Only a Game (Olympus Drive Chronicles)

Chapter 48: The control tower

Ariadne

I don't think I've properly described these people I'm with and how utterly incompetent they look and act. Like, these are the absolute last people you would plan a heist with; they really are. If you picked up murderers, and homeless people, and nursing home residents, from across the entire world, and lined them up along with these two, none would ever pick these two as the most competent people to do a break in with.

But they're all I have. I haven't even clearly gotten what they're doing here. They probably don't know. That's why I'm not asking. I'm scared the answer will be that they don't know.

"Cool—oh wow more stairs," Dean says, nearly running into me.

"It's this why---god why is everyone drunk?" I ask, stopping before rounding a corner. More guards. Damn it. They're all intoxicated looking, though.

"Sorry," Dean says.

"What—everybody on the island is drunk?" I ask. Party music is blaring somewhere.

"Ah—basically?" Maya says.

"Ish?" Dean says.

"I mean you're not."

"Yeah you're not."

"So no."

"Not everyone."

"Don't think your dad is either."

"So no."

"Not everyone."

"I'm trying hard here—"

"He is— he is trying hard."

"And I for one am proud of that."

"I'm proud of him too cause I'm not as drunk as I could be considering—him."

"Oh my god," I sigh, "Okay, they are not going to let us just walk past them."

"Not a problem," Dean says, rubbing his forehead. All the guards collapse.

"What---what did you do?" I ask.

"I won't do it again," he cringes, "I just drained their strength—a bit, they're still awake just---too weak to move."

"Well don't do that again," I say, shuddering. I myself feel weak now. I stumble.

"Sorry," he nearly cries but doesn't move to help me.

"Here—he's going to be burning hot don't touch him, just come on," Maya says, "It's better if you drink the ambrosia."

"Yeah I'm not doing that," I say, mounting the stairs. At the top sits the reinforced steel door to the control tower. I can hear the guards moaning behind me.

"Hopefully I can guess the code," I say, trying the keypad. Of course it isn't working.

"I have this?" Maya holds up a grenade.

"Where did you get that?" Dean asks, he's hugging himself and kind of whimpering. Are his eyes glowing?

"Guess," Maya says.

"Time?" their conversations usually don't make sense.

"Yeah, who else distributes lethal weapons to small girls?"

"He's distributing grenades as well as knives and guns now?"

"Yeah and giving lessons, I have duct tape we tape it to the door, pull the pin and run," very happily. To reiterate, this entire experience is like if Monty Python directed and starred in Inception but everything else remains that same. Yeah. That bad.

"Yes, I know how grenades work; he's my brother," Dean growls, tearing the duct tape for her and getting it stuck to himself. I wind up doing it.

"We are so dead," I mutter, backing away.

Maya pulls the pin and runs into us, pushing us back more.

That does work, but we did not anticipate how powerful a grenade is and we fall over. Then we get our clothes slightly on fire running into the control room.

"Block the door---I need to get on the cameras," I say, running to the computers. Yes. These I can hack into.

"What are we looking at?" Dean comes after blocking the door with a table.

"These are the views inside the Labyrinth---I'm tracking the player's VR headsets---damn it," I put my face in my hands.

"Well, one person's alive," Maya says.

"That's Teddy---goddamn it. He's the only one left alive," I say, taking a shuddering breath.

"Okay okay, one out of fourteen isn't bad—what?" Dean says when we look at him.

"That's really bad, it is," I say, "That means—Aster's already killed the others."

"Yeah, which means he's used to hunting people now," Maya says.

"Yeah—okay I can reset a few things, let me make it harder for him to find Teddy," I say, taking a deep breath and looking at the controls.

There is slamming at the door.

"Don't do it again---you nearly got her," Maya says, grabbing Dean's arm as he turns toward them.

"If you could—not," I say, I am really weak.

"Nope, we can do this the old fashioned way," Dean says.

"Yeah, we'll buy you some time," Maya says, drawing knives from the pockets of her dress.

"Five minutes, that's all I need," stay alive Teddy. Stay alive.