Time Maze

Alone in the Dark

"Tyson! Tyson!" Marcus screamed in sheer terror the moment he found himself in the dark tunnels.

Tyson had told him about them. He knew that he had been there before, but having no memory of any of it and finding himself there so suddenly terrified him. Especially having in mind that Tyson wasn't by Marcus's side.

Cold sweat started dripping down his shirt, the same one he had been wearing what felt like the night before, as he tried to remember the one thing that he was forgetting in his frantic search for his friend. One crucial detail he was missing as he continued to yell for Tyson, spinning in circles.

The loud booming sound made him recollect what he had been forgetting, the mechanical monster that guarded the tunnels. The same thing both of them had apparently been running away from for quite a while.

"What do I do now? What do I do?" Marcus mumbled, stuck in place like a deer in the headlights.

Before he could do anything, out of nowhere, something crashed into him, and he thought that was the end. That he was dying under the hooves of the Minotaur-like robotic thingy that he couldn't even imagine.

"Stop squealing like a pig and crawl towards the wall. We need to find that crack, fast," Tyson said, trying his best to grab a part of his friend's body and pull him to safety. "You must have made a lot of noise for it to come so quickly."

"I was...looking... for you," Marcus said, stuttering and shaking like never before.

"It's fine, just get yourself together and hurry up. I found the opening," Tyson said, trying to sound encouraging although he wished to shake some sense into his friend.

He couldn't even imagine who went around yelling in a tunnel they knew was inhabited by a monstrous being eager to destroy them.

Finally, Tyson somehow managed to stuff Marcus down the familiar crack without any help from Marcus himself as he was out of it. He reacted far better when he was in there for the first time than he did at that moment, and Tyson had no idea why that was.

It took Tyson so long to get Marcus inside that he almost faced the wrath of the creature. Luckily for him, its aim didn't seem to be perfect, and the lasers it shot from its eyes only singed a bit of Tyson's hair before he slid down the improvised slide.

"Turn on your phone's torch," Tyson said the moment he safely landed next to still shivering Marcus.

"Why?" Marcus asked, having calmed down enough to ask questions when Tyson least needed him to do so.

"Just do it," Tyson whispered, more on edge than when they were faced with the crazy thing that was trying to kill them.

As Marcus did as he was told, Tyson took his phone, moving the torch around the small place quickly but thoroughly.

"Alright, we are safe now," he finally said when he was sure that Sybil and her group weren't around to shoot at them.

"What do you mean 'now'? You told me that these holes were the safe places where we escaped that crazy beast," Marcus said, fear leaving his body only to be replaced with anger.

"Yes, they were. But the last one we've been in turned out unsafe as some Mazers came across us and were less than friendly," Tyson said.

He did his best to limit the amount of information he shared with Marcus to avoid bringing him back to the place of fear he found him in.

"Tyson, what are you hiding from me?" Marcus asked, for once being rather perceptive.

"Fine, they might have kind of shot at us, a little bit," Tyson said, his words not making much sense even to himself.