrow in the shiny surface. By no stretch of the imagination did I look happy. My dark brown hair was matted and tangled, and my long bangs were slicked against my forehead. My jaw was clenched tightly, and my dark eyes flashed with anger. I hated that digicam. Hated it more than I remembered hating anything for a very long time.

“You shouldn’t look directly at it,” Rogan advised, touching my arm with the hand that wasn’t clasped to his injured shoulder.

I shrugged away from him. “Why not?”

“You don’t want to give the Subscribers more than their money’s worth. They want you to look at them that way. It gets them off to see you suffer.” He pulled me away so that I wasn’t staring right into the lens anymore. “How did you know to ring the bell?”

I finally looked at him. “Lucky guess.”

“Yes,” a voice said. “Very lucky indeed.”

I turned to see that a door had opened and a man had entered the white room. He was tall and skinny, with short black hair and a trimmed goatee. He wore wire-framed glasses and a white doctor’s coat and he held a clipboard.

“Who are you?” I forced myself not to step backward. He was the first live person I’d seen other than Rogan since this nightmare had begun.

He stopped walking. “My name is Jonathan. I’m your liaison to Countdown.”

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer me. Instead, his gaze flicked to Rogan. “You’re injured.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t know that already, being our liaison and all.” Sarcasm mixed with the pain in Rogan’s voice.

“It’s worse than I thought it would be.” Jonathan let out a long sigh and shook his head. “We will have to wait a moment first.”

I looked around the room. He wasn’t moving, just staring straight ahead.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

Jonathan held up a finger. “One moment.”

Every muscle in my body was tense and ready to run, but instead I waited, standing silently in place. After a couple of minutes, a small door in the wall to my right opened up, and the silver ball camera left the room. The door closed behind it.

“What happened?” I said.

“Countdown is now on an official break,” Jonathan explained. “We have a little time to prep you for your next level.”

“I won’t last another level,” Rogan said.

Jonathan nodded. “I know. I’ve been monitoring your vitals.”

He left the room briefly and returned with a white box.

“Sit,” he instructed, and Rogan sat down in a white chair next to him.

I swear, everything in the entire room was white and scrubbed immaculately clean. It felt like a hospital—or, at least, the kind I’d once seen in an old movie.

Jonathan pushed away the material that covered Rogan’s wound. Then with no sound from the murderer other than a pained groan, Jonathan cleaned the wound and sprayed it with some sort of colorless substance. The skin around the cut turned a sick shade of green.

“Ah,” Jonathan breathed, peering closer. “The knife they used on you was tipped with calcine poison.”