The Mysterious Door

Chapter 17

I fall on my knees with Cindy on my lap. She's dead. Not only that, but I killed her. How could I do this to her?

"I'm sorry, Jake," Anthony says, "I can only imagine what's going through your head right now."

"I'm surprised," Daniel says, "I would have never thought you'd go through with it, especially not after she kissed you." He laughs and I touch my lips, still feeling hers pressed tightly against them. Not the best first kiss in history.

"Let's just get this over with and get out of here before something else goes wrong," I say, "The sooner we get out of here the sooner we can forget any of this ever happened." I put Cindy down on the ground, crossing her arms over her chest and closing her eyes.

My heart feels like it's beating at half the speed it's used to, but there is one thought that lingers in the back of my mind, giving me hope to go on: Even if this was the empath, the Cindy it killed would have been a clone, meaning that there's a way to get her back. When we get out, I will find the Instructor and make her make another clone of Cyndy and I'll get to fall in love with her all over again.

"Let's get the book and go look what else we can find in the new library," I say, "We might not have Cindy or Sabrina anymore, but I'm sure we'll find a way if we work together."

Anthony grabs the book off the table from where Cindy left it and we make our way to the entertainment room. It's only now that I become aware of two things. I have Daniel's dagger in my one hand. It would be so easy to get rid of him right now. I know Anthony won't blame me and it sure would be a lot nicer to finish all of this without him. I can feel the muscles tense in my hand, but I can't give the Instructor the satisfaction. The more of us that get through this, the better.

The second thing I become aware of is Cindy's teddy. The last thing she thought of doing was giving me what I can only assume is Mr. Bearsington, her beloved bear that she got from her mother. She never showed it to me, but I always assumed it would be bigger.

I enter the entertainment room and instantly bump into Anthony who has stopped dead in his tracks right in the doorway. I'm about to ask what's wrong when I see the shimmering vision of the Instructor standing in the middle of the room.

"Well, well, well," she says, "I've got to say you three have really outdone yourselves. You exceeded even my expectations."

"What do you want," Daniel says, grabbing for his belt, but as his fingers grasp air he turns around and looks at me.

"Now, Daniel," she smiles, "Attacking me won't do you any good. This is only a projection and you won't be able to do anything to hurt me where I am now. Besides, I'm here to congratulate you on a job well done. I was really expecting this part of the tests to take at least a week and you managed to figure it all out in less than a day."

"So, it's over," Anthony asks.

"Not quite. You see, your friend, Cindy had the right idea searching the books in the library, seeing that there was a message hidden inside the lot of them. This message would have directed you to a scavenger hunt in the dining room and into the secret tunnels behind the kitchen and only then the fireplace. But thanks to Mr. Hetherington's attempt to kill Jake, you managed to skip ahead to one of the last pieces of the puzzle so early on."

"Happy to help," he says smugly, "Now get to the point. I assume there's some kind of catch."

"Right you are, but you're not going to like it. I'm afraid you still haven't reached the objective of this test yet, seeing that the empath still lives."

"What do you mean," I ask, pushing through between Anthony and Daniel, "I killed Cindy. I felt the life leaving her."

"Yes," she says smiling even wider, a smile I haven't seen on her face since Gustav brought Axel's head into the training room, "And that was a fantastic performance and would have been the end of things, had Cindy been the empath. Unfortunately, Mrs. Hayden's death was a very tragic waste of time and talent."